Page 69 of Road To Runes

"Do you have a freaking death wish?" I asked, annunciating every word slowly.

"Doyou?"

"This place is going to burn down with me in it. I don't have a choice. You do!"

Asher pulled back, extending my arms, and he grabbed my hands from his shirt to encase them in his. He tucked them both under his chin and gazed at me with big, shining eyes that would have made me melt if the rising temperatures weren't already doing the job for him.

"No, I don't," he muttered. "Now, are you going to help me findbothof us a way out of here or not?"

I searched his eyes, and for a moment I was flung back into our past; where his tenderness filled every moment, and the joy of merely being his orbit fuelled me no matter how bad my day was going. And my day was going really freaking badly at that moment.

The still unconscious forms of Thornton and Paul lay a short way from us. Looked like they were going down with the ship too, whether they liked it or not.

"Make thatallof us," I said, as Hecate paced up and down the far basement wall, pressing her paw to it every so often. "I can't get out of here unless there's a breach in the enchantments they've hidden in the walls and unless you've brought some drilling equipment, I don't see how we're going to do that."

Asher lowered our hands and tugged me toward the wall where Hecate paced. She jumped up on my shoulder and licked my cheek.

"I can't break the enchantments, they're too strong,"she said."If there weren’t so many, I could dosomething,but there's a network connected through the walls in the entire house. It's too much."

The distant sound of crackling wood and the groaning of beams made my heart race faster.

"There's no way you can just crack one of them?" Asher asked. "We only need a small-"

"I'm telling you, it's too well reinforced."Hecate batted his hair with her paw.

"Is there any way we can hide?" I asked. "Find somewhere that we can protect ourselves?" Saying it out loud made it sound even stupider than in my head. Desperate times meant dredging up every idea, even from the very bottom of the barrel.

"There's this little thing called oxygen and we're gonna need it-"

"I get it, Hec." I scowled at her. She was right. No matter where we hid in this place, if the fire didn't find us, the smoke would.

I pressed my palm to my forehead and closed my eyes. All my thoughts were clouded with the imminent danger and the utter devastation that Asher and Hecate hadchosento go down with me. I couldn't let them die like this. Even if my time was up, theirs wasn't.

Asher's hand squeezed mine so tightly that it started to tingle. He could feel it, too. The blanket of death that was getting closer and closer to smothering us all and bundling us into its grasp. If onlyIhad Hecate's power, then maybe I could...

My eyes snapped open. What if Icould? The thought of absorbing Hecate's power temporarily had never crossed my mind. Spirit creatures were sacred, kleptomaniacs or not, and as such, they were protected. If anyone had tried to take the power of a grimalkin or any other spirit creature, it wouldn't exactly have gone down in scientific literature.

I dropped Asher's hand and lifted Hecate off our shoulders, holding her out in front of me while she mewled in protest.

"Let me take your power," I said. "Letmetry to break the enchantments."

"But you've never done that before. I don't know anyone who has. What if it goes wrong?"

I pulled my most deadpan face. "We're in a burning building, Hec. I don't thinkthatgoing wrong is our worst problem rightnow." I coughed again and tried to cover my mouth with my upper arm. "Will you let me do it?"

Asher looked between the two of us but I could see the cogs turning behind his eyes. He was trying to think of another plan. Any other plan. But after a solid moment, he had nothing to offer. Neither did Hecate, it seemed.

"It's too dangerous, Bea! My power isn't meant for humans anyway, but-"

"We don't have time to debate this, Hec. Will you let me?"

"You're going to get hurt."

"We're going to die if I don't try this anyway. Hec, please."

Hecate mewled but stopped halfway through for a series of sneezes.

"All right, but...please be careful. It's easy to overload yourself with my power."

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