Page 78 of Just Dare Me
After the longest five seconds of my life, the footsteps pause, then shift their weight before retreating quickly. Daring a glance over Madison’s shoulder, I watch the nightmare beast bound away, strolling up West Jefferson amidst a chorus of screams and screeching brakes and crashing cars.
My relief at still being alive quickly turns to the shame of a kind of betrayal. Yes, I was spared, but only by the redirection of the beast toward a city that might as well be the whole world. Because it is to me.
I don’t mean to say it out loud, but the words escape anyway. “This can’t be happening.”
“It is happening, finally,” Madison replies, turning to face me. “And what I have started, I will now stop. I need to get to the Renaissance Center. As your car is the fastest, I suggest we take it.”
“What the hell are you talking about? It’s over! There’s no containing it. The whole world…” I still can hardly put words to the terrible, surreal truth. “The whole worldknows. Because of you!”
“And because of me, it will also know which side we’re on. I have a second team of sorcerers waiting in ambush at the Renaissance Center.”
“Another team? Waiting for what?”
She calmly brushes silver hair from her eyes. “To save this city, what else?”
I don’t have time to argue. Spinning to Elle and Oliver, I bark orders. “You two! Get in there and find Conrad Paul and your parents. Detain all three of them; they’re under arrest.”
Elle, still wobbly from the attack, gives a grim smile. “With pleasure.”
Wiping blood from his mouth, Oliver jerks his chin at Director West. “What about her?”
“Her punishment is to come with me. We’re going to fix this or die trying.”
Every major U.S. city hasits own unique skyline, like a fingerprint. St. Louis, the Gateway Arch; New York, the Statue of Liberty; San Francisco, the Golden Gate Bridge. For D-town, it’s the GM Renaissance Center, which we just call the RenCen—a campus of seven skyscrapers. The central tower is the world headquarters of General Motors, and by far the tallest building in Detroit. To attack it would be like blowing up the White House. Yeah, Arael Moaz never was subtle.
He’s headed straight for the RenCen. I can’t see the hellhound, but I can easily follow its path of destruction down Jefferson Boulevard. The roads are empty, because all the traffic is now piled on the sidewalks and center dividers, or crashed through storefronts. Half the people are scared shitless, crying and babbling, while the other half shuffle like zombies, eyes glassed over in shock. One thing about them is all the same, though: they all run away from the threat, away from downtown. I’m the only one stupid enough to race toward it.
My speedometer surges past a hundred miles per hour. Ardee Todd’s big bobblehead rattles like chattering teeth. Wind screams through a dozen cracks and holes in my windshield.
“It’s not too late, and you know it,” I shout over the noise, glancing at Director West in the passenger seat, trying to get a read on her.
She’s too quiet, too calm, and I get the feeling it’s not because she’s confident or determined. She’s not barking orders at me, or trying to defend her plan. She’s watching the faces of these people, and her own face doesn’t look so different from some of theirs. I think she’s worried, and that worries me.
“There’s still a way to explain this, I’m telling you. Cover it up with the same old bullshit. Cloned DNA gone wrong, busted out of a government lab. Or, hey, this thing was frozen in the ice at the bottom of Lake Huron, just waiting for global warming to set it loose. They’ll believe it. They’ll have to. But only so long as that hellhound is theonlyimpossible thing they see today. You show up and start throwing magic in front of all those news cameras and cell phones, there’s no going back.”
“And how many would die before it’s over, Shayne? How are they going to kill it? A tank would do the job. Or a missile strike. Do you know how many hours it’ll take for that kind of call to be made? You’re right. There’s no going back. We stop him, or nobody does.”
“And you know how to do that? You’ve fought a hellhound before? A mythic?”
She avoids the answer. “I didn’t have a choice. Marco was going to do it without me, only he wouldn’t have tried to stop Arael once he’d set him free.”
“I thought you said this was all Marco’s idea. It was his dream.”
“It wasourdream! Together!” She wrings her hands at me, then sinks back into the seat, dropping her fists in her lap. It’s the only time I’ve ever seen any kind of emotional distress from her. Another red flag. Before, she was pissing me off; now she’s scaring me. “But after I brought him back…he was different.”
“What, like, he was somebody else?”
“It wasn’t somebody else. It was Marco. It was still him. It just wasn’tusanymore. I’m the one who brought him back, but Arael Moaz was his only master, and King Paul was their secret.”
“King Paul?” It takes me all of one second to piece their plan together. “Marco was building his own necro ring behind your back. They were going to cut you out.” Those red flags in my brain turn to flashing red alarms. “But that means…”
She finishes my thought. “Yes, Arael Moaz knew my plan. He’s known all along. And yet here we are. He let me go through with it anyway.”
“Because he thinks he can beat you.”
“No. It’s because of you, Shayne. He knew you were going to take Marco, and soon. That’s the only reason Arael Moaz came back to me. He’d rather take his chances.”
“Or he knows something you don’t.”
