Page 43 of Kissed the Mark
And, following that mundane thought, theUber car exploded.
Part Three
The Unseelie Court
Chapter Twenty-One
Things Blow Up
THE SIDEWALK SCRAPED COARSELY AGAINST my face; myknee hurt like a bitch. I felt dazed, unable to process what washappening. Though I’d never seen brains outside of someone’s body…Iwas pretty sure the brains belonging to the Uber driver I’d justbeen annoyed by a second ago were splattered on the pavement.
That was definitely his disembodiedhand.
Someone shook my shoulders. There was aringing noise in my ears and then nothing. The side of my face waswet; I reached a tentative hand to touch the skin by my ear. Fluidwas trickling out down my neck. A ruptured eardrum.
The person shaking my shoulders lifted thehand from my face. Leandra. She was screaming something, somethingI couldn’t hear. There were red and blue lights, a ton of securityguards, cops. The car was shrapnel, spread all over the parallelparking drop-off lane, blood everywhere and car windows shattered.“What’s going on?” I tried to ask, but couldn’t hear my ownvoice.
Leandra was dragged away from me. Thefurious form of Matt Rivera loomed over us. He knocked Leandra tothe ground, pummeling her with his fists. I used my scraped palmsto push myself off the ground but couldn’t stand up all the way, myknee giving out. A shiny object caught my attention—my silverdagger, among the contents of Leandra’s completely busted suitcase,strewn everywhere. I limped to it and slumped against a parkingbollard, exhausted and panicked, unable to hear incoming threatsand unable to process information.
I screamed when someone laid rough hands onme. They were unmistakably dressed like a vampire.Right,Leandra, where is she?I scanned the area and found herfighting Mateo back, having thrown his head through the glass of asliding door. Glass shards glimmered in the lights of the broadairport windows. Cops were swarming the place now, but they didn’tknow who to arrest, who was responsible; two had guns trained onLeandra and Mateo, which would injure but not stop them, but thepolice didn’t know that.
The vampire tugged at my arm violently. Itried to shrug him off and got a good look at his face—one of thecronies Patricia had brought to my apartment. But it wasn’t thethird midnight yet, I thought numbly. I still had a day. I gesturedto my ears as the vampire continued to shout at me, his fangsshining in the night.
Leandra had Matt Rivera against the cementnow, smashing his head into it repeatedly. He grabbed her by thethroat and squeezed. My legs inched forward a little of their ownaccord, though I’d be no help in a fight like this. I closed myeyes and felt for the earth; there wasn’t any useful vegetationaround.
The crony vampire was trying to pull me awaynow, and I roughly freed myself again.
And then Patricia entered my line of sight,heading right toward the fighting vamps, holding her skirts inclenched fists with unmasked fury.
Shots were fired; more glass littered theconcrete; a family of five sprinted in the other direction, baggageabandoned.
Somehow I had to get Leandra to Faerie. Weweren’t safe here. I used the bollard to propel myself forward tothe next one to get closer to the action. A police officer wavedhis baton at me to stay back. His bullets might only inconveniencethe vampires, but they would definitely kill me. I could screamwith frustration.
“Leandra!” I shouted, but I had no sense ofthe volume of my own voice versus the chaos. I inched forward againand a security guard from the airport held out a hand to stop me.He was opening his mouth, saying something. Tears filled my eyes.Would I ever hear again?
Would that be a concern if I died today?
There were tons of vampires now, ganging upon Leandra and Mateo. Neither of them was in good graces with thevampire community, if I had to guess. Patricia waved her fingeraround, ordering people restrained. Five vamps held down MateoRivera, though not as harshly as they held down Leandra, Inoticed—they had their favorites, too, and Leandra had been inhiding and seemed the guiltiest. I screamed wordlessly again,turning a few heads. “Leandra!”
I planted my hands against the cement andbreathed deeply. There were trees everywhere in the world; I woulduse grass if I had to. The panic and adrenaline extended my rangefar beyond normal bounds. I felt the earth, the air, theroots.
Tree roots burst through the pavement.Police backed away, their faces pale. Any non-supernaturalcivilians had long ago fled, but the vampires watched thetransformation of nature in consternation and wonder. I pressedharder, the roots breaching concrete more forcefully, pushingpeople out of the way to get to me.
In the confusion, Leandra freed herself fromthe last vampire holding her down. She leaped over a huge chunk ofcracked pavement with supernatural grace and landed on the tree I’djust grown in the middle of the drop-off area, sliding down anenormous root in my direction.
I kept pushing, but I was unbearably weakand tired now, my eyelids fluttering. There was a huge rendingcrack—I can hear it!I thought with wonder, though whetherit was because it was so loud that it could get even to my rupturedears or that I was getting my hearing back, I didn’t know—andanother tree burst forth from the pavement, twisting to the skies,branches whipping out at people in its radius.
Leandra scooped me into her arms, limpingnot away to freedom, but further into the airport.
?
I woke with the taste of iron in my mouthand wet hair glued to my face. My head was against something paddedbut scratchy—pillowed by my jean jacket, I realized, and I was onthe floor of a bathroom, a bathroom with…no doors on itsstalls?
“Olympia?” Leandra asked.
I lifted myself onto my elbows. My leggingswere torn and covered in blood, especially by that injured knee,but when I moved my legs, they felt fine. I brushed a finger overmy lips, wondering at the metallic taste, and they came away redwith blood.
“What happened?” I asked, dazed.
