As the doors slid shut, Aric moved closer to me. Under the crackling lights, Jack and I shared an uneasy glance.
My heart thudded when we began to descend, seeming to inch to the next floor. “I am the lizard’s tail. I am the tail.” Milo kept blathering that. “I’m shed when we’re caught.” He’d said the same thing last night.
What could he mean? Sometimes when a tomcat caught a lizard, the creature would shed its tail, allowing it to escape.
My eyes widened. “Push the emergency stop!” The twins were going to sacrifice their father. We had entered some kind of trap. They would bet on me surviving, regenerating for their torture. “We have to get out of here!”
But Aric was looking up—at the access hatch that had just opened.
A girl peered down, a replicated tableau glimmering over her.
With a giggle, the Violet clone dropped a grenade into the cab—and slammed the hatch shut.
37
Jack had told me about grenades. Once you pull the pin, a grenade is not your friend.
And most exploded within five seconds.
One thousand one . . .
Aric dove for it, just as Jack did. Collision. Cursing. I couldn’t see what was happening in the wavering lights.
One thousand two . . .
Milo kicked at their faces, so I slashed him with my claws. Aric caught the grenade.
One thousand three . . .
He vaulted upward, punching that hatch so hard it flew off the hinges. The Violet clone shrieked. Jack snatched me in his arms, pressing me against the wall. “Brace yourself.”
One thousand four . . .
With a yell, Aric lobbed the grenade straight up through the opening. The only place he could.
Where the cables were. The brakes.
One thousand five—
BOOM!
We . . . dropped. Free fall. That feeling of weightlessness wrenched a scream from my lungs.
“I got you, bébé! We’ll get through this. We’ll get through—”
Landing.
Bone-jarring impact. Grinding metal. Stabbing pain?
The force pitched Jack from one side of the half-crumpled cab to the other. I was held fast. With a swallow, I peered down. A piece of metal had skewered my waist, just over my hip.
Stone and debris plummeted onto the top. The clone gave a cry. More rocks bounced, then spilled through the opening, blood-smeared from the girl above.
I needed to move. Stifling a scream, I stepped forward, nearly collapsing.
“Evangeline!” Jack’s hands searched me for injuries. “Christ, you bleeding?”
“I-I’ll be okay. Are you hurt?”
“Non.”
“Aric?” I asked.
“I’m fine. Milo’s been better.”
He was rolling on the floor, moaning in pain. Stones continued to fall.
Jack gazed up. “We got to go before we get buried.”
Aric unsheathed a sword to pry open the mangled cab doors. “Or before another carnate drops more explosives.” He wrenched one of the doors from its track; it clattered to the floor.
Holding my side, I gazed out into a dimly-lit warehouse. Were those pallets of canned food?
Over the falling rocks, I heard snarling.
Jack snapped a glow stick from his coat pocket, tossing it. The tube skipped across the floor.
When it stopped, I lost my breath.
Bagmen. What must be hundreds of them. All branded.
Milo laughed. “The tail. The tail. Now the cunning lizard gets away.”
With crazed snarls, the horde charged.
Jack shoved me at Aric. “Get her out!”
As Aric lifted me to the hatch, Jack hauled Milo up and tossed him to the oncoming Baggers.
Ignoring the pain in my side, I scrambled to the roof, past the dying clone. A boulder rested on her crushed torso, like she’d caught it.
She smiled at me serenely, as if she were on a train, heading off on an adventure.
As if we’d be sure to meet again. Then her lids slid shut.
More rocks fell, pinging me on the head. A big one connected. I staggered, seeing four of the dead clone.
“They’re goan to overrun us.” Jack drew his pistols, picking the Baggers off.
“Climb up here!” I’d thought he and Aric would be right behind me.
The snarling grew louder and louder.
“If we don’t stop them”—Aric’s swords flashed out—“they’ll power their way through the top of the cab.”
I raised my gaze. “There’s another floor, maybe thirty feet up.” The doors at the elevator stop had been blown wide from the grenade. Red lights pulsed from that landing.
Jack snapped, “Get her out of here, Reaper. NOW!”
Before I could argue, Aric leapt up to join me, grabbing my bloody waist. He drew back to the opposite side of the shaft. “You can do this.”
“Do what?”
He tossed me. I flew upward, arcing toward the opening.
Oomph. The edge gouged my wound as I landed, half of me inside, half clambering.
“Climb, Empress!”
My boots scrabbled against the uneven shaft. Before I could hoist myself in, pain shot through my head.
Another rock? Cracked skull? Blood poured down one temple. My glyphs flickered. With the last of my strength, I hauled myself up into some kind of storage room.
Louder snarling below. No more gunshots. Jack?
I couldn’t release my thorn tornado without risking him. Poison wouldn’t work on them. I had no ground to grow vines, no plants to revive.
I flopped onto my front and shimmied to the edge. “Aric!” I saw him through a frame of dripping blood. A crimson slick gathered around me, pooling over the lip of the floor. “Don’t leave him!”
After a heartbeat’s hesitation, he seized the coil of severed elevator cables, ripping them free. “Deveaux!” He threaded the length through the hatch. “Grab hold!”
“Got it! Go, go! Fuck—they’re in!”
In one motion, Aric heaved on the cable and vaulted toward me. Midway, he lost momentum, snagging the edge of the floor with the tips of four fingers. “The mortal’s caught on something.”
Jack dangled halfway out of the hatch; Baggers scrabbled to drag him back down, clinging to his feet.
Cable in one hand, crossbow in the other, he fired. For every Bagman he killed, two more took its place.
Hanging by his fingertips, Aric grappled to heft Jack—and the chains of Bagmen suspended from each of Jack’s legs. A Bagger tug of war. “Can’t hold this for much longer. The mortal’s probably been bitten.”