Magic and Decay (4 page)

He put two strong hands on my shoulder and seemed to
gather some courage or tact or something. “We’ll get through this, Ivy. Hermes
isn’t going to lose you to Zombies. So he wanted to teach you a lesson. You’ve
learned it, obviously. He’ll be back to get you, soon.”

“Us.”

“What?”

“He’ll be back to get us, Ryder. Hermes isn’t going to
leave you here.”

He made a disagreeing sound in the back of his throat.
“We’ll see. Those Greek bastards are a little fickle when it comes to humans.”

“He wouldn’t leave you here,” I insisted. “And you’re
not a normal human.”

Ryder’s thumb rubbed a slow trail over my collarbone;
my stomach flipped and spun and twisted until it was hard to breathe. I tried
not to react outwardly, but my breath caught and my body instinctively leaned
into him.

He pulled back immediately and retracted his hands. I
felt the loss of his touch like a physical pain. Even in the lack of light I
could see his attention shift from places he had just been touching to my face
and then back again.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if they left me, Ivy. And you
probably shouldn’t be either.”

I growled.
Actually growled.
“They’re not going to leave you.
I
won’t leave you.”
 

I felt whatever warmth he’d given me in the last few
minutes disappear completely. His attitude turned icy and crept over my hands
and arms like frost. I still couldn’t catch a breath, but this time it was
because my lungs had frozen.

“You
already
left me, Ivy. And you already told me that once before.”

“You guys coming?” Eden asked from up a flight of
stairs.

“Yep.”
Ryder turned away from
me and marched on.

I struggled to stay present, to stay breathing for
several more moments before I finally followed after him. And when I finally
did, it was only because the pounding against the walls increased and I feared
for my life.

I scurried after Ryder trying not to hate myself. It
wasn’t easy. I was rather an expert on self-loathing.

I also needed to figure out how to get us out of this
mess. “Hermes,” I whispered into the darkness.

Nothing.

I kept whispering the name of my supernatural travel
agent all the way up the stairs. He never showed.

The sun burst bright and blinding through the rooftop
door. I blinked against the evening sun and let my eyes adjust. It wasn’t harsh
light but after the darkness of the building, my eyes seemed unwilling to open.

When I could finally see again, I wished I couldn’t.

Zombies stretched out from the building in every
direction. They flooded the streets and alleyways of this small town and surged
the building.

They fought, clawed, wrestled, did anything they could
to get to us.
To me.
And they smelled so bad.

So freaking bad.

Eden and
Kiran
stood super
close to the ledge and stared down over it with a hungry kind of vengeance.
Their Magic seemed to zing back and forth between them and light the air with
invisible fire.

Ryder didn’t seem to notice the electrical current
they brought with them, but I felt it all over. It shouldn’t be this easy for
me to sense their Magic or trust them at their word. But it was and I did.

I couldn’t explain it, but it was easy for me to trust
Eden. I felt this inexplicable connection to her. I wanted to blame it on the
cosmos or some great psychic event, but it was probably much simpler.

Probably something as little as we
were from the same hometown or something.

I joined them at the edge and tried not to gag. “Oh,
my gosh
, are they…? Are they eating each other?”

Eden sucked in a breath. “Looks like it. I’ve heard of
that before, but this is the first time I’ve seen it up close and personal.
That’s just disgusting.”

“I don’t think they’re going to give up, Red.”

I glanced over my shoulder at Ryder and then followed
his gaze down to where Zombies were trying to crawl up the wall or use each
other as step stools. Their bloodied hands left dark streaks on the bumpy
stucco. Their half-gone faces sneered up at me and they bared their blackened,
gunky teeth with clear intention.

“I hate this place,” I whined. “Out of all the places
and all the worlds and all the things, this one is the worst.
The very worst.”

“I concur,”
Kiran
laughed.
“This one is by far the worst.”

“So do we have a plan?
Er
,
more of a plan than just sitting up here and Zombie-watching?”

Eden and
Kiran
shared a
look. They seemed to do that a lot. It was like they were so in sync they
didn’t even have to speak in order to convey thoughts. They just looked at each
other and knew.

It was super obnoxious.

But also, really sweet.

I wanted to hate them for it. And I did feel an
intense amount of jealousy. But it also strangely gave me hope.

Maybe if they found their happy ending, Ryder and I
could too.

But then he accidentally brushed against me and
recoiled like I was a poisonous snake. I watched in horrified awe as he moved
across the roof to stand on the other side of it, as far from me as he could
get.

So maybe that happy ending was more of a pipe dream
than reality.

Ugh.

“I have no idea how long we’re going to be stuck
here,” I told the group. “I don’t think we’re going to be able to hang out and
enjoy the sunset though. We have no idea how long it will take Hermes to get
here, if he decides to come back at all.”

“You’re probably right,” Eden groaned. “I usually
think things through better than this.”

Kiran
practically choked on
his laughter. “She doesn’t think anything through,” he told us. “Not anything.”

Eden tried to look irritated, but her
embarrassed
smile killed the effect. “Okay, but usually, you
talk me out of my dumbest ideas!”
Kiran
raised his
eyebrows and waited patiently for her to amend her story. “Okay, fine! But you
at least make a protest!”

Kiran
cleared his throat but
wisely stayed quiet.

“Ivy and I have no weapons,” Ryder stated obviously.

“And we have Magic, but it doesn’t exactly do you any
good,”
Kiran
commiserated. “We’re going to have to
find a way to keep moving.”

Kiran’s
gaze moved to the
building next door. There were at least fifty feet of space between the ledge
we peered over and the next building. The other building was shorter than this
one, at least. We overlooked the mayhem below from two stories high. The next
building over was only a one-story little thing.

It wasn’t the worst jump in the history of
building-jumps.

But there was no way in Hades I could clear it.

I would be Zombie food in no time.
 

“I can’t make that. My supernatural powers are
restricted to looking pretty and acing an
American
Idol
audition
. That’s it. I don’t have go-go
gadget arms or super speed or witchcraft! I just have this!” I gestured at my
face and bugged out my eyes. Ryder didn’t have those things either, but he
could probably still make it. He was like that.

He was just naturally good at everything he tried to
do.

Obnoxious, right?

“We’ll help you,” Eden piped up with more enthusiasm
than I thought the situation called for. “We’ll, um, propel you over there with
Magic. We’ll keep the force-field, too, so they can’t nip at our heels.”

“Nip at our heels?”

“Just to be safe.”

I looked at Ryder, but he was busy judging the
distance of the jump. I could see his wheels spinning and his gray eyes
tumultuous with thought.

“After that building, then what?”
I looked down the small main street lined with quaint little buildings on one
side. The other side was beach only and led straight to the ocean. The sun sat
just above the horizon, a shimmering half-circle of orange that let off little
light.

Overhead the stars had started to twinkle and hazy
gray clouds had rolled in. The air caressed my skin with a sultry breeze, at
complete odds to the craziness beneath us.

 
It was really a
perfect evening. In the normal world, I would have loved to wander through
these little shops and step foot in the ocean. I would have enjoyed the warm
night and getting lost in a place I didn’t know and in a town full of people
that didn’t know me.

But I wasn’t here on vacation.

I was here to be taught a lesson by a stuck-up,
entitled god, and I didn’t get to window shop or be anonymous.

I got to jump from building to building and hope that
I didn’t miss.

“Okay,” I sighed. “Let’s do this.”

“You’re going to jump it? Red, have you lost your
mind?” Ryder was at my side in a second, practically vibrating with anger.

“What else are we going to do, Ryder? We don’t have
another option.”

“So you’re just going to jump to
another building
and hope their Magic can boost you across?” He
sounded absolutely incredulous, and I didn’t exactly blame him. “You honestly
trust them this much?”

Eden and
Kiran
waited
patiently for me to get my thoughts together. “Honestly? I don’t even know
them. Mainly I’m hoping this is some stupid dream, and I’ll wake up from it before
I can do any real damage. If I just open my eyes, everything will be back to
the nightmare I know.”

Eden
tsked
softly.
“Sorry, Ivy.
Dreaming is our thing.”

“Your thing?”

“You get the whole looking pretty act going on though.
That’s apparently enough to write a whole book about. You’ll be fine.”

I decided not to respond.

I hopped up to the wide ledge and swayed a little bit
from the precarious height. “All I have to do is jump?”

Eden scrambled up next to me and gave me a winning
smile. “This is the easy part.”

My mouth fell open as I watched her jump across the
too-far expanse. She landed on the flat roof across the alley with the grace of
a cat. She didn’t even fall or trip or anything.

As I stood there, she spun around and grinned at me
some more before bowing low with a flourish.

“She’s such a showoff,”
Kiran
muttered.

“Right.”
She was just showing
off.

“Ready?” he asked. “Just jump. Eden and I will help
you across.”

I held my hand out to the side and wiggled my fingers.
I kept my focus on Eden when I said, “Jump with me, Ryder? Don’t make me do
this alone.”

Several heavy beats of silence had pounded by before
he said, “Fine, Ivy. We’ll do it your way. We always do it your way.”

I tried not to smile. “At least you’re finally getting
it.”

His big, warm hand grasped onto my wrist a little
tighter than I expected. He yanked me over to him and then slid his arm around
my waist. His chest pressed into my back, and his body seemed to envelop me in
comfort and familiarity.

I wanted to cry from the closeness, from how right his
touch felt.
From just touching him again after so long.

I wanted to stand here and weep and sob my apologies
and tell him that I would never leave him again.

Except I knew that wasn’t true.

I couldn’t keep that promise. And we both knew it.

“I’m getting you out of this, Red. And then we’re
going to act like it never happened. Yeah? We’ve got shit to work out, but that
can wait till the other side.”

“Yeah.”
I nearly choked on
the word. “Okay.”

He jumped before I could take a second to prepare
myself. But just like Eden promised, they caught us with their Magic and helped
our feet land in the middle of the neighboring roof.

Ryder’s arms dropped from my body and I nearly
collapsed with relief.

Eden was in my face before I could breakdown though.
“Only seven more roofs to go.
Ready for
more?”

“And if I say no?”

“You are so cute, Ivy! Has anyone ever told you that?”

“I don’t appreciate your sarcasm,” I teased her.

“
Mphm
.
I know it’s rough, but we’ve got a ways to go, and I’m starting to feel a
little uneasy.”

“What do you mean?”

Kiran
came to stand by her
side as soon as he’d made the leap. His arm went around her waist and he
pressed a kiss to her temple. “Eden?”

“I think there’s more for us here. I don’t think we’re
just supposed to help Ivy and Ryder.”

“You mean more humans?”

Eden nodded. “I feel it.”

“Magic gives you great insight?” I guessed.

“Premonitions,”
Kiran
explained. “Eden’s an Oracle. She can see into the future a bit. It’s the
reason we came here in the first place.”

“Premonitions?
Magic?
Jumping tall buildings and running faster than a
speeding bullet? Is there anything you guys can’t do?”

Kiran
just shrugged. I
wanted to punch him.

“Apparently you guys get all the cool stuff.”

“And you get all the decidedly uncool stuff,”
Kiran
lamented.

Eden sounded optimistic when she said, “At least none
of us have to deal with Zombies on a regular basis.”

The sounds of clicking metal and footsteps drew our
attention to the corner of the roof where a dark-haired version of
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
stepped from
behind the giant fan unit, followed by a shaggy blonde-haired guy that made my
knees go a little weak.