The Shattered Dark (24 page)

Paige and I take a step back.

“I left my ID in my other jeans.” Totally true, but the cop either doesn’t believe
me or he doesn’t care. He slips his baton an inch out of its holder. I don’t know
what his deal is. Hundreds of people were in that club. He should be asking if we’re
okay. He shouldn’t be treating us as if we’re…

Criminals. As if we’re armed.

I
am
armed, and if the bodies in the building next door have been discovered, the cops
are probably searching for the killers.

“Keep your hands where I can see them,” the officer says.

Paige suddenly loops her arm around my waist, throwing her weight against me with
enough force to make me stagger.

“Call an ambulance!” she says, her bright blue eyes going wide. “Can’t you see she’s
bleeding?”

Bleeding? I look down, see that my shirt and jeans are covered in blood. I’m not hurt,
though. Not badly, at least. This is all from the girl in the club.

The
dead
girl in the club.

“You have to help us,” Paige says, forcing me to move toward the officer. “Please.”

Paige is a great actress, but the cop isn’t buying it. His baton slides all the way
out of its holder, and he shouts a name, calling for backup, I presume.

I look toward the right, where the rest of the cops are congregated, helping the injured
or setting up barricades to keep out traffic and the decent-sized crowd that’s developed.

Speaking of that crowd, it surges toward the sidewalk, making room for a black sedan
to pass. The car hits the opposite curb, nearly clips the post holding up one side
of the canopy in front of the theater’s entrance before returning fully to the street.
Completely ignoring the barricade the police are moving into place, it heads straight
for us.

It has to be Shane. Thank God he made it out of the club okay.

I grab Paige’s arm, removing it from around my waist and using it to pull her toward
the approaching vehicle. Then I remember the last time Shane came to my rescue. He
plowed into me. I don’t want a repeat experience, so I backpedal toward the sidewalk.

“Hey!” the officer in front of us shouts, moving forward. He notices the car a second
later. I tense, hoping Shane doesn’t intend to run him down—hitting a remnant is so
much different than hitting a human who’s only doing his job—but the officer staggers
backward, out of the way.

The car screeches to a stop between us. I grab the handle of the back door, jerk it
open, and am halfway inside before I realize the driver isn’t Shane.

He is human, though.

His dark brown eyes meet mine. “You have two seconds to make a decision.”

He shifts into first gear. Paige shoves me from behind. I’m not in the mood to see
the inside of a British jail, so I scurry across the seat. Paige barely has time to
fall into the car beside me before the driver takes off.

Or rather, he sort of takes off. I’m thrown back, then forward and back again as the
transmission protests. This is a standard. Whoever this guy is obviously doesn’t have
much experience with them.

“Let me drive,” Paige says, putting her hands on the shoulders of the front seats
to crawl over the center console.

“No,” the driver answers. After another rough stop and start, he gets moving. For
about ten seconds. The car coughs and dies.

“You’re going to strip the gears!” she says, grabbing the hand he has on the stick
shift.

There’s a muffled yell outside the car. I turn in time to see the officer slam his
baton into the driver’s window. The safety glass fractures but stays in one piece.

The cop raises his baton again just as the car roars back to life. We lurch forward.
I turn around, looking out the back window to see the officer running after us with
the baton raised again. He swings. This time, he misses.

But we are
so
not out of danger yet. A car parked beside the crowd of onlookers starts moving,
heading toward us with its lights flashing.

I face forward again, see that the street is clear ahead, but I’ve seen enough police
chases on TV to know that this won’t end well. We might be in the UK, but I’m sure
they have helicopters and cameras the same as we do in the U.S. The only way we might—
might
—get away with this is with fae help. We need to get to the gate.

The guy driving brakes as he makes a sharp left. The turn goes well, but as soon as
he tries accelerating again, the car sputters. Paige sprawls over the console and
has to brace a hand against the front dash. I grip the back of the driver’s seat and
hold on.

“You’re going to get us killed,” Paige says. “Move.”

“You’re sitting on the gearshift.” He leans his shoulder into her, trying to push
her out of the way. Ahead, a patrol car sits at an intersection. It starts to pull
out, blocking our street.

Paige grabs the wheel, spinning it. I’m thrown against the door, and I swear we nearly
flip as we make a wild left turn.

“Jesus Christ, Paige!” The driver rights the steering wheel, but once again, the car
lurches.

“This isn’t working.” I grab the door handle. “We’re going to have to run.”

“Not if this asshole cooperates,” Paige says. She gets her legs underneath her, then
somehow maneuvers her way into the guy’s lap. She’s petite enough that she’s actually
able to fit under the wheel. From the backseat, I can’t see what exactly happens next,
but there’s a grunt of pain from the driver, the gears grind one last time, then tires
squeal as we take off.

Sirens blare beside us. I curse when I see the patrol car speeding toward my window.
Curse again when Paige yanks the wheel, sending me across the backseat. I’m awkwardly
wedged onto the floorboard when I’m flung in the other direction.

Adrenaline surges through me—I’m pretty sure we’re going to crash any second—but when
I manage to crawl back into my seat, I see that Paige totally has this.

She’s shifting gears like a pro, dodging pedestrians and random medians in the road.
She hasn’t shaken the cops pursuing us, though. At least three vehicles are on our
tail.

“You’re on the wrong side of the road,” the guy formerly driving the car says. He’s
maneuvered himself into the passenger seat. The tendons in his throat are tight, and
he’s holding on to the door and center console as if they’re his only lifelines.

“Seat belt,” I say calmly, yanking on the strap over his shoulder. I still tense with
every close call and last-minute turn the car makes, but I keep my breaths steady
and force myself to trust Paige’s driving. She’s doing better than I could, which
is ironic because I know she doesn’t have a license, and I’m fairly certain she’s
never even owned a car.

I grab my own seat belt and buckle in. “We’re not going to be able to lose the cops.
We need—”

“We’ll go back to where we fissured in at,” Paige interrupts. “Someone will find us
there.”

The someone she’s talking about has to be a remnant. “Paige. We need to talk. What
did they tell you? Do you know who they are?”

Her eyes meet mine in the rearview mirror. “Don’t you mean
what
they are? They’re fae. And I’m totally pissed you never told me about them.”

Obviously,
they
told her about them. I’m grateful for that, though, and if they’ve convinced her
that they’re the good guys in the war, then they must not have hurt or threatened
her. After seeing what they did to the Sighted humans, I’m grateful for that.

The former driver looks over his shoulder at me. “You know where a gate is?”

“North side of the river near the docks,” I say. Then I add, “Who are you?”

I’m extremely curious. He and Paige obviously know each other. They must have both
been with the remnants. They kidnapped Paige because of her connection to me, but
I’ve never met this guy. I don’t think he was one of Atroth’s humans.

Atroth’s
murdered
humans.

“My name’s Lee,” he says.

“He’s the jerk who’s using me to find you,” Paige adds. Then she slams on the brake
and spins the wheel.

I brace against the front seat again.

There’s a squeal of tires behind us, then a crash as we lose a patrol car.

Paige sideswipes one of the city’s signature red phone booths and keeps driving.

“Using you to find me?” I ask, a death grip on the back of the driver’s seat.

“I’m just looking for my brother,” Lee says.

“Who you need McKenzie to find.” She makes a relatively controlled turn to the right.
“Hey, I found the river.”

“We need to go south,” I say, taking a closer look at Lee.
He’s facing forward again. The light from the radio highlights his profile. His eyes
are dark, and his black, spiky hair is meticulously styled.

“You’re looking for Naito,” I say, certain I see a few faint Caucasian features in
his otherwise angular Asian face.

“You do know him,” he says, peering back at me.

“Yeah,” I say, but I don’t elaborate. I had no clue Naito had a brother. He never
mentioned one, but then, he never mentioned his father very much either. Understandably,
since Nakano is the person who killed Kelia. Nakano leads the group of Sighted humans
who attacked the rebels back when they held me captive in Germany. They loathe the
fae and are determined to kill them whenever and wherever they can. We call them vigilantes,
and they’re a perfect example of why the fae hide themselves from human society.

“You have the Sight?” I ask. The Sight is supposedly hereditary, but it’s extremely
rare for two immediate family members to possess it. For all three to have it, that’s
truly remarkable.

We cross to the other side of a bridge before Lee answers, “Yeah. I have the Sight.”

That tells me nothing about his allegiance.

“Have you been with the rem…with the fae for long?” I ask.

“We met them a week ago,” Paige says, swerving onto the road running parallel to the
river.

“I can answer for myself,” Lee says.

“Oh, really?” Her blond bangs fall into her face when she swings her gaze to him.
“You don’t need to consult—”

“I can answer for myself,” he says again. This time, it sounds like he’s gritting
his teeth.

“What do you want with your brother?” I ask. If he’s a vigilante, maybe I should find
a way to ditch him.

“I haven’t seen him in three years,” Lee answers. “I want to talk to him.”

“He hasn’t mentioned you.”

“We didn’t part on good terms,” he says, then he uses a button on the center console
to move the mirror on his door. To focus on the patrol cars pursuing us, I assume.
Five are
behind us. One pulls parallel whenever he has the chance, but so far, they aren’t
being aggressive about forcing us to stop. Back in the U.S., some cities have a policy
to just follow suspects. If we’re lucky, they have the same policy here.

“So, the gate,” Paige says. “How are we going to use it without a fae?”

“Someone will be waiting for us there.” I
hope
someone will be waiting. This was Aren’s plan. If we’re separated, he’ll bring an
army to the gate to make sure I’m fissured out of this city unharmed.

If he has time to summon that army. If he wasn’t killed back at the club.

Fear surges through me, making my throat close up. It’s exhausting, worrying about
him so much, and even though I’m still upset about his connection to Thrain—or, more
precisely, about him not telling me up front about the connection—I can’t make myself
not care.

“Who’s ‘someone’?” Paige asks. Then she slams on the brake. The car fishtails on the
wet pavement, but she maintains control, which is lucky for the humans standing no
more than two feet away from the front bumper.

“Crap, people!” Paige yells. “You have to look before you cross the street!”

A patrol car pulls up beside us. The officer opens the door.

“Not yet,” Paige says, her tone hard, determined. She pounds on the horn, shifts into
first, then drives straight at the people. They scurry out of the way before she hits
them.

Lee watches the officer as we speed away.

“You done this before?” he asks Paige.

“Star in my own police chase?” She shakes her head. “Nope.”

The cops fall into pursuit behind us again. We’re screwed if the rebels aren’t at
the gate. We’ll be arrested. I’ll most likely be charged with murder, maybe with grand
theft auto, too, which is completely unfair. Every car I’ve climbed into in the last
month might have been stolen, but they were all stolen by someone other than me.

Lee holds on to the oh-shit handle above his door as Paige
veers around a fountain, which for some illogical reason, is placed in the middle
of the road. “Where did you learn to drive like this?”

She shifts, then, very deliberately, she meets Lee’s eyes, and says, “I dated a guy
who street races.”

Lee’s mouth tightens as if this is some kind of verbal jab. My gaze shifts back and
forth between the two of them. Do they have a history together? I’d swear the last
guy she dated was named Ryan. Or maybe Roger. I’m pretty sure it started with an “R.”
Anyway, if there is or was something between her and Lee, she has plenty of exes to
throw in his face.

“Have you guys known each other for long?” I ask.

“No,” they say in unison. Then Lee turns his glare on me as if my question offended
him. “Where’s the gate?”

Or maybe that look is because I’m asking questions that really aren’t important right
now, not with half the British police force on our bumper. And not with a roomful
of slaughtered humans discarded in an apartment and one innocent girl stabbed to death
in a club.

“We’re getting close.” I sink back into my seat, and the edge my adrenaline’s been
giving me fades. I don’t think those deaths are the only ones that occurred tonight.
The club was packed. Everyone was panicked. My gut tells me not everyone made it out
of there okay. Shane might not have made it out okay.

I stare out the window. Lights from the patrol cars tailing us flash in my peripheral
vision, but I block them out and focus on the buildings we’re driving past. They’re
all big, blocky warehouses. London’s gate was near the city airport. We’re curving
south. If we curve back to the north once we pass the warehouse ahead, I think we
might be there.