But he had no mist, no door. He had only the dreary heavens above the earth, the twinkling stars offering little in the way of beauty and absolutely no mysticism to him.
Although if he was alive, he had a chance to—
“I’ve got to move you to some better cover. I’m sorry.”
Turning his head, he found it difficult to focus on the near-to, but after a moment, the face on a level with his own registered.
“Apex.” Dearest Virgin Scribe, his voice was so hoarse. “Wherever are we…”
“Brace yourself.”
His fellow prisoner left him no time to follow that order, but perhaps it was for the best. As Kane’s pain receptors once again became all he knew, the electric shocks boring through him like swords, the contortionof his limbs and spine nothing he could control, he retreated into his skin, the world lost unto him. Those icy cold heavens, too.
It felt like an eternity until he was laid out flat on the ground, and certainly the agony departed on its own schedule, what had arrived with a slamming alacrity retreating upon a leisurely stroll.
He opened his eyes again as a way of enduring the torture. In all his nights of suffering, he’d found that if he could focus on something, anything, outside of himself, he could beat back some of the onslaught—
Mechanicals. As his sight sharpened, he was looking at an interwoven thicket of pipes, shafts, wires, pans: It was a vehicle on its side.
In a flash, he remembered a gunfight, Apex leaning out of a window, throwing something—and then…
“You need to leave me,” he said to the other male.
When there was no response, he gritted his molars and turned his head up and around. Apex was kneeling beside him, his hands planted on the scourged earth, his body poised as if he were going to attack what was left of the SUV.
“You are going to leave me here,” Kane repeated, “and save yourself.”
As the other male opened his mouth, he found an octave lower in his tone. “Let me go. I heard what Lucan said. A wolven in the road. And there have to be more in the woods if we hit one, and there will be another flank of guards on top of all that. You’re free. You’re out of the prison.Go.”
The male lowered his eyes, and in the tense silence, Kane studied those harsh, lean features. He had seen much of them since he had detonated his collar and the circlet had exploded. Apex had stayed for hours at his bedside, for reasons he still could not understand.
“You need to save yourself.”
Apex didn’t reply. Didn’t nod or shake his head. He was like a statue, though under his surface, there was heat and life. And aggression.
“Can you move him?”
The female voice was a surprise, and yet expected, given who had pulled Kane out of the back of the toppled vehicle. Lucan’sshellanwas dressed in darkness, and she had a gun in her hand. Though there was blood on her cheek and smudging across her jacket, she was as unflappable as a person in their place of usual habitation.
“Yes,” Apex said. “I’ll pick him up.”
“No,” Kane cut in.
“We need to get him and Mayhem in our car with the doors locked.”
Apex moved fast. So did the female. And Kane must have passed out as he was picked up because the next thing he knew he was sitting upright, a belt over his shoulder and across his chest, his feet arranged in an alignment so precise, his propermahmenwould have approved.
“Kane, lock the door. Do you understand?”
Unable to move his head, his eyes sought the deep voice. Apex, again. Apex, always. Leaning down into the vehicle.
“Dematerialize out of here,” Kane commanded.
“Lock it.”
A hearty steel panel was slammed, and then Apex jammed his forefinger to the glass, to a little shaft that protruded from the door.
Apex’s eyes burned. “I’m not leaving you until you do it.”