Chapter 34
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ry stared. “Are you kidding? Do you even know how
to drive that thing? Do you have keys?”
“I don’t need keys,” he exined with infinite patience.
“It runs on demon energies. Now, are you going to get
on, or do you want to ride your own?”
Numbly ry slid onto the bike behind him.
Somewhere, in some part of her brain, a tiny voice was
screaming about what a bad idea this was.
“Good,” Jace said. “Now put your arms around me.” She
did, feeling the hard muscles of his abdomen contract
as he leaned forward and jammed the point of the stele
into the ignition. To her amazement she felt the
motorcycle thrum to life under her. In her pocket Simon
squeaked loudly.
“Everything’s okay,” she said, as soothingly as she
could. “Jace!” she shouted, over the sound of the
motorcycle’s engine. “What are you doing?”
He yelled back something that sounded like “Pushing in
the choke!”
ry blinked. “Well, hurry it up! The door—”
On cue, the roof door burst open with a crash, torn from
its hinges. Wolves poured through the gap, racing
across the roof straight at them. Above them flew the
vampires, hissing and screeching, filling the night with
predatory cries.
She felt Jace’s arm jerk back and the motorcycle lurch
forward, sending her stomach mming into her spine.
She clutched convulsively at Jace’s belt as they shot
forward, tires skidding along the tes, scattering the
wolves, who yelped as they leaped aside. She heard
Jace shout something, his words torn away by the noise
of wheels and wind and engine. The edge of the roof
wasing up fast, so fast, and ry wanted to shut
her eyes but something held them wide open as the
motorcycle hurtled over the parapet and plummeted like
a rock toward the ground, ten stories down.
If ry screamed, she didn’t remember itter. It was
like the first drop on a roller coaster, where the track
falls away and you feel yourself hurtling through space,
your hands waving uselessly in the air and your
stomach jammed up around your ears. When the cycle
righted itself with a sputter and a jerk, she almost wasn’t
surprised. Instead of plunging downward they were now
hurtling up toward the diamond-littered sky.
ry nced back and saw a cluster of vampires
standing on the roof of the hotel, surrounded by wolves.
She looked away—if she never saw that hotel again, it’d
be too soon.
Jace was yelling, loud whooping shrieks of delight and
relief. ry leaned forward, her arms tight around him.
“My mother always told me if I rode a motorcycle with a
boy, she’d kill me,” she called over the noise of the wind
whipping past her ears and the deafening rumble of the
engine.
She couldn’t hear himugh, but she felt his body
shake. “She wouldn’t say that if she knew me,” he called
back to her confidently. “I’m an excellent driver.”
Btedly, ry recollected something. “I thought you
said only some of the vampire bikes could fly?”
Deftly, Jace steered them around a stoplight in the
process of turning from red to green. Below, ry could
hear cars honking, ambnce sirens wailing, and buses
puffing to their stops, but she didn’t dare look down.
“Only some of them can!”
“How did you know this was one of them?”
“I didn’t!” he shouted gleefully, and did something that
made the bike rise almost vertically into the air. ry
shrieked and grabbed for his belt again.
“You should look down!” Jace shouted. “It’s awesome!”
Sheer curiosity forced its way past terror and vertigo.
Swallowing hard, ry opened her eyes.
They were higher than she had realized, and for a
moment the earth swung dizzily beneath her, a blurring
landscape of shadow and light. They were flying east,
away from the park, toward the highway that snaked
along the right bank of the city.
There was a numbness in ry’s hands, a hard
pressure in her chest. It was lovely, she could see that:
the city rising up beside her like a towering forest of
silver and ss, the dull gray shimmer of the East River,
slicing between Manhattan and the boroughs like a scar.
The wind was cool in her hair, on her legs, delicious
after so many days of heat and stickiness. Still, she’d
never flown, not even in an airne, and the vast empty
space between them and the ground terrified her. She
couldn’t keep from squinching her eyes almost shut as
they shot out over the river. Just below the Queensboro
Bridge, Jace turned the bike south and headed to the
foot of the ind. The sky had begun to lighten, and in
the distance ry could see the glittering arch of the
Brooklyn Bridge, and beyond that, a smudge on the
horizon, the Statue of Liberty.
“Are you all right?” Jace shouted.
ry said nothing, just clutched him more tightly. He
banked the cycle, and then they were sailing toward the
bridge, and ry could see stars through the
suspension cables. An early morning train was rattling
over it—the Q, carrying a load of sleepy dawn
commuters. She thought how often she’d been on that
train. A wave of vertigo swamped her, and she
squeezed her eyes shut, gasping with nausea.
“ry?” Jace called. “ry, are you all right?”
She shook her head, eyes still shut, alone in the dark
and the tearing wind with just the pounding of her heart.
Something sharp scratched against her chest. She
ignored it until it came again, more insistent. Barely
opening an eye, she saw that it was Simon, his head
poking out of her pocket, tugging her jacket with an
urgent paw. “It’s all right, Simon,” she said with an effort,
not looking down. “It was just the bridge—”
He scratched her again, then pointed an urgent paw
toward the waterfront of Brooklyn, rising up on their left.
Dizzy and sick, she looked and saw, beyond the outlines
of the warehouses and factories, a sliver of golden
sunrise just visible, like the edge of a pale gilt coin. “Yes,
very pretty,” ry said, closing her eyes again. “Nice
sunrise.”
Jace went rigid all over, as if he’d been shot. “Sunrise?”
he yelled, then jerked the cycle savagely to the right.
ry’s eyes flew open as they plunged toward the
water, which had begun to shimmer with the blue of
oing dawn.
ry leaned as close to Jace as she could get without
squashing Simon between them. “What’s so bad about
sunrise?”
“I told you! The bike runs on demon energies!” He pulled
back so that they were level with the river, just skimming
along the surface with the wheels kicking up spray.
River water sshed into ry’s face. “As soon as the
sunes up—”
The bike began to sputter. Jace swore colorfully,
mming his fist into the elerator. The bike lunged
forward once, then choked, jerking under them like a
bucking horse. Jace was still swearing as the sun
peeked over the crumbling wharves of Brooklyn, lighting
the world with devastating rity. ry could see every
rock, every pebble under them as they cleared the river
and hurtled over the narrow bank. Below them was the
highway, already streaming with early traffic. They only
just cleared it, the wheels grazing the roof of a passing
truck. Beyond was the trash-strewn parking lot of an
enormous supermarket. “Hang on to me!” Jace was
shouting, as the bike jerked and sputtered underneath
them. “Hang on to me, ry, and do not let—”
The bike tilted and struck the asphalt of the parking lot,
front wheel first. It shot forward, wobbling violently, and
went into a long skid, bouncing and mming over the
uneven ground, whipping ry’s head back and forth
with neck-cracking force. The air stank of burned rubber.
But the bike was slowing, skidding to a halt—and then it
struck a concrete parking barrier with such force that
she was lifted into the air and hurled sideways, her hand
tearing free of Jace’s belt. She barely had time to curl
herself into a protective ball, holding her arms as rigid
as possible and praying Simon wouldn’t be crushed,
when they struck the ground.
She hit hard, agony screaming up her arm. Something
sshed up in her face, and she was coughing as she
flipped over, rolling onto her back. She grabbed for her
pocket. It was empty. She tried to say Simon’s name,
but the breath had been knocked out of her. She
wheezed as she gasped in air. Her face was wet and
dampness was running down into her cor.
Is that blood? She opened her eyes hazily. Her face felt
like one big bruise, her arms, aching and stinging, like
raw meat. She had rolled onto her side and was lying
half-in and half-out of a puddle of filthy water. Dawn had
trulye—she could see the remains of the bike,
subsiding into a heap of unrecognizable ash as the
sun’s rays struck it.
And there was Jace, getting painfully to his feet. He
started to hurry toward her, then slowed as he
approached. The sleeve of his shirt had been torn away
and there was a long bloody graze along his left arm.
His face, under the cap of dark gold curls matted with
sweat, dust, and blood, was white as a sheet. She
wondered why he looked like that. Was her torn-off leg
lying across the parking lot somewhere in a pool of
blood?
She started to struggle up and felt a hand on her
shoulder. “ry?”
“Simon!”
He was kneeling next to her, blinking as if he couldn’t
quite believe it either. His clothes were crumpled and
grimy, and he had lost his sses somewhere, but he
seemed otherwise unharmed. Without the sses he
looked younger, defenseless, and a little dazed. He
reached to touch her face, but she flinched back. “Ow!”
“Are you okay? You look great,” he said, with a catch in
his voice. “The best thing I’ve ever seen—”
“That’s because you don’t have your sses on,” she
said weakly, but if she’d expected a smart-aleck
response, she didn’t get one. Instead he threw his arms
around her, holding her tightly to him. His clothes
smelled of blood and sweat and dirt, and his heart was
beating a mile a minute and he was pressing on her
bruises, but it was a relief nevertheless to be held by
him and to know, really know, that he was all right.
“ry,” he said roughly. “I thought—I thought you—”
“Wouldn’te back for you? But of course I did,” she
said. “Of course I did.”
She put her arms around him. Everything about him was
familiar, from the overwashed fabric of his T-shirt to the
sharp angle of the corbone that rested just under her
chin. He said her name, and she stroked his back
reassuringly. When she nced back just for a moment,
she saw Jace turning away as if the brightness of the
rising sun hurt his eyes.
16
FALLING ANGELS
HODGE WAS ENRAGED. HE HAD BEEN STANDING
IN THE FOYER, Isabelle and Alec lurking behind him,
when ry and the boys limped in, filthy and covered in
blood, and had immediatelyunched into a lecture that
would have done ry’s mother proud. He didn’t forget
to include the part about lying to him about where they
were going—which Jace, apparently, had—or the part
about never trusting Jace again, and even added extra
embellishments, like some bits about breaking the Law,
getting tossed out of the ve, and bringing shame on
the proud and ancient name of Wand. Winding down,
he fixed Jace with a re. “You’ve endangered other
people with your willfulness. This is one incident I will
not allow you to shrug off!”
“I wasn’t nning to,” Jace said. “I can’t shrug anything
off. My shoulder’s dislocated.”
“If only I thought physical pain was actually a deterrent
for you,” said Hodge with grim fury. “But you’ll just spend
the next few days in the infirmary with Alec and Isabelle
fussing around you. You’ll probably even enjoy it.”
Hodge had been two-thirds right; Jace and Simon both
wound up in the infirmary, but only Isabelle was fussing
over either of them when ry—who’d gone to clean
herself up—came in a few hourster. Hodge had fixed
the swelling bruise on her arm, and twenty minutes in
the shower had gotten most of the ground-in asphalt out
of her skin, but she still felt raw and aching. Material ? N?velDrama.Org.
Alec, sitting on the windowsill and looking like a
thundercloud, scowled as the door shut behind her. “Oh.
It’s you.”
She ignored him. “Hodge says he’s on his way and he
hopes you can both manage to cling to your flickering
sparks of life until he gets here,” she told Simon and
Jace. “Or something like that.”
“I wish he’d hurry,” Jace said crossly. He was sitting up
in bed against a pair of fluffed white pillows, still wearing
his filthy clothes.
“Why? Does it hurt?” ry asked.
“No. I have a high pain threshold. In fact, it’s less of a
threshold and more of arge and tastefully decorated
foyer. But I do get easily bored.” He squinted at her. “Do
you remember back at the hotel when you promised that
if we lived, you’d get dressed up in a nurse’s outfit and
give me a sponge bath?”
“Actually, I think you misheard,” ry said. “It was
Simon who promised you the sponge bath.”
Jace looked involuntarily over at Simon, who smiled at
him widely. “As soon as I’m back on my feet,
handsome.”
“I knew we should have left you a rat,” said Jace.
ryughed and went over to Simon, who seemed
acutely ufortable surrounded by dozens of pillows
and with nkets heaped over his legs.
ry sat down on the edge of Simon’s bed. “How are
you feeling?”
“Like someone massaged me with a cheese grater,”
Simon said, wincing as he pulled his legs up. “I broke a
bone in my foot. It was so swollen, Isabelle had to cut
my shoe off.”
“d she’s taking good care of you.” ry let a small
amount of acid creep into her voice.
Simon leaned forward, not taking his eyes off ry. “I
want to talk to you.”
ry nodded in half-reluctant agreement. “I’m going to
my room. Come and see me after Hodge fixes you up,
okay?”
“Sure.” To her surprise he leaned forward and kissed
her on the cheek. It was a butterfly kiss, a quick brush of
lips on skin, but as she pulled away, she knew she was
blushing. Probably, she thought, standing up, because
of the way everyone else was staring at them.
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