“I—” Cass’s frozen expression is all the answer JJ needs. “No, but—but we’ll figure it out, okay? We’ll?—”
JJ takes another step back. There’s an unmistakable sensation of focused clarity washing over him, the laser-sharp precision of planning for his next mission?—
Protect Cass and Desi.“No. No, I’m not putting you two in danger. I’ll hold them off as long as I can, but they can reopen freshly closed rifts. You’ll need to rift-hop for a while to throw them off, and try not to go back to your house for a few days, and?—”
“No!”Cass’s eyes are furious. “I don’t leave allies behind, Jackson. I don’t leavefriendsbehind, and I—I’m sure as hell not leavingyoubehind. JJ?—”
Desi lets out a strangled sob, reaching out a tiny hand towards him. “JJ! Don’t go!”
Cass’s arms tighten around her, instinctive and protective, and JJ?—
JJ knows Cass will take care of her. And she’ll take care of him, too. He manages a smile. “Keep her safe, okay? Don’t let anything happen to her, and—and don’t let anything happen to you, either.”
“Don’t do this, JJ.” Cass’s voice sounds raw. “JJ?—”
“Cass.” JJ takes a deep breath. He knows that the strike teams are closing in, pounding footsteps and shouted orders drawing closer by the second, but right now, it all sounds far away in his ears. “Cassius. Please.”
For a long moment, Cass hesitates. Looks from JJ to Desi and back to JJ, like he never even imagined he might have to choose between them.
And then he grits his teeth, squeezes his eyes shut, and snaps his fingers. Relief washes over JJ as the rift shudders closed, taking Cass and Desi to safety with it.
Now, he just has to make sure they’re not followed. He snatches his escrima sticks out of their gap in spacetime, keeping his back to the nearest storefront so no one can sneak up behind him. Nine armed and deadly hunters closing in fast, at least six more on the way?—
He cut his way through a militia to get to Desi once before. He can do it again to keep her safe.
Let’s see how long he lasts against an army.
“We need to move,” Cass says sharply, bolting into Desi’s bedroom with his pulse still roaring in his ears and his heart still shattering into pieces. “Desi, we need to go, we need to?—”
Desi sobs when Cass tries to set her on her feet, burying her face in his shoulder and clinging to him. “But JJ?—!”
Pain tears through Cass’s chest. “Don’t worry about JJ right now, okay?” he says desperately, and he snaps open one of his pocket dimensions, grabbing fistfuls of Desi’s clothes and shoving them inside. The seconds race by too quickly in his head, that unfailing beat of time driving them forward?—
Cassius. Please.
He and Desi shouldn’t even be in his real house right now. Heknewthat the Sanctum could reopen recently closed rifts, but in his blinding haze of trying to save Desi and JJ, he didn’t think. Hedidn’t think,and?—
And he just wanted them to be safe—wantedallof them to be safe—and the place where he’s always felt safest is his own home.
Not so much anymore, though.
But Desi will need her belongings if they can potentially never come back. Cass has had this pocket dimension packed with his own emergency supplies for decades now, but he never filled up a go bag for Desi. Part of him futilely hoped that she’d never see this ugly side of the world, that she’d never have to worry about being forced from her home, that she’d never even know what itmeantto go on the run.
He hates that she’s about to find out. He finishes shoving most of Desi’s wyvern plushies into the pocket dimension, snaps it shut, and presses Kira into Desi’s arms for safekeeping. “We’re going on an adventure, okay?” he says distractedly, waving open a rift to the most desolate part of Antarctica and stepping through. “We’re going to see every continent in the world. This one is called Antarctica. There are penguins here. You like penguins, right, Desi?”
Desi sniffles against his shirt and doesn’t answer. Cass doesn’t really expect her to. Snow and ice crunch under his feet as he jogs twenty feet forward, peels open another rift, and steps into a lush rainforest. “Andthisis one of Costa Rica’s cloud forests, see? We’re really high up in the mountains, so it’s foggy all the time. Pretty cool, right?”
Cass keeps talking as he weaves around a handful of trees, snaps open another rift, and steps through. Rift-hopping is an active defense strategy that demons use to throw Sanctum trackers off the scent, movingjustfar enough away from each closed rift to lose any pursuers before opening the next one.
It’s not foolproof, of course. Cass knows that some Sanctum spellcasters are specifically trained to track demons through multiple rifts. He can only hope that none of them were in those strike teams, that it’ll take too long to mobilize them from the Sanctum?—
I’ll hold them off as long as I can.
That JJ can keep them occupied for long enough, and no,no,Casscannotthink about JJ right now, he has to hold it together for Desi, has to get them somewheresafe?—
“Andthis,”he says, pulling open his twelfth consecutive rift in the past ten minutes, “is Greenland, see? It has a funny name, because there’s not much green here—just snow and ice. And even though it’s cold like Antarctica, there aren’t any penguins. There are polar bears, though!”
His ragged breath puffs white ahead of him. He needs to start slowing his pace, needs to conserve his energy. Needs to pick a safe location for the next few hours, needs to ward it with every defensive spell he knows?—
