The family parted to let me pass without a word spoken between us.
I figured they helped me because we had dispatched two vampires sent to antagonize Nuhav and its people. We had all lived our lives under the thumb of the vampires and, even closer than them, under the heel of the Nuhavian lawmen.
Other people stepped aside to let me pass as I struggled to haul Garroway. The sea of humanity parted to let the lone human girl and her grayskin ally leave the vicinity. They closed ranks once I’d gone by, to hide us.
My eyes scanned the horizon, desperately searching for a place to hole up.
There!
Cresting over the nearest buildings and houses, the gilded peaks and awesome sight of a structure lifted high above all the others.
The Temple of the True.
Chapter 34
I shouldered my way into the temple, bursting through the huge engraved double doors with a shout of despair.
A lone priest hurried toward us from the other end of the nave, passing the pews—
And froze when he recognized the skin tone of Garroway’s slack face and the fangs past his slightly parted lips.
He made the sign of the Truehearts, shouting, “Blasphemers!” and skittered off with his robe swishing, escaping the room.
The exit of the priest left me alone with my charge. He was heavy in my arms. I stumbled over to a pew, panting and heaving, and dropped Garro unceremoniously onto the bench.
“Garro! Can you hear me?” I lightly slapped his face.
Feeling slick warmth on the insides of my arms, I looked down to see splotches of blood coating my forearms, biceps, and tunic.
The firebomb had blasted him backward into an unconscious pile. Garroway was covered in holes from the explosion.
I got a good look at him with lit chandeliers hanging from the rafters of the high-ceilinged temple. He looked bad. His skin was marred and burnt near his front, and the scent of cooked flesh made me nauseous.
Somehow, his beautiful face was untouched—slightly bruised and ashen from soot, but not charred. He was lucky not to have any hair on his head to begin with or it would’ve been gone as well. Other various cuts and slashes scarred his flesh from our skirmish with the vampire assassins.
My mind spun as I appraised his body, biting my lip, wondering what I could do to help him. He suddenly coughed and I bent forward. “Garroway!”
The grayskin’s eyes flickered beneath his lids. They cracked open, the tinged crimson orbs dancing as they reached me.
I sat over him, my eyes bright. “Thank the Damned,” I breathed. “You’re alive.” He was still getting his bearings, eyes looking past me to the ornate chandelier hanging over my head. “What thefuckwere you thinking?”
“T-Thinking of getting us out of there.”
“In an explosion of fire and fury?”
“You m-must admit, lass, it was . . . good theater.” A crooked smile split his wounded face. “And it worked. Or am I dead and somehow found myself in a pearly heaven?”
His voice was raspy and weak, but damn it all, I was elated he was alive. My instinct to nurture and chastise him for his stupidity dashed away in an instant when he threw that disarming smile at me.
I found myself cradling the back of his head as he tried to sit up. Garro’s eyes widened once he grimaced and sat against the seatback of the bench.
“We’re in a holy house,” he said.
His words were heavy, and their meaning hit me a moment later. “Shit!”
I scrabbled for his body to check for new wounds.
He gently took my anxious hands away, his touch warm and inviting. He was still smiling when he said, “Fear not, little honey badger. I’m not smoldering into an impious, sinful corpse. Not yet anyhow.”
