When we reached the spot where I’d landed, I dropped Titus and looked up. We were directly below the rupture, and Mira needed to hurry if we weren’t gonna become demon chow.
Did you call me?
I jumped as a voice sounded outta the air.
“You say something, Harker?”
“Not me.”
A shadow of a girl appeared next to us. She had short, dark hair and sad, dark eyes.
Did you call me?
“No,Ididn’t. It was my friend, Jax—” I shook my head. “Look, whatever Reilly Argaud was up to is connected to some things that are happening now.”
Are you trying to bring him to justice?
“He was tried and sentenced to The Box. I’ve already talked with him.”
Then what do you want with me?
This conversation was going nowhere fast.
“I have no idea what Jax wanted to ask you.”
He made me do it, you know.
“Who made you do what?” Titus narrowed his eyes at her.
Pull the trigger. Reilly made me put the gun in my mouth and pull the trigger.
“You know what she’s talking about, Harker?”
“Yeah. Aspen, why’d he do that?”
I was breaking free of his control. He couldn’t risk me telling what I knew.
“Then you’re a murder victim, not a suicide,” Titus said. “How did you end up in Hell?”
I don’t know.
Okay, now I was gonna have to rescue her, too.
“You got a reliquary or something on you, Wray?” I asked.
“I have a pyx.”
“That’ll work. Get Aspen in it.”
But—
“What—”
“Hurry up!” I snarled. “We’re getting outta here!”
Somehow.
Aspen zoomed into the pyx, and Titus snapped the lid closed right as the first of the Diabolical creatures reached us. Throwing up a hand, I whirled in a circle and spewed out power. The smallest of them fizzed into nothing; the rest piled up around us.
