“Aw, you can handle it, big man!” I yelled back. Then I felt a jerk on the cable and hauled it up as fast as I could. “Jax, get ready to catch someone!”
When the cage reached the edge, Titus jumped out. Jax grabbed him and pulled him away as more of the floor crumbled.
“Get that back down there!” Titus roared. “He’s surrounded by now!”
Immediately, I dropped it, the braided metal cable sliding through my hands a mile per second. Titus slumped against Jax. His one leg was a mangled mess.
“Can you call a healer?” I played out the cable until it reached the same place as before.
“Later! Just get him out of there! A flock of rivens was on my tail. Keep your blades out.”
“Already bagged one.”
Rome directed Jax to take Titus out to Mimi. When they were gone, he moved closer to the edge. Holding his swords at the ready, he asked if I felt anything on the cable.
“No. Nothing. Do you think the cable—” The cage was suddenly gone from my control. “It’s gone!”
“What is? The cable?”
“All of it!” I pulled up the cable, but only got a few yards before I reached the frayed end.
The screech of rivens got louder.
Snarling, Rome dropped his blades and grabbed the table Jax had collapsed and leaned against the wall. He flipped it lengthwise over the widest part of the rupture and flattened himself on top of it. About a dozen rivens slammed into it with dull thuds.
“I can only hold them back for so long like this.” He spread his arms and legs to weigh the table down. “Any ideas to get Kerry out?”
“How much time do we have left?” Gigi’s voice came from everywhere and nowhere.
“Forty seconds,” he called back. “Get ready to close it up!”
“I am not leaving him down there,” I hollered.
“We have to, Mira! It’s him or us and this whole building!”
Ideas, ideas! Gotta save Kerry! If only someone other than Gigi could tele—
“I know what to do!” I pulled one of the charms off Zick’s bracelet and smashed it between my thumb and forefinger.
“Mira, w—”
#
Kerry
There have been times in my life where I have made really bad decisions. Some of them were for very good reasons and others, well, for not so good reasons. But I usually regretted them.
Sending Titus Wray topside first? I wasn’t sure if that was a good decision with bad consequences or just a flat-out bad decision, but I sure didn’t regret it.
Even if it meant never seeing Gemma again, I couldn’t leave a wounded man to face the hordes of Hell alone. And it wasn’t outta mercy or respect, so don’t paint me as any kind of hero. It was stubbornness, plain and simple.
Okay, and I really wanted to kill things.
I dropped two Hell-spawn per second until they started fighting each other. It was almost funny, the way they took eachother out almost as fast as I had, but then this big …thing… shoved its way through the chaos and came straight at me.
I didn’t know what Mr. Snyder would call it, but it looked like a ten-foot-tall man made of lava. Fire flowed under the cracks in its black hide and steam blasted outta its mouth.
And I admit the thought crossed my mind that I could let Charcoal Boy take me out.
