Chapter 26

Boyfriend snapped awake at my feet. His golden eye caught the moonlight, and fourteen claws scraped the metal truck bed with a grinding screech.

Pine tensed, ready to flatten him.

But before the raptor could have an original thought, I was in his head—tracing a path down the dark farm road, across the highway, and around the side of the chapel.

I showed him what I’d seen. Crow at the front of the one-room church, his hand resting on my Mom’s head, trying to steal her magic.

And the hellfire in his eyes when he realized there was nothing there to take.

Rage revved through me from head to toe. And I made sure Boyfriend caught those feelings before I yanked the belt off his muzzle and turned him loose.

“Go,” I whispered.

Boyfriend burst out from under the tarp, snapping tie-downs and sending the plastic sheet flying. In a whoosh of winged claws and a whisk of tailfeathers, he leapt over me and vaulted off the hood of the truck.

The Dodge bounced.

In the cab, Dr. Jacobs gasped and gripped the wheel. Dad shielded his face. Martina let out a squeak.

The raptor whipped down the farm road and disappeared in the darkness.

Martina watched him go through Dr. Jacobs’ hunting binoculars. “I can’t see a thing.”

“What happening?” Dad asked through the sliding rear window. “Is everything okay?”

“Mom’s busted,” I whispered. “I gotta focus.” I covered my ears, dropped my head between my legs, and dodged back into Bitey’s point of view. It was easy as changing channels.

The candlelit chapel was so quiet, I wasn’t sure anybody in the pews was even breathing. They all stood perfectly still, waiting for the so-called god king’s judgment.

With a growl, Crow thew Mom down on the floor, flat on her back. “She’s not the mage.”

I gave Bitey a nudge. He skittered up beside her and rested his front paws on Mom’s leg to look her over.

She propped herself up on her elbows with a wince, but she gave Bitey a grim look and a slight nod. Like she was telling me not to worry. To go on with the plan.

“She’s not hurt,” I said to everybody in the truck.

“We need to get her out of there,” Martina said.

Pine shook his head. “First, the Crow.” He and Mom usually thought in the same direction.

“Pine’s right.” Dad’s voice strained like his calculator brain and his do-no-harm heart were pulling in opposite directions. But once he and Mom made a strategy, they stuck to it no matter what. “We have to cut off head of the snake.”

“Got it.” Destroying Crow would kick the teeth out of Mrs. Hemming’s secret society. And it’d be a lot easier to focus on taking down one guy than to cut an escape route through fifty people. Poofing their leader was the best way to get Mom out of there in one piece.

With every cell in my body, I urged Boyfriend faster.

Meanwhile, Crow had turned to look at Mrs. Hemming, waiting for the explanation he deserved. And so had the entire chapel.

“We’ve been researching the Slumber bloodline for years.” Mrs. Hemming went pale, but she stood her ground. “I’m certain this is the necromancer. If she’s fighting you—”

Crow reached into his pocket, turned back to Mom, and pulled out his handaxe.

A gasp filled the chapel.

A zap of energy as sharp as a scream zinged through my body. I coiled all Bitey’s muscles up and locked his sites on Crow’s hand, ready to snip off a finger. If he was going to hurt my mom, he’d have to dust us, first.

But just as Crow lifted the blade—

“She has a daughter,” someone blurted from behind.

The words flash-froze me, locking Bitey to the spot.

Crow paused. Looked into the crowd.

I turned Bitey’s head, just slightly, to follow his gaze.

Dixon stood in the front row, cringing like he’d cinched his tie too tight. “She’s my age.” Now that everyone’s eyes were on him, his voice withered to almost a whisper.

Mrs. Hemming forced a laugh. “One moment. I apologize.” She clicked off the stage, stopped inches away from him, and said in a voice so private I probably only picked it up with Bitey’s sensitive hearing, “For once, scry before you open your mouth.”

But Dixon looked right at Crow and announced to the whole world, “I met her.” His voice shook, but he held his volume. “Your fatelines are connected.”

That evil little country club lizard. If I ever saw him again, I’d slap him out of his boat shoes.

Mrs. Hemming put her hand on Dixon’s back. “My son is still in training. It can be difficult for young diviners to recognize the likelihood of certain outcomes.” She leveled her free hand to calm the room. “For clarification, Evelyn is about as likely to have a child as she is to be struck by lightning. I mean that quite literally. She would never allow that happen.”

Allow?

What was that supposed to mean?

Crow frowned and shifted his eyes back to my Mom. He seemed to be doing the same math as Mrs. Hemming—but by the way his face hardened, it looked like he was coming up with different numbers.

“Evelyn would never pass her power on.” Mrs. Hemming’s face sort of pinched, like she could feel the odds rearranging. “She swore she wouldn’t.”

My next heartbeat slipped. Was that true?

I glanced at Mom, but she was focused on the ground. Like her deepest, darkest secret was airing on TV, and she was willing the floor to turn into quicksand.

“She—she was happy.” Mrs. Hemming glanced around the room. “She had a hit song. An incredible career. She traveled all over the world.” Her face went from waxy to nearly transparent. She looked like she was holding down the urge to puke. “She never wanted . . .” She stopped running her mouth, like she finally realized she might be digging a hole.

My stomach crumpled.

She never wanted—me?

My chest crushed inward, squeezing my heart like a stress ball. In how many worlds did I not exist? How many versions of her were better off without me?

A wave of confusion and sickness rolled through me, and for a second I could hardly tell up from down. I reeled back so hard I had to grip the side of the truck. Tears pricked my eyes.

Mom looked Bitey deep in the eyes—looked at me—and found her voice. “That’s not . . .”

She realized her mistake before she even finished the sentence. But it was too late for take-backs.

Mrs. Hemming narrowed her eyes. Something between shock and amusement swept across her face. “You lied to me.” She almost sounded impressed.

Crow didn’t waste a second. “Take her.”

Mom lunged off the floor and sprinted for the door.

But two men jumped off the front pew. They grabbed her by the arms and started dragging her away.

She wrestled them, kicking and grunting, as they hauled her past Crow and into the shadows.

Someone opened a door behind them, letting in a shaft of moonlight. A gust of night air made the candlelight shiver.

They were taking her out the back.

I snapped back into my own body, silent alarms ringing all through me. “They’re taking her away.” If they got her into a car, if I lost her—

“I’ll take care of it.” Dad shoved the passenger door open. “Focus on Crow.”

“Calvin.” Dr. Jacobs reached across the bench seat to stop him.

But he was already sprinting down the dark road toward the chapel.

I fell back into Bitey’s body, right next to his fluttering, finch-sized heart. We scampered after Mom, toward the open door.

But then she let out a soul-deep shout—two words that echoed off the walls of the chapel. “Finish it.”

The door had barely swung shut behind her when Dixon and his mom both snapped their heads to the right. “Window,” they said at the same time.

Before anyone could make sense of it, one of the side windows exploded.

Boyfriend crashed into the room, throwing shards of glass and knocking over racks of candles. He landed feet-first on the back of a pew and launched himself into the center aisle, grinding his killing claw into the hard floor to stop from skidding.

A small fire kicked up in the middle of the right-hand pews, scattering Crow’s guests. Everybody screamed. I could hear the commotion all the way from the Dodge down the street.

But Mom’s final command drowned everything out.

Finish it.

I called Bitey’s soulshine back to me. I’d need all my focus for what was about to happen.

“What’s going on?” Dr. Jacobs asked.

I shifted gears and locked into Boyfriend’s head. In the raptor’s body, all the same adrenaline that made Bitey a jittery mess just turned us into a heat-seeking missile. “I’m going for Crow.”

The raptor’s motion-centric vision snapped between shadowy guests. But I forced his eyes past all the chaos and zeroed in on the one target that mattered.

A red halo activated around Crow’s head—summoning something.

We wouldn’t give him the chance.

I let go of my raptor’s leash. Boyfriend flattened his feathers and shot up the aisle like an arrow.

But Crow only needed seconds to work my magic.

The ground in front of him cracked. The pile of offerings at the foot of his throne swelled and pitched, sending fruit baskets bouncing and bottles rolling.

With a whirl of dust and a wildcat shriek, the female raptor leapt out of the floor. The fire sweeping through the church pews baptized her cream-white coat in bloodred light. 

She lunged into Boyfriend head-on. Tackled him to the ground.

They rolled, thumping their wings and snapping their teeth, sparring with their killing claws like a knife fight.

Crow’s raptor shoved Boyfriend down and held him there. She must’ve outclassed him by at least twenty pounds.

Boyfriend couldn’t struggle away, so he kicked, slashing at her belly.

But his talons caught on something hard. Bone. Ribs. Protecting her stomach like a plate of armor.

Crow’s raptor took the kicks like the Terminator—the liquid metal one.

With a flurry of windy wingbeats, she forced Boyfriend down on the ground, clamped her sharp teeth into his arm, and wrenched so hard that she ripped his whole wing off. She shook it like a dog, spraying the whole room in dirt and pebbles.

Out the corner of Boyfriend’s eye, I caught Crow disappearing out the back.

The female raptor dove in again, this time to sink her teeth into Boyfriend’s throat.

But just before she could bite down on his windpipe—

THUNK.

She dropped, shattering into shards of chapel floor and limestone foundation.

Dad stood over me and Boyfriend, breathing hard and dripping sweat—from the run over here or the heat of the rising fire, I wasn’t sure. He wobbled a step, choking up on a candlestick like he’d just batted a homerun.

“Where’s your mom?” he gasped.

Before I could so much as glance toward the backdoor, the roof over our heads let out an earsplitting crack.

Dad froze. Looked up.

The rafters buckled and the ceiling bowed in, like a backhoe scoop was pushing down on the roof.

That couldn’t be good.

With a splintering crash, the corner caved in, blasting dust through the chapel.

A massive, reptilian snout loomed overhead—narrow and downcurved, glittering with alligator scales, as long as I was tall. Nostrils I could shove my whole fist into sniffed the hazy air, sending the smoke and dust swirling.

Dad staggered a step back, raising the candlestick to defend himself. “Holy—”

The enormous, hooked jaws split open, revealing railroad spike teeth. The open mouth rammed downward, grabbed Dad around the waist, and lifted him through the hole in the ceiling.

All the heat drained from my body.

I’d heard my dad yell before. On roller coasters. At some teenagers who egged our house.  When the Dallas Cowboys were phoning it in.

But I’d never heard him scream.

All I could do was watch as his glasses clattered to the floor and his running shoes slipped through the hole in the ceiling.

And then, before I could react, a crossbeam dropped out of the broken roof. Right down on Boyfriend.

The beam cracked his back and crushed him to dust.

Everything went dark.  

With a gasp, I fell back into my own body. A second later, so did Boyfriend’s soulshine.

Pine gripped me by the arms, grounding me as I caught my breath. I’m here, he said.

I was alive, in the back of the Dodge. But Mom, Dad—

“I lost ’em.” My voice wobbled on the razor edge of a sobbing, screaming panic. I glanced over my shoulder, through the opening in the rear window. “Crow got my mom and dad.”

Martina just sat there, holding the binoculars, in what looked like total shock. Dr. Jacobs stared out the windshield with her mouth hanging open.

I rolled onto my knees to stare over the top of the cab.

At the end of the farm road, across the street, the little historical church had gone up in flames.

The firelight illuminated the biggest animal I’d ever seen, as tall as the chapel and as long as a school bus. A tyrannosaurus-shaped predator with a bison’s humped spine and a bull terrier’s sloping muzzle. The one thing we couldn’t plan for.

“Acrocanthosaurus,” Martina whispered.

And my dad hung limp in its jaws.