Adryan and the others came tearing through the forest and stopped behind me. I could hear their shocked murmurs as they realized what the fuck was happening.
And then the Diablos was diving for her, extending his massive wings and curling them backward to pick up more speed as he went toward her.
“Now, Sherbet. Fucking now!” Adryan roared, but I was already scaling the mountain in hopes I could catch her and cushion her fall.
A stupid fucking thing for me to think, because I couldn’t save her from a fall like this.
I could hear chanting behind me but was too panicked to care what was happening with anyone else but Ada.
Just as the Diablos grabbed her wrist, there was a massive shock wave that blasted all around me, pressing my body hard to the mountain before I was wrenched backward and falling through the air.
And then the nothingness took over.
Chapter
Twenty
Ada
The air was knocked out of me as I landed on my back, my head cracking against the hard ground.
For a moment I couldn’t see anything. Stars danced in front of my vision, and I tried blinking rapidly to clear it.
My skull throbbed, my body ached, and I felt as if I were in some kind of trance, like a fever dream that I was trying to pull myself out of.
I could smell and hear an array of things, ones that confused me as they were familiar and certainly not something that should be in the parallel dimension.
I smelled electricity burning and gunpowder filling the air. I could hear things being blown up and guns being fired. There were human screams and otherworldly roars.
The metallic scent of blood filled the air, not just mine from where I’d cracked my head on the floor, but from humans and Otherworld alike. It saturated the air so heavily I could feel the coppery tang of it hitting the back of my throat.
I finally pushed myself up, instinct telling me to retreat although I didn’t know what I was backing away from, didn’t know what I was trying to escape.
When I felt something hard and rough stop me from moving, I blinked my eyes repeatedly to get them into focus.
Everything in me stilled.
I felt my eyes widen as I looked around, the nightmare of being back at the Assembly’s underground facility right in front of me.
“No,” I whispered. “Nonono.” I felt a wave of panic settling in me before I told myself to get my shit together and figure it out.
It wasn’t because I was here. It wasn’t because enemies surrounded me. It wasn’t even because my life was in the throes of some kind of hellish purgatory.
No, I felt bone-crushing fear because the very thought of never seeing Sebastian again sucked the air from my lungs.
I saw a group of Otherworld creatures rushing by, and I pressed my back against the wall even farther, terrified because I had no idea what in the hell was happening.
I’d been falling off the side of a mountain, and Torvic grabbed my wrist.
Then there’d been nothing.
How did I get here?
Was I in hell?
Did I die and was now in a kind of awful purgatory where I was in some continuous loop with the crazy-ass humans?
Sebastian. I thought of my mate as reality finally started to catch up with me and push back the shock and haze of the situation.
I didn’t know if he was here… but if I was in the past, I knew he was somewhere within these crumbling walls.
And I wasn’t about to stand here and keep wondering what the fuck was going on.
I pushed away from the wall and stumbled forward, my feet tripping over the large debris that covered the floor.
Sparks of electricity crackled overhead from exposed wires. I ducked down when I heard a gun going off in another hallway.
There was an unholy roar that seemed to shake the entire foundation, but I pressed forward. I knew Sebastian was here. I swore I felt it, like a tether keeping us together despite being apart.
Or maybe this was all just some kind of horrible nightmare, a sort of Groundhog Day occurrence where I would just relive this moment over and over again.
The night of the escape flashed through my mind in gory detail, and I found myself going the same way, moving down the hallways, remembering all the details of broken walls, all the fighting and bloodshed, and the sounds and scents that had invaded my senses that night.
I was having a hard time keeping my balance, my nerves causing my hands to shake and my knees to feel locked tight.
I kept looking down hallways, hoping, praying to whatever gods were watching us down here like rats in a maze, that I’d find my mate.
The air burned my lungs as I picked up my pace, a hand on the wall to steady myself. I didn’t even care about escaping. I just wanted to find Sebastian.