I didn’t really believe in heaven or God as such, but if ever there was a sanctuary from hellhounds, then surely a church would be it. After all, holy water and blessed knives could destroy them, so there had to be some form of protection offered by churches themselves.
If I was wrong, we were dead meat. I wasn’t going to be much use fighting-wise after this flight. Tao—who’d been caught so unaware by this move—wouldn’t be, either.
Hell, he probably wouldn’t even be coherent.
Tao’s weight forced me low to the ground as I fled the building. I whisked along the street, feeling the grime of the concrete seeping through my pores, feeling the terror of what we were fleeing pulse through every aching part of me.
The streets were quiet still, but I could hear the howling of the hounds. They were hunting for us. If I could have shivered, I would have.
I rolled on, heading for the small brick building I’d seen on the way down here. It was only a couple of blocks away, but it might as well have been several miles. By the time I whisked underneath the old wooden doors, I was barely holding it together.
I stopped near the pulpit and reached for the Aedh magic once more, carefully piecing together our two separate entities, until flesh was fully formed and we became ourselves once again.
I landed with a splat on the old wooden flooring, and even though I wanted to do nothing more than collapse, I twisted around, ignoring the red-hot needles that jabbed into my brain as I looked for Tao.
He was lying several feet away, his clothes shredded but his flesh whole. And he was breathing.
I hadn’t killed him.
The relief that swept me was so great that for several seconds I could barely even breathe. It had worked. Against all the odds, we were out of the cell, we were alive, and for the moment, we were safe.
But shifting with another person in tow was something I never wanted to attempt again.
I closed my eyes and waited until the shaking and the sweeping bouts of dizzy nausea eased, and I became aware of groaning. Not mine. Tao’s.
“You okay?” I asked, my voice sounding as wretched as I felt.
“What the fuck,” he said, his voice whispery and filled with pain, “did you just do?”
“I saved our asses.”
But for how long? The second we’d regained flesh the howls had intensified, and even now I could feel the ill wind of their approach. If the church didn’t stop them, I didn’t know what would. There would be silver somewhere in this church, but I really doubted we’d have the time to find it.
I forced myself to roll over onto my stomach, then closed my eyes again, breathing deep and trying to ease the quivering. When it finally began to ease, I looked around.
The church was small and sparse, with old wooden benches for seating and little in the way of decoration other than the beautiful, stained-glass windows. The fading sunlight filtered through the glass, filling the barren interior with rainbows and warmth. The place was still, with nothing to break the silence other than our uneven breathing. This church might still be in use, but there was no priest here at the moment. I wondered whether it would make a difference to the hellhounds or not.
I guess we’d find out soon enough.
I gathered my strength and forced myself upright. If death was my fate, then I’d damn well meet it on two feet, not four.
Tao stared up at me from his prone position. His face was ashen, his clothes little more than a mess of barely-held-together threads, and the bits of flesh that were exposed were covered in a cobwebby sheen of fiber.
“Don’t ever do that again,” he said. “Not even to save my life.”
Despite the growing symphony of the hounds’ cries and the ever-growing certainty that we might yet meet our death here, I smiled and held out a hand. He lurched up and clasped it, his fingers so warm compared with mine. Which meant his flames still burned deep inside him and of that, I was glad—if only because it suggested I’d put him back together right.
He climbed slowly to his feet—using me as a stabilizer more than anything else—then looked around. “Do you think the church keeps holy water close by?”
“Most churches do.” I saw the simple basin and pedestal sitting near the entrance. “That’s probably it.”
He followed the line of my finger and nodded, but didn’t walk over, moving behind the plain wooden pulpit instead. “Nothing much in the way of cups behind here.”
I smiled and forced my feet forward. The scent of death and sulfur was once more beginning to stain the air, and my fingers twitched, wanting a weapon they didn’t have.
“I think you’ll find the church is canny enough to lock away its valuables in an area like this.”
“I meant the paper kind of cup, not the sacred chalice type.”