Page 65 of Flame and Fury

“Whatever it is, we all just majorly pissed off the gods and clerics by escaping Nathaniel’s house, so there’s probably no going back,” Lark says with wide eyes.

Lark, Nico, and Estella watch us. My jaw ticks. I’m used to keeping everything to do with the Underground locked down. No one outside of other members knows about my involvement, but Wren’s right. They should have the choice to join us. There’s no going back on what happened at Nathaniel’s house, but they don’t have to get any deeper into shit.

I reach up and press a button that closes the window between us and Carlos. Kat trusts him, but I’m already out of my comfort zone. I don’t need any more people listening in than need to. I lean forward and everyone else mirrors the move until we’re all angled toward each other.

I study Nico, Lark, and Estella before turning my gaze to Wren, where it lingers. She squirms under my stare, but doesn’t look away. She never does. I’ve never met anyone who pushes back so relentlessly without even saying a word.

“What I tell you stays in this car. If Nathaniel or any of the clerics get their hands back on us, you can’t speak a word of this. You will end up causing the death of many, many people.”

Lark’s eyes dart to Wren and then drop to her neck where the small gold snake charm always sits. A line forms between her brows and she nods. Estella quickly does the same.

Nico grins, slapping his hands together and rubbing them enthusiastically. “Absolutely.”

I draw in a deep breath. “We’re headed to an Underground safehouse.”

Nico’s ruddy brows lift, Estella’s eyes go wide, but a slow smile starts to spread over Lark’s face.

* * *

We drivethrough the city streets, winding our way through both the beautiful and rundown neighborhoods. It’s at least half an hour before we leave the city, making it nearly midnight. The roads we travel are completely dark, lit only by our car’s headlights. Not many people have the luxury of owning cars or being able to afford gas. The roads outside of the city are never very busy, and we’re going rural.

Estella’s asleep, her head on Lark’s shoulder. Once the adrenaline left her body, she crashed hard. Everyone else in the car has some form of divine blood in their veins. We aren’t suffering the same come down. Wren is restless in her seat, squirming and changing positions every few minutes. I’m anxious to get to the safehouse. I’ll feel less like a moving target. We’ll have weapons and the ability to see who’s coming for us. No one besides Kat and a few of her higher-ups know the location of this place, so it should be secure.

It’s at least another hour before we pull into a small town. There’s exactly one stoplight in the entire city. We keep rolling down the quiet street. It’s too late for anything to be open, but we pass a grocery store, a hardware store, a food bank, and a small Olympus temple. I can’t imagine there’s more than one cleric in this rinky dink town. Which is likely the reason Kat set up the safehouse close by.

Within a few minutes, we’ve traveled the length of the entire city and are back to farm fields. I sit forward in my seat, anticipating arriving soon. There’s still another fifteen minutes of corn and wheat before the car turns off on a nearly hidden gravel road. Dust billows up around the car. The headlights tunnel through a cloud of brown grit, almost totally obscuring the way.

Carlos knows where he’s headed, so I trust he won’t run us off the road. Rocks ping against the underside of the car until we slowly come to a stop. I peer out the window, seeing a run-down house illuminated by the headlights.

“This is us,” I say, my voice sounding overly loud after we’ve been silent for so long. Wren startles and blinks at me like she’s coming out of a trance. I open the car door and slide out. Wren does the same on her side, and the others file out behind us.

A rustic house sits nestled between huge pine trees. The cedar shake siding is gray with age, with a few pieces hanging and precariously close to falling off. The front porch has a slight sag in the middle, but all the windows are intact. A small garage is attached to the house, the barn-style doors patched where wood has rotted over time.

“Did you bring us out here to kill us?” Estella blinks slowly as she takes in the dilapidated house.

“If I wanted you dead, I wouldn’t have bothered bringing you with us,” I reply. Wren groans and scrubs a hand down her face.

“I see you’ve got your business face on again.” Wren knocks her shoulder into my arm as she moves toward the house. She reaches the saggy steps that lead to the front porch and pauses there before she turns to look at me. “What are we doing here?”

Carlos pops the trunk for me, and I gather a couple of bags that Kat sent. I shut the trunk and tap on the car, letting him know he can take off.

“NowI’mstarting to wonder if we’re going to get murdered.” Nico watches the car drive off in a cloud of gravel. The rest of us are left in the dark, with only a sliver of moon to light the way. At least it stopped raining.

“It might happen if everyone doesn’t shut up.” I exhale loudly, eating up the distance to the porch in a few long strides. The house may look like a shithole from the outside, but I’m not worried about it falling down. The sagging porch holds my weight without a problem.

A faint blue glow falls over my hand and I press in a code to the keypad. A series of beeps cut through the quiet night before the lock clicks and I open the door.

“Welcome to the safehouse.”

CHAPTER36

WREN

Ipeer up at the overhang, eyeing a drooping soffit and a dangling gutter. This place doesn’t seem like the type to have a modern lock. I’d peg it more as the spare key under a garden gnome kind of place, if anyone even bothered to lock up. It looks like it could fall down at any moment.

Atlas pushes the door open with a loud creak.

“It’s a good thing we’re not trying to sneak in.” Nico sounds amused behind me. He and the other two have joined us on the porch, which is somehow holding all our weight.

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