Page 71 of This Coven Won't Break
His words grate against my soul—the Hunters’ drug didn’tcureanything—but Benton is helping us, and for now, that has to be enough.
“Sheisn’t human,” Riley argues. “Leave the witch, and I’ll let you go.” He bares his teeth. “For now.”
Benton glances back at me, and I can tell he’s considering the offer. That he’s weighing his options. His brows crease, and he closes his eyes tight before shaking his head. “Please, Hannah,” he whispers. “Don’t make me shoot him.”
“I won’t stay here.”
“I’m not asking you to.” Tears spill down his cheeks. “But I don’t want to shoot him. Can’t you do something?”
Understanding blooms in my chest, but before I can reachfor my power, Riley rushes forward. “Look out!” I shout, and then everything happens too fast.
Benton turns.
The gun goes off.
Someone cries out.
And then Riley’s on the ground, clutching his lower leg. He’s screaming and cursing but still very much alive. Benton backs away, pale and shaking. The gun slips from his grip and clatters to the ground.
“Come on.” Archer pulls us both away, his face swollen and contorted with pain.
We stumble after him.
And then we run.
25
WITH THE GUNSHOT ALERTINGthe rest of the Hunters to our escape, we run into the trees and don’t stop until we can’t breathe. Then we walk until our legs are ready to give out. When we’re about to collapse, Archer slips into an abandoned parking garage and comes out ten minutes later driving an old sedan.
We ride in silence back to Salem, Archer and I in the front with Benton curled up in the back, his knees pulled up to his chest as he stares out at the speeding scenery. He let me borrow his phone to call Mom. She didn’t answer the unknown number, but I left a message and she called back in less than a minute. Hearing her voice, hearing her alive and simultaneously furious and relieved, was enough to soothe the last of the tension from my heart. I doze off and on the entire hour back to Salem.
“Are we taking him to the police station or the jail?” I ask as we near the town line.
Though he doesn’t say anything, Benton tenses.
“Neither,” Archer says, surprising me. “Without the three Hunters we lost, he’s our last connection to the Order.” He doesn’t say it’s my fault that Riley and the others got away, but he doesn’t have to. It was. “He could be useful.”
I glance at Benton in the rearview. He looks just as uneasy with the plan as I feel, but I imagine for opposite reasons.
When we finally pull into the driveway at my house, the lights are all on inside. The curtains rustle as Archer cuts the engine, and then Mom comes tearing out the front door. She squeezes the breath from my lungs. “I will never, ever let you go.” She tightens the hug. “You are never leaving this house again.”
Archer clears his throat. “We should go inside.”
Mom releases me, but when she spots Benton, the air around us crackles with cold. “What ishedoing here?”
“Inside,” Archer says again, more command than question now. He steers Benton toward the house without waiting for an answer. When Mom notices the injuries on Archer’s face and hands, she sucks in a worried breath and ushers me after them.
In the bright, artificial light of the house, Benton looks even worse than I feel. It’s hard to imagine he was ever the smiling boy I knew in school. Harder still to picture his currently bruised and swollen face contorted with disgust like the night he tried to burn me alive. I can’t believe he protected us. I can’t believe he shot Riley to help us get away.
He looks like he can’t believe it, either.
I try to squash any softness I feel toward him, but my stupid heart constricts as he moves gingerly through the house. His ribs are likely bruised from where Riley hit him, and his hands haven’t stopped shaking.
Mom reluctantly, and after several thinly veiled threats against Benton, leaves us in the kitchen to talk to Archer in the hall. I pull two cups from the cupboard, fill them with water, and pass one to Benton.
“Thanks.” We drink our water, and the air grows heavy with unsaid things. I wonder if he remembers all the times we laughed and joked in art class. If he remembers how much we cared foreach other before we learned that we stood on opposite sides of a deadly feud.
I drain my cup and reach for the faucet to fill it again. While my back is turned, his voice catches me around the chest.
