Page 23 of The Tracker's Dawn: Sunderverse
“If I could have,” Damien had repeated last night as he recounted how he saved Rosalina and the others, “I would have saved your agency. I know how much it matters to you both, but keeping everyone safe took all of my power.”
“As it should have,” I said. “You don’t have to apologize for that.”
After he had stayed behind by the car, Damien had begun the job of keeping Bernadetta’s vampires’ presence hidden from the Midnight Witch. The deed was a combination of magic, distance, and death. The vamps were several blocks away from the agency, shrouded under a concealing spell and waiting for the signal to attack. The fact that they were dead, for all intents and purposes, had also contributed to keeping them undetected.
Once he finished that piece of work, Damien approached the agency, positioning himself at a safe distance, also doing his best to magically conceal his presence from Mekare.
The moment the witch sent Rosalina, Gonira, and Em flying backward through the agency’s window, Damien made his move. Relying on his concealing magic, he carved a hole in the building’s back wall and quietly entered. It wasn’t easy with his magical abilities taxed to the max—keeping the vampires and himself from notice was hard enough, not to mention fashioning a door by removing one brick at a time—but he managed. Beautifully.
“I wanted to blast the damn thing out of the way,” Damien had said last night, “but that would have drawn Mekare and her hybrids’ attention.”
It took him several agonizing minutes to form a hole big enough to step through, but once he did, he went into the building and found the three women lying on the floor, unconscious.
“Taking that wall part was hard, but not as hard as not going after that bitch,” Damien said. “She was right there within reach. I could see her back as she threatened you. I wanted to...” He grunted in frustration. “But keeping the women alive was the priority.”
His copper eyes spoke the rest, revealing what he was unwilling to say out loud—that he wasn’t sure if he could best the Midnight Witch and that trying and failing might’ve meant a bigger mess and, possibly, everyone’s death.
After healing Gonira who had suffered a cut to her side and was bleeding profusely, Damien levitated the women out of the building one at a time, starting with Rosalina. Not a moment too soon, he got all three out, saving them from the explosion. Then, additional spells were cast to protect them from the fire and debris and to quickly levitate them to his car two blocks away.
As she listened to the replay, Rosalina unwound the towel from her head and set it aside. She ran her fingers through the wet strands, spreading them over her back to help them air dry. She let out a trembling sigh.
“Did she... did she hurt you?” I asked her, afraid of the answer.
“No, not physically,” Rosalina said.
“But...”
Another trembling breath, then, “she... she told me you were dead.”
I gasped as tears filled my eyes, pooling at the edges. Leaning forward, I wrapped her in an awkward hug. The worry that she might be dead had been torture, and only the hope that we would find her safe and sound had kept me going. Had Rosalina kept the same hope? Or had Mekare managed to crush it with her lies?
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. We held each other for a long moment. When we pulled apart, we were both crying, salt streaks staining our cheeks.
“I tried not to believe her,” she said. “I told myself that she wouldn’t keep me hostage if you were dead. I thought maybe you had escaped her at the cabin, but every day that went by, it got harder to convince myself.”
I squeezed her hand, understanding all-too-well how she’d felt.
We were quiet for a long moment as I contemplated how to give her the news about our agency. I heaved a heavy sigh, met her eyes for a moment, then glanced at the floor.
“There’s something else, isn’t there?” she asked, reading me like an open book.
I nodded, my insides doing weird things. She had been through enough already. This news might devastate her.
“Just rip off the Band-Aid.” Rosalina straightened her back, preparing herself for the blow.
“Mekare, she... she blew up the agency.”
All the air seemed to go out of her. Her shoulders caved in. Her chin fell to her chest. Her breath grew agitated, and I thought she was crying, but when she looked up, her expression was twisted in anger.
“That bitch! That bitch!” Her hands tightened into fists, and I was sure that if she’d had one of her guns in her grip, she would’ve started shooting holes in the ceiling.
“I’m sorry.” Guilt washed over me. Her life had turned into such a mess because of me, and now her livelihood had been blown to smithereens. “I’m so sorry.”
“Quit apologizing,” she said dryly.
I glanced up from the patterned quilt on the bed. Her expression was fierce, nothing but anger reflected in her eyes. I expected despair and tears, but it was quite the opposite.
“I know you think this is your fault,” she continued. “That I would be better off if we had never met, if we had never started a business together. You need to stop thinking that way. I make my own decisions, Toni, and I’m not the kind to regret my choices, especially when they are the right ones. My life would suck without you. It would be dull as hell. I would probably be stuck in some cubicle, surrounded by people who hate me and try to stab me in the back while they ask where I bought my cute outfit.
