Page 43 of Liberty
He cut me off, “There is not a first fucking time for an earthquake, here. Not today!”
Instead of leading me out the way we came, he grabbed my hand and dragged me toward the back of the shop. The floor rolled under my feet; the walls shook, and I couldn’t understand how he was so stable while I had to grab on to nearly everything just to keep from stumbling.
He pushed open the door that led to a kitchen, his fingers never leaving my hand. “Oak and Ellis are on their way.”
He was trying to comfort me, but really, just having him here was enough. I squeezed his hand tightly, trying to convey my feelings before saying, “You didn’t even call them.”
“Oak can’t fight it.” He looked both ways, trying to decide which was the best way to go. The streets were crowded, people were screaming, children were crying, not a single one knew what to do. We were all hopeless. He pulled me to the left toward the water that connected land and ocean. “He is drawn to you, Liberty, we all are.”
We were going against the crowd as we ran, everyone’s instinct to get away from the water instead of file toward it. “Why are we going this way?”
“Because the magic wants us to go the opposite,” he shouted over a lady’s wail.
“What if it’s not magic?” I stumbled, and he caught me.
“It’s magic,” he said confidently. “That stone protects and strengthens you from a physical attack, but if something injured you in an attack on your surroundings, then the stone is useless.”
“I don’t understand. Why me?” I was feeling a bit of hysteria inside of me, and though I tried not to let it slip, I knew he could see it.
He stopped, pulling me aside in the rush of people. “It’s nothing to do with you, Liberty. It’s Greta’s pride. She’s embarrassed to know that her lover had a child she hadn’t known about. Letting his children, or the children of his children live, makes her weak. He was the one who truly got away, and all of us were caught in the crossfire of their petty lovers' quarrel. If James had just let us be without turning us all those years ago, this might not have happened now. But he let the bitterness in his heart lead to his actions.”
The ground pitched hard, and I fell into him, his arms wrapped around me automatically, but he didn’t make a move to release me. Instead, the band of his body around my own only tightened with each of the ground’s movements. The screams of terror drowned to nearly nothing when he leaned down and kissed my hair. “I promise we will find a way out of this.”
Sterling released me, and I wished more than anything to reverse time and go back to his embrace, where I felt warm and safe. But the crumbling buildings and bursts of fire that now surrounded us were a reminder that we couldn’t enjoy any aspect of our lives until we eliminated the threats that seemed to appear repeatedly.
He pulled me through a side street, the road deserted by people but not the crumbling debris. “Do you think they will find us?”
“They probably are already at the waterfront.”
“How would they know to go there?” I gasped. My thighs ached from running; my muscles coiled tight from dodging falling bricks and glass.
“It’s where I would go look for you first, even if I couldn’t feel a pull to you, and I know Oak is the smartest one of us.” It was shocking that he would pay his friend such a compliment, especially when they spent so much time pretending not to care about each other.
It was another two blocks before we made it to the water. The shores and streets surrounding it were deserted. Empty cars littered the crowded streets; food carts were left with heat and fire rising from their cooking surfaces, bikes were tipped over on the sidewalk. The water’s waves lapped at the shore, forming large arches before cresting into the nearby bridge and structures. With one final shake, the ground suddenly stopped.
My nails dug into Sterling’s arm as we surveyed the night. “It’s done.”
He shook his head while cursing, “I highly doubt it. Where the fuck are Oak and Ellis? We need to get you home where the wards are.”
“Can you carry me?” I asked, knowing that they all ran incredibly fast.
He shook his head. “It’s a fail-safe. We all agreed that if something happened, we would meet up outside of the house. If I took you there now and the trap was an even larger one, then this was only pushing us toward it, then your death would be my fault.”
Behind him, an enormous shadow emerged from the ocean, the darkness making it nearly impossible to see, but my insides screamed for me to be cautious, to run, to find safety. I swallowed hard, my throat suddenly so dry it was painful. “Like –” The words froze as a blinked a few times, trying to make sense of what I saw. “Like that?”
My finger pointed to the creature that was becoming clearer the closer he got. Its giant tentacles stretched toward us; its sights fixated only on us and none of the surroundings. To my left, I felt Oak and Ellis’ presence before I heard them, but I couldn’t make out their words. I was frozen in place, my eyes fixed in such a trance that I wasn’t aware that Sterling was shaking me, screaming at me, trying to do anything he could to make me move until it was too late.
The tentacle of the beast twisted and molded until it formed a spear, a spear that plunged right through the center of Sterling’s chest, causing blood to spray across me and ooze out of his body. His hands went to the wound where the spear still protruded while his beautiful eyes grew wide and glassy.
His body rose into the air, blood forming a puddle on the ground as it ran down his body and dripped to the cement. He gasped out a word, but I strained to hear it. He made wet gurgling sounds in his throat, his eyes rolling back for a moment, and when they found me again, the only thing I could hear was him saying, “Run!”