Eternal [HS]

Chapter Forty-Four

THE CITY JO ONCE WORKED IN JUST outside of the gateway between the human world and her world hasn't changed since she last saw it. Buildings loom, cars pass, yet the sidewalks are mostly void of people due to the late hour of nighttime. If it were snowing, she would have mistaken it for the night she was brought to Harry's house by Niall as if no time had passed at all.

It comes back to her in quick jolts of half-second memories. Snow, drops of blood, a scarf, and a creeping feeling of suspense that crawled up her spine on the walk from the hospital to the train station. All that's missing this time is the dreary weather and the mortality that has been sold away willingly for the one person she never thought she'd like at first, let alone love. Though her body shows no scars except for the bite mark on her wrist, she has the memories to prove that her trip to the underworld was not some imagined dream spurred by boredom.

Sometimes she wants to believe that it's all a dream. For a while, it was the only logical explanation she could come up with for it all, but it's not. The pain inside of her chest at the feeling of being separated from Harry, of knowing how much danger he's in, is too real for her to think it's fake.

That pain ebbed in sadness, then into anger, and now the anger flows through her freely as she dashes from shadow to shadow without the lingering gazes of humans out and about to see. Most people are either asleep or at work for a nocturnal shift as she makes her way from rooftop to rooftop with the hunger to destroy anyone in her path who's responsible for the kidnapping.

She is one with the darkness. In each cautious yet precise footfall, she brings herself closer to the burnt warehouse in which he once took her to in a dream. Niall and Mitch both converge on the building from other directions, and she doesn't need to squint to see where they dart around like invisible ghosts in the late night, killing every Sacrosanct guard posted on the rooftops around the warehouse and concealing themselves in the shadows before they can be spotted by another.

One man with a tall and intimidating build that would've made her wary of approaching him without her immortal powers dies by the end of her silver knife. It was already splattered in the black blood similar to what now flows through her body before, but it is coated in it when she yanks the weapon out of his body and rushes to catch his body before it smacks the roof with a loud thump.

The slightest misstep or noise could give them away, so she acts with as much silence and grace as she can considering her lack of experience in this new body of hers. She lays him down as gently as possible onto the slanted edge of the shingled roof. The light in his eyes fades so quickly, she hardly notices it happen. All there is left to do is search his pockets for any weapons or items of value before continuing on in the direction she was told to.

Words repeated over and over again on the journey over echo in her mind, "In the basement of a building closest to the door to the warehouse"—the building that she is now climbing down the side of to reach the bulkhead basement doors—"a secret entrance to an escape tunnel is hidden behind a false wall." It wasn't something they stumbled upon in blind luck. There were multiple people in their ranks who risked their lives stealing the blueprints to the warehouse itself as well as its surrounding houses and empty buildings, and she makes a note to thank every last one of them if she lives past tonight.

A small voice in the back of her mind scolds her for the word "if". They can't afford to have any "if"s tonight when so much is at stake. There can't be an "if they live", or an "if Adeline is killed", or an "if they rescue Harry". The latter of the phrases almost makes her slip from her barely-there footholds on the brick wall she descends.

He isn't dead, and the fact that he isn't proves to her that coming here is what Adeline wants her to do, but what else can she do? Wait for her to either track her down or kill him after waiting too long for her to come to his aid? Either way, both options would end in death, and she much prefers putting herself in danger for his sake than waiting around for someone to murder him.