Page 103 of Break Out the Girl

I can’t feel her. Our connection.

“Drive, Burt,” London says softly. “Shane and I will fight to the death anyone who gets in the way. You take her to your mum. It’s the right place to go, my belly is telling me that.”

Strangely, his support eases my panic.

“D'accord,” François murmurs after a beat. “Take her to where she can be saved. That’s all that matters.”

My foot is already flat against the accelerator, but I press harder anyway as we race south.

After too long, I turn onto the muddy road that leads to the tiny farm cottage I grew up in. My parents inherited it from a great uncle years ago. Most of the land had already been sold off, and the roof is full of holes and moss, but it’s warm. It’s hopefully safe.

It’s home.

We bounce through deep, waterlogged potholes, passing a small gray tractor that hasn’t run in half a century, aiming for the yellow porch light that cuts through the sheets of gray rain.

That means my parents are in. Thank Gods.

Easing off the gas and I pull up right outside the porch. The front door of the farmhouse flies open instantly. Mom is silhouetted in the doorway.

Of course.

She’s the first person everyone turns to in a crisis. The amount of times beat-up cars and trucks have skidded to a stop outside our home, someone hurt and bleeding inside, are too numerous to count.

She sprints out, her familiar ragged coat thrown over her shoulders.

“Who is it?” she screams over the wind, her hand shielding her eyes.

I push the driver’s side door open and step out. “Mom.”

Opal Bevan freezes dead in her tracks, the rain plastering her skirt to her shins. Her silver hair is falling out of its braid, and there is a new network of fine lines all over her face.

And she’s the most comforting thing I’ve seen in forever.

Her silver eyes widen with disbelief then fill with tears. “Tally?” she whispers, her voice cracking before she loses it completely, rushing forward through the mud. “Oh, gods, my beautiful boy, you’re here…”

My instinct to wrap my arms around my mom has to be pushed to one side. “I need you.” I take her shoulders in my hands, voice cracking. “You have to help her. She’s everything, Mom. Everything.”

The overwhelmed softness vanishes instantly, replaced by the fierce determination and a strategic mind that has saved a hundred lives. “Then bring her in. Move!”

François is already lifting Aurora out, his own wounds bleeding through his shirt. Rory is wrapped in his overcoat. I take her from his arms, her head rolling uselessly against my shoulder, and sprint into the house.

London and François can deal with Sky. This is my home, my territory. My mom.

Laying Aurora across the clean white sheets of the room that once was mine, I swallow my despair. Her skin is gray, and covered with black, bubbling chemical burns from the Harpy.

She’s going to be OK.

She has to be.

Mum rushes in, carrying a heavy, battered wooden healing chest and a modern doctor’s medical kit. Taking her scissors, she cuts open Rory’s sweater, her eyes widening at the sight of the caustic burns.

“Her heart, Mom.”

She nods, instantly attaching a stethoscope to her ears. I’m silent as she moves it around Rory’s chest. “It’s too erratic,” she mutters to herself. “Weak.” Pressing the end of the scope a little further down her frown increases. “Fluid in the lungs. Quick, sit her up.”

I go to one side of the bed, and Mom stays on the other, hauling Rory into an almost sitting position. “We need more hands, someone to keep her upright.”

It takes me less than a beat to respond. ‘LONDON!”