“Too close for what?” she asked, worrying about the neighbors waking up and coming out to investigate the strange noise.
“There’s no way we’re going to make it out before they get here. So we go with plan B,” he explained in a low voice, quickly moving around the back of the car and ripping open the driver’s door.
Following him, she stammered, “What on earth is p-plan B?”
“You drive, I’ll shoot.” He motioned for her to get into the car, then shut her door and reached behind him. Olivia’s eyes went wide as he pulled a heavy black handgun from behind his back, where it must have been tucked into the waistband of his jeans, hidden beneath the hem of his shirt.
Silently chanting a mixture of curses and prayers, Olivia quickly belted herself in while Aiden moved around to the passenger’s side. He folded his long body inside the compact interior, then sent her a strange look that would have been funny if she hadn’t been so terrified. “Christ,” he muttered, “I feel like a friggin’ pretzel in this thing.”
“Fwiggin’ pwetzel.” Jamie giggled from the backseat.
Olivia glared at him and he winced, grumbling something about small-ass cars quietly enough that Jamie couldn’t overhear him as he moved the seat back as far as it would go.
“So what happens if we m-make it out of here?” she asked, her hands shaking even harder than her voice as she looked over her shoulder and began reversing out of the driveway. At any moment Olivia expected the monsters to come leaping out of the dark, and she fought to brace herself, worried she was going to panic and steer the car straight into a tree, or one of the neighboring houses.
The gun clicked as he checked the clip, his voice somehow confident and calm as he said, “I need to get you and Jamie to the Watchmen compound in Colorado as soon as possible. It’s called Ravenswing and it’s where I live. It’s also one of the safest places there is.”
“We can’t fly there,” she told him, wondering how long she and Jamie would need to stay at the compound. It seemed so bizarre, the idea of living under the same roof with a group of strangers. Not to mention with Aiden Shrader. “Jamie has an inner-ear condition that causes extreme pain at the kind of high altitudes a plane flies. I’ve heard that there’s a new medication for children her age that can help, but the prescriptions are just about impossible to come by.”
“That’s okay. Probably safer right now to stay on the ground anyway, where we’re in control,” he murmured, making her wonder if he didn’t care much for flying himself.
Turning the wheel so that they were facing the road out of the cul-de-sac, she put the car into Drive. “Aiden, I, um, I have n-no idea what to do.”
“Just make it fast.” His voice was rough, his expression focused as he started to roll down his window.
Taking a deep breath, Olivia gripped the wheel with both hands and floored the gas pedal. The back wheels made a god-awful noise, searching for traction, and then the car finally lurched forward, tearing down the moonlit road. A scraping, sinister howl sounded from somewhere in the darkness up ahead, and she shivered, praying she wasn’t going to throw up from the churning rush of adrenaline and fear.
“What are you doing?” she asked when Aiden turned around, reaching into the backseat.
“Putting Jamie’s blanket and pillow over her head. The Marker will protect her from the Casus’s claws and fangs, but she could be cut by the glass if any of the windows get shattered. That’s why I’m covering her up.”
“Oh, God,” she groaned, feeling as if she’d slipped into some kind of horrific action movie that had been horribly miscast, terrified she would make a mistake that could cost Jamie her life. “Please keep her safe,” she whispered under her breath. “Please, please, please keep her safe.”
Continuing to send up the quiet prayer, Olivia flicked on the high beams and glanced over to see Aiden watching her with a kind of confused expression on his rugged face, as if he couldn’t quite understand what she was doing. “What?” she asked, sinking her teeth into her trembling lower lip.
“You really care about her, don’t you?” It was obvious from his tone that the idea surprised him.
“Of course I do,” she snapped. Then, in a calmer voice, she said, “Why do you find that so hard to believe?”
He shrugged his broad shoulders, looking as if he was almost embarrassed as he turned his attention back to the road. “I just don’t think a lot of humans feel that way about our kind.”
“You mean I shouldn’t love her because she isn’t human? That’s ridiculous. I couldn’t care less if she’s human or Merrick, a mermaid or a fluffy little bunny rabbit.”
“You’d be surprised by some people, then,” he muttered. “Not everyone feels the same way.”
Anger made her voice hard. “Then they’re jerks. And brainless ones at that.”
“Can’t argue with you there,” he drawled in a husky slide of words, and from the corner of her eye she could see his mouth curve with a wicked, endearingly lopsided grin.
The howls suddenly came again, sounding considerably closer, and Olivia gripped the wheel tighter, silently cursing the damn road for being so long. Funny how it had never seemed that way before, and now it felt as if it stretched out forever, like an endless pathway leading straight into hell.
“You see anything big and ugly and gray, hit it,” Aiden instructed her in a low voice. “Just try to avoid a tall guy with auburn hair, and one whose hair is short and black, if you see them. They’re with me.”
“Both Watchmen?” she asked, wincing as she took the next curve too fast and the wheels screeched in protest.
“The redhead is. His name’s Kellan. The other’s a human, but Noah’s fighting with us against the Casus.”
Looking over his shoulder, he reached back and patted Jamie’s leg, his voice raised so that he could be heard over the roaring engine and the guttural howls. “Jamie, baby, I need you to cover your ears, okay?”
Olivia steered them around the next bend in the road, and without any warning, the first monster came out of the woods, charging the car head-on. The impact as it slammed onto the hood reminded her of the time she’d been rear-ended on the interstate by a drunk driver, the jolt slamming through Olivia’s body hard enough to make her bones rattle. Claws screeched against the metal hood as the beast struggled to hold on, the nightmarish sound making her want to scream with terror, though she refused to give in to her panic. Not yet. Not until she’d gotten Jamie out of there alive and away from the monsters.
As Aiden braced himself in the open window and fired the gun, she knew why he’d instructed Jamie to cover her ears. The blast was painfully loud, making her flinch. The car swerved, and Aiden slammed into the window frame, a coarse four-letter word jerking from his throat.
“Sorry!” she shouted.
“Don’t worry about it,” he grunted, resettling himself in the open window. “You’re doing great.”
It all happened so fast after that, the details were like a blur. Olivia fought to keep the car steady while the other Casus attacked, jumping onto the roof…the hood. Each time she thought they were going to die, Aiden would unload a round of bullets, and even with her untrained eye she knew his aim was lethally accurate. Only one of the vile creatures managed to get too close, its razorlike claws just missing his chest as it fought for purchase on the roof of the car. Before it could swipe at him a second time, Aiden reached out with his left hand, caught its arm and cracked the bone in half while bringing his gun arm around and nailing the bastard right between its pale, ice-blue eyes. Olivia struggled not to gag as its heavy body rolled down the windshield, leaving a bloody streak across the glass as another Casus launched itself toward the car, only to be jerked off its feet as Aiden drilled it with a bullet that tore right through the center of its leathery forehead.
“Don’t freak out,” she whispered to herself, her hands curled in a death grip around the wheel. “Just focus…and keep breathing, and whatever you do, don’t pass out.�
�
One minute the car seemed to be buried in the bowels of hell, and in the next, it was over and they were speeding down the winding road all alone, with nothing but the moonlight and the surrounding forest for company. “Is Jamie okay?” she shouted the second Aiden had slipped back into his seat and rolled up the window.
Sensing her panic, he quickly turned and leaned into the backseat, pulling the blanket and pillow off Jamie’s little body. “She’s fine. A little pale, but she isn’t even crying.” To Jamie, he said, “You were so brave, sweetheart. It’s all over now, but I want you to keep the cross for me. Can you do that?”
In the rearview mirror Olivia could see Jamie nod her head, but it was difficult to make out her expression in the shadowed interior. She took a deep breath, trying to sound as normal as possible as she said, “I love you, Jamie.”
“Love you, too, Livie,” Jamie called back. From the sound of her voice, you’d never have guessed the child had just gone through a living nightmare, and it made Olivia’s insides clench with worry, the fear taking hold of the back of her neck with a cold, clammy clasp. It had a different flavor than the terror that had been riding her during the attack—this one slower, digging down deeper, rooting its way into her heart.
Settling back into his seat, Aiden quietly asked, “Is, uh, that normal?”
Olivia knew he meant Jamie’s reaction—or lack of one—and she shook her head. “I don’t know. She’s been really closed down lately.” She swallowed, trying hard to keep it together. Softly she said, “I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t worried about her.”
She flinched as he reached out and settled his large hand on her forearm, its startling heat sinking into her flesh. “You can slow down now, Liv. Just pull over here on the shoulder for a minute and get your breath back.”
She hadn’t realized she was still driving at top speed until he pointed it out, and she immediately did as he said. The night seemed unusually silent without the engine roaring, and as the car came to a slow stop, she pressed her forehead to the steering wheel, her chest hurting from the ragged force of her breathing. “They’re going to keep coming for her, aren’t they?” she whispered, wondering if she would finally throw up now.
“Yeah.” Olivia turned her head to look at him, her expression obviously stricken, and she felt the powerful intensity of his stare as he studied her face all the way down to her bones. Felt it in her blood and her stomach and the tightness of her chest. “I know that’s not what you wanted to hear, but I’m not going to lie to you, Liv.”
“Well, that’s something, then,” she murmured, unable to ignore the strange sensation that he was actually telling her the truth. Honest men, in her experience, were few and far between. She’d have pegged Aiden Shrader as the kind of guy who could smooth talk his way right out of any uncomfortable situation, sugarcoating the truth if it made things easier for him, but maybe she’d been wrong. “Have you had to do that a lot?”
“Do what?” he rumbled as he undid his seat belt again. Leaning forward, he reached behind him and slipped the handgun back into the waistband of his jeans.
“The gun thing,” she explained. “You were deadly accurate with it.”
Pushing back the thick strands of his hair, he slid her a wary glance, as if worried about how she was going to take his answer. “I’ve had to make kills, when the circumstances called for it.”
Olivia nodded, squeezing her cold fingers around the padded wheel. “That’s not surprising, I guess, except that I thought the Watchmen were meant to be neutral or something like that.”
“For the most part, yeah, we are,” he rasped. “When it comes to the clans, our directive is to simply monitor and report our findings. But there are times when we’re called on to take down something that needs to be taken down.”
A shiver traveled up her spine. “Well, I think the Casus certainly fit into that category.”
“You’d think, wouldn’t you?” he muttered, his tone bitter. Before she could ask what he meant, he changed the subject, saying, “Why hadn’t you left town, anyway? After what happened to your stepsisters, I would have thought you understood how dangerous it was for the two of you here.”
“Well, we haven’t been alone,” she explained, noticing that his eyes had bled back to hazel, though they still smoldered with an unearthly glow of light. “Up until this morning, Jamie and I had a houseful of aunts and uncles from my father’s side of the family staying with us. Two of them are actually retired law enforcement, so I felt we were safe with them there. They came in for Monica’s funeral, but after being here for several weeks, they needed to get back to their lives, especially with the holidays coming up. The house finally cleared out this morning.”
“So they just abandoned the two of you?” Rough words that practically vibrated with outrage.
“It wasn’t like that,” she told him, turning to stare through the front windshield. “Remember, they’re human, like me. They don’t know anything about the clans or how Monica really died or what’s happened to Chloe. As far as they know, a wild animal attacked Monica, and most of them believe Chloe’s flighty enough to take off on her own without telling anybody. Several of my aunts invited me and Jamie to stay with them, but how could I say yes, knowing the danger we would have brought with us? I can only assume that the sheer number of people we’ve had at the house forced the Casus to bide their time, but they wouldn’t be daunted by a few humans once our numbers were smaller.”
“So you decided to leave?”
Olivia nodded. “I packed up the car early this morning and we left the house. I figured it would be safer to drive out of town at night, and I actually had an important meeting in town late this afternoon with Monica’s lawyer that I couldn’t miss. So we went to my friend Connie’s house for the day. I thought we’d be safe there, but I guess my mistake was in telling Georgia where we were going.”
Slanting him a worried look, she said, “You don’t think the Casus have hurt her, do you? She must have told them about Connie’s house, the same way she told you.”
“Maybe not. Depending on how good a lead they had on your scent, they might have simply tracked you there.”
“They can do that?” she whispered, feeling as if every ounce of blood had just drained from her face.
“Yeah, and you didn’t travel that far from home.” He took a deep breath, and his voice seemed even deeper as he said, “Your scent is…unique, Liv. Different. I’m not sure if they can track Jamie’s Merrick blood, like they do with the other Merrick, since she’s so young, but there’s a good chance they could have followed you.”
“Great,” she groaned, wondering why she would have to be the freak with the “unique” scent, whatever that meant. “Will they be able to track us out of town?”
“Not as easily, and we can keep ahead of them if we’re careful. But it’s still going to be a dangerous trip. They’re going to guess we’re headed for Colorado, which means we’re going to need to avoid the direct routes as much as possible.”
“This all seems so unreal.” She shook her head again, her voice thick with emotion. “I don’t even know what I’m doing.”
“Naw, you’re doing fine. Hell, just look at how you handled yourself tonight. You drove like a demon, and not everyone could have done that.” Her pulse rate climbed as he gave her another one of those sexy, lopsided smiles that just seemed to intensify his outrageous appeal. “I never thought I would say these words, but you are one badass kindergarten teacher.”
Though she felt oddly torn between laughter and tears, his husky words filled Olivia with a strange bubble of warmth that managed to ease some of her fear, which was probably what he’d been after. “You know,” she said shakily, looking away as she felt her face go warm, “this is probably going to sound crazy, but I think that’s the nicest compliment anyone has ever given me, Aiden. Thank you.”
As the heat from his gaze lingered on her profile, she wondered what he was gearing up to say, but then
his phone rang, interrupting the moment. He quickly took the call, asking if everyone was okay, while Olivia twisted around in her seat to check on Jamie, who seemed to be quite happy as she studied the beautiful cross that Aiden had hung around her neck.
“When you’re done taking care of the bodies,” he said into the phone a moment later, “meet us over at the gas station we stopped at earlier. Had to leave my truck back at the house, so we’re in a red Honda.”
“Are they all right?” she asked when he ended the call.
“Yeah.” He slipped the phone back into its case, then raked his hair away from his face again. “A little banged up, it sounds like, but then they’re used to that. Kellan thinks they took down around seven of the bastards in the woods, which means there were about twelve of them altogether, if you count the ones that attacked the car.”
“That seems like a lot,” she murmured, pulling back out onto the road. The only gas station remotely close to their location was a mile away, so Olivia headed in that direction, assuming that’s where his friends would be meeting them.
“They’re coming through faster and faster,” Aiden grunted, his right arm braced against the door, his hand resting against his mouth as he sprawled against the back of the seat in one of those casual poses that had always struck her as beautifully male. “But to send that many tells us that your sister was right. They’re eager to get their hands—” He cut himself off, obviously not wanting Jamie to hear, but Olivia knew what he’d been about to say. The monsters wanted to get their hands on her niece. On a precious, innocent little girl.
“I don’t understand,” she whispered. “It just…it doesn’t make any sense.”
“Yeah, well, you can’t apply logic to these things, Liv.” The words were straightforward enough, but she could tell from his tone that there was something more. Something he either didn’t want her to know or that he couldn’t say in front of Jamie. Her body ached as the worry settled deeper into her bones, the past few weeks making her feel as though she’d aged ten years.
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