by Kay Camden
My elbow makes no dent in his heavy foot. I guess he’s busy with more important things, like keeping the tires of this wild thing on the road. He shifts a gear before reaching behind my seat. I look at the helmet he drops in my lap. I look at him. I didn’t think it was possible to hate him more.
At the first stoplight he talks into his phone and hands it to me. It’s a rally car. It can’t be helped. Get over it.
I elbow him again just because. I want to ask him where he’s heading but at this point it doesn’t matter. My goal is to get far away, and from the speed he’s going, he agrees. Headlights appear in my side mirror, far behind on the road but closing in fast. He’s tilted his gaze toward his mirror too before turning it on me. The intensity of it puts a tumble in my belly. Not long ago that same look of brewing war was directed at me, and for a second I wonder if he’s had a change of heart. But there’s something else in his eyes—a question I must decipher. Every battle starts with a decision, a first move, a first reaction. It’s what sets the rules, what draws a line in the earth. It only takes a beat for me to figure out our options, and all at once I see what he’s asking.
Hide or flee?
I sign, Both, because freedom is so close and we have to pull out all the stops to get there. He can only spare a quick glance away from the road, and from the crease in his forehead I know he doesn’t understand. The car lurches under a gas pedal stomped so hard I’m jerked backward with the force. The speedometer advances at a glorious rate. He looks at me again, so I quickly fingerspell the letters hoping he can figure out the word. His eyes pinch at the corners, then he’s jerking the wheel to send us off the road, bouncing into a ditch then out again as I feel a lift in my stomach like we’ve caught air. Our headlights catch on barbed wire, and Rex jerks the wheel again, pivoting the car in a new direction as if it’s on a spindle.
We’re in the grass beside the road going the opposite direction, tall weeds smacking the front and sides of the car as we speed through it. He turns off the headlights. No car should go this fast off road. And I need a mouthguard because my teeth are about to knock each other out of my head.
He turns toward me and says something. Help me? Help it? Oh—helmet.
Leaning down to fish the helmet off the floorboard where it landed after that last stunt gives my head a few knocks against the dashboard. I hand it to him but he shoves it back at me and says, You. It’s nearly impossible to strap on the helmet in this off road bumping hell but somehow I manage, pleased that when we crash and roll and this toy car crumples, my skull will be intact and Rex’s will be in pieces. Job complete, prophecy fulfilled, I can go home. A thought like that days ago would’ve lightened my mood. But now, sitting beside him while he pilots our insane escape pod, the thought gets gobbled up by others. What’s left is a vibe too complicated to dwell on when my stomach is busy being tumbled by outside sources. I don’t want to barf in Rex’s car. At least not while he’s trying to save us.
Chapter 10
Rex
The car that was behind us makes a U-turn in the road to pursue us now that we’ve been spotted, and I can’t decide if I should keep going or turn around myself. I look at Sloane, but she’s as clueless about these roads as I am. Even if she wasn’t, she couldn’t tell me a thing. Note to self: If I ever do a real rally, don’t pick a deaf girl for a co-driver.
I flip the headlights back on because we’re apparently not fooling anyone. That car gains on us fast. They look like Jag headlights, but I have no idea who’d be driving the Jag. Even though my car is quicker, they have the advantage of flat pavement. I punch the navigation screen, hoping my worthless co-driver will take the hint and find us an escape on the map. Her intake of breath has me hitting the brakes hard. We hit the embankment anyway. Instead of trashing the front end of the car, I manage to get us safely over it. Second note to self: Real rally or fake rally, never take my eyes off the road.
She points across me—through my window a pale dirt road bends away from us. I back up, turn, and floor it onto this lucky path, kicking up so much dust I can taste it. Behind us, our pursuer follows, but he can’t keep up. He’s all over this loose road when my loyal R5 is owning it. All that practice drifting in the southeastern field has paid off. This car has seen as little pavement as I have, and we’re a perfect team because of it.
The dust cloud behind us has completely obscured the other car’s lights with the increasing distance between us, which means my dimmer taillights aren’t going to be visible to him at all. Pull off the road and hide? Or keep going? I want to ask her, but I can’t tempt a second crash by taking my eyes off the road. She’s also gone all weird again. Rigid, closed off, quiet. Ridiculous to call a deaf girl quiet but that’s what it feels like. Her normal quiet is unnoticeable. This quiet is a thing.
I downshift, tapping her arm by accident. She jumps so hard it makes me jump, which causes enough of a jerk in the wheel to catch a tire on the edge of the road. I wrestle it back on course. “The fuck is wrong with you?”
Besides being locked in an idiotic car with her sworn enemy, chased by a car full of guys hired to kill her. Or something.
Out of the corner of my eye, she lays a hand against the base of her neck like she’s trying to keep herself in the seat. Well, that’s understandable. I let off the throttle and downshift again, careful to avoid her arm this time. Not sure why. It wasn’t but a few days ago I lived to terrorize her. Now that she’s making it so easy, it’s lost all its appeal. But it’s not just that. It really has nothing to do with how she’s acting right now and everything to do with what she did to me in that bedroom in the house. That symbol she drew. That odd magic she invoked. And whatever she took away from me.
As soon as we can find somewhere safe to hide, I’m going to force her to tell me what she did. I’m going to make her undo it. Then I’m going to kill her.
The dirt road straightens out before dumping onto a paved one. A lone streetlight marks the intersection next to a row of mailboxes leaning in the weeds. Right or left is a complete toss-up. I open the nav for a clue. With no idea where my family’s land is or which road we took that led us to this dirt road, it all just looks like a mess to me. I look at Sloane. She leans closer to the map as if trying to figure out where we started, where we want to go. I’m not sure I want her calling the shots though, so I make a right turn and floor it.
We have lines on the road now, and the middle one keeps changing from dots to lines and I have no idea why. Aaron was supposed to teach me how to drive on real roads, but we never got around to it. Little houses on small parcels of cleared land keep popping up on either side of us. I have to stop in the road to digest that people actually live in something so small. Movies and TV haven’t even prepared me for this. Cheap cars sitting beside them, trash cans lined up, porch lights swarming with night insects. Now a face in the window looking out at us, and Sloane’s poking me in the arm and gesturing for me to go.
I should probably let her drive. I’m about to go into culture shock.
At the next intersection I make another right like I know what the hell I’m doing. Up ahead there’s an object in the road. A car, tilted to the side like it skidded and found rest across both driving lanes. Headlights blaze in my rearview mirror. Okay, this is all wrong, so very wrong. I hit the brakes to slide but find we’ve been flanked on both sides. I go for reverse, find a car barricade behind us.
Sloane has both hands braced on the dashboard. No point to even trying to get out of this. We’re surrounded.
A man exits the car that’s sitting across the lanes in front of us. I don’t recognize him but it doesn’t matter. He’s one of my family’s trained men, here to collect their property. I twist in my seat—five cars. Five guys minimum. More likely ten.
I unbuckle my harness and reach for my bag in the back. Sloane grabs a fistful of my shirt, forcing a look into her eyes. I hear my name being called outside. “They
won’t kill us,” I say, grateful for the noise of the R5 exhaust drowning me out. She doesn’t need the spoken words and neither do they. All she needs is the form of them, and I don’t think whispering is the same thing. “But we have to kill them.”
She jiggles her fistful of my shirt, demanding more. She doesn’t understand. I can’t tell if she wants more info about what I said or didn’t catch it at all. If we don’t kill every one of them, they’ll take us both back to the house. My uncle Jared—or even worse, Charlie—will get to kill her instead of me. I’ll be punished. I’ll lose my standing, my place, my chance to reign. I’ll be nothing.
“Kill them,” I say to Sloane.
Eyes sober with understanding. She lets go of my shirt. I press the release on her harness, make a motion that shows taking it off. I’m not doing this alone.
One gun from my bag goes into my waistband. The other? No idea where it is. I root around in the floorboard but they’re calling my name with less patience now, so I poke her hard in the arm and point to the floor. “Gun.”
She nods. I get out of the car. The guys in the cars flanking me get out too. Three in one, two in another, plus the guy from the car ahead. I turn around—at least two in the car behind.
“Master Rex, I’ll drive you back. The girl will go with Thompson there. Moretti will drive your car back.”
I take out my phone and dial my father. He picks right up.
“Call these assholes off.”
“You’ve pushed too far, Rex. We’ll talk when you get here.”
“Don’t make me do something stupid.”
“It’s a bit late for that, don’t you think?”
I pull the gun and aim at the closest guy’s head. “Count of three.”
“Rex.”
I fire. It wasn’t three but sometimes I lie. Pistols draw all around me. Everywhere I look there’s a hollow barrel. “One down. I know the amount of training you put in all these guys. How many more do you want to lose?”
“The more damage you do the worse it will be for you.”
“Bullshit. It can’t get worse. But if you’d back down and let me finish this my way, you’ll see …” I can’t even come up with a decent lie. What will they see? What the hell am I even doing?
“See what, Rex? Your disregard for orders? Your abandonment of duty? Is she with you right now?”
I aim at a second guy. Through the ringing in my ears, I hear safeties going off all around me, rounds being chambered. They won’t kill me. There’s no way they’ve been given that order, and they’re too afraid of what their employers will do to someone who harms their prince. They’d rather die than have to face that terrifying unknown. And so would I. “Number two. Should I actually count to three this time?”
My father sighs sharply into the phone as Sloane pops up on the other side of the R5’s hood. Her eyes are so much like the barrels that surround me. Fierce, deadly, pleading. She’s supposed to be backing me up, not talking me down. I glance at the dead body on the ground, the dark circle of blood surrounding his head. Life bled out, a life I took. It’s not the first, but it’s the first I took while under my own command and not theirs. They trained me well, because the second body goes down without a thought. Sloane covers her mouth with her hands and draws a breath. Coming from her it’s more like a shout, packed with too much for me to think about right now. She probably knows some perfect Bevan magic that could put all these guys to sleep. Well I don’t have that. This is all I can do on short notice. This is the only way.
“Last chance,” I say into the phone. “Or I’m hanging up and finishing them off.”
“You think we can’t find you?”
With Sloane Bevan on my team? “Yep.”
I hang up, but I don’t finish them off because Sloane has walked into my aim. Guys shuffle closer around us. I shift my back against the car, jerking her around beside me but it’s not quick enough—one of the guys makes a grab and she dodges, another comes out of nowhere and spins her against him, arm around her throat, gun against her temple.
Something happens to me. It feels like a massively unexpected bass drop. A lurch in my chest. A double heartbeat. A heart attack. I adjust my aim for his face because there’s no one in the world I’ve wanted to kill like this. I need more hands, more guns. I need to blow off every one of his appendages. I need my knife so I can butcher him. I want to kill him and eat him and shit him out.
I’m laughing instead, a sick release to ease the crazy. How it’s finding a way past my clenched jaw is some kind of miracle. I’m drawn into Sloane’s gaze—it’s like being caught in a colossal lie and actually giving a shit. Humbled, but I’m not sure why. It’s shut me up though, and then I see something else. She’s passing something to me, a wordless message. She’s about to do something and she wants me to be ready so—
She bends, flipping her captor to the side and twirling away from him. His arm whips out; she captures it and twists her whole body around it, snapping it at the shoulder. Bodies erupt around me. Bullets zing by and pelt the ground. Aiming for her, no doubt. They won’t kill me. But in this commotion maybe they will because no one would know who’s responsible.
I’ve managed to get between my car and another. My hearing has gone fuzzy now because of all the gunshots and I can’t tell what direction the sounds are coming from. I aim around the bumper, take down two more guys. Without a visual on Sloane I have no idea which way to go. Calling out to her would do no good. She can’t hear me, and right now, I’m not sure I could hear her response even if she could speak.
A body drops onto the car’s hood and slides to the ground beside me. Injured, not dead. Looks like his knee is blown out. And there’s something not right about the angle of his wrist. When his eyes lock onto mine, I see his recognition. I also see the hilt of a blade at his waist and the hand creeping toward it. I don’t want to risk popping one of the R5’s tires with a bullet, so I snatch his knife before he can and drive it into his chest. It’s messy but I’ve done this before and it’s never bothered me. And right now I’m not bothered. Definitely not bothered.
I stand and back away, bumping into a body I spin to face—Sloane. She grabs my shirt and yanks me toward the R5, everything about her saying, Get in, get in. The car that had been blocking us at the front bumper has been moved. She hops into the passenger side as I hop in mine, and I’m pulling away before she’s even shut her door. I watch the mirror as we bail. In it is a jumble of cars and bodies, some immobile, some upright giving chase, some bent over. One lone square of light from a phone. Someone on the phone to my father. They got away, sir. We’ve lost men. We need to regroup.
Let them. They can’t defeat me. Their only option now is to wait for me to come back.
Hands come at me. Not just one or two, but a hundred. Pulling, jostling, restraining. I knock them away, but I’m not fast enough. There are too many. A vicious squealing fills my ears, giving perfect meaning to the smell of burning rubber. All at once I come to, realize the blackness I’m seeing isn’t right. What’s right is the silver strip of road, the brilliant moon, the frame of dark woods on either side. Then I see the real hands. There are only two and they belong to Sloane. She’s now holding them up and away, but I remember where they were: helping me into my safety harness.
Now that we’ve come to a screeching sideways stop, I can buckle in myself. I should thank her for trying but no way. She needs to keep her hands off me. I should also apologize for the freak-out but no to that too. For the same reason.
I check my watch as she buckles up beside me. Then we’re off. No trying to consult the map this time, no attempt for any sense of reason. I just drive. The sun will be lighting the horizon in a few hours, and we need to get far enough away that the search radius is too great for the amount of guys my family can round up. Then Sloane Bevan needs to whip out some tricks and make us untraceable.
She has
n’t moved a muscle since she withdrew her hands. The only movement from her side of the car is the jostle from the bumps in the road. Her chin stays tipped high, her hands flat on her thighs with fingers fanned out like she’s afraid to touch anything. Then I see how bloody they are, and the posture doesn’t look so much haughty as uncomfortable. It’s a bit prissy for a girl who can fight like that to be bothered by blood.
I pull to the shoulder and get out my phone. We need somewhere to lie low. Any ideas?
She looks at the screen for a long time, contemplating. Thinking of a spot? Or knowing a spot, but deciding whether she should tell me? Both options could explain what’s on her face. For the first time I see how easy she is to read. She puts everything out in the open with no filter.
After wiping her hands on the only clean part of her shirt, she writes, Ask Aaron for the address to the cottage he was born in. If he doesn’t know, his dad will.
I shoot off a text to Aaron and toss the phone in her lap so she can monitor it while I drive. We need more distance. We need somewhere to rest. We need food—damn how I need food. I poke her in the arm and point to my bag behind us. “Food.”
She shakes her head, pointing instead through the windshield toward some lights in the distance. Above the glow hovers an illuminated sign. She does something in sign language that looks very much like it could mean ‘food.’ Holy balls, if she can lead us toward something hot and salty, I think I might have to be her best friend.
Okay, that’s a lie. But it sounds good.
*
Tacos. So many tacos. Burritos too. And a flimsy box bending under the weight of loaded nachos. All washed down by a coke as big as the water jug in my hatch. We had to go inside to order because I had no idea how to use the drive-through and she can’t do it deaf. So we stood just outside the ring from the streetlight in the parking lot behind the R5 and used the remaining water jug to wash the blood off our hands and faces. My clothes were splattered but it wasn’t noticeable on camo or black. Her dress was fitting attire for the undead. But she waved her hand like she had it covered then poked my wallet pocket and opened her hand. Curious, I handed it over.