But in our haste, we hadn’t thought ahead. We’d come on our own, and now we were alone on a mountain with a crazed madman barreling down on us in his monstrous truck.
“Get in the car!” I yelled.
Grace jumped into the back seat, holding the door open for me, just as a shot rang out. I whipped around, only to hear another shot fill the night before something hot flew past my ear.
Holy shit. He’s shooting at us!
I shoved her mother in the back seat beside Grace, focused more on getting her in the car versus trying not to hurt her.
Her mother groaned, but I slammed the door anyway and pried open the driver’s door just as a bullet hit the back of my car, going right through the panel. My heart slammed against my ribs, my stomach dropping.
Headlights from her father’s truck headed straight for us. Her father was only a hundred yards away, the engine’s roar and spinning tires filling the cold dark night, as he leaned out the window, a gun raised.
Not only was her father racing toward us in a truck big enough to push mine off the road, but he was shooting at us too.
I dropped into the driver’s seat as a shot hit a tree next to us on the side of the road.
“Stay down!” I yelled at Grace.
Since I’d never cut the motor, I swung the wheel. The tires spun, and I cursed. I tried again, but the tires refused to find a grip, moving too quickly and spinning again.
“Raven!” Grace cried from behind me. “He’s going to hit us!”
Another shot rang through the night, going wide. Move! Move! I hit the accelerator again but more carefully. The car inched forward, the tires sticking.
But we weren’t moving fast enough. Within a few seconds, her father would hit us if I couldn’t floor it down the mountain, and with how slippery the roads were, that wasn’t going to happen.
I made a split-second decision. I knew it was a choice that could come back to haunt me, but the woman I loved sat in the back of my car, screaming in terror while she clung to a mother she wanted desperately to protect.
“I’m sorry, Di,” I whispered.
I called up the fire inside me, activating the part of my brain that was dormant in others. A huge wall of fire erupted across the highway, ten feet deep and fifteen feet high. The heat and light from it licked the sky, sparks erupting into the bitter air.
Grace screamed again, but her mother must have passed out from the pain or the cold, because she didn’t make a sound.
An explosion rocketed through the night when Darren Anderson barreled headfirst into my flames. He’d been going too fast to stop.
A plume of dark smoke came next. The tires on his truck exploded, and every window in his truck shattered, as my flames consumed the monster inside.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“Oh my God, Raven! Oh my God!” Grace cried over and over from the backseat, her voice turning hysterical.
I flung the door open and jumped out of the car. With a flick in my mind, I stopped the fire. The wall of flames disappeared, leaving nothing but a burned vehicle in a heap on the road. Not even the road bore evidence of my flame since I’d hovered it above the snow and pavement.
“Is he dead?” Grace called.
I cautiously approached the truck, fearful that a blackened charred monster would rear from the seat, shooting at me again, but a new sound reached my ears, making me pause. A distant vehicle. Down the mountain, headlights from a car cut through the night.
“Shit,” I whispered. Someone was coming. I frantically looked around. How they hell do we clean this up?
I raked a hand through my hair, walking toward the truck cab again. What I’d done meant the police would be called. An accident scene would ensue. Questions would be asked.
And I’d have to answer them.
“Shit!” I picked up a jog, my heart pounding.
Grace’s father lay slumped over the wheel, his body badly burned, his useless gun lying on the passenger seat. I swallowed tightly, too afraid to touch him for fear his skin would peel away.
A groan came from him.
My breath caught. He’s still alive.
The car engine in the distance grew louder. My mind raced. Okay, play it cool. Say you came upon the accident. Say you have no idea what happened. But how did I explain Grace’s mother passed out in the back of my car? A woman who was the battered wife to the man who’d been badly burned? A woman who’d tried to escape?
I wracked my brain for ideas on how I’d get out of this mess. Howling wind surrounded me, and the approaching car grew louder. Grace had stopped calling for me from the back of my car. She’d probably heard the approaching vehicle too.
“Get down!” I called to her. The more time I had to figure out a way to explain her presence, the better.
A shiver struck me despite the adrenaline coursing through my body. It was freakin’ freezing out here. I studied her father again. Another groan escaped him. Through his charred clothes, it was hard to see the extent of his burns, but I imagined only a large trauma center would be able to help him. If they could help him at all.
I jumped on the balls of my feet, jittery at what was to come, when a thought struck me. We should call the police. It would look suspicious if we didn’t.
I whipped out my cell phone as headlights from the approaching vehicle shone just down the hill from us.
“911 operator. What’s your emergency?”
I shoved my free hand into my pocket as another groan came from Grace’s father. “There’s been an accident. A man is badly burned. It seems his truck caught on fire.”
The 911 operator proceeded to ask me questions. I cringed and hoped I was answering them in a way that wouldn’t come back to haunt me. I tried to keep my answers short, but as the approaching vehicle pulled up behind my car, all of my attention focused on that.
“It looks like somebody else has arrived,” I told the operator. “I’ll see if they can help.”
“Please stay on the line, sir. We need—”
But I hung up anyway, not wanting to implicate myself further. I jogged toward the vehicle parked just behind mine as Grace tentatively called me through the back door’s cracked window.
“Raven?” Grace said.
“Stay inside the car,” I replied discreetly.
The bright headlights from the parked vehicle shone directly in my eyes. I brought a hand up to shield my face. I had no idea how many people were in the car, thanks to the blinding headlights.
A car door creaked opened from the new vehicle, then a frantic voice cut through the night. “Raven? Are you and Grace okay?”
I nearly collapsed in relief at the sound of Di’s voice. She turned off the headlights, and I was able to see the large SUV she’d driven. Flint, Lena, the twins, and Edgar all poured out from the doors, following Di.
Di rushed toward me, her dark hair whipping in the wind as she assessed the situation. “Are you guys okay? I had a vision of you with Grace on a mountain, trying to save her mom. It was so powerful that it woke me out of a dead sleep.”
The rest of my family circled around me. Everybody appeared half dressed and wild-eyed. Lena’s hair stood up in all directions while Flint came to my side.
“I see you took care of matters on your own.” He stared grimly at the burned truck.
I hung my head. “I had no choice. He was going to kill us.”
Flint’s jaw locked, and he nodded curtly. Lena was already racing toward the back of my car, calling for Grace. The twins and Edgar all took in the scene with open mouths.
“Holy shit. How the hell do we explain this?” Jet asked.
Di put her hands on her hips. “Who were you talking to when we drove up?”
“The 911 operator. I didn’t know what else to do. I knew if I didn’t report this it would look suspicious, and I didn’t know it was you guys driving up the road. I thought there would be witnesses, so if I didn’t call, it would look—”
She raised her hand, cutting me off
. “I get it. You did the right thing. We needed to call this in, but now we need to clean it up before they get here.”
Flint was already by the truck, crouching in the snow, studying the road. “There aren’t any burn marks. How are we going to explain the fire?”
Jet touched the charred hood of the truck as another groan came from Grace’s father. He jumped back so fast, I would have thought he’d seen a ghost. “He’s still alive?”
Di’s eyes widened, and she kicked into action. She was at the driver’s door in a split second, assessing Grace’s father. But after a few seconds, she shook her head. “There’s nothing I can do for him. He needs a burn center. I’ll just make matters worse if I try to help.”
“So what do we do?” Jasper asked, coming up behind his brother, his shoulders hunched up from the cold.
Di looked around the snowy narrow highway. Trees blanketed the mountain side, towering pines and skeleton-like aspens. “We need to make this look like an accident, like the truck started on fire on its own, so no further questions are asked.” She swung around to face the twins and Edgar. “Can you guys manipulate the first responders’ emotions so they don’t grow suspicious or feel that foul play was at work?”
The twins both nodded, their jaws locked as serious expressions covered their faces.
Turning toward Edgar, Di softened her tone. “How comfortable do you feel taking charge of the situation? If you’re able to make the police believe that this was truly an accident, any repercussions we could face may go away.”
Edgar’s hands shook. He stuffed them into the pockets of his jacket. “I’ll help.” Sweat popped up on his brow despite the bitter cold. “I came up here ta help, and I will.” A twinge of the fake British accent he’d adopted as a coping mechanism during his time at O’Brien tainted his words.
Flint and I shared a worried look.
Di placed her hand on Edgar’s shoulder, squeezing it, just as Lena emerged from the back of my car. She jogged toward us.
“Grace is in shock, and her mother is unconscious. Di, can you come take a look at them?”
Di nodded curtly, her dark hair swinging against her chin.
Flint stood with his hands on his hips, surveying the trees again. “If we can make a burned tree fall on his vehicle, it’s possible we can play this off as a lightning strike that caused everything.”
“How the heck do we do that?” Jet asked with raised eyebrows.
But I’d already caught onto Flint’s idea. “I can start one of the trees on fire, but I’ll need to split the tree somehow, so it looks like a lightning strike. With Lena and Flint’s help, we can knock the tree over onto the vehicle, making it look like it hit the truck and started it on fire.”
Jet took a step back, a sarcastic grin tilting his lips up. “Now this, I gotta see.”
Snow continued to fly around us as Flint and I filled Lena and Di in on our plan. Edgar stood by the side of the road, still trembling, but a determined expression locked his jaw.
I knew he hated using his powers, but once again, he’d come to our family’s rescue. As one of the three lost children buried away in O’Brien’s subterranean research lab for most of his life, he’d had more drugs administered to him than the original eight in my family. Because of that, he, Susannah, and Luke all had additional powers, but none of them were like me. I was unique in my family as I’d been born with my powers since my mother had been experimented on while she’d been pregnant.
Lena nodded her head after we’d filled her in on our plan. “Okay, yeah, I can do that. There’s a lot of energy to work with out here. Do you want to start the tree on fire, Raven? While it’s burning, I’ll start working on the base of the trunk. As it grows weaker, can you shove it over, Flint?”
Flint clenched his hands into fists. “I’m ready whenever you are.”
We chose a large pine tree, as its towering height meant it would easily fall across the road onto the truck.
“This is gonna be tricky,” Lena said. “We have to make the tree land on that truck’s hood without hurting Grace’s father further.”
Occasional groans still came from inside the truck’s cab, but they had grown less frequent. I didn’t know if her father would survive, and even though I wasn’t proud of admitting it, I didn’t care if he did.
“Let’s get this over with,” Flint said before jogging into the snow by the tree.
The three of us worked together, channeling our powers and unique abilities as we staged the accident scene. I called my flame up again and lit the tree on fire with an explosive spark, doing my best to mimic the intense heat and power of a lightning strike.
The trees around us whipped and flowed as Lena manipulated the energy fields among all living things. She’d grown incredibly powerful over the past few years. Thankfully, she was a good person who never used her powers in malicious ways, but if she ever chose to do that . . .
She’d be a force to be reckoned with.
Flint stayed at the base of the tree, being careful to avoid the showering sparks and swaying branches around him.
“Try it now!” Lena yelled.
Flint barreled into the tree, the trunk creaking and groaning. I kept my attention on the fire, carefully controlling it so it didn’t hurt anybody on the ground.
“Holy shit,” Jet whispered. “They’re doing it.”
In the distance, sirens wailed. Flashing lights appeared below the mountain.
“They’re coming, you guys. You better hurry it up!” Jasper yelled.
Concentrating more, I grew my flame as Flint again barreled himself into the tree trunk. With a loud cracking snap, the pine tree broke at the base and began to fall. It drifted to the side, threatening to land in front of the truck.
Abruptly, the tree stopped, hovering in midair. Lena stood to my side, sweat beading along her upper lip as a fierce look of concentration bloomed on her face. Flint pushed more at the base of the tree, moving it back toward the trunk as Lena groaned.
The tree shifted in midair before falling with a bang onto the truck’s hood.
I left the tree burning as the first responders arrived. The second the EMT’s jumped out of the ambulance, the twins were already at work. Docile expressions covered the three EMT’s faces, but they still went about their work. The police officer was the same. He stood by Di, asking questions, his voice never sounding curious or suspicious.
It took a while before the paramedics removed Grace’s father from the truck. Given how uneven the terrain was, an airlift wasn’t possible. Grim expressions downturned their lips as that foggy glaze coated their eyes, indicating the twins’ powerful mind manipulation.
Edgar, on the other hand, worked on the police officer. I didn’t exactly understand how his power worked, other than he had the ability to control minds. Whether he was rearranging the police officer’s thoughts, or planting staged beliefs in the officer’s mind, I didn’t know. But I did know that Edgar was our best bet at coming out of this situation unscathed.
When Grace’s father was finally in the ambulance heading back down the mountain, and as the police officer finished filling in his information for his report, we all breathed a sigh of relief. The officer said a cleanup crew would have to wait until the morning, and that he needed to get back to work and close the mountain road off until the burned tree and truck could be cleared.
We all nodded, murmuring our thanks as he left. When we were finally alone, Lena wrapped her arms around herself. “Do you think this will come back to haunt us?”
My gaze strayed to the back of my vehicle where Grace and her mother huddled down in the seat. Thanks to the twins and Edgar, neither the paramedics or police officer had ever realized they were there, and we wanted it to stay that way.
“I have no idea,” I replied grimly and crossed my arms. My fingertips felt numb from the cold. “But right now, we need to get Grace and her mom home. Her mom is badly injured, and she needs medical attention. And Grace…” My breath sucked
in when I saw Grace’s expression through the back windshield.
Sheer terror and shock coated her face.
“I want to get Grace out of here. I never want her near this mountain again.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
I paced the medical wing in Father’s mansion while Grace sat at her mother’s side. The scent of antiseptic hung in the air, along with the steady beep from a machine. Grace’s mother, who I’d come to learn was named Rosemary, lay on one of the beds. A cast encircled her arm, bandages wound around her chest, and multiple cuts and bruises covered her body. Darren Anderson had done a number on her.
Two days had passed since the incident on the mountain. In all that time, Grace hadn’t left her mother’s side for more than a few minutes, sleeping on the bed next to her, watching movies with Rosemary when she lay awake, standing vigil as her mother rested.
Most would say Grace’s actions were a testament to her kind soul, but I’d noticed the fear in her eyes. I’d seen her constant glances toward the door, and the way she chronically checked her cell phone, as if waiting for a call from the hospital to say that her father had been discharged.
Anxiety pulsed from Grace in steady waves, as though she believed the only thing that would stand between her deranged father and sick mother would be her. Grace would use herself as a human shield if her father showed up, I’d bet money on it, but it wasn’t possible for Darren to hurt them now.
I’d tried to reassure Grace that he’d never bother her again, but Grace was too scared that her father would find them even though he currently lay in a burn unit at the University of Colorado in Greeley. He’d been flown there after arriving in Laramie’s hospital, and despite the latest medical report saying he’d lost his eye sight, his right arm had been amputated, and he’d most likely never walk again, terror still coiled around Grace, like a boa constrictor trying to suffocate her.
Anyone could see she still believed her father would return from the brink of death, but another worry tinged the back of my mind, niggling deep into my subconscious every time I tried to tell myself—and her—everything would be fine.
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