by Nyna Queen
In front of them, a roadblock appeared, made of pylons and red-and-white-striped wood planks on metal beams. Officers were swarming toward it, shouting and waving. Alex threw one glance at Darken’s face and grabbed the side handle.
Darken pushed his foot down. The POs froze and then scattered like fish in front of an attacking shark.
They hit the barrier at about fifty miles an hour and broke through, sending metal pieces and wood flying, and merged into the flowing traffic up toward Gomorrha.
Alex’s heart was performing a mad stomp-dance in her chest. A small trickle of blood dribbled down the front shield, fanning out to the sides due to their speed like wrong-colored rain.
“Damn!” Darken slapped the wheel with his palm, as he raced along at a suicidal neck-break speed, overtaking cars left and right, missing them only by inches, his face a rigid mask. “Curse those halfborn Peace Officers. Always so quick of the mark!”
Alex gave him a surprised side glance.
“What?” he snarled, eyes two burning pools of red.
She swallowed, unsettled by the lethal fury in his gaze.
“It’s just—I … you’re forfeit,” she said, trying to order the thoughts rattling inside her head. “I just didn’t think—”
“You didn’t think what?” His voice was too soft; a dangerously sleepy croon, like a knife running along soft skin, looking for a place to cut.
A shudder went over her. It suddenly was hard to breathe. “I just didn’t think, you know—one death more or less …”
The moment the words were out, she knew that she’d said the wrong thing. His hands grew so stiff on the wheel she heard the leather crack and had an uncanny vision of her own neck breaking. The raging fire in his eyes was bleeding onto his cheeks, giving his whole face a ghastly glow.
“I’m forfeit,” he growled, “but just because my magic drives me to kill doesn’t mean that I have no regards for the lives taken.”
“I just assumed—”
“Spare me your assumptions!” he spat. He changed gears again and swerved over the lanes, avoiding a van by a hair’s breadth. “That man wasn’t a threat to the country. Or my family for that matter. He was just doing his job!”
“He could have killed the children by accident,” she pointed out weakly.
“I’m not saying he did a good job,” Darken squeezed through gritted teeth, “but in the end, he intended to help them and now somebody has to fill out a death certificate in some sticky room and his relatives will get a call. And just because someone decided to play games with my family.”
It really did bother him. Another unexpected piece in his complicated personality-puzzle.
Alex bit her lip. “Look, sugar, I didn’t mean to—Car!”
Without really looking Darken dodged the approaching car and send them sliding over three lanes. Alex’s teeth jarred. The smell of burned rubber penetrated her nose.
Sirens howled in the distance.
Max’s squeaky voice cut through the car. “They took up the pursuit!”
Alex looked out of the back and spotted the flashing of blue lights through the field of destruction they were leaving in their wake.
In front of them, the street started to rise, ascending in a curve toward Gomorrha’s gate. They sped onto the bridge.
Alex’s heart skipped a beat. They had missed the last exit. Acid desperation filled her mouth. Gomorrah’s walls in front of them. PO behind them. Now there really was no way left for them to go!
Below the bridge, a canopy of trees stretched before giving way to the gloomy streak of the Hadez Channel unfolding like dull black glass in the perilously approaching dark.
“They are gaining!” Josy cried.
So they were. The sirens wailed like a gaggle of outraged old furies and the blue lights reflected in the rearview mirror, stinging Alex’s sensitive eyes.
Up ahead, the street was splitting up.
The car veered left, and Alex gripped the door frame, as Darken squeezed them through a miniature gap between two cars. The SUV they passed rocked to a forced stop, its mustache of a bumper pruned by their encounter by a couple of inches. Darken didn’t pay him any mind.
“Is everybody belted in?”
“Yeah, sure.” Alex watched him throw a glance in the rearview mirror for confirmation. “Why—”
Darken hit the gas. Alex flew back against her seat, hitting her head. The motor howled as they accelerated, gaining more and more speed. With a jerk of his hand, he ripped the stirring wheel around, sending them flying over the opposite lane. The car hit the crash barrier in a sickening crunch of steel with the front and right side. The car lifted, turning over.
For a moment they were suspended in the air.
Alex rose out of her seat, dropping hard into the confines of her seatbelt. The shaper in her automatically shifted her center of gravity, going with the movement of the car, attempting to absorb the shock of the concussions.
She heard the kids yelling, their voices far and distorted. Saw the ground below them, the scarp, the treetops waving beneath like little toy versions.
As if in slow motion, she saw Darken, face terrible, thrust his hand into his pocket. Something glittered, when he pulled it out, like some kind of short, convex pencil. With a sharp movement, he flipped off the lid, hit it into the center control like a syringe for a vaccine and pushed the backside with his thumb.
Magic lashed from him in a blast.
An invisible cushion snapped open like a self-inflating rubber dinghy and pressed her into her seat.
They hit the ground. Alex felt the collision, but muted, as if she was wrapped in a thick ball of cotton. It still badly jarred the muscles in her neck. Somewhere far away glass shattered. Something nicked her forehead.
The car crashed down the scarp, between trees, overturning several times. Then they thudded the ground one last time, slithering a couple of yards and finally came to a stop at the foot of some rocks.
The magic cushion was sucked back into the device and the metal moaned as it dented like a sardine can crushed under a boot.
Finally, they lay still.
Alex hung upside down in the car, held by her seat belt which was cutting into her hips and shoulder. Her ears were filled with numb ringing. Every inch of her body prickled from hot adrenaline and she could feel her heartbeat pulsing in her fingers, her toes, even her lips.
Alive. They were alive. It took her a moment to process it.
“Get out of the car.” Darken’s deep voice cut through the fuzzy haze in her mind and when she slowly raised her head she saw him pushing open the battered driver’s door.
Yes. Out. She wanted to get out of this car. Too cramped, too confined.
With shaking fingers, she fumbled with the buckle of the seatbelt and, when it snapped open, quickly changed gravity and landed in the wrinkled ceiling in a cat-crouch.
The windshield had crashed in the final collision with the rocks and tiny glittering shards littered the ground, pricking her skin. The sunglasses lay in broken pieces beside her hand.
The strong smell of gasoline filled her nose. In a sudden panic, Alex pushed at her door, but it wouldn’t bulge, squeezed together as it was. Snatching a strip of her backpack, she crawled over to the driver’s door on all fours, ignoring the glass biting into her knees and hands. She squeezed through the slit and stumbled into the open, bend over, sucking in the humid dusk air through her nose.
Alive, alive, the spider chanted inside her and she felt the strong desire to stretch out on the floor, press her face and fingers into the soft earth and just breathe in the smell of grass and twilight moss until her heart stopped trying to push out of her chest. Instead, she straightened up, ignoring her complaining muscles. Darken was just pulling Max out of the car and putting him down on his feet, quickly scanning his face and chest for injuries, while Josy leaned against the rocks, looking jarred and pale.
A brisk wind swept through the trees, shaking their tops and Alex t
hought she smelled blood over the scents of nature and gasoline. A short look at the others told her that they all had various scratches and bruises, but she couldn’t spot any serious injuries.
Well, not yet!
She ripped off Darken’s cloak and stomped over on wobbly legs, throwing it at his feet.
“Are you absolutely insane?” Alex was shaking, although she couldn’t yet decide if from shock or anger. A bit of both perhaps. And anger was quickly gaining the upper hand because he had frightened her. Badly. Not many people managed to do that. Yet this man had quite a talent for it.
Darken picked up the coat, shook it out and draped it around his shoulders.
“It was a controlled maneuver.”
“A controlled maneuver? A contr—” Her voice almost cracked, but at this moment she really didn’t care. “It may well be that you are throwing your ass from a highway bridge three times a week, but if it is my ass, I’d really like to have say in it!”
His eyes glazed over, and she almost shrunk back at the spark of red igniting in their depths.
“But of course,” he purred, “next time when we’re hunted, and I see a way to escape, I’ll take the time to discuss it with you first.”
“I’d appreciate it!”
Darken shook his head, a picture of trueborn contempt. “We don’t have time for this.”
With that, he dipped his hand into another hidden pocket inside his coat and this time she recognized what he pulled out.
Her eyes widened, and she took a step back.
Oh, my goodness, he really is insane.
“Take cover,” Darken ordered quietly, reaching for the ring of the tiny hand grenade.
Not missing a beat, Alex grabbed the kids by their arms and hauled them down toward the river murmuring in the gloomy haze below, unaware of the madness taking place just atop of its peaceful banks. Ignoring their protests, she pulled them into the cover of a couple of tree-covered rocks, crouched and pressed her back flat against the stone.
They had barely taken shelter when an ear-deafening blast shook the ground. Alex squeezed her hands over her sensitive ears, gritting her teeth against the shrill, gut-wrenching pain. Twigs and pebbles rained down on them. Behind them the twilight ignited with a bright flare and heat whipped over them in a hot wave like an angry dragon’s breath, pulling at their clothes and hair. The spider inside her hissed and curled inward.
The silence that followed was heavy with peril, all the birds and critters hushed by the unexpected mayhem.
Alex let go of the rock and stepped out from behind the stony ledge.
Greedy red and orange flames engulfed the battered car, hungrily feasting on the crunched metal, belching sooty black smoke into the evening sky. Part of the wreck caved in, spraying the air with a scattering of hissing sparks.
Darken strode toward them, his dark outline sharply silhouetted in front of the raging inferno, black coat flowing around him. Another smaller explosion—perhaps the gas tank—rattled the world. It bloomed behind him like a red flower of destruction, roaring flames snapping for the lower branches of the trees.
He didn’t even flinch. The fire reflected from his eyes, mirroring the soul swathed in the lethal darkness of his body: a devil stepped right out of the bowels of hell, sowing fire and doom in his wake.
Alex stared at him.
Without stopping he walked past, his dark, cavernous eyes trained at the river in the distance.
The kids hastened to follow. Alex followed as well, too numb and too speechless to do anything else. Behind them, the flames fed on the darkening sky.
Darken’s face turned to her, as she closed up to him. It was calm, almost relaxed and his voice, when he spoke, was oddly causal. Alex swallowed. What was it that he did with his days that a car chase with the cops, a crash from a highway bridge and the close-range operation of a highly destructive military weapon left him about as rattled as a mountain in a storm?
Targeted. Fired. Traces removed. Next.
This man was thorough, frighteningly thorough, and she really didn’t want to be on his hit-list.
“Soon, it will be teeming with Peace Officers down here,” he said, “but it will take them a while to extinguish the fire and examine the wreck. When they come to realize that there are no corpses in that car, we’ll be long gone.”
And where, Mr. Death-can-suck-my-balls? Alex wondered, as she looked left and right and felt her heart sink. The river loomed before them, its dark waters lapping against the reedy embankment. Nothing looked even close to familiar. They must be miles from Fisherman’s point.
Darken stopped.
“Can you swim?”
Alex blinked. How did that matter right now? Sweet Jester, he was changing topics so fast it made her brain swirl.
She lifted a shoulder. “I know enough not to drown, but—”
“That will be enough.”
With that, he grabbed her by the waist and tossed her into the river.
Alex had just enough time to give a startled yelp before she hit the surface of the water and was being pulled under. Cold water swallowed her, wrapping around her limbs in dark, icy tentacles.
For a moment the chill paralyzed Alex and she sank like a stone. The spider howled and fled into the deeper layers of herself.
Suddenly, her lungs registered the lack of oxygen and she flailed in panic, thrashing blindly in the murky green darkness. A rock bit into her shin and she opened her mouth, bubbles bursting from her lips.
Instinct kicked in and her body moved of its own. She pushed her legs, propelling herself up toward the lighter expanse above her.
Alex broke through the surface and gasped for air, spitting out what seemed like a ton of water. The currents pulled at her and tossed her around like a cork and she swallowed another mouthful of fishy water. Looking around wildly, she located the other shore. Twenty-five yards.
Taking a deep breath, she began swimming over, taking long forceful strokes, pushing her arms and legs, while fighting against the current that tried to drift her down the river. She might be a bit stiff in that department, but swimming, like a couple of other things, was something you simply didn’t unlearn. Even as a kid she’d never been a big fan of water, be it from above or below—quite unlike her brothers who’d found any excuse to jump into the lakes close to the mansion in the hot summer—but her sire had still insisted that she learn swimming along with them. Bless her sire now.
When she neared the other bank, she spotted Darken bending down and fishing Josy out of the water. Max was already standing beside him—Darken had probably towed him—shivering visibly in the evening air, wet hair plastered to his forehead. His face was a sallow smudge in the gloom.
Alex kicked her legs once more and felt mud under her knees and hands. Ground. Thank Jester!
She raised her head, just as Darken stepped over and held out a hand to help her out.
Ignoring his outstretched hand, she grabbed a handful of reeds and hoisted herself up by her own power. Water dripped from her in streams as she straightened up on the bank, wet and muddy and seething. It was surprising she wasn’t instantly blow dried by her own anger.
She dashed around to Darken.
“How dare you!”
Her eyes would have flashed solid black if she’d had any access to her true skin, but the spider was hiding in the den of her core, and, wet as she was, wouldn’t be coaxed anytime soon.
His lips twitched, and she realized she probably looked more like a drowned rat than a dangerous spider.
“I figured you might not like the idea.”
“You figured right!”
“Now don’t make such a fuss.” The lazy, arrogant smile he gave her only enraged her more. “It’s just a bit of water. You’ll dry eventually.” His voice lowered confidentially. “Don’t worry, you’re in no danger of melting—not sweet enough.”
Oh, you—
She sputtered. “You arrogant, complacent son of a—”
Closi
ng the distance between them she pushed against his wet chest. He really had a hard, massive chest. It was a good thing too that the spider was incapacitated or she might have unsheathed her claws and given him a taste of just how sweet she could be.
A soft growl rippled from his lips, but she ignored it, too mad to contemplate that dangerous glitter in his eyes.
She shoved him again. Wow, that felt good!
“You—”
When she raised her hands to push him again, he grabbed her wrists, clenching them in his iron grip.
Alex snarled and tore at her arms to free them, but he held on tight. He wasn’t using his magic, but she, too, had to make do without most of her shaper strength and he seemed to be made only from muscle and steel. She had almost forgotten how fucking strong he was.
With a growl, she kicked for his groin, but he slipped around her with predatory speed, locking her leg between his in a steel vise. Sleek bastard!
Alex tried to lean back and bring her elbows between them to use them as a lever, but he smelled the maneuver and forced her into a hard turn, trapping one of her arms behind her back and yanking her so close that his chest was pressing against hers.
Breathing hard, they stared at each other, her head slightly tilted back to look up at him, steam rising from their bodies into the cool evening air.
Alex felt the burning heat of his skin through their soggy clothes, his muscled torso brushing against her hard nipples sticking out through the thin, wet cotton of her shirt. His eyes flared and something feral sparked inside them, something wild and hungry that made her pretty much aware that they were locked in almost a lover’s embrace with nothing but a thin layer of wet fabric separating them. An alarm wailed inside her head. Too close. They were standing way too close.
Using a self-defense technique, she rotated into his hold, then broke free from his grip with a quick, brusque movement and skidded back out of his reach, one of her knives automatically jumping into her hand.
Darken stiffened. Something chilling entered his eyes, making them glassy, almost sleepy.
“You really want to dance with me?” His voice was a soft purr.
“Any time sugar!”