by Olivia Ash
The splitting pain coursing through my body is almost too much to bear. My head. My arms. My side. Blood seeps over everything, and my fingers are slippery from the hot liquid rolling over me. I reach for my gun, but for several moments, I just snatch at the air.
After a crash like that, my coordination is shot to shit—and everything is still so damn blurry.
My hand finally reaches my holster, but it’s empty.
Damn it.
Not one to waste time, I switch gears and look for a knife. After a few moments of struggling, I finally manage to grab one of the daggers in my boot, but I’m too late. Two strong hands grab my waist and hurl me through the air. I land on something hard, and instantly, the light fades.
Vibrations float through me, disorienting, and the fluttery dread in my chest starts to turn my blood cold.
But I’m a fighter.
I’ve been through worse than this.
Survive, Rory, I tell myself. Whatever it takes, survive.
I squeeze my eyes shut, giving myself only a second or two to clear my head.
To focus.
To fight.
It works. The ringing fades. My vision clears enough that, despite the darkness, I see the dim glow of a red taillight filter through a gap in what looks like metal. My fingertips massage the ground beneath me—cheap carpet.
I’m in a car.
Correction—I’m in a freaking trunk.
Oh, this asshole is going to die a painful death.
The floor beneath me lurches, and I slide across the cheap carpet as the car speeds off. With each twist and turn, I’m jostled and thrown around. It’s tough to keep my balance, but I manage to lie on my back with my hands on the roof of the trunk to stay still. It only kind of works, however, and I still slide along my back as the car screeches around the next bend. A sliver of pain shoots up my spine from all the injuries, but I grit my teeth through the pain.
He’s driving—which means he’s distracted.
Only a fool turns his back on someone who trained as a Spectre all her life—even if he thinks he has her safely stored away in his trunk.
With my enhanced strength, I kick out the carpeted wall opposite the red glowing light. The goal is to get into the car’s cabin, and sure enough, my boot and the decimated fluff that was once a seat cushion lands in the backseat.
A dark forest whizzes past the windows as the car races down an isolated road. A man sits in the driver’s seat—dark eyes, light skin, dirty blond hair. His furious gaze in the rearview mirror is focused on me, instead of the road, and I hope he realizes how badly he just screwed up.
The risks here are obvious—either he’s armed and tries to shoot me, or I take him out and we end up wrecking his crappy car.
Or both.
To hell with it. I’ve already survived one crash today, and getting in another one doesn’t faze me. Especially not if it kills this guy.
He lifts a gun, angling it toward me over his shoulder, and I effortlessly kick it away. I figure he wasn’t expecting me to get my coordination back, but that’s the perk of people underestimating me—it’s easier to kick their asses once they let their guard down.
The gun clatters to the floor and slides beneath the passenger’s seat. Without even giving him a chance to reach for it, I lean my chest against the back of his seat and wrap my arm around his neck to choke him.
My injury screams in protest as I lean against the back of the driver’s seat. Stitches rip. Blood seeps through my shirt. I can already feel the wound ripping open again.
But I do not care.
The stranger gasps for air, clawing at my arm as he desperately tries to get me off of him. His nails gouge the full length of my forearm, but I grit my teeth through the pain and use it as fuel to grip him tighter.
In a desperate move, he spins the wheel sharply to the left.
The momentum throws me off of him, but he can’t recover in time to keep the car from flipping off the road. We roll, the world spinning around us. In the chaos, my back hits one of the car doors, and the force of the impact knocks it open.
As my world tumbles, I can feel a thick rush of something warm seeping through my shirt. Something sharp stabs my shoulder. I grimace in agony, impulsively biting back the scream of pain as Zurie always taught me to.
When I finally stop rolling, everything hurts. It takes a long while for me to groggily lift my head, and for a moment, I don’t dare move. I just can’t. I lay in puddle of blood, beaten and bruised, and I almost can’t tell which parts of me hurt worst.
Not far away, the man groans in pain.
Guess I can’t tend to my wounds, then.
I force myself to my feet, squaring my shoulders as I stare him down. Blood drips in a steady stream down my thigh, but I try to ignore it. I can figure out what’s bleeding later.
The stranger climbs out of the wreckage. Considering how twisted the engine and trunk are, I’m astonished he survived.
For a moment, he’s nothing but a silhouette in the dark woods around us. The moon cuts through a gap in the canopy above, casting a spotlight on the dead leaves between us. As the man drags himself out of the car, I catch a glimpse of his face.
Rough stubble lines his jaw, and his wild, dirty blond hair frames a rugged face. He glares at me, the thick muscles in his arms flexing as he tries to get his bearings.
I have no idea who this guy is, and that just pisses me off even more.
“You must have a death wish,” I say, a dangerous chill to my voice.
“Quite the opposite.” The man stands, teetering as he tries to catch his balance. “You’re my ticket to a better life, and you’re coming with me even if you barely have a pulse when I drag you in.”
“Death wish it is, then.” I crack my neck, running on the fumes of my fury and adrenaline. “Let me help you with that.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
With my injuries, it takes everything in me just to stand. My knees threaten to give out. My neck aches, and the steady drum of a thumping headache pulses through my brain.
But, as always, I persevere.
Blood rushes down my abdomen and pools in my boot. A bout of dizziness shakes my brain, and for a moment, everything goes blurry.
Not once, however, do I let the man standing before me know that.
My fingers curl against my palm as I try to summon my magic, but it sputters and fades. I have almost no energy left at all, and it takes most of my effort just to remain on my feet.
Looks like I might have to kill him the old-fashioned way, then.
“Do you know who I am?” he asks, chest heaving.
I resist the impulse to roll my eyes. He’s trying to buy himself some time to recover from the accident, and his little ploy is just so painfully transparent.
As wounded as I am, though, I need to conserve my energy. As much as I would love to simply charge him and end this, any and all movements must be kept to a minimum.
I need him to come to me, which means I need to indulge him. For now. I have to use this moment of respite to figure out his weaknesses. His insecurities. I need to rile him up, throw him off guard, and trick him into making a mistake.
“Never heard of you.” I glance him over like he’s an insect, just to rile him up. “I don’t bother myself with minions.”
His nose wrinkles in hatred, and he stumbles once as he impulsively leans toward me. His emotions almost get the better of him, but he manages to rein them in.
Good. It looks like pride is one of his faults, then.
With slow and careful precision, he pulls a long knife from a sheath strapped to his thigh. The case is so smooth, so thin, that I didn’t even notice it at first.
But once the knife’s out, I instantly recognize the subtle curve of the blade. The way the handle tilts at the end. The custom angles to the dagger, all designed to kill with a single, devastating blow.
That’s a Spectre weapon.
Shit.
In a flash, I pi
ece it together. I’m his ticket to a better life, apparently, but I’m to be brought in to his masters alive—and the only Spectre who wants me alive is Zurie. This guy is good, but he’s sloppy, so he’s not among the ranks of Spectres. Not yet, anyway. A Spectre never would have put me in a trunk I could escape from.
That means he must have made some sort of deal with Zurie, and I’m pretty sure their agreement won’t work out in my favor.
“You like it?” he asks, his gaze shifting to his dagger as he arrogantly smirks. I’m sure he thinks he’s about to drop some massive secret on me. “Zurie sends her regards, by the way.”
“Is she taking on charity cases, then?” I tilt my chin, smirking as I feign a bored expression. “She’s sunk to a new low.”
He scowls, his arrogant charm gone in a flash. Without another word, he thunders toward me.
I grit my teeth and block his blow as every inch of me screams in protest. As he swings again, I duck out of the way, careful to minimize my movements.
Time and time again, he swipes at me, the blade sailing inches from my face. He’s a tad careless, but he makes up for it by being fast. I can see why Zurie chose him to hunt me down—he shows promise, and with maybe six years of training, he could pose a real threat.
“What did she promise you?” I counter one of his blows and kick him hard in the thigh. Bones crunch beneath my boot. “I hope it’s worth the trouble I’m going to cause you.”
He yells in agony as he limps quickly out of my reach, lifting the dagger once more to keep me from following him.
It was almost too easy to fracture his leg, and I’m suddenly reminded of how far I’ve come since I bowed to Zurie’s will.
If he’s truly her new protégé, he’s in for a rough life.
“You lost your chance with her,” he seethes between clenched teeth, glaring at me. “You had everything, and you squandered it. For what? For dragons?” He nods toward the road somewhere behind us. “Where are your precious dragons when you need them, huh?”
I nod to his fractured thigh. “I can take care of myself.”
He grimaces, clearly trying to push through the pain. I want to charge him, to finish this while he’s weakened, but he’s still armed and I’m very much not. I can barely stay on my feet, and even as we both pause to catch our breath, I feel myself teeter off balance.
I dig my heels into the dirt, settling into my stance in an effort to stay upright.
“I don’t care what it takes,” he says, standing a bit straighter. “I can bring you back without a few pieces if I have to. You just need a pulse.”
“Good luck.” I crack my knuckles, inviting him to continue our dance.
Tires screech over an asphalt road nearby. Gunshots ring through the air, and the crunch of footsteps through the underbrush interrupts us. A bullet whizzes past the stranger, nearly hitting him in the back of the skull.
The stranger hesitates, and I can see the battle raging in his mind. Run, and lose his chance to take me down? Or try to take out this new threat with a possibly broken leg?
Hell, I’m not sure of what to do, either. We have no idea who this newcomer even is. I limp toward a nearby tree, ready to take cover should the need arise.
I’m quickly running out of options.
To my delight, however, Tucker storms through the shadows in a haze of bullets. His gun and a deadly glare are trained on the stranger. Their eyes lock, and Tucker’s eyes widen briefly in surprise.
In recognition.
In that brief moment, the stranger bolts.
Tucker snaps out of it, now scowling with hatred, and fires rapidly after the stranger. Three shots hit—two in the arm and one in the side. The stranger groans in pain, but the injuries only seem to propel him faster into the darkness.
“Damn it,” Tucker says under his breath. “With all the tree cover—I can’t believe I missed.”
My knees shake as I lose far more blood than any mortal should. I lean against the nearby tree, smiling with relief and gratitude that Tucker barged in when he did.
“Get him,” I say breathlessly with a nod after the stranger. “You can have my kill, just go. I slowed him down for you.”
Tucker pauses, a deadly serious look on his face as he studies me. His gaze briefly shifts toward the darkness where the man disappeared, but he doesn’t move.
“Tucker, go!” I point in the vague direction of the man who tried to kill me. “He’s getting away!”
“Sorry babe,” Tucker says with a deep sigh. “We need to get you to a hospital before you bleed out.” He holsters his gun.
“Kill that asshole, and do it now!” I shout, furious that he would let the man who’s been hunting me disappear into the night.
“If you can resist me, gorgeous, then I’ll do whatever you want,” he says with a laugh as he sweeps me off my feet. My body trembles with the sheer depth of the pain rattling through my body, and a stream of blood rolls down my arms as he carries me toward the road.
I can feel myself nearing a blackout. My world spins, and I try to yell at him to go back. To chase the man down. I try to tell him that he’s wrong, but I can’t even form the words.
“Tucker—damn it—”
He grins as my world darkens. “Love you, too, honey bun.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
The first thing I feel when I wake up is a pounding headache.
I groan, sitting up in bed as I cradle my temple. A bout of nausea burns in the back of my throat, but I manage to hold it at bay.
There’s a soft golden light filling the room around me. A window on my right. A white curtain on my left. A closed door in the wall nearby. Something soft presses against the backs of my knees—sheets, maybe. I peek around to find myself lying in a bed, with a heart rate monitor hooked to my chest. I quickly rip off the sensors as I lean forward.
And—in the chair across from me—Drew leans on his elbows with his face in his hands.
“How long was I out?” I slur a little as I come to.
His head snaps up, and he watches me with grateful disbelief. Instantly, he storms over and wraps his arms around me.
“Ow,” I mutter, craning my neck as I try to hug him back.
“Sorry.” He takes a deep breath and puts his hands on my shoulders, studying my face like he has so much to say and doesn’t know where to start. “You’ve been out for twelve hours. How do you feel?”
“Like I got hit by a bus,” I admit, grimacing.
Everything hurts.
“Yeah, that’s what happens when you flip, what, eight times in one night? Between the two cars?”
I shrug. “I’m an overachiever.”
He chuckles and kisses me lightly. I can feel him restraining, and I know how badly he must want to have his way with me, to dominate me like he usually does.
This must be torture, to hold back.
He tastes amazing on my lips—like apples and happiness. I sink into the kiss as my memories slowly crawl back to me. The crash. The knife. The stranger.
“Jace!” I shout, suddenly breaking the kiss as I grab Drew’s collar. “I couldn’t find Jace after the crash, and Tucker—”
“They’re safe,” Drew promises, holding my hands tenderly. “Everyone’s safe.”
“Even Russell? The way his head—”
“Everyone,” Drew promises. “Russell’s got one hell of a headache, but you definitely got the worst of the injuries.”
I sigh with relief.
Drew reaches past me and pushes a small green button on the wall. “As much as I always want to keep you to myself, Jace threatened to literally throw me in a cell if I didn’t tell him the moment you woke up. Jace, Tucker, and I took shifts looking over you, since we weren’t sure when you would wake up. Levi about lost his damn mind, Rory. Jace almost had him tranqued.”
“Oh man.” I rub my eyes. “That didn’t go at all to plan, did it?”
“Not a bit,” Drew admits with a chuckle. “But hey, we can’t predict
the future. We did all right, knowing what we knew then.”
I shake my head. “This guy who hunted us down, he—”
The door swings open, and Jace barges into the room with a thick bandage over his head. The moment our eyes meet, his expression softens, and he jogs to the other side of my bed. “Thank the gods.”
I wrap my arms around his neck and hold him close, grateful I didn’t lose him. “I was afraid the car rolled on you, or—”
“It’ll take more than that to kill me,” he says with a chuckle. “You, however, certainly tempted death.” He holds me tightly, sighing into my hair, and I wonder if he’s had a chance to sleep at all.
Knowing him, probably not.
“Where’s Tucker?” I ask.
“On his way,” Jace promises, watching me with an odd expression. It’s something between relief and gratitude, and on his usually hardened features, the gentle expression seems out of place. “First, I have a surprise for you.”
Without waiting for me to guess what it is, he walks to the white curtain and pulls it back to reveal Irena, sleeping soundly in the bed next to mine.
I smile, relieved. Her cheeks have color. She breathes normally, and a single heart rate monitor beeps softly in the corner.
I throw off the blanket and swing my legs over the side of my bed.
“Wait, Rory.” Drew raises a hand, gesturing for me to stop.
I wave him away. “I’m fine.”
My world spins briefly as my toes brush against the floor, but my head quickly clears. My aches all begin to fade as I get my blood moving, and I suspect a lot of my pain is just from sitting still for so long. I absently pat the wound on my abdomen to find fresh bandages beneath the shirt. Even through the gauze, I can feel the distinct ridge of a scar.
Score.
Carefully, I stand while both Jace and Drew hover nearby, ready to catch me if I fall. I shake my head, chuckling a little at their antics. I wish I could make them stop fawning over me, but I take it as a compliment.
They care.
Having people who love me is still pretty surreal, given how I was raised.