I scream.
I beat and pound on his back so hard that my already sore muscles flash with pain and my throbbing head feels like it’s going to explode. But I don’t stop.
“You’re going to regret that,” his accomplice says, striding behind us. I take a swipe at her, hoping to wipe the stupid grin off her face, but she recoils before I can make contact.
“Don’t worry, Candy,” Ace says. “I like a screamer.”
Candy chuckles, her cheeks ruddy with pleasure. I glower at her, but I don’t scream after that.
The church is too quiet. Around Candy’s ample girth I can see the rebels all standing at the altar. They watch my capture in silence, their expression a mixture of acceptance and happiness. Pixie has her back turned to me, pointedly looking away. I decide I don’t like her after all.
We burst through the door into sunlight and birdsong. Ace carries me over a stretch of crunchy gravel before setting me down abruptly on my feet. I sway, trying to catch my balance as blood rushes from my head. All the while, Ace stands in front of me, close enough that I can feel his body heat radiating onto me and smell the cigarettes on his breath. I stagger backward, but I run into the warmed metal of a van.
He gives me a long up-and-down appraisal, then clucks his tongue. “Damn, girl. How Cruz let you get away is a mystery to me.”
I wouldn’t mind dropping this guy into a hole in the earth. I call my magic, and it answers instantly, bubbling hot as lava in my stomach.
“Save the Rico Suave stuff for later,” Candy says. The van rocks as she hops into the passenger side. “We gotta be back, pronto.”
Ace ignores his friend’s comment and takes one of my blond curls in his fingers. He pulls it down, stretching it straight, then lets it go so that it springs back up. A chill seeps into my bones even as my magic pumps hot in my stomach. I will do it. I will kill him if he touches me.
A horn honks.
Ace gives me a long smile. “Later,” he says. Like a promise and a threat.
He slides the back door open and spins me around. I gasp as he pulls my arms behind my back. Fabric binds so tightly around my wrists that my hands throb and I know that if I could see them they’d be a shade of purple. And then he shoves me into the van. The seats have been removed, and without my hands to brace my fall, my face slaps against gritty blue carpet. Pain bursts through my head. If I don’t have a concussion by now, then I don’t know what.
“Try anything stupid and I’ll make you regret it.” He slides the door closed. A moment later, the driver’s-side door opens and he hops inside.
“Rock ’n’ roll,” he says, starting the engine. Country music blares through the speakers at a deafening volume. We jolt into drive.
From my slumped position in the back, I can only see the blue sky through the windshield as we fly across bumpy roads at breakneck speed. Ace taps the steering wheel and mumbles the occasional offbeat lyric. I can’t believe the same thing is endearing when Bishop does it.
I remind myself that everything is going according to plan—that I shouldn’t be trying to escape—but if this vehicle stops anywhere but sorcerer headquarters, if I even so much as suspect Trucker Hat’s going to try something, it will take God himself to save him from the natural disaster I will strike on him.
The certainty is comforting.
After a while, I see flashes of tall buildings and burned billboards through the windshield. When I recognize the spherical shape of the Capitol Records building, hope flutters in my chest. We’re in Hollywood.
Sorcerer turf.
I roll backward on the industrial carpet as the van moves up through the hills, the tops of trees cresting the windows. After a while, we stop.
Ace kills the engine, and a moment later, he slides the side door open. I’d expected to find we’d reached a busy headquarters, but all I see are trees.
And we’re alone.
I try to scrabble away, but it’s next to impossible while lying awkwardly on my side with my hands bound behind me. Ace grins as he pulls me out roughly by my ankles. I scream, my back stinging with rug burn as my shirt rumples up around my stomach.
“Let me go!” I yell as he pulls me up to my feet.
“Not on your life,” he says.
I look around for Candy—she doesn’t seem like the sympathetic type, but there must be a feminist bone in there somewhere—but she’s disappeared. Panic swells inside me. But before Ace can hike me over his shoulder again, a door set into the side of a grassy outcrop swings open.
“Candy said you got another—”
The guy’s words stop dead in his mouth.
For a split second I don’t recognize him. His olive skin is scrubbed clean and closely shaved, and he’s wearing a clean white fitted T-shirt instead of the grubby canvas jacket he wore on our first meeting. But I do recognize the bulky muscles under his shirt, the dark eyebrows drawn together in a brooding expression.
Cruz.
Relief floods through me. I don’t for a second trust him, but I know that he has at least some feelings, based on the way he stiffened at my accusations of kidnapping. A person I can deal with. Ace, on the other hand, probably beheads bunnies for kicks.
“Help me!” I plead, before a hand slaps over my mouth.
“Shut up, or I’ll make you shut up,” Ace spits, pulling me against him. I bite his hand and he lets out a string of swears. His grip loosens momentarily, and I slide out from his grasp, stumbling back toward Cruz.
“What the hell is going on?” Cruz demands.
Ace cradles his wounded hand against his stomach. “Bitch!” he says through clenched teeth. He lunges at me, but Cruz steps between us.
“She’s mine!” Ace yells.
I move out of his line of sight, trembling under his hate-filled glare.
Footsteps sound beyond the darkened doorway behind us, and then two more men emerge.
“Would someone tell me what’s going on?” Cruz demands.
“I caught another human, that’s what,” Ace says.