chapter Five
Under normal circumstances, the trip to Lucas’s mansion in Upstate New York should have taken over an hour. Google Maps would tell you so, anyway. The narrow two-lane highway wound like an asphalt snake through a towering hall of pine and bare-branched oak. Every time you passed another car you took your life into your own hands, risking oncoming traffic around the next tight curve in the road.
Whenever I drove from the city to Lucas’s sprawling country estate, the looming darkness of the trees made me nervous. The dark can hide so many evils, I was hesitant to let my eyes linger on the tree line because my overactive imagination could formulate any number of potential attacks from within.
I never expected the road itself would be the thing I should fear.
The first blow was so sudden I thought I’d run something over. But as my gaze darted to the rearview mirror to see what poor fox or badger I might have killed, the previously unseen car behind me turned on its brights. The glare of the lights flashed in my eyes, rendering me momentarily blind. As the fist-sized spots of light swam in my vision, the car struck us again. This time the BMW bucked and I lost control of the wheel, swerving into the oncoming lane, which remained empty by some miracle.
Kellen let out a startled shriek and held on to my headrest. I got myself together, blinking away the blind spots, and swung the car into the proper lane, overshooting by a hair and sending a wave of gravel arcing backwards when I hit the shoulder.
I jerked the wheel back from the edge of the road and jammed my foot down on the brake, forcing the car into a sudden spin and making my tires scream as they burned a trail of hot rubber across the cool spring blacktop. When the car came to a halt, steam was rising off the cement and my BMW was headlight to headlight with a black Corolla. Possibly the least distinctive car imaginable.
Kellen squeezed my shoulder, reminding me I was not alone in this hellish game of bumper cars.
When I looked to my right at Brigit—just a quick shift of my gaze since I didn’t want to take my eyes off the car in front of me—the young vampire was wide-eyed but wore a vaguely excited expression. Kellen, on the other hand, was threatening to break my collarbone with her death grip.
“What do they want?” she asked, her voice high and trembling. “What do they want, Secret?”
I shrugged off her hand, trying not to be cruel about it. My future sister-in-law was terrified, and my being flippant wasn’t going to help anyone.
“I don’t know,” I replied honestly. “Do you want me to get out and ask?”
Okay, so maybe it wasn’t a nice response, but in perilous situations I have a bad habit of overindulging in sass, so all things considered it was politer than I would have been normally.
Kellen didn’t seem to be fazed—she was too busy being scared out of her mind. “No,” she said. “No, please don’t.”
The Corolla revved its engine. My stupid brain was reminded of the scene in Footloose where the two boys decide to play chicken using tractors. It was all I could picture as the black car edged forward.
“Ladies,” I whispered, shifting the car into reverse and letting up on the brake a fraction of an inch. “Hold the f*ck on.”
I did my best to press the gas pedal right into the floor, and the car responded by growling and shooting backwards at a breakneck speed. The Corolla was left in our dust as I sped around a curve, but our reprieve was short-lived when the familiar lights slid past the bend like a luminous worm.
There was a secondary flash, quick and bright as lightning, and then my windshield gave a wheeze and a bullet tore through the interior, past all three of us, and out the rear window. I expected the safety glass to crack and shatter into a million tiny squares, but instead it seemed to move out of the way of the projectile, leaving a puckered hole in both windows and trailing spider-web cracks around the entry and exit points.
Kellen screamed loud and long. Brigit, who no longer needed breath to live, let out a gasp and braced her hand against the dash.
I rolled down my window, and a howl of cool April air blasted the interior of the car as we continued our frenzied pace along the highway with only the dim red lights of rear bulbs to guide us. I could see in the dark, but with headlights shining in my eyes and a car going backwards at almost sixty miles an hour, I was tempting fate on a scary level.
“Bri, my gun.”
“Where?”
“There’s one in the glove box.”
She didn’t need to be told twice. The glove box was open and the gun loaded and in my waiting palm before I had a chance to say please.
“I need your foot.” This time I had to take my gaze off the road to look at her because I wasn’t sure she’d understand what I was asking for. She was shaking her head emphatically even as she shifted in her seat, moving her legs from under the dash.
“You can’t.”
“What are you talking about?” Kellen piped in, her voice barely above a whisper.
“Don’t worry,” I told them both. “I know what I’m doing.”
It never ceased to amaze me, but whenever I used those words, people were stupid enough to believe me. And I think every time I said it, I hadn’t the faintest idea in hell what was going to happen next.
Brigit stopped shaking her head and Kellen sat back in her seat, muttering what sounded like the Lord’s Prayer. Good. If God was listening, we could use a little divine intervention for what I was about to do.
“On the count of three,” I instructed Brigit. She nodded her mute acceptance.
The window was rolled all the way down, and my hair whipped across my face. The whole left side of my body was alive with goose bumps, but my rage was so focused I couldn’t feel the cold.
“One.”
I undid my seat belt and let it wind itself up with a loud whir. “What are you doing?” Kellen asked. When I didn’t answer, she turned to Brigit. “What is she doing?”
“You really don’t want to know. Like really, really.”
I ignored them both. “Two.”
Letting up on the gas, I slowed the car just enough I figured we might not die in a horrible fiery wreck in the next second. Then I met Brigit’s gaze and smiled with forced hopefulness. She looked as grim as I felt.
“Three.”