Meg gasped in terror as she saw blood pump from the wound. She shoved the bleeding metamonarch into the passenger seat and slammed the door shut. With anger she had never known herself to feel, she screamed at the remaining soldiers.
“STOP!” her voice echoed through the vibrations she sent from herself into the world around her, and the world stopped.
Meg watched the vacant stares of the remaining soldiers. She heard a distinctly animalistic guttural growling and realized it was coming from her own throat.
She rounded the car and sat herself in the driver’s seat. Her anger was boiling to the point of creating utter destruction—even her own.
That’s when she willed the gate to burst open and stomped the accelerator. She flew through the gate as it became shards of iron spinning wildly through the night air. Her fury was as powerful as C4 blocks yanking the world a part, piece by piece.
She drove over bodies as she floored the sedan forward, too emotionally raw and drained to let herself care about the injuries she was causing. Her only concern was for the two bodies in the car with her now.
“Niche!” she screamed his name. He was slumped against the passenger door, blood still gushing between his fingers as he yanked the blade from his chest.
The bloody knife fell from his trembling hand.
“Meg—” Niche’s voice hitched painfully.
“Don’t talk. I’m getting us the hell out of here,” she said, her body shaking so badly, she white-knuckled the steering wheel out of fear her hands would vibrate off and she’d crash the car.
“I’m sorry—” he managed.
“Don’t you dare apologize to me!” She barked angrily.
She risked a glance at the child in the back seat. He hadn’t moved since she first laid him there. She did notice they were working with half a tank and driving in the wrong direction. She knew she wanted to head south. At the first highway she found, she adjusted her direction.
“Niche, are you still with me?” she asked after several quiet minutes. Before now, he’d been panting, desperately trying to breathe.
He moaned in response.
Oh damn, she thought.
She needed to secure his wound, but she had nothing except the bandana she wore on her head. She yanked it off and pressed it to Niche’s chest. “We need to keep compression on the wound, Niche.” She drove with her left hand while her right reached across Niche’s slumped body. Her head kept whipping back and forth from him to the road and up to the rearview mirror.
There’s so much blood, Meg watched it pool into his lap and onto the seat beneath him.
Niche was drifting in and out of consciousness. When lucid, he watched Meg’s wide, dark eyes glance into the rearview mirror every few seconds to see if headlights were following them. Then he’d slip away from reality and dream they were back on the dance floor and she was in his arms smiling up at him. He knew he should hold the bandana to his spilling chest, but part of him wanted only to bury his nose in the cloth and inhale the strawberry lilies of Meg’s scent.
Her face was gaunt with fright as she drove like a bat out of hell. She didn’t care about police, knowing she could talk herself out of any ticket. She just needed to see the Red River. That was her goal.
Just get me to Texas.
***
Senator Arkdone was made aware of the breach in security the moment the silent alarm on the gun cabinet went off.
He watched with a mixture of anger and curiosity as the escape unfolded on the digitally enhanced images from his security cameras. He saw the stupid girl try to rescue one of his Monarchs in training. He watched as she leaped into the car driven by one of his most trusted metamonarchs, Gideon Niche.
He shook his head in disgust at the fight by the perimeter gate between his soldiers and the two traitors. And found himself rewinding no fewer than a dozen times the scene where Gideon took the blade intended for Meg.
He was beside himself with feelings of shock and awe over the monumentally disastrous night he had. And as he sat there watching for the umpteenth time Meg’s silent scream for Gideon, he started to replay the events leading up to his acquisition of the girl and wondered for the first time what her real motive had been for pretending to join his side.
What was the point of it?
17 Breakdown
Their lives hinged on the miles she could put between them and Arkdone.
“Niche,” Meg had been talking to him so he would focus on her voice and stay conscious. “Niche, I have to pull over and take care of your chest.”
She glanced at him and saw him struggle to open his eyes before they rolled back into his head.
She’d been driving 90mph for the past twenty minutes, but she wasn’t able to stop his bleeding. She refused to give up trying to stave off the blood flow with her soaked cloth. But the wound was so big and her hands so small.