Something struck the door again and the dresser fell over, crashing against the bed. Forcing herself not to turn, she pushed the wrapped body against the window.
“Shut up or I might,” she told him. “Now sit, swing your legs over, and drop.”
He shifted his body, and Tana braced herself to act as a counterweight and to keep him from falling before he was in position. Aidan stood under the window, catching his feet. Taking a deep breath and hoping the duct tape and blanket shroud would hold, she let him go.
Aidan eased Gavriel onto the top of the trunk.
The door of the room cracked open behind her.
Keep going, she told herself. Don’t look back. But she looked anyway.
Two creatures stood framed by the doorway—one male and the other female. Their faces were puffy and pink, bloated from all the blood they’d consumed. Their mouths and sharp teeth were ruddy, their eyes sunken, clothes stiff and stained dark. They weren’t the slick vampires from television; they were nightmares and they were coming at her, wading through the coats, flinching from waning pools of light.
Tana scrambled for the windowsill, her body shaking, her hands trembling so ferociously that she almost couldn’t get a grip on the wood frame. Going up on her knees, she threw herself forward, missing the car entirely and falling onto the lawn.
Fingers clamped down on her calf, pulling her back. She kicked hard, dragging herself forward with her arms. Teeth scraped against the back of her knee just as she pulled free and toppled out of the window. Behind her, there was a high, keening cry of pain. She hit the dirt, falling onto her back, the air knocked out of her. Dazedly, she turned to one side, looking out at a lawn sparkling with shattered glass, as though someone had tossed handfuls of diamonds in the air after a heist.
“Jesus!” Aidan shouted, hands in his hair. “You should have seen how that thing’s arm got scorched. He nearly got you.”
She staggered to her feet. The fresh scrape on the back of her leg burned and she started to shake all over again. “I think he did get me.”
“What?” Aidan took a step toward her and Tana shook her head.
“Not now,” she said. The car was right there. They were almost free. “Help me with the trunk!”
Rolled up in the blanket, Gavriel looked like a body that a pair of murderers were planning to dump somewhere. He was lying on his side, body bent so that his back was turned to the sun. Together, Aidan and Tana heaved him up and off the car. But as they tried to carry Gavriel, Tana stumbled and pulled the wrong way. The bags ripped, the cloth falling open. She slipped, tumbling onto the grass. For a moment, she saw his side and hand blackening in the sun, light seeming to eat away the flesh. Before she could think to do anything, Gavriel rolled over, turning his body so that the exposed part was pressed against the dirt, hidden from the light.
“Gavriel?” Tana said, scrambling up, wrapping the blankets back around him.
He tried to stand.
Stumbling and exhausted and not very careful, they managed to open the trunk and dump Gavriel heavily inside. Aidan slammed it shut, donning his bad-boy-about-to-do-a-bad-thing grin. His gag was in his other hand, pulled free from his mouth.
“Aidan,” she said, taking a step back, her voice coming out half as if he’d annoyed her and half as if she was afraid, which she was. “Aidan, we don’t have time. You have to get in there with him. I can’t drive with you wanting to attack me.”
“Have you looked at yourself?” he asked her, his voice odd, almost dreamy. “You’re covered in blood.”
She glanced down and saw that he was right. Her skin was dappled with shallow cuts, welling and streaking red down her arms and legs. A smear of it on the back of her hand where she’d wiped her face. It must have been fragments of glass from the window.
“We have to go, Aidan.”
“I’m not getting in the trunk with a vampire,” he said, looking at her hungrily, his eyes black with desire, the pupils blown. “See, I’m controlling myself. You’re bleeding and I’m controlling myself.”
“Okay,” she said, pretending to believe him. “Get in.”
As he walked toward the passenger side, she picked up the tire iron and her boots. She knew what she should do—hit him in the back of the head and hope it knocked him unconscious—but she couldn’t. Not with a house full of dead kids behind them. Not when she wasn’t sure he would survive the blow. Not when she was shaking so hard she was about to shake apart.
She took a deep breath and made her decision.
“No, on the other side,” she told Aidan. “You’re going to drive.”
He turned back to her, brows knitted in confusion.
“It’ll give you something to concentrate on other than biting me. And I can keep an eye on you.” She held up the tire iron. “And we head where I say—understand?”