I looked down. Sure enough, blood soaked the front of my sweater. I raised the fabric to reveal an ugly gash running across my stomach. I gingerly pressed on the wound and hissed at the fresh pain that spiked through my body. More blood oozed out of the gash and trickled down onto my jeans. Ken had cut me deeper than I’d realized.
“Gin?” Jade whispered again. “What do you want me to do?”
“Call Silvio,” I said, my words slurring a bit. “Tell him that I parked my car at a house on the next street over. He’ll get the healing ointment out of my trunk.”
Jade crawled away from me, searching through the mess on the floor for a phone she could use.
“You need to lie back so I can put some pressure on that,” Ryan said.
He helped me lie down on the floor and then put his hands on my stomach, applying constant, steady pressure.
“I guess this is a new experience for you, huh, Doc? Working on a living patient instead of a dead one?”
He smiled at me. “It’s a welcome change.”
I laughed and had to stop, as it made more pain shoot through my body, rising higher and higher with every beat of my heart, like a tidal wave about to drag me under.
“Just don’t let me bleed out before Silvio gets here,” I mumbled. “He’ll never let me hear the end of it if I die on him . . .”
White stars exploded in my field of vision, along with a misty white fog that blanketed my mind.
“Gin? Gin!” Ryan shouted. “Stay with me!”
But his voice was faint and far away, and the tidal wave of pain rose again, higher and stronger than before. It crashed down on me, sweeping everything else away.
? ? ?
I was snared in a world of shadows.
As soon as the Fire elemental had sent her men after me, I’d staggered away from the edge of the trees and plunged into the heart of the woods, desperate to escape before they found and killed me.
And I’d become thoroughly lost in the process.
The dark, twisted shapes of the trees loomed like skeletal monsters all around me, making everything seem blacker and more sinister than ever before. I could barely see my own hand in front of my face, much less the gnarled roots that arched up from the forest floor to trip me or the rocks hidden in the leaves that stabbed into my bare feet like a hundred little needles, each one bringing a sharp sting of pain.
After tripping for the umpteenth time, I forced myself to stop and look around. Up ahead, more trees blended into a never-ending sea of shadows, one that I could easily become lost in forever. Behind me, several hundred feet in the distance, the Snow family mansion continued to burn, the orange-red flames looking deceptively bright, cheerful, and inviting in the black night.
I shifted on my feet and winced as another hidden rock poked into my heel. Stupid rocks. Stupid tree roots. Stupid everything. A harsh, bitter wail rose in my throat, but I swallowed it down. Crying certainly wasn’t going to help anything. All it would do was tell the Fire elemental and her men exactly where I was. Not to mention Hugh, that creepy vampire. I couldn’t let any of them find me.
So I bit my lip and considered my options. I could keep walking through the woods and wind up who knew where. It wouldn’t be daylight for hours, and I could get so turned around in here that I’d never find my way out again, especially since I didn’t have any food, water, or other supplies. Or I could walk back toward the flames, the mansion, and orient myself.
It was a big risk to take, especially since I didn’t know where the Fire elemental, her men, and that vampire were. I hadn’t seen any flashlights bobbing up and down in the woods, so maybe they were searching in a different area. Maybe they’d already passed me by. Maybe they’d already given up and left. Either way, my best chance to get away from them was to go back to the house. If I was lucky, I could slip down to the road and follow it . . . somewhere, anywhere but here.
So I turned around and trudged back toward the mansion, using the flames as a homing beacon to light my way. I’d been so panicked that I hadn’t gone nearly as far as I’d thought, and I quickly made it back to the edge of the woods. I slid behind a tree, looking out at the mansion, but I didn’t see anyone moving through the backyard or wandering around this side of the crumbled structure. My heart lifted. Maybe I could make it down to the road after all—
A hand clamped on my shoulder and spun me around.
A giant grinned at me, his crooked teeth gleaming in the ambient glow cast from the flashlight in his other hand. “Hello, little girl. I know someone who wants to talk to you.”
Panic flooded my body, and fresh waves of pain exploded in my burned hands at the thought of facing the Fire elemental and her cruel magic again. I didn’t think. I just reacted. I lashed out and kicked the giant in the knee as hard as I could.
I didn’t do any real damage, since I wasn’t wearing shoes, but the blow surprised him and made him lose his grip on my shoulder. I ducked under his arm and darted away.
“Hey!” he hissed. “Come back here!”
I expected him to start yelling that he’d found me, but the woods remained quiet, except for the continued spitting, hissing, and crackling of the mansion fire. The giant must have thought that he could chase me down himself.
He wasn’t wrong about that.
I wove in and out of the trees, trying to disappear into the shadows, but something sliced into my bare feet with every single step, and I was limping along more than I was actually running. My heart pounded, sweat streamed down my face, and a stitch throbbed in my side, growing more painful by the second. Finally, that pain forced me to stop and catch my breath. I crouched down behind a large bush with snarled branches, squinting into the shadows, expecting the giant to come crashing through the woods at any second.
Think, Gin, think! I chided myself. The giant was much bigger and stronger than I was, and he probably had a gun too. I couldn’t outrun him, so how could I possibly escape?
Not just escape. A sick realization filled the pit of my stomach. I needed to keep him quiet about seeing me too. I needed to silence him.
I needed to kill him.
I couldn’t let the giant go back and tell the Fire elemental that I was still alive. That would ruin whatever small chance I had of escaping, of surviving. But how could I defeat him? What could I possibly do against someone who was so much bigger, tougher, and stronger than I was?
I forced myself to take in slow, deep breaths, trying to calm my racing heart and come up with a plan. Then I looked around again, trying to figure out where I was.