“Never,” I whispered between gritted teeth. And then I stomped on the accelerator as hard as I could.
The hearse screeched against the pavement as it roared backward. The woman jumped out of the way, her red energy missing the car. but taking off a wing mirror. But I knew that if she lived, she would take up pursuit… and I wouldn’t get away a second time. So instead of barreling down the driveway and onto the road, I turned the steering-wheel and, at full speed, backed over the woman still on the ground.
There was a sickly crunch and a rough bump that made me hit my head on the steering wheel and Warin’s coffin slide in the back, but when I looked up again, the woman was lying still on the path. From the angle of her neck, I knew she was dead.
I pulled us out onto the deserted road as fast as humanly possible and sped off without another look back. I knew they’d follow us, that it wouldn’t take long before someone saw the open garage and the dead woman on the path, and our only shot was if I got us as far away as possible before that happened.
Zeth’s hideout was in an isolated part of Indiana—not that those are few and far between, mind—and I hadn’t been in a position to pay attention to where we were going when he brought us here. I glanced at the time on the hearse’s dashboard and grimaced. Only noon, and the gas was pretty low. I wasn’t going to be able to just keep driving until the sun set and Warin could fly us off somewhere safe. I needed a plan.
It was only fifteen minutes later, when I passed what looked like a small, deserted path, that a plan started to take form. I turned down it, and after a few turns, came across a shack half-buried in junk—parts of rusted agricultural machines, oil cans, and moldy bales of hay.
I got out the hearse and ran to the shed. It took me a couple of minutes to open the creaky old door and peer inside. It was filled with the same sort of junk as was leaning against its outsides, but… there was enough room for a coffin.
My veins burned as I dragged Warin from the hearse with my magic. It took everything I had to keep the casket even and hovering above the ground as I got it inside the shed and safely shoved into a corner. I didn’t have enough energy to try and conceal it, but I prayed that this would be enough.
“Be safe, my love,” I whispered as I touched a shaking hand to the lid. “Stay hidden.”
Sunlight streamed in through cracks in the shed, glinting off the polished wood of his coffin, reflecting green in the specks of dust floating in the air. I wanted to curl up next to it so bad, wanted to just fall asleep and wake up when he could rise and take over. But I couldn’t. It was up to me, and to me alone, to keep him safe. Which meant I had to leave him behind.
I dragged myself out of the shed and back into the hearse, wishing that for once, I could protect my lover without abandoning him. But the skinwalkers would be looking for a hearse, and there was no way to hide a vehicle this size in the shed. The best I could do was to keep driving, hopefully luring them far away from where Warin slept.
My plan was to drive until I hit a town, abandon the hearse, and somehow find another means of transportation out of there, to throw the skinwalkers off my trail for long enough that Warin could find me again.
Only, as I drove away from the shed and back out onto the road, it was so hard to keep my eyes open, and my vision kept blurring at the edges. I gritted my teeth and forced myself to focus on the road and my trembling hands to keep steady on the wheel.
I don’t know how long I drove for. Maybe half an hour. ne minute I was trying to ignore the sweat dripping from my forehead, because I knew if I took my hand off the wheel to wipe it away, I’d never straighten up the hearse again.
The next, everything went black, and then I was staring into the dashboard.
I blinked, trying to figure out why my shoulder and waist hurt so much, and why I had the oddest sensation of vertigo. It took me a little while to realize that the car was flipped on its side, and only the seatbelt kept me strapped in. I’d crashed the hearse, and I didn’t remember doing it.
“Shit,” I groaned, fumbling for the seatbelt’s release button. I found it, and fell to the floor—which was now the passenger-side window—in a graceless heap. Everything hurt, and my vision doubled as I gasped for air. But I had to keep moving. If they found the car with me still in it, they’d know I’d left him somewhere. And they’d find him.
A caw sounded from outside, and a shudder of terror went through me. I fought to get up, to get out, but my hands slipped on the seats as I tried to climb up them, and the world spun. Groaning, I slipped back down, cutting myself on broken glass. The pain lanced through my already aching body, and I hunched over and threw up. I didn’t have anything but bile in my stomach, and it hurt my throat.
A threatening snarl from right outside the hearse made me heave for breath, panic pulling on my brain to try to manage one last ditch effort to get out, but before I could, something big slammed into the side of the car, pushing it several several feet along the pavement with a screech of metal. I lurched to the side, falling over in my own sick and more broken glass. My vision darkened at the edges just as the car rocked again.
I fell into unconsciousness knowing I’d failed us both.
* * *
“…know he might just kill her, anyway. Do you really want to risk that?”
“Dammit, Carl, Pete was my mentor! My brother! And he was yours too. We don’t have enough time to find another witch, and she’s right there! He’ll be gone, forever, if we don’t use her! Is that what you want?”
I blinked to try and clear the spots dancing before my eyes. Everything was still dark, but it slowly dawned on me that it was more due to low lighting in wherever I’d been taken than it was my inability to see. There was a flicker of light just at the edge of my vision, almost as if someone had started a campfire, but from the hardness against my back and the lack of wind, I knew we were inside somewhere.
Everything hurt—my veins, my throat, my arms and hands. And I felt weak as a newborn kitten. When I tried to lift my arms, I could barely move my fingers, and it quickly became apparent that my hands had been tied behind my back.
“Of course not!” The first voice I’d heard upon waking spoke again, and I tried to locate the sound. As far as I could tell, they were over by the flickering fire. “But if we do it, and he kills her, do you really live the rest of your miserable existence with a chunk of your soul gone?”
“He might let her live. We lost so many last night, he’ll want to protect those of us who’re left,” the second guy said. He sounded desperate.