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And flipping.
And flipping.
The last strike popped two of the tires and sent the vehicle spinning round like a top, the back end smashing into the barricade separating traffic.
When silence fell again, Max’s world was swimming, his head drowning in shock so intense it was paralyzing as he attempted to gather his bearings.
“Dallas?” His own voice was muffled by the ringing in his ears. His head weighed a thousand pounds, and warm moisture trickled from his nostrils, a line of wet dripping from his brow, too.
Dallas was dazed—bleeding from the side of the head. “Holy shit.” Had she whispered? Or were her words muffled because Max couldn’t hear anything?
“Dallas,” he said again. The screeching in his ears intensified, and his stomach roiled. He fought the urge to vomit.
Dallas pointed. Shouted out a warning he saw more than heard.
Max spun in his seat. Fumbled his gun out. Fired.
He didn’t hear the shots, but saw the spray of blood as bullets tore into the bodies of three men, and knew he’d aimed true.
A fourth came from the back of the vehicle, firing a shot through the shattered window—through the spells that had ceased to function.
The bullet ripped through the leather back of Max’s seat. The shot grazed his arm, the pain like a butane torch passing over his skin.
He barked out a curse word as the top layer of his skin was torn off.
Grim leapt out of Max’s shadow with blinding speed, pouncing on the gunman and tearing into him with teeth and claws. But the Familiar, too, was rattled by the accident, and another man who Max didn’t see at first came up behind Grim and gagged him with a shadowy rope that had a noose at one end.
“Grim!” Max wrenched on the door handle, but it wouldn’t open. He wound his leg back and kicked the door, but it was so crushed it didn’t even budge.
And Grim was being dragged across the highway.
“Dallas—Dallas, get Grim!”
She fought with her own door, and soon she was shattering the last of her window in an effort to get out.
Max did the same on his side. He dove head-first through the narrow opening, landing hard on his shoulder on the pavement. Glass and gravel bit into his bare arms.
He got up and rushed toward Grim, who was being hauled by two men toward the open doors of a nearby car.
“Grim!” Max’s voice cut through the night like a knife. He fired again, killing two more men. They dropped like stalks of wheat, blood misting the pavement.
Something hot bit into the muscle at the back of Max’s shoulder, and he went down.
“Exarmaueris!” Dallas shrieked, waving her magic stave through the air. A smattering of magic swept down the highway, incapacitating another two attackers as she sprinted to his side. “Max!” She grabbed onto his shoulders, keeping him from falling. He blinked fiercely, the pain of the gunshot rippling through to the front of his chest. “MAX!”
Sirens bounced down the highway. Grim was no more than a limp, black blur as the men wrestled him into the back of the car.
There was a glowing red collar around Grim’s neck. The Familiar kept fighting, but his efforts were visibly strained, as if something was holding him back.
Max was shouting—screaming himself hoarse. “Grim! GRIM!” The rust of his own blood filled the air as Max pushed to his feet and sprinted after the car.
The driver sped away, tires screeching. Max tried to speak to Grim through the Spirit Bond, but it was like there was a wall there, and he couldn’t break it down.
He crashed to his knees again, gray fogging up his vision.
“No,” he wheezed. “No, no, no, Grim—”
Grim was gone. Max’s vehicle was crushed, his back wet with blood. And that splintering, blistering pain—
