She holds on.
“Get some sleep,” she says. “It’ll rebuild your strength.”
“Yeah,” I say, staring out the window.
Dark mountains. Sky lightening at the edge. No headlights behind us.
We’re out. Not safe. But out.
Right now, that feels like everything.
Chapter 26
Sable
I’m doing sixty on a mountain road with the headlights off when the lights appear ahead.
Three sets. Coming around a curve in a formation too tight and too deliberate for civilian traffic at three in the morning. They spread across both lanes—black SUVs, armored, low to the ground—and stop nose-to-nose, blocking the road completely as they come to a halt. The trees on either side are too thick to go around.
I brake. The van skids on wet asphalt and stops thirty feet from the roadblock.
My hands are still on the wheel. The engine idles. Beside me, Rafael sits up from where he’d been sleeping against the window. The blanket slides off his shoulder. His eyes are sharp, sharper than they’ve been since I unbuckled him from the cot. The hour of sleep seems to have worked miracles.
“What’s happening?” he says, instantly alert.
“Roadblock.”
“How many?”
“I count six. Maybe more inside the vehicles.” I scan the formation. Two men are broad enough through the chest and shoulders to be dragon. One is massive—the heaviness barely contained in a human frame. “Two dragons. At least.”
The power is already building in him. I’ve been feeling it for the last twenty minutes through the seat, through the console, growing steadier as the miles put distance between him and Aurora’s wards. Now it sharpens. The steering column buzzes under my hands. The dashboard rattles.
Doors open up ahead. Figures step out and fan into a loose line in the headlight wash.
Alastair Creed stands in the center. Black tactical gear. No diplomatic suit.
He’s done talking.
Dr. Fell is behind the vehicles. Hair almost glowing in the headlight glare. Hands clasped behind her back. She’s not in the front line. She’s waiting.
“Out,” Creed calls. “Both of you.”
“Stay close to me,” Rafael says.
We step out.
The cold hits first. Mountain air, wet road, exhaust from the idling SUVs. I stand beside the open door with my hands visible. Rafael is a step away from me. The power is spreading from his body into the road surface, into the air, into the metal of every vehicle in range. I can feel it through my feet, like standing on a bridge when a train passes underneath.
“You’re blocking our path,” I call out, brazen, because it’s all I have. “We’d like you to move.”
“The asset belongs to the Syndicate,” Creed says. “The offer to Viktor was a courtesy. This is the alternative.”
“He doesn’t belong to anyone.”
“Dr. Fell would disagree.”
“I don’t give a fuck what Dr. Fell agrees with.”
