Chapter One
THE CAR HADbeen built for open roads and speed—long, cool, and black. It had been left cracked open at the side of the road, stranded on its back while hot fluid dripped out slowly and ran over the scarred concrete. A scraped-thin reflection of the fat white moon wavered greasily in the shallow puddle.
Marlow opened his eyes and squinted at the abstract collision of color and light that filled his field of vision. Nausea hit him in the throat, and he squeezed his eyes closed. That didn’t help. It only made him aware of the fact his heartbeat hurt in his sinuses and it felt like someone had shot him in the shoulder again.
He tried a second time. The nausea curdled unpleasantly in his chest, but after a couple of hard blinks Marlow realized what was wrong with the world.
It was upside down through a broken windshield.
Or rather, he was upside down. Lines of light from the streetlamps smeared over the road at angles he didn’t usually see.
Marlow exhaled hard and watched a fine splatter of blood droplets spray over what was left of his windshield. That wasn’t good. Marlow registered that and filed it away for later. There wasn’t much he could do about it right now. Not until he got out of the car and worked out what had happened.
His thoughts were scattered. The last thing he remembered was…the rough scrape of Cade’s hand on the back of his neck, the heat and heaviness of him as he dragged Marlow away from the wheel.
“Shit,” Cade hissed against his ear. Then Cade’s arms tightened around him until it hurt. Sharp knuckles dug into his shoulders, and the awkward angle made it hard to breathe.
Then something smacked into them hard enough that, for a second, Marlow felt weightless. Until he wasn’t.
Marlow reached up and fumbled with the seat belt. It was jammed—the nylon tangled and the metal buckle battered and twisted under Marlow’s fingers. Panic washed over him, a salt-sharp realization this was bad, and he wrenched violently at the buckle for a second. It gave slightly—although that might have been his imagination—and locked again.
The panic crested and faded. He could still feel the effects. His breath was hot and ragged in his throat, and his heartbeat—still echoing painfully behind his eyes—was too fast. It was just, the more adrenaline his body pumped out, the quieter his mind was.
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Everyone Marlow knew had it. When you spent your nights fighting seven-foot-tall werewolves with impulse-control problems, things gave. It would probably be easier for the department therapists to treat if it wasn’t useful sometimes.
Cade groaned next to him. Sort of. It started as that, anyhow, before it thickened on its way out through his teeth.
Marlow glanced over at his passenger. Blood plastered Cade’s hair to his skull, dark against the shaggy blond curls, and stained his shirt in thick, wet patches. His arms hung limply over his head, one sleeve of his shirt torn off completely, along with a good chunk of skin.
What was left of his arm suddenly prickled with goosebumps, stark against tanned skin, and the fine scruff of pale hair visibly darkened.
Marlow swallowed a mouthful of blood and spit and went back to the problem of how to unbuckle himself. If he couldn’t do that, it wouldn’t matter how long they’d been here. Eventually, it would be too long.
He kept a pocket knife in the compartment on the driver’s side door, but being upside down had added more variables to that. Marlow twisted around the best he could—pain radiated out from his ribs as they grated against each other—and scanned the roof of the car.
Nothing.
Shit.
He swallowed the slow roil of nausea and reached down to fumble over the roof of the car in search of something he could use. All he came up with was a pen, which wasn’t much use.
It could have been thrown out of the car. Marlow checked the window next to him. It was shattered, chunks of diamond-sized pieces scattered over the road outside. In the middle of it, the bright red handle of the knife stood out in the moonlight.
Which reminded Marlow…
Next to him, Cade sucked in a quick, eager snort of breath that didn’t sound quite… right.
Not quite human.
“How long?” Cade asked.
“Welcome back,” Marlow said, his voice strained as he stretched his arm out of the car. His fingers nudged against the pocketknife, but he couldn’t quite get hold of it. He braced his foot against the console and pushed himself out as far as he could, the seat belt a vice across his shoulder and ribs as he strained to reach it. Close. Closer. Marlow finally managed to grab it and pull it back into the car. His hand felt numb from the pressure of the seat belt, but he managed to get his thumbnail into the notch on the blade to pull it open. “You okay?”
Cade laughed, a rough, not exactly amused sound. “I will be,” he said. “How long do we have?”
The dashboard had cracked on impact, the instrument panel buckled in and broken. Marlow pointed at it with his chin as he worked on the seat belt. The handle of the knife was cracked too, the sharp edges rough against his fingers as he sawed. “Clock isn’t working,” he said. “How long do you think?”
“Not long,” Cade said. He coughed and cleared his throat. Or tried to. It sounded like something was stuck in there or had been damaged in the crash. “If I can get far enough from—”
