Veya felt her pulse lurch so violently it hurt.
Every instinct warned her that what she was seeing was deeply wrong. No normal person would be standing out there in the middle of that storm. No normal person would remain that still while headlights bore down directly toward them through rain and darkness.
Her breathing fractured sharply.
The closer the car moved toward him, the more unreal he became, as though the fog itself struggled to hold his shape together. His face remained hidden beneath shadow and rain, but she could feel his stare fixed directly on her with a suffocating intensity that made her entire body go cold.
“Shit! Oh, shit!”
Her foot slammed onto the brake pedal.
The tires screamed against the flooded asphalt as the steering wheel jerked hard beneath her hands, the entire car fishtailing sideways. Panic detonated through her chest as she fought to regain control, but the storm had already stolen the road from her completely.
Water fanned beneath the spinning tires as the vehicle lurched sideways again, throwing her shoulder against the door.
Veya gasped as the car lost traction completely and hurtled off the road into the dense underbrush. Tree branches exploded across the windshield with deafening force whilemetal screamed around her, the car tearing through brush and saplings hard enough to shake her entire body.
Her head snapped sideways. Glass burst inward somewhere beside her. The steering wheel drove into her ribs as the seat belt locked across her chest. Her body snapped back against the seat before the next impact hurled her forward again.
Then the front of the car slammed directly into something solid enough to stop everything at once.
Her head struck the driver’s-side window with sickening force.
Pain exploded behind her eyes.
The engine coughed weakly somewhere beneath the hood while smoke curled upward through the dashboard vents in pale, twisting ribbons, carrying the sharp chemical sting of gasoline and hot metal. Rain continued drumming heavily against the wreckage while the world around her tilted slowly sideways beneath the haze consuming her thoughts.
Warm blood tracked down the side of her face while her vision pulsed in and out of focus, the shattered remains of the windshield blurring beneath the relentless storm outside.
She tried weakly to lift one trembling hand toward her ribs, but fresh agony ripped through her side hard enough to drag a fractured cry from her throat before darkness surged at the edge of her vision again.
The fog beyond the headlights pressed unnaturally close around the wreckage, swallowing the forest entirely until it felt as though the world had disappeared beyond the ruined vehicle.
Veya’s eyes fluttered weakly as consciousness began slipping away from her in slow, fractured waves.
Somewhere beyond the shattered windshield, hidden within the storm and fog pressing silently against the wreckage, she could not shake the horrifying certainty that whatever she hadseen standing in the road was still out there watching her lose consciousness.
* * *
Rhen felt her before the headlights found him.
He had left the truck beneath the trees to follow the trace of heretic magic threading through the fog. It had led him to the center of the road and stopped.
So had he.
The approaching car was no threat to him.
He didn’t move.
The tires screamed, the sound high and sharp enough to slice through the storm. The car fishtailed across the rain-slick asphalt, spinning hard before vanishing through the trees in a spray of shattered branches and twisted metal, swallowed by darkness like prey dragged beneath deep water.
Rhen listened while the forest absorbed the collision.
Metal shrieked as it twisted apart. Glass burst outward in sharp, echoing cracks. Trees groaned beneath the impact while the smell of smoke and ruptured gasoline bled steadily into the damp night air.
Then everything beneath the rain went still.
His senses locked onto the female inside the wreck.
