Page 62 of Flames and Blood

Two vehicles come out and turn down the mountain, full of men, moving fast.

“Now,” I say.

We’re in the truck and rolling before the second one has cleared the posts. Meyer drives, because Meyer drives better than I do. Kent gets her from me and holds her flat across the back seat. I take the passenger side with the window down.

The gate man is out of his hut, watching the two vehicles go, with his back mostly to the road. Meyer comes down the hill without lights and without touching the brakes. The barrier is still up. It’s still up because nobody has told him to put it down, and he’s looking the wrong way.

We’re through the posts before he turns around.

He gets a hand up. He shouts something. Then he’s behind us.

And then we hit the line.

Coming in, the guard let me in, and the wards let me pass. Going out, nobody has given us permission. The barrier is up, and that is the only thing between us and a dead engine on a mountain road.

The magic hits me through the open window, through the door, through the floor of the truck, all at once. When I walked through it, it dropped me and held me down. This is shorter, because the truck carries me through it, and it is still the worst pain I have ever felt. My arms lock. My jaw locks. My vision goes white at the edges, and the only thing I can think is that Meyer’s foot had better stay down.

It stays down.

We come out the other side. The pain stops the moment the line is behind us, and my shoulders slump.

In the back, Kalli arches up off the seat against Kent’s arm and makes a sound with no words in it at all.

“I’ve got her,” Kent says. “I’ve got her. Crowe, she felt that.”

“How is she?”

“She’s flat again. She’s all right.” He gets his hand under her head.

Nine miles down, I hear engines working the grade behind us before any light shows. Two of them. Then headlights come up and settle in our mirrors.

They stay behind us for a while. They’re quick on the straights, and they brake too early into the bends, and they keep their lights on the whole time, which tells me they’re not professionals.

I take us off onto a forestry track I marked three days ago, and we run dark for four miles with the pines closing in on both sides. The headlights go past the turn and keep going down the highway. Ten minutes later they come back up it, slower. Then they’re gone.

Guards. Not hunters. There’s a difference.

“They’ll be back on that highway by first light with better men,” Meyer says.

“They will. We’ll be underground by then.”

“And when they find nothing?”

“Then their boss starts making calls.” I watch the mirror. “We’ve screwed up his operation. He won’t report that to anyone official. So he’ll pay people. That’s the part we’ll be dealing with.”

We stop at the bottom of the track, where the second vehicle is waiting under the pines—the one we left outside the line before we went in.

Meyer gets out and opens the back door and starts to scoop her up against him.

I’m on him before I know I’ve moved.

I have him against the side of the truck with my forearm across his chest and my hand at his throat. My fangs are down. There is a sound coming out of me that I did not decide to make.

Meyer doesn’t fight me. He doesn’t even lift his hands. He stands there with my hand on his throat and looks at me.

The sound stops. My hand opens on its own. My fangs pull back, and I step away from him. My arms are shaking all the way down to where my fists are clenched at my sides.

Nobody says anything.