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“By accident.”
“I doubt he’ll be concerned with whether it was an accident or not.”
We didn’t have many options. “We talk, or we murder all these guys too, I guess. Because they don’t look like they’re going to stop anytime soon.”
“They started it,” Zee said.
“Did you at least call Leomaris while inside the diner?” Victor asked, skidding the truck off the main road, onto a dirt track that hopefully led somewhere remote so I could get my dragon on without too many witnesses. I still planned to try and talk us out of this, but eating them all was a strong—and let’s face it, likely—Plan B.
“Uh, well, that’s the real problem I mentioned. So um . . . there’s another Adam.”
The truck hit a rut in the road and rattled us in the cab like peas in a can. Victor wrestled the wheel, but eventually wrangled the truck back under control, bouncing it through and around potholes.
“Apologies. I became momentarily distracted by the terrain. Adam, repeat your statement,” Victor asked.
“Yeah, so, there’s another Adam at home. A me, but also not me.”
“That doesn’t make sense, my dear.”
“I know . . . . but I saw him on the TV. He looks like me, talks like me.”
“Cosplay?” Zee suggested. We’d seen some convincing Adams at the Stephanie Hotel’s LARP weekend.
“No, I don’t think so. A real, actual Adam Vex.”
“What the fucking fuck?”
“That’s what I thought . . . Or you know, sorta.”
“The loup-garou,” Victor said, then looked at me in the rearview mirror. “She’s not dead.”
“Yeah . . . I figured it was her too.”
“How can she not be dead?” Zee exclaimed. “She fell all the fuckin’ way down that cliff.”
“Shapeshifter.” Victor’s face gathered all the shadows, making his dark eyes shine.
Zee huffed a laugh. “So she just sprouted wings and fuckin’ flew away?”
“Exactly.”
“Wait . . . She could do that? Shouldn’t you have planned for that, Your Highness?”
“I was aware it was possible, but it did not occur to me that in her final moments she’d have the wherewithal to shift. I assumed she had plummeted to her death.”
“You assumed? You do know assumed makes an ass outtah you and me, right?”
“We all thought that,” I said, and scowled over my shoulder at Zee. Zee rolled his eyes and flopped back in the seat. Facing Victor again, I could see the frustration on his face. “It’s alright, it’s not your—alligator!”
The truck’s lights highlighted the track ahead, and the biggest alligator I’d ever seen. Which wasn’t saying much as I’d only ever seen one, but this one was real big, and in the middle of the road.
Victor yanked the wheel, veering the truck wildly left. Headlights lit up a swathe of trees we were definitely about to crash into. The truck’s nose dropped, we plowed down a bank, and dove into the swathe of black swamp. The windshield exploded. Water and glass surged in, and swirled around us, quickly rising. My legs were soon underwater, then my waist.
Zee poofed. Gone for a second.
The water surged higher, slurping up my chest.
Victor turned in the driver’s seat, reaching for me.
