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I cut through back alleys, ducked through broken fences, and climbed over walls.
While I ran, I muttered the spell Augusta had taught me.
In my head, I was back in Montana, sixteen or seventeen, running for my life. My dad’s friends had been after me then, too. Then, if they’d caught me, they would rape me. Now, I didn’t know what they would do.
Keep me alive, I guess, until they could find the amulet.
Then they would kill me.
How had they found me at all?
Autumn had told me the veil was slipping, but why was that? Why could they find me but not the amulet? It didn’t make any sense.
I didn’t have time to figure it out. I looked over my shoulder, but I wasn’t being chased anymore.
I spun around. Where the hell had he gone?!
I strained my ears, trying to listen for a sound above my thundering heart and my ragged breath scraping in and out of my lungs.
Suddenly, a thick arm grabbed me from behind. It wrapped around my neck, and I was caught in a headlock, my body pressed up against his burly frame.
“You think you’re so clever, little fox,” the man growled in my ear, and I nearly gagged at the feel of his hot breath. “You’re not as good at this game as you used to be.”
My power surged to the surface, and I tried to fight back. I kicked and punched, but the man was like a mountain of meat and seemingly felt nothing. He held his grip, and my vision blurred. My eyes watered, and I gasped for air.
I tried to summon my magic and shift—if I could slip out of his arms that way, I could escape… I was too weak, and without any more oxygen going to my brain, I started to black out.
The last thing I was aware of was my dad coming to us.
“Get her in the van before anyone sees us,” he said. “And be quick, I don’t want this shit to drag out longer than it already has.”
“Dad,” I tried to say, but my voice was nothing but a breath, and then the blackness overcame me, and I didn’t know anything anymore.
21
OAKLEE
When I blinked my eyes open, I was in a storage room with a roller door and concrete floor. It was empty, save for a stack of flattened boxes in the corner with a blanket on it, like someone had been sleeping here.
I sat on a crate, my hands tied behind me, back against the wall.
My head throbbed dully, and my chest ached.
“You take forever to wake up,” Tate scowled, sitting in a chair opposite me. He’d slid down in the chair, one hand hooked over the backrest and his legs spread wide. “You’re still as weak and pathetic as when you left.”
I bristled, but I didn’t grace him with an answer.
“Where is it?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“You’re lying to me,” Tate growled.
Something hit me from left field, and my head spun. Stars danced before my eyes.
“Fuck, not so hard that she passes out, Buck,” my dad snapped.
Buck.I remembered his name now. Ironic, since he was the hunter, not the hunted.
