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“You need to run, I can’t keep going. I’m sorry. We never should have risked it,” Nova murmurs when the smell of damp soil hits my nose, before literally hitting my nose when I faceplant the ground. Nova is forced to shift mid run, and I find myself ass up and face down in the dirt.
Lifting my head, I blink trying to take in where we are. I claw at the soil, trying to push off with hands that feel like putty. My vision blurs as I lose my ability to see in the dark without Nova’s enhanced vision, which makes me realize she must have made some distance because it wasn’t dark when we left.
Pain radiates up my leg. With a groan, I peer around and find myself in the forest. Forest that is so dense I can’t see between the gaps of the trees, and the lack of light doesn’t help. Gone is the greenery, and now all I see is shadows and outlines.
“Get up! We are running out of time. I made it only ten minutes once they shot me,” Nova yells at me. I clutch my thigh, the burning pain worsening, only for my fingers to come into contact with a dart. No! I choke.
“Quick, find somewhere to hide, you need to cover your scent, or we need to get to the road, it’s our only chance,” Nova urges. But what’s the point? She is down, and I won’t last very long with wolfsbane in my system myself, or be able to defend myself when they catch us.
“We have to try; we are as good as dead anyway now. Just keep heading down,” Nova says as the sounds of running and rustling reaches my dulling hearing. Plucking the dart from my leg, I grip a nearby tree trying to haul myself up. I stagger from vertigo that sweeps over me, and I stumble forward. With those few short steps, a gasp leaves my lips when I find myself falling.
My body seems to propel forward when I find myself rolling down a huge embankment. Sticks and rocks pummel my body as I try in vain to stop myself smashing and rolling down the steep hill. By the time I reach the bottom, I am bloody and covered in cuts from rolling through the lantana bush that covered the entire mountain side—finally coming to a stop as I hit a tree. Howls ring out loudly through the night, and I peer around into the darkness. Getting up seems impossible, and I don’t want to, yet once again Nova pushes me, urging me to at least try despite it being pointless. So reluctantly, I crawl out of the huge prickly bush and get to my feet.
“It’s not pointless; we are nearly at the back roads. We just need to keep going down. The lantana will be hard to get through with their fur. We can do this; we aren’t caught yet.”
“They’ll catch us, you know they will,” I tell her. Stumbling blindly, I keep walking, using the trees to hold me up. The howls grow louder before suddenly a new scent, one I am not overly familiar with, overwhelms my senses. The smell of an exhaust in the distance pollutes the air. Blindly, my hands reach out seeking the next tree as I try to pull myself up the small hill when the sound of an engine in the distance reaches my ears.
“Quick, that’s a car.”
“What if it is Satish or one of his men?” I groan tasting blood on my tongue, my entire body aches.
“We have to try!” Nova pleads, she lends me what little energy she has to me when a surge of adrenaline hits me. I start racing to climb the embankment to the other side, where I hear the car about to continue down the mountainside.
Just as I claw my way to the top, the howls that follow us disappear, which makes me more nervous. Seconds pass when a car zips past at blinding speed. Seeing I am too late, I nearly give up when Nova shoves forward with me, with another surge of adrenaline.
“There has to be another road,” she says, forcing my unwilling body to cross the road and climb the barrier. The moment I step one foot over it, I find air beneath my feet. Once again, I am somersaulting down another steep hill. I feel every bump, hit, and graze, and I am sure this fall will kill us as I come to a stop at the bottom with a hard thud. My head bounces off the ground, making my teeth rattle as pain explodes through my skull and steals my vision temporarily.
Even Nova is giving up her fight after that fall. She can feel me weakening, the wolfsbane slowly burning through my system. I can tell she is incapable of shifting to take over, yet also too weak to fully control my body. With a groan, I get to my hands and feet to find I am on flat ground. I stagger blindly through the trees and once again hear the car.
Determined to either make it stop or let it run me down, I use the last of my energy to run. My legs have finally lost all feeling, my body feeling foreign as I will it to keep going when I feel gravel beneath my dragging feet. I lift my head, but I see no car. A whimper escapes my lips when lights suddenly cast my shadow on the gravel road.
Sluggishly, my brain tries to figure out what that means when I hear a horn blare and the sounds of tires screeching, dust burns my eyes as I turn to find a car racing straight toward me. Death is heading right toward me when I hear her. “Move damn it!” Shadow screams at me. My heart thuds harder as I look for her.She escaped, I think,she got out too.
“Move Temperance!” she screams, and my eyes widen as a car slides across the road, spinning out of control.
“Help her Shadow, she’s in shock!” Nova whimpers in my head, too weak to come forward. Shadow? But where is she? I wonder when I feel a shove, my body lurches to the side and I look for Shadow who shoved me just in time to see the hood of the car.
The pain of the car colliding with my body is horrific but not as painful as my body being skinned on the gravel road when I am flung backwards.
Everything hurts, and I feel like I have been skinned alive and chucked on an ant's nest. The burning pain is horrendous and all I can focus on. The sound of car doors opening and slamming makes me open my eyes to see the car about twenty meters away, its lights burning my retinas.
“She came out of nowhere! Where did she come from? Fuck, Eziah I didn’t see her, can you save her?” I hear a loud, frantic voice ask.
“Nova?” I murmur but get no answer, I try to focus on breathing, content with death taking me at this point. I could accept death now if only it takes the pain away.
“Eziah?” the same voice says as their footsteps grow closer and my vision begins to fade, while my heartbeat grows louder in my ears.
“Eziah?” The man repeats, but my mind is slipping away like the dust in the cool breeze.
“We found her?” another voice speaks into the darkness that is taking me.
“What are you doing, help her!” Silence follows when I feel hands grab me, and sparks dance across my skin. Then I feel the motion of being rolled over. I want to open my eyes, force them to open to find the delightful source that is erasing the pain and making my skin tingle.
“Wait, what did you say?” The first man who spoke speaks again. “It’s her. It's Temperance.” At the mention of my name, my blood runs ice-cold while I try to figure out how he knows my name. Which pack member do I know by the name of Eziah? However, the name doesn’t ring a bell. If only I could see his face, maybe I would know which monster is holding me because his voice I do not recognize or his scent that makes my nose tickle.
“Shh, I got you, Temperance. You’re safe with me.”
Lies, I think to myself,he is one of Satish’s men. This is all a ruse for me to put my guard down. I know all too well those words and promises of safety are anything but. I know I’m dying and can feel death stealing my life source, but what about Shadow? Perhaps, maybe, he’ll help her?
