AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Corvus whirled on Rook. “What would you have me do?” he demanded of Rook, his eyes like burning embers. His teeth bared. “If we stop the trial, she fails, and she dies. If we save her, we’ve interfered, and she failsand dies.”
“We could leave,” I said, not even realizing I’d spoken out loud until Corvus’ searing gaze found mine, his nostrils flaring. “We could save her and then leave.”
He paled, and I felt the blood draining from my own face, too, giving the migraine wreaking havoc in my skull a pulse.
“No,” Corvus said after a minute, saying aloud what I wished wasn’t true. “We can’t.”
“You said she was going to be fine,” Becca said, and the three of us turned at once to see her standing behind the sofa, her arms tense with balled fists and trembling at her sides. “You knew she was going to die, and you justlet her go.You fucking liars! You fucking pieces of shit!”
I stood, hopping the back of the couch to grab her. She just needed to understand, we didn’t have a choice. But Becca snatched her arm away before I could grab her and spat at my feet.
“If she dies, I’m coming for you. I’m coming for all your useless asses.”
She shouldered past me, the blow shaking me all the way to my core. She didn’t have to worry about retribution. If Ava Jade died tonight, I was coming for my fucking self.
The drive wasn’ta long one. No more than five minutes and the car whose trunk I was currently folded into began to slow, and then stop.
Judging by the curvy path they took, and the steady inclination of the road, I guessed we were no more than a few miles from the Docks. Maybe three. Four at a maximum.
I didn’t know if knowing where I was would help me, but I would take any information I could, tuck it away in the back of my mind in case I should need it.
Like the fact that there were at least five of them, but no more than seven. In two vehicles. One a sedan, whose trunk I was currently in, and the other, the dark SUV that drove us off the road.
I knew Diesel was here. And Tiny. The others I couldn’t be sure of.
I also knew that I was fighting a high I wished to hell I hadn’t decided to ride, and that in about three more seconds, I’d have the ties binding my wrists together at my back completely sawed off.
One, the sedan’s ignition shuttered to a complete standstill.
Two, the doors clicked open.
Three, a key slipped into the lock on the trunk, and the latch popped.
The ties snapped apart, but I kept my arms behind me as the trunk opened, the almost total darkness brightening some under the dappled light of the full moon through the black bag.
Roughly, someone gripped my arm, and I clutched my wrist to keep my arms from popping apart as he hauled me from the trunk and threw me against the rear fender. I grunted as the blow to the back of my knees almost sent me to the ground, giving me the perfect opportunity to play it up the injury, and bend, groaning so I could slip two fingers beneath the back of my dress and snatch a blade from the garter on my thigh.
I wondered if I could kill them.
I mean, would that be breaking the rules?
The guys said to try not to, but if push came to shove? If they actively tried to kill me? If killing them was the only way to ‘pass’ the trial?
The other vehicle pulled up nearby and the headlights flashed over me before going out as the ignition shut off.
I sensed more than knew it when Diesel St. Crow stepped out of the other car, like a shift in the air. Similar to how it felt when one of his sons entered a room. As though they disturbed the fabric of the universe, taking up far too much space for beings their size.
I lifted my chin, waiting.
A second later the black bag was pulled from my head, and I blinked, disoriented and a bit nauseous from the bumpy ride in the trunk.
My lips parted, and a tremor of dread ran down my spine like an icy fingertip. Before me were six men, but I didn’t recognize any one of them. It was too hard to tell in the masks.
A wolf. A bear. A stag. A panther. A snake. And a crow.
Their faces were fully covered by their animalistic masks, dark hollows where their eyes should have been. And in each of their hands, a crossbow.
Motherfucking crossbows.
