Saved By Your Hot Book Boyfriend

39. The Hot Guy Heads East

39

The Hot Guy Heads East

You

You’re exhausted. So exhausted you can barely move.

It’s dark, and you’ve been stuck in the back of this van for who-knows-how long. You’re hungry, thirsty, and you kinda have to pee.

You don’t even know if this is the final stop, or if your kidnappers are just pulling over to get gas, but you know this is probably your best chance to escape.

Figuring you’d better take the opportunity while you can, you…remember that the doors are locked and you have no way to get out.

Right .

Wait!

That’s not quite true.

Because as you lay there in your exhaustion, something kept jabbing your thigh with every rut in the road.

That’s right!

The sword! The tiny, tiny, but very sharp sword. (Fortunately, still in its equally tiny sheath.)

You use the last of your energy to pull it from your pocket, gripping the tiny hilt tightly as you crawl to the door.

Maybe if you were an ‘80s action movie hero, you could use that blade to weasel the door open.

Somehow.

Well, you’re decidedly not an ‘80s action hero, but you figure you at least might as well try.

As soon as your kidnappers have both exited the van, slamming their doors behind them, you ready your attack, working the tiny sword quickly against the edge of the door.

And…nothing happens.

You groan, trying again.

If only you could make the sword grow bigger.

Then maybe you’d accomplish something, but this is like trying to pry your way out with a letter opener.

A sharp letter-opener, but still a letter-opener.

And you’re so exhausted, you can barely put any force into it.

Maybe it’s because you’re so far from Ziros. The magical link between you is stretched so far, it feels like it could snap at any moment.

There’s no way you can use any magic now. No way you can get that sword to grow bigger, even if you were good at doing it on command.

“ One more time ,” you mutter to yourself, gripping the tiny sword as tightly as you can as you hold it up against the door again, heartened by a thin stream of cold, fresh night air drifting through the miniscule gap in the frame. “Let’s do this thing.”

With a heave, you lean into it, pressing all your weight against it, when suddenly, finally—

The door gives!

You tumble outside into the deep darkness of late night in the middle of nowhere.

“Dammit, Jerry,” Ski Mask Guy grumbles as he and his partner haul you roughly up by your arms. “Why the hell didn’t you search her? She’s got a weapon, for Christ’s sake!”

“Don’t be so damn dramatic. It’s a damn letter opener, not a sword,” he says, picking up the tiny blade from where it fell to the gravel beside the van. “ Ouch , damn stupid thing.” He must have cut himself. Serves him right. “Why the hell is a letter opener so damn sharp?”

You groan, lamenting the loss of your only weapon—no matter how tiny.

“What do you…want with me?” You manage, surprised at how strained and weak your voice sounds.

“Don’t worry, pumpkin,” Ski Mask says, binding your wrists behind your back with a length of rope. “We won’t be seeing each other much longer.”

Pumpkin?

You’re about to come up with some sort of witty response, or maybe try to get your still-tiny sword back, but the world is getting darker and dizzier at the edges with every passing second. You stumble, held up only by the kidnapper’s painfully firm grip digging into your upper arms.

As it is, it’s so pitch dark out here—wherever you are—you can barely see the side of the van.

Are they planning to dump your body out in the middle of nowhere where no one but the buzzards will ever find you?

That’s a chilling thought.

Ziros , you think as loudly as you can, stumbling again as the world darkens. Save me, Ziros!

You know he won’t be able to hear you.

But it’s all you can do, the only hope you have.

And…

To your surprise, you swear you hear a distant, ever-so-faint voice echoing back.

It’s him.

It’s Ziros.

Hold on, Anzelika , rings his voice in your head. I’m going to find you .

Maybe reaching out to him took the last of your strength, because as soon as his voice fades away, the world darkens further, spinning up around you.

The last thing you hear is one of the kidnappers saying, “They should be here any minute now.”

Ziros

—A Little While Earlier—

East.

She’s somewhere to the east.

That’s all I know. I can feel that much through the link, the thin strand of energy holding both our lives together, pulling me back toward her.

It’s a distant pull, but it’s there.

And I’m too damn weak.

The miles between us must be vast, because with every passing second, I get weaker and weaker.

At this rate, I’ll die before morning. Fizzle out, just like that. Like a spark in the wind, an ember fading, an infinite existence gone. As if I never even existed.

What a way for someone as powerful as me to go.

The modern world is too fast, too complicated. I’d rather go back to the time before I was locked away, back before all these speeding boxes they call cars.

It’s so late it’s probably early, and this damn city is still alive, those damn cars blocking up all the good places meant for walking.

I stumble up out of the bar—and a car honks, peeling out as I push off its passenger window and teeter away.

I probably look drunk.

I thought it was the drink, but that’s not it. Can’t be.

It’s gotta be the distance between us.

My thoughts are all over the damn place, and I can barely keep together where I’m supposed to be going, what I’m supposed to be doing.

I need to find her.

I need—

Crunch .

Under my boot is a very familiar purse.

Well, damn it all.

It’s hers . My human’s purse.

I knew something bad had happened to her. She wouldn’t just go without me. Not as far as she must be.

But now I’m sure it’s even worse than I’d realized.

I’m coming, human . Just hold on .

I don’t know if she can hear me. I’m sure she can’t.

But I sling her purse over one shoulder anyway, stumbling toward the highway. I’m walking in a haze, weaker than a weak human.

I’ll never get to her in time at this rate.

I’ll have to improvise.

Maybe I can use one of these damn cars to my advantage.

Summoning the last of my magic, I wait until one of those cars with the long, empty open sections in back goes by—a pickup truck—and leap into the bed on a gust of wind.

Meanwhile, in the Cab of A Random Pickup Truck

—Somewhere in the Pacific Northwest—

“You hear something, Bob?”

Two middle-aged men sit in the cab of their truck, heading east. Why they are heading east, no one knows. Perhaps not even them. Or perhaps that’s not true at all. Perhaps they are brothers, visiting their cousin for her wedding, driving late into the night to get there.

Perhaps they are innocently minding their own business, and a strange thunk just rocked the bed of their truck.

Almost as if a certain magical someone had just launched himself into the bed of said truck and is now reclining peacefully in it, watching the stars go by overhead, wondering how much longer he can stay awake before the heaviness pulls him down.

How much longer can he last?

And he hopes this truck will take him closer, close enough to get a little of his strength back.

Because there in the distance is the quiet plea for help, the plea of his human so far away.

Just hold on , he begs her. Hold on, Anzelika .

And though he won’t admit it, not even to himself, he can’t stand the thought of losing her.

Meanwhile, the man in the passenger seat of the truck cab groans, rubbing one hand across his bleary eyes.

“Nah, Fred. I was sleeping. I didn’t hear nothin’. You’re imagining things again.”

“You’re probably right, Bob,” says the driver, blinking at the dark road stretching out like a ribbon in front of them, illuminated only by the dull, orange glow of the headlights.

Funny the way the mind plays tricks in the dark of the night.

Funny, indeed. It was almost as if a full-grown man had landed in the bed of the truck. Almost as if the man named Fred had seen the blur passing as Ziros landed in said bed.

Almost .

The man named Fred shakes his head, ridding himself of those silly thoughts.

Because he knows what he thought he saw must have been a trick of passing headlights.

That’s all.

But maybe the night road inspires the mind to think on uneasy things, to settle into the sinister kinds of things found after dark. Because he finds himself asking his brother, “Say, you hear about that crazy cult out east?”

“Yeah, I heard of them. Why you bringing them up in a spooky place like this? You think they’re up to something again?”

“Naw, they’ve been real quiet-like for a while now.”

“Don’t go saying that, Fred. You’ll jinx it. That’s just asking for trouble.”

“You don’t still believe in all that nonsense and magic, do you, Bob?”

“Believe what you want, Fred, but I’m not taking my chances.”

And somewhere in the back of the truck, a magical, mysterious hot guy lies still and silent, barely alive.

Hoping this truck will take him in the right direction.

Hoping he’ll still be alive when he wakes up.

And that he’ll be close enough, strong enough, to find his human.

Because if this truck turns, if they stop driving, both he and his human will be dead by sunup.

You

It’s morning when you wake up.

Bright, blinding sun flashes into your eyes.

Wait.

No.

That’s not right.

Those are the headlights of a car.

And they’re pointed right at you.

“ They’re here ,” says one of your kidnappers, standing up. Hauling you back to your feet and giving you a shove in the direction of the waiting car. “Sure took them long enough.”

You’re barely awake, half-alive, struggling just to stay conscious.

One moment you’re being held by the kidnappers, hands bound behind your back.

The next, a kid who can’t have even graduated from high school yet is helping you up into the seat of a beat-up old truck.

At least it’s not the back of a van this time?

“Incompetent fools,” rasps an elderly, female voice from somewhere in the night outside. The kind of voice that echoes like thundering water over stones. A voice as old and weathered as time itself. “What have you done to the Chosen One?”

Right. The Chosen One.

Is that supposed to be you?

You don’t feel ‘chosen’ to be anything right now. If you could, you’d choose to be back in your apartment getting some nice rest, with Ziros by your side.

That’d be nice.

Instead, you’re… here .

Out in the great, empty darkness.

“Drink this,” rasps the elderly woman’s voice from the shadows, and it takes you a moment to register that she’s leaning over you on the seat, uncorking a small vial and holding it up to your lips.

It smells…like lemonade, actually. That’s a pleasant surprise. For a second there, you were expecting something quite a bit more toxic.

Then again, maybe the lemonade smell is just a trick. Maybe it’s a drug.

Surely it is.

But—

Is it a good drug, or a bad one?

That’s the question.

“ Hurry ,” she insists, tipping it slightly, trying to pour it into your mouth. “There’s no time to waste.”