Chapter 16
Chapter
Sixteen
The vampires probably somewhere in the woods are determined to erase us from existence.
Tree limbs close in around us and blot out the night on this stretch of road. As long as we’re heading in the opposite direction of the Vanishing Mile—
Grayson breathes heavy, his chest rising and falling erratically.
My hand smooths across his forehead and stays there, electricity pulsing where our skin meets. “Grayson, come on. You’re safe now. You have to come back to me.”
Please don’t let me hurt anyone anymore.
He’s in this state because of me.
I cup his face in my hands and angle him like it will make a difference, helping him breathe easier. I brush his hair back and my heart breaks again when he doesn’t lean into my touch.
“This is bad,” Colt murmurs.
“It’s going to be fine.” Even Lacey’s assurances fall flat. She doesn’t believe a word she’s saying.
“We have more moon-mad wolves to deal with, and now the vampires who own the circus have our scent. What part of this is going to be fine?”
“I stole the shaman’s journal.”
Colt is silent a beat, then says, “How do we know the cure is in there? She might have been jotting down notes on making homemade cat treats for the white beast of hers.”
He shivers like he’s remembering the brush of the cat’s tail snaking around his calves.
“Say the cure is in there. Great. What then? Both sides are closing in on us.” Colt stops, swallowing audibly. “And Grayson is—”
My head snaps up. “What about him?”
“You didn’t see him back there. You didn’t see what this is doing to him.”
Colt’s voice drops and I shiver. “He’s fine. We’ve got the suppression potion and now we’ve got the journal. We’ll be able to find a cure in time.”
Colt won’t respond but he lifts his head, peering at me in the rearview mirror. His silence speaks volumes. The words I’m terrified to hear.
It’s too late.
Whatever this last change triggered, there’s no coming back from it, there’s no saving either one of us. No matter what desperate final measures we’re prepared to take.
My forearm throbs and when I pull my hands away from Grayson’s face, I’ve left twin crimson handprints on his skin from holding him so tightly.
I force myself to sit up, to keep him close when he starts to shiver.
Whatever power in this godawful world brought us together, I want to hope it did so for a reason. Not just to give me a taste of tenderness, a tease of what life could be, then to yank it away.
What will I do if I lose him?
The thought is a spear of ice straight into my chest.
I pinch my eyes closed. It won’t come to that.
Suddenly Grayson jerks on my lap.
I glance down as his eyes pop open, the pupils narrowing into slits and his lips peeling up in a snarl. Any resolve I’d bolstered by sheer willpower disappears.
“Grayson?”
A curse falls dead on my lips when his spine arches, his body bucking and fur sprouting along his arms once more. Panic cuts sharp and painful between my ribs but my yell dissolves in his roar.
“Don’t!” someone yells.
The shift takes Grayson, but he’s not there, no hint of humanity left inside him. There’s only the wild animal now, trapped in the car with us and growing larger by the second. Limbs scrabble, claws digging into the seat, into my skin.
I shrink and curl myself into as small a ball as possible to protect my head. Grayson isn’t done. His body swells, muscles bulging, the wolf taking over and skin and fur flaking off him. Saliva drips and someone shouts.
My center of gravity lifts when the car swerves off the road. Tires bounce along the gravel-and-dirt incline into the short gulley separating asphalt from forest.
The bitter tang of blood fills the inside of the car. It coats my mouth and tongue, bile rising. We go up on two tires and the car shudders, spinning, metal grinding.
Then crunching.
We smash to a halt against the trunk of a tree, jolted forward from impact. Grayson scrambles into the front seat, his rear claws digging in for purchase. One claw catches my thigh and jams against bone, sending my heart into my throat.
I’ll remember his roar for the rest of my life, hear it in my head, in my dreams.
“Grayson—”
It’s his name in my voice. My legs go useless underneath me.
I slam my hand against the door, fumbling for the lock. Steam belches up from the crunched hood and I pull, the door finally swinging open.
Fresh air, my eardrums threatening to blow out, and pain screeching up from my thigh and into my skull.
I fall to my knees as my vision cuts in two. The roaring in my ears throws me off balance.
Glass crunches and something heavy thuds to the ground beside me. Heat rolling off Grayson threatens to turn me to ash and all I can do is scream as his weight collapses on top of me.
Black rings my vision and I almost give into it. I’m desperate to make it all stop.
Somehow despite the burn, I scramble free from him, my veins hardening. Dread solidifies around my heart and I turn on my back.
Grayson rises on two legs with his approach, his massive body balanced on muscular limbs tipped with wicked black claws. Red lips pull away from his canines.
Terror turns the world monochrome.
The moon madness.
Colt grabs Grayson around the midsection before the wolf makes contact with me. The hit throws them both into the gulley and behind the popped car trunk.
The scent of blood is stronger and suddenly Lacey is there, bleeding from a set of twin scratches across her temple.
“Get up. Get up, Mandi, let’s go.”
Colt wrestles Grayson to the ground, struggling for dominance—he’s the only one strong enough to do it.
“Don’t hurt him!”
I’ve taken a step in their direction before Lacey pulls me back. Her icy fingers thread through mine.
“Please. He doesn’t know. He can’t…”
I’m trembling, jaw clenched as Lacey clutches my hand, drawing a wave of fresh blood from the gash on my palm.
“Go!” Colt screams. “Go now!”
It’s the second time tonight I’ve run away from Grayson, and I wonder which one will be harder for me to forgive myself for.
Part of my heart splits and stays behind at the crash. I bleed through the growls, the roars, the sharp yips of pain I’m not sure come from who. Lacey is a strong, cold presence urging me onward.
My double vision clears the longer we run and the harder my lungs work. The night sharpens around us. Trees grow closer here than at home, more rugged and untamed.
Darkness is thicker and alive, pulsing against my skin.
Tears drip down my cheeks and disappear as we sprint into the unknown. Then Lacey stumbles and goes down, her knees connecting hard against roots.
She waves me away when I try to help her. “I’m fine. Keep going.”
We put as much space between us and the boys as possible. Whatever threw Grayson over the edge, it’s not something we can help. It’s not something we can fix.
Time means nothing out here. We sprint until my legs give out and my muscles spasm in a clear demand to stop. Adrenaline runs its course and slips out of me inch by inch until I’m empty and carved out.
I skid to a stop then go down, clutching the ground to anchor myself.
Blood and cold announces her as Lacey runs a hand down my spine. “It’s okay.”
When I glance up, her scratches are already healing. Raised bumps dot her temple and cheek, the blood dried and caked on.
“It’s not okay. It’s never going to be okay. What’s happening to Grayson will happen to me soon.” No wolf. Only the curse.
Never the freedom of the shift. Only the madness.
Lacey says nothing, patting me twice more for comfort before reaching into her pocket. She soundlessly dials and pushes the cell to her ear until a muffled female voice answers.
“Yeah, we might have a problem.”
“Uh oh,” a familiar tinny voice says on the other line. “What happened?”
The witches.
I lift my head, dazed.
Lacey turns but she doesn’t walk far enough for me to miss her recounting. Every inch of this evening has gone to shit.
Harried laughter bubbles up and pounds in a wave against my teeth. Laughing isn’t going to fix anything. It’s not going to keep me and Grayson from…
Sure, we’ve got the journal, snagged like thieving pickpockets.
But what happens if there are no answers in it?
What if we open the pages and find nothing but drawings of the ridiculous fluffy cat?
Lacey tells the girls everything that’s happened and as I watch, the wounds on her face close up. Skin knits together and leaves stains behind where stitches would have been required.
“Yeah, see if you can track the phone. We’re still sharing our location with you, right?” Lacey pauses. “Okay, good. Then we’ll see you in a few hours. Okay, ten hours. I’m not counting.”
She hangs up before they can argue with us because we all know it’s going to take more time than we have for RJ and Aimee to get here.
What the hell are we going to do?
How are the vampires going to hide when the sun rises?
My teeth chatter louder and Lacey doesn’t bother to plaster a fake smile to her features when she turns to me. We both know it’s too much effort.
“They’re on the way. They’re going to meet us here.”
“Where is here?” I ask.
“It doesn’t matter. They’re tracking our location. It’s a precautionary measure we took before and now I’m damn sure glad we did.”
She settles at my side, making more noise than I would have expected, and I wonder if it’s because she knows it will make me feel better.
Or she still hasn’t adjusted to no longer being human and her control has snapped with exhaustion.
Does the noise comfort her, too?
She gives off no body heat but I scoot closer to her regardless. Wolves are pack animals. Even my secrets didn’t stop me from seeking the comfort of another body. I need to lean on something or the screams will strangle me from the inside.
It’s useless. Body battered, thigh leaking blood from the newest set of puncture wounds, I almost give in. How much better would it be to taste the reprieve of unconsciousness?
“How are they going to find us?” I ask instead, the question burning in my gut.
“Colt always knows where I am. Don’t worry.” Lacey pats my knee. “It’s part of him biting me.”
“Like a blood pull?”
My head bobs in her direction and I jerk upright. It’s one thing to sit together, and another entirely to cave when enemies are still out there stalking us.
“They’ll find us,” Lacey repeats.
“What do you think happened to Grayson?” My words are a whisper.
Silence stretches and it takes a second to realize the forest has fallen still. There are no wing beats overhead, owls or bats searching for their next meal. Even the wind has paused to see what she’ll say next.
“I’m not sure.” At least Lacey is honest. “If the shift is taking him over and he can’t control it, then generally…”
“It means he’s losing it. The curse is taking over.” She hadn’t been as close as I had to him, felt the rolling heat and scented the first bit of rot.
“I won’t make you promises, Mandi. There’s no way for us to know if this is going to work out or not. Death is, unfortunately, a huge part of our world. It’s the only constant there is.”
She blows out a breath through her nose, slowly.
“I hope he’s okay. I don’t want him to get hurt.”
She glances sideways at me, her eyes dark and her expression unreadable. “None of us do, girl. The only thing we can do is our best. Colt gave us a chance to run. We took it.”
I swallow again, the lump in my throat as rough as sandpaper. “Thank you for being here with us. For doing this. You didn’t have to.”
“After everything we’ve survived, if I can in any small way help this situation, then I’m going to do it.”
Somewhere along the lines, exhaustion weighs too much for me to keep carrying it. There’s no comfort on the ground. No comfort with the vampire and her cool skin, her scent like the first snow of the season. But as I slip off into unconsciousness, her steadiness grounds me.
Whatever happens, at least I know I’m not alone.
These people have seen me. They know my secrets and have seen the worst of what I can’t hide.
And they’re still here
It counts. It has to count.