7. Chapter 7
Kalli
The brakes come on hard and stay on. Not the long, easy slowing of every stop before this one. The floor bucks under me, the chains pull tight, my shoulder hits the wall, and we’re stopped in the middle of the turn, in a place where there’s no reason to stop.
The radio on the older escort’s shoulder crackles. One word comes out of it. I don’t catch the word. Both men are on their feet before I’ve pushed myself off the wall, and the younger one puts the compartment light out.
“What’s happening?”
“Down!” He’s got his hand on the door, and he’s not looking at me.
“Is it the road or is it people?”
He doesn’t answer that either.
“You could tell me. I’m chained to the floor. What am I going to do with it?”
The younger one has his hand on the light switch and his eyes on the older one, waiting.
“Stay down and keep quiet,” the older one says. Then he goes out. So does the younger one. The lock throws behind them.
Right. Fine.
I’m alone in a locked box. They just left me alone in the dark. Whatever’s out there matters more than I do.
Two heavy sounds on the gravel, close together.
Bodies dropping, I’m certain of it. Doors open. Muffled curses.
Another engine comes up close and cuts out. Then boots, and then shooting.
The first is off to the left. The second is closer. The third one hits the transport, a flat bang against the outside wall higher than my head, and I’m face-down with my arms over my skull before I’ve decided anything, cuffs tearing at both wrists.
Shit!
I sneak a glance up. The wall held.
I don’t know what this wall stops. The next round might go through.
Breathe. In, out, slow.
It’s the drill I built in that place, back when I was afraid all the time.
Then I get my back against the wheel-well and work the cuff. Wrist rolling into the give I’ve made, the same movement I’ve done ten thousand times without anyone seeing. Now I don’t bother to hide it. I twist and wrench. The cuff moves, and then stops. Not far enough.
Come on!
I try it the other way. Same. I try it with my thumb folded under my palm until the joint complains, but the steel doesn’t budge. I keep working it anyway, because the other option is sitting in the dark listening.
I hold my breath and try to pick up what’s going on outside. The shooting is moving away from me.
Every exchange starts nearer and ends further off. Somebody out there is dragging it the other way. Strange. Why aren’t they surrounding the truck?
My dragon goes still.
Not the press she’s been holding against me for days. Still. All of her aimed at the door, the way she used to go quiet on a ridge in the half second before I saw what we’d been tracking.
She’s found something. My skin starts to tingle.
The lock takes a pull from outside. It holds.
It takes a second one, and gives. The door swings open, and the cold comes in around the man standing in it.
He’s tall. Dark hair pushed back off his forehead. A straight nose, and a mouth that looks like it’s not used to smiling.
There’s a weapon down at his side, held loose, like he’s finished with it, and a dark, wet patch low on his coat where somebody has already put a round through him. It isn’t slowing him down at all.
Then his eyes come to me and stay there. Dark. Steady. Not moving over the compartment, not checking the corners. On me.
Heat goes through me, low, and it isn’t hers. I haven’t felt that in a very long time.
Oh, for God’s sake!
My mouth has gone dry. There are men shooting at each other on the road outside and my whole body has picked this exact minute to notice a stranger’s mouth and decide that it’s sexy.
Wonderful. Very useful. Well done.
He stops.
Whatever he expected behind that door, it wasn’t this. His mouth opens. He shuts it. He doesn’t hide any of it fast enough. His hand isn’t steady on the door frame. One second, maybe less. Then it is.
He looks at me the way you look at somebody you already know.
I have never seen him before in my life.
No breath. And I’m near enough to hear a heart from where I’m sitting, and there isn’t one in him.
Vampire.
He’s got one hand on the door frame above his head, and the sleeve has pulled back off his forearm. There’s a lot of strength in a man built like that, and that’s another thing I shouldn’t be noticing. But I do.
My dragon goes off.
Heat comes up my throat. Smoke on the back of my tongue. The skin across my shoulders pulls tight where wings I haven’t opened in over a year come awake all at once. My spine bows and the chains catch me halfway. I fold forward against them, hard, with my hands shaking on the floor.
I know what my eyes are doing. They’ve gone gold, and they’re throwing light onto the backs of my own hands. There’s nothing I can do about that now.
My beast was already focused on the door. She wasn’t waiting for the door to open. She was waiting for him.
Flashes come back to me. The loading bay. My head down, boots and shouting, and my chin coming up without me choosing it.
Him. He was in that yard that night at the quarry. I never saw him.
She did.
“Kalli,” he says. My name. Out loud. In a stranger’s mouth.
For over a year I’ve been a number on a page. This man says my name, and he says it the way you say a name you already know. My throat closes on nothing at all. I’d forgotten what it sounds like from outside my own head.
“We’re getting you out of here.”
He steps up into the compartment, and what I do with the biggest moment of my year is give him instructions.
“The chain anchors to a plate in the floor. It’s solid. The left cuff has slack in it. I’ve been working it loose. Start there.”
He crosses the compartment and reaches for my wrist. He doesn’t tell me it’s going to be fine. His hand closes over the left cuff.
Bare fingers. No gloves. His touch firm and certain.
I suck in a breath.
Nobody has touched me without gloves in over a year.
His hands are cold, colder than the air in here, and mine are running hot with everything my dragon has just done to me.
He notices. I feel him notice in the half beat before his grip settles.
There’s a fraction of a pause, but he doesn’t say anything.
“Who sent you?” I look down at where he’s examining the cuff.
“We’ll get to that later.” He turns the cuff a quarter turn and stops, and his head tilts. “Right now we get you out of this box. Everything else comes after.”
He runs a fingertip around my wrist beneath the cuff, and a shiver runs through me.
“Runed,” he mutters, a thumb moving softly over the burns circling my wrist.
“Yeah.” My voice comes out hoarse, and I clear my throat. “All the way through. Not just on the surface. Nothing I’ve tried gets through it.”
He doesn’t say anything. Focuses on the cuff and wrenches at the weak spot. It gives. It also flares. Pain shoots through my wrist and up my arm. I scream before I can stop myself. The smell of burned flesh makes my stomach turn.
He recoils as if he’s been burned too. “Are you okay?”
“Ye-yes,” I manage. “Keep going. It’s breaking.”
He shakes his head. “It’s going to get worse. That’s its job. You’ll lose that hand before the cuff will come off.” He turns his attention to the floor plate. “This is safer.”
From the tone of his voice, this isn’t up for debate.
“How many did you bring?” I ask as I watch him. Muscles bunch and move under his shirt as he hauls on the chain.
“Two.”
“Two men?”
“Two good ones.”
“Against how many out there?” I listen to the shouts outside. There were six in this truck. I’m sure just as many in the other vehicle.
“More than two.”
“Well.” I put my head back against the wall. “That’s not…encouraging.”
He looks up at me, and for a moment, I’m frozen.
His eyes aren’t just brown. They’re darker, flecked with something I want to lean in and look at properly.
His hands stop for a second on the plate.
Then they go back to work, and when he speaks, his voice hasn’t changed at all, which I notice, because everything else about him just did.
“Can you run?” he says without looking up again.
“I can try.” I look down at my legs. “I’ve been locked up so long, I’m not sure my legs remember how to work.”
He grunts in response. The plate doesn’t move. He shifts his grip and puts his shoulder into it, and it still doesn’t move. The runes in the metal glow beneath his hands.
Boots come up the road. More than a few.
He hears it before I do. His head comes round to the open door and back to the chain, and his hands don’t slow down.
“Shit,” I exhale.
A hand closes around the door jamb and a head pokes in the door. Younger, rugged, with tousled hair. He looks like someone who enjoys trouble.
“Hey,” he says. My rescuer shoots a look at him.
“God!” I gasp. “You scared the crap out of me.” I never even heard him outside.
He doesn’t look at me. “Problem,” he says. “Just heard them radio in for reinforcements.”
“Goddammit,” he curses beneath his breath. “How far out?”
“Someone said ten minutes.” The newcomer glances back over his shoulder, then looks back in. “We can hold this lot off for a bit. But if there are more.” He shrugs. “I’m happy to fight all night. But the sun’ll be up inside the hour.”
I look from one to the other. The second one is like the first. Cool. No heaving chest. No heartbeat.
What the hell?
I’ve been sent into the hills by dragons—my own freaking kind—and now I’m being saved by vampires?
When did I slide into this alternate reality?
“Help me with this plate,” the first one says, but the other one’s already gone. From the sounds of fighting from outside, he’s got other things on his mind.
“Fuck it,” he exhales. He shifts his grip again. As his hands move, I see blisters forming over his palms and then healing just as quickly.
“Runes affect you?” I ask, getting down beside him and pulling too. The plate creaks.
“These ones do.” His brow furrows. “Must be some kind of silver alloy. Unless they had us in mind when they warded everything.”