Prisoner of Night (The Black Dagger Brotherhood #16.5)(10)

She needed to save her brother, and Chalen had given her a weapon.

As well as a map, evidently.





6




DURAN’S PRAYER FOR AN escape had been answered . . . just not in a way he could have predicted. Here he was, out from behind those bars and nearly free of Chalen’s hellhole, released from his imprisonment—and yet, as the female reminded him of the power she had over him, he realized what liberty he had was not his own.

He had begged for an escape. Had repeated some version of “Dearest Virgin Scribe, let me get out of here” so many times that only the variations of personal sacrifice he had been willing to offer in exchange for his release were greater in number.

So it made no fucking sense that he was on the verge of liberation . . . and yet stuck on this plank bridge where he stood, staring up at the angry heavens through rain that was like getting pelted with marbles, the chorus line of ragged, jagged, loosey-goosey lightning overhead just looking for a place to land.

It wasn’t that he was afraid of the storm.

He had lived through worse than electrocution. Hell, they’d even used a car battery on him once.

No, the problem was his brain’s ability to process the size of the sky, the scope of the land, the breadth of time. Actually, that last one was the worst.

Down in that dungeon, he’d had no way of knowing whether it was night or day, and so he had lost track of weeks, months . . . years. How long had it been? For godsakes, the shape of that car she told him was hers was like nothing he had ever seen before—just like her clothes. And his ignorance was terrifying in a way he could not explain.

“What year is it?” he croaked.

The female said something, and he waited for the syllables to sink in and make sense. Meanwhile, she shifted her weight back and forth like she was plotting the precise course of her footfalls across the puddled courtyard.

“Please,” she said, “don’t make me use this.”

He looked at what she held up to him. It was the trigger to his restraint collar, the one the guards used on him when they had to enter the cell.

Unlike those voice-box-less males, she clearly did not want to shock him, and he had to give her credit for that. She would do it if he made her, however. Something about her brother . . . and the beloved—

All at once, focus returned to him.

Nothing like revenge as an existential palate cleanser.

Yes, he thought. He would take her to the beloved. What happened after that, however, was going to be up to him, not Chalen.

Duran’s body moved before he ordered it to, his arms and legs breaking out into a run, his bare feet slapping across the planks before splashing through puddles and pounding over slick rocks. The car he did not recognize as a car came up to him, not the other way around, some distortion of reality shredding the dimensions of the courtyard and drawing the hunk of gas-driven metal right into his face.

There was a chunking sound and the interior lights came on.

“Get in the back.” The female opened the rear door for him. “Get in.”

Duran dove into the interior, his wet skin sliding on leather until his head jammed into the opposite door, a jarring halt to his momentum. Tucking his legs up, the female shut him in and jumped behind the wheel.

They were off in a blink, and he braced a foot and a hand to keep himself from becoming a fish in the bottom of a boat.

Herky-jerky, back and forth, and then a roar as she gunned them down some kind of coast-is-clear. The vibration of the engine and the bumps in whatever road she put them on traveled through the padded seat and into his body, magnifying aches he knew he had and some that were surprises.

And then came the nausea.

He hadn’t expected that. He’d never been one to get carsick.

Closing his eyes, he sat up and breathed through his mouth as if maybe the air moving up and down the highway of his throat was the kind of traffic that vomit couldn’t break into.

Bad idea with the lids down. He opened things and looked through the shoulders of the front seats to the female driving.

She had one arm outstretched, her hand not so much locked on the steering wheel’s curve as welded to it. Idiotically, he had a thought that he hoped her other hand was on the trigger to his collar. He wanted her to protect herself against all threats, including the one presented by an unknown naked male in her back seat who might just eat her.

After all, only he knew that he wasn’t going to hurt her—

Hadn’t she said the same thing to him? He couldn’t remember. Everything seemed like the blurred landscape rushing by the vehicle, indistinct and out of his control.

In the glow from the interior lights—which included a screen-like TV in the center of the console showing a badly imaged extacto-map of their location—her concentration was so fierce it bordered on violence, her jaw set with aggression, her eyes sharp as blades.

Like she expected a lesser to roll up onto the hood and shatter the windshield.

From time to time, she jerked her head around, but not toward him. She looked the opposite way, at the side-view mirror mounted on the outside of her door.

He wanted to ask her if anybody was coming after them, but he held off. For one, Chalen wouldn’t be so obvious if he’d sent them on the mission for his beloved. For another, enunciation of any words was going to be too close to a feather on the back of his touchy throat for him to keep the contents of his stomach where they needed to stay.