Wicked Soul (Ancient Blood #1)(106)
Fuck.
“Just a little longer,” I whispered, more to myself than the gently flowing energy inside me. “Come on, just a bit more.”
I closed the door to the stairs and snuck into the main floor of the funeral home, coffin in tow, searching for a way out. It didn’t take me long to find the door leading to the garage, and I sent a grateful thought to my goddess at the sight of the hearse parked inside.
Getting Warin’s casket into the back was hard. It hurt to use my magic now—an odd, internal ache that ran the length of my veins, but I managed. Only when I jumped into the driver’s seat, there were no keys.
“Of course. Of-fucking-course,” I hissed as I wiped the sweat from my brow while frantically looking around for the keys. But why would escaping a psycho Ancient vampire and his skinwalker minions be fucking easy?
“Fuck!” I rested my head in my hands as I leaned on the steering wheel, trying desperately to come up with a solution.
It was simple, when it came down to it. There was only one solution. I had no idea if it would work, if this was how it was supposed to work, but it had to… because it was my only option when it came to saving Warin. I breathed in deeply as I stared at my shaking hands, and tried to visualize a key of green magic twisting in the ignition.
Pain lanced up my arms, and I cried out as magic burned through my veins—but the engine switched on.
I could hardly stand when I stumbled out of the hearse to hit the garage door button, but the image of Warin’s still face as I closed the casket over him pulled me through. He needed me. And so I had to be strong.
The driveway from the mortician’s to the road looked clear. I staggered back into the hearse and forced my trembling arms and legs to obey as I set the car into reverse and backed out.
“We’re going to make it, my love,” I whispered at the quiet coffin in the back. “It’ll be all rig—“
“Hey!”
My heart slammed into my throat at the sound of an angry voice. In the rearview mirror I saw a woman jump out on the driveway, a hand lifted as she stared at the hearse. Red energy crackled in her palm, and I knew I didn’t have the strength left to kill her before she unleashed her magic.
“Stop!” she snarled, lip curling back.
“Never,” I whispered between gritted teeth. And then I stomped on the accelerator as hard as I could.
The hearse screeched against the pavement as it roared backward. The woman jumped out of the way, her red energy missing the car. but taking off a wing mirror. But I knew that if she lived, she would take up pursuit… and I wouldn’t get away a second time. So instead of barreling down the driveway and onto the road, I turned the steering-wheel and, at full speed, backed over the woman still on the ground.
There was a sickly crunch and a rough bump that made me hit my head on the steering wheel and Warin’s coffin slide in the back, but when I looked up again, the woman was lying still on the path. From the angle of her neck, I knew she was dead.
I pulled us out onto the deserted road as fast as humanly possible and sped off without another look back. I knew they’d follow us, that it wouldn’t take long before someone saw the open garage and the dead woman on the path, and our only shot was if I got us as far away as possible before that happened.
Zeth’s hideout was in an isolated part of Indiana—not that those are few and far between, mind—and I hadn’t been in a position to pay attention to where we were going when he brought us here. I glanced at the time on the hearse’s dashboard and grimaced. Only noon, and the gas was pretty low. I wasn’t going to be able to just keep driving until the sun set and Warin could fly us off somewhere safe. I needed a plan.
It was only fifteen minutes later, when I passed what looked like a small, deserted path, that a plan started to take form. I turned down it, and after a few turns, came across a shack half-buried in junk—parts of rusted agricultural machines, oil cans, and moldy bales of hay.
I got out the hearse and ran to the shed. It took me a couple of minutes to open the creaky old door and peer inside. It was filled with the same sort of junk as was leaning against its outsides, but… there was enough room for a coffin.
My veins burned as I dragged Warin from the hearse with my magic. It took everything I had to keep the casket even and hovering above the ground as I got it inside the shed and safely shoved into a corner. I didn’t have enough energy to try and conceal it, but I prayed that this would be enough.
“Be safe, my love,” I whispered as I touched a shaking hand to the lid. “Stay hidden.”
Sunlight streamed in through cracks in the shed, glinting off the polished wood of his coffin, reflecting green in the specks of dust floating in the air. I wanted to curl up next to it so bad, wanted to just fall asleep and wake up when he could rise and take over. But I couldn’t. It was up to me, and to me alone, to keep him safe. Which meant I had to leave him behind.
I dragged myself out of the shed and back into the hearse, wishing that for once, I could protect my lover without abandoning him. But the skinwalkers would be looking for a hearse, and there was no way to hide a vehicle this size in the shed. The best I could do was to keep driving, hopefully luring them far away from where Warin slept.
My plan was to drive until I hit a town, abandon the hearse, and somehow find another means of transportation out of there, to throw the skinwalkers off my trail for long enough that Warin could find me again.