“I think of you all the time,” I said quietly, tears gathering at the corners of my eyes. “I’m so sorry for everything. You were a great father, and I don’t think I ever told you that.”
Crush wasn’t a sensitive man, but he bought me a bunny on my eleventh birthday, even though he was allergic. Any guy who buys his little girl a bunny is a good man in my book.
I wiped my face with the heels of my hands and sat up, my back stiff from lying on a hard roof for the past nine hours.
This place felt so familiar, as if I could walk in the door and pretend nothing had ever happened. But knowing about our world would endanger his life. Aside from that, what would he think about his daughter becoming a monster? Part Mage, part Vampire, and complete killer. I wanted him to remember me as the little girl in crooked pigtails, because Crush didn’t know how to do hair.
After saying good-bye, I hurried down the road toward the gas station off the main road. I closed my eyes, imagining the sky turning an indigo blue before the pale-orange light bled into the horizon. Instead, morning greeted me with rolling fog on the tree line to my right and thunder rumbling in the distance.
It only took the cab driver ten minutes to arrive—impressive considering we were on the outskirts of the city. I tossed my duffel bag on the floor and got in, my clothes damp, my throat parched.
After giving the driver directions, I hugged my midsection, shivering from the cold air. My eyes closed as thoughts of my father stayed on my mind. When I was first offered immortality by my Vampire maker, I thought I’d hit the jackpot. But after a few years of living the life, immortality frightened me. Someday I’d be thousands of years old, and my father would be nothing but a distant memory. Would I still remember the sound of his laugh?
The car slowed, and the back doors suddenly opened. Someone slid next to me on the right, and when I turned, I saw another man getting in on the opposite side.
Confused, I knocked on the plastic divider between the front and backseat to alert the driver. Maybe he hadn’t switched the light off.
“Darius wants to speak with you,” one of the men said.
My heart thumped against my chest, and I turned to look at him. He calmly sat in his seat, eyes forward, making no aggressive moves to restrain me.
“Maybe I don’t want to speak with him.”
They both had on sunglasses, and the one on the right looked more the part of an FBI agent. “That’s your choice. You can either go willingly, or we can do this the hard way, but youaregoing.”
“Fine.”
I sat back and crossed my foot over my knee, casually tapping my fingers on my boot.
When the driver sped up, I heaved a reluctant sigh, reclining my head against the seat. Had I tried to escape, they would have restrained me, so I played it cool until I found an opportunity to do something about my situation. Not long after we entered the city, the pedestrians had become a distraction to the man on my left. Each time we stopped at an intersection, his head would turn away.
I glanced up at the goon to my right and blew a soft breath on his neck. He shivered and looked down at me, his lips pressed tight.
“Ever had a threesome in the back of a cab?” I whispered.
His eyes were concealed, but when his lips parted, that was the answer I needed.
With lightning speed, I pulled a blade from the heel of my boot and jammed it in his leg. I turned left and reached into his friend’s jacket in search of weapons. The cab swerved, and the man tried to throw me off, his friend still paralyzed from the stunner I’d left in his thigh.
He slammed me against the divider and reached inside his jacket. I grabbed his arm and wrenched it away, punching him in the throat with my free hand. He swung his right arm and hit me in the shoulder instead of the face. I grabbed hold of his weapon—a long dagger—which I held to his throat.
“Is this a stunner?” I asked, removing his sunglasses. “Let’s find out, shall we?”
The cab was going at breakneck speed. If the driver had stopped, I would have gotten out and fled.
I pressed the sharp tip of the blade into the man’s neck until blood crawled down onto his shirt. His eyes bulged, and his trembling movement confirmed that this was no blade infused with magic.
But daggers could still do some serious damage, and he didn’t seem like the kind of man with a high tolerance for pain.
“Okay, okay,” he said, raising his arms.
“Tell your friend to pull over.”
When he suddenly glanced out the window, it made me look.
The next thing I knew, the guy behind me grabbed my arms and held them back, forcing me to drop the knife.
The guy on my left had my push dagger in his right hand. He must have pulled it from his friend’s leg when I wasn’t paying attention.
