The howling was closer, the wind made of wolves, of teeth—cold, alien, and hungry.
I yelled and pulled with everything I had.
The door swung.
I stumbled back and fell, knocking my head on the hard ground.I swore, dazed, and rolled onto hands and knees as the world swung and rocked.I pushed up to my feet.
The truck was just ahead, the door still open.I had to get into it.
I grabbed the frame of the door and swung myself up into the cab.
Abbi was there, Lula was there, both of them warm and alive against my frozen body, reaching across me to shut the door.
“Go,” I said to Lula, my teeth chattering.“Drive!”
She put the truck in gear and hit the gas.
She cranked on the wheel, aiming us away from the house and back down the long gravel road.
I couldn’t even see the road, had no idea how she could, other than she was not quite human.Her eyes were far better than mine.
A flash of taillights swam into view ahead of us.The hunters, leading us to a place to hide.
If we made it through this unholy storm.
Abbi hugged Lorde in a bear grip and whispered to Hado tucked into the crook of her other arm.
Hado’s eyes flashed red, then he stretched and liquified, becoming nothing but black smoke, a shadow that seeped through the wall of the cab, and back to the book hidden in the witch’s box.
I didn’t know if Hado could hide it from whatever was riding wild in the storm, but we needed every bit of help we could get to keep the book hidden.
“You’re bleeding,” Lu said, maybe had said more than once.She hadn’t looked away from the road, away from the taillights fading in and out of sight, jostling and jerking in the gusting wind.
I didn’t know how Pamela was keeping her vehicle on the road, or if she could see where she was going, but they’d said to follow them and there was no way in hell Lu was going to break that promise.
The storm was all around us now, the rain so loud on the roof, I couldn’t hear the engine revving, couldn’t hear Lorde, who was barking, her teeth bared.
She knew there were monsters in that storm?—
—power—
—she knew something very bad was out there.
Lightning hissed, striking the ground beside us and exploding, the blast of thunder unbearable.I threw myself in front of Abbi, and reached for Lula, trying to keep them both safe from a threat I couldn’t even name.
Was this Apep?Was the storm sent by Mithra?By Atë?
Or was there something else, something made of pure violence gunning for us?
Abbi screamed and pointed.
Lu slammed on the brakes.
The truck fish-tailed, rocking up on two wheels.I relived the crash we’d been in weeks ago, a crash I wasn’t sure we would survive.
But Lu wrestled the wheel and held the truck to the road through sheer will alone.
The hunters had stopped ahead of us.
