Glass burst around me like shattering rain. The roof crumpled. Something hot and sharp cut my cheek. Maktel was yelling, or maybe that was me.
We slammed down hard enough that air was punched from my lungs in a juddering gasp.
My skull cracked against something, and white light exploded behind my eyes with the pain. The sound of grinding metal merged into a single, awful roar.
Then I knew no more.
Chapter Twenty-Five
The first thing that filtered into my consciousness was the sound of whispering. Then I noticed I couldn’t feel my magic. It had been burgeoning before, almost bursting from my skin. Now, the hollowness in my chest struck me immediately. Next, the throbbing in my head registered, along with the bite of handcuffs against my skin. Fuck.
I opened my eyes to mottled darkness. Pain throbbed through me, and panic was close behind. For a moment, I was a teenager again, snatched by one of Dad’s enemies and bundled into the back of a van while walking home from school to teach him a lesson.
I closed my eyes again as memories of old pain welled and threatened to drown me. I took a deep breath to quell it, but doing so sent a stab of agony through me. Okay, no deep breaths. Mindful of the pain in my ribs, I willed myself to breathe slowly and shallowly. To focus. To ground myself in the here and now.
Ugh but the here and nowhurt.My head throbbed in time with my pulse, and my neck hurt like a bitch. My face was cold,pressed against a rough floor. I moved my head on the concrete and felt a flare of pain. My cheek, I remembered. I’d hurt it when the car flipped. Yes, the car. I blew out another shallow breath, suppressing my fear as best I could.
I was kidnapped, but I wasn’t tied to a table. It wasn’t like last time.Iwasn’t like last time.
I forced the panic down and opened my eyes again.
The whispering had stopped.
I let my eyes adjust to the darkness, and soon I could make out two figures chained to the wall opposite me.
‘Maktel? Hanlon?’ My voice came out croakier than I would have liked.
‘Inspector,’ Maktel replied, his own voice gruff. ‘Are you harmed?’
I was pretty sure I had a broken rib, my head was drumming something fierce, and my neck was killing me, but I lied, saying, ‘Just some scrapes. You and Hanlon?’
‘We’re fine,’ Hanlon said, but the pain in his words belied them. Hanlon had been on the passenger side, where the truck had hit. Of the three of us, he must have suffered the worst injuries, but we were all pretending we were fine. Well, at least we were all equally lying to each other. Team Fibbers for the win.
‘Loki?’ I called, but there was no answer.
‘We’ve not seen the bird,’ Maktel confirmed gruffly.
My gut clenched. We were all battered, bruised and bleeding. Loki was small and delicate. Could my caladrius have survived the crash?
I swallowed hard. The little bugger was tenacious. He’d be fine. He had to be. If only I’d had my magic, I’d have been able to feel him through our bond. Instead, there was just emptiness and the knowledge that if my little avian friend was dead, I’d ugly-cry for days. He’d grown on me – like mould, admittedly, but he’d grown on me all the same.
Sniffling over him now would achieve nothing, so I turned my attention to the very threatening situation I found myself in. Kidnapped. Again.
‘All right, what have we got? Any sign of our captors?’ I kept my voice low. No need to let our kidnappers know we’d regained consciousness.
‘Not yet,’ Maktel replied, his quiet tone matching mine.
I sat up, suppressing the gasp of pain that wanted to slip out as my ribs protested. I pulled my hands apart behind my back, testing the cuffs. They didn’t give an inch. I looked down at my feet. They were tied together, but only with rope. If I could free my hands, I could untie my feet too.
‘How are you secured?’ I asked as I carefully lifted my bum up and shifted my arms underneath my legs and up around to bring my cuffed hands in front of me.
‘Chains,’ Hanlon grunted.
‘Seer-imbued,’ Maktel added glumly.
I grimaced. The seers could make powerful artefacts, and I’d come across seer-imbued chains before. They could hold anything, even a dragon, though these chains were obviously not made for anything so big. These were made for ogres.
Seer-imbued chains were incredibly rare and all but impossible to break. The only way to release them was with the key. That was it. They were unbreakable and unpickable.
