But before my idiot brain can even finish that thought, she moves.
One second, she’s outside. The next, she’sinside.
The car turns to ice. A breath-stealing cold erupts around us, sinking into my marrow, paralyzing every muscle in my body. Shadows bloom like a toxic ink spill, devouring every last drop of light. My world narrows into something thick and suffocating.
I can’t see.
I can’t breathe.
All I feel isher.
And then—claws.
Jagged. Black as sin. Latched around my arm.
“You're mine,” a crackling whisper slithers into my ear.
And then, she yanks me backward.
I don’t even have time to scream.
I don’t even have time to scream before my entire body gets slammed backward. My back collides with the door, the wraith’s grip not just touching me but infecting me, her cold burrowing into my bones like some kind of supernatural frostbite.
Nathaniel lunges, fingers skimming my wrist—
Too late.
The wraith rips me through the car door.
Out. Into the night.
Wind howls past me, snatching the air from my lungs. My hair whips in my face, stinging, blinding. The road below rushes up, a dark smear of doom, eager to tenderly kiss my skull with the sweet embrace of asphalt.
Behind me, tires shriek. Someone howls my name, the sound raw, desperate—
But I’m already falling.
I don’t have time to think. I react.
I twist midair like a cat who miscalculated a jump, flailing wildly, scythe slashing at the void as if that will help. It does not.
My body jerks. My free hand claws at nothing, fingers grasping for purchase, foranything, but the wraith’s grip is an iron shackle, dragging me under. Cold, endless, suffocating.
I fight. I thrash. I burn.
And then—
Impact.
The ground slams into me. My body crumples, rolls, crashes, tumbles—my shoulder explodes with pain, a searing, white-hot agony that rips through me like fire. I swear it feels real, like I'm really here, corporeal and alive. It feels as if the asphalt has torn my skin, as if bones got broken, as if there's blood pooling in my bruises.
The world spins, a chaotic mess of dark sky, pavement, distant headlights.
Tires scream.
Metal shrieks.
Voices—yelling, panicked, broken.
