I double-timed it back the hundred feet to the car and shoved my way through the snowy brush and debris between the road and its back bumper. The sedan had run into the forest almost perpendicular to the road, and the front end had gotten stuck in the branches of a couple of large pines but missed the trunks of both, luckily for whoever might’ve been in the front seat. There was a ditch, a gully, or maybe a cliff under the nose of the car; I couldn’t see how deep it was from here, only that it tilted down at a pretty steep angle. My night vision surpassed a lot of people’s day vision, but I couldn’t see a fucking thing through the ice-crusted rear window. A faint pitter-patter suggested heartbeats from inside, though. With the wind through all the trees around me, it was impossible to be sure.
Hanging on to the rear bumper of the car with one hand to make sure it didn’t slide further down the slope, I reached over and broke off a pine branch that pushed against the driver’s side of the car, the crack echoing through the forest like a gunshot, and flung it over my shoulder.
“Jesus Christ, watch it!” Nate yelled from behind me. “Stop throwing trees!”
“Only a branch, and stay out of the way, then,” I grumbled at him, without a lot of heat. I’d told him to get out of the car to come and help, and he had, without even complaining about it. By Nate’s usual standards, mere random bitching counted as cheerful cooperation.
“That ‘branch’ was as big around as my leg,” he muttered, but then added, “I can try to use some magic to see if anyone’s inside the car before we start taking the trees down and breaking in.”
Bitching, but helping. Yep. That was Nate all day.
“I thought I heard heartbeats,” I said. “So yeah. Try to tell me how many, too.” The faint creak and groan of metalunder strain, and the slight increased weight on my hand on the car’s bumper, was making me tense. The car had started, ever so slowly, to slide. I could overcome its inertia to pull it out, but keeping both it and me from going off a cliff together might be more challenging if it got actual momentum going. Probably wouldn’t kill me, almost nothing would, but whoever was in that car would be toast. “No pressure, but hurry the fuck up.”
Nate grunted agreement and didn’t say another word. I did really like that about him. When it truly mattered, he stopped being such a whiny little princess.
A flare of warlock magic at my back forced me to take a deep, gasping breath, holding it in and closing my eyes until the instinctive burst of rage and panic subsided again. Seven years of imprisonment, torture, and conditioning at the hands of men with magic like his had left me…a little less than rational, let’s say. I kept it under control. Always. My rage could be fatal to anyone around me if I slipped up for so much as a second. And my mate depended on my strength.
But it’d only been about seven months since I’d killed the last two warlocks, the ones who’d kidnapped Jared for a second time and tried to force me back under their control by hurting him. Seven months of relative safety set against seven years of indescribable darkness.
Jared had been my ray of sunlight in that pitch-black hell. Almost too pure and brilliant and perfect to look at.
He still was. I couldn’t falter for a moment, not if I hoped to be worthy of his love.
Less figuratively, I couldn’t falter for a moment right now, either, because the car had definitely started to tilt and slide. “Back up,” I ground out. “I’m pulling it out now whether there’s anyone in it or not. Can’t wait any longer.”
“I can’t tell,” he panted. “I think the car’s empty. I’m not feeling anyone. But it’s like there should be something, and instead there’s nothing.”
The fuck?
But I didn’t have the attention to spare for Nate’s weird magical riddles, and I didn’t have time to reposition myself all the way behind the car where I could get both arms at the same angle, either. I shoved the hand on the bumper all the way under, got a grip on the frame, and worked my other arm around the rear tire and far enough back to get that side of the frame.
And then I braced my feet and drew on all the reserves of strength that those bastards who’d experimented on me had forced into and out of me with their drugs and their foul-tasting, agonizing magic, strength that no living thing ought to have.
Even for me, dragging several thousand pounds of metal through mud and brush as it tried its best to let gravity take it in the opposite direction wasn’t easy. Every muscle strained; some of them tore, hot stabs of pain that I ignored. My left shoulder dislocated, and one of my ankles snapped as I staggered backward, but I put my weight on the other leg and forced my feet to move. A red haze filled my whole vision. The magic that moved through me, as my shift took hold and my body grew even more, made me want to vomit. I hated it, even as I used it to my advantage.
The car slowly moved back, and then another foot, dragging what seemed like half the forest with it, as the wheels were too bogged down to turn.
Another step. My ankle had already healed, but the metal frame was close to cutting my hands in half.
At last, with one final rending groan and snap as a side panel bent and broke, the car was back on level ground, the rear bumper at the very edge of the road.
I let go and dropped down to the ground, my ass landing in a pile of slushy snow that had been hiding a bundle of very sharp sticks until they stabbed me in a dozen sensitive places.
Fuck me, anyway.
“Oh my fucking gods,” Nate was saying. “Calder! That was amazing, but are you okay?”
I lifted my head and found him crouching down next to me, peering into my face. One of his hands hovered a few inches from my shoulder, as if he didn’t quite dare to touch me.
Very few people did. For a moment I allowed myself to wish Nate would grab me by the shoulder, check me over for injuries, and shamelessly manhandle me the way he would’ve done with anyone else in the family, including Arik.
Then I sighed, shrugged, and lied, like I generally did when someone asked me if I was okay. “I’m fine. Go make sure there’s nobody in the car.”
Nate narrowed his eyes at me, clearly not fooled at all. He’d been raised—and used for his magic—by the vile, twisted piece of shit who’d run the facility where Jared and I had been tortured, so it figured that he’d learned to tell when someone wasn’t on the level.
“I’m not much of a healer, anyway, so I guess we’ll wait until Arik can take a look at you when we get home. And he will,” he said darkly, a threat if I’d ever heard one. Arik’s affectionate fussing often took the form of physical violence.
Nate pushed to his feet, rubbing his gloved hands up and down his arms. His cheeks had gone bright rosy pink, and I could see his increased circulation, along with the residual glow of his magic, flowing beneath his skin. It lit him up like the ridiculously over-the-top Christmas light display he’d insisted we put all over the pack house and the trees around it this year.
