Huge, billowing clouds of black smoke poured off the front end of the enormous van currently stuck catty-corner through the back of Marci’s car. He couldn’t even see the driver between the smoke and the dark and the van’s heavily tinted windows, so he stopped trying, running instead toward Katya’s car. Or, rather, the place where her car was supposed to be.
Julius skidded to a stop, staring at the empty street in utter confusion. She’d been right there, right behind them, but now there was nothing. Just Marci’s sedan and the giant, smoking van, which was already roaring back to life.
The smoke pouring out from under its hood must have been from something non-vital, because a second after the engine gunned, the van rushed straight at him. If Julius had been human, he would’ve been run down. As it was, he managed to jump out of the way just in time, dodging the van by inches as it shoved Marci’s car out of the way like the old sedan was made of cardboard and surged down the empty street.
By the time it occurred to Julius that he should do something to stop it, or at least look for identifying marks, the armored van was already flying through the abandoned intersection ahead of them, tires squealing as it took the turn on two wheels and vanished around the corner.
He didn’t even try to chase it. Even with his speed, there was no way he could run down a van over a long chase. He had more important things to do at the moment in any case, so he put the van he couldn’t possibly catch out of his mind and shifted his focus to finding Katya.
This proved more difficult than he’d expected. They were only a few blocks away from the diner, which meant they were directly under the heavy shadow of the towering monolith of the support beam that had cut this area off from the rest of the city. Still, it wasn’t so dark he shouldn’t be able to find acar.But everywhere he looked, the road was deserted. He was almost ready to believe she’d vanished into thin air when he spotted the huge hole in the condemned building across the street.
Now that he’d seen it, Julius didn’t know how he could have missed it. The old storefront on the ground floor was smashed in like it had taken a direct hit from a wrecking ball. Smoke and dust were still pouring out of the breach, but through the thick clouds, he could just make out a pair of dimly flickering headlights.
Julius didn’t waste another second. He ran for the wrecked building, vaulting through one of the broken windows to land inside what must have once been a retail sales floor. Now that he was inside, he spotted Katya’s car at once. He also realized why he hadn’t been able to find it earlier. The impact had thrown the little blue coupe clear through the building, taking out a line of old sales counters and at least one support beam in the process. It was now lying against the far wall of the building, but it wasn’t until he got past the wreckage of the old registers that Julius realized the blue sports car was actually lyingupside down.
The sight was enough to turn what was left of his stomach into an icy ball. Just as he was starting to fear the worst, though, he saw movement in the wreckage, and relief hit him like a punch in the gut.
“Katya!”he yelled, tripping over his feet in his rush to run forward.
No answer.
Panic returned immediately, and not just because of the silence. Julius was halfway through the building now, close enough to see that the movement he’d spotted was not actuallyinthe car, but beside it. Three large, man-shaped shadows were running down the back wall of the building toward the old emergency exit where an armored van—asecondarmored van that looked exactly like the one that had just crashed into Marci’s car—was waiting for them in the back alley.
By this point, Julius was running full tilt through the debris, but he still wasn’t fast enough. By the time he reached the emergency door, the men had tossed themselves and Katya’s unconscious body into the back of the van. It lurched forward the moment their feet left the ground, roaring down the alley and around the corner into the street beyond. He ran after them on principle, but the van was already gone, vanished into the dark, decaying grid of old Detroit.
“Julius!”
He glanced over his shoulder to see Marci running up behind him. Or, rather, he assumed it was Marci. The alley was so dark, he wouldn’t actually have been able to tell it was her if she hadn’t called his name.
“I heard another car,” she panted when she reached him. “Did they get away?”
He nodded before he remembered she couldn’t see him. “Yes. They got Katya, too.”
“What?”
“It was a trap,” Julius said, hands shaking. “A setup. They were waiting for us.”
He could almost hear Marci staring at him, and then she let out her breath in a huff.
“Oh come on,” she said. “I mean, that doesn’t make any sense. There’s no way someone could have known we’d be driving this direction in time to set something like this up.Ididn’t even know we’d be driving through here until a few minutes ago. And even if they did somehow psychically know where we’d be before we did, there’s no way they could have set up a situation this specific. I mean, lining up a van to hit a car at just the right angle to throw it through a building on the other side of the street where another team is waiting to grab the driver and make a getaway? I don’t care if you had a year to plan, there’s not enough luck in the world to pull off a stunt that. It’s a miracle they didn’t kill her.” She stopped short, breath hitching, “Um, theydidn’tkill her, right?”
“No.” Katya hadn’t been moving, but she’d clearly been all in one piece, and it took more than a car wreck to kill a dragon her age. Julius was far more worried about the rest of what Marci had said, because she was absolutely right. Therewasn’tenough luck in the world, because it wasn’t luck at all. This was the work of a seer.
The moment that thought crossed his mind, everything else fell into place: Bob’s sudden interest in his life, the perfectly timed text with Katya’s location, his appearance to Marci just minutes earlier. This was his eldest brother’s doing. It had to be. The only way anyone could make something like this work was if they had knowledge of the future, but when you added a seer into the mix, everything became perfectly clear. Everything, that was, exceptwhy.
Julius closed his eyes. It was so dark in the alley this hardly made a difference, but it still helped him think, and he’d never needed to think faster than he did right now. Katya was the youngest daughter of their clan’s greatest enemy. What had just happened wasn’t technically his fault, but if he didn’t find Katya before Svena discovered she’d been taken, the White Witch of the Three Sisters wasn’t going to sit patiently and listen to explanations. She was going to blamehim, and then probably kill him, which would start a clan war for sure. It didn’t matter that his mother considered Julius the least of her hatchlings—no one killed a Heartstriker except Bethesda and Chelsie. Bobknewthat, so why would he put Julius in this position? Surely even he wasn’t crazy enough to involve a clan as powerful as the Three Sisters in his schemes, right?
Julius scrubbed his hands through his hair, sending a rain of dust spattering across his shoulders. Trying to figure out seer logic was a quick route to madness. For all he knew, Bob was having tea with Katya in the back of that van right now. But while he had no idea what was really going on, or why, one truth was crystal clear. “We have to get her back,” he said grimly. “Tonight.”
Marci nodded and turned around, her steps picking up as she starting back down the alley. “Let’s get going, then.”
Thanks to Katya’s headlights, it was much brighter inside the crumbling building than it had been out in the alley now that the dust had settled. Marci was already on her hands and knees beside the upside-down car by the time Julius came in, her head stuck through the shattered driver’s window.
It was the only place she could have stuck her head in, Julius realized with a lurch. The passenger side of Katya’s car was completely crushed where the van had struck it, leaving the roof of the upside down car strewn with glass and the tattered remains of the deflated airbags. Only the driver’s side was still intact, though there was a bloody dent on the dash where Katya must have knocked herself unconscious. The driver’s side seatbelt was still neatly in its place, clearly unused, which only made Julius even more certain that his brother had been behind this.
That thought made him angry all over again. He didn’t want to scare Marci, though, so he took a deep, calming breath. Unfortunately, this actually made things worse.
Now that the initial rush of panic had faded, the smell of the wreck was overwhelming. The stench of burning rubber and plastic mixed with the reek of fresh blood was nauseating. There was quite a lot of blood, actually, which was strange. Other than the splatter on the dash, he hadn’t thought Katya was so injured. It smelled odd, too, not like dragon blood at all. It wasn’t until Marci ducked back out of the shattered window, though, that he realized the truth.
