I was trying to wrestle Meshara out of Mellie’s maternity pants, with little help from the increasingly useless demon, when the soft growl of an engine startled me upright so fast I actually hit my head on the roof of the SUV.
“Hang tight!” I shouted, to be sure she’d hear me, as I scrambled out of the vehicle and stared down the unmaintained highway at the miles we’d already driven.
“Wha…?” Meshara called, and I wasn’t sure whether she was asking a question or starting the contraction count all over again.
Within seconds the approaching vehicle came into sight, a small, dark blur in the distance, speeding around obstacles and spitting up clouds of dust beneath its tires every time it veered off the road to avoid a collision.
My heart thumping painfully, I squinted, trying to decide what kind of car it was, or at least what color. It was coming from the general direction of the Lord’s Army, if my understanding of the map was accurate, but that didn’t mean that whoever was in it was friendly. Meshara had left Anathema with only one vehicle, and two missing members to chase. Considering that hoofprints would be easier to track through the dirt than tires on pavement, I held out no hope that they’d come after me instead of Grayson.
Not that I would have wanted them to. Grayson was much less able to defend herself.
As the car sped closer I decided it was a dark-colored sedan. Black, gray, or blue. I couldn’t swear it wasn’t one of the Lord’s Army’s cars, but I couldn’t imagine them coming after me. They’d be busy enough trying to make sure that no more of their own were possessed, then trying to bring peace to the souls of Naomi and Serah.
A minute later I was able to make out two shapes through the windshield. Seconds after that I realized the car wasn’t slowing. It hadn’t seen me.
Or maybe it had and the plan was to run me down.
“Meshara!” I shouted, backing toward the wrecked SUV, afraid to look away from the car speeding toward us. “Brace for impact!”
The dark car was less than one hundred feet from us when the driver suddenly slammed on the brakes. The vehicle began to skid, and the driver overcorrected. The car spun off the road into the grass and did a complete revolution before sliding to a stop at the edge of the road, its nose ten feet from the bumper of our SUV.
Eight feet from my kneecaps.
I didn’t realize I was screaming until the car’s engine died, leaving only the soft ticking from beneath its hood and the near-paralyzing sound pouring from my throat.
“Nina!” Someone was getting out of the driver’s side of the car. He wore a dark cowboy hat and jeans. “Nina!” he shouted, and I stopped screaming just as the passenger’s- side door opened. Anabelle climbed out and slammed her door, and by the time she had folded me into a hug tight enough to squeeze all the air from my body, I understood that the car’s driver was Eli.
A thick white bandage peeked beneath the brim of his hat on the left side of his head.
For a moment I could only stand in shock, and after a second Anabelle stepped back to hold me at arm’s length. “Nina, are you still…you?”
I cleared my throat. “Still me. Are you…you?” I asked, and Anabelle nodded.
“Where’s…Melanie?”
“Meshara,” I corrected. “The same demon that killed Micah. She’s in the SUV.”
Anabelle’s eyes watered and she covered her mouth in horror. “Nina, I’msosorry.” She’d known Mellie since the day my sister had started kindergarten.
I nodded, numb in the face of her grief. “All that matters now is the baby.”
Eli’s eyes narrowed as he studied our wreck. “What happened? Is she…incapacitated?”
“Kind of. She crashed the car, and…,” I started to explain, but then my gaze flew back to Anabelle. “What about him? Is he still himself?” I was pretty sure I knew what she’d say, considering they’d been driving alone together for hours, but I had to ask.
“Yeah. He has a concussion, and he was unconscious for several minutes, but Finn confirmed that it’s still him.”
“Finn.” I blinked. “Where is he? Where’s everybody else? Are they okay?”
“They’re fine. They went after Grayson last night,” Eli said, and an unexpected wave of disappointment washed over me. I wanted them to save Grayson. It made sense that they’d go after her first.
Yet the truth was that I alsoreallywanted Finn to come for me. I wanted him to be so worried about me and so enraged to have lost me that he couldn’tnotcome after me, even if he lost the vote.
But I understood why he hadn’t.
Eli took off his hat and wiped sweat from his brow, his fingers brushing the edge of the bandage. His gaze kept straying back to the wrecked SUV. To whatever he could see of the monster who’d killed his brother and my sister. “Finn wanted to come after you,” he said, and I realized he’d read the disappointment on my face. “But Maddock said that Kastor wouldn’t allow either of you to be possessed before they got you to Pandemonia, because that would render you useless as bait. Then Reese saidyouare better able to protect yourself than Grayson is. And that even as a demon, Melanie’s speed would be hampered by the pregnancy.”
I tried to swallow my dismay and deny how badly my arms wanted to wrap around Finn. How badly the rest of me wanted to be held by him. How badly I wanted to hear him tell me everything would be okay, even though Mellie was dead and the baby had no soul and…
