Already sore from the explosion, the impact of his body barreling into hers almost made her scream as he flung her backward. She nearly let go of her knife when her head bounced off the ground and stars burst before her eyes.
Images of Dylan and Jack swam through her mind as she struggled to remain conscious. If she blacked out now, that would be the end of her, and she couldn’t leave them alone.
The Savage came down on top of her. Charlie blinked at him when her vision swam, and she briefly saw two of him kneeling over her with his hands clawing at her throat. Then his fingers enclosed on her neck and he was bearing down on her. She choked as her breath was cut off.
His red eyes shone with malicious glee as his twisted smile revealed his fangs. He wouldn’t kill her now, she realized. He wanted to immobilize her and take her somewhere he could drag the torture out for hours.
Unwilling to let this bastard destroy her, she managed to find the strength to lift her knife and plunge it into this sick freak’s eye. Keeping hold of the blade, Charlie ripped it free as the vamp howled and flung himself backward. Blood oozed around the fingers of the hand covering his eye as he knelt on the ground sobbing.
She felt no sympathy for him; he’d never shown any of his victims mercy, of that she was certain. Rolling to the side, Charlie ignored the protests of her battered body as she staggered to her feet and pulled her stake free. She was about to launch onto the asshole when Kirha emerged from the smoke and plunged a broken tree branch through the Savage’s back and into his heart.
“Thanks,” Charlie said.
Kirha pulled the branch free and wiped the sweat from her brow with the back of her arm. Smoke and dirt streaked her face, her shirt was singed at the end and so were her jeans, but she appeared uninjured.
Charlie turned her attention to the spreading fire in search of Jack, but she didn’t see him anywhere amongst the rubble of burning trees. The bomb must have been in the center of the pine trees, as fragments of them were embedded in some of the surrounding trees. Charlie shuddered as she realized that not only could the bomb have taken out Jack, but so could any of the numerous wooden missiles the explosion created from the trees.
“Jack!” she croaked, but the smoke and the strangulation from the Savage had left her voice raw.
Smoke burned her eyes as flames devoured the trees closest to where the bomb went off. Weakened by the fire, trunks snapped, and the groaning sound of falling trees filled the air before they hit the ground with a thunderous crash that shook the earth.
Through the thickening smoke, Charlie spotted the charred remains of someone lying on the ground thirty feet away from her. Fire licked over their blackened skin, their mouth was open in twisted agony, and no clothes remained.
“No,” she breathed and took a step toward the smoldering remains. She didn’t sense a break in her connection to Jack, but she was so rattled, she didn’t know if she would.
“It’s Clifford,” Kirha said as she rested her hand on Charlie’s arm. “I think he stepped on whatever triggered the explosion.”
A pang of sadness tugged at Charlie’s heart. She barely knew Clifford, but he was here to help them, and he’d kept Dylan enthralled with his stories earlier without showing any sign he was bored. He was a good man who hadn’t deserved this.
“Have you seen Jack?” she asked.
“No,” Kirha said.
Over the roar of the spreading inferno, shouts sounded around her, but these weren’t cries of pain. No, they were the excited shouts of hunters seeking their prey. However, because of the smoke and growing fire, their voices were distorted, and she had no idea where the Savages were.
“We have to find Jack and get out of here,” she said as she shoved her knife back into its holster.
“No shit,” Kirha said, and Charlie almost laughed, except there was nothing funny about this situation.
Where is Jack?Charlie struggled not to give in to her terror as she plunged into the thickening smoke. Smoke choked the air so badly, Charlie could barely see the flames loudly devouring the woods.
Her heart hammered and sweat coated her body as she staggered toward where she last saw Jack, but he wasn’t there. Spinning in a circle, Charlie searched for him, but all she saw was smoke and flames crackling through the underbrush.
Jack.His name was a whimper in her head.
Charlie tried to draw on the instincts that had kicked into high gear since she bound her life to Jack’s, but she couldn’t sense or feel anything other than her rising panic. Tears filled her burning eyes as every breath became more smoke than air. Her hair waved about her face as the fire stirred the air.
If she’d been a human, the smoke would have overtaken her by now; instead, her throat burned and her lungs were seared. They had to get away from the death spreading around her.
She searched for Jack through their bond, but she couldn’t feel him anymore. A crushing sense of doom threatened to overwhelm her as she stumbled forward. They had to get out of here, but she couldn’t leave without him.
He can’t be dead; he can’t be.She’d just found him; she couldn’t lose him now.
She kept her hands in front of her as the smoke became increasingly challenging to navigate. She no longer heard the excited shouts of the Savages as the inferno devoured the forest. Kirha stayed by her side, clutching the branch against her chest. Her red-rimmed eyes streamed tears as she glared at the woods.
Charlie’s racing heart felt like it was going to tear out of her chest when she choked out, “Jack!” in a hoarse voice that probably didn’t carry more than two feet away from her.
And then she staggered out of the smoke and into fresh air. Charlie eagerly gasped the air in, but every breath caused knives of pain to slice her brutalized throat. “Jack!” she croaked again as she spun back toward the fire.
