“Move over, sir,” Willow commanded as she took control of his mind.
Reluctantly, the man shifted into park, released the wheel, unbuckled his seat belt, and slid into the middle of the vehicle.
“Get into the passenger side,” Willow commanded. “And stay there. Don’t move an inch.”
The man’s lips compressed into a flat line, but he did as Willow ordered. She stared at him before returning to Declan; she checked to make sure he was okay. His shallow breath came out raspy as it whispered past his lips. She had to get him fedsoon.
Running down the embankment, she retrieved the sword before returning to Declan. She lifted him from the side of the road and dragged him forward. His toes skidded across the pavement as she hauled him over to the truck, opened the driver’s side door, and plopped him on the seat.
“What happened to him?” the man demanded with a mixture of awe and disgust. “You’re not putting a dead guy in my truck.”
“He’s not dead!” Willow snapped.
“What happened to him?”
“A war,” Willow muttered.
The man’s horrified eyes swung to her, but she ignored him as she kept one hand on Declan's shoulder to keep him on the seat while she placed the sword in the truck’s bed. She put a folded tarp on top of the sword to keep it from sliding around. She hated parting with the weapon, but it was safer in the bed than in the cab, where it might accidentally stab one of them.
She pushed and shoved Declan as she maneuvered him toward the middle of the truck. “Help me with him,” she commanded the man.
He reluctantly touched Declan's shoulder. “Does he have any diseases?”
“No, and no more questions from you.”
When Declan was finally in the middle of the truck, Willow buckled his seat belt to keep him from falling too far forward and climbed behind the wheel. She slammed the door shut, shifted into drive, stomped on the gas, and peeled away.
Chapter Forty-Six
Willow draggedDeclan into the barn and over to a pile of straw at the far back of the large, gray barn. There were no animals in the barn, but the scent of horses and leather lingered on the air. She wished there were animals here; she could have fed on them instead of leaving Declan to hunt, but now, she had no choice.
She settled Declan onto the bed of straw and knelt at his side. When she brushed back the strands of his hair to reveal more of his face, dread coiled in her stomach when she saw none of the colors had eased from him.
With trembling hands, she turned her attention from him and to the rest of his body. The bleeding had stopped, but she didn’t think it was because the wounds were healing. In fact, when she looked closer, she saw his flesh hadn’t sealed around the bolts as it usually would. Instead, he’d stopped bleeding because he no longer had enough blood left to shed.
The beat of his heart was so languid she barely breathed as she waited for each beat to be his last. She was reluctant to leave his side, but she had to get him bloodsoon.
She pushed herself up and hurried to the front of the barn, where she slid the ten-foot-high door further open. A nervous glance around the field and paddock revealed both were still empty as she jogged toward the pickup.
After driving the owner of the truck twenty minutes to his house, she fed on him and gave more of her blood to Declan. He was the first human she ever fed from, and though she hated doing it, Declan needed the blood.
Afterward, she left Declan in the truck while she followed the man inside. He had no other vehicle, so after learning more about him, she left him with instructions to call his son in three days. That was when he could report his truck stolen. Willow would have made him wait longer, but he didn’t have much food in the house and no way to get any more.
She called Vicky from the man’s home and listened to her sister sob with joy while she held back her tears. It was tempting to stay at the man’s house and wait for the cavalry to arrive, but they were still too close to Culver for her liking.
Unable to give Vicky a destination of where she would go, she told her she was going to put more distance between them and Culver. She couldn’t stop somewhere to buy a new phone because of cameras, so she didn’t see them getting their hands on a burner phone anytime soon, and the man didn’t have one for her to take.
Vicky told her that Abby and Brian were back, and Brian was looking for them, but Willow made her promise to call him off. She didn’t want anyone else tangled up in this mess or for something to happen to Brian. She promised Vicky she would do everything she could to make it home.
She asked about Lucien, but Vicky said there was still no sign of him. Unwilling to spend any more time on the phone, Willow told Vicky to pass her love on to her family and hung up.
That brief contact with her sister had reminded her of the world beyond the blood, death, and terror she’d been residing in, and she hated relinquishing her only tie to it. But she’d hung up the phone, left the house behind, and returned to the truck and Declan. She put the sword back in the bed of the vehicle before climbing behind the wheel.
She kept to backroads in the hopes of discovering a place where they could hide until Declan recovered. They traveled over fifty miles before she spotted this barn. The windows of the house two hundred feet away were broken out. The charred roof sagged in one section, and in another, it had collapsed into the burned-out home.
Whoever once lived there was gone; she didn’t know if they would be back to rebuild, but that wasn’t a concern for today. She would be out of here before then, or at least she hoped she would.
She longed to go home, but she didn’t dare make the journey while Declan was still so vulnerable. With all the cameras between here and there, the Savages might spot her. Or the assholes could turn to the media for help with hunting her and Declan, so it was best if they stayed low until he was stronger.
