“You, in the car,” the man commands Lucien, gesturing with his gun.
“Like hell,” he growls, to which the man just shrugs.
Without a modicum of reservation, he promptly fires off a shot that tears through Cambria’s thigh.
“Sonofawhore!” She crumples to the ground, pressing both hands to the wound in an attempt to staunch the bleeding.
“I’m going, alright?” Lucien rushes out, hands diplomatically raised in surrender and slowly walking towards the car. His amber eyes flash with menace, risking a worried glance in her direction before schooling his features.
I take a step in her direction, but he turns his gun on me and I go stock still. “Did I tell you to move?” His dark eyes are devoid of any and all emotion, and based on his size, I’d bet money on hired muscle.
“Now that wasn’t very nice.” Cambria groans, her silver eyes swirling with pain and rage. “Wouldn’t you rather get in the car and head home before anyone calls the cops? You wouldn’t want to start such a nice morning off in jail, would you?”
Her words wrap around me, imbued with her power, but he simply responds by firing another shot only inches away from her into the dirt. Tapping his ear with his face twisted into a cruel snarl, he sneers, “Nice try, witch,” drawing attention to the earplugs.
Luce is in the back of the car at this point, and the trigger happy bastard tosses a pair of handcuffs at him. Without having to be asked, Luce gets them on with some finagling behind his back, eyes boring holes in the man’s head all the while.
“Now you, pretty boy.” He gestures for me to join Luce and my heart sprints into overdrive, praying he doesn’t have Atlas come too.
Because if we leave Cambria here alone, who knows what side effects there will be? She only was able to tolerate a five minute drive apart before calling Luce to come back for her that first day.
There’s a brief moment of relief after I’m in the car and my own cuffs in place, the man gesturing for Atlas to pick her up and bring her. It’s gone just as quickly as he demands Atlas put her in the trunk.
“I’m not stupid,” he snarls. “Not about to have one of you sitting up here, trying to get me to wreck the car so you can make a break for it. You willing to risk her surviving a crash?” There’s a pause as Atlas slides in beside me, fastening his cuffs into place. “Yeah, didn’t think so,” he taunts with a self-satisfied smirk.
We pull away from the curb, soon merging into traffic and all the while I try to frantically think of a way out of this. We weren’t killed on sight, so that has to be a good sign. After the explosion, we assumed someone just wanted us dead. So either this is a different person, or something’s changed. If we’re still breathing, then there’s hope. We just need to buy ourselves enough time to find a way out of this mess.
For all of my envy of Lucien and Cambria, they aren’t any better off than Atlas and me. But it also means we only have a few days at best, if we even survive that long, to figure out a way to escape. Because something tells me this guy won’t be singing Cambria’s praises any time soon and she can only survive so long without going home.
Chapter 12
Lucien
––––––––
We’re taken two townsover and into the industrial district bordering the river, where several men are waiting for us when we arrive. We’re yanked out of the car, and as they start wrapping blindfolds around the others’ eyes, I try to frantically soak up every possible detail of our surroundings before mine’s put into place. Even the most unassuming things could later prove useful and I try to commit each blip to memory.
