see Wolfe dig his claws into the trunk. Little bits of metal flaked off as if they were paper. I looked through the rear window and saw those black eyes staring back at me, the mouth of the demon upturned in a grin. I couldn’t take my eyes off him. He was keeping pace with the car, barely, trying to use his claws to secure a hold to grab on.
Kurt floored it as we shot through another intersection, then turned to get on the freeway. Wolfe’s hands fell free of the trunk, but he kept running behind us, still watching me. He maintained his pace all the way to the top of the onramp, at which point Kurt put the accelerator to the floor and I saw Wolfe’s black eyes recede in the distance as we made our escape.
Eleven
As the car sped down the interstate, I stole a look at the speedometer. Kurt was doing close to a hundred as I slipped into the back seat and knelt on the floorboard next to Zack. One of my gloved hands held his head while the other wiped the blood from his face. It flowed from his nose, which was broken. The rest of his handsome face seemed unharmed and his eyes fluttered open.
“What happened?” he asked, woozy.
“Wolfe,” I replied.
“Oh. Did we win?”
I heard a snort from Kurt in the front seat. “Do you feel like you won, kid?”
He turned his face to look at the back of Kurt’s head. “I’m still alive, so yeah. Kinda.” His hand crept up to his nose and held it, stemming the bleeding. He sat up, his eyeballs rolling. “What about the other guys?” He looked at Kurt, who made no move but to stiffen and keep focused on the road.
Zack turned to me. His eyes met mine and I had to look away. “I don’t think there were any survivors,” I said, looking down.
“How did we get away?” His voice carried a dreamlike quality.
Kurt harrumphed in the front seat. I shot a glare at him. “Your partner shot Wolfe with some kind of epic blaster weapon that kept him down while I carried you out. Why weren’t all your guys carrying those?”
Kurt didn’t deign to look back. “Because that’s the only one we had.”
I looked back to see Zack studying me. “You’re hurt,” he said.
“You too.”
“Lean forward.” He gently pushed me toward the front seat. “Your shirt is bloody in the back.”
He started to lift my sweater but my hand brushed his away. “I’m fine,” I assured him. “Wolfe rammed me into the wall but I’m already healing.”
“I should check.” Concern lit his slender face and warm eyes. I stared a moment too long, got embarrassed and looked away again. Damn.
I ran my gloved hand down my back and felt a half dozen places where it hurt, but wasn’t agonizing. Then my hands moved to my front and I found some broken ribs and cringed. “I’m fine,” I said as he started to lean toward me. “Really. I’ll be back to a hundred percent before you know it.”
“Must be nice,” Kurt spat. “I know a few guys that wish they had that ability right now.”
“Kurt…” Zack started.
“What?” Kurt’s tone was acid in reply, and he shot a look of pure malice at me. “Miss High And Mighty Little Meta got them killed. Is that too deep for you, Zack? Are you too busy staring into her eyes to realize that there are eight of our guys dead because of her?”
“Shut up!” Zack answered for me, but I was smoldering on the inside. I couldn’t deny the truth of what he was saying, but it didn’t make it sting any less. They were dead because of me.
“We didn’t walk out of there with whatever it was she went for,” Kurt went on, voice breaking like a man on the edge. “What did you need to get from your house that was SO important, little girl, that you’d risk meeting up with Wolfe to get it?”
I opened my mouth to speak but no words came out. I stuttered for a minute before Kurt cut me off.
“I see. Well, I’m glad it was so important that it was worth all those men’s lives. Some of them have families, you know—”
“Enough.” Zack’s voice was commanding enough that Kurt stopped, leaving a pall hanging in the air between the three of us that Zack broke as he leaned in close to me. “In the basement, what I found…”
“I don’t want