Blackbird Broken (The Witch King's Crown #2) - Keri Arthur Page 0,73
possible neither he nor Darkside are aware it was us rather than the preternatural boys.”
“Preternatural doesn’t have witches who can smoke bad guys with lightning that shoots out of daggers, so I think that’s pretty much a giveaway.”
“Why would he assume it’s you, when you’ve never been able to access the power of the daggers?” She glanced at me, eyebrow raised. “And how do you know the preternatural team don’t? More importantly, how would he know? He’d have far less contact with them than us.”
“That would depend on whether he—or whoever he’s working with—has one of them on the payroll.”
“True.” She paused, waiting for some traffic to pass before pulling out onto the road. “We still have to try, though.”
“I take it you gathered some of his items when you cleaned out mine?”
“Of course I did, though it was a bit of a risk. If he goes home and notices, he might decide to hit us first.”
“I really don’t want to believe that he’d hurt us, Mo.”
She didn’t say anything for a very long time, concentrating instead on the road and the morning traffic. Once we were past Preston and on the M6, she glanced at me. Her expression was both serious and sad. “You do realize that—if all this goes down as I suspect it will—we may have no choice but to—”
“Don’t say it,” I cut in. “I don’t want to hear it.”
Not now. Maybe not ever. He was my twin, for god’s sake … I swallowed heavily and fought the rise of tears. The need for confrontation and drastic action would come, and there was nothing I could do to avoid it. But as long as I didn’t acknowledge it, I could still believe there was a chance—a hope, however slight—of redemption.
“What we need—what I need,” I continued, aware of the catch in my voice but unable to do anything about it, “is to talk to him first.”
“I agree we need to talk to the lad, but we can’t risk a true showdown just yet, Gwen. We need to learn far more about his Darkside connections first.”
I sucked in a breath and released it slowly. It didn’t do much to ease the inner tension, and I wasn’t entirely sure whether its cause was Max or something else. “Can you track him via his phone? At the very least, it would be handy to know where he is at the moment.”
“I’m afraid when the roof collapsed into the living room, it took out the tracker phone. I haven’t yet had the chance to pick up another and replicate the spell.”
I forced a smile. “Well, why not? It’s not as if you’ve been busy doing other things.”
She snorted and slapped my leg. “Cheeky wench.”
“Had a good teacher.” I watched the passing landscape for a while, although there wasn’t much more than grass and treetops to see, thanks to the sloped embankments on either side of the road. “What’s our next step if Vivienne can’t offer any info about the real sword?”
“We might be forced to try the impossible.”
I raised an eyebrow. “And that is?”
“Wake the old bastard from his slumbers.” She grimaced. “As I said, it won’t be easy. But he did have a penchant for creating magical swords; if the sword in the stone is one of his, he’ll certainly be able to tell us why it was created and what it’s capable of.”
“Did I not suggest this course of action some time ago?” She gave me what some might call the evil eye, and I grinned. “That look doesn’t scare me, you know.”
She sighed. “What is this world coming to when my best means of frightening small children and nonsensical adults no longer has any effect?”
“I’m not sure I’m pleased to be called nonsensical.”
She reached across and patted my knee. “Present company excepted, of course.”
It was at that precise moment, when her attention was more on me than what was happening around us, that we were hit.
Not by another vehicle. Not even by energy or magic.
By wind.
Wind so fierce and strong, it was as if we were suddenly in the middle of a cyclone.
It lifted us up and spun us around so fast, we were flung about bonelessly. Then it spat us out over the metal guard barrier and down into the wide river below.
Chapter Eleven
The water woke me. It crept up my legs, its touch icy. The car sounded like a dying beast, hissing and groaning as it tilted forward and down. It was only the seat