be a hardass from the moment I exited the womb.” I laughed despite the miserable twinge in my stomach.
“Pull over up here,” Laurel instructed.
I ripped to the right, shouting as I accidentally mounted the curb. I slowed and flicked the handbrake button. “Sorry about—"
Glass shattered as a vehicle slammed into the passenger side.
My head snapped back as the airbag exploded. Stars filled my vision and I barely registered the side-door bag exploding after.
Movement. Rolling. Crunching. Whining.
I choked on a scream, feeling blindly for my head as the SUV settled with a lurch.
The seat belt cut into my breasts, supporting my weight.
The car was on its side?
Where was everyone? Were they okay? I couldn’t hear anything!
I’d pulled right off the road. I was up on the curb. How did this happen?
Oh god, was everyone alright?
“Laurel,” I croaked.
Through the cracks on the windscreen, I saw a man approaching the car. He shoved his hands through the cracked windscreen, puncturing two holes, and yanked. With a high-pitched whine, the glass came away from its fixings.
I studied the almond shape of his eyes. His olive complexion.
Vissimo. Not the kind I wanted to meet.
Where’s Laurel?
The ringing in my ears from the bags exploding obliterated everything else. I feared looking around in case my fragile grip on consciousness failed.
“Go away,” I mumbled.
He slashed through my seat belt, and I fell onto the driver door, on top of the deflated airbag. I screamed as glass shards speared into my body, my voice swelling into panic as the vampire seized my wrists and dragged me over the dashboard and what remained of the bonnet.
He hoisted me in his arms, and agony ripped another scream from my lips. Grunting, he yanked a jagged length of glass out of my outer thigh.
White filled my vision.
I retched, jolting violently. Pain blanketed my mind, obscuring my surrounding.
But gunfire. I could hear gunfire. There was fire. Smoke. Sirens.
I retched again as the Vissimo holding me broke into a run. Bile surged through my throat, and I didn’t manage to choke it back this time. Acidic vomit poured from my mouth down my front and onto the vampire carrying me.
He didn’t stop.
The Vissimo ran. Blurred. And I clung to the scraps of my consciousness, trying to catalogue the passing buildings to keep my bearings. The colours—Grey, Blue, Purple registered.
Yellow.
I’d missed some suburbs.
Was I fading in and out?
Red.
Cold water poured over me, and I jerked awake for what felt like the fifth time.
Spluttering, I sat and knocked my head on the top of a—
A…
… Dog cage?
The taste of stale bile soured my mouth. Water dripped from my bloodied hair. I blinked droplets from my eyes, looking for the source.
A man held an empty bucket in his hand. The Vissimo who’d taken me hostage.
He wasn’t alone.
There were ten of them in the basement. Half were female.
Three of the men I couldn’t fail to recognise. I stared at the triplets who murdered Rhys, clamping down on a fresh urge to vomit.
I shifted, and my shriek at the sharp agony in my side was more surprised than anything.
“Fucker,” I hissed, hands trembling over the wound beneath my ribs.
Glass jutted from my body through my leather jacket which was covered in bile. Other glass shards littered the right side of my stomach and thigh—smaller pieces the size of my thumbnail. But the one right next to my belly button was the size of my palm at least.
I stared at it in horror, swaying on the spot.
“Well done, Callum,” a triplet said to the man with the bucket. “Casualties?”
“Just Indebted, brother. A small band tracked me as far as Red. I altered the route to shake them.”
Laurel and the girls had come after me. I knew it. I could only recall gunfire and smoke at the crash scene though. How the fuck did Fyrlia get through my personal convoy and the perimeter guards?
The shaking of my hands intensified as I contemplated the glass again. Should I yank it out? Would that sever something important?
“She’s still in the thrall with Kyros. Perfect. There’s no way he won’t come. Is everything prepared?” another of the triplets asked.
“Yes, brother,” Callum said, lowering his gaze.
I listened in mounting terror, nearly forgetting the piece of glass embedded in my side as I strained to hear. They intended to capture Kyros?
Fuck, that meant I was bait.
They’d hurt him. I had to get out of here.
“She’s not much to look at, is she?” one of the women said, sneering. Or maybe her face was always like that.
Another,