Bound by Forever - (True Immortality #3) Page 0,13

even if it was the early hours of the morning and there were only a few cars on the road, she couldn’t lead them into a fight where innocents might get hurt.

She was currently on the motorway and as she passed the buildings on her left, she caught glimpses of thick, dark forestation in the distance. One of Moscow’s national parks, maybe? She knew there were areas of natural beauty scattered throughout Moscow that could make folks forget they were even in a city.

Niamh could head into the park and lose them in there. Her strength might even come back in a place like that and she’d be able to travel.

Mind made up, and seeing no way off the motorway but to cross it, she swerved the car onto the opposite side of the quiet road and shot across and off it. She hit the grass as she took a road on the left, past a Burger King, down a tree-lined street toward the wooded area she’d seen in the distance. Plowed snow sat piled along the edges of the sidewalks in graying, icy borders.

Glancing in the rearview mirror, she saw the two cars were still following her.

Clingy buggers, aren’t they? she thought in aggravation as she approached a glowing-red traffic light perched beneath a railway bridge.

Niamh took a breath and flew under the tight bridge, thankfully not meeting any oncoming traffic. As soon as she came out of it, her headlights lit up a path leading into the park.

Skidding to a stop, the car hit ice and swung haphazardly into the tall curbside. She barely even felt it. She was too busy jumping out of the car. Niamh dashed toward the opening in the snow-dusted trees. She could see the pathway under a thick layer of snow. Tires squealed behind her as her pursuers witnessed her escape. Sweat beaded under her arms as she pushed through the lethargy that still clung to her body.

Come on! She gritted her teeth in frustration as she ran up the snowy path, fast but nowhere near the speed she was capable of. The snow didn’t bloody help matters.

That fecking fecker of a werewolf!

He was going to get her killed!

The path seemed to just keep going, the trees thick on either side, and Niamh could hear the crunching of very fast feet through hard snow in the distance. Panic bloomed in her chest as she hit an intersection in the path.

She turned left, feeling her speed pick up in increments. Fast, but not fast enough.

Breaking off the path, Niamh disappeared into the snowy trees, hoping to lose her pursuers in the darkness. She had superior night vision, but so did most supernaturals.

The birch trees towered above like skinny giants holding out their snow-peppered arms protectively, urging her to hurry. She tried to detect the scent of her pursuers but she didn’t have a nose like a wolf and all she could smell was the freshness of snow, the earthiness of the soil beneath, and the sweet, sharp, clean scent of the birch. There was also the faint mustiness of animal. Not werewolf, but from whatever animal lived in the park.

Niamh picked up speed, calmed by the enveloping darkness of the trees and the fact that the crunching footsteps had grown fainter in the distance. She kept pushing, pushing until she burst out of the trees into an open field thick with snow. Gathering her speed again, she flew across the openness—wet encapsulated her ankles as her feet disappeared in and out of the snow—and into the tree line ahead.

Not long later, as Niamh caught the glimmer of another opening in the distance, a familiar sick sensation built in her gut.

No.

No, not now.

Tears of defeat pricked her eyes as she rushed out, skidding through the snow of another small clearing.

In the distance, she could hear the thrashing through the forest. The thrashing of her pursuers growing closer.

And there was nothing she could do as the first image blasted into her head, throwing her to her knees. She didn’t even feel the icy wetness soak through her clothes.

The pain was too blinding, an electric, white-hot heat that blazed around her head as she saw green.

Grass.

And on the grass, four stone circles. Like a small druid circle. Like standing stones.

Then a face appeared through that image. A woman. A face she’d seen before but not since her death.

And then Elijah.

And Rose.

And herself.

The image was obliterated as another slammed into her skull. A pendant. A jade pendant shaped