good.
My attacker leaned into the trunk, and I got a good look at his face for the first time. He was no one I knew, and I didn’t see any sign of a glyph anywhere on him. I hoped that meant he was just some random human thug who’d seen a delicate-looking woman alone in a darkened parking lot and decided to take advantage of the situation. If that was the case, I might be able to surprise him with my supernatural healing ability and make my escape.
The possibility that he might not be some random human, that he might have been after me specifically, was not something I cared to contemplate.
I was in no shape to make a flashy getaway from the car in my current condition, and I decided my best chance of escape—at least while my head was still reeling from what I was now sure was a concussion—was to attract attention and get help. I drew in breath to scream, but even that turned out to be more than my body could handle, as the ribs in my back sent a breath-stealing blast of pain through me. Maybe I had some broken ribs to go with the concussion.
My midsection hurt so much I barely even felt it when my attacker punched me and I blacked out again.
When next I woke up, my situation had not improved. My head felt even more woozy, and the car felt like it was pitching and bucking beneath me. I was lying on my stomach, my hands bound behind my back. I heard the distinctive ripping sound of duct tape, and felt something being wound around my ankles. I tried to voice a protest, but there was duct tape over my mouth, too. I swallowed a few times in rapid succession. This would be a really bad time to throw up, no matter how bad the nausea was.
Once again, my struggles served only to let my captor know I was awake.
“Damn, you are one tough bitch,” I heard him mutter.
He grabbed me by the hair and slammed my head down against the floor of the trunk. If I hadn’t already been hurt, I don’t know if the impact of my head against the carpet would have done much, but as it was, it stunned me into semiconsciousness.
In the last few moments of light before the trunk slammed shut, I caught sight of something that struck terror into my heart: lying next to me, on the floor of the trunk beside the roll of duct tape my attacker had thrown in when he was finished with it, was a shovel.
SIXTEEN
I closed my eyes in the darkness of the trunk and tried not to panic. Panic would steal my ability to think rationally even better than the aftereffects of the concussion would.
It could be just a coincidence that there was a shovel in the trunk with me. Maybe my captor was a gardener, or a handyman or something. It didn’t mean he was planning to bury me alive.
Or bury me after killing me, which was just as bad.
My attempts to comfort myself didn’t do a whole lot of good, and fear stole my breath. Ever since I’d first heard about what Konstantin had done to Emma, chaining her at the bottom of a lake so that she would revive and die over and over again for all eternity, facing a similar fate had become my worst nightmare. Immortality might have its perks, but making a fate like that possible was one hell of an awful drawback.
Until I had joined the fold, Anderson had been searching for Emma for ten years, unable to locate and rescue her without a descendant of Artemis to help in the hunt. And if my attacker buried me, Anderson wouldn’t have a descendant of Artemis to help him find me.
Which meant that no matter what it took, I had to make sure I didn’t find myself planted in the ground.
I felt the vibration through my body as my captor started the car, then the lurch as he pulled out of the parking space and a bump when he pulled out of the lot. I didn’t know where he was taking me, but I hoped it was a long way away. The more time I had to recover and plan, the better the chances I would be able to get myself out of this nightmare.
At least, that’s what I tried to tell myself to keep the panic under control.
I tried