Jess Haines - Enslaved By the Others

A sense of foreboding crawled over my skin, colder than the hint of fresh snow on the wind.

Once I was outside with enough room for her to squeeze past, the lady grabbed my arm, hauling me to her car at a faster clip than I was ready for. Dustin followed us out, still on his phone. Though the pain and dizziness made it hard to focus on anything other than putting one foot in front of the other, I scanned the tree line at the edge of the parking lot, then stiffened. If she hadn’t been dragging me along, I might very well have given up then and there.

Max was watching us, hands pocketed, head lowered, only the embers of red glowing in the depths of his eyes giving him away. That, and the brutal wrenching in my psyche the moment our eyes met as he fought to tear my control away from me and force me to come to him.

Away from the lights. Witnesses. The security cameras.

Panting, I tore my gaze off him, sudden warmth oozing down my lips and chin. Blood gushing from my nose. “Hurry,” I begged, though I was the slow one here.

Her fingers tightened on my arm, but other than that she gave no sign she heard me. Once we reached her pickup truck, she practically threw me inside, somehow shoving me up to reach the cab in next to no time.

Hands shaking, I settled myself in the huge leather seat. She raced around the other side, hopping in. When I looked up, Max was standing on the edge of the pools of light cast by the headlights, his eyes reflecting a phosphorescent sheen like a cat’s. There was some kind of dark, sleek sedan parked under the trees on the side of the road, not visible from the front door of the store. No wonder I hadn’t known he was there. Probably laying in wait to ambush or follow me somewhere without any security cameras.

“Fucker moves fast,” my new friend said, her tone conversational as she started up the diesel engine with a roar and shoved the monster into gear. Blessed heat blasted from the vents, briefly fogging the windows. “Buckle up. There are napkins in the dash and, I think, a bottle of water under the seat if you want to clean up.”

I gasped as I was thrown back, the tires squealing on the pavement as she hurled us straight at the vampire. One hand on the dash to brace myself, I squeezed my eyes shut, waiting for the inevitable collision—but it never came. Squinting one eye open, I looked ahead, but there was nothing but empty road before us. Twisting around to look behind us, I saw the convenience store fading fast in the distance, though one ... two ... four pairs of headlights flicked on and began to follow us.

Max was still visible, a darker shadow against the tree line. I pressed a hand to the glass, mouth going slack with horror as he held his arm out to the kid, who was moving away from the lights and cameras and safety of the store to the vampire’s side. Dustin was making straight for the deeper shadows, where a sure, ugly death waited for him, all because he had done me a small kindness.

“Stop! Stop, we have to go back!”

She shot me a look. “We’ve got a tail, and you just narrowly escaped a nasty fate. I am no match for that thing and, in your state, neither are you.”

“You don’t understand! Dustin! He’s going to kill Dustin!”

“And you, too, if we go back there. Save your strength. You’re going to need it.”

I stayed plastered to the window, staring back. I couldn’t see anything else. The wood and shadows swallowed up man and beast, and soon even the store was lost to the night.

My vision blurred, tears stinging my eyes as I stared back, willing for some sign that Max was after me and not that poor kid. Though the vampire had severed the mental contact between us, cutting me off from feeling what he wanted, I was sure he had done it on purpose. He must have wanted me to sit and stew and feel guilty for leading him right to someone whose only crime had been to offer me temporary shelter.

It was working.

“Kumiho.”

I wasn’t sure I heard her right, but I was too busy staring back the way we had come and feeling like a Grade A, gold-plated turd to ask her to repeat herself.

“I could be wrong, but I thought the polite thing to say when someone introduces herself is, ‘Nice to meet you, and by the way, thanks for saving my ass.’”

A faint sound somewhere between a laugh and a sob rattled in my throat. I turned away from the window, pressing my fingers to my eyes to keep the tears in. If I let them spill now, they’d never stop. “I’m sorry. Kuh ... Kim . . .”

“Kumiho. Or Soo-Jin, if you prefer.” She patted my shoulder. “Don’t worry about it. I shouldn’t be giving you a hard time, but old habits die hard. Listen, I’m sure all you want to do is sleep for a week, but as soon as I put some distance between us and that tail we’re going to have to stop somewhere so I can dig the tracking chip out of you. Do you think you can handle it without any meds? I don’t have anything to give you for the pain and Alec said the only flight he could get for the magi won’t arrive until tomorrow night.”

Numb, I dropped my hand and looked at her, blinking owlishly like that might help her words sink in better.

Her gaze flicked over to me, then back to the road. Her lips thinned. “Sorry, Shiarra. I really am. But I can’t take you to a safe house until the chip is out, and I don’t have the skills of a healer.” She flashed me a smile full of sharp little teeth, prompting a shudder out of me. “I’ve always been much better at removing things than fixing them.”

From the hands of one monster and into another. What the hell was she, and why was Royce trusting her with my life?

After my time spent with Clyde Seabreeze in California, I couldn’t help but question Royce’s judgment and taste in allies.

“Do whatever you have to,” I said.

“I’ll do what I can. We’ll put a few miles behind us, then I’ll take care of it.”

“Dig it out of me, you mean?”

She nodded, gaze focused on the road stretched out before us. I swallowed back rising bile and looked ahead, too. I wondered how she knew about the chip. If she knew where it was on my body. Had she worked for Max at some point? Or was she an escapee, like me?

Kumiho, or Soo-Jin, or whatever her name was, did a great job of shaking Max’s cronies following in our wake, and giving me a raging case of carsickness. Once we were about a mile from the convenience store, she yanked the steering wheel to one side.

I almost peed myself, certain we were going into a roll.

Instead, she sent us in a turning slide that put us in the ditch at the side of the road. The tires of the huge truck bit into the snow and mulch, sending us rocketing into the trees. The cars following us, on the other hand, slid a good distance as they attempted to stop, two of them crashing into each other. The other two managed to make the turn, but one skidded into a tree when the driver drifted off of our tracks, making an accordion out of the driver’s side. The last managed to stay on the path we made, following us into the woods.

Branches slapped against the doors and my hip flared with agonizing regularity as we bumped and jolted over unseen obstacles in the dark, hidden beneath the blanket of snow. The regular thumps and screeching of branches were punctuated by the occasional whump of snow piles being dumped on us from above.

Kumiho wasn’t deterred and showed no visible signs of alarm as she navigated around the bigger trees. I clung to the oh-shit handle with both hands and stared at her in a mix of shock and a weird sense of unreality as she sang along to the song blasting out of the radio, looking for all the world like she was having a great time. I didn’t recognize the song, and it took a few minutes for it to sink in that the lyrics were in another language.