Jenna Black - Dark Descendant

“Damn it,” I muttered under my breath. This was so not my type of gig.

I sat there for a good ten minutes, debating what to do between repeated attempts to get Emmitt on the phone. The rain had turned to sleet, and icicles were forming on the gate. The branches of the trees beside the road hung low, weighted down by a thin coating of ice. There was no sound except the steady ping of the sleet bouncing off the windshield and the roof of my car.

Finally, I blew out a deep breath and put the car in drive. I couldn’t sit idling forever. My choices were to turn around and go home, or drive through the gate and make sure everything was okay. Doing so was technically trespassing, but the gate was hanging open like an invitation. Emmitt had almost certainly gone in without me, and if he had, his failure to answer the phone was a bad sign.

“Screw it,” I decided, and maneuvered the car carefully down the driveway, my tires struggling to find a grip on the ice-slicked asphalt.

I gave the ice the respect it deserved, driving slowly and trying not to make any sudden moves. Even so, my car slipped and slid, and I gripped the steering wheel tightly as I struggled to keep control. The damn driveway meandered through trees too evenly spaced to be natural growth. I wished whoever had done the landscaping had kept the trees farther back from the road. There wasn’t a hell of a lot of room for error if I lost control of the car. Streetlights would have been a nice touch, too.

My nerves were taut, and I had to remind myself to breathe every once in a while. Driving in snow I can handle, but the sleet was a nightmare. I worked my way around yet another curve in the driveway, one that seemed specifically designed to send cars careening into the trees. I let out a sigh when the driveway finally straightened out, the lights of the house itself just visible in the distance. Anxious to find Emmitt and get out of there, I gave the car a little more gas than was strictly wise.

My only warning was a glimpse of movement in the trees off to my right. Then, as if he’d appeared literally out of nowhere, a figure stood in the middle of the road, barely two yards from my car.

With a shriek of alarm, I instinctively slammed on the brakes. If I’d had half a second to think about it, I’d have remembered that slamming brakes on an icy road was a bad idea. The wheels locked up, and the car skidded forward, the back slewing to one side.

The figure in the road made no attempt to get out of the way. At the last moment, he raised his head, and I recognized Emmitt’s face in the glare of the headlights. His eyes met mine, and I’ll never forget the small smile that curved his lips. Then the car slammed into him with a sickening wet thunk.

I screamed again, my car now spinning like a top as the airbag exploded out toward my face. The impact slammed my head back against the headrest. Though I tried to turn the wheel into the skid, I was so disoriented, I didn’t know which way that was.

Out of the side window, I saw a tree trunk heading my way. The side of the car crunched with the impact, safety glass shattering and peppering my face as I held up my hand to protect my eyes. The car door crumpled under the pressure, and something sharp and hard stabbed into my side, the pain blinding. Even as my head snapped to one side, the car caromed into another tree. Something struck the other side of my head, and everything went black.

When I came to, the engine was off and the air bag had deflated. My whole body hurt, and with the windows all broken, frigid air and sleet had frozen me to the marrow. With a groan, I looked down at myself to assess my injuries. My vision swam and my stomach lurched when I saw the huge gash in my side. Blood soaked my sweater and the top of my pants and coated the crumpled door.

My brain was working in slow motion, my head throbbing. I suspected I had a concussion in addition to my other injuries. Shivering, sick, and scared, I forced my nearly frozen fingers to release my seat belt. I didn’t need a medical degree to know I needed help, but when I reached for my cell phone, I found it hadn’t survived the crash.

The door was far too badly damaged to open, so I had to drag myself out the broken window. It hurt so much that I wondered if I wouldn’t be better off just keeping still. Surely the people in the house had heard the accident. Someone would come to check it out, and then they could call an ambulance for me.

By the time this brilliant thought occurred to me, I was more than halfway out the window, and gravity took the decision out of my hands. I came close to blacking out when I hit the ground, but I fought for consciousness. I couldn’t be sure anyone in the house heard the accident, and if I didn’t find shelter soon, the sleet and cold would finish me off even if I didn’t bleed to death.

I staggered to my feet, swallowing a cry of pain. Clutching my side, hoping I wasn’t killing myself by making the wound bleed faster, I limped and stumbled back to the road.

Without the headlights, the dark was thick and oppressive, but the ambient light was just enough to illuminate Emmitt’s body. He lay by the far side of the road, where he must have been tossed by the impact. He wasn’t moving, and the angle of his neck was all wrong, but I had to check on him, just in case I was wrong and he was still alive.

My feet slid out from under me the moment they hit the icy road, and I slipped and slid the rest of the way on my hands and knees, leaving a trail of blood. In the distance, I could see three small yellow lights bobbing up and down from the direction of the house. Flashlights, I decided with relief. Good. Someone in the house had heard the accident, and help was on the way. I’d be a dead woman otherwise, because I didn’t think I’d be able to make it to the house on my own before I collapsed and the elements had their way with me.

I came to a stop beside Emmitt’s body and let out a sob at what I saw. His neck was obviously broken, his eyes wide and staring. The sob hurt like hell, but once I’d let go of one, I couldn’t restrain the rest.

I was on my knees, clutching my side, which oozed more blood, and crying uncontrollably when the beam of a flashlight hit me square in the face. The light sent a stabbing pain through my head that almost made me vomit. My vision still blurred with tears, I held up one bloody hand to shield my eyes from the flashlight’s glare. There were three flashlights, though only one was focused on me. The other two illuminated Emmitt’s ruined body.

“Aw, shit,” said a man’s voice softly.

One of the men behind the flashlights knelt beside Emmitt. I recognized Blake Porter, one of the supposed cultists I’d been doing such a fabulous job of investigating. He was the quintessential pretty boy, though he didn’t look so pretty now with his blond hair plastered to his scalp and the look of raw sorrow on his beautiful face. He brushed his hand gently over Emmitt’s face.

“Keep your fucking hands off him!” one of the other two growled, the one who insisted on shining his light right in my eyes. He took a menacing step in Blake’s direction.

Blake looked up at the speaker blandly. “I was just closing his eyes.” He sat back on his heels and held his hands innocently to his sides.

My head was still spinning from a combination of concussion, shock, and blood loss, but everything around me had taken on a surreal quality that had nothing to do with my injuries. These men weren’t acting at all like first responders to an accident. There was no sense of urgency or shock. No one had spoken to me, asked if I was all right. And the man who’d ordered Blake to keep his hands to himself had sounded distinctly protective. But why would the cultists— any of the cultists—feel protective of the man who’d been trying to lure one of their members away? Did they even know who he was?