Page 6 of Warmongers and Wands
Chapter 4
Bronwyn
Iopened my eyes, feeling the wind and rain lashing at my face. Blinking a few times, my eyes adjusted and I realized even through the storm, I could see my shattered windshield, the tree branches and leaves protruding through into the cab of my truck. The airbag sat like a deflated balloon against my bent steering wheel, splotched with something that I was pretty sure was blood. My seatbelt was on, and when I tentatively went to unhook it, I found the buckle was stuck.
Everything hurt—hurt so much that trying to unhook my seatbelt had sent a stab of pain through my chest so sharp that I’d nearly passed out.
I was wet, and I wasn’t sure how much of that was rain and how much was blood. Each breath was agony. The front of the truck had smashed in, the dash pressing against my lower half. I was afraid to move my legs—afraid that the sharp ache in my calf would escalate into something worse. Were there splintered bones poking through flesh? Limbs in the back seat? Guts spilled out through a hole in my abdomen? Every horror movie I’d ever seen was playing through my mind right now and all I could do was take slow careful breaths and try not to panic.
This tough welder girl was scared. A fact which would surprise anyone except my sisters who knew that under the brawn and cheeky swagger was a total wimp who could be brought to her knees by a papercut or a wasp sting. This? I didn’t want to know. I just wanted to close my eyes and wake up when it was all over and I was in one piece again.
But that wasn’t going to happen. My truck was most likely down in some ravine. The werewolves wouldn’t think to come look for me. My family wouldn’t notice my absence for a few days. I’d need to gather some courage and assess my physical condition, then decide how the heck I was going to get out of here and somewhere I could call for help.
I tried again to unhook my seatbelt, whimpering in pain as I shifted to the side. It was truly jammed. And worse, it had become clear to me that my legs were not only trapped under the twisted dash, but one was definitely broken. Sitting back, I realized that even if I could get the seatbelt free, I’d have to deal with the hunk of metal trapping my legs. Then if some fricken miracle occurred and I freed my legs, I’d be facing an agonizing one-legged hop out of the woods and up the side of the mountain.
Yeah. No.
I looked for my purse which was nowhere to be found. Who knows where it had ended up as my truck had rolled down the hill. The contents were probably spilled all over the cab, and maybe even across the mountainside. Yep, I was pretty sure that was a lipstick down on the passenger-side floor.
Lipstick. Don’t judge me. I sometimes wear lipstick, although in reality it’s more like tinted Chapstick. When you work outside all day, lips get chapped.
Okay. Focus. I couldn’t sit here cold and wet in my smashed truck with injuries for days, praying that someone would manage to notice I was missing and track me down. I felt around, hoping that maybe some of my purse contents had landed near me and nearly cried from relief when I realized the multitool in my driver’s door pocket had somehow not been flung around the cab when I’d crashed. With shaking hands, I pulled it out and began sawing at the seatbelt.
Those suckers were tougher than I’d ever imagined, but using the little saw on the multitool, I managed to disengage myself from the belt. Bruises. Cuts. I was pretty sure I had a cracked or bruised rib or three. My leg… I tried to pull free from the twisted dash and nearly vomited in pain.
Guess I was back to waiting a couple of days for someone to rescue me. Maybe once daylight hit I’d be able to figure a way to get my legs free. Unscrew the dash with the multitool or something like that. Yeah. That was totally plausible. And in the meantime, I’d just freeze to death in the chill of the night, wet and injured in a broken truck.
I blinked back my tears, gripped the multitool tight and closed my eyes, hoping when I opened them, all this would have been a bad dream.
Instead I opened them to the sound of something against the door. Before I had a chance to ready my multitool for defense, the truck rocked from side to side. I gasped in pain, everything going momentarily black. When I could see again, I heard the squeal of twisting metal and turned to see the driver’s side door to my truck being torn off the hinges.
I’ll admit to being momentarily annoyed that someone was tearing the door off my truck, but I quickly remembered that was the least of my worries. The truck was most likely totaled as well as my little trailer with my forge and all my tools. I was injured and trapped. Someone ripping the door off my truck meant I wasn’t down in this ravine alone. Had the paramedics found me? I blinked and tried to focus, expecting my sister Ophelia’s face to appear in the spot where my driver’s side door had once been.
A face did appear but it wasn’t Ophelia’s, or anyone else I knew from Accident. This was a man with a tangle of dark wavy hair, a tanned face with a thick black beard, and light brown eyes under dark brows. There was a strange light filtering through the trees behind him that haloed his head, bringing an otherworldly feel to what had become a really shitty day.
Who the hell was this guy? I knew everyone in Accident and I’d never seen this man before. Was I dead? If so, I’d expected to meet a geriatric Saint Peter at some pearly gates in the clouds, not be yanked from the wreckage of my truck by this Jason Momoa look-alike.
Mmmm. Jason Momoa. Nowthatwould be heaven.
The man stared down at me, astonished, as if he’d never seen a woman in a wrecked car before. Guess that meant he wasn’t a paramedic. Or Saint Peter. He reached a hand toward me, swiping a finger along my cheek. It was red when he pulled it away. Rubbing the bloodied finger against his thumb, he frowned.
This whole thing had taken a surreal turn—as if things could get any more surreal than the brakes going out in my truck during a thunderstorm, getting caught in a rockslide, and being hurtled down a mountain.
He looked up from his fingers, his eyes meeting mine. “You came back.”
His voice was deep and raspy, just as mesmerizing as his appearance.
“You came back for me,” he repeated. Then, before I could reply that I had no idea who he was, the man reached in and pulled me from the truck.
Actually, it wasn’t that easy. He went to wrap an arm around my waist and I screamed. The seatbelt was a dangling, sawed-in-half strap. The air bag was a chalky deflated mess on the steering wheel. Something in my chest had stabbed me like a knife when he’d touched me, and my legs were still pinned under the mangled dashboard.
With a mumbled apology, the man grasped the steering wheel and yanked it from the car. Then he took the bottom part of the dash with both hands and twisted it upward. I inhaled sharply, feeling the pressure leave my legs, only to be replaced by agonizing pain.
“You the Incredible Hulk or something?” I gasped. “Werewolf? Troll with glamour? Elephant shifter?”
He didn’t reply; instead, he ran a hand over my legs, carefully easing my hips around. One hand came under my ass, the other across my shoulders.
This was going to hurt.
