Page 143 of Blood & Throttle
I don’t answer. I can’t. Because the final stretch is coming hard and Sin still isn’t fucking awake. I grit my teeth and hit the comms, voice tight.
“Ghost, get Maggie in the pits. Full kit, now.” My voice wavers, just once. I shove it down. “She’s not—she’s not responding. We’re coming in hot. Be ready.”
“Copy,” Ghost says. “She’s already on her way.”
The track dives into a chaos tunnel, spinning lights and curved walls covered in blinking advertisements and dancing holograms that glitch from strippers to skulls to flames. The road pulses like a heartbeat on drugs. Every color burns.
The final stretch is coming fast, and Sin’s still out cold against my back.
“Another racer’s closing on your six,” Ghost warns. “Fast. Heavy engine. Sounds like—”
“Jace,” I growl.
He shoots up alongside us from the right, bike humming like a fucking predator.
He tilts his head like he’s already celebrating, then yanks a modified short blade from his harness and aims it toward Sin.
My blood fucking boils.
Before he can swing, a sharp blue light fires down from the air. One of Ghost’s drone-mounted EMP bolts smashes into the back of Jace’s bike, shorting his throttle and sending a jolt up his arm. His bike jerks violently, swerving across the line of fire.
He recovers. Barely. But he doesn’t crash, just falls behind.
“Keep going,” Luca says. “Three riders still on your tail. One went down two clicks back. We’re almost clear.”
I snarl and drop a gear. The finish line is burning up ahead—an arch of molten neon, shaking in the heat, collapsing in on itself like the fucking gods are done with this game.
“Hang on, Little Stray,” I whisper. “Just a little further.”
Sin groans against my back, barely conscious but a sign of life that lessens the tightness in my chest. Her fingers twitch at my sides.
I push the throttle to its limit.
We launch again, the grappler mod snapping out from beneath the exhaust and hooking the edge of a crumbling signpost. The swing carries us wide, fast, sparks raining down like a meteor storm while the track behind us gives out. Racers drop like flies. Screams cut off mid-air. The Verge eats them alive.
We land hard, tires screeching, shocks groaning, and my grip locked so tight I’m surprised the bars don’t snap in half but we cross the line.
The pit detonates around us—sirens, floodlights, drones shrieking overhead. Heat from the blown-out track ripples through the air, stinging my skin even through the leathers.Neon flames curl along a ruptured fuel line in the distance. Everything’s glowing. Screaming. Alive.
Only six bikes make it through.
Six.
Jace is one of them.
He skids to a stop twenty feet away, that shiny new Syndicate bike still humming under him like a goddamn trophy. His helmet’s off, hair slicked back, blood on his jaw, and a smirk carved into his face like he fucking won something.
His eyes go straight to her.
Sin.
Still strapped to me, barely conscious, head lolling, and body too damn still.
My hand twitches toward the blade on my hip. My whole body wants to move, to end him. Now. Fast. Bloody. Final.
But not yet.
Not fucking yet.
