Page 30 of Fanged Secrets
We took it too far.Itook it too far. What the fuck else was there to say about it?
With no grace or tact to speak of, I slammed on the brakes, nearly rear-ending the car in front of mine when it rolled to a stop. Leaning back in the seat, I sucked in a deep, rattling breath, impatiently eyeing the red eye of the traffic light two cars down. My thoughts were a tangled mess as I gripped the steering wheel, my knuckles white from the tension.
I had demanded, multiple times on the short trip from the apartment to my car, that Amara stay behind for this mission. Partially because I needed to clear my head and get as far away from the source of my confusion as possible, and partially because if these shifters did want to kill Amara, I didn’t want to deliver her straight to them. Unfortunately, Amara was relentless. Which seemed to be a common trait among my associates.
I glanced sideways at her, knees curled up where she slouched in the passenger seat. She clutched her cell phone tightly, keeping an eye on the tracker's location. Small rose and red hickeys bloomed under the collar of her shirt, partially hidden between her curls. Our brief, heated encounter replayed in my mind, making me shift uncomfortably in my seat. When Amara glanced up and met my gaze, I quickly looked back at the road.
My thoughts tumbled over each other, the ravenous part of me craving more of the woman beside me and the other part rearing to run the other way. She had said my name, murmured it against my mouth while my fingers explored her. I don’t think she even realized she’d done it, let alone what it had done to me.
This impractical mission was a distraction, the only way to keep my fracturing mind from breaking apart completely. But still, a visceral fear gnawed at me. No good could come from what we had done. No good could come from anyone getting as close as she had.
In the heat of the moment, holding her, tangling my body with hers had felt like the easiest thing in the world. For a fleeting moment I had felt at ease – complete in every sense of the word. But still, that small voice whispered caution, prophesied disaster.
My father had once said there was a darkness inside me, a black hole that swallowed everything that got too close. It was there behind my eyes, he said, greedy for everything in my line of sight. Drawing in everything that shone, crushing it to nothingness. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was going to lose Amara to my shadows too.
We drove for hours, leaving the city far behind us. Amara directed me as best she could, pointing and flailing when I took a wrong turn and had to reverse.
“You know what!?” I slammed a fist on the steering wheel after the fifth wrong turn, rounding on Amara who knocked her fist toher forehead. I knew the meaning behind that gesture now and it irked me more. “This would be a lot easier if you would justgive me the goddamn phone!”
But Amara only shook her head, vehemently pointing over her shoulder at the turnoff I had just missed. I had to calmly remind myself that we were too deep into the countryside to kick her out of my car now.
The sky overhead was a dirty white, streaked with angry gray clouds like charcoal on rough paper. It cast a dull light over the dreary, empty fields we passed. The landscape felt desolate, an unsettling calm before the storm. Eventually, Amara signaled for me to halt and I hit the brakes, the car rolling to a stop on the side of the empty road.
To my left, a molding wooden fence stretched out in both directions and beyond it, nestled behind a graying field of corn, stood a warehouse. The dark structure looked empty and dilapidated. I peered at it over the steering wheel, leaning my elbows on the dashboard.
“Are you sure this is where we’re meant to be?” I glanced at Amara, my tone skeptical. “The place looks deserted.”
Amara furrowed her brow, focusing on my lips, and I repeated the question. She looked out of the window at the rolling fields of corn, then glanced down at her phone and nodded. She held up the screen so I could see the pin drop hovering right over the location of the warehouse.
I rolled down the window and scanned the place again, my eyes narrowing. For a few long minutes, nothing moved, and I began to wonder if this too could have been some kind of setup. But then…
“There.” I caught a slight movement near the building, a shock of white hair disappearing through the doors. “It’s her.”
Amara scrambled over to my side, crawling over my knees to see the white-haired woman. I leaned back in my seat, thesudden nearness of her making my heart stutter, a debilitatingwantswelling in my chest at the scent of her hair. I cleared my throat, turned my head to the side, and kept dead still until she returned to her seat.
When my thundering heartbeat finally slowed I straightened up, jerking the car into gear.
“We need to get out of here,” I said firmly, keeping my eyes trained on the imposing dark structure. “We’ve confirmed her whereabouts, there’s no need to hang around and catch her attention.”
As the words left my mouth, I spotted more white-haired figures stirring inside the building. My eyes tracked ten, twelve, fifteen. The realization hit me like a punch to the gut – there were far more of them than we’d thought. I had to tell Jordan, she would send in a proper team to investigate. And above all else, I had to keep them from Amara.
Amara herself tried to protest, urging me to let her get a closer look. But I had already started up the car and was dedicated to ignoring her.
But before I could pull back onto the road the world tilted violently.
In an instant, we were airborne as something big and heavy rammed into the side of the vehicle. The screeching of metal needled my ears and shattered glass flew through the air like tiny transparent daggers.
The car was tipped on its side, and I was thrown headlong toward Amara. I instinctively put my hands out, falling into a crouch, barely preventing myself from landing on top of her. I looked down in a panic, blood rushing in my ears as her wide, dazed eyes met mine. Her fingers trembled as she lifted a hand, touching the trickle of blood that oozed from a cut on her forehead.
Her eyes fluttered momentarily and she slumped backward against the crumpled passenger door.
“Shit, shit, shit!” I swore out loud, my shaky hands betraying me as I checked her pulse. Relief washed over me when I caught the steady beat of her heart, but the urgency of our situation had my adrenalin spiking all over again. Glancing out of the shattered windscreen, I saw movement. Someone – something, was coming.
Without a second thought, I hauled myself through the mangled windscreen. Whoever was out there, I had to dispatch them quickly. I had to hope they wouldn’t notice Amara slumped over inside the battered car. Tearing my jacket on jutting glass, I scrambled to my feet to meet the attacker head-on.
The man before me was not a man at all. His hair was a stark, snowy white. Towering over me, his muscular frame was covered in scales that shimmered with a metallic sheen, tapering into a long, sinuous tail.
His face was a grotesque mix of monstrous features: a wide, flattened nose, a mouth full of shaggy needle-like teeth, and two long, curved horns that jutted out from his forehead, arching back over his head. Oleaginous eyes black like an oil spill.
