Pointed it at the male’s face.
And pulled the trigger.
The bullet went right through the forehead, and the body jerked, arms and legs flopping, mouth falling open, eyes wide and instantly sightless. He let the guard fall to the ground and jumped over the hood. For a split second, he couldn’t go any farther. The male he’d bitten had half a face, the bone structure eaten away under where his fangs had penetrated, the roots of the teeth exposed, the nose nothing but a pair of black holes. One eye was gone entirely, and the disintegration was spreading.
Kane turned back to the cabin and thought of the wolven.
“I won’t be gone long,” he called out to Nadya. “Stay where you are!”
“Kane?” There was a pause. “Kane!”
“No time, stay where you are!”
Jumping behind the wheel, he remembered what he’d seen the others do. He planted his foot on something down on the floor—the engine roared. That wasn’t right. He punched his foot into the other pedal. There was nothing. Locating the shifting rod, which was in the center between the seats, he found it frozen in place—until he punched at the pedals again. As the gear wand became freed, he wrenched it all the way back.
The car went forward.
Not what he wanted, but he made it work. Yanking the wheel around until it was tight to the left, he herky-jerked the car in a circle, heaving, ho’ing. Punching at the pedals. Lurching.
When he had a clear shot out the lane to the road, he ran over the driver as he shoved his boot into what made the car go. Skidding, slipping, drifting from side to side, he mostly kept on the twin paths that had been worn into the ground, and when he got to the paved double lanes they’d been on, he made a turn that was as close to ninety degrees as he could make it.
The glow in the east was gathering real momentum now, and he had to hold his arm up over his face to keep his eyes even partially open. As another vehicle came toward him, a horn sounded, loud as the kind that he remembered being on steam trains. His instinct was to wrench the wheel to the right, but he knew that he’d end up deep in the bushes andthe trees—and he was still too close to the hunter’s cabin to ditch the vehicle. He held on tight and kept straight, inching over to make room, catching a quick glance at the furious human as they passed.
Glancing up to the little mirror mounted on the front window, he saw the other vehicle’s red lights keep going, that blaring noise getting cut off.
He kept going, too.
The burn of the sun’s first rays on his face and upper body made him remember being in the clinic’s bed, and the memories of Nadya made him focus through the pain. As he continued to surmount the road, as miles went beneath the wheels, he controlled things better, managing the speed and the steering with greater competence. Signs appeared off to the side, but he couldn’t read them because his bloodline had thought that the languages of humans were beneath his kind. They’d always haddoggenfor English translations.
As the sun’s rise grew even more relentless, his eyes began watering such that he could barely see, and wiping them repeatedly didn’t help. The only good news was that the guards would be under the same conditions he was.
And then he simply couldn’t go any farther.
Looking to either side of the road, he saw nothing but tree line, no glowing lights, no drives into the forested acreage. He extended his right foot as far as it could go, and the engine responded as he demanded, his speed increasing. As he rounded a bend and came to a straightaway, he closed his eyes, took a deep breath—
And spun the wheel hard right.
At the very moment the vehicle shot off the road, he dematerialized out of the interior, sending himself off in a scatter, beelining for the hunting cabin. With every foot of distance he covered in the ether, his strength got sucked away by the arriving day—and he had a thought that he had waited until too late.
Except then he knew he was in the right place, his sense of direction undiminished by the sunlight.
Re-forming with momentum, he came back into his physical body in a run. As he barreled forward, racing in between the two bodies on the ground that were already smoking from the sun, he took a leap at the hunting cabin’s open door, going parallel to the ground with his arms outstretched. He meant to land in a roll, but he was too busy looking to the hearth, to the far corner.
She wasn’t there—
With a thunderous bang, he landed facedown, and there was no skidding because the floorboards were rough. Cursing, he didn’t care as the breath was kicked out of his lungs and one of his hips sang with pain.
Twisting on his side, he looked around.
Nadya was gone.
Back when that wolven had been driving away from the prison camp like a bat out of hell, Apex had had to dematerialize off the roof of that car. Strong as he was, he hadn’t been able to hold on anymore, and when the wind shear had peeled him free of the panels, he’d let himself go. For a moment, he’d just hung in midair, the rushing wind keeping him aloft, his eyes trained on the infinite sky above the earth.
Too bad that coast couldn’t last.
And the pursuing car full of guards was going to be the worst possible landing pad.
Closing his lids, he dematerialized just as he felt a bullet nick the side of his leg. The strike wasn’t enough to slow him down, but he didn’t have a destination.