by V M Black
Because the world was full of evil people who wanted a pet werewolf of their own, and they weren’t above any means to make it happen. Levi had seen the results of such ambitions too many times—his own body bore the scars of it. The young and, most especially, those in whom the werewolf blood didn’t breed true were so often made the victims of unscrupulous aethers in their pursuit of control.
Especially vampires.
No, Levi had no interest in adding his own pack to the clan. As long as he was alone, no one could ever have a hold over him. That meant that the attraction that he felt for this woman—this amazing, marvelous woman, who was as cool under pressure as her body was hot—was just that, attraction, and nothing more.
But he didn’t say any of that.
Instead, he said, “They’re going to be following.”
“The vampire, too?” Harper asked, a crease forming between her eyebrows. “I hit him pretty hard.”
“Yeah, definitely the vampire,” he said.
“So they have that magical insta-healing, too.”
He laughed. “Theirs is way better than mine. Speaking of which, I’ve still got some issues to deal with from that last encounter.”
The bullet at the barn had been a through-and-through, but the one he’d shot at the lock had fragmented, four separate pieces hitting his chest and legs.
“You might want to look away,” he added, fishing in his pants for his knife.
Harper’s gaze turned curious as she saw it. “What are you—” She cut off abruptly as he laid the blade against his naked flesh.
“Got some bits of lead in me that need out,” Levi said. Jaw set, he cut the skin to pop them out, one after another, then picked out the two tiny fragments of laminated glass that had managed to penetrate his skin.
“Uh. That doesn’t look comfortable,” Harper said. She was watching with a frown on her plump lips.
He cleaned the blade on his t-shirt and flipped it closed. “Ever dug a splinter out of your skin? It’s like that, but worse.”
“So what do we do now?” she asked. “Where do we go?”
“Doesn’t matter. We just need to stay out of reach of those guys long enough to get the SD card’s contents uploaded.” He blinked, suddenly realizing that they weren’t driving down the same highway as before. Instead, they were on a narrow, winding road, with a center stripe but no shoulder and trees pressing close on each side. “Where are we, anyway?”
“Some of my relatives have property around here. My great-grandparents had a farm and some woods backing up to Juniata River, and the cousins sold the farm but kept the woods for hunting and fishing and stuff. They’ve been building a cabin out there for, oh, probably fifteen years now, but only the trailer’s got plumbing and stuff. There won’t be anyone out there this time of year. I figure we could hide out there while you got the data uploaded or whatever.”
He blinked at her. She was full of surprises.
“That’s perfect.”
“I’m sorry,” she said then. “Back there, I mean, going out the wrong door. You knew the gates were locked, right? You were trying to tell me not to go in. I didn’t understand.”
“What’s past is past,” Levi said, dragging on his pants. “We got out of there alive, which probably wouldn’t have happened if we’d tried the front door.”
“Still, I didn’t know what you meant,” she said. “Is there some kind of wolf sign language? Morse code? Psychic communication? Something?”
He laughed. “Yeah, that’d make things a whole lot easier. Body language is all you get, babycakes.”
“Don’t call me that,” she said absently, frowning as she opened her value meal bag and pulled the hamburger out. “Your repair bill is really mounting, I’ll have you know.”
“What, are you going to hold me responsible for the hood, too?” he demanded. “I wasn’t the one who ran over a vampire.”
“I’m holding you responsible for absolutely everything that happens to Baby since you hijacked my car,” she said.
“That doesn’t quite seem fair. What if you hit a tree? And anyway, you actually call your car Baby?”
“Still your fault,” she said. “And yes, I do.”
“At this rate, I should just buy you another one,” he grumbled, pulling the shirt, now marked with smears of his blood, over his head.
“That’s not funny.” She glared at him.
He snorted and pulled on his boots, then grabbed her purse from the floor, where it had landed on top of his value meals.
“What are you doing with my purse?” she asked around a mouthful of hamburger.
“The reader,” he reminded her. “You know, the whole reason we went in there?”
“You can use it?” she asked.
He pulled out his Android phone. “Sure can.”
He fished out the reader and the pouch with the SD card in it. He cut the reader free and slid the SD card into it, then slotted the micro USB into place and powered the phone on.
“Uh, Levi?” Harper said, swallowing another bite of her burger.
The strained note in her voice made him look up. “What is it?”
“I think you may have to put messing with the card on hold for a while. It looks like our friend the vampire is back.”
Chapter Six
Levi turned in his seat and groaned. Sure enough, there were two sleek black sedans behind them, gaining fast.
“The good news is that I’m pretty sure Baby’s twice as heavy as those cars,” Harper said calmly. “The bad news is, if we survive this, the repair bill is really going to be out of this world.”
“Should have picked up more mags for the Walther, if they had them, and a shotgun,” Levi muttered. He pulled the SD card out of the reader and sealed it in its plastic bag, shoving it in the coin purse and dropping it, the phone, and the reader into her purse before fishing the luger out of it.
“The vampire would have showed up in the middle of the background check, so it wouldn’t have helped,” Harper said, keeping one eye on the rearview mirror.
“I didn’t mean buy it,” Levi said. “I meant take it.” He grabbed a box of ammo, chambered a round, and hit the mag release, topping the magazine off before sliding it back home.
“Because we’re not already in enough trouble, you wanted us to make the Pennsylvania’s Most Wanted?” she returned. “That’s smart.”
Just then, a burst of gunfire came from the lead car, and Levi wedged himself between the back of Harper’s seat and her body as she hunched forward over the steering wheel.
“What are you doing?” she said. “I can’t steer.”
“It’ll be even harder to steer with a hole in you,” he returned. He angled his body so that he could see the approaching vehicles in the rear view mirror. Behind the glare of the headlights, he could make out a man hanging out the passenger’s side window of the lead car, holding a burst-firing pistol in one hand.
Mortensen could send an M79 after them, but not a guy with a rifle? That would have cut through the car like butter. Levi didn’t dare question his luck, but it was the only thing keeping them alive right now, and he didn’t like that.
The man dropped the magazine into his hand as Levi watched, then slapped in another before letting loose another hail of bullets. The sedan’s frame kept him from being able to sight effectively and still hit the Skylark—but even as Levi watched, the sedan nudged into the opposite lane, clearing his line of fire.
“Pull left,” he ordered Harper.
“What?”
“Pull left,” he repeated, switching the luger to his other hand before reaching around her to tug the steering wheel to the side.
She elbowed his hand out of the way. “That’s oncoming traffic!”
“Do you see any cars coming toward us? If you don’t get over, they’re going to draw even and shoot you in the head!”
At that, Harper jerked the wheel to the left. The rear bumper clipped the sedan, and the Skylark bucked. The light
er sedan skidded wildly and dropped back as the driver regained control. With those impossibly fast reflexes, it must be the vampire behind the wheel.
Damn.
Soon, it began edging up on them again—this time on the right, with the bulk of the car blocking the shooter on the passenger’s side from firing.
There had been eight men in the Walmart. Levi was pretty sure he’d disabled at least three, the first casualty being the idiot Kowalski. With two drivers, there were at most three shooters remaining between the two sedans. If Levi was lucky, the back car would have two, leaving one for the front.
Just then, the back driver’s side window rolled down, and a man leaned out with another pistol and squeezed off several bursts.
Right. That had been too much to hope for.
“This is how it’s going to work,” he said rapidly, pulling away from Harper now that the bullets were coming from his side and unfastening his belt. He cranked down the window. “Hit eighty and stay there. They’re going to come up on my side now, and the front guy with the gun will have to shoot past the driver to try to hit me, and the guy in the back will still be shooting at an angle. Your job is to not get shot, got it? And then, when I yell ‘go,’ I want you to ram them off the road with everything you’ve got, and then just don’t crash. Can you do that?”
“Yeah, I’ll do my best,” she said, her voice steady and her eyes fixed on the road in front of them. “Especially the ‘not getting shot’ part.”
“Good,” he said, and then, in the brief pause as the goon hanging out of the window released his mag into his palm, Levi leaned out, twisting backward. Squinting against the headlights, he squeezed off three rounds with absolutely accuracy into the man’s head.
The goon’s gun hit the asphalt in a shower of sparks, bouncing down the road, and the man slumped, his shattered head and arms dangling from the window.
Levi was already leveling his gun at the driver, sending two more shots slamming into the windshield. They glanced off. Bulletproof. Levi cursed. Behind the glare of the headlights, the bloodsucker smiled, and the car came on.
Now things were going to get dicey.
Levi shifted his grip on the luger, weighing whether he had time to top off the mag before the sedan drew even. It was closing distance steadily, and he decided that three more bullets weren’t worth the risk of getting caught unarmed.
Anyway, if thirteen bullets couldn’t stop the vampire, he probably wouldn’t be in any condition to shoot more.
The sedan’s front bumper was even with his window now as it crept up, the vampire still maintaining a foot between the cars.
“Levi....” Harper said warningly.
“Not yet,” Levi growled back, not tearing his eyes from the car. “I’ve got to get this bastard.”
“But what if he gets you first?”
“Then you’ll be in real trouble, won’t you?” he said, his lips pulling back from his teeth involuntarily as the vampire’s window came level with his.
The cocky bastard was smiling at him through the bulletproof glass. Levi shifted his grip on the pistol as the vampire pulled a gun from his holster and held it up. Locking eyes with Levi, he reached down and hit the button to roll the window down, then immediately lifted the gun so that the end of the barrel pressed against the top edge of the window as it began to lower.
Levi saw instantly that it was one of those new kinds of automatic windows, the kind that rolled the driver’s side all the way down with one touch. This was going to be bad—but not impossible.
Probably.
As soon as the barrel could be squeezed out of the crack in the top of the window, the bloodsucker fired. Levi was already ducking, and the bullet sent a blaze of fire across his back. He yelped, and the Skylark jerked to the right, slamming into the sedan and edging it to toward the side of the road. Reacting with instinct, the vampire yanked the gun down as he grabbed the steering wheel with both hands.
“I didn’t say go!” Levi snarled, his hand clutching the door frame mere inches from the metal door of the other car.
“I don’t care,” Harper snapped. “You’re no good to me dead.”
The Skylark jigged left again, and a space opened up between the cars. The vampire lifted his gun hand from the steering wheel, but Levi was already steadying his own pistol on the edge of the doorframe. He squeezed, and the round took the vampire perfectly between the eyes. The bloodsucker’s eyes rolled back into his head just as the Skylark jerked sideways again, hitting the sedan with a scream of metal.
The man next to the vampire made a lunge for the steering wheel, but it was too late. With no one fighting the weight of the Skylark, the sedan skidded off the road, falling behind them as it hit the narrow grassy shoulder and veered off into the trees.
“You’re welcome,” Harper said.
“Follow instructions next time,” Levi said over the sound of the wind whipping through the windows, one open, the other broken.
“Don’t give such stupid instructions, and I will,” Harper returned.
Levi glared at her—and then realized that she was hurt, blood dripping down her arm. His stomach clenched.
“What happened? I told you not to get shot.”
“Oh, so sorry,” she snapped. “I should have tried harder, then.”
He reached over to pull up the sleeve of her v-neck tee to get a better look, but she elbowed him away.
“Later, okay?”
Levi looked back in the rearview mirror. The second sedan had dodged the first as it slowed, and now it was gaining ground on them quickly.
One down, one to go.
Chapter Seven
Levi flipped the safety and chambered a round before popping a box of ammo open and releasing the mag to top it off again. There were probably only two goons in the second car, but it was still armored, and human bullets killed just as surely as ones from a vampire.
They were coming up on a bridge ahead. Juniata River, the sign read. Without prompting, Harper started to edge over into the opposing lane as the sedan approached—but then the lights of a semi appeared over the hill across the bridge, and with a muttered curse, she pulled back into her lane as the truck reached the far end of the bridge.
Levi looked back as he slid the magazine home and flipped the safety off. The sedan was approaching much faster than the last one had, the windows rolled up tight. Much, much, faster. He mentally measured the distance to the bridge and to the semi that was crossing it. There was no way that the sedan could pull even with the Skylark until after they’d passed the truck, by which point they’d be practically on the bridge.
For a moment, he relaxed, thinking he’d have a few more seconds to prepare. But the sedan kept coming, faster and faster, and he realized that he’d misjudged their intentions. Badly.
“Hold on! They’re going to ram us.”
He barely had time to get the warning out before the sedan struck, smashing into the right side of the Skylark’s bumper. Levi’s body slammed into the door, knocking the breath from his body as the car went skidding straight into the path of the semi. Its horn blared as the headlights filled the car’s cabin.
Letting out a shriek, Harper spun the wheel to the left. The semi clipped them as they darted past, spinning the Skylark parallel with the road as it burst onto the grass and dirt of the shoulder. Then they were going down the slope beside the bridge far too fast, bouncing hard, whipping through weeds and scrubby trees that had grown up since the last big flood.
Levi had the peculiar sensation of everything being fast and slow at the same time as his body rose from the seat and hurtled toward the dashboard. With perfect distinctness, he saw the gun fly from his own hands as he flung up his arms, futilely trying to protect himself.
Almost absently, he noticed Harper beside him, her lips pressed tight and body rigid as she battled the steering wheel and brakes, her face sheet-white in the light of the moon and the cast-back headlights. And a distant, detached part of himself, which
seemed to be watching the scene from above, thought that she was the most magnificent sight he’d ever seen.
And then the car hit the water, and an instant later, his body hit the dash.
***
“Damn it to hell and back.”
The words reached his ears first, then he felt the cold water licking at his legs, and Levi remembered where he was and what had just happened. He dragged his eyes open. Water was sheeting through the open windows, around the doors, and through the openings in the firewall and into the car. His heart jumpstarted into a frantic beat—but he saw that the water only came an inch above the bottom edge of the windows, the river spreading out like a silvered road under the moonlight beyond, and then he realized that they were in no danger of drowning.
Harper was bent at the waist, her face turned sideways against the rapidly rising water, cursing with increasing volume and inventiveness as she fished around blindly while a Wendy’s bag floated by her nose.
And then his caught his breath as he understood. She was looking for her purse—which had the SD card and his phone in the bottom of it. Which were all now a good foot and a half underwater.
She straightened with a cry of triumph, dragging it up from the bottom of the car by the strap. Whatever insane hope he might have had left was dashed at the sight of the river water streaming from every seam of the pink monstrosity.
He let out a curse of his own. The SD card should still be good, and maybe the reader could be dried out, but his phone was toast. Harper’s eyes snapped over to him.
“Oh, thank God, you’re okay,” she breathed. “When you hit the dashboard—”
“I’m hard to kill,” he said. He spit another curse as another nasty realization hit. “My gun.”
The water was already at his waist, and he held his breath as he ducked his head under the murky water. The cold shock of it dazed him for a second. His werewolf’s eyes could pick out shapes even in that faint light, and he pawed through them—another Wendy’s bag, the empty ammo box, his jacket, and then, just as his lungs began to burn, his pistol. His fingers tightened around the handle, carefully avoiding the trigger, and he straightened, emerging from the water with a jacket in one hand, pistol in the other.
