“Evan?” she called, panicking.
“I’m okay,” he said in a hoarse voice. In the deep shadows under the loft, he stood, but as she scrambled toward him, she could smell it again—burning flesh.
“Oh my God, oh my God!” she cried as she reached him. His skin was burned and smoking, and his clothes were nothing but scorched tatters, adorning his open, blistered skin.
“Listen to me,” he murmured. “Fuck.” He shook his head hard. “When he opened his eyes, they were black, then blue, black then blue. He was straining so hard. “You have to run.”
“What? I’m not leaving you.”
“You have to, Nicole. Run out into that sunlight so I can’t get to you and neither can he. Not until sundown. You can’t go back to the house.”
“I don’t even know where we are,” she whispered in horror. She couldn’t leave him burned. She couldn’t.
He winced, and a long hiss sounded from his lungs. “Nicole, you have to go! Now!”
“I can’t!”
“I can’t take your life! Do you understand? He’s going to make me take your life!”
“Then turn me!”
“Fuck…fuck…” His face was twisted up in pain. “Nicole, there isn’t enough time, and it won’t solve anything. He’ll stake you. Run to town. Hide somewhere he can’t get in.”
“But—”
“Please live.” There was such pleading on his face. Such desperation. “You have an hour.” He suddenly lurched forward and roared at her, his expression terrifying.
With a scream, she fell backward into the sunlight. He stopped, pacing the edge of the shadows, black eyes trained on her, an empty smile on his lips.
Evan wasn’t here anymore.
She watched the hollowness of his hungry gaze as her lungs burned for breath. This couldn’t be happening. He’d brought her here to set her free into the daylight, to trap himself into the shadows.
One hour.
She had one hour to find a safe place from not only Vlaric, but from the Winterset Coven under his control. She had to find a safe place from Evan.
That part broke her heart.
He’d become her safe place.
A sob clawed its way up her throat. She scrambled up and bolted from the barn. She hunched in fear when Evan’s roar echoed through the woods surrounding the barn.
There was a road so she followed it. She needed to find her way to town. One glance at the horizon, and she was horrified to find the sun had sunk so low in the sky. Too low. Time was so short. Think, think.
She veered into the tree line and searched frantically on the ground for a limb. It needed to be dry and stiff and easily fashioned into a stake.
Over there.
She bolted for a stick that had splintered into a sharp end and clutched it tightly in her hand. She jogged back to the overgrown dirt road, which was basically two tire tracks through knee-high grass, and that told her this place didn’t see humans often. As she jogged, she stripped the small branches off the limb and made it as smooth as possible. And holding it in her hand, she ran faster. God…dang! She should’ve paid more attention to her gym membership because her legs and lungs were already burning.
It hadn’t been one hour. She obsessed with thinking of the minutes that had passed since she had looked at the microwave in the Coven house for the time. It already felt like so long ago. God, what she wouldn’t give for her phone right now.
“Go into the woods.” The voice that whispered across her mind was so soothing, so convincing, she veered off from the tire track a few steps and stopped.
Nicole shook her head hard and ran back to the road. “Fuck you,” she said out loud.
Well, now she knew what he wanted. The monster wanted her in the woods.
That vamp was holed up somewhere, not asleep, playing puppet master with the minds of her friends. And now he was trying with her.
She’d never hated anything before, but seething fury roiled through her veins at the thought of that asshole. She could sink this stake deep into his heart, and she wouldn’t lose an ounce of sleep over killing a man.
“Go into the woods.”
She gasped and spun, crouched, ready, her stake poised to slash. “Where are you?” she called. The voice had been real. She knew it was real. She’d heard it.
No answer.
With a sob, she turned and started running again, determined to ignore anything else but getting to town.
“If you run into the woods, it’ll all be easy. You’ve been so fun, Nicole. My greatest hunt. You did so perfectly. You went to a coven for protection. A coven with shifters, and you gained their fealty. It was beautiful. Now I don’t have to hunt you. I get to hunt vampires and shifters. So perfect. You’ll be hard to top.”
She swallowed bile and fought the urge to retch into the dry grass.
The road wound this way and that through the trees. God, where was she? There weren’t any outbuildings or markers. Where had Evan brought her? Far enough away from the coven house that Sadey and Dawn’s snow leopards couldn’t track her down, but close enough that Evan didn’t burn completely.
Evan. Another sob escaped her, and twin tears made warm tracks down her cheeks. She was so scared, and he wasn’t here.
Run to town. That’s what he’d told her and that’s all she had to hold onto, so she sprinted, stake in hand, arms pumping with every stride. The sun was halfway down the horizon. How long had she been running? Ten minutes? Twenty?
Her legs were on fire.
“Then stop. Stop where you are and go into the woods. Everything will be okay. You’ll see.”
Yes. She should just rest for a few
