Taken. Lilith Saintcrow
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nose was full and the blood and spit smeared across her mouth sealed her up pretty effectively. Her lungs burned, her throat crawling with iron-tasting slickness.
She’d tasted blood before. Plenty of times. It always made her sick and light-headed, bracing herself for the next punch and hoping Mark would run out of steam. The past threatened to close over her head, a weight of black water against every muscle. Her ribs heaved as she tried to breathe, the panic attack looming over her.
Breathe, Sophie. Breathe. Don’t think of the past.
But she literally couldn’t get any air in with his hand over her mouth and her nose full, and the blackness was so close.
Then, thank God, he eased up on her a little. “Be nice and quiet, shaman. Take a deep breath.”
Shaman? What the hell? She sucked in a lungful of blessed air. The panic retreated, with a vicious little thump under her breastbone that promised it would be back.
Sophie’s eyes were beginning to get used to the inside of the van. It smelled of musk and fast food, and with each mile slipping away under the tires she was farther and farther away from Lucy’s car—and Lucy’s body. The police would be there soon, but nobody would know she’d been out with her friend.
If she could just escape, get to a phone, something, anything—What did these people want with her? She was a nobody. At least, now she was.
Mark? Maybe. He had money. But why would he want her kidnapped? He’d want something far more personal, wouldn’t he?
Oh, yes, he would. Unless they were taking her to him. Oh, God. If they were taking her to Mark, it was all over.
“I’ve got a little over a thousand,” the driver said. “Could be more or less, I wasn’t keeping close track.”
“We’ll drive for a while, then we’ll stop for food.” The one holding her loosened up a bit as the van took a sharp turn and accelerated. “We’re on the freeway now, sweetheart. Just be nice and easy—you’re safe.” He let up on her mouth again, but kept his hot fingers on her cheek, ready to gag her. The wet warmth slicking her cheeks and fogging her glasses was tears, she discovered, and blood smeared around her mouth. Had she drooled, too?
Did getting kidnapped and half suffocated make you drool?
I’ve gone insane. It’s the only explanation.
“Please don’t hurt me.” Much to her surprise, she sounded steady. Her tank top—Lucy’s tank top—was all rucked up, her bare skin against his T-shirt. He was warm, and the van was heating up. Her naked legs prickled with gooseflesh.
“We’re not going to hurt you.” The young boy crouched on the seat swayed as the van kept going. He swiped at the tears on his cheeks, scrubbing them away angrily. “Zach, are you sure? She’s a bleeder.”
“She’s got the mark, I can smell it on her. If I can, you can, too.” His hands fell away, and Sophie was suddenly aware she was half lying on him; he was wedged up against the closed side door. Her eyes flicked toward the passenger’s side in the front— there was an open seat there, and maybe she could signal or get away somehow, if she could just get that far.
Think, Sophie. Think!
“A shaman.” The driver sighed. “Goddammit.” There was a sound—palm striking steering wheel, sharply. “Kyle.”
“We’ll sing him to the moon as soon as I’m sure we’re safe. We’ll hold Silence for him until then.” The guy she was lying on—Zach—sighed, too. “It’s just us now. But we’ve got a shaman. Julia, find her a coat. Brun, gather up the money. You’ll hold it for me.”
The crying boy hopped off the seat, grabbing the roll from the girl’s hands. He paused and ducked his head when his gaze drifted across Sophie’s. That streak in his hair looked oddly familiar. He seemed not to notice he was weeping, even while the tears dripped on his denim jacket.
“Please,” she whispered. “You can just let me go. I won’t tell anyone, I promise.”
“She’s whining.” The girl’s lip lifted. White teeth glimmered. “What a bleeder.”
There was a confused sense of motion, and Sophie landed hard on her side, her head hitting something. A burst of starry pain rocked through her skull, and the weird rattling growl crested again, drowning out the engine.
Her ears roared, too, like a high wind in acres of trees. A familiar sound, one she’d heard many times before, usually while Mark was yelling. It was always so loud when he started in on her, the screaming robbing her of breath and light, closing down her vision into a tunnel.
“Shut up, Julia!” Zach snarled, but Sophie slid down into a darkness starred with weird spangled lights, and was gone.
Chapter 6
An hour later, they stopped at a drive-through at the city limits.
They held the Silence for Kyle, none of them speaking unless absolutely necessary. It was to keep his spirit from lingering, but it meant Zach had too much time to think.
It also meant he couldn’t explain much to the new shaman. Not that she seemed disposed to listen. She shrank frantically away any time one of them came near her, and her eyes roved the inside of the van when she thought he wasn’t watching her.
Looking for escape.
He cursed to himself every time he saw her flinch. She had an oil-stained rag clasped to the side of her head. She really was a pretty little thing, curved in all the right places, her hair a tangle of sandalwood curls and those little librarian glasses—thankfully not damaged; Brun had picked them up from the carpet—perched on her adorable little nose, over two wide, pretty eyes. It was too dim to tell what color the pale irises really were. Something too light to be green, and the wrong shade for blue.
He wanted to find out.
Unfortunately, the bruise spreading down the side of her face from hitting the seat didn’t do much to help her looks. But he’d had to shut Julia up before he was tempted to hurt her. So many times now he had glanced over to gauge Kyle’s reaction to the new shaman, to Eric’s driving, to Julia’s soft sobbing in the backseat, curled up in a ball—and found an empty place where his little brother should be.
This is your fault, not Julia’s. He wasn’t hard enough to lead, and especially not to rule a traveling Family without a shaman. You know that. You still let him take the alpha, because … why?
He knew why. Because of the smell of smoke and the sound of Kyle’s agonized howl as Zach held him back, as the fire ate their home and their parents. It was right after a fight with a small wandering band of upir, both the alpha and the shaman wounded, the shaman too deep in a healing-trance to wake up in time. Smoke inhalation could kill any Tribe, and the old alpha had thrown Zach clear with the last of his strength. Dad had succumbed with his last mate, their deaths an agonizing rawness in the center of Zach’s memory.
The fire had left them homeless, without shaman or kin. And it had left Zach with the deep shame of failure. He was strong enough—he should have saved Dad or gone up in flames with the shaman. He’d made the instinctive choice, not the right one.
And an alpha couldn’t ever afford to be instinctive instead of right when it came to choices like that.
Eric handed the bags of food to Brun, who had settled in the passenger’s seat, not daring to comfort his crying twin. The shaman potential, who wouldn’t give her name, perched on the other side of the bench seat, dry-eyed and dazed. She smelled too good to be true, and he had to stop himself from taking deep lungfuls every time the air in the van shifted.
I have screwed this right up, haven’t I? But he hadn’t been thinking, just reacting to the beast’s roar