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Chapter
One
GRACE
“Goblin,” I said, his name fell from my lips like a gasp of horror twisted with a prayer. The sweet puppy was racing toward us from the front of the house. The engine growled as Bones dropped his hand to the stick shift. And it was a stick shift. Dammit.
“Backseat,” Bones ordered and I didn’t argue, I just freed my seatbelt and climbed over. “On the floor and get ready to open the door.”
He waited only long enough for me to slide into the back before the car did a hard reverse. I bumped into the front seat even as I braced against the backseat. As much as I’d like to see where we were versus Goblin, I didn’t say a word and just waited.
The car spun to the side.
“Now,” Bones ordered.
I shoved the backdoor open. “Goblin!” The beautiful dog raced toward me. There was no mistaking the blood on his fur as he leapt onto the backseat. The heavy scent of copper made me want to gag, as did the wet sound of him slicking over the seat.
A bullet sparked off the door and I stretched over to yank the door closed before covering him even as Bones hit the accelerator and spun the car. Thankfully, the force of his curve helped the door to slam shut.
The explosive sound of his gun firing was violently loud, sharp, and almost deafening. It seemed to bounce off everything around us, like the car amplified the sound of the weapon. My ears rang with a high-pitched whining static that threatened to drill through my brain.
Goblin made a low sound or maybe it wasn’t low, I couldn’thearhim so much as feel the sound vibrate through him. If my ears hurt this bad, then he had to be in hell. The air seemed to compress, then pop almost painfully before everything muffled again. If there were other sounds—I couldn’t hear them at all.
The car slammed forward again, the acceleration shoving me against the seats and I braced one hand and one foot to keep from squashing Goblin. The good boy had his claws digging in to keep himself in place too.
Bones said something—maybe. It was muffled and distant. I might as well have been underwater for how many syllables I could make out. The car shifted gears, then lanes, and slid around corners, all the while the acceleration varied.
Goblin slurped my face and I lifted my head in time for Bones to downshift abruptly before we took a hairpin turn that plastered me to the outer door.
“Fuck!” The word exploded out of me as I wrapped a hand through one of the seatbelts and clung to it as much as Goblin was to the seat.
In front of us, Bones shouted something. Or at least I caught the sight of his lips moving, but the words were still muffled as hell. When he raised his gun, I ducked.
Hopefully, he’d been saying duck.
Though maybe he’d yelled fuck too.
At least when he fired this time, my ears were already too clogged to flinch. Goblin wiggled against the seat as Bones downshifted again. We were climbing, the engine seemed to whine beneath my feet as if the car were giving its all.
Heart pounding, I stole a look toward the side mirror on the passenger side. I could lean to look at it without raising my head. Where were we?
Town. We were somewhere in the mixture of old and new worlds that made up the town. We were whipping through narrow backstreets, crossing bone jarring cobblestones, then skidding out onto wider open boulevards.
I was surprised we didn’t have police chasing us. Maybe we did, I couldn’t hear anything over the rush of static and wind. Then I saw a motorcycle in the side mirror.
No.
Two motorcycles. They were racing after us, all in black, leaning over their bikes as they accelerated and closed the distance. This shit looked so exciting in movies.
It was nowhere near as fun in real life. Fear pumped through my blood as I hung on. When Bones hit the brakes abruptly, I slammed against the back of the passenger seat. Teeth gritted, I managed tonothit my head, but I had a good view of the motorcycle racing up on us.
I shoved the door open abruptly and winced as the bike and rider slammed into the open door.
“Shit!” The one word came through like a clarion call from the front. The man hanging on the door had lost the gun in his hand but he lifted his head and turned to look at me.
The dark helmet and visor hid his facial expression and ice water flooded my veins. Goblin bared all of his teeth.
“Down!”