To ruin an Omega

Chapter 223: Accidents happen 2

FIA

I stared at the card in my hands. Gabriel’s name gleamed in simple lettering, too pretty for what it represented. The car had left Silvercreek behind hours ago. We were deep in Skollrend territory now. The sun was completely gone too, leaving only darkness beyond the windows.

I turned the card over between my fingers. There had to be a way to use this. To use what I knew bow to my advantage. I had leverage somewhere in this mess. I just needed to find it.

Baruch came to mind first. After what I’d done for him at the trial, he owed me. Since Gabriel took interest in Hazel, she would be useful and it would be a safe bet to watch her. But the thought died as quickly as it came. If anyone in that ground found out he’d helped me against Gabriel or Hazel, they’d execute him.

And his grandmother needed him.

I couldn’t do that to her. To him.

I let my head fall back against the seat. The leather was cool against my scalp. Maybe I could talk to the grand Luna directly. But no. Aldric would have already prepared for that possibility. I was too many hours late. He was always three steps ahead, always had contingencies stacked on contingencies.

The smart thing to do was pretend I knew nothing. Let them think their little game was working. Let Gabriel keep showing his teeth while Aldric hid his.

Good cop. Bad cop.

It made perfect sense now. They’d probably been working together from the beginning.

I looked at Garrett through the rearview mirror. His eyes were fixed on the road, both hands on the wheel. Focused. Alert.

“You’ll have to watch Ronan even harder,” I said. “Maybe ask for help from people you trust.”

His eyes flicked to mine in the mirror. “Is there more you hope to find?”

“I have a feeling Aldric and Gabriel have been working together since the beginning.” The words tasted bitter. “It makes sense. Gabriel shows himself as the monster and the enemy everyone needs to point at. While Aldric hides his. One threatens, one comforts. Classic manipulation.”

Garrett’s jaw tightened. “No problem at all, Luna.”

I went back to staring at the card. The letters seemed to shimmer in the dim light from the dashboard.

Then I smelled it.

At first, it was faint. Barely there. Like someone had sprayed perfume several cars ahead and it had drifted back to us. I paid it no mind. But it got stronger…. thicker. Like someone had dumped an entire bottle in the car. The sweetness burned my nose, cloying and wrong.

I coughed once then again.

“Did you spray something?” I asked.

Garrett shook his head. “No.” He looked at me in the mirror. “Are you alright?”

I coughed harder. “Yeah. I just don’t know what that smell is.”

Then the sensation hit me.

It rushed through my body like a wave, not painful exactly but wrong. Invasive. Like something was trying to push its way inside me, trying to find a crack to slip through.

I knew this feeling.

I’d felt it before.

The night I’d hurt myself to frame Hazel. In my weakened state, drifting through consciousness and unconsciousness, I’d felt this exact thing when magic had been performed on me.

When Madeline had laid her hands on my skin to stitch me up.

My heart kicked hard against my ribs. I twisted in my seat, looking out the back window. The road behind us was empty. There were no cars or people. Nothing but darkness and trees.

“Garrett.” My voice came out sharper than I meant it to. “Something’s wrong.”

He slowed the car immediately. “What is it?”

“This is going to sound crazy.” I turned back to face front. “But I think you need to drive faster.”

He didn’t question it. His foot hit the gas and the car surged forward. The speedometer climbed.

Sixty.

Seventy.

Eighty.

I pulled out my phone. My hands shook as I unlocked it. I needed to call Cian. I needed to tell him something was happening, even if I didn’t know what.

When I reached my contact, something caused me to glance up.

To my surprise, there was a woman standing in the middle of the road.

She was impossibly thin, like something carved from wood. Her head was shaved down to a black buzz cut and she wore all black as if to solidify whatever she was going for. She didn’t move. She just stood there waiting.

“Garrett.” My voice cracked. “You see that person?”

“Who?” He leaned forward slightly, squinting.

“The woman. In the middle of the road.”

We were getting closer. The car ate up the distance between us and her with terrifying speed.

“There’s no one there,” Garrett said.

“Yes there is.” I pointed straight at her. “Right there. In front of us.”

He looked at me for a second, confusion clear on his face. “I swear to you, there is no one there.”

“There is.”

The woman didn’t move. She didn’t flinch either despite how fast the cat was coming. At that rate, we were going to hit her.

“Turn to the side,” I said. My voice was rising. “Garrett, turn—”

“I don’t see anyone.”

We were seconds away.

And all my humanity kicked in and made me grab at the wheel.

Garrett shouted something but I was already yanking it hard to the right. The car swerved violently. Tires screamed against asphalt.

The road ahead was clear when the wheel finally obeyed me.

Nothing stood there. No body. No dark shape. Just the stretch of black road bending away into the trees, smooth and empty like it had always been that way. My stomach dropped so fast it made me nauseous, shame and relief crashing together in my chest, and for one awful heartbeat I wondered if I had done this for nothing. If I had scared myself into seeing something that was never there.

The thought hadn’t even finished forming when the light hit.

There was nothing there before and then there was suddenly something.

It came from the right, sudden and violent, flooding the inside of the car until there was nothing else. My eyes burned instantly, tears springing without permission as my body locked up, every muscle pulling tight in the same useless direction. I knew that light. I knew what it meant. My heart slammed so hard it felt like it might tear something loose inside me.

Headlights of another car.

I tried to breathe. I tried to say Garrett’s name. All that came out was a broken sound in my throat as guilt surged through me, hot and choking, because this was my fault, because my hands were still on the wheel, because I had turned us into this.

The impact stole everything.

Sound collapsed into pressure. The world lurched sideways and then fractured completely, metal screaming as the car was hit hard enough to lift it, spin it, tear it apart.

The impact threw me forward. The seatbelt locked across my chest, cutting into my skin. Glass exploded inward. The sound was massive, all-consuming. Metal shrieked as it crumpled. The world tilted sideways and then I was flying.

The seatbelt had snapped or I’d torn through it. I didn’t know. It didn’t even matter.

My body hit the asphalt and the road peeled my skin away in long strips. I rolled, unable to stop myself. The world was just pain, motion and the terrible grinding sound of flesh on bitumen.

When I finally stopped, I couldn’t breathe.

Something was wrong with my throat.

I tried to inhale but only got a wet, gurgling sound. My hand moved to my neck on instinct. My fingers touched something hard and smooth.

Glass.

A shard of it, huge and jagged, buried deep in my throat.

I couldn’t pull it out. I couldn’t speak either. Blood filled my mouth when I tried. It poured out instead of words, hot, thick and wrong.

My vision started to go red at the edges. Like someone was slowly pouring blood over my eyes.

I turned my head. It took all my strength. Garrett was lying several feet away. He wasn’t moving. But I didn’t see any glass in him. No blood pooling beneath him.

Was I dying?

The thought came calm and distant. Like it belonged to someone else.

My phone. I needed my phone.

I saw it lying on the road a few feet away. The screen was cracked but still glowing. I reached for it. My arm barely moved. My fingers scraped against asphalt.

Then my phone started sliding away from me.

It was not a play on my mind or a sight I was seeing because I was finally dying. It was actually moving. Like someone was pulling it on a string I couldn’t see.

Through the smoke rising from the wreckage of the cars, through the flames starting to lick at twisted metal, I saw a figure.

The phone floated toward it, lifting off the ground and drifting through the air like it weighed nothing.

My vision was getting darker. The red was spreading inward, eating away at the edges of the world. I tried to focus on the figure but couldn’t make out details. Just a shape. A person.

A witch.

It had to be.

My phone had just floated away after all. That was magic.

The darkness pulled at me. My body felt so heavy. So cold. I couldn’t feel my fingers anymore. I couldn’t feel much of anything except the glass in my throat and the blood still pouring out.

Then a voice cut through the gathering dark.

Unfamiliar. Neither male nor female. Just wrong somehow. Like it didn’t quite belong to anything human. But I knew it belonged to the figure.

“You are actually resistant to magic in a way.”

The words seemed to come from very far away and very close at the same time.

“Not enough though.”

The darkness rushed in all at once.

I tried to fight it. I tried to hold on to consciousness, to the world, to anything. But it was like trying to hold water in my hands. It just slipped through my fingers and then there was nothing.

Nothing at all.

Just pitch darkness.