Tainted: Book Three - Enslaved

3. Is That a Dead Person?!

"Good luck." Chance gave Spin a bro-hug at the door.

"Gracias, el macho muchacho." He turned to me with a grin. "Au revoir, mon frère."

"Tot ziens." I dropped the keys to the rental car into his open hand. "Until I see you again."

"You said you don't speak Dutch!" Mira whapped my bicep with the back of her hand.

"No, I said I spoke it poorly. My oma would wince to hear my accent."

When Kerry woke up later in the afternoon, he wanted to leave, too, insisting he was well enough to travel. Chance insisted he wasn't. Kerry didn't like hearing that, and his irritability ratcheted up to fury between one heartbeat and the next. Flames lit his eyes and a thunderous rumble rolled around the room. Chance threw up his hands and stalked away.

Needless to say, we piled into Mira's car and headed east. After City of the Future, none of us wanted to be the one who lit the tinder of Kerry's temper.

We drove for hours in the wooded highlands until darkness fell. By then, we were all heartily sick of sitting in a car, and Kerry's increasingly crankiness made all of us uneasy. Lunch had been hours ago and his snack supply was gone. Unfortunately, the hungrier he was, the crankier he became, and that made his control slip.

Of course, it doesn't help that he's furious, worried to death about Gemma, and still recovering from both backlash sickness and a total power drain.

To tell the truth, we were lucky he hadn't lost it already.

The bright lights and signs of a travel center came into view, and we all sighed in relief. I was looking forward to stretching my legs.

Then, in a violent screech of metal, the world slid sideways.

#

Mira Kuznetsova

I wasn't going very fast as I pulled onto the exit ramp, but the impact when an SUV slammed into us still whammed my head against the side window. It wasn't enough to knock me out, but it rang my bell good. The SUV didn't let up, and I knew this was no accident. As my eyes rattled around in their sockets, my car went down a steep gully and landed on its passenger side in a wallow of ditchwater and bulrushes.

Hands wrenched my door open, cut through my seatbelt, and yanked me out. My head still ringing, I saw two men had wrestled the back door open and were pulling Gigi out, too.

"MIRA!"

I wanted to answer Rome's bellow, but I was pretty busy. I kicked and punched my captors until they whipped my hands behind my back and something that felt like plastic zip-ties bit into my wrists.

A burst of blue power lit up the darkness, nearly blinding me, and I heard a scream cut short. One of my attackers cursed and dragged me backward. Squirming and jerking, I used all of my strength against him and nearly broke free before a sack came down over my head. All of my power fled, which shocked me long enough for hands to pick me up and toss me into what was probably the SUV that had hit us.

As a body landed on top of me, an elbow drove into my stomach and knocked the wind out of me. Doors slammed and rubber squealed, and my abused head finally said enough.

#

Rome

Kerry was out of the car in a flash, but I knew he was too late from the string of curses he ripped out.

Holding panic off with an iron will, I untangled myself from Chance, got us out of the car, and left him to help Jax.

Kerry was hunkered down next to a pile of ash, his elbows on his thighs and his hands dangling between his knees. When I joined him, he gestured toward the highway.