She’s whimpering, no longer from the pain that I know must still be wracking her body, but from pure terror. I bite the insides of my cheek to stay awake, so hard that I taste blood, but it’s no use.
I feel her being torn away from me as I raise a feeble hand helplessly. The worst thing in my life is about to happen, and I can’t do a fucking thing. I don’t deserve to live. I deserve a worse fate than Liam and Dane, because I can’t fucking save her.
The man grabs a fistful of her hair and pins her to the ground, then hikes up her dress. She’s struggling hard, but it’s no use. Even if she weren’t wounded, he’s ten times stronger. If anything, her struggling seems to turn him on.
“Pi-i-per,” I gasp with my last breaths.
Then suddenly, there’s a loud detonation, and the man crumples to the ground.
The last thing I see before, I sink into helpless unconsciousness, is a person stepping out of the underbrush, a smoking gun in his hand.
It’s the last person I’d ever expected to see right now.
It’s…Josh.
Chapter 24
Quill
I’m having a weird fucking dream right now.
That’s the conclusion I’ve come to, after trying to figure out for the past ten minutes why the hell I’m strapped to a horse galloping in a burning forest, while a hot frying pan is pressed to my shoulder.
It’s a dream, but I can’t get out of it. I’m trying hard, harder than I ever have, because the dream keeps glitching, interrupted by snapshots of a girl with blue-green eyes and thick round glasses, who needs my help.
It takes the horse drowning in a bathtub full of water for me to manage to open my eyes.
My first thought is that it’s not a bathtub, it’s a plastic bottle of water that’s just been emptied on my face. The second is that I must still be dreaming, because standing over me is one of the Devil founders. Logan Colt.
“The fuck?” I mutter.
Logan turns his head and calls, “He’s awake!”
“Good.”
Someone draws near, and when his cheerful, if somewhat tired eyes, cross mine, I decide this really must be a dream.
“I mentioned some water on his face might be a good thing, but I didn’t think you’d empty the whole bottle on him,” says Josh, biting down on a chuckle.
I blink my eyes up repeatedly, and when I’ve at last decided that thisisn’ta dream, I manage to breathe out, “Piper…”
“She’s fine,” promises Logan. Then he adds, “No thanks to you.”
Josh looks at me apologetically, but I deserve a whole lot worse than that. I allow myself to feel just a bit reassured by his words, but I need to see her. I need to know he’s saying the truth.
Everything else feels confusing, but also, unimportant. I try to sit up but groan in pain and lie back down on the bed in a helpless thud.
Then I realize I’m not in a bed at all, but in some sort of makeshift tent. A tent that’s bumping pretty badly on the road. So… a car?
More like some sort of van, with its back seats removed. The floor doesn’t feel entirely hard, so I wonder vaguely if they’ve put down some blankets. Then I turn my head, and I see her. My cricket.
She doesn’t look like she’s fine, a huddled, unconscious form on the floor, her back facing me. I try again to get up, and I hate my body for being so sluggish, so weak.
“Take it easy,” advises Josh. “You’ve lost a ton of blood. You’re not out of the woods yet. Piper’s okay. We gave her some medicine so she could sleep, that’s all. She was in pain.”
Those words twist at my heart. She’s in pain because I failed her. It’s all my fault. I can’t sit up, but I manage to kind of half roll, half crawl my way over to her. “I need her,” I force out. “I need her. I need her.” I repeat the words under my breath, each repetition giving me the strength to get close to her. Luckily, neither Logan nor Josh try to stop me.
“Is he always so annoying?” I can hear the former question the latter.