Spirit Prophecy (The Gateway Trilogy Book 2) (42 page)

I turned at the sound of my name and my mouth dropped open. Finn Carey was leaning out of the window of one of the black Caomhnóir SUVs, motioning at us frantically to get in.

Savvy gasped. “What the —”

There was no time to think about it. “Come on!” I said, and we dashed for the car, flinging open the door and jumping inside. It peeled away from the curb before we’d even shut the door.

We’d barely had time to sit upright when Milo materialized between us.

“Forgetting someone?” he said.

I ignored him and turned to Finn instead. “What are you doing here?”

“What are
you
doing here?” he asked.

“Fixing to become a big city statistic, apparently,” Savvy said, sounding every bit the smoker as she hacked and wheezed. “Wow, that was way too close for comfort. Thanks, Finn, mate, you really — “

“I’m not your mate,” Finn practically growled. His eyes found mine in the rear-view mirror. “What are you playing at?”

“What do you mean?”

“What the hell are you doing here in the middle of the night?”

I pulled my eyes from his penetrating stare and fumbled with my seatbelt. “None of your business.”

“Of course it’s my business! Everywhere you go and everything you do is my business!” he said. He took the corner too quickly and the tires squealed in protest. “I’ve sworn an oath to protect you, and I can’t do it if you’re sneaking off in the middle of the night!”

“How did you even know I was here?”

“I saw you on the grounds tonight, heading for the woods with your bag.”

“And so you decided to spy on me?” I said. I sounded like a tween busted climbing in her bedroom window after a night of drinking wine coolers in the woods. This realization only made me angrier.

“I just wanted to see where you were going. And it’s a good thing I did, or who knows what would have happened when that guy caught up to you,” Finn said. “Who is he?”

“I have no idea,” I said, which was only half a lie.

“And you don’t know why he was chasing you?”

“No. We were walking along the south bank, minding our own business, and he just started following us,” I said.

“Did he say anything to you?”

“Not a word,” Savvy answered. “Just started snapping pictures, bloody pervert.”

I could tell from his expression that he didn’t believe a word of this, so I quickly changed the subject. “How did you get here?”

“I saw you get into that car and head south, so I borrowed one of the Caomhnóir vehicles and took the front entrance road. I knew I’d catch up with you eventually; there’s only one road that comes by Fairhaven.”

“But how did you find us in the city?” Savvy asked.

“I’ve been waiting since the car dropped you off. I just parked a block behind him and waited until you came back. Then I saw you running by and followed you.”

“Are you allowed to take these cars out?” I asked.

Finn gave a humorless bark of a laugh. “Does it matter? I needed it to do my job, so I took it. I don’t think anyone will take issue with that, and if they do, I’m not bothered.”

Silence fell in the darkened car. I watched the lights of the city pass one by one over Finn’s stormy features.

“You still haven’t told me why you’re here in the first place,” he said at last.

“I know.”

“Well?”

I hesitated, throwing a sidelong glance at Savvy. “We needed a night out. You know, just to unwind and have a little fun.”

Finn’s brows contracted so tightly together that he looked for a moment like some giant bird of prey. “A little fun?” he repeated, his voice dripping with contempt.

“Yes, fun,” I said. “Maybe you’ve heard of it. It involves laughing and socializing and other such foreign concepts.”

“I don’t believe you,” he said baldly.

“Believe it or not, I don’t really care.”

“That’s all the explanation I’m going to get? After I stole a car and risked my neck tracking you down after curfew?”

“I don’t owe you an explanation,” I said, staring out the window so that I wouldn’t have to meet his gaze. “I never asked you to do any of this. Look, I appreciate your concern, but I don’t always need your protection. I can take care of myself.”

“Is that so? Didn’t look like it from where I was sitting.”

I said nothing. Of course he was right, and we were damn lucky he’d decided to follow me, or who knew what might have happened when that man caught up to us. On the other hand, there was no way I was going to admit this, at the risk of encouraging his habit of treating me like a damsel he was constantly and grudgingly rescuing from varying degrees of distress.

“Sorry to interrupt this really awkward silence,” Milo said, “but there’s been an SUV behind us for the past couple of minutes, and whoever is driving it just blew through a red light to stay on our tail.”

We all turned to look out of the back windshield. Between the darkness and the tint on the vehicle’s windows, it was impossible to make out anything about the driver.

“Let’s not panic,” Finn said. “Plenty of people ignore traffic lights. Everyone turn around and pretend you haven’t noticed them, just in case. I’ll see if I can’t shake them off.”

Finn took a few side roads that pulled us away from what would have been the most direct route out of the city. The SUV stayed unobtrusively but undeniably on our tail. We came to a roundabout. Finn started around it, and put his blinker on as though he were going to take the first exit. The SUV did the same. At the very last moment, he pulled the car sharply back into the flow of traffic, eliciting several angry honks from the cars around us, and revealing what Milo had already suspected; the SUV veered away from the exit at the last moment as well, almost sideswiping a small blue hatchback and causing another volley of beeping. We had all looked to see what the SUV would do, in spite of Finn’s warnings to ignore it, and now we all faced the front again. The mounting panic was tangible, a toxic fume that had permeated the car and was threatening to suffocate us all.

Finn caught my eye in the mirror. “Are you still going to tell me that you have no idea who these people might be?” In my panic I nearly told him my suspicions, but kept my mouth shut. I nodded instead. “I really don’t know who they are,” I said.

Finn shook his head at me, clearly frustrated, and then floored it. We were all pressed back into our seats as the car shot forward, picking up speed alarmingly fast and weaving through the traffic recklessly. I clutched at the door handle as we peeled around the next corner, thinking wildly of those arcade video games where you careened through digital landscapes and, more often than not, ended in a fiery wreck behind a flashing red “Game Over.” I swallowed back the urge to scream.

“Finn, mate, you’ve got to shake them off before we hit the M11 or we’ll never be able to —” Savvy began.

“Don’t you think I know that?” Finn shouted. “I’m driving like a maniac, here!”

Then, as though to prove his point, he veered onto the wrong side of the road to pass the car in front of us, narrowly missing colliding with the oncoming traffic. We all screamed.

“Bloody hell,” Savvy hissed through clenched teeth as we watched the SUV barrel halfway onto the sidewalk, taking out the front of a shabby newsrack and emerging directly behind us again.

We screeched through a red light at the next intersection. The driver followed, dodging a cab and nearly spinning out in the effort to keep behind us.

“Shit,” Finn kept muttering under his breath. “Shit, shit, shit!”

Soon the city began to fall away and we merged onto the M11 at breakneck speed, the SUV still behind us and surging to catch up. “I don’t know what to do!” Finn said, his knuckles white on the steering wheel. “It’s open highway, there’s nowhere to go.” We wove from lane to lane, dodging cars like so many traffic cones, but the SUV followed, closing the distance second by second.

“Brace yourselves, he’s going to hit us!” Savvy suddenly shouted.

With a shattering crash, the SUV slammed into the back of our car. Everyone shouted, and the car fishtailed wildly as Finn struggled to get control of the steering wheel and stop us from spinning out. I reached right through Milo to grasp onto Savvy, and Milo vanished.

“Milo!” I called frantically. “Milo, where are you?”

Crash.

The SUV collided with us again, clipping the corner of the car. We swung wildly around, spinning, completely out of control. Everything was a blur, and then for one, perfectly clear moment, I saw Finn’s face, and the guardrail rearing up behind him through the windshield.

His eyes found mine, and in that tiny but endless moment, they said they were sorry. Then he closed them, almost gently.

We were crashing, rolling, and sliding all at once. The car was tumbling down the embankment, glass exploding from every window, needling through the air. I threw my hands above me as the roof of the car came down to meet them. Everything was a blur of pain, confusion, and heart-stopping terror.

Then it was nothing but silence.

The first thing I registered was that I was not dead. The second was that I was upside down, my face and hands pressed against the surprisingly soft roof of the car. I could feel my seatbelt cutting into my thighs, holding me suspended. I turned my head and saw Savannah staring back at me. Her eyes were wide, but very alive, and they blinked several times. They were almost all I could see in the darkness.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“I dunno,” Savvy said, blinking again. There were several small cuts on her cheek, and a trickle of blood was snaking its way down into her hair. She raised her hand and felt the blood. “I feel like I ought to be covered in this. You alright?”

“I don’t know,” I said, making a rapid mental inventory of my body. I could feel everything, and though I was sore and aching, nothing was in terrible pain. “I think so.”

“What about Finn?” she asked. “Finn?” I called into the broken, smoking darkness. I held my breath through an agonizingly silent few seconds, and then called his name again. “Finn?”

Nothing. Fear began to flood through me, rising inside me, threatening to drown me before I could do anything to stop it. He came here to save us, and if he was dead, it was all my fault. All my fault.

“I can smell petrol,” Savvy said. “I think we should try to get out of here as fast as we can.” She was already trying to wedge herself out of her seatbelt straps.

I felt around and found my seatbelt buckle and tried to undo it, but it was jammed. I clenched it tightly between both hands and squeezed as hard as I could. Finally it popped apart with a muffled click and I crumpled into a heap on the roof of the car. A moment later, Savannah fell with a loud curse.

“Finn?” I called again, and my voice broke with fear at the answering silence. “Savvy, we have to get to him, we have to get him out of the car and get help.”

“There’s no way we’re getting out this side,” she said, gesturing to her own window. She was right. The car had slammed into a tree, leaving barely six inches of space between the shattered window and the splintered trunk.

With difficulty, I twisted my neck and examined my window. The glass was gone, and there was a clear five or six feet between the car and the nearest tree. “We should be able to escape on this side,” I said. “Hang on, let me get out and I can help you.”

I grasped the window frame and braced my other hand against the back of the passenger seat, using my legs to push off against the seat above me. I cried out as my back slid across the glass-strewn roof beneath me. As my head and shoulders emerged through the window frame, I was able to brace a hand against the frame of the car and push myself the rest of the way onto the cold, wet grass, where I gladly could have lain and not moved again for the rest of my life. Instead, I got to my knees and reached my arms back through the window. Savvy grasped hold of them and together we pulled her out beside me, panting and groaning.

“You alright?” I gasped.

“Dizzy,” she said faintly. “I think it’s the fumes from the petrol. Just need to catch my breath.”

“Are you sure you don’t have a concussion?” I asked.

“Mate, I’m barely sure that I’m alive.”

“Stay here, I’m going to check on Finn,” I told her, and stumbled to my feet.

It seemed to take forever to reach him; my vision was strangely tunneled. I rounded the front of the car and reached his window.

Please don’t let him be dead. Oh, please, please don’t let him be dead.

Finn’s eyes were closed, his mouth slightly open, his head resting against the steering column where the air was hissing quietly out of the airbag. His cheek was covered in small gashes, but I couldn’t see any more blood. “Finn, can you hear me?” I asked in a hoarse whisper. He did not stir. My eyes blurred with terrified tears. “Jess, there’s fire back here!” Savvy called. “Is he okay? Can you get him out?”

“I don’t know!” I called back. “I’m going to try!”

I wedged my head into the window frame and reached across Finn’s body to release his seatbelt. I pulled his limp arm through it, grabbed him under his armpits, and pulled as hard as I could, bracing my legs against the door. He slid out onto the grass, his head coming to rest on top of my thigh. I had vague memories of being told you shouldn’t move someone who had been in an accident in case of head injury, but it was too late for that. I bent over him, brushing his hair out of his face and tapping it gently with my fingers.