Embry and Gabriel waited expectantly for the fight to resume, but when it didn’t they turned to the window, to see where the voice came from. They both looked straight at me, horrified.
I made my way over to see what they were seeing, then ran for the door half a second after Gabriel’s arms wrapped around me. He held me back so that all I could do was scream “Sam!” over and over again, as I tried to fight my way free from Gabriel, as if I could do anything to help Sam.
“Let go of me Gabriel, I have to help him,” I argued, fighting and twisting to try and shake him off.
“Do you promise not to go out to him?” he asked, holding on to me as if I weren’t moving at all.
“He has Sam.” He knew there was no way I would stay in the room while Sam was being held by a man with a knife to his throat.
“Sam’s dead if they get you,” Embry was delicate, but I wanted them to stop focusing on me and start helping Sam.
“It’s Sam,” I repeated, giving up the fight. I looked at them pleadingly, so they finally agreed.
“Stay behind us. If you have a chance, run, then find a car and drive,” Gabriel let me know not to stay and wait for them if anything happened. His eyes were as intense as I had ever seen them, letting me know that there would be hell to pay if I didn’t listen.
“Okay,” I said, knowing I could never leave the 3 of them behind. I didn’t mind staying out of sight as long as I could listen. I went to get my backpack from the corner and slipped the dagger into my boot.
“I know you’re inside, and you see I’m alone. You have no reason not to come out,” the man called.
“Lucine Suzanne Owens you stay inside!” I heard Sam use my full name, to show me he was serious. The man chuckled, not at all concerned by his outburst, knowing it wouldn’t deter me in the slightest.
Embry and Gabriel looked at me like they would rather I listen to Sam as well, but I stood my ground. Gabriel opened the door and stepped out first, followed by Embry, then me.
The man who held Sam was a couple of inches shorter than my brother’s 6 foot 3, with blonde hair slicked down to his head. His eyes were the same color as the men in front of me, but while theirs came off as intense, his were dark and scary hellholes. He smiled at us, making him even more ominous, but it was the knife to Sam’s throat that solidified him as a horrible, evil person in my book.
He kept his smile while Embry and Gabriel came into his view, but the look he gave me made my blood curl. I had been the victim of catcalling, and guys looking at me like they wanted to do ungodly things to me, but he looked at me like I was a piece of meat, something to be butchered for the parts and then discarded.
“You must be Lucy,” he said, bowing to me. Sam had to go down as well, to prevent his neck getting sliced by the ever-present blade. If his goal had been to show me deference and respect, he failed. All I did was cringe until I saw Sam come back up, unharmed.
“What do you want, Donovan?” Gabriel asked as if he was completely unfazed by the way he was handling Sam. I had hoped knowing the Big Bad’s name would make him less scary, but so far it did not help.
“Bypassing the formalities?” Donovan’s amused smile made me want to punch him, had I been able to reach him. “You both know what I want. It has been the same for centuries. I want the girl.” His look told me that if I gave myself up, I would not be making it out alive, and they would never find what was left of my body. Still, I wouldn’t be able to not go to him if the price of keeping me safe was someone I loved.
“Our answer has been the same since you came after Margaret. We will die before we let you have her, and even then, we still won’t let that happen,” Gabriel said.
“I expected as much. But you brought the girl out with you. Do you think that she will stand back and watch as I slice into her big brother, the man who has been raising her?” Donovan moved the knife so it glistened in the moonlight. Embry took a step back to put his arm on my shoulder, ensuring I wouldn’t fall for it and run to my death. “Will you still be able to hold her back when it is his daughter I eviscerate? When I cut every freckle off of that fire-kissed little girl?” Sam’s hands were balled into fists, and if the knife hadn’t been so close to his jugular, he would have used them.
“I’ll lock her in a cell and throw away the key if it means you can’t have her.” I had expected it to sound like a lie coming from Embry, but he was just as convincing as if Gabriel had been the one saying it. He meant it.
“Will you drain her blood and incinerate her to keep her from me? That is what you did to Cassandra, right? She thought that if she could just get to you, she would be safe. Do you still value the mission more than their lives?” Donovan was playing with the knife, making me incredibly nervous. I wanted to yell at him to stop when I saw a speck of red on Sam’s neck, but I also didn’t want to remind anyone that I hadn’t made a mad dash for the highway yet.
“If necessary.” Gabriel’s face was stone, and it shocked me that I believed him. I knew Cassandra would have been dead before they did anything to her, but the conviction in his eyes made me realize for the first time that I wasn’t their mission. Sure, I was the promise they made, but protecting me might not mean my life so much as whatever it was of mine that this man wanted. I loved them like family and I knew they loved me too…but if I ran out and let the man take me, would they be fighting to save me, or to stop him?
Whether because he saw what I was thinking, or to keep me in place, Embry gave my shoulder a squeeze. My first instinct was to shake him off, but I knew that even if they would sacrifice me to stop him, they were still all I had.
“See dear, you think they care about you, but they would slaughter you faster than I would. Come to me so I don’t have to kill the boy,” Donovan addressed me. I got his logic, but loving and caring about someone wasn’t something you could turn off. Which was why I tried to go for Sam, causing both Embry and Gabriel to put themselves in front of me.
“If I can’t go to him, what is our plan for saving Sam?” I asked without taking my eyes off of my big brother.
They exchanged a look that implied they had no intentions of letting me turn myself in, or of putting me at risk while they saved Sam.
“We either come up with a plan or you will have to carry me over your shoulder for the rest of this trip,” I warned, letting them know that I wasn’t kidding either. I just didn’t have the same bargaining chips that they did.
“Luce, he knew what he was getting into. We all signed up for this,” Embry tried to talk me out of it.
“He didn’t. He maybe knew that this was a possibility, but I was dropped into his lap when his parents died. You two chose to love Annabelle, and to dedicate your lives to this, but Sam just feels like he has to take care of the girl he grew up with.”
“He made his choice when he agreed to take you,” Gabriel said calmly, but I could see the vein pulsing in his forehead.
“If I’m going to die either way, I’d rather it be saving Sam than whatever else you have planned.”
“We don’t plan on you dying at all,” Embry assured me, sensing a slight edge to my voice.
“Feel free to continue talking as if I don’t have a knife to his throat, but if the girl isn’t walking towards me within the next five minutes, I am slicing until I reach the bone,” Donovan sounded more annoyed at the prospect of having to slit Sam’s throat than anything that would imply he had some humanity left in him. Assuming he had any to begin with.
“We have five minutes to come up with a plan,” I turned to Embry and Gabriel expectantly.
“We have five minutes to get you as far away from here as possible,” Embry argued.
“Or we could waste it all debating,” Gabriel was exasperated.
“Have the two of you ever taken him on alone? Is it a possibility that while I walk over and he releases Sam, you could fight him and win?” I asked, looking from one to the other. “Wouldn’t it keep me safe if while he was dead, we locked him up in a steel box and tossed him to the bottom of the ocean?”
They looked at each other, weighing the situation and deciding whether or not they had a chance of managing that. Two of his men still hovered a few feet away from us, but I felt like it would be easy enough to get past them. Then it would be my two guys against Donovan, but I got the feeling Donovan was older and more powerful somehow, especially with all of the freaky magic stuff. I took it as a good sign that he hadn’t used any of it against us, but the guys were not as optimistic.
“This isn’t the entire army. This is just Donovan’s scouting crew,” Embry said before a bunch of men and women dressed in black showed up. They came from every possible hiding place, surrounding us so that other than barricading ourselves back in the motel room, there was absolutely nowhere we could go. Any hope I’d had of being able to fight Donovan to get Sam back disappeared. We would be lucky if any of us made it out alive, which was an issue, because once I was gone, I was not coming back.
Sam was mouthing for me to run, resigned to his fate, but not only could I not leave him, I didn’t have anywhere to go.
“Like Prom,” Gabriel told me, reaching for his bag.
I barely had a moment to realize he meant escaping through the bathroom window before they all pulled swords and guns out of nowhere, prepared to fight to the death. I stayed there, frozen in place, before making eye contact with Sam, who once again mouthed that I should run. I reluctantly rushed back into the motel room and locked the door. I was shocked when no one followed me, but one look back through the window showed me Embry and Gabriel wouldn’t let them. I grabbed my bag and locked myself in the bathroom, which was a bright pink I attributed to the seventies. The lock on the door might hold if you tried to turn the handle, but one good push or some jiggling would get you in.
The window was right on top of the toilet, so I was able to stand on that to pry it open. It was harder than I expected, due to a layer of rust and mildew, but my arms were used to lifting Clara and had spent hours boxing with Caleb. I threw my bag out into a bush, then hoisted myself through the opening, trying my best not to get tetanus or some other infection from the ledge.
I expected an army in black to be there waiting for me. They were everywhere on the other side, but the woods were completely deserted. I could hear the busy highway, with its constant flow of cars that could take me away. It was what the guys wanted me to do, but I had nowhere to go, and I wouldn’t last long without Embry and Gabriel. So, instead of doing the smart thing like I had promised, I spotted a tree I could climb and found cover, just as a woman poked her head out of the bathroom window. I tried to convince myself that she got past Embry and Gabriel because they calculated how much time I needed and knew I would be safe, but I saw how many people they were up against. It was more likely that my line of defense was lying dead in the motel parking lot.