When all of my fingers were gone and my hand was in a fist, Sam bopped his head back to knock out the man behind him, who had loosened his grip on the knife. I grabbed my dagger from my boot and planted it a few inches to the right of Donovan’s heart. The element of surprise was the only way I managed to get that close. He was fast, and strong, and threw me to the ground with a force that knocked my breath out.
Sam managed to incapacitate two of the men charged with holding him, but more of them took their place. One of them now had his knife dangerously close to Sam’s jugular, as Donovan used his boot on my windpipe to pin me to the ground. I tried to push it off, but gravity and biology were on his side.
“I take it this means you won’t be coming willingly,” Donovan concluded. “That is a shame. For you, at least. The challenge of an uncooperative heart is one we have been expecting since that slut got away,” Donovan’s voice had taken back its bored quality, except when he referred to Annabelle, my ancestor, as ‘that slut’. Pure hatred laced those words, and I feared what he might do to someone who looked exactly like her.
My refusal of his offer and trying to escape disappointed him. Any victory I might have felt from learning that he could still be hurt, that I had hurt him vanished the instant he nodded to the men holding Sam. I barely had time to turn my head before the blood was pouring from Sam’s neck and he slowly fell to the ground.
“Sam!” I screamed, rushing to him as soon as Donovan let me go. He knew he had me now, so it didn’t matter if I cried from a distance, or leaning over Sam’s lifeless body.
I crumpled onto the ground next to my big brother, taking his head into my lap, running my fingers through his carrot top head. He hated the color of it when I was younger, until he met Deanna and found out she liked it. All I had known growing up was my mom, Grams, Mr. & Mrs. Boyd, and Sam. As the warm blood continued to flow from the wound on Sam’s neck, onto my jeans, all I could think was that every single one of them was gone now.
The tears poured freely, which blurred my vision, so I didn’t notice that the army of men and women that made up Donovan’s army had diminished. I looked to Donovan, waiting for him to mock me for crying, or to taunt Sam for being dead, but he was on the ground, right next to where he had been crushing my windpipe.
I couldn’t even summon any excitement over my stab costing Donovan one of his unlimited lives. All I wanted to do was lie down beside Sam until he woke up and told me it was all a horrible nightmare and we could go home now. Sam’s death would be in vain if I didn’t figure out a way to escape before Donovan came back to life, but I didn’t have any fight left in me.
Although most of the people who followed Donovan had been under his control, some of them did so by choice. These were the men who now recovered Donovan’s body and put it into the large Hummer they had found us with. They could see from my catatonic state that I wasn’t going to run or put up a fight, so they let me be. Even if I had tried to escape, it wasn’t like I could reach anywhere before the dozen or so of them that remained caught up to me.
I knew I didn’t have long, that they weren’t forgetting about me, just dealing with more pressing things, but it took everything in me to focus on a plan rather than the crushing pain around my heart. It was like I couldn’t breathe, and I was breathing too much, all at the same time.
I needed something to make sure Embry and Gabriel would find me, so they could stop Donovan from using my heart to end the world as we know it. I was relatively certain no one would make an executive decision to kill me until Donovan woke up, so I had a bit of time. Unfortunately, I had no more weapons, and everything I brought was in the backpack Donovan’s minions took when they found me at the foot of the tree. Not that I could think of anything in my backpack that could help me. I could see Sam’s car keys sticking out of his pocket, but I didn’t see the mini-van anywhere. Unless I could find it, get in, start it and drive off before one of the minions could get to me, the keys weren’t going to help. The key wasn’t even the type that you could use to scratch someone’s eyes out or stab them. It was a small, rounded, rectangular shape that you just needed to have in your pocket for the vehicle to let you in. I was reproaching us for buying fancy cars instead of the ones with weapon-like keys, when it hit me.
I made sure no one was watching me, then reached into Sam’s pocket to release the standard dealership keychain, the one where he put our Onstar stickers, so we would always have our numbers. I looked around again and saw that they were still huddled around Donovan’s body, doing god-knows-what. I threw Sam’s keychain as far as I could in Embry’s direction, slipping the actual key into my pocket. I breathed a sigh of relief when the keychain landed on Embry’s stomach, his shirt muffling the sound. Hopefully, Embry would see it when he woke up and remember how to work the Onstar.
The minions finished their task and remembered me, so two of them came over and lifted me by the arms when I refused to leave Sam. They pulled me towards the side of the vehicle, both of them dressed like they were in special ops, all in black, with matching cargo pants and side arms. The taller of the two was the muscle, not saying much other than occasional grunts, but the shorter one kept barking orders when the others looked to him for confirmation. He had his brown hair slicked back with way too much gel and was clearly in charge now that Donovan was out of commission. He was about to open the door for me when one of the other men called him over.
“Tie her up while I teach Miguel how to discard,” Slick commanded Muscles, who was still holding on to me.
“You could have had it all,” Muscles told me, shaking his head like I had torn up the winning lottery ticket. His knots weren’t stellar, but they were too tight for me to be able to do anything. He helped me into the backseat, then let me sit alone and wait for another fifteen minutes while they figured out what they were going to do. Or maybe they talked about the weather, because they still didn’t know what they were doing when they got into the car. They had me move to the middle seat, with a minion on each side. Muscles took the passenger seat while Slick had the wheel. I saw the other guys following us in another car as we turned to get out of the motel parking lot. All I could do was hope Embry and Gabriel had time to wake up and find me before Donovan came back to life and killed me.
Perhaps I had seen too many movies, but I was fully prepared to get a burlap sack put on my head and spend the next few hours counting turns and how long we drove so I would be able to escape and find my way back, or help someone find me if I got my hands on a phone. The fact that none of that happened, that they let me know exactly where we were, told me they were either terrible kidnappers, or that no one expected me to be rescued, so they didn’t care what I saw or heard.
We drove for hours, making lots of elaborate detours, and sometimes driving in circles. I didn’t know if they were worried someone would come and save me, or if they had other enemies they were trying to avoid, but either of those options would give me a chance to escape. The first hour was in almost complete silence, and I would have sworn we had been driving at least three hours if the dashboard clock hadn’t let me keep track of time. It wasn’t until Muscles turned the radio on that they all loosened up. They talked about past road trips, some with their families, while others had been traveling together for a long time. The driver, who I nicknamed Slick, didn’t talk much, except to admit that his first road trip with ‘the big guy’ was before cars even existed. Then they got to teasing each other about how old they were. I tried to listen to everything, just in case one of them would slip and mention something I could use to escape or bribe my way out. The only useful information I got was that Slick was loyal to the mission, but the rest of them were waiting for the riches and the glory that was promised to them as soon as Donovan got what he needed.