Chapter 30

“She’s gone,” I said in a daze, staring at the blood that flowed from my wrist.

“Goodness sakes, man,” Jaze exclaimed at the sight of the blood. He ripped the hem of his shirt and wrapped it tightly around my wrist. He glanced at my face. “This looks self-inflicted.”

I barely heard him. I wiped my brow and stared at the blood the gash left on my fingers. Jaze grabbed some tissue from the glove compartment and wiped the blood away, then pressed it to my forehead and pushed my uninjured hand up to hold it in place. “That silver sure does a number on your immune system,” he muttered, tearing another strip of his shirt free as blood soaked through the first one around my wrist.

I stared out the window at the reflector poles along the road. Light caught the circles and bounced it back as I replayed the scene of Marcie getting hit over and over in my head. It was hard to accept that she was gone, that the terror that rose in my chest at the sound of her voice no longer had a grip in this world, that I was truly free of her greedy, merciless clutches.

I shifted my eyes to my reflection in the window. Red showed through the tissue on my forehead so I held it tighter. I studied my scarred face, weary eyes, and clenched jaw. The vision of Marcie and the semi-truck ran through my head again and vanished for the last time. I focused on my reflection and a slight smile of relief touched my lips. I let out a long breath and felt her hold disappear like the memory.

“Are you okay?” Jaze asked. He touched my shoulder and I turned to look at him. He searched my eyes as though worried I had lost what made me me. “We’ve got to find Taye,” he said, pulling me back to the present.

Her name tore through my heart like a dagger; I saw the white truck again and remembered her scream as the bag was put over her head. In the chaos, everything had faded but the terror of being back under Marci’s control, but now the stark reality was that Taye, the one person in the entire world who was so caring, accepting, and healing that she had been able to break down the walls a lifetime of pain had formed around my heart, had been taken away.

I stared at Jaze, my silver-numbed mind working in overdrive to figure out how to find her. “What do we do?”

“We go home,” he said. “The Hunters and werewolves are already searching. Maybe they’ve already found her.” But there was uncertainty in his voice. My limbs shook with the inability to do anything to help her. I stared out the window, wishing we were home. Blood soaked through the makeshift bandage at my wrist, but I didn’t notice as it pattered slowly on my pants. Jaze swore softly and wrapped it again.