Everything seemed normal, but my unease ratcheted up another notch. Something about this whole situation felt slightly off. Worse than that, it reminded me of . . . something . . . something I’d seen before . . . something I couldn’t quite put my finger on . . .
My eyes locked on to the stop sign next to the van, and a memory erupted out of the dark of my mind. I flashed back to another intersection and another time— when Vivian had told Preston Ashton to ram their SUV into my mom’s car so they could ambush and kill her.
And suddenly, I knew that the Reaper sighting at the airport had been a false alarm—one designed to make us drive to this exact spot.
“Tell Linus to stop! It’s a trap—”
Even as I started to yell, I realized it was already too late.
Linus eased the van out into the intersection to make the turn. The idling black truck immediately zoomed forward and slammed into the side of the van, sending it skittering sideways. Sergei cursed and put his foot on the gas, trying to get closer to the van and our friends.
But he didn’t realize that there was a second black truck right behind the first one.
It roared up and steered straight at us. I didn’t even have time to suck down another breath to scream before the other vehicle smashed into us.
For a moment, the world went completely black. Then, the SUV stopped rolling, and I snapped back to
reality. I shook the fog from my mind and looked at Logan. He’d gotten the worst of the impact, and his side of the car was smushed in like a tin can someone had stomped under his foot. The left side of his face was bloody from where the window had shattered, and the glass had cut into his skin, while his body was twisted at an awkward angle.
“Logan?” I said. “Logan!”
I thought he wasn’t going to answer me, but he let out a weak cough, and his eyes slowly fluttered open.
“Gypsy girl?” Logan rasped, raising his hand to his neck, as though it were aching. It probably was after the jarring impact of the crash. “What happened . . .”
“Reapers,” I muttered in a dark voice.
My yells and Logan’s voice roused the others, and Sergei let out a low groan from the front seat. So did Grandma Frost. Sergei’s face was cut and bloody, just like Logan’s, but Grandma didn’t seem to have a scratch on her. Neither did I, since we’d both been on the opposite side of the car from the impact.
Since everyone seemed to be more or less okay, I leaned forward and peered through the cracked windshield. Several figures wearing black robes and carrying curved swords had already gotten out of the two trucks and were approaching the artifacts van. That was bad enough, but what made my heart clench in my chest was the fact that more and more Reapers poured out of the woods on the right side of the road, including two very familiar figures.
One of the Reapers was a girl my own age, seventeen, with frizzy auburn hair, pretty features, and eyes that were an amazing golden color. The other Reaper was a tall, slender woman, remarkably beautiful with her blond hair and intense green eyes.
Vivian Holler and Agrona Quinn.
The leaders of the Reapers. Here. My enemies were right here in front of me.
And they weren’t alone.
Along with the Reapers, several Black rocs hopped out of the woods, some of the birds even larger than the smashed-up vehicles. Even from here, I could see the crimson sheen that streaked through their glossy black feathers and the sparks of Reaper red that burned in the depths of their shiny black eyes.
Agrona waved her left hand in an obvious command, and several Reapers surged toward the van. Another smaller group split off from the main pack and rushed past my SUV, no doubt to engage the Protectorate guards that were climbing out of the vehicles behind us. Even through the closed doors, I could already hear the sharp ring-ring-ring of metal hitting metal.
My eyes narrowed, and rage burned in my heart, searing through the rest of my foggy confusion from the crash. Vivian and Agrona were here, and they’d hurt my friends—again.
Well, they weren’t going to get away with it, and they especially weren’t getting their hands on the artifacts. Not if I had anything to do with it.
“Gypsy girl?” Logan rasped again, his blue eyes glassy and unfocused in his face. “What’s going on? What happened?”
“Stay here!” I yelled. “Don’t move!”
I unbuckled my seat belt, tightened my grip on Vic, opened the door, and sprang out of the SUV.
It was like stepping into a war zone.
Screams, snarls, shrieks, and shouts ripped through the air all around me, along with the constant clashclash-clang of swords smashing together and the occasional, high-pitched caw-caw-caw from one of the Black rocs. The coppery stench of blood mixed with the smell of burned rubber from where the Reapers had spun their tires, building up enough speed to ram the artifacts van and the SUV that I’d been riding in.
I staggered forward, my head spinning and my body aching, a little more shaken up from the crash than I’d realized, but I shoved the feelings away and concentrated on the van in front of me. Vivian and Agrona were standing off to one side of the road, next to a Black roc, while the other Reapers clustered around the van. Apparently, the back doors of the vehicle were locked because one of the Reapers drew a crowbar out from the folds of his black robe and went to work trying to pry open one of the doors. The left side of the van had been smushed in, just like with our SUV, but there was no sign of Linus, Inari, Oliver, or Alexei, so I had no idea how badly they might have been injured in the crash.
I risked a quick glance back over my shoulder. Reapers surrounded the other two SUVs that had been at the rear of the convoy and were fighting the members of the Protectorate who had hopped out of those vehicles. Aiko moved through the Reapers, spinning this way and that, like a leaf dancing in the wind. She seemed to be trying to break through the line of Reapers to get to the artifacts van. So did all the other members of the Protectorate, but there were too many Reapers between them and the van, and I knew they wouldn’t be able to defeat the other warriors in time.
Up to me, then.
“Reapers,” Vic said in a low, bloodthirsty voice. “Finally, finally, some Reapers to kill. What are you waiting for, Gwen? Charge! Charge! Charge!”
I knew exactly how he felt. “With pleasure,” I muttered back to him.
I tightened my grip on the sword and sprinted forward. Vivian, Agrona, and the other Reapers remained focused on the back of the artifacts van. Apparently, they’d thought that the hard crash had incapacitated everyone in my SUV, so they didn’t even glance in my direction.