Something Witchy (Mystics & Mayhem) (13 page)

Caveman Mentality

I don’t think I’ve ever moved as fast as I did when I jumped across the console like a professional stunt driver.  I didn’t stop to think about the fact that I was about to piss off an immortal being who could crush me like a bug.  I didn’t care that I was probably going to get caught before I ever got the car started.  I didn’t even mind that I was committing grand theft auto, a felony if there ever was one.  All I could think of at that moment was getting as far away as possible before fang boy realized how bad he’d just screwed up.

Nathan came barreling out the door of the diner just as I threw the car in first and hit the gas.  I screamed when he darted right out in front of me and slammed on the brakes.  For one long, heart-stopping moment we just stared at each other through the windshield.  His eyes were glowing white again, but I didn’t give a shit if he was pissed or not.  I was the one behind the wheel of a two ton machine. 

He was just a speed bump.

“Ember!” he roared as I smiled.

I didn’t even hesitate.  It wasn’t like getting run over was going to kill him or anything!  When he flashed his fangs at me, I mashed the gas pedal all the way to the floor. 

Yeah, because it’s
my
fault he was too stupid to move.

I winced at the sound of metal hitting flesh, but I didn’t stop.  Knowing that I was as good as dead if Nathan caught me—seeing as I had just run over him with his own car—I didn’t even let up on the gas.  Fishtailing like crazy, I sped out of the parking lot, shifting gears like a Nascar pro, and cut a hard right back the way we had come. 

I hit ninety miles an hour before I was even out of sight of the diner.  I glanced in the rearview mirror as I turned the next curve and felt my blood run cold when I saw Nathan standing in the middle of the highway.  I couldn’t see his face, but I had a pretty good idea that he wasn’t happy.  Murderous, maybe, but definitely not happy.

It took almost half an hour before my muscles unclenched and I was finally able to stop shaking.  So what if my eyes were stinging with tears?  I mean, that could be stress, right?  I had, after all, just survived ‘an ordeal’.  And that guilt bubbling in the pit of my stomach?  That had to be because I’d stolen a car, not because I had run over said car’s undead owner.  Yeah, that had to be it.

I was so busy trying to figure out all my internal crap that I nearly died of a heart attack when the back tire blew with a loud pop that sounded like a gunshot going off.  I had to fight to keep the steering wheel from being jerked out of my hands.  By the time I got the car pulled over I felt like I was about to shake to pieces.

Seriously, I
had
to find a way off the Bad Karma Fairy’s shit list.  This was just starting to get ridiculous.

I immediately started looking for a latch for the trunk, thanking anyone listening upstairs that Blake loved me enough to teach me how to change my own tire.  I finally located the trunk release and jumped out of the car to get to work.  I paused only long enough to arch an eyebrow at the very expensive luggage packed neatly in the trunk.  So he had been planning my kidnapping?  Well, it sucked to be him, huh?  Not only did I have his car, I had his clothes, too. 

By the time I had the luggage in the trunk stacked neatly next to the side of the road—where I fully intended to leave it, by the way—my hands had stopped shaking again and I was starting to think rationally again.  Nathan’s car was an amazing machine with a max speed of a hundred and ninety, and I had been pressing pretty hard on that gas pedal.  Even with vamp super speed, I figured I still had enough time to get the tire changed and get back on the road.

What I didn’t figure on was not being able to get to the spare.

“Are you frigging
kidding
me?!” I moaned when I grabbed the leather handle made into the trunk liner and it came off in my hand. 

With a frustrated scream, I kicked the pile of luggage, sending it flying…and the car…and the gravel beneath my feet. The whole time, I was reciting a litany of every foul curse word I had ever heard.   I was so busy using Nathan’s luggage for football practice that I didn’t even notice the car coming my way until it was too late.  I immediately froze like a deer in headlights and stared as a bright yellow Jeep pulled in behind me and killed the engine. 

Sure that it was Nathan and I was about to die, I just kept standing there, the blood draining out of my face so fast I felt light-headed.  When the driver’s side door swung open, every instinct I had started screaming for me to run, but my feet felt like they’d been cemented to the ground.  I had a sudden vision of myself as a bloodless corpse and had to swallow hard to keep from screaming bloody murder when a silhouette appeared in the headlights. 

“Hey!  It’s okay, calm down,” the silhouette said with a deep British accent.  “I’m not going to hurt you.  I just stopped to see if you needed some help.”

I blinked as a really cute guy who definitely wasn’t Nathan materialized out of the glare of the headlights.  He wasn’t the muscle-bound type I usually liked, but he was still hot.  He was tall and leanly muscled, his bronze skin seeming to glow with the last traces of a summer that was long gone.  His hair was a little longer than was fashionable and I seriously doubted the highlights I could see in it were chemically done.  Everything about him screamed sun and warmth, like he living embodiment of summer or something.  Even his eyes, which were the most unusual shade of antique gold and totally gorgeous, seemed to hold that heat and light. 

“Are you all right?” he asked, sounding really concerned, when I just stood there and stared at him like an idiot. 

“Y-yeah,” I stammered out, still trying not to hyperventilate.  He might not be Nathan, but he might not be all sweetness and light like he appeared to be, either.  For all I knew he was a serial murderer who preyed on young women on dark roads.  “I’m fine.  Just a flat.  I’ve got it under control.”

“Uh-huh, I can see you do,” he said softly, glancing at the luggage strewn half in and half out of the road.  “You know kicking your car isn’t going to get that tire off, right?”

“I’m just having a little trouble getting to the spare,” I admitted, waving the scrap of leather still clenched in my hand at him.  “The damn handle broke off.”

With one of those superior male smirks I really can’t stand, he brushed past me and started fishing in his jeans pocket for something.  I tensed up so much I’m pretty sure I felt a tendon or two snap when he pulled a pocket knife out and flipped it open.  Instead of turning around and gutting me with the thing, he slid it under the flap hiding the spare tire and popped it up effortlessly.

“Right, like
I
have a pocket knife,” I muttered when he put his knife away and reached back into the trunk to get the spare tire he’d just revealed with his manly skills.  “Let me guess, you were a Boy Scout?”

“It pays to be prepared,” he said, chuckling, as he propped the tire against the bumper and started looking for the jack.

“Yeah, I guess,” I said, thinking how much easier my life would be if I was ever prepared. 

If I had been prepared, I wouldn’t have ended up a vampire’s captive.  Then again, how
would
you prepare for something like that?  Somehow I didn’t think there were any classes or instructions for that eventuality.  Seriously, what would they call it? 
Abduction by the Undead for Beginners
?

“Well, I’ll have you back on the road faster than you can say ‘AAA’,” he said, grinning.  “My name’s Tyler Jordan, by the way.”

“Nice to meet you,” I told him, intentionally not giving him my name.  “Thanks for helping me.”

“Anything for a beautiful woman,” he shrugged, loosening the lug nuts on my shredded tire like a professional. 

I arched an eyebrow at that, but he was too busy to notice.  When did I become ‘beautiful’?  And having two hot guys call me that in the same day…yeah, that had to be a record.  I suddenly found myself staring at my rescuer through narrowed eyes as I tried to figure out what kind of psycho he was.

Because, looking at my track record, that seemed to be the only kind of guy I attracted.

Tyler chattered away to me as he worked, but I couldn’t really put a lot of effort into listening to him.  No, I was too busy looking around as I waited for Nathan to jump out of the shadows and rip my head off.  How long would it take him to catch up with me?  An hour?  Less?  The sooner I got back on the road, the better.

“You all right?” Tyler asked.  I looked down to find him looking up at me with a troubled expression.

“Fine,” I told him, my eyes involuntarily scanning the area around me again as my muscles tensed up a little more.

“This is a nice ride you have here,” he said as he stood up and put the blown tire in the compartment in the trunk and threw the jack in after it.  “You must be a model or an actress or something to afford a car like this.”

“It’s not my car,” I told him, causing him to arch one perfect eyebrow.  “I stole it.”

“Stole it?” he repeated, both eyebrows shooting up his forehead like they were in a race.  “Funny, you don’t look like a car thief.”

“I’m not,” I admitted, shaking my head for emphasis.  Then, just to see what he would do, I told him the truth.  “I stole it from the dead guy who kidnapped me.  Oh, and I might have ran him over while I was trying to escape.  But
that
wasn’t my fault.  The idiot ran out in front of me.”

For a second he just stood there and looked at me, and I felt my cheeks heating up.  He probably thought I was off my meds or something.  Hell, if someone had told
me
that story I would have been calling in the men in the little white coats.  I wondered if that was what he was thinking when he turned around and looked behind him—probably wondering if he could make it back to his Jeep before the crazy chick in front of him could attack—then slowly turned back around to face me.

“Was the poor bloke dead
before
you ran over him?” he asked with a very solemn expression, taking me by surprise. 

“Yeah,” I answered, honestly.  “Well, kind of.”

“I was afraid you were going to say that,” he muttered, running a hand through his hair, looking nervous.  “In that case, why don’t you leave his car right there and let’s get the hell out of here.”

Go?  Uh…no.  My parents might have been the worst parents in history when it came to the whole love and affection thing, but they had at least raised me with a little common sense.  I wasn’t about to climb into a car with someone I didn’t know!  Only an idiot would do that!

But you did that very thing only a few hours ago,
a depressed sounding voice said in the back of my mind.

Yeah, and that had turned out so
well
for me, hadn’t it?

“No offense, but I don’t know you from Adam,” I told him, chewing on my lip.  I thought I should probably exhaust any other options before I just rode away into the moonlight with him.  “Look, let me borrow your phone.  I’ll call the cops and tell them where I am.  Seriously, I really don’t think you want to get involved in the drama-fest my life has become.  You
do
have a phone, don’t you?”

“Yeah, I have a phone,” he said.  I felt a little smidgen of hope flare in my chest that died pretty quick when he started shaking his head.  “Unfortunately, the battery’s dead.”

  Of course it was.

“Look, we really need to get out of here before your boyfriend shows up,” he said, reaching out like he was going to take my arm.  I immediately backed up.

“Which one?” I asked when he frowned at me.  “The vampire?  Or the demon?”

“Bloody hell!  There’s a demon, too?” he asked, laughing shakily.  “You’ve been busy pissing off
all
the wrong people, haven’t you, beautiful?”

I just stared at him.  Most people would have been running in the other direction in case my insanity was contagious.  Not this guy, though.  He hadn’t even blinked when I admitted to being chased by not one but two mythical monsters.  He looked nervous, don’t get me wrong, but given the way his eyes were darting around, peering into the darkness surrounding us, I didn’t think it had anything to do with worrying about my sanity.

“You actually believe me, don’t you?” I whispered, my eyes filling with tears.

“Of course I do,” he told me, frowning.  “Why wouldn’t I?”

He took another step toward me, and I backed up again, nearly toppling over into the trunk.  He reached out to grab my arm to keep me on my feet, and I suddenly forgot why I was trying to get away from him.  His hand was very warm, almost hot, and that heat soaked through my sweater and seemed to spread through me like wildfire, easing the chill that had taken hold of me.  But that wasn’t what turned me into a human statue, unable to even shake his hand off.  No, what shocked me so much that all I could do was stare up at him was the fact that I suddenly felt…safe.

“You’re a bandraoi,” he gasped, bringing me back to reality with a thud, “A real, true to goodness blood witch.”

Yep, and we were back to that.

“No, I’m not,” I told him, shaking my head vigorously.

“Yes, you are,” he said, giving me an impressed look that made me feel really self-conscious.  “Do you have any idea…?”

His voice trailed off and he shook his head, looking at me like he was in awe.  I decided then and there that he was as delusional as Nathan.  Seriously, I didn’t get how either one of them could think I was a witch.  Witches were powerful, weren’t they?  I sure as hell didn’t
feel
very powerful.  Scared?  Confused?   Exhausted?  Yeah, those I had down.  Powerful?  Not so much.

“I need to get you out of here,” Tyler said softly, staring down at me with way too much intensity.  “Let me help you.  You can trust me.  I swear.”

A pleasant tingling sensation raced through me when his hand slid down my arm to wrap around mine.  It wasn’t that intense electrical surge that Nathan’s touch produced, but something sweet and gentle and warm.  Just like him. 

“She doesn’t need your help,” a cold, menacing voice said from out of the darkness behind Tyler.  “But if you don’t get your hands off her right now,
you’re
definitely going to need some help.”