Chapter 145: Arthur
Cecilia
He yanked the wheel hard to the right, sending us careening onto a side road so narrow the branches of overhanging trees scraped against the windows.
The sedan's suspension screamed in protest as we hit potholes and ruts at speeds that should have torn the undercarriage apart.
The pursuing vehicles followed, their headlights cutting through the darkness behind us like searchlights.
I could see them more clearly now—black SUVs with tinted windows that reflected nothing but our own desperate flight.
"How many?" I asked, trying to keep my voice steady even as terror clawed at my throat.
"Three," Harold said from the driver's seat, his knuckles white on the steering wheel. "Maybe four. Hard to tell with the—"
The back windshield exploded.
Glass rained down on us in a shower of glittering fragments. Beside me in the back seat, Sophia screamed, her hands flying up to protect her face as bullets punched through the upholstery where our heads had been seconds before. On my other side, Daniel made a choked sound of pain, his battered body going rigid.
"Get down!" Harold shouted, his voice cutting through the chaos. "All of you—below the window line, now!"
I grabbed Sophia and pulled her down, then reached across to help Daniel slump lower in his seat, feeling his body go rigid with pain as the movement jarred his injuries. We huddled together in the back, three bodies pressed into a space meant for comfort, not survival.
More bullets tore through the car—one taking out the passenger side mirror, another punching a hole through the roof that let in a beam of moonlight. The metallic tang of fear mixed with the smell of gunpowder and gasoline.
Harold's response was to floor the accelerator, the sedan's engine roaring as we shot forward with enough force to slam me back against the seat. Trees blurred past on either side, branches reaching out like skeletal fingers trying to grab us, pull us back toward the monsters hunting us.
"There's a main road ahead," Harold said, his voice still controlled despite the chaos, despite the fact that he was driving blind with all of us ducked below the windows. "If we can reach it, lose them in traffic—"
One of the SUVs pulled alongside us on the driver's side, close enough that I could see the driver's face through the tinted windows when I dared to peek—cold, professional, utterly devoid of mercy. The passenger window rolled down, and I saw the barrel of what looked like a rifle extending toward us.
Harold jerked the wheel left without warning, ramming our sedan into the SUV's side with enough force to send it careening off the narrow road and into a ditch.
The impact threw me against Sophia, and I heard Daniel grunt in pain as we were all thrown sideways, but we stayed on the road, still moving, still alive.
"Two more behind us," Harold said through gritted teeth, checking the mirror. "And they're not backing off."
The road widened slightly ahead, opening onto what looked like a junction with a larger highway. Streetlights appeared in the distance, the promise of civilization and witnesses and safety if we could just reach them.
We were maybe a hundred yards from the junction when the second SUV made its move.
It accelerated with a burst of speed that brought it right up against our rear bumper, then rammed us hard enough to send the sedan fishtailing across both lanes. Harold fought for control, his entire body straining against the wheel as he tried to keep us from spinning out completely.
"Hold on!" he shouted, and then we were airborne.
The sedan hit something—a curb, maybe, or a drainage ditch—and launched into the air for a sickening moment of weightlessness.
Time seemed to slow, giving me just enough space to think this is it, this is how we die, before we crashed back down to earth with an impact that made every bone in my body feel like it had been shattered.
We came to rest upside down, the roof crushed inward and the smell of gasoline thick in the air.
My head felt like it had been split open, warm blood trickling down my temple, and when I tried to move my arms they responded sluggishly, like they belonged to someone else.
I was hanging upside down in my seatbelt, Sophia to my left and Daniel to my right, all three of us suspended like broken marionettes. In the front seat, Harold groaned, already fumbling with his own belt.
"Sophia," I managed, my voice sounding distant and wrong. "Daniel. Harold. Are you—"
Footsteps. Heavy boots crunching on broken glass, multiple sets converging on the wreckage from both sides of the overturned vehicle.
Through the shattered windshield, I saw them approaching—dark figures silhouetted against the streetlights we'd been so close to reaching. One of them bent down, peering into the car with cold eyes that assessed us like we were nothing more than damaged merchandise to be collected and returned.
"Still alive," he said, his voice carrying a thick accent I couldn't place. "All four of them. Lord Rhys will be pleased."
No. No, we'd come so close, we'd almost made it—
A hand reached through the broken window on my side, grabbing my arm with bruising force, and I tried to fight, tried to pull away, but my body wouldn't cooperate, wouldn't do anything except hang there limply in the seatbelt that was the only thing keeping me from falling onto the crushed roof.
"Easy now," the man said, and there was something almost gentle in his tone that made it worse somehow. "Don't struggle. You'll only make it harder on yourself."
He pulled out a knife—not to hurt me, but to cut the seatbelt—and I felt myself falling, felt hands catching me before I hit the ground, felt the world tilting and spinning as they dragged me out of the wreckage.
On the other side of the car, I could hear Sophia crying, hear Daniel's weak protests as they pulled him free. Harold was fighting—I could hear the sounds of a scuffle, flesh hitting flesh—but there were too many of them, and he was injured from the crash.
Arthur, I thought as consciousness started to slip away, as rough hands bound my wrists behind my back and shoved me to my knees on the broken pavement. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry I couldn't—
A sound that didn't belong, that cut through the ringing in my ears and the chaos of our capture—the distinctive whup-whup-whup of helicopter blades, growing rapidly louder, coming from directly overhead.
I forced my head up, squinting against the pain and the blood in my eyes, and saw it descending through the darkness—a sleek black helicopter with no markings, its spotlight suddenly blazing to life and pinning our captors in a circle of blinding white light.
The men around us froze, their hands going to weapons as they tried to track the aircraft's movement, tried to figure out if this was reinforcements or a new threat.
The helicopter dropped lower, dangerously low, the downdraft from its rotors sending debris flying and forcing everyone to shield their eyes. And there, visible through the open side door, backlit by the interior lights—
Arthur.