Owner (Blood Brotherhood) by Loki Renard

Author:Loki Renard [Renard, Loki]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2022-06-23T18:30:00+00:00

Anita

I’ve never seen the countryside coming at me this fast. Crichton handles the car like a rally driver, and I finally feel safe enough for my brain to start working again.

“Were you in the back of the car the whole time?”

“That would appear to be a reasonable explanation for my presence now," he replies, glancing in the rear-view mirror. It’s not really necessary. The sirens are still very much audible. These country police have never been so excited to catch anybody. Direford isn’t a place boasting a lot of high-octane crime.

I wonder what Crichton is going to do to get us out of this. I am a passenger now, and that gives me time to do what I so rarely have opportunity to do. Think.

“You weren’t in the back of the car. I put my duffel in there.”

He doesn’t reply. But I know very well that men cannot appear from nowhere. The whole thing about being a person very much involves being one place, and then being in another. Things that don't have to be anywhere in particular before being somewhere else are not of this world.

“You came to me last night with the hot chip butty,” I say. “It was so nice, and this is nice too. So I don’t want to throw any of this in your face. But…”

The butty was delicious. Mrs Crocombe must have put it together in the middle of the night just for me. I can only imagine her having a fry up in the wee hours of the morning, then sending Crichton down to me. The two of them have been so very kind to me. They are they only ones who've seemed pleased I was there. Bryn and Thor would rather I didn't exist at all. Yes, even Thor, whose desire has been evident from time to time, and who has shown me some softness, he'd probably wish he'd never met me.

The tires are squealing and the car is sliding from side to side, but Crichton keeps it on the increasingly narrow lanes with the ease of a rally driver.

"Why are you on my side?”

“Because you’re one of us, miss. You knew what was in the case the moment you saw it. Unlike the generally dull public, you were drawn to power, because it comes from the same place you do.”

“I really don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He smiles gently and navigates the car around a sharp bend, over a hillock, and through a portal to Hell.

Literally.

Before I know what is happening, the hill in front of us is no longer a gentle rise with a calm track ascending. It is jagged rock, a hole torn straight through the earth and reality itself. I didn't see it open up, surely such a tectonic event would destroy everything for miles around. But there’s not even a shudder. There’s just the strangeness and the openness, and a cavern made for two before us. The road fractures into a thousand pieces, but Crichton does not slow for even a moment.

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