Silver and Bone by Claudia Cain

Author:Claudia Cain [Cain, Claudia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Black Sheep Books
Published: 2024-10-30T12:00:00+00:00

•••

The world rocks. Light flashes. Glass breaks and a horn screams.

When I open my eyes my vision sways like we’re underwater, and I’m stuck in a loop of weightlessness and crashing as the car rolls. Only when it finally stops moving, lurching to a stop upside-down and battered, can I catch my breath.

I’ve only ever been in three car accidents. None too terrible. Nobody was killed, but the mortals involved were always injured. There’s nothing like a high-speed collision to remind you how breakable a human is.

This fourth crash is not accidental, and as I hang in the seatbelt, wheezing and blurry-eyed, it takes a minute for sound to start coming back to me.

A tinny voice is screaming from the other end of a phone. Oliver. But the phone is out of view, and it’s the last thing on my mind.

I jolt, scrabbling at my seatbelt. My side of the car took the brunt of the crash. Behind me was—

“Paul.” It comes out like a cough. “Paul?”

Silence. Visions of dead faces and sightless eyes dance through my mind, laced with trickles of blood.

“Paul?” I croak again. “Dave?”

My fumbling fingers finally hit the button, and the seatbelt retreats with a whiplike crack. I crash to the roof of the car, landing in the scattered glass, and gasp with pain, stabbed in a thousand places.

There’s a noise behind me, a strangled groan, and I shuffle until I see Dave, also lying on the roof. His eyes are open but unfocused, and a long, shallow gash slices the right side of his face, blood coating it like a mask. Alive, though. He’s alive.

He blinks at me.

I still can’t see Paul.

“Paul,” I say insistently, and after a moment Dave grunts, slowly straining to see the seat beside him. I shift myself, bones cracking and glass crackling, and realise that the space next to me is vacant, the passenger door hanging open.

Ian is gone.

My breath catches. “Ian!”

There’s a scrambling sound, and Ian drops into the empty space where the door hangs open. His eyes are wide, hair mussed and glittering with glass, and his hands are ragged and bleeding. Other than that, he appears miraculously unscathed. “Detective Jones? Jennifer, someone is getting out of the other car.”

It takes a second for the words to process. Thinking is like wading through a bog.

“Jennifer!”

“Yep,” I mutter. “Right. Who?”

His head disappears as he peers over the top—bottom?—of the car, before looking back at me. “Two men. I don’t recognise one, but I’m pretty sure the other one is Laurie. He looks different than I remember, but I think it’s them. What do I do?”

“Is Paul alright?”

Ian hesitates, his expression carefully masked. “I can’t tell.”

There’s a long moan from the back seat, and Dave drawls, “Ow…”

“What do I do?” Ian repeats. “They’re coming closer, they’re just walking. Do I fight them? Can I fight them? If Laurie is an older vampire than me, does that mean he’s stronger? If I drag you out, then you can help, and we can get Dave and Paul and run.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.