The Volvo’s headlights threw images into the dripping trees. She caught a glimpse of a raven, a wolf. They had borne witness months before when she’d left her old life. It felt right that they had shown up for this.

Her trackers started to gain on her.

“I’m back.” Josiah’s voice came through loud and clear. “We’re exploring an idea to get to you faster.”

“I’ve got hairpin turns coming up,” she told him. “I have to put the phone down.”

“Don’t hang up yet.” He sounded so calm, so steady. “What’s the name of the airfield you’re headed for?”

He was working his heart out to find ways to protect her and join the fight, but meanwhile he hadn’t had a chance to recover from life-threatening injuries. This upcoming confrontation might not kill her.

But it might very well kill him, because he would die before he let anything happen to her.

Except he couldn’t join her if he didn’t know where she was.

“Josiah?”

“Yes, milaya.”

“I love you,” she told him.

She didn’t wait for a reply. Pushing her phone’s power button, she turned it off. Then she tossed it into the drink holder and concentrated on the dark, solitary road ahead.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Those hairpin turns cost her.

Maybe she had ten or fifteen minutes at best before they caught up with her.

It wasn’t worth trying to get to the airfield. She had to stop now, before she lost any more time. Anyway, she was tired of running. Months tired, in fact, and she was more than a little pissed.

So okay. It would have been better if the area was by the ocean, or—she glanced at the clouded night sky—if there was a full moon. She was missing the presence of her two strongest elements, but she had to play the hand she was dealt.

She passed around another curve and reached a relatively straight length of road.

This was the place.

She spun the Volvo into a tight U-turn. There was just enough room on the two-lane road to turn around. Then, putting the vehicle in park but leaving the engine running, she ran to the narrow shoulder and searched until she found a rock that was heavy enough she had to lift it with both hands.

Jogging back to the Volvo, she set the rock on the floor on the driver’s side, poised on its narrowest side in front of the gas pedal. Then, leaving the driver’s door open, she dug through her kit of magic items for a piece of consecrated chalk and a vial of the ocean water she had harvested on the beach by the light of the moon. At least she had some form of her two strongest elements with her.