The Chosen

One minute they were going quite the thing, and the next, in slow motion, they were in a pirouette … and landing in a ditch.

Like, literally, a frickin’ ditch.

Facing backward.

The good news, Blay supposed, was that he had been able to slow them down enough so the air bags had not gone off and pillowed him and his dad in the face. The bad news? The “ditch” was more like a giant ravine capable of swallowing Swedish cars whole.

The first thing Blay did was check on his mom, who had had to remain unrestrained. “How’re we in the back?”

He was trying to remain casual, and he didn’t take a breath until his mom flashed him the thumbs-up. “Well, that was exciting. And I’m just fine.”

As his dad and mahmen started to chat nervously, he looked up, up, up to where the highway was. Then he turned off the engine. There was a good chance the tailpipe was impacted with snow, and if the heater kept running, they’d wake up dead way before they were incinerated in the morning by the sun.

“Any chance you can dematerialize?” he asked his mahmen.

“Oh, sure, absolutely. Not a problem.”

Ten minutes of eyes closing and concentration on her part later, it was clear that was a lost cause—and it went without saying that neither he nor his father were leaving the car without her.

Annnnnd that was how he’d ended up calling Qhuinn.

Now, that decision had taken some time.

And with that male coming for help at a dead run, Blay sat with his hands on the wheel in spite of the fact that they were going nowhere, and wondered if he shouldn’t have called John Matthew instead.

Or maybe the Sugar-Plum-fucking-Fairy.

“This all will be fine,” his mahmen said from the back. “Qhuinn will be here soon.”

As Blay glanced in the rearview, he noted the way she zipped up her parka. “Yeah.”

Damn it, he should have had Jane come out to his parents’ house. But he’d been thinking about Assail and anyone else who was really injured. It had felt selfish to take either of the docs or Ehlena away from the clinic.

Besides, Manny, as a human, couldn’t dematerialize.

No, and it had been best that he call Qhuinn. Especially given that he was trying to keep his parents calm about the fact that he’d spent one, and now two, nights at home—and hadn’t mentioned the twins at all. He was well aware that he wasn’t fooling either of them, but he was so not ready to talk about the situation: Oh, yeah, remember those kids you’d liked so much? Yeah, Mom, including the one that was named after you? Well, they’re not going to be—

From out of the blowing snow, a ghost emerged. A big-ass ghost that was sporting a skullcap.

“Oh, here he is,” his mom said from the rear.

And her relief was the kind of thing that Blay couldn’t afford to acknowledge feeling himself. Except yes, he was glad the Brother was here. Come on, it was his mahmen. He needed to get her to the mansion—and he’d known that even a blizzard wasn’t going to keep Qhuinn from coming to get them all.

Yeah, apparently the line was not drawn at gale-force winds or blinding snow.

Diaper duty was the divide.

“Stay here,” Blay announced as he went to open his door.

He’d meant to emerge triumphantly, an equal to an equal who had been only temporarily bested by a failure of his Bridgestone radials. But the door was fucking stuck.

He ended up dematerializing out of a two-inch crack in the window.

Damn it was cold, he thought as the wind started smacking his face around.

“She’s injured!” he shouted into the gale.

Qhuinn just stared at him, those eyes reaching across the space that separated them, questioning, begging. But then the guy shook himself out of it. “Because of this accident?”

“No, before! She slipped and hurt that ankle again. She wasn’t wearing her boot. I was trying to drive them to the training center.”

“You should have called me before—I would have—”

From out of the storm, another figure arrived. Tohr. And as Qhuinn tweaked to the presence, he turned around and seemed surprised. Then relieved.

“Can she dematerialize?” Qhuinn yelled as he refocused.

“No! And we’re not leaving her!”

Qhuinn nodded. “I need to go and get the Hummer!”

They were yelling back and forth, cupping their hands, bracing their bodies—and oddly, Blay thought that it was a lot like communicating through the events that had happened around Layla and the kids. That whole storm had blown in between them, rocking them both, creating an emotional blizzard that made the landscape of their relationship impenetrable—and the bad weather had yet to move on.

In fact, he feared it never would.

“I’ll stay with them!” Blay said.

Tohr spoke up. “I’m going home and getting blankets! And then I’ll be back to help guard!”

Blay had to turn his head away and get the snow out of his eyes. “Thank you!”

When he felt Qhuinn’s hand on his shoulder, he jumped, but didn’t step out of reach.

“I’m coming right back, okay?” the Brother said. “Don’t worry about anything.”

For a split second, Blay just stared into those mismatched eyes. Something about the sight of them, so concerned and intense, made the pain in the center of his chest feel fresh as the moment it had first been created.

But that wasn’t all he felt.

His body still wanted the guy. His body was still ready … for more of Qhuinn. Goddamn it.

Without another word, Qhuinn got gone and so did Tohr.

Blay stood there in the storm for a heartbeat or two longer, pivoting around so he could look up to the highway. Oh, check it. They’d managed to break through the side rail.

Before he got back inside the car, he went around to the front hood, got down on his knees, and took out his Swiss Army knife. His hands had no gloves so he worked fast, brushing the snow away, removing the two screws that held the license plate to its holder and snagging the tag. Then he fought his way through the wind to the back and did the same thing to the rear plate, tucking them both into the inside of his jacket.

Dematerializing into the car, he smiled at his parents. “They’re coming right back. Won’t be a problem.”

His mahmen nodded and smiled. “They are just the best.”

“Uh-huh.” He pointed to the glove compartment. “Say, Dad, would you mind—”

“Already did.”

His old man gave him the registration and insurance cards, both of which V had faked, and Blay put them inside his parka as well. The VIN numbers had been scrubbed as soon as they’d gotten the thing for just this occasion—when you were a vampire in a human world, and your ride wrecked, a lot of times you just up and left it because the hassle wasn’t worth the retrieval.

FFS, it was going to be a day or two before anyone could even get to the sedan, maybe longer, so it was best to simply write the whole thing off.

As he stared out the side window, Blay felt a curling anxiety that had nothing to do with his mom’s appendage or the blizzard.

You can’t go back, he told himself. Only forward.

“I’m really going to miss this car,” his mom murmured. “I was just getting used to it.”

“We’ll get another one, honey,” his pops said. “And you can pick it out.”

Yeah, too bad you couldn’t just go to a RelationshipMax lot and buy a new version of whatever you’d crashed, one that maybe had some technology upgrades and better suspension on your partner.

But life didn’t work like that.

FORTY-TWO

Behind the wheel of his Hummer, Qhuinn felt like it took a month to get back to where that Volvo had deep-sixed itself off the side of the highway. He supposed, though, as the mile marker that he’d waited forever for finally presented itself, that he should be grateful he could get out here at all. His second new SUV was tight like that, though, its claw-treaded tires fortified with a set of King Kong chains, its wide wheelbase, and mile-high clearance exactly what you needed on a night like tonight.

When you were rescuing the love of your life and his parents out in the middle of the blizzard.