Relief rushed through me as my hand curled around the gun. I straightened, took a deep breath, and forced my mind into training mode. I’d practiced encounters like this a million times—evasion tactics, self-defense, apprehending. …

I opened the door and got out of the car.

Tall. Dark blond hair cut short. Black T-shirt. A leather strap diagonally across his chest attached to a round shield behind his back. But what caught my attention and made my heart leap to my throat was the very shiny, very wicked-looking blade in his hand, something in between a dagger and a short sword.

He was solidly built, and when he eyed me up and down and then stared into my eyes, my mother’s words echoed in my mind. RUN!

My hand flexed on the weapon I held against my thigh as he moved from the trunk of the car to the open space, leaving me trapped between two vehicles and the wall of the hotel. I eased back and slipped between the front of the car and the bushes, and made for the other side. He shadowed my move.

“Look, man, I don’t know what your deal is, but maybe you should put the knife down, okay?”

We were on the back side of the hotel, virtually isolated. And unless a car came down the side road next to the lot, I was on my own.

He moved forward, leading with his wide shoulders. I didn’t want to shoot the guy, but something told me he could care less about the gun. He started speaking. In a different language. A low, commanding tone spoken with such conviction that I knew whatever he was saying was bad, like last rites kind of bad.

“C’mon, don’t be stupid.” I backed up, stumbling over the curb. “I don’t want to shoot you.”

He closed the distance between us and was about three feet from me when he spoke in heavily accented English and raised the blade. “By the will of Athana potniya, I release you from this life.”

Damn it, he’s gonna make me do it.

The blade swung down. I fired.

The sound cracked through the night air like a bomb, and the slight kickback vibrated through my body as the bullet thunked into his thigh.

He flinched, paused for a second, and then continued stalking toward me.

My eyes went wide and my mouth went dry. Oh yeah, he was jacked up, high on something. Had to be.

He raised the long dagger again. My pulse pounded loud and slow in my ears. It seemed like that second lasted forever before his arm came down with so much force that it made him grunt. I could barely feel my hand as I leveled the gun and pulled the trigger again. The bullet hit him in the right shoulder. It wouldn’t kill him, but it should make him drop the damn mini-sword.

He stopped, arm halfway into his blow, and glanced at the blood blooming outward from his wound. Then his crazy eyes met mine. He grinned.

Oh shit.

He took two steps and swung downward. I caught his arm, hoping the wound and my own strength would be enough to hold him off. His face was inches from mine, close enough for me to see the purpose-filled light in his eyes. Sweat trickled down his left temple. Through clenched teeth, he cursed at me in that odd language. His other fist swung up, but I blocked it with my elbow, steeling myself against the pain, and immediately kneed him in the groin with enough strength to dent the hood of a car. He dropped back and doubled over.

The blade clattered to the ground.

About time.

My senses kicked in. I darted past him, grabbing the blade off the ground without breaking stride, my hair coming undone and falling into my eyes. I made for the side street that led to the front of the hotel, but just as I rounded the corner, he caught up with me. His hand snaked out and hooked my ankle. I shrieked in surprise. My arms pinwheeled. Oh no. I braced for impact.

My elbows hit the ground first, a fraction of a second before my forehead cracked hard on the blacktop and sent the gun and blade clattering.

Pain burst in all directions, running along every inch of my skull and blinding me in the process.

Jesus Christ! Everywhere there was searing white light.

My limbs went numb, my pulse thundering too fast, too chaotic. I was on the verge of panic, the kind that would completely destroy my ability to fight if I didn’t get my act together. If you’re down, you swing at anything! You do whatever it takes to get back up! Bruce’s voice shouted in my head.

Biting back the panic, I flipped over and kicked out blindly, connecting with something. My hand brushed over the hilt of the blade lying above my head. I grabbed it, sat up, and shoved it in front of me with all my strength, hoping to hell it hit something.

The sword caught. I pushed.

My heartbeat drummed so loud in my ears, I could barely hear. Slowly my vision returned.

The man knelt between my legs, both hands holding a small portion of the blade near the hilt, the rest embedded deep in his chest. His eyes were wide and surprised, as though the idea of failure had never occurred to him.

Time passed. Our gazes stayed locked. At some point, his expression shifted to regret. One hand reached out and lifted a strand of my hair. “So beautiful,” he whispered in English. He rubbed it between his bloody finger and thumb. Then he muttered in that same strange language before a cough overtook him. He grimaced, closing his eyelids tightly. My hair trailed through his fingers as he fell back, his body sliding off the blade.

The frogs and crickets continued their night song. The sounds of traffic came back to life. But all those sounds, those sounds that had no idea what had just happened, were muted by my loud, ragged breaths.

My throat grew thick and dry. Tears stung my eyes as I stared at the guy in front of me. He couldn’t have been more than twenty-five. Healthy. Good-looking. He could’ve had a decent life. Met a cute girl. Gotten married. Had babies.

Oh, God. I’d just killed a man—my fingers flexed on the hilt of the blade—with a goddamn miniature sword.

Family time with the Sandersons never covered this.

I swiped the back of one shaking hand over my wet eyes, still gripping the dagger with the other even though my knuckles were white and my fingers were cramping. I couldn’t seem to move, couldn’t seem to recover from the shock. The shock of being attacked by a stranger. Of fighting for my life. Of killing him . . . Get the cell phone. Call 911. Get off your ass, you know what to do. Yes. I knew what to do. With a few deep breaths to calm my racing heart, I rolled onto one hip to push up, but the man’s body suddenly twitched.

I froze, mouth going slack as his body lifted off the ground and hovered for a few seconds before slowly turning to smoke, and then disappearing into some invisible updraft.

Dumbfounded, I sat back down and blinked. My grasp on the sword went limp, the angle of the blade catching the streetlight and making the blood shine.

A sharp laugh escaped my open mouth. “Seriously?” My voice sounded small and weak in the quiet night. I tipped my head back and yelled at the hazy night sky. “Seriously!”

Was this someone’s idea of a mind game? Did I fall down the steps at Rocquemore? Bang my forehead too hard on the pavement? Goddamn it! Tears blurred my vision as I stared at the blade resting on the ground between my legs.

Blood. Blade.

Whatever had just happened, I knew one thing. It was real. I held the proof of it in my hands. My mother, as screwed up as it sounded, had been right.

Three

AN ENGINE’S DEEP RUMBLE AND THE BLARE OF MUSIC CLICKED into my shocked senses. Bright lights blinded me. The whine of brakes. The smell of rubber burning on asphalt . . . It all reached me too late.

I threw an arm over my face and turned to roll, realizing I was sitting in the side street, in the path of an oncoming vehicle. I’d been caught off guard, distracted by what I’d just done and seen. Blood rushed through my system so fast, my limbs were numb and my head was cloudy.

The truck swerved and came to a rocking halt, the left front bumper so close that I could reach out and touch it. A puff of exhaust breezed over me, the smell turning my stomach. A small figure leaned out of the open driver’s side. I removed my arm from over my head as the loud engine vibrated through me like a slow, continuous stream of electricity going for the ground.

“Hey, you okay?” a girl in overalls and a tweed cabbie hat asked.

I tried to respond, but couldn’t find my voice.

“You drunk or something?”

“No,” I croaked, rolling to my knees and flattening my palms on the asphalt to help push my weak body to its feet. Once I was steady, I brushed my hands on my jeans.

“’Kay. Well, you mind moving? I got mail to dump.”

I eyed the girl with her grease-stained overalls, white ribbed tank underneath, flannel shirt, and thin frame. Her brown hair was braided into two plaits, and she had shrewd green eyes, a splattering of freckles over the bridge of her nose, and a smudge of grease on her face. An old UPS logo peeked out from a thin layer of black spray paint on the truck’s side. “You’re from New 2. One of the mail runners.”

“So?”

I swallowed, knowing I was in shock and probably not in the best frame of mind to make a spur-of-the-moment decision, but I knew if I didn’t take advantage of the opportunity in front of me, I’d talk myself out of it. One day. All I needed was one day. “I’m looking for a ride into the city.”

The girl’s left eye squinted, sweeping over me from head to toe, and not shy about it either. “You one of those parrots?”

“Parrots?”

“Yeah, you know . . . paranormal tourists?” She flapped her elbows. “Squawk, squawk!”

“How old are you?”

“Almost thirteen.”

My brow lifted. “They let a twelve-year-old deliver the mail?”

The girl rolled her eyes, leaning her forearms on the large steering wheel. “You ain’t been to New 2 before, have you?” I shrugged. “Things don’t run down there the way they run outside The Rim.” Her eyes turned calculating. “You can get in, but it’ll cost you.”

“How much?”

“Twenty bucks.”

“Done. Just give me a sec.” I snagged the gun and blade from the ground, then hurried to the car to grab my mother’s box. I shoved the sword into my backpack, having to angle it so it’d fit, slid the gun into my waistband, and then locked the car.