“No’ just Dale,” Ian said. “I’ve found at least six different tracks. I think they’re all hunting her.”
Charon was grateful the others were with him. He still didn’t understand why he wasn’t dead. He’d felt his organs begin to shut down from the drough blood. Yet, somehow he’d been healed in a mere moment.
How when Phelan’s blood hadn’t been able to heal him from the previous attack? There was a different kind of magic at work, one they had never experienced before.
They followed Laura’s tracks as long as they could until the trail disappeared. They were about a mile from the cabin, and Broc’s power still didn’t work.
The Warrior wasn’t at all happy, and neither was Charon. If Broc could use his power, they could find Laura in a matter of minutes and get her away from Jason.
It felt almost as if something were standing in their way, preventing him from finding Laura.
And for once Charon didn’t think it was Wallace.
The stitch in Laura’s side brought her to a halt. She struggled to breathe past the pain, all the while her mind was urging her to run.
She grabbed her side and bent over, gulping in air to try to calm her racing heart as she rested. The sun was nearly above her, but it was difficult to see with all the trees and cloud cover, so she had no idea which way she was going.
But she had to keep moving. That was her only choice as she waited for Phelan to find her. Somehow.
The image of Charon lying on the ground flashed in her mind. Laura couldn’t believe he was dead. She should’ve listened to him instead of fighting him when he wanted to send her away.
He might still be alive if she hadn’t let her pride get in her way. So what if he had been repeating the actions of her family, he had been doing it to save her life, not trying to run it.
How could she have been so stupid, so foolish? Her actions had cost a good man his life.
Or was he a man? Charon appeared to be a man, but whatever he had turned into was certainly more than just a man. He’d moved with supernatural speed, and he’d been able to heal.
That gave her pause. She had seen his wounds heal. There might be a chance he wasn’t dead. But then she remembered the explosion, the way she had somehow obliterated everything.
No, she was alone now while some psycho with magic chased her. Even if she knew how to blow something up again, she wouldn’t chance it since she could harm innocents in the process.
The stitch eased enough that Laura began to run again. She wasn’t moving as quick as before, but she was moving. She kept as quiet as she could, though it sounded to her like her breathing could be heard all over Scotland.
She was sure that at any moment Jason Wallace and his group would jump out at her, but somehow they didn’t. Laura didn’t question her fortune, just kept running.
When she came to a stream, she rested again and drank deeply. Her stomach growled with hunger. She hadn’t eaten anything since the awful date with Ben.
Had that really happened only the night before? It seemed years ago. Perhaps because her life had changed so much in the hours afterward.
The shade from the oaks and pine cast shadows over the water, the sound of the gurgling stream easing some of her weariness.
It was so beautiful in the forest, so peaceful and wild that it almost felt as if she were in another world. Is that why Charon always sought the solace of the woods?
She took another drink of water, and once more started running. No matter how she tried, she couldn’t stop thinking of Charon.
Maybe she should have stayed and seen to him. She could have hidden so Jason and the others couldn’t find her. If only she’d been brave enough to stand her ground instead of hurrying away.
Each time she began to think about the explosion and the feeling that had coursed through her body, she immediately turned her thoughts to something else.
Laura wasn’t ready to think about what she had done or how. It was too scary for her mind to comprehend all of it. She wanted to deny she caused the blast, but she knew the blame lay squarely on her shoulders.
Instead, she kept jogging over hills and through valleys. Occasionally she’d stop by a stream to drink and rest, but hour after hour, she kept moving.
“Dang it,” she muttered when she tripped over a root and raised her hands to stop her face from slamming into the ground when she pitched forward.
Laura tried to make herself get up and keep moving, but her body was exhausted. She managed to sit up, then lean back against the trunk of a pine.
The light filtering through the thick canopy of limbs dimmed the sunlight. The summer sun wouldn’t officially set until around midnight, but it was well into evening. Sounds she hadn’t heard in the forest before grew louder. If she hadn’t been so tired, she might have been frightened.