Shoving at the door, Ava found it locked, which should have been impossible. A swift glance down revealed a wrench thrust through the handle. She scrambled across the seat, only to find the same thing on the other side.
Trapped.
Please.... She hadn't survived a madman only to die now. Ava shook the door, slamming her shoulder against it. Would she even die in a crash? Or would the cursed craving virus resurrect her?
The window...
...was too narrow to fit her bustle through. Goddamned fashion.
Tugging out the lady's pistol Malloryn insisted she carry, she shot the lock off the door. The handle remained jammed shut. Ava leaned back on the seat and kicked it with her feet, forcing all her blue blood strength into the action.
The door jarred. Screams sounded through the open window. "Come on, damn you!" she kicked again, and this time part of the door panel broke free. Lace ripped along her sleeve as she forced the panel open, hammering at it with her heel one more time, and them scrambling across the seat to shove the door away.
It hit the cobbles, tumbling end over end, and leaving her free to remove the wrench. Grabbing her parasol from within, she hooked it over the top of the carriage roof and dragged herself up there somehow, clinging to the edges as her skirts choked her legs.
The intersection loomed. Someone honked a carriage horn furiously, its tinny squeal trying to clear the crossing. People scrambled out of the way, but there was far too much traffic clogged in the sudden panic.
She caught sight of a little girl crying, her pinafore stained with red lolly, and Ava forced herself to move.
The parasol was gone in the rush. Ava slithered along the roof, her hair whipping back in the wind as she tumbled forward onto the driver seat in front. Steam hissed past her from the boiler. The red arrow in the gauge trembled as it ticked dangerously into Warning territory.
It all happened so quickly. Ava tried to release the locked steering wheel, but the driver had jammed a bloody umbrella under it to hold it in place and the cursed thing was stuck. Lashing out with her foot, she broke it in two, then wrenched on the wheel just as they hit the intersection.
A carriage flashed past. The little girl's pinafore flapped in the wind and she cried out, the sound whipping into the distance. All Ava could see was a brick wall looming ahead of her, each brick carved out with precise mortar, as if her vision had sharpened, and she gasped in a breath and threw herself off the side-
The impact stole her breath.
Ava tumbled head over heels on the cobbles until she fetched up in a bruised mess against the gutter. A concussive explosion of sound forced her to fling her arms over her head as the carriage slammed into the brick wall. Screams echoed in the thoroughfare. Horns blared as a man on a steam-powered rickshaw tried to veer around the wreckage, and smashed into a gaslight. Her corset suddenly had steel teeth and they were closing around her lungs hungrily. It hurt to breathe. It hurt to move. The world was a mess of noise, and light, and people everywhere.
Then it was all over.
"Oh my goodness!" a woman blurted, staring at the wreck. "Oh my goodness."
The woman kept repeating herself, even as others came to her rescue.
"Are you all right, miss?" There was a gloved hand in front of Ava's face as she looked up into a man's face, or what she could see of it over the scarf wrapped around his throat. He was wearing a newsboy's cap covering his hair, and had pale blue eyes that seemed almost arctic in their intensity.
Her head spun.
Her shoulder ached from the impact, but there were other people in front of her who were hurt worse than she was. If there was one good thing about the craving affliction, it was the fact she could survive almost anything. Including a runaway carriage. "I'm fine," she said, sitting up and swaying slightly.
"That's a shame." Something sharp pricked her upper arm.
Ava blinked as she stared up into his face. What had he-? She felt the first faint chill down her arm, her body suddenly loose and weak as she sprawled back onto the cobbles. Nothing. Not a twitch in her limbs. Her steady, dependable heart kept ticking as if nothing was wrong, but she was screaming on the inside. She couldn't feel her feet or her hands, but her eyes still moved as the man loomed over her, peeling back one eyelid to stare down at her.
Trapped inside a body that no longer worked.
Hemlock. He'd used hemlock on her. The poison had an adverse reaction on a blue blood, paralyzing them for up to ten minutes, depending on the level of craving virus in the blood.
"That's better," he crooned softly. "Won't be long now, Miss McLaren."