He started the engine. Then he backed away from the Darkhaven and started speeding for the highway.
* * * *
Lazaro gunned the black sedan through the late-night traffic on the highway, speeding like a bat out of hell for Baltimore. He didn’t know what had Melena so terrified, but her fear was visceral. And it was eating him alive from the inside.
“Hang on, baby,” he muttered as he dodged one lagging car and nearly sideswiped another. “Ah, God, Melena...know that I’m coming for you.”
He was just about to veer toward the exit he needed when all of his instincts lit up like fireworks.
She was somewhere close—right now.
Possibly on the same stretch of highway, by the way his veins were clanging with alarm bells.
He scanned both sides of the divided lanes, a chaos of headlights and commuting vehicles. She might as well be a needle in a goddamned haystack.
And then—holy shit.
His Breed senses pulled his attention toward a light-colored SUV that had just merged on to the opposite side of the highway. The vehicle was speeding almost as fast as he’d been. In a big f**king hurry to get somewhere.
Melena.
She was inside the silver SUV. He knew it with total, marrow-chilling certainty.
And whoever had her was going to have bleeding hell to pay if she’d been harmed in any way.
Lazaro yanked the steering wheel and sent the sedan roaring into the median. Grass and mud flew in all directions as he tore across the divider and launched his car into the traffic on the other side. He floored the pedal, tearing up the pavement as he tried to catch the bumper of the vehicle that held his woman.
Flashing his lights, laying on the horn, he tried to get the attention of the vehicle bearing GNC diplomatic plates. It belonged to Byron Walsh, but Lazaro wasn’t certain who the Breed male was behind the wheel. But then, as he ran up alongside it briefly, he caught a glimpse of the driver. A cold, sickening recognition set in.
Son of a bitch.
Derek Walsh.
And judging from the vampire’s murderous glower, he had no intention of giving up Melena without a fight. The SUV lurched into a more reckless speed. It careened behind a semitrailer, dodging between a car of teens and a commuter bus. Lazaro could only follow, negotiating the traffic and keeping his focus trained on his quarry.
Walsh drove erratically for several miles with Lazaro chewing up his bumper. More than once, there was the opportunity to ram the bastard and send the SUV rolling, or to draw one of his semiautomatics and blast a hole in the Breed male’s skull...but not with Melena inside. Not when Lazaro’s heart was tied to her and every breath in his body was devoted to keeping her safe.
He hissed when Walsh narrowly avoided a collision with a car drifting into his lane. And when another near-miss snapped off the SUV’s passenger side mirror, Lazaro shouted a furious curse. He saw a break up ahead—a chance to get in front of Walsh and force him into the median. Lazaro buried the gas pedal and flew past.
But Walsh saw the maneuver coming.
Instead of letting himself catch up to Lazaro, he hung a hard right and gunned it for an upcoming exit.
An exit that was under construction, littered with barrels and an obstacle course of concrete barriers.
Walsh was going too fast, too frantically.
Lazaro stomped on his brake and was whipping around to give chase again when the SUV clipped one of the barriers and went airborne, rolling into a hard crash.
All the breath seemed to suck out of Lazaro’s lungs in that instant. The entire world seemed to stop breathing. Dust went up in the darkness, the haze illuminated by the beams of passing vehicles on the road.
Then, a spark of flame.
“No,” Lazaro moaned, his blood screaming for Melena. “Goddamn it, no!”
He threw his vehicle in park on the shoulder and hit the ground running.
Even with his preternatural speed, he’d barely gotten within arm’s reach of the wreck before the ruptured gas tank ignited. A blinding wall of flames shot skyward, heat blasting his face.
“Melena, no!”
* * * *
She couldn’t breathe.
Heat all around her. Splitting pain in her skull, ringing in her ears. She opened her eyes and saw a churning, thickening cloud of gray smoke. And flames.
Oh, God. Fire everywhere.
Melena tried to move, but her arms wouldn’t work. Her wrists were tied. She remembered now, awareness coming back to her. Derek had bound her. He’d driven away with her.
He and his Opus Nostrum comrades were going to kill her.
“No,” she gasped, choking on smoke and heat. “Oh, my God...no!”
She started kicking, screaming, trying frantically to get free of the restraints. She couldn’t loosen them. And something was crushing her in the back of the SUV. She looked up and saw the floor. Beneath her, the roof of her father’s GNC vehicle.
The smoke was rolling in front of her eyes, burning them. She couldn’t keep her lids open. Hurt to see, to breathe...
“Melena.” The deep voice penetrated the fire and sooty air that surrounded her. She wanted to reach for it—for him—but she was trapped, unable to move. “Melena, I’m going to get you out of here, sweetheart. You stay with me, damn it!”
There was a great, groaning howl as the vehicle rocked where it had fallen. A gust of cool air, followed by a rush of hot, intensifying flame.
“I’m coming in to get you,” Lazaro said.
She couldn’t see him, but she felt him climbing inside the inferno. Crawling all the way to the back, where she lay broken and half-conscious.