Sarah McCarty by Slade Read Free Book Online

groaned as the wheels dug into the ground. The car shot forward, toward the cornfield ahead and to the right.
    As if nothing amazing had just happened, Jane said, “That’s simply not possible.”
    “Not for humans.”
    Her calm broke on a sharp, “Stop harping on the fact you’re not human.”
    Sanctuary was nipping at their heels, his energy was running out, and dawn was coming. He didn’t have time for her games of self-denial. “Stop harping on the fact that I am not, and get with the program.”
    The car plunged blindly into the tall corn, the stalks snapping under the wheels and whipping at the sides.
    “Oh my God.” This time she grabbed his thigh. Her first voluntary touch, and he couldn’t appreciate it. Shit .
    “I won’t let anything happen to you, Jane.”
    The noise of the stalks beating against the vehicle almost drowned out her voice. “Just shut up and concentrate on not crashing.”
    “I’m multitasking.”
    Her grip tightened. “I’m not impressed.”
    The hell she wasn’t. “Really? I thought that last maneuver was pretty slick.”
    “You would.”
    “Hey, it kept us from being caught.”
    “Who can catch this? We’re doing one hundred thirty miles per hour across a cornfield!”
    Her words came out choppy, her voice distorted by the car’s bumpy course through the rutted rows. Slade couldn’t afford to smooth the ride. Levitating the car, scanning and cloaking, was draining his energy fast. If he could keep them running until dawn they’d be okay. The tinted windows of the SUV would offer him some protection from the sun that their pursuers wouldn’t have. “Sanctuary.”
    “Sanctuary. Again with Sanctuary. There’s nobody out here but us.”
    She wanted so much to believe that she was trying to convince herself of it. Maybe a bit of fear wasn’t a bad thing. Slade fed a little of his awareness into Jane’s senses. “Can’t you feel them? Even if you can’t see them, your instincts have got to be telling you that ‘something this way cometh.’”
    She licked her lips. “Of course I have a sense of danger. We’re driving at an alarming speed!”
    “They are moving just as fast.”
    She glared at him. “It doesn’t make sense that anything can keep up with us.”
    “You haven’t met anyone from Sanctuary.”
    She cut him another glare, one that said she clearly didn’t appreciate his response. One that sneaked past his guard and caught the edge of sexual tension, bringing it into play.
    “Are they stronger than you?”
    “No, but they outnumber me, and you are a definite weak point.”
    She frowned, tapped her finger on the armrest, and glanced into the side mirror.
    “Yeah, but an enhanced machine should outlast Sanctuary.”
    “I notice you don’t say ‘outrun.’”
    There was a loud thump on the top of the car. A sizzle snapped across the roof, followed immediately by an unearthly scream as a man tumbled to the ground behind the vehicle.
    Jane gasped. “Sanctuary?”
    “Yeah. For the short term, it might help you to think of them as jaguars and us as impalas, outmaneuvering the attack.”
    Jane let go of his thigh. “We’re the bottom of the food chain?”
    He glanced over. “At the moment.”
    There was another thump. Another scream as the defenses he’d put in the vehicle and enforced with his own energy shattered the nervous systems of the Sanctuary vampires who were attacking.
    The draw on his strength was incredible—more than he’d anticipated. He’d have to revisit his calculations.
    “For heaven’s sake then, keep your eyes on the road and drive faster!”
    Slade didn’t have the heart to tell Jane they’d maxed out on fast. And time. Between the edge of the cornfield and the road there was a three-foot ditch. At full strength he could levitate the SUV over the ditch, but now he didn’t know if he had the reserves to get the car safely to the other side. He glanced up at the lightening sky. Jane’s gaze followed his.
    “If