Free Torn by Julie Kenner Page B

it shut.
    “Is he still on us?” the girl asked, her short-cropped hair a pink blur as she whipped around to face me.
    I pivoted to look out the back. “No.” But only moments after I answered, the car shook, rubber burning on the asphalt as the car inched backward. “What the fuck?” I whipped back around to face the girl. “What the hell are you doing?”
    “Me?” she retorted. “I thought you said he’d given up on us.”
    I looked back and saw that, sure enough, the demon was standing stock-still in the middle of the road, his arms outstretched, the air between his hands shimmering as if from a rising heat wave.
    This wasn’t good. This really, really, really wasn’t good.
    “Do something!” the girl shouted, as Rose cowered in the corner.
    “What? What the hell am I supposed to do?”
    “Distract him. Stop him. Slow him down. Something,” she howled. “But do it now, because we’re going nowhere fast, and he’s getting closer.”
    Distract him? What the hell was I supposed to do? Strip naked and do the hula?
    Probably not the best option, and instead I hung over into the front seat, scouring the weapons cache I’d bar reled into when I’d first jumped into the car. I found a crossbow, hefted it, and pulled it into the backseat with me, along with a handful of arrows.
    “Hurry!” the driver screamed. Beside me, Rose was still silent, but she’d turned around and was facing the back window, her expression worried.
    I clenched my jaw, determined to wipe the fear from her face, and leaned out of the open window, the crossbow at the ready. The car was thrumming, vibrating, and it wasn’t easy to aim, but I got the demon in my sights, aiming for the broad expanse of chest. I said a prayer and let the arrow fly, and it wasn’t until the shaft was zipping through the air toward him that it occurred to me to wonder if that strange shimmer between his hands was impermeable. If it was—if the arrow bounced back uselessly—then I was going to have to go hand to hand with the big guy. And that idea was really not rocking my boat.
    Figuring I was better off being proactive, I reached to reload the weapon—planning this time to aim for his face. A smaller target, but possibly a more accessible one.
    Turned out my caution wasn’t necessary, though, because even before I’d managed to slide the second arrow into place, the first struck home—and struck hard.
    The demon released an earsplitting howl as the arrow slid through flesh—and as his hold on our car weakened. I felt a lurch, heard a pop , and suddenly we were free, and my mystery driver was shooting us like a rocket down the street.
    “Holy shit, holy shit, holy fucking shit!” she kept saying, over and over, her eyes flicking up to meet mine in the rearview mirror every few seconds. Or maybe she wasn’t looking at me. Maybe she was checking to see if we had a tail, something I kept doing, too, twisting around to look down the street behind us. So far, he wasn’t coming. And so far, the car was still moving.
    I took that as a good sign.
    The driver spun the steering wheel, making a hard right, then an immediate left, taking us onto a straight-away that she blasted down, going at least sixty miles over the posted speed limit. After a few minutes of that, she blew through a red light, careened into a parking lot, slammed on the brakes, then twisted in the seat, looking back at me and breathing hard.
    “Whoa,” she said. “I think we lost him.”
    “Yeah.” I took a tentative glance out the back glass again. Nothing. Beside me, Rose had her eyes on the driver and one hand tight on the door handle.
    “Hell of a way to meet,” the girl with pink hair said, thrusting out a hand to me. “I’m Kiera. I’m your new partner.”

TEN
    “Partner?” I repeated. Okay, probably I should have guessed that one. After all, most Good Samaritans would at least blink at the sight of a behemoth demon attacking two girls in the street. And though a