Free Wish Bound (A Grimm Agency Novel Book 3) by J. C. Nelson Page B

without ever managing to leave the parking lot. Hell, the one time we were in a rowboat, I didn’t let her touch the oars because I hadn’t forgotten when the captain of the Ellis Island cruise let Ari steer. Hitting an iceberg in the Hudson River pretty much sealed the deal—the universe didn’t want Ari behind the wheel of anything larger than a model car.
    The thing was, if you wanted someone run over, Ari was the go-to woman. As we exited, she swung the wheel so hard we fishtailed around the corner, then gained more speed in fifteen yards than I would in two blocks. As we approached the cargo bay at the back of the Agency building, she jumped the curb and aimed at the huntsmen standing at the loading dock.
    Anyone else wouldn’t have been able to pull it off. Even my mentor, who taught me how to drive badly, couldn’t have timed it, but right as Ari reached the bay, the universe reached down to remind her to always take a cab. The passenger-side tires blew out, and we ran over a dolly left carelessly beside a truck.
    I wasn’t the least bit surprised when our car rolled on its side, passing exactly between two parked delivery trucks, and flattened an extremely surprised huntsman before burying us in a box of champagne glasses destined for Kingdom.
    I smashed my way out of the side window, lamenting yet another car relegated to the scrap heap, and whipped my head around as the telltale twang of a repeating crossbow echoed from our cargo bay. Ari lay slumped against the wheel, breathing, but unconscious. It figured, being a princess and all, that the worst she’d get out of this was a headache.
    “Grimm, watch out for Ari.” He couldn’t answer without a reflection, but the pulse of his power through my bracelet meant he heard.
    “Move.” Rosa’s voice startled me so badly I almost shot her. She had her gun leveled at my chest, that same look of lemons dipped in curdled milk, as always, plastered to her face.
    I nodded to the door. “You want the left side, I’ll take right?”
    “No. Stay away.” Rosa hobbled on over to the door, peeking inside. She took one half step in, and fired, paused, and fired again, before pivoting out. Then she put the gun up against the wall and pulled the trigger again, blowing a hole straight through the wall.
    For the record, enchanted furs are also not terribly helpful against a shotgun slug to the face, which was what one of the huntsmen caught.
    The other came rolling through the doorway, and only the slightest glimpse of silver gave me enough warning to throw myself to the floor. A dagger the length of my forearm stuck out of the concrete, and Rosa, she wasn’t nearly as fast or lucky.
    She’d been pinned to the wall with a spent bolt on the outside of her shoulder. I couldn’t tell if it shattered the humerus or not, but based on the lack of gushing blood, it probably missed a major artery. Rosa’s shotgun, along with one of her thumbs, lay on the ground in a pool of her blood.
    I didn’t give the huntsman the chance to finish what he started, squeezing off one shot after another. Problem was, I had the only weapon those bulletproof skins actually worked on. He came for me, pulling fresh knives from the bandoliers about his chest.
    And something inside me seemed to scream, a part of me that I didn’t know was there. I’d felt something similar before, when my harakathin answered. I waited, hoping that one of them might have survived. Blessing or curse? I didn’t care. Either would do.
    Come,
I willed them. What stepped out of the shadows in answer to my call, I’ll never be able to forget. A monster like some sick surgeon had grafted a dozen rotten bodies together, lashing muscle to muscle and bone to bone, without regard for or knowledge of anatomy.
    It lurched forward, stumbling and crunching its own bones, gurgling like a fountain of blood ran somewhere deep inside. The eyes on all three of the heads were lit with golden light.
    The huntsman took one look at