Gemma stopped driving quite so cautiously once they were out of the city limits and on the highway; she was by then more familiar with the response of the car: the delicious, eager response of the low-slung, purring power of the car.
Her pulse was jumping erratically; her internal wolf was exhilarated, that half of her trembling on full alert, watching for and reacting to the obstacles which appeared in the headlights faster than she could think. Which was necessary at this speed.
Her heart was beating hard, insistently against her ribs, urging
Faster! Faster!
For Bethan and Kate, this speed was necessary.
She heard a muffled, frustrated grunt from behind her, and a waft of amusement pulsed anew from Hakan, hulking beside her in the deep leather passenger seat, while he glanced back again at her other two guards.
"You just wait until we pick up the A," Erik growled vengefully at her chief bodyguard, the words barely audible around the kneecaps that were jammed against his face.
Hakan grinned.
Mac was right that the wolves couldn't drive - and they didn't know much about cars either. Erik had simply requested the fastest car that the garage had had, so long as it could fit four people in it. The result was that Gemma was now driving the most sleek, responsive car that she'd ever been in, while trying to see past the thicket of wide knees wedged against the ceiling that were obscuring the view out of the back window. The hire car representative had initially looked relieved when Gemma had appeared at the desk to pick up the keys; later his eyes had widened incredulously and jaw dropped when the tiny woman had stood hopping about with impatience while two of the huge hulks accompanying her had tried to cram themselves into the tiny back space misleadingly advertised as twin seats.
"Uh - we have a larger model," he'd begun, blinking at the curvaceous little brunette now checking that she'd be able to reach the pedals if she adjusted the driver's seat as far forward as it would go. "Maybe -."
"No, no, this is great," the older, dark-haired powerful man on the passenger side had interrupted, shoving hard at a protruding leg to force it to bend into the back, ignoring the half-sworn yelp and slamming his own seat into place. "We need the speed, thanks."
That had been true, so Gemma had let Hakan get away with it. Her stomach was churning now as she repetitively gnawed and licked healed her bottom lip, worry seething through her while they streaked along the straight road North-West through the dark night. She overtook another car which barely seemed to be moving, distractedly thankful for her internal wolf, which found this speed as easy to deal with as her human self did her usual much gentler driving pace.
Naomi has lost his trail
, Mac conveyed tersely.
Grey's been picked up by a vehicle -a wolf vehicle - as I suspected
.
Gemma floored the gas pedal, and the car leapt forwards like an eager racehorse.
Don't stop for me,
her mate decided.
The girls are driving so fast that I can probably intercept you where you're going to meet anyway, more-or-less.
Hakan kept flashing conveyance of any visible roadsigns to the Alpha, while he also held the handset to his Alfamme's ear. In the other car, Bethan was reading the roadsigns that she and Kate passed aloud to Gemma in a breathless voice, and the wereem conveyed them on. Luke was back at the house, keeping track on the map for them all, and apprising the wolves on their relative positions while Gemma kept a rolling update to her human friends of how close they were getting to each other.
Gemma's stomach was tightening in increasing hope as they got nearer.
Tightening muscles, black flecks jumping across her eyes: her internal wolf was also getting more jumpy, alert and angry, aching for a fight.
Luke began calculating which junction they would all have to exit at to meet up, but Bethan gasped when Gemma explained, and cried despairingly, "We haven't any money! We can't get off - we can't pay the toll!"
Gemma was swearing, claws clenching into the leather steering wheel while the wild, uncomprehending rage surged to overwhelm her reason. Words flickered through the black clouds in her head, a distant, indistinct murmur of Mac calmly suggesting that Gemma could pass the girls, come off and head back down after them, no trouble - her speed was so much faster, it would only add a moment to the journey. As the words sank in, her eyes slowly swam back into focus.
The wereem blinked away the last black blotches that were obscuring the red lights streaming past her vision, breathing deeply while she watched the black fingernails on the wheel slowly turning pink again. Well, except for those of Hakan's one hand, which were still human anyway. He had taken a light grip on the wheel and was casually dancing them around each pair of red lights which appeared ahead, uncaring whether under or overtaking, swooping from side to side of the road. It looked surreally like they were in the middle of one of her brother's PS3 games. It
sounded
like they were threading their way through a slow-moving, honking chorus of geese; the other drivers were loudly and indignantly expressing their opinion of his speed and steering.
The wereem took a harsh breath, and tapped the back of her bodyguard's beefy hand with a finger. "I'm OK," she said, "Let me steer - you're attracting too much attention."
Mac was murmuring something urgently in her head while she said it.
"What?"
What?
"Next junction," repeated the wolf beside her tersely. "We will see them passing on the other side any minute and -."
"Eeeep!" a half-shriek, half-gasp, shrilled terrified from the phone directly into Gemma's ear, rasping painfully along her already vibrating nerves.
"THERE!" bellowed Erik simultaneously from the back seat. "That must be them! And right beside them - he's trying to get them! STOP!"
Twin sets of headlights, specks in the distance, were tearing down the opposite carriageway, locked much too closely together, swaying in unison in a deadly dance. Gemma's teeth clenched as the obliterating fury hit and she braked viciously, swerving straight towards the central reservation where a spray of grass rose as the front wheels hit the narrow strip separating the two carriageways.
Her head slammed painfully against the side door when they bounced off the crash barrier. Then the fury lifted abruptly as the pure clear mind of fighting for her life in a skid descended and she struggled instead to keep the wildly spinning vehicle from slewing back into the traffic. The four headlights on the opposite side flared closer at breakneck speed, appearing in patches in her spinning vision. Everything seemed to be happening in slow motion.
From the corner of her eye she noticed the blur of Xavi's elbow in the reversing mirror, heard the splintering noise as the back window disintegrated under the sharp blow and then there was a swirl around her of damp grass, pieces of glass and mud, whipping around inside in a sudden stream of fresh air and exhaust. Before she could blink, the two wolves on the back seat had exploded from the vehicle, landing momentarily silhouetted on the crash barrier in the centre of the road before recoiling to fling themselves onto the dark green limo shrieking past on the opposite side, the car locked in an elbowing fight with the black Lincoln glued to its side.
"Go! Go! Go!" yelled Hakan to her, just as their car finally slammed to a halt, back to the barrier, still half on the grass. Her remaining guard swivelled so fast that his neck almost snapped, looking over his shoulder at his two packmates fighting to break into the racing cars on the opposite side. "Over the bridge and after them!" Then his fiery black eyes focussed on her and he snapped out
