Tate broke the silence after several minutes. “Pete here will be one of the members of the unit, Cather-excuse me, Cat,” he corrected himself.

I didn’t open my eyes. “Not unless I say so, or were you asleep during that part? I pick the team. Pete’s in only if he passes my test, and that goes for you, too.”

“What’s the test?” Pete asked condescendingly.

My eyes slit open.

“To see how many times you’ll get back up after I beat you unconscious.”

Pete laughed. Tate didn’t. Maybe he wasn’t as stupid as I’d first thought. The glance he threw me told me he believed every word.

“Look,”-Pete eyed me in the rearview mirror, skepticism etched on his face-“I know you’re supposed to be something special, but…what the fuck?”

Pete’s retort ended in a gasp when he spotted a man in the middle of the highway in our lane. My breath caught as well, and my mother screamed.

“That’s him! That’s-”

Tate had less hesitation. In the seconds before the car struck Bones, he pulled his gun and fired through the windshield at him.

It was like hitting a brick wall. The collision crushed the front of the car. Glass exploded out of the windows and the front and rear air bags deployed instantly. Jerked forward violently, I heard brakes screech behind us as our escort swerved to avoid slamming into our rear. The two cars on either side of us sailed past and then applied their brakes to try to rotate around. Traffic still came from behind us. Vehicles that had banked sharply to the left and right of us crashed into the turning agents’ cars. The sound of twisting steel on metal as the vehicles piled up in a ghastly domino effect was deafening.

Tate and Pete lolled in their seat belts, blood from the glass and contact with the dashboard streaming down their faces. There was a wrenching sound as Tate’s door was ripped off its frame. Through the smoke from the destroyed engine, I saw Bones grin as he chucked the piece of the car like a giant Frisbee at the car behind us. Back there, the other guards vainly tried to get a clear shot at him. They scattered as the door burst through their windshield. In a flash the other door followed suit, and my mother wailed in mortal fear when he next tore open mine.

“Hallo, Kitten!”

Despite my earlier resolution, I was thrilled to see him. He unclasped my seat belt and grabbed my mother when she tried to scoot out her side.

“Not so fast, Mum. We’re in a bit of a hurry.”

A moan from the front seat made him casually swat Tate in the head.

“Don’t kill him, Bones! They weren’t going to hurt me!”

“Oh-right, then. Let’s just send them on their way nicely.”

In a blur he yanked Tate clear from his seat. For a moment his mouth pressed against his neck, and then he tossed him fifty feet in the air. Tate landed in the grass by the shoulder of the road. Pete attempted to crawl away, but Bones grasped him and gave him the same flight with similar onboard beverage service.

“Get out of the car, luv,” Bones directed, and I sprang from the ruined remains of the vehicle. He still had my mother by the arm. She was crying and cursing him at the same time.

“They’re going to kill you, they know what you are! Catherine’s-”

My mother’s words were cut off when I punched her right in the jaw. She collapsed without another word. In her railing threats, she would have revealed too much, and if Bones knew about the deal I’d made, he would talk me out of it. I’d believe whatever impossible assurances he gave me, because my heart had no common sense.

A bullet whizzed by. I dropped to the ground, not wanting to get shot again. Bones gave an irritated glance in its direction and then grasped the floorboards of the car. My eyes widened in growing comprehension. God, he couldn’t do that, could he?

The agents from the cars in front of us had taken cover behind one of their overturned vehicles, and they were firing at us. Apparently they’d been told to ensure my safe arrival or, failing that, guarantee I didn’t escape. Plan A had failed, so they were going with Plan B. Bones gave a wolfish grin as he lifted the car off the ground. He spun in a semicircle for maximum velocity, and then the twisted hunk of machinery went sailing through the air, landing point-blank on the makeshift barricade of the agents’ vehicle.

There was a thunderous boom as the car exploded on contact. Thick acrid smoke billowed into the air. In the midst of this maelstrom, with his legs apart and eyes flashing green, Bones looked absolutely, terrifyingly magnificent.

Pandemonium seized the highway. Traffic on the opposite side of the road piled up as disbelieving onlookers stopped driving and gaped at the carnage to their left. Every second brought a fresh squealing of brakes and new accidents. Bones didn’t pause to admire his work. He took my hand and threw my mother over his shoulder as we raced into the trees out of sight.

He had a car waiting about five miles ahead where the lanes were free of the wreckage behind us. Bones deposited my mother in the back, pausing only to clap a piece of duct tape over her mouth before we sped off.

“Glad you were the one that socked her, luv. It saved me the trouble. You don’t get your meanness from your father-you get it from her. She bit me.”

For someone who had just been hit by a car going sixty, he looked remarkably chipper.

“How did you do that? How did you stop the car? If a vampire can do that, why didn’t Switch prevent me from bashing into the house last night?”

Bones snorted derisively. “That pup? He couldn’t stop a toddler on a tricycle. He was only ’round sixty, luv, in undead years. You have to be an old Master vamp like me to pull such a trick without regretting it dearly afterwards. Believe me, it hurt like blazes. That’s why I took a nip from your two blokes before chucking them off. Who were they, anyhow? They weren’t police.”

This had to be handled very carefully. “Um, they were from some branch of government, they didn’t say which. Weren’t real chatty, you know? I think they were taking me to a special jail or something because of Oliver.”

He gave me a look. “You should have waited for me. You could have gotten killed.”

“I couldn’t wait! One of Oliver’s dirty cops tried to shoot me, and he was supposed to plant a bomb in the hospital where they were taking my mother! Oliver was the one, Bones. He admitted it, practically bragged about how Hennessey was ‘cleaning up’ his state for him. Like all those people were nothing but garbage. God, if I’d killed him ten times, it still wouldn’t be enough.”

“What makes you think those blokes who were taking you away weren’t more of his men?”

“They weren’t. Besides, you hardly treated them like you were giving them the benefit of the doubt. You dropped a car on four of them.”

“Oh, don’t fret.” Unconcernedly. “They jumped free before the explosion. And if they were too thick not to, then they deserved to die for their stupidity.”

“Whose car is this?” We were riding in a black Volvo SUV, fully loaded with that new car smell.

Bones cast a sideways glance at me. “Yours. Do you like it?”

I shook my head. “Not whose it is now, but won’t it be reported stolen soon?”

“No,” he replied. “This was your Christmas present. It’s registered under the name on your false license, so there’s no way for them to track it. Hope you don’t mind missing out on the surprise, but under the circumstances, it was our best option.”

My mouth hung open, because he was clearly serious. “I can’t accept this. It’s way too expensive!” In the midst of everything, here I was arguing over the lavishness of a Christmas gift. Normal and I would never meet.

He gave an exasperated sigh. “Kitten, for once could you just say thank you? Really, luv, aren’t we past this?”

A sharp stab of misery poked me when I remembered we were way past this, just not like he thought.