{WATTYS 2023 WINNER}
• Book 1 of the Daegelus series •
While hunting for his missing friend, Elijah stumbles upon a fiery journalist, who so happens to be looking for the same people as him: the doctors who experimented on him when he was a child. B...
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Every strike of lightning made Elijah's heart race a little faster. The flashes were as bright as the overhead lights in the operating rooms where he spent most of his childhood, and he could swear he saw the faces of the men and women who hurt him staring back at him through his reflection in the car window.
He stopped glaring out at the forest and focused on the road ahead. They were approaching an intersection. "Turn right," he muttered, pointing to the road which led up into the mountains.
Jake turned right and followed the steep hill up to a narrow mountain road, and the further up they got, the pouring rain quickly turned into snow.
"W-what if they're hurting her?" Jake panicked, glancing at Elijah.
"Just concentrate on the road," the demon muttered.
"What if we don't get to her in—"
"We'll get to her in time if you stop talking and drive," Elijah snapped, sharply turning his head to glare at him.
Jake shuffled around uncomfortably and fixed his eyes on the road. Then, he took a deep breath and said, "We'll get her, right? W-we'll catch up to the van, and then you'll do some sorta cool demon thing, and everything'll be fine." He glanced at Elijah. "It'll be fine, right?"
With a deep sigh, he glowered at Jake.
"Sorry. I just...." But he didn't finish his sentence. He started slowing down as a worried frown struck his face.
Before Elijah yelled at him, though, he saw what Jake was looking at. Twenty yards up ahead, the black van that took Zoe had slid off the road and collided with a tree. It was smoking, and the doors looked like they'd been ripped clean off.
"Pull over," Elijah insisted.
Jake quickly parked a few feet from the van. "Is she there?!" he asked desperately as Elijah got out of the car.
The demon unzipped his jacket in case he needed to reach for his guns, and as he approached the van, he looked around cautiously. But to his frustration, there was no sign of the girl or the catchers. There was a burned corpse in the snow, but it was male, and possibly one of the catchers.
Where was Zoe? Where were the other catchers?
"What the hell happened?" Jake exclaimed, standing beside Elijah.
Elijah peered inside the back of the van, searching for the slightest clue that might tell him what happened or where Zoe was. The van walls were lined with silver, which explained why he couldn't locate Zoe's aura once she was taken. He spotted a syringe on the floor—it looked like the one they used to drug Zoe—and picked it up. When he sniffed it, though, it burned the insides of his nose.
