Covet (Clann)

didn’t remember getting out of the car or even pulling to a stop. I just found myself running through the field toward that crushed-in hunk of metal and praying that he would be okay.
    As I ran around to the driver’s side, I felt all his pain stop like a switch had been flipped off.
    “Tristan!” I screamed, grabbing the handle of his door. But the twisted door wouldn’t budge. “Emily, I can’t feel him anymore. Call for help!”
    I reached in through the broken-out window, carefully found the side of that strong column where his pulse should be throbbing out a steady beat to me. It was there, but just barely.
    “Tristan, please,” I whispered. “Please don’t go.”

CHAPTER 8
    Emily finished talking to someone on her phone. Then she reached past me and touched her brother’s shoulder.
    “Oh God,” she gasped. “Tristan, don’t you dare die on me!” She yanked repeatedly at the door handle, her once smoothly styled French twist flying loose in all directions.
    “Together on three,” I told her, grabbing the windowsill of the door, ignoring bits of glass as they ground into my hands. “One, two, three.”
    We jerked as hard as we could, and the door burst open so quickly we landed on our butts in the grass. I scrambled to my feet, fighting the stupid heels as they sank into the soft dirt. Emily must have more practice with heels. She was already back at Tristan’s side, her hand pressed to his shoulder again.
    “We have to get him out,” she muttered. “Then I can work on him better.”
    “Do you know what you’re doing?” I asked. What if moving him made his injuries worse?
    “We have to try. The ambulance won’t be here for another five or ten minutes. And his pulse—”
    “I know.” I didn’t want to hear her say what I already knew, that his heartbeat was way too weak. That we were losing him.
    We couldn’t lose him. I couldn’t lose him. I didn’t care if I couldn’t be with him. I had to know he was alive in this world somewhere. Otherwise I’d go crazy.
    “Okay, get his feet,” I said as I grabbed his shoulders and tugged him toward me. Emily squeezed in between me and the door and freed his feet from the twisted frame and steering column.
    Somehow we got Tristan out of the truck and onto the ground. I cradled his head in my lap, stroking the blood away from his forehead, while Emily knelt on her knees at his side.
    “There’s so much broken,” she whispered.
    “Please,” I murmured, begging her, begging God, begging a universe that had been nothing but cruel to me, in the hope that maybe it would finally answer just one request.
    Emily closed her eyes and pressed her hands to Tristan’s chest as if she were about to do CPR. But she never pushed down. Instead, she sat perfectly still, her palms laid flat on the stained red and white shirt. The skin on my arms and the back of my neck erupted in prickles of pain far stronger than I’d ever felt before, even when Tristan was using magic while fighting Dylan. That had been a fire ant attack. This was like being in the middle of a swarm of really ticked off wasps. God, she was a strong witch. But was she strong enough?
    If only I’d been allowed to learn how to use magic....
    I bent over him, the pain in my chest my own now, the staggering force of it curling me over. Blood streamed from a gash in Tristan’s forehead near his left temple, and the bloodlust was there in the distance, wanting my attention. But nothing could dull the sheer terror pounding through my veins now, not even the bloodlust.
    “Please, Tristan, stay with me,” I whispered against his forehead, my lips moving against the only clear area at his right temple, his hair brushing my nose and cheek.
    And then I heard it. A strong, solid heartbeat, followed by more of the rapid, barely-there taps.
    “Again, Emily,” I whispered.
    More pinpricks stabbing at my arms and neck as she ramped up the energy level.
    Another strong heartbeat beneath my fingertips. And another. And another, each one evening out the rhythm into a steady pulse again.
    Tears streamed down my face now. I looked up at her for confirmation, needing to know I wasn’t imagining it.
    “He’s coming back!” she cried out, grinning.
    “That’s it, Tristan,” I murmured, stroking bits of glass out of his hair. “Keep fighting. Come back to us.” Come back to me .
    Wailing in the distance. The ambulance was here. They pulled to a stop on the road, two figures jumping out from