“Go, Paul!” William’s strained voice called out. “They’re taking her!”
I didn’t hear any more because the man whose shoulder I was riding could’ve competed with a bullet in the 400 meter. The air around me was jetting over us, creating a slip-stream in our wake. No one needed to tell me what this Immortal’s gift was.
Barely a minute later, but for speed’s sake, we could have crossed the French border, we surged to a stop.
“Stella, where are you?” the man hissed into the dark night, shifting me to the ground.
“Right in front of you, you half-wit.” Dressed for what you’d think to be the social event of the decade, Stella sauntered towards us, leering at me the entire journey. She kneeled beside me, moving her mouth just outside my ear. “I’ve been looking forward to this day,” her feline voice purred as she ran her hand down my face. About mid-way down my jaw, her nails dug into the flesh, tearing down the line of my neck.
The warm liquid I felt follow led me to the conclusion it wasn’t only her voice that was feline. “I’m going to enjoy this.” Her hand gripped into the hollow of my shoulder and whatever power I had left in me drained out of me like water moving through a funnel. I wasn’t just powerless feeling, but empty feeling. Like I’d never known an emotion and I never would. Her laugh chimed several octaves higher than soprano-qualification. “What do you think of your first time with me? Nothing quite like it, is there?”
So payback wasn’t just a bitch, it was a bitch dressed in heels and Versace.
“You can play later, Stella,” Troy said, coming up behind us. “We’ve got work to do right now. Get her arms and legs tied,” he yelled back at one of the men rustling through the trees. “And Stella, I don’t have to remind you not to take a finger off of her for even the shortest second, do I?”
“The idiots, Troy,” she sneered, “are the males dressed in blah suits. Don’t insult me again or else you might get to know my touch.” She raised her eyebrows at him.
He chuckled, licking his lips. “Last I recalled, it wasn’t all that spectacular.”
Her eyes narrowed into slits, her fingers managing to drill deeper into my skin.
“Now this one,” he said, crouching beside me, “something tells me I could get very used to her touch.” I didn’t need to look at his face to know the lust that was formed around it. “If John wasn’t so eager to have her back, I wouldn’t be wasting time with chit-chat.”
“Stella, back away,” I said, trying to twist away from her to no avail. “Troy wants to feel my touch.” I eyed my challenge at him.
Troy grinned, moving aside to let a pale-faced boy who’d barely had his driver’s license when he’d been Immortalized bind my wrists with something that looked like shiny chrome barb-wire.
I gave Troy an unimpressed look. “You think that’s going to detain me? Isn’t that kind of like binding me with a wet noodle?” The boy moved seamlessly to my ankles, twisting the same thing around them in a figure-eight formation.
As soon as the boy moved away, I popped my wrists and ankles against the metal restraints I’d assumed would snap instantly. Instead, the metal only contracted around me farther, its sharp prongs bursting through my skin. A flash of fire singed over my skin where the metal ran. I yelped, sadly more due to the pain than the shock of it.
“What do you think of my little invention?” Troy asked, stepping back into view. “It’s my version of an Immortal-grade restraint. Convincing, isn’t it?”
I didn’t chance a response. I was still grinding my teeth from the shockwaves of pain and there was no way I was going to cry out in front of him again.
“Well, we better get going,” Troy said, more to me than the men around him. “Although it’s a shame we left so many Haywards still standing. Although they won’t stay that way for long.” He drilled his eyes into me, annunciating each syllable just so it fed the fury bursting in me.
Despite Stella’s debilitating hold, I felt the thing inside me I never wanted to hear from again flicker to life. Not quite as immediate as a light-switch, but close enough to make it dangerous. I felt it spreading through the far reaches of my body, bubbling to the surface of my skin, ready to erupt. All I needed was the shortest second of freedom from her and I’d no longer be an invalid Immortal, but the angel of death incarnate.
“Bryn!” A voice crashed through the woods, followed by a body breaking through saplings and anything that stood in its path from the sound of snapping and splintering. Paul’s voice was all I needed. Stella shifted in the direction of Paul’s voice, her hand loosening infinitesimally, but I was ready and waiting for it.
I popped my shoulder up, forcing her hand to break contact. Her face christened with horror before she readjusted it in place . . . but I was ready for her. For the first time since I’d learned what I was capable of, I wasn’t desperate to keep it contained. I was welcoming it, willing it to the surface. My skin was buzzing by the time her fingers curled back into my shoulder.
Her body bolted away from mine like she’d been electrocuted, blasting a boulder into smithereens as she shot through it.
So maybe payback was more the thing of sneaker-wearing oddballs.
I eyed Troy, still lying below him, bound up and unmoving, but I could tell from his expression it was like he was looking at something as final as the Council’s verdict of death. It was the first moment of exhilaration I’d felt in awhile.
“I’m going to enjoy wiping that smirk off your face the next time I see you,” he said, running his tongue over his lips. “Oh, the possibilities.”
“Bryn!” Paul’s voice was closer, nearly upon us, and it sounded like there were more bodies behind him crashing towards us.
“Time to move on out, boys,” Troy hollered at the men waiting around him. “See ya, beautiful.” He kissed the air in my direction before turning into a blur of light disappearing into the trees. Nothing but the rush of wind announced the departure of John’s army, disappearing as suddenly as they’d appeared. They were gone, but had anyone besides Paul and me survived?
“Don’t touch me!” I shouted at Paul as he ran full-bore my way, but the words wouldn’t hit him before he collapsed into me.
From some place deep within, those places we don’t even know exist until sheer need brings them out, I felt awareness come to the surface. I’d turned this death machine on with near the speed of flicking on a switch, I could turn it off as quickly.
Seeing Paul’s frantic form about to fall around me, I closed my eyes, stalling time. Stalling death. I looked for the switch, searching for it like so much more than my life depended on it, but the darkness swirling inside of me blinded my way.
I could feel Paul’s energy closing around mine when I found it. The switch flipped, followed by an internal sigh of relief, as Paul crashed to a stop against me. His hand went immediately for my cheek, the other searching over the rest of me for any damage done . . . although it felt a bit too explorative over certain areas of my body to be innocent in nature.
“Are you alright?” he asked, his eyes flicking away from mine every blink to search over my body.
I looked into his face, admiring the life and color that still flowed in it. A few months ago, I would have killed him, but somewhere along the way, in the midst of nearly killing William and thinking about and training my gift until I’d gone crazy in the head, I’d gained an understanding of it. Not quite a mastery, but a certainty I was on my way there. The gift was a piece of me, it didn’t define me, and it certainly didn’t control me. I was foolish to let it decide my fate, but leaving William would be the last mistake I’d let it make—although that was really the only mistake that counted and the one I couldn’t reverse.
Pushing this enlightened sense of self aside—at least for now—I answered Paul, “I’m phenomenal. How about you?” I tried sitting up, but he pressed me back down.
“I’m fine, well, actually, I need to tell you something and then I’ll be fine,” he said, leaning down over me. “And since you’re bound up with no where to go, now’s as good a time as any.”
I wove my bound wrists under his arm. “This really isn’t a good time,” I said, lifting them in explanation.
“There’s never a right time with you, but you don’t really have a say in it, bossy. Since I’m the one without the wrist and ankle restraints, my word goes.”
“After tonight,” I said, glowering more with each word, “there never will be a right time with me again if you keep this whole chauvinistic cave-man act up.”
He rolled his eyes, unconcerned. “I had to come to terms back there that I might never see you again,” he said, his forehead lining. “That I might find you dead and I’d have to live with you never knowing how I felt about you.”
I’d just escaped one nightmare to find myself in another. This wasn’t happening. “This really isn’t the right time for this.” I shoved myself up to only be flopped back down to the ground. This time he straddled me with his arms, leaning in too close to let myself believe I was misreading his intent.
“So help me, Paul Lowe,” I warned through clenched teeth.
“Just shut up, Bryn,” he whispered, his breath breaking against mine. “Shut up for once in your life or I’ll have to make you.”
I closed my eyes, the only fight I could muster as he closed the remaining distance between us. His lips pressed into mine, warm and pleasant as the morning sun, and when they moved against mine with a passion that would have surely torn down the embattlements of many finer women, I felt nothing.
Nothing but skin coming in contact with mine. There were no tingles, no butterflies, no responses to affirm that I’d been made for anyone other than the one man I’d have to live my life away from forever.
He rested a final kiss on the corner of my lips, his breathing rushed and shallow. “Was that so bad?”
I sucked in a long breath, taking the time to compose myself before I went off on him. Opening my eyes, ready to glare into his, something off to my right caught my attention, where a shadowed figure was bracing himself against an ancient birch.
I didn’t need a ray of moonlight to cast over his face to see the expression covering it. His eyes were staring straight into mine and an emotion that was too extreme to decipher was etched onto his face. The intensity of it scorched its origination point. It could have been anger, it could have been sorrow, but whatever it was, I would never find out. He darted into the darkness, swallowed whole by the night.
“You A-hole!” I shouted, punching my fists into Paul’s chest. “Get off of me and do me a favor, don’t ever touch me again.”
His eyebrows pinched together, like he couldn’t understand what I’d just said or why I’d said it. I may have been the first girl to turn a fire hose on Paul Lowe, but I wouldn’t be the last if he continued to make such miscalculated, brazen shows of affection.