Something Wanton (Mystics & Mayhem) (19 page)

“Stop, or I’ll shoot you again.” 

I took another step closer to her, calling her bluff, and she let another arrow fly.  I ducked just in time to keep it from hitting me.  It pinged off the wall behind me and fell to the ground with a clatter.  Real close to fed up, I picked it up and cracked it over my knee, snapping it in two.  Her eyes widened and she immediately reached for another arrow as I flung the pieces away from me and started stomping toward her.  She might not have sounded all that impressed before, but I was about to change all of that.

“Don’t do it!”  I was finished playing games with her.  If she shot me again, I would
not
be held responsible for my actions.  Self-defense had to be a valid defense for murder even if you’re a darkling.  “I’m tired, I’m pissed off, and I’m hungry.  From where I’m standing, you’re just a rainbow-colored buffet.  Your best bet would be to just turn around and walk away before I decide I need a midnight snack after all.”

“First, let me tell you how stupid that is,” she said, rolling her eyes.  “You don’t let someone who’s trying to kill you walk away, Ember.
”

“Wait.  How the hell do you know who I am?” I demanded as a shiver of dread went down my spine.

“ And second,” she continued as if I hadn’t even spoken, “you’re not going to do shit.”

“Really?  And why is that?” I asked, narrowing my eyes when she smiled mysteriously and glanced at her watch.

“You’ll see in ten…nine…eight…”

“What the hell
are…you…”  My voice trailed off and I shook my head as my vision started to blur.  When I looked back at the hunter, there was two of her.

“Seven…six…five…”

My muscles started to tremble and the bones in my legs felt like they had been replaced by marshmallows.  I tried to take a step, anyway, and immediately staggered.  I tried to scream for help only to find that my voice was trapped in my throat.

“Four…three…two…”

“I told you she was a fighter, didn’t I?”  I turned my head to see Zan leaning against the wall a little ways from where I stood.  I didn’t think it boded well for me that there was two of him, too, and both of them were grinning in satisfaction.  “Sorry about this, Firecracker.  It’s for your own good, though.  Trust me.”

Yeah, I would trust him when Hell froze over.  Even shot, drugged, and furious, I fully understood what he had done.  He had sold me out!  Unfortunately for him, I was going to wake up eventually. 

At least, I
hoped
I was going to wake up.

My vision went dark even as I started plotting my revenge.  My knees buckled, and I felt myself falling.  With no way to stop it, I waited for the ground to come up to meet me.  I was out before I reached it.      

When I woke up my head was pounding like I had been hit repeatedly with a sledgehammer.  I cracked one eye open, desperate to find out where I was, and a bright shaft of sunlight jabbed me right in the pupil.  I closed it quickly and groaned as my head throbbed again.

Once the pounding had eased up a bit, I shaded my eyes and tried again.  To my surprise, I found myself in Nathan’s room.  I frowned, trying to understand my kidnappers’ plan.  Zan had lured me out alone, his girlfriend had shot me with a drug-tipped arrow, then they had brought me
home
?  Sure!  That made
perfect
sense.

Totally grumpy, I slid out of the bed, intent on finding out what the hell was going on.  I gasped when I realized I wasn’t wearing anything but a bloody bra and a pair of panties.  I wasn’t really sure I wanted the answer to the question of who had undressed me.

Please let it have been Nathan,
I groaned, silently. 
If Zan saw me naked, I may have to commit darkling suicide.

I stumbled over to pull the drapes closed over the windows to block out the excruciating sunlight that was doing its best to blind me. 
Once the room was blessedly dark, I made my way carefully over to the closet and pawed through the clothes hanging there.  I had already put on my shirt and was pulling on a pair of jeans when I heard a door close and voices drifted down the hall to me.  I tiptoed over and cracked the door open just enough to hear what was going on—and immediately wished I hadn’t.

“I didn’t ask for your advice, Ainsley,” Nathan growled.

“And here I am giving it to you anyway.  Crazy, right?”

I froze as
that voice registered, sending my temper skyrocketing clean into outer space.  I didn’t know what she was doing in my house, but if she was still there when I walked out that door I was going to take punitive damages for my pain and suffering out of her skinny little ass.  In fact, I hoped she
was
crazy enough to stick around.

“I’m just trying to help, Nate.  I know you don’t like it, but it is what it is.  Trust me, it’s the only way,” she continued, oblivious to the beat
down that was coming for her.  “God!  You
could
show a little appreciation!”

“Appreciation?” Nathan repeated, sounding like he was about a heartbeat from beating me to the punch—literally.  “You
shot
her, Ainsley!  You shot my mate!  What do you want, a medal?  A reward?  Flowers and candy?”

“A thank you will suffice.”  I could almost hear the shrug in her voice.

“Give it a rest!” Zan snapped, sending my temper up past a couple more solar systems.  Good, the gang was all there.  I could kill everyone at once.  “Nate, Ember wasn’t just going to stand there and let us give her an injection.  She doesn’t know Ainsley, she doesn’t like me, and, I hate to bring it up, but she doesn’t trust
you
anymore, bro.  Shea wasn’t going to help, so we had to find another way.  We had to get the shit in her system somehow, and we got the arrow out as soon as the bind broke.  It might not have been the gentlest way, but it got the job done.  Let it go!”

As soon as the bind broke.

I froze again in the act of swinging the door open, those words repeating themselves at top volume in my head.  But he was wrong.  He had to be.  The only witch I knew who was powerful enough to bind me was Grams and she wouldn’t have done that to me again.  She had done it to me once before, when I was ten, but even then I’d had some powers that even she couldn’t take from me.  Since I’d come back from Oblivion, I hadn’t had
any
powers.  Even my ability to see the dead had become a painful memory.

He’s wrong,
I thought to myself, even as I was beating back the hope threatening to choke me so I wouldn’t be destroyed by it when I proved Zan was as full of crap as I believed him to be. 

Holding up my hand, I centered myself and tapped into my power the way Grams had taught me to, calling up a small ball of light.  For a second, nothing happened.  Then, just when I was about to give up, I felt an undeniable surge beneath my skin and a tiny speck of light began to form just above my palm.  Before my eyes, it grew until it was a ball of radiant white about the size of a Christmas ornament.

“Holy shit!” I mouthed, silently.

Inside, I was jumping up and down and screaming hysterically with joy.  I hadn’t even realized how much I really missed my powers until I had them back.  Watching that little ball of light float over my palm was the first really happy experience I’d had since becoming a darkling.

Wanting to be absolutely sure that small display of power hadn’t been a fluke, I glanced around for something else to test my powers on.  I saw a book lying on Nathan’s nightstand and tried to levitate it.  I barely concentrated on it and it rose into the air and floated toward me.  By thought alone, I opened the cover and flipped through the pages.

“So, who’s going to tell her?” Zan asked, breaking my concentration and reminding me I wasn’t alone.

The book fell to the floor with a soft thud and the sudden silence from down the hall told me it had been heard.  As fast as I could, I picked it up and put it back on the nightstand.  I was about to jump back in the bed when a photo lying on the floor caught my attention.

My heart caught in my throat when I picked it up and flipped it over, preparing to return it to its rightful place, and saw it was a picture of me when I was still
human.  I was sitting at the table on the back patio, my knees drawn up, staring into space.  My cheeks were rosy with cold and there was a soft, happy kind of smile on my lips.  

So that’s how he likes to remember me,
I thought sadly.  I was still standing there staring down at that photo of the old me when I heard the door open, bringing with it a fresh wave of Nathan’s scent.  With a sinking sensation in my stomach, I turned around to face him. 

“How much did you hear, Em?”

“Does it make a difference?” I asked, shrugging.  Apparently, I had missed something.  Maybe if I played dumb I could figure out what.

“Yeah, it does.”  He reached for the picture in my hand, and I let him have it.  My already broken heart disintegrated a little more when he smiled down at it sadly before putting it back inside the cover of his book.

“Well,” I said, training my gaze on a spot on the wall just above his shoulder, “I heard that your skanky friends shot me on purpose, Grams has some major explaining to do, and that I’m some kind of witchy-darkling hybrid.  Now, what did I miss?”

“Nothing,” he said, his eyes betraying the lie for what it was before he walked past me to the window
and opened the curtains again.  “You got the important points, anyway.  The rest was just…details.”

He looked at me again and
a tortured expression crossed his features before he turned away, saying nothing.  I knew it then.  It was time.  I had been expecting it, but that didn’t keep me from wanting to curl up and die.  I mean, it was one thing to
know
something deep down inside.  It was something else entirely when it was voiced aloud.

Because once said, there would be no going back.

I found myself faced with two choices.  I could run and delay the inevitable, or I could stand tall and take what was coming.  I couldn’t bring myself to run.  With no other option open to me, I prepared myself for the worst.  Telling myself that I was strong, that I would make it through what was coming, I walked over and stood next to him, staring out at the bleak winter landscape.

“Let me guess,” I said quietly, my voice calm and even.  “
I’m
the details, right?”

Instead of answering me, he stuck his hands in his pockets and stared at his feet.  Something told me I needed to brace myself.  Things were about to get really bad.  I could feel it in the very air between us.

“We need a break, Em.  We both have some things we need to work out for ourselves.  We’re only hurting each other this way.  Maybe, if we had a little time to think, some room to breathe…”

I was glad he was too much of a coward to look at me when he said that.  He didn’t see the agony on my face.  He didn’t see the way my breathing skipped or the way I closed my tearless eyes as that same agony ripped through me, leaving total devastation in its wake.  By the time he decided I was worthy of his full attention again, I had arranged my face into a serene mask.  To him, I probably just looked mildly curious.  He would never know what he had just done to me. 

I could see that he was waiting for an explosion, or maybe it was pleading he had in mind.  Either way, he was bound to be disappointed.  I might give in and let the pain have me—actually, I was pretty sure I would—but I wasn’t going to do it in front of him.

“Say something, Em,” he whispered, his eyes begging me to be reasonable.

That, at least, I could do.  In fact, I could be more than reasonable.  I was going to be honest.  One of us should be, after all, right?  If he didn’t have the balls to come right out and say it, I would.

“Taking a break is just code for breaking up, Nathan,” I told him, shrugging.  “You could have at least respected me enough to give it to me straight.”

Unable to keep up my calm, collected act any longer, I headed for the door.  I counted my footsteps, making sure they were unhurried even though I wanted to run from the room, screaming uncontrollably.  I took deep, even breaths, trying to maintain my show of calm until I could get away from him.

And it was starting to become imperative that I do that as quickly as possible. 
Something coming, something terrible, and I had to be far away before that something arrived.  I didn’t trust myself to still be there when it did.  I didn’t trust myself to be able to control it.

“Where are you going?” he asked, sounding like he was strangling on the words, just as I turned the doorknob to leave.

“Does it really matter?”  I allowed the agony to show on my face since my back was to him and he couldn’t see it.  “I’m just a detail, remember?  And now, I’m not one you have to worry about anymore.”

“Em—”

“Bye, Nathan,” I whispered, jerking the door open and preparing to run as a different kind of pressure, the dangerous kind, started to build in my chest.  At least I didn’t have to wonder what was coming anymore.  “I guess I’ll see you around.”

The pressure was building too fast.  Before, I would have had Nathan to talk me down from it, but
I didn’t think I could count on that anymore.  I ran through the house, ignoring Nathan calling out behind me and the startled expressions on the faces of the two people sitting on the sofa in the living room, and out the door.

I took off at a sprint once I was outside.  I had to get as far away as I possibly could, preferably to somewhere there were no people at all.  The blast of power
accompanying that steadily increasing pressure in my chest that was making it impossible to breathe had been bad enough when I was human.  I shuddered to think about what kind of destruction I would be capable of as a darkling.

Teleport!
a hysterical voice in the back of my mind screamed at me. 
You have your powers back, so teleport!

I didn’t think about it, I just did it.  Without even slowing down, I pictured a clearing deep in the woods where I had gone for bonfires in the days before my life became a waking nightmare.   A familiar uncomfortable sensation swept over me as the world blurred.  The feeling that I was being sucked through a straw was one I really hated, and the pressure in my chest got worse as it began.  Fortunately for me, teleportation is pretty much instantaneous.  Picture where you want to go and,
voila
!  You’re there!

The world had barely come back into focus when I lost it.  A high, keening scream tore from my throat as the first wave ripped free.  It was so strong it was actually visible to the naked eye—and it had brought friends.  I fell to my knees, that terrible scream still echoing in my ears as wave after wave pulsed out from me, destroying everything in their path.

When it was finally over, I opened my eyes to find that the clearing closely resembled a war zone.  The ancient trees that had once stood so proudly had been reduced to kindling in the first wave. The ground around me looked like ripples in a pond, the grass scorched black in a wide circle that led deep into the forest.

The effect it had on me was as devastating as the effect it had on my surroundings. It felt like every vein in my body had shriveled practically to dust.  My muscles clenched painfully, released, and then started the process all over again.  Just the idea of moving was enough to make me want to die.  I felt like I had been run over and beaten
with a baseball bat before being thrown off a mountain.  I swear, even my toenails hurt.

But it was nothing compared to the pain of my broken heart.

How could I be so incredibly powerful and still have no control over my own life?  I could level everything for miles around.  I could defeat demons and talk to the dead and teleport myself hundreds, maybe even thousands, of miles in the space of a heartbeat.  I could do all of that, and yet I hadn’t been able to protect my own heart.