by Zoey Parker
He slapped her again and without thinking she slapped him back. She was really tired of people hitting her to keep her from talking, especially when they had been the one to ask her a question in the first place.
“Stop it!” she said, and waved her hand at him. “I’m tired and you need to stop it.”
“I will shoot you.”
“No, you won’t. You just said you need me to get you out of here.”
He growled, and she giggled. He didn’t like her reaction. That was fine, she really didn’t like his either. People were growling a lot today, too, and snapping, and just generally angry. It was like finals week…but with guns and explosions.
“Shut up.”
“What does that actually mean?” she pondered out loud while he dragged her towards one of the sleek cars. “I mean, we shut down computers, but that means to turn off. What does shut up mean? My mom used to hate it when I said shut up, did yours?”
“What is wrong with you?” he demanded as he shoved her in the car.
She giggled again. “I told you, hysterics. When the body hits a certain stress point sometimes—”
“Shut up!”
She sighed and slumped in the seat. It took her a moment to realize she was in the driver’s position.
“Oh, that’s not a good idea.” The passenger door opened and he slid into his seat. “I don’t think I should drive.”
“I don’t care what you think.”
She shifted in the seat again. They were made of a rich buttery leather. She could almost curl up and fall asleep.
“What is wrong with you? I have a gun pointed at you, I might not kill you but I will shoot you in your precious little hands. How many dogs will you save with a gimp hand?”
She blinked at him for a moment. His face was riddled with serious lines. She threw up her hands in surrender before plopping them on the wheel. “Gimp isn’t a very nice word.”
“You are going to argue semantics with me right this moment?”
She giggled again. “I didn’t know you knew the word semantics. I’m proud of you. All right, Miss Daisy, where are we going?”
He hit a button and the engine roared to life. She had to admit there was something very grounding about hearing all that horsepower rumble beneath her. The feel of the stylish wheel beneath one hand and the touch of the gearshift beneath her other pushed the giggles to the very back of her mind. She wanted to drive this thing.
“Just drive, get us out of here.”
“If you say so.”
He opened the garage door and she slapped her bare foot against the gas. The car surged forward. She barely managed to navigate it around the other cars and out of the garage.
“Holy crap!” she cried out. “This thing can move!”
“Take us past the ruined gates.” He motioned to the right with his hand and she followed it. The car was a beautifully made machine. Kellan could keep his bikes; she wanted one of these. She barely needed to touch anything before she felt it respond. A slight tug and the beast was rounding the cement ribbon of his driveway, past the spitting mermaid and through the smoking remnants of the gate. Metal scrapped against fiberglass, making her teeth grind. He set the gun aside and rubbed his temples.
“All right,” she said, more to herself than to him. “Let’s see what this baby can do.”
She jerked the wheel to the left and it made a turn that could have caused a dime to wince. She threw the gears and stomped on her foot again.
“What are you doing?” he demanded.
“Going for a swim.”
He had just picked up the gun again when the car surged over the lip of the pool and crashed into the mermaid. Water spewed everywhere, filling up the small space between her and Gabriel. He reached for the gun. So did she. He found it first. She slapped his hand back beneath the water. She held it there with her foot, and her back pressed to the door.
He shot, but his hand jerked awkwardly. No matter what the movies showed, guns were not really made for firing underwater. It was all physics. There was just as much chance that the gun would fire as it would explode in your hand.
Blood mingled with chlorine as Emma pushed herself against the door. She didn’t panic, not now. She’d had quite enough of hysterical laughter. More physics was coming her way. There was enough water pushing against the door that she didn’t have the strength to actually move it. Maybe if she were feeling better, but not right this moment. She let the fluid rush in, circling around her legs. All she had to do was wait for the pressure on her side of the door to be equal to the pressure on the other side of the door and voilà, it would open.
She waited, but Gabriel didn’t. He tugged her away from the door, hefting the gun up in his uninjured had.
“Oh my god,” she said, “haven’t you had enough?”
“When you’re dead.”
“I am not okay with that.” She slapped at his good hand and the gun tumbled into the back seat. He went for it and she slapped her weight into his lap to keep him pinned there.
“Get off of me.” He tossed her forward.
“Funny, that’s what I told your brother before I beat him to death.”
His rage filled the car faster than the water. He wrapped his hands around her neck and started to choke her. She kicked at him, struggled with him, but he wasn’t his brother to be distracted by her girlish terror. He was a very angry man. He slapped her against the dashboard. Her already hurting back cried out at the continued abuse.
Her vision went hazy around the edges. The nearly forgotten headache swam up behind her eyes, making them feel too big for her head. Everything hurt, and then the hurt began to go numb. That couldn’t be good. Suddenly Emma was very sure she was going to die. “Stop,” she managed.
He didn’t. He pushed harder.
It only took five pounds of direct pressure to break a bone. There was a little bone in the throat that broke when a person got choked, it was supposed to be more detrimental to survival than the actual choking.
“Kellan,” she whispered.
The water rushed up around the two of them, lifting them inside the cabin. It helped with some of the pressure. He pushed her downwards, the water puddled around her ears. She took the deepest breath his hands would allow.
“He’s not here.”
Somewhere, glass broke. Gabriel’s head jerked to the side, his mouth went slack. Those hawk eyes rolled backwards and his grip on her neck relaxed. When his body slumped to the side she saw a bullet wound just behind his eye.
She didn’t take time to be grateful that she could breathe. With the water rushing in she wouldn’t be able to do that for very long. She kicked out at the door again and again but it wouldn’t but it wouldn’t budge. The car had sunk too deep. There was too much pressure on the outside. God, how deep was this pool? She shifted her attention to the window. Had it been a roll down window she would have been fine, but it was the automatic kind and the engine was no longer a help. She kicked, and kicked, and kicked again. It slipped down inside the slot a half an inch. It wasn’t much, but it would have to do. Emma wrapped her bruised fingers over the fake glass and shoved it down, it gave, little by little, but it wasn’t fast enough.
She took a breath deep enough to make her lungs burn. She pushed, down and down. The window gave and she slithered through it. The water wasn’t cold, it was hot, and a thick substance was leaking out of the car. She swam away from it. Her body carried her up until she breached the surface, not half so pretty as the mermaid had been, but very much alive.
A very pale hand reached out to her. She smiled and took it.
“Hello, Phantom.”
“Emma.” He nodded. “Is he dead?”
“Yes.” Her heart sank. “Did you? Were you the one who shot him?”
Phantom shook his head and pointed. Emma couldn’t see Kellan, not exactly. But there, perched in a tree, was a small glimmer of light, and the outline of a man against a trunk.
She didn’t think
she ran for that spot. Her aching and wounded legs felt nothing as she charged across wet concrete and the burning remains of a dead drug dealer’s gate. Modern materials gave way to pine needles and branches. She clamored up the hill, even as the shape jumped down from the tree.
“Kellan, oh god, Kellan!”
He came out of the forest like a dark-haired specter. Obsidian curls swam around his angular face. His jeans hung low on his hips, as if they were too big, but she saw they were only torn. His vest hung around his chest.
“Come here.” His strong arms wrapped around her, and he hefted her off the ground. She felt like she was flying when he swung her in a circle. Somehow his mouth found hers. He kissed her like he would eat her from her lips down. Right this moment, she would have been perfectly okay with that. He kissed her until neither of them could breathe. “Let me see you. Dammit, let me look at you.”
His hands kept her face and she winced. “Careful, please. I’m a little burnt”
“Emma, what happened? Was it Gabriel?” If his voice had been a knife, it would have cut her. “He’s dead. I killed him.”
She shook her head, not sure if he was telling her he had shot Gabriel or reminding himself. “I know you did, thank you. But not all of this was him, no.”
Her answer did nothing to alleviate his blooming wrath. Anger, hot and visceral, flickered through his eyes. “Where is Michael?”
“Dead,” she whispered, barely willing to bring herself to say it. “I killed him. Oh god.”
Saying it somehow made it more real. She had seen it, watched his body fall to the ground in that dead-man’s slump. Still, now that the truth of it had come out of her lips she couldn’t stop herself from remembering it over and over again. It was real. It had happened. Her legs wouldn’t hold her up.
His arms tightened around her, dragging her to the comforting line of his chest. She took in the scent of him, drowned herself in it. She had no tears, but she sobbed anyway. Deep, guttural sounds ripped through her until she couldn’t breathe. “I thought you were dead!” she managed when the tightness in her chest eased. “I saw a video of the clubhouse. They said there were no survivors.”
“Some of them did die.”
“Who?” she demanded, stepping back from the comfort that he offered. “Who died?”
He hesitated before telling her. “Vinny, Joe, a few others. And Leon.”
“Leon?” she whispered softly. “He’s really dead?”
“Yeah, he is. I’m sorry, Emma. I really am.”
She couldn’t take much more tonight, but she had to ask. “Rudy?”
“He’s fine, and Phantom. The three of us are all that’s left right now.”
She nodded slowly. It was something. It wasn’t much but right now she would take anything. Phantom, the boy who had saved her, was alive. He had pulled her out of the pool. She hadn’t seen Rudy, but she was willing to take Kellan’s promise that he was somewhere.
“Okay.” She managed to clear her throat. “Okay, I’m here. You’re here. We aren’t dead.”
“That’s right. We can rebuild everything else. I’ve got you, Emma. I’m right here,” he whispered against the wet mat of her hair. “Tell me what happened.”
“It is a very, very long story, but I need to go to the doctor. I got hit in the head. I got hit in the head a lot. Samantha even hit me.”
He blinked down at her. “Samantha?”
He didn’t know, she realized. Even now he didn’t know everything that had happened. She managed to tell him, pausing every now and then to explain what she had seen and what Samantha had told her. “I don’t know where she is now.”
“It doesn’t matter,” he promised, “all that matters is you are safe. We need to get going. A lot of cops might not come up this way, but an explosion is going to bring bodies.”
“All right, but I still need to go to an ER.”
“Anything you want, Emma. God, anything.” He took her hands in his and brought them to his lips, kissing one set of knuckles and then the other. “I love you. I’m sorry I didn’t want to say it before, I love you.”
She took one of her hands from his and put it against his cheek. “I love you, too.”
Chapter 18
Emma didn’t relax until she heard the familiar sounds of a medical center. Sure, hospitals didn’t have as much howling or squawking, but there was enough that she could let herself linger in the curve of Kellan’s arm. He answered all of the police officer’s questions. Some of what he said was lies, some was real, all of it was easy to forget when the doctor waved Kellan aside and started the impersonal process of making sure she wasn’t going to die.
“Sir, I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”
Kellan seemed to grow two sizes, taking up more space than his body was actually capable of. “Why?”
The doctor looked completely unimpressed. “Because you are bleeding on my floor. Go get yourself seen to.”
Kellan had the good sense to look sheepish. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize.”
The doctor blinked at him owlishly until he left the room. The whisper of an air conditioning unit pumping into the room made Emma lay back against the crinkle of medical paper that protected the bed and made for easy clean up. It felt so good to lie down.
“I have to ask,” the doctor said once the door was closed, “did your husband do this to you?”
Emma blinked twice before she understood exactly what the doctor was asking. “Oh, no. No. I mean, Kellan and I might yell at once another, but not this.”
“I’m going to assume that the cock-n-bull story he just gave to the nice police officer in the emergency room was fake.”
“Doctor-patient confidentiality?” Emma asked.
“As far as it will stretch.”
Emma sat up again, her muscles screamed in protest. She settled into a position and held as still as possible. She looked into the doctor’s dark eyes, took a deep breath, and told her everything from the night that she was attacked in her dorm room until the moment that she stepped into the emergency room. She knew doctor-patient privilege would only cover some of the crimes, but she needed to talk.
“Well,” she said after the story ended. “That’s what happened.”
“I don’t know if I should believe you or toss you in a nut house.”
Emma shrugged a shoulder. “At the end of the day, doc, it’s entirely up to you. You could go out there and get that cop. Federal crimes aren’t covered by privilege.”
“Do you plan on making a habit of killing a would-be rapist?”
“I really, really hope not. All I want to do is go to college, open a practice, and have a simple life.”
The doctor motioned towards the door Kellan had left through. “You think you are going to get that when you are walking around with that?”
Emma didn’t just answer. She thought about it. There was a chance that being with Kellan another night like this might happen. Actually, odds were definitely on it. Even so, Emma couldn’t bring herself to walk away, not after he rescued her, not after he admitted to loving her.
“Doc, I have loved that boy since I was sixteen years old. I can’t help that. I can, however, make the best life with him that I can.”
The doctor eyed her again and then sighed. “All right, if the officer asks, I will just tell him you stuck to your husband’s story. That aside, how are you feeling?”
“I have a concussion. It started off mild but the accident exacerbated the problem.”
Her cool dark fingers investigated the bump. “Exacerbated, huh? You said you were going to open a practice? Are you a doctor?”
“Vet, or I will be when I finish school.”
“How long do you have?” the woman asked. She looked more concerned than interested.
“Just a semester. I might take this one off. My dad just died, and I just got married, and then all of this.”
“Mm-hmm. Might be a good idea. You never know how much stress can affect your stu
dies.” She picked up a clipboard and settled it professionally against her arm. “All right, let’s go over the basics. Open and say ah.”
Emma did all of it. She got her heart listened to, got her ears checked, her eyes looked over. It felt good to just be able to do what she was told, to sit back and let someone else act. She had done too much action tonight.
“What was the date of your last menstrual cycle?”