by Amy Patrick
“Twenty-five seconds. Not bad.”
He grinned and shook his head then paused in his sawing motion. “You know, before I finish up this heroic rescue, I’ve got to say something.”
I furrowed my brow. “What?”
“Well, correct me if I’m wrong, but… I do believe you’re having a problem.”
In spite of my bizarre circumstances, I laughed. Which hurt my ribs. “Maybe,” I conceded.
“No, come on now. Admit it. You’ve got a problem, and as promised, I’m helping you solve it.”
“Are you going to leave me hanging here all day if I don’t play along?”
“Maybe.” He smiled.
“Then yes, Asher, I have a problem. Now would you please get me the hell—”
Before I could finish the sentence, he made the last cut and sort of dived beneath me so when I dropped the short distance from the belt, I fell onto him and not the car’s roof or the shattered windshield. For a second we lay there, his arms wrapped tightly around me.
“I got you,” he said into my hair. “I got you. You’re okay now.”
I allowed myself to soften against his chest and breathe deeply. He smelled like freshly cut grass and yummy guy shampoo and smoke. Oh yeah, the fire. I lifted my head and looked around.
“We should move—”
“It’s okay,” he said. “The fire’s across the street—the factory. You lie still. I’m going to slide out and bring you with me, in case you’ve got a broken bone or something and don’t realize it yet. You may be in shock. Just pretend I’m a stretcher.”
I nodded and clung to him, wondering for the first time why a teenaged boy was performing my rescue instead of a firefighter or someone more qualified, someone with an actual stretcher for instance. Not that I was complaining—I couldn’t let human paramedics examine me anyway.
And then we were free of the wreckage, and I understood.
The scene outside the car was utter pandemonium. I stood to take it all in. The beautiful church I’d been admiring was blackened on one side, those multi-colored windows in jagged pieces or missing altogether. Across the street, a low, stretched-out building was fully engulfed in flames. It looked like a factory or a one-story warehouse.
Several other wrecked cars were scattered on the street, in various stages of annihilation. Mine hadn’t gotten the worst of it. Or the best.
I turned to look at the wreckage of my little convertible and all the air deserted my lungs at once, leaving me struggling for breath once again. It was smashed. How had I even survived it? Feeling dizzy, I rocked on my feet.
Asher’s arms came around me again. “You okay? You should sit down until the EMT’s can take a look at you.” He walked me to the nearest curb and guided me to sit, his supportive arm still around my back.
“What happened?” I finally thought to ask the obvious question.
“I’m not sure. That’s the Magnolia Sugar Tea Company. I was down the road near the park when I saw the blast. I drove up as close as I could and got out to see if anyone needed help, and then I saw your car. That’s as much as I know.”
I stared at the flames, the black smoke pouring from the open roof of the building. The heat of it was immense, even here across the street. It was hard to even look at it without squinting.
“Do you think anyone was inside?” If they had been, it was unlikely they’d survived.
He shook his head. “No. I don’t think so. It’s closed for the night. My buddy’s checking inside the church.” Lifting his eyes, he scanned the fiery scene. “Oh man, Ryann’s gonna be torn up. Her grandma, too.” He turned back to me. “She’s one of my classmates. It’s her family’s business.”
A cold sensation gripped my heart. Ryann’s tea factory. Culley’s mission. Was that what he’d been talking about? Had he been sent here to take out the source of the tea that was freeing humans from Elven influence? I twisted away from Asher and dry-heaved over the sidewalk.
His hands came to the sides of my head, sweeping my hair back from my face. After waiting for my spasm to pass, he said, “I’m gonna see if I can get somebody to check on you. They’ve got their hands pretty full, though. God this is a mess. You’ll be okay here for a minute?”
I nodded weakly, but I was not okay. How could Culley have done this? I didn’t know him well, but after spending the past week or so with him, I didn’t think he had this kind of evil in him. Yes, he’d advised me to just do my job, not to “think about whether it was right or wrong.” He said that was what he always did. But this was so extreme. He might have killed people tonight.
Asher hustled toward a nearby ambulance where uniformed paramedics were loading a writhing man into the back. I glanced around again. It seemed like everywhere I looked there were shocked faces, some people crying, others running toward the destruction or away from it. A mother shielded her young child’s eyes from a pool of blood in the street near another one of the ruined cars.
Within two minutes Asher was back, kneeling in front of me. With a hand under my chin, he tipped my face up so our gazes met. Those incredible turquoise eyes were so serious, so full of concern.
“Listen, they know you’re here, and they’re going to get to you as soon as they can. There are a lot of people who need help—a lot of people hurt. I need to help out—there aren’t enough emergency personnel to handle it all. You stay right here, okay? Don’t get up and wander off. You need someone to check you out. I’ll be back for you as soon as I can.”
I nodded, but he wasn’t satisfied.
“Promise me Ava. Don’t leave before I come back.”
“Okay. I promise.” It wasn’t a hard vow to make. I had no way to leave. My car was a lopsided pancake in the middle of the road. I didn’t feel like moving anyway. I was sort of numb and disconnected. This was horrible. And I felt responsible, like I should have prevented it or something.
Maybe it had been an accident? My spirit lifted for a second then immediately sank again. Not likely. It was too coincidental that Ryann’s factory had blown up the night after Culley had left Altum. He must not have headed for L.A. right away as he’d said he would.
I’d been wondering how he planned to get to the airport anyway. I had picked him up from the airport in Memphis last week after driving cross-country myself. He’d had a modeling gig in New York City and couldn’t drive out with me from the west coast—not that I’d wanted to share a three-day car trip with him. Now I was hoping I never saw his face again.
From somewhere behind me I heard the screech of car tires. Another town resident getting a first look at the carnage, no doubt. At the sound of footsteps hitting the pavement at a dead run, I twisted at the waist to look. I’m not sure why. I guess that’s just what you do when you hear someone running toward you.
It was Culley. Great. I got to my feet, now feeling stiff and sore all over, prepared to walk away from the devil approaching me with his designer clothes and tense expression and treacherous beauty.
With his unnaturally good looks and tall, athletic physique, he looked like an actor on the set of an action movie instead of a real person happening upon a real disaster scene. Of course he wasn’t a person, not in the literal sense of the word.
When he spotted me, Culley’s pace slowed to a saunter. And I didn’t walk away. No, I wanted to confront him, make him account for what he’d done.
By the time he reached me, his face had lost its worry and reeked of his typical unconcern. His eyes roamed over me, assessing, perhaps checking to see whether his plot against the humans would lead to any unfortunate Elven casualties. Then his gaze slid to the side, taking in my destroyed car, and back to me.
“Good thing you dumped me, Angel. If I’d been in that passenger seat, the world would be minus one Culley Rune.”
“Yes, that would have been tragic,” I deadpanned. “What are you doing here, Culley? I thought you’d be long gone by now.”
“I was. I made it to the airport in Memphis.”
&nbs
p; “But then you decided to come back to the scene of the crime. I guess criminals do that sort of thing—I’ve seen it on cop shows.”
His eyes flared. “Criminals? You think I had something to do with this?”
“Didn’t you? Wasn’t this your mission?”
For a moment, I thought I saw a glimpse of hurt in his eyes, or insult, but then it was gone, replaced by flinty blue obstinance. “I did not. It was not.” He reached toward me, laying a hand on my arm. “So, you’re okay? You’re not hurt?”
I shrugged away from him. “No. I’m fine. I was lucky. Which is more than I can say for a lot of people here tonight.”
Across the street, someone yelled for help, and a couple of girls Asher’s age ran toward him. Culley didn’t even turn his head. He was still focused on me.
“And what about back at Altum with the Light King? And Nox? They didn’t punish you? Or did they just throw you out?”
I shook my head. “They did neither. Listen, I don’t really have anything left to say to you, okay? You’ve verified that your bomb worked, or whatever, so you should probably get back on the road.”
Now Culley’s eyes narrowed. “I didn’t do this, Ava. I’ve already told you that. Do you really believe I’m a… a terrorist?”
The word no leapt to my mind, but what other explanation was there? Why else would he have come back here? “I believe you do what your father commands you to do. And I know you’re good at making people see what they want to see.”
I’d discovered Culley’s unique glamour on the day I’d met him—we’d been on a shoot together, and it quickly became obvious why he was the world’s most in-demand male model. He wasn’t just attractive. He’d explained it fell along the lines of the old adage “beauty is in the eyes of the beholder.” No matter who was looking at him, male or female, child or adult, human or Elven, they all saw their ideal—he was literally the best-looking guy they’d ever seen.
Culley smirked. “Believe it or not, Ava, my glamour and my moral center are two separate things. I’d think you would understand that, if anyone would.”
Ouch. He was right. For years, I had used my own glamour to hurt people in service of Culley’s father Audun, the head of the Dark Council, to erase their memories or implant new ones, and it had made me feel like scum. I was seriously hoping that just because a glamour could be used for evil purposes, that didn’t mean it had to be.
In fact I was making my break from the Dark Court and setting off on my own when my car had been caught up in the crossfire of this tragedy.
“It doesn’t matter what I think. You should be worried about what these deputies milling around here are going to think,” I said. “You’re a stranger in a very small town at the wrong time. So am I. We both need to go.”
Culley stared at me for a moment. Then he took my hand. “Come with me.”
I yanked my fingers from his grasp just as Asher walked up. His eyes went from me to Cully, back to me again, clearly taking in the unfriendly body language.
He slid an arm around my shoulders. “Everything okay here? This guy bothering you?”
Culley bristled at his words—and his familiar handling of me—straightening to his full six-foot-three height. It put him at only an inch taller than Asher.
“This guy…” he said, his light Australian accent suddenly more pronounced. “… is her fiancé. So you can just nick off, farm boy.”
Asher’s hand on my shoulder tensed slightly. “I wasn’t speaking to you.” Turning to look directly into my eyes, he asked again, his words gentle and low, meant only for me. “Are you all right, Ava?”
“He’s not my fiancé,” I said. I wasn’t sure why it was so important to make the clarification at that moment. “He was, but he’s not anymore. It’s complicated.”
He nodded. “Okay. I want you to go sit in my truck and wait for me while I check with the EMT’s. I think they’re about to transport some people. Did anyone get to you?”
“No, but I’m fine.”
His eyebrows lowered, and his lips stretched into a thin, displeased line. “I’m driving you to the hospital, just in case. Here are my keys. Just go get in—I’ll be right there.”
He held out his keys, expecting me to take them. Expecting me to allow him to take care of me—keep taking care of me. I couldn’t do that. And I couldn’t go to the hospital. Before I had the chance to tell him that, Culley spoke up.
“Listen mate, I’ll take it from here. You’ve been all Johnny-on-the-spot and whatever—good on ya. But I’ll look after my girl.”
Asher took a step forward, insinuating his body between me and Culley. “I believe Ava’s already made it clear she’s not your girl anymore.”
My gaze bounced between the two aggressively positioned guys. This wouldn’t do. And though I would not be leaving with Culley, I couldn’t leave with Asher either. I couldn’t go to the hospital. I couldn’t allow him to get more involved in my life than he already was. The burning building on my right was a perfect example of the reason. My world was too dangerous for a human interloper. I was dangerous to him.
I touched his arm lightly. “Asher. Can I speak with you a minute?”
He glanced over his shoulder at me, then took a breath and fell back from his standoff with Culley. Together we walked a few feet away. He dipped his head to listen as I spoke to him in a low voice.
“It’s okay. I’ll handle him. He’s harmless.”
Asher glanced to the side, where Culley stood watching us with clenched fists and a scowl. Even now he was ridiculously good-looking. What did Asher see when he looked at him? Some kind of threat, obviously.
“Harmless,” he repeated, not sounding convinced. “Did he have something to do with the reason you climbed that tower the other day?”
“Um… not directly. I can’t really explain. Just… don’t worry about me, okay? I’ll be fine. I can handle him.”
Asher’s big hands enveloped my fingers. His sincere eyes bored into mine. “You don’t have to handle anything—not alone. My friend Richie owns a body shop and a tow truck. I called him to get your car out of here and find you a loaner. In the meantime, I’ll take you wherever you need to go.”
Culley stepped close, butting into our private conversation. “She’s going to California, mate. You planning to saddle up your horse and take her there?”
Asher slid an acid glance over at him. “If that’s what she needs,” he growled.
Culley reached out and grabbed Asher’s shoulder. Asher knocked his hand away. This was getting out of hand. I stepped in between them and held my arms out to either side like a boxing referee.
“Wait a minute. Asher—thank you, but no. I don’t need your help. And Culley… I’m not going back to California. You know why.”
His eyes narrowed in a warning look. “They’ll find you, you know. Even with a head start.” Slanting a glance in Asher’s direction, he added, “Even with a beefed-up bodyguard. You can’t win this one, Ava.”
I lifted my chin, hoping he was wrong, even though I suspected he was right. “I can try. They don’t own me. It’s a free country.”
Culley shook his head, his lips twisting in a sympathetic smile. “Not for us, Angel. Not for us.”
* * *
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This is an important part of the book for me because without the people named here, HIDDEN DARKNESS wouldn’t exist.
First to you, my beautiful reader... thank you for giving my books a chance to entertain you and touch your heart.
Huge thanks go to my lovely editor Judy Roth for her wonderful work and to Cover Your Dreams for another fantastic cover.
I am forever grateful for my amazing critique partner, McCall, for her words of wisdom and huge heart. I’d be nowhere without my brilliant and hilarious Savvy Seven sisters and the special Dauntless girls. Love and thanks to the rest of the fabulous Dreamweavers and my Lucky 13 sisters for their support, good advice, virtual Prosecco, cupcakes, and cabana boys. #teamworddomination. I’m so proud of you all!
I’m blessed to be “doing life” with some amazing friends. Love to Bethany, Chelle, Margie, and the real housewives of Westmoreland Farm. Special thanks to Mary and CM and Bria for all the great book (and life) talks.
To my first family for your unconditional love and the gift of roots and wings. And finally to the guys who make it all worthwhile—my husband and sons. And thank you to the rest of my friends and family for your support and for just making life good.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Amy Patrick grew up in Mississippi (with a few years in Texas thrown in for spicy flavor) and has lived in six states, including Rhode Island, where she now lives with her husband and two sons.
She’s been a professional singer, a DJ, a voiceover artist, and always a storyteller, whether it was directing her younger siblings during hours of “pretend” or inventing characters and dialogue while hot-rollering her hair before middle school every day. For many years she was a writer of true crime, medical anomalies, and mayhem, working as a news anchor and health reporter for six different television stations. Then she retired to make up her own stories. Hers have a lot more kissing.