To stop myself from crying out at the sight of Jason’s limpless form, I bit down hard on the stick in my hand. This was the worst I’d ever seen him. His face was scratched up, but my eyes were immediately drawn to his neck, where a deep red laceration bled profusely. Some of his body parts looked displaced, and I imagined he had several broken bones. He’d be black and blue from head to toe in a few days, but that was the least of my worries. I needed to close the neck wound, stop the bleeding, and heal any broken bones so he’d still be alive in a few days.
“Hey, pretty boy,” Kieran shouted and kicked Jason.
“Mmm,” Jason groaned and rolled slightly to one side.
“What a waste! If you Guardians would just feast on human Essence you’d be strong like us.” He turned sideways and spat blood. “Of course, your loss is my gain. There’s nothing that satiates my hunger better than the Essence of another Guardian. Pity it won’t be as strong to start off, but once I’ve drained you of every last bit, and you take your last breath, my strength will be more impressive than it was before.” He rubbed his dirty hands together. “Then of course, I’ll feast on your little Innocent who’s hiding around here somewhere – a nice tasty treat after all my hard work.”
Jason moaned again, and I fought to maintain my strength of mind. Even though I was rigid with terror, anger propelled me into a standing position. As Kieran leaned over Jason with his hands outstretched, I jumped. Plunging downwards, I refused to close my eyes and lose sight of my target this time. I jabbed the sticks straight into Kieran’s back and landed feet first on the ground. A surprise attack gone right. Finally!
Howling like a madman, he fell face forward onto Jason. Hatred commanded my every move. Without hesitation, I kicked Kieran in the face like my foot was made of steel. The force behind my kick sent him spiraling backwards. Rage consumed me when I looked down at Jason’s damaged body. I clenched my fists and advanced on Kieran again, slamming him with another powerful kick to the head. His face wrenched sideways, and he stopped moving.
Immediately, I turned my attention to Jason. His breath was shallow, his face pale. I knelt down beside him and placed my hands on his neck. I knew he was at his weakest, so I mentally prepared myself for nothing more than a trickling of Essence. But when I didn’t feel any flow at all, my body started quivering, and I fought back tears. If I hadn’t seen him roll over moments before, I would have thought he was dead. What I felt wasn’t physically painful, it was more shocking. For some reason, this time I could feel his suffering. Closing my eyes, I focused and ignored his pain. I shared with him my strength and energy. As my fingers tingled, I could feel my Essence surging into him fast and unyielding.
“Jason, Jason! What’s happening? Answer me please!” Madison was trying to contact him telepathically again.
“Come on Jason. You need to answer,” I whispered. His eyelids started fluttering just as brutal hands clamped onto my shoulders. Flinching, I lifted my hands away from Jason’s bloody neck.
“Owww, what the hell…” Kieran yelled. Shocked that he was up again, I whipped around. Kieran gazed back and forth between his hands and my face several times before his lips formed a slow smile. “How fascinating,” his voice cracked as he looked at me sideways. Although not much taller than me, his build was definitely more muscular and stocky. His small eyes were a vibrant hazel. From far away he might have looked like Adam Levine, but up close he was greasy-looking and intimidating. Either his facial hair grew in clumps, or he’d shaved hastily around his goatee. His predatory stare, profoundly unwanted, made me extremely nervous. He glanced down at Jason, and I instinctively moved to block his view.
“Get back,” I growled. Not that I was going to be a lot of protection when this crazy dude morphed back into a mountain lion, but I would take whatever measures I could to protect Jason.
“This just gets more stimulating by the minute,” Kieran said with a chuckle. “I do believe I have one very genuine and powerful Amethyst standing before me. This makes my trip to the Northwest a total success.” Smirking, he cupped his chin and shook his head. I didn’t know what to make of his odd behavior, but when he took a step towards me, I instantly put my hands out to stop him.
“Don’t touch him,” Jason said in a raspy voice. Glancing down, I shot him a surprised look. He was talking; that was good.
“Ha, ha, ha. Oh no! Don’t listen to him. Please, go ahead. Touch me – anywhere you want.” Kieran reached his arms out and wiggled his fingers before me. Trembling, I looked at my hands, now covered in blood – Jason’s blood. Apparently, I didn’t have control over who I healed. If I touched him, I’d heal his injuries. Talk about screwed! How was I going to defend myself if my touch only enabled him?
“I wouldn’t consider touching you…you filthy…vile creature,” I said venomously. Then I had a random thought, well probably not so random. It was more like I’d just fit the last missing pieces into a puzzle, one that I’d been working on for weeks. Now that I could see the whole picture, everything made sense, and it wasn’t very pretty. “Why don’t you touch me instead,” I said hesitantly, waving my hands in front of his face like he’d done to me. If my suspicions were right, I had one defense after all.
“Oh, I like it! She still has a sense of humor. How intriguing.” He laughed mirthlessly but made no attempt to reach for me. Looking me in the eye, he said scornfully, “I don’t feel like playing with fire right now.”
A strange, queasy feeling overtook the pit of my stomach. So that was it. If I touched him, I healed him. If he touched me, it hurt. A lump formed in my throat, and I looked down at Jason with a sick feeling. His aqua-marine eyes flickered back at me with a measuring look, and I knew. I knew the heat that had always been between us had been real. I just hadn’t known that for him it was hot. Painfully hot.
“So, we’re at an impasse,” I said uncertainly to Kieran. Shifting my stance, I waited. I didn’t have a special ability like everyone else. Apparently, my own best defense was myself. This was getting complicated.
“Actually,” Kieran said, taking a step closer to Jason, “you have a choice to make now.”
My face hardened, and my shoulders stiffened. “I don’t know what you mean,” I said with a hint of alarm.
“You see your boyfriend here…” He pointed, and I noticed several silver rings on his stubby fingers. One was an especially large snake head wrapped around his thumb joint. Scratching his goatee, he silently contemplated for a moment. “Well actually, he’s probably not your boyfriend, because a relationship between an Amethyst and a Guardian is flaming impossible isn’t it?” He laughed.
My chest tightened. With all this new information, I still had a lot to sort out. Unfortunately, things were not looking too good for me at the moment. “Just get on with it.” I grimaced.
“Like I was saying before I so rudely got off track – you have a choice. I can reach down and draw the Essence from him until he’s dead,” he smiled impishly, “while you watch helpless and virtually defenseless. I mean you can try to pull me off of him or whatever. But you know as well as I do, the minute you touch me, it only makes me stronger.”
“I won’t let you near him,” I seethed. I would die before I let him touch Jason again.
Or,” he winked, ignoring my outburst, “you can choose to share your Essence freely with me. You can heal the inconsequential injuries I sustained during my recreational bout with your friend here. It would be like a really good fix. Just might satisfy my craving for a couple days…and then I wouldn’t need to bother with him. What do you say?” He looked pleased with his offer.
Jason moaned and tried to sit up. “Alex. No.”
“Hmm…Alex,” Kieran purred.“It’s decision time. You have five seconds: 5…4…3…2…”
“Fine,” I said angrily.
“Fine, what?”
“Fine, I’ll heal you. But I have a condition of my own.”
“Of course you do. But that’s okay, I admire a shrewd mind. What’
s the condition?”
“We move away from him,” I said and looked at Jason, who was staring at me with despair and shaking his head. Gazing up at Kieran again, I said, “I don’t want to be anywhere near him when we do this. He needs to be out of sight.”
“Ohh, I get it. Out of sight; out of mind.”
“Not quite,” I snarled. “But if we’re in agreement, let’s go. I’ll follow you.” The sooner I got him away from Jason, the better.
“Sure thing my little peddler.” Kieran snorted and started walking. He stopped almost immediately. Glancing back at Jason, as if he was an afterthought, he remarked, “It was fun. Let’s do it again sometime. Actually, I’m sure we will, and I’ll be looking forward to it, because next time I won’t let you live.” With that he started whistling and scrambled up and over a dead tree.
“Alex, please don’t do this,” Jason choked out. He flinched and tried his best to get up, but he wasn’t strong enough yet. “Don’t taint yourself with his Essence; he’s pure evil.”
I leaned down and touched his forehead. “Jason, I’ll come back. I promise. Keep your eyes open for Andrew.”
“Alex, let’s go,” Kieran called out obnoxiously. “Deal was that you heal me, not him.”
I whispered to Jason, “Talk to Madison. How long until she gets here?” I stood up.
His eyes narrowed and his mouth opened in surprise. Giving me a very funny look, he whispered, “Five minutes tops; stall him, but don’t touch him.”
“I’ll try,” I mouthed back and turned to follow Kieran, who continued whistling loudly as he led me into the dense forest. We waded through thick, low-growing shrubs, branches snapping under our feet. Eventually, he stopped, and the chains hanging from the belt loops of his torn black jeans rattled as he jumped straight up. That giant leap landed him square on his feet, about six feet up, on top of a big, old stump that had a huckleberry bush growing out of it.
He turned around and looked down at me. “Must suck being an Amethyst sometimes. Can’t jump great heights. Can’t run with super speed. And no experimenting with new abilities every time you link with a different person.”
Looking at him with new perspective, I tried hard to look bored. In actuality, I was soaking up all this new information like a sponge. “Being an Amethyst has its advantages,” I said snidely and wondered what they were, because I could really use them right about now.
“Yeah, like being able to heal yourself almost instantaneously while the rest of us take days if left on our own. And of course, there’s no advantage to me killing you, because your Essence all but dissipates when you die, leaving me with nothing. No, I need a different strategy with you. I just don’t know what it is,” he muttered as if it was an afterthought.
What? I could heal myself. And why couldn’t he strip me of my Essence like he could a Guardian? Jessica had a lot to teach me if I made it out of this mess. “Mmm hmm,” I mumbled hoping he’d keep rambling. The more time I bought, the better my chances. I was sure he had some trick, some way to capture me and take me with him in the end, but I wasn’t giving up hope.
“Then again, there’s something to be said for stealing an ordinary human’s Essence,” he said with a gleam in his amber eyes. “The hunt that leads up to the kill…oh, it’s such a rush. And the power we gain and sustain when we extract all of someone’s Essence. I don’t think your Guardians will ever wise up. They’re so weak – so concerned about human life.”
The more he talked the more disgusted and horrified I became. They were murderers, killing people for their Essence. Suddenly, I felt chilled to the bone even though we stood in the dark shadows of the trees and the temperature was probably around 85 degrees. In fact, not only did I feel colder than a block of ice, I felt like he was chipping away at me with an ice pick, and I might shatter at any moment. I certainly didn’t want to touch him and pollute myself with his tainted Essence.
He hopped down, landing only inches away. “Well Alex, it’s time to hold up your end of the bargain.” He smiled, baring dingy, yellow teeth. A mix of blood, animal fur, and cigarette smoke permeated from his body. Foul and disgusting. I hated the way he called me Alex. More than that, I just plain hated that he knew my name at all.
He stood unbearably close now. Blood crusted around the scratches on his face and torn skin hung from his neck. Jason had inflicted some damage, but this guy was obviously strong. Sighing with resignation, I pursed my lips and reached out to touch him. But at that exact moment something crashed through the forest in the distance. We both turned our heads in haste. Blazing through the thicket and cornering trees at full speed, a golden-colored animal raced towards us making loud chirping noises. I gaped in surprise when a cheetah came into view.
Quick in his own right, Kieran swore under his breath and spat out, “Our time together has been most rewarding Alex.” His gaze was intense and his smile wicked. “And while it’s good-bye for now, have no doubts – I will find you again.” With that he leaped straight up in the air, and when he landed a good 30 feet away, he was once again the lean, mean reddish mountain lion. Using his long tail like a rudder, he turned sharply through the trees and disappeared with a burst of speed.
I’d been surprised to see a cheetah. I was even more astonished when, as it dashed past me, it transformed into a huge, shaggy black bear and continued running with a fast, shuffling gait. Watching his massive and powerful body was fascinating, because his legs on one side moved swiftly together rather than alternating like most four-legged animals. He stampeded over a couple logs, squashing them easily, and he followed the mountain lion into the thicket.
I didn’t have time to wait around and see what happened next, because I had to get back to Jason. Tearing through the forest as quietly as possible, I found him in the same place I’d left him – at the bottom of my protective wall. Fortunately, he was still alone. Sitting in the middle of a dark green bush and leaning against the log, he didn’t look overly comfortable. At least he was part way up. His color looked better, but he was still a mess.
“Alex, thank God!” he exclaimed. In a worried voice he asked, “Did he touch you?” I frowned at him and he amended his question, “I mean, did you touch him?”
“No,” I said softly.
“How?”
“Shhhh.” I held my finger against my lips and shook my head, suppressing tears that were trying to spring forth. I placed my hands on his neck, and he flinched but nodded. His eyes held a significant amount of gold spots. Not normal. Looking at him distracted me, so I closed my eyes and concentrated. His Essence felt stronger, and that eased my worries.
“Alex,” he broke the silence after another minute, and I looked up, “quick we need to move behind the trees.”
“Why?” I asked impatiently, knowing he needed more of my Essence “We need to heal you before they come back. You need to be able to protect yourself,” I said with exasperation.
“No, they’re coming – right now.” Just as he said that the forest erupted into a thunderous cacophony, like numerous trees were being felled simultaneously.
“Madison?” I asked but already knew the answer to that one. I knew how loud she was when she was pissed off, and from the sounds of the mass destruction heading our way, I’d say her name was written all over it. Only this was decibels higher than her usual rumblings.
He nodded and said, “Her and Andrew.”
“Tattoo guy with the energy spheres,” I clarified.
Nodding, he rose to his feet and motioned for me to follow. “Let’s go.”
Just before rounding the log barrier, I stopped and watched Andrew fly backwards into the clearing. His hands were out and he was throwing energy blasts everywhere. Smaller trees split and toppled over, and large potholes blasted the forest floor to pieces.
Madison rushed into the now cluttered clearing with her long hair whipping in the breeze, a breeze she’d created with her own anger. With her hands out in front of her, she appeared to be lifting things off the g
round and hurtling them through the air. Huge branches, logs, and even boulders flew towards Andrew, like pre-programmed missiles. She tilted her head slightly, and I knew…I knew she’d been the long-haired girl in the alley who’d been launching buckets.
All Andrew could do was counter with his energy blasts. Loud “booms” erupted as things collided overhead, decimating treetops. Shattering into millions of particles, the rock shards and huge chunks of timber scattered in all directions. One Guardian and one Ray-pac together had created a war zone, and it was spectacular.
Highlighting her long, tan legs and toned upper body, Madison wore tight, black shorts and a form-fitting, ultra blue tank top. She was beautiful, and she was deadly. Andrew didn’t stand a chance this time.
“Alex, get over here now,” Jason roared.
At that moment, a rogue sphere flew over my head and blasted off the top three logs in the wall. I dropped to the ground and scrambled on my hands and knees to get away from the falling chunks, but splintery pieces sprayed my back. When I glanced up, a huge tree section, about five feet long and two feet across, was hurtling straight towards me. As I cried out, the massive log smashed into my head.
And my world went dark.
CHAPTER 18 – GUARDIAN EXPLANATIONS
I knew my eyes were closed, but I wasn’t ready to open them. My whole body ached, and my head was throbbing something terrible. I felt weightless like I was on a swing. I thought maybe I was dreaming until a hand touched my shoulder. Jessica’s hand for sure, because I could feel her Essence pouring into me. Her Essence was good. Strong.
Amethyst - Book One of the Guardian Series Page 23