by Ivy Sinclair
Protect Her: Part Six
By Ivy Sinclair
Copyright 2015 Smith Sinclair Books
ebook Edition
Cover Design by Mihaela Voicu
ebook Edition, License Notes
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CHAPTER ONE – RILEY
I like to brag that I am one tough motherfucker who can survive any situation because I always know exactly what to do. The way I tell it, I’m motherfucking MacGyver or something close to it. But in reality, that’s not always the case. After Proctor appeared in the road, and Klein threw the steering wheel to the side to avoid hitting him, I froze for an instant.
Several things went through my mind. Interestingly, the first one was that I couldn’t wait to get in front of Proctor again and kick his ass. Of course, that was after I managed to get out of my current predicament, which involved having my body flung hard to the left as the van tipped over and started to roll down the steep incline on the side of the road.
My world exploded after that, and that’s because somehow the momentum of the accident sent me through the windshield. I wasn’t even aware of any pain from the impact. My senses were stunned by the sudden departure from being inside the van, and having the feeling of complete weightlessness. I wouldn’t have guessed that my body had gained enough momentum to burst through the glass, but it probably had more to do with my bulk than anything.
The net of all of it was that I never lost consciousness, but I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not. I lost complete sense of time and sensory perception even though my eyes were wide open. From my angle in the tall grass where I landed, I watched without any real coherent thought as the van rolled one more complete turn before coming to rest on its side.
Then everything roared back, and I felt as if there were a million pins being stuck into every molecule of my body. The shock of the pain caused me to hiss out loud, and a quick assessment told me that it was my left side that radiating the most pressing pain. Somehow, I managed to pull myself up onto my haunches. I could see bits of glass everywhere in the grass around me, and some of the shards had embedded themselves into the skin of my arms. My shirt and jeans had visible tears. It was almost as if I had gone through a meat grinder.
I saw the cause for the stabbing pain in my side almost immediately. When I went through the windshield, I had taken a chunk of it with me, and it was lodged into my side. It was deep enough that I felt it moving inside me with every shift of my body. But I didn’t care about that. The only thing that I could think about then was if something had happened to Paige. Looking around me, I saw that I was alone. Proctor, the fucking coward, had caused this mess and was probably gleefully watching from afar.
“Paige? Klein?” Was that my voice? It was barely louder than a whisper. I tried boosting the volume, although each word I uttered hurt like a bitch. “Paige? Klein? Can anybody hear me?”
I heard a low moan coming from somewhere near the van, and I forced my aching, battered muscles to push my body upward so that I was on my feet. Once there, I faltered as I started to take a step, and a rush of lightheadedness threatened to knock my knees out from under me. I closed my eyes and willed the spinning to stop. My hands automatically went to my left side. They were immediately covered in blood. I was losing a lot at a fairly alarming rate, but I put those thoughts aside. I’d worry about that once I found out if my people were okay.
Concentrating on keeping my feet moving in as straight a line as I could, somehow I managed to cover the twenty feet separating me from the wreckage of the van. I smelled the strong scent of gasoline. That was even more worrying than the fact that the van appeared to be completely demolished.
The same groan I heard earlier filled the air again, but it was louder this time. It was definitely coming from inside the van. I saw that although the windshield was shattered, most of the driver’s side was still intact. And the sound was coming from the other side of the glass. I peered inside trying to find the source.
“Klein?”
A lump of dark clothing that I hadn’t noticed before laid on the ground where the van’s passenger seat used to be. I felt a flare of relief. Klein was alive. I moved to help him without thinking of how it would hurt me. I grabbed a fistful of the back of his shirt, and I pulled his body as hard as I could. He was little more than skin and bones on a good day, but his one hundred-sixty pound frame felt like a pile of bricks in my hands.
“Stop!” Klein’s voice sounded panicked. I could see the side of his face in the moonlight now. It was covered in blood. “Jesus Christ, I think something’s broken. Take it easy!”
“What’s broken?” I tried to kneel down beside him, but the shard in my side prevented my ability to bend over fully. I still felt sick to my stomach. I pushed those sensations aside. At the moment, my priority was getting Klein out of the van, and then finding Paige. I tried to peer further into the back of the van, but I couldn’t see anything but darkness and glimmers of further debris.
“I think a rib,” Klein said, answering my question. “Maybe my arm. I don’t think I should move.”
“You have to move,” I barked. “The van is leaking gasoline. Can’t you smell it? We need to get you out of there.”
“Did you see him? Is he still out there?” I didn’t have to ask which ‘he’ Klein meant. Bruno Proctor was the reason we were in this mess.
“I haven’t seen him since we left the road,” I said. “Even if he is out there, it doesn’t matter. We have to get you out.”
“He’s going to kill us,” Klein wheezed.
“If he was going to kill us, he’d have done it already,” I replied, trying to assess how bad I was going to impact his injuries if I returned to my original plan of dragging him out of the van. “He wanted to scare us.”
“Mission fucking accomplished,” Klein said.
“Klein, you are either going to help me get you out of there or I’m going to do it myself,” I said grimly. “This truck could blow any second, and I’d rather not be anywhere near it if I can help it.”
Klein groaned as he slowly rolled up onto his side. His eyes focused on me for the first time since I arrived at his side, and I saw them widen as they traveled up and down my agitated form. “How are you even standing up? You are a bloody mess.”
“This isn’t about me. This is about you. Getting out of this van. Now.” I reached forward to grab his shirt again, and Klein yelped.
“Stop, stop! I’ll do it myself.” Klein cradled his left arm against his body, and I caught his pained wince. Then he pushed himself up onto his knees. “Move out of the way so I can do this before I pass out.”
I turned to the side and watched Klein half-crawl, half hobble on his knees out through the windshield. He tried to maneuver around all of the broken glass, but it was damn near impossible. As soon as he was clear of the van and toppled onto the grass, I hooked my shoulder under his armpit and pulled him upward.
“FUCK!” He screamed.
I hissed at the pain in my side, but somehow I managed to get enough momentum going to propel both of us away from the van. I looked up and spied a small copse of trees about thirty yards away. That seemed like a safe enough distance. I had no idea where Paige was, and I needed to look for her. I felt sirens going off in my mind. She was in danger, and I couldn’t do anything about it beca
use I couldn’t find her.
“You remember that I probably already had a concussion? I hit my head again when the van rolled. What if I’ve got brain damage now?” Klein’s voice was tight, and I realized what he was doing. He was trying to talk through the pain. I had to admire that.
“If you ask me, you already had brain damage,” I said, trying hard not to wheeze from the effort of keeping us both upright. I felt the lightheadedness coming on again, and I focused on the nearest tree. Luckily, I managed to get both of us to it, and then I let Klein go. He slid ungracefully to the ground.
“Riley, this is bad,” he said. “I can feel my chest tightening up, and it’s hard to breath. I think my broken rib might have punctured a lung.”
“Calm down,” I ordered. “I have to go look for Paige.”
“You can’t leave me here! What if he comes back?”
“Trust me, buddy. If he comes back, he won’t be looking for you,” I said. I knew that the sentiment wasn’t likely to make him feel any better, but it was all I had. “Just hang in there. We’re halfway out of this mess.”
I turned and made my way back toward the van. There were little explosions of light in the corners of my eyes even as I tried to keep my feet moving in a straight line. The pain in my side had dulled to something close to manageable, but I didn’t take that as a good sign.
“Paige? Where are you?” My vision blurred for a moment, and I knew my words were slurred. “Paige?”
“I’m here, Riley.”
My eyes refocused in the direction of her voice, which was somewhere around the back of the van. Then Paige stepped into my line of sight. She looked like an angel the way that her blonde hair flowed around her shoulders. She rushed to my side. “Riley? Oh my God. You’re hurt.”
I put my hands on her shoulders. Things came sharply back into focus. My eyes quickly looked at her face and the rest of her slim form. “You’re not. You’re not hurt at all.”
She shook her head. “No. I don’t know exactly what happened, but when I came to I was lying in the grass further down the road from the direction where we came from. But I just saw that the back doors of the van are closed. I checked them, and they are locked. I don’t know how I got out.” Paige had been sitting in the back of the van when it went off the road.
“Magic,” I said slowly.
“Where’s Klein?” she asked as she looked around us.
I would have cocked my head in Klein’s direction, but I was afraid that the movement would cause me to topple over. “He’s over by those trees behind me. He’s hurt pretty bad.”
“Maybe I can do something,” she said. “I don’t know how exactly to control it, but I can try.” She meant trying to use her magic to heal Klein.
“That sounds like an excellent idea,” Proctor’s voice caused me to whirl around, and I immediately regretted it as I felt my knees begin to buckle. I would have gone down if Paige hadn’t braced her body under my shoulder to keep me upright. “I’d like to say it’s nice to see you again, Mr. Stone, but really you just always seem to pop up at the most inconvenient times. This time, at least, I think you might be useful to me.”
“You didn’t need to cause an accident if you wanted to talk,” Paige said.
“That’s probably true, but we had an agreement, Ms. Matthews, and I feel a bit put out,” Proctor said. He put his arms behind his back. If we weren’t standing in the middle of nowhere, I would have thought that the man looked completely relaxed and ready to start his work day at some big corporation. Instead, I knew that Proctor was coiled up like a poisonous snake ready to strike.
“It was my fault,” I said, standing up as straight as I was able to trying to put Paige behind me. “She had nothing to do with the fact that I cast a spell and took her away from you. It was too late to do anything about that after I pulled her out.”
“And yet instead of allowing Paige the opportunity to make contact and explain the situation, you went into hiding instead,” Proctor said with a slight sneer. “How convenient.”
“How did you find me?” Paige asked.
“Your friend Abigail’s farm isn’t as secret as she would like to think,” Proctor said as he straightened the collar of his suit jacket. “Which reminds me that I need to chat with her as well. It seems a colleague of hers went missing from Hell recently. Lucifer is quite put out about that.”
“Don’t let us keep you from your duties,” I said sarcastically. For a moment, the world went black and then the fireworks exploded in the corners of my eyes again. I grabbed my head and fell to my knees. As I pitched forward, I felt the rip in my side as the shard of glass cut deeper into my torso.
“That is a nasty wound. I’d do something about that if I were you,” I heard Proctor say. His voice was noticeably closer now. “What’s the matter? Cat got your magic?”
I felt soft wisps of hair touch my cheek as Paige leaned down beside me. “Riley, I’m going to try to use my magic. Hang in there.”
“I’d be more than willing to help you,” Proctor said. “A little boost of magic from my end I’m sure can get the juices flowing.”
“I’d rather rot,” I spat.
“Paige, you are welcome to draw on my energy,” Proctor continued as if I hadn’t said a word. “Take what you need.”
“And what do you want in return?” Paige asked.
Smart girl, I thought. Nothing with Proctor was given for free. “Don’t listen to him, Paige. You can do it on your own,” I wheezed, grabbing my side. I instantly regretted it as another stab of pain shot up my left side.
“He’s lost a great deal of blood. The only reason he’s conscious at all is because he’s a stubborn ass. He can’t wait for you to flit about trying to find your energy source. He’ll die before you do.”
“What do you want?” Paige’s voice was clipped. I knew her well-enough now to know that she was on the edge of panic.
“You can use my magic to heal your friends. Then you are going to get something for me that I want. You are uniquely positioned to do so. This will supersede our earlier arrangement. If you don’t though, I’ll call foul on our blood pact, and you’ll die. By default, without your help, your friends will die too.”
“Don’t, Paige,” I said, but I knew that my protest was weak. If Proctor wanted to, he could kill her where she knelt beside me now for breaking her earlier pact with him. Proctor had neatly trapped her again, and we all knew it.
“Fine,” Paige said.
“Tsk, tsk. You know how we do things in Hell,” Proctor said with a shake of his head.
I turned my head and felt another rolling wave of nausea even as I saw Paige’s hand grip Proctor’s across my back. She didn’t even cry out as the blood dripped down from their joined fist onto the ground.
“Help me,” she said. Her voice was demanding.
“As you wish,” Proctor said.
I felt hands on my back, and this time I couldn’t stop the screams as the ripples of pain coursed through my body.
CHAPTER TWO – PAIGE
Every time that Riley screamed, I felt like there was a new rip through my own soul. I felt the power coursing through me as soon as Bruno opened up his magic to me across the bridge of our joined hands. But as Riley began to writhe on the ground beneath my hand, I yanked my other hand away from Bruno and moved so that both of them rested on Riley’s back. Although his t-shirt covered his skin, I knew that the mysterious symbol of the Protector was directly beneath it.
Even though I lost the connection with Bruno’s magic, I felt the gates open to a different source. This was Eva’s magic, and I was starting to recognize it as if it were truly my own. It felt different from Bruno’s. Where his felt heavy and dark, this energy felt full of promise and hope. It was light, and as it filled me I could see that my hands had started to glow.
I emptied my mind of everything that had happened and focused solely on Riley. This was the man that I cared about, and he was hurt badly. I wanted to take all of that p
ain away. As soon as my ministrations were being fueled by my own efforts, Riley quieted. That was almost scarier than his screaming. But then he rolled over and took my hands into his as he brought them to rest in the place over his heart.
The energy inside of me fell away to something akin to a low hum in the background, and I knew that I had done it. I really didn’t need to look at his healed skin on his arms and face, or the fact that the shard of glass in his side had disappeared to know that he was alright. I felt the flush of relief fill me.
“I did it,” I said.
Riley smiled faintly at me. “You did. Thank you.”
“Oh, this is so touching. I almost hate to break it up.”
For a moment, I had been able to forget that Bruno was even there. I wondered what kind of magic it would take to make that happen permanently. Riley was on his feet though before I could say a word closing in on Bruno.
“You’ve made your point,” Riley said as his hands clenched into fists at his side. “Get the hell out of the way.” He motioned to me. “Klein is over by those trees. He needs your help.”
I could tell that he was about to lose it, and Riley angry was something that I knew was a less than ideal situation. We were dealing with a demon official, and one that was in a pissy mood at that. The wiser move at this point was to figure out what he wanted and try not to piss him off any further. I sensed that Riley would have no interest in that plan.
I looked at Bruno. “We should talk.”
“We should,” he said, crossing his arms.
“Give me a minute to check on my friend,” I said. “Then I’ll be back, and we can set this all right again.”
“What?” Riley roared whirling on me.
“Riley, this is between me and Bruno,” I said calmly. “I’m not willing to put anyone else’s life in danger right now. Bruno helped me heal you.”
Riley closed in on me now. I was reminded how much taller he was then me as he loomed over me. “He helped you only because you agreed to help him.”