by Hart, Callie
I tried not to think about what my father was going to say when I finally found my way back to camp—the punishment for this transgression would be severe to say the least—but I couldn’t help it. His wrath was all I could think about. I wasn’t paying attention, which was why I didn’t notice the fence up ahead. I didn’t notice it until I’d plowed right into it, and—
Fire.
I was on fire.
I was—
I couldn’t—
I—
My brain had wildly shuttered on and off like a light switch being flicked up and down at speed. My thoughts were fractured, broken apart…
Made absolutely no sense.
My heart skipped and slipped and tripped and back flipped, and then…
It stuttered to a dead stop.
I didn’t hear the shouting from further up the field. I didn’t see the figure come charging out of the night toward me. I saw nothing, not even the darkness as it engulfed me, folding me into its soft embrace.
Later, in the tiny, ill-equipped hospital close to the camp that I’d been rushed to, my father had told me I’d stumbled right into an electric fence. I’d played chicken with my friends before, grabbing hold of charged fences to see who could hold on the longest, but I’d experienced nothing like the lightning bolt of pure power that had forced its way inside my body in that field, though. Turned out the field I’d been trudging through was home to a highly-strung bull; the farmer who owned the bull had amped up the voltage to insanely high levels—levels high enough to deter an eighteen-hundred-pound bull…and to stop a nine-year-old boy’s heart dead in his chest. I wouldn’t have survived if the farmer hadn’t been out feeding the animals that night.
Now, at the age of thirty-seven, I still remembered both the sensation of drowning and the sensation of being electrocuted, but the experiences had somehow melded together into one, horrific event. I knew what the panic felt like as your synapses fired like crazy below the water. I knew what it felt like to be unable to move, your muscles rigid and taut, straining as your heart labored to beat.
I knew what Zeth Mayfair was feeling right now. I held onto the plastic grips of the jumper cables, watching smoke rise off the edge of the copper tub in my bathroom as he flailed and thrashed, his body locked up, and water sloshed out onto the floor.
I took a step back, aware of the spreading pool that was forming around the tub. Zeth had been right: the soles of my boots were rubber, but it really wouldn’t take much. If a stream of water hit me, I’d be fucked.
I counted in my head.
Five…
…six…
…seven…
…eight…
My heart was the slow, rhythmic beat of a lazy metronome.
“Fix.”
I looked up, almost surprised that Sera was still standing there in the doorway. Her eyes were alight with worry.
“Fix, I don’t think…I don’t think this is the best way. Please stop,” she whispered.
Distancing myself from what I was doing often helped get the job done. Made things clinical. A series of tasks that needed completing. Sera, on the other hand, hadn’t developed that skill. I prayed she didn’t have to as I looked down at Mayfair, still bucking and thrashing, and I slammed back into my body, back into the reality of the situation. Ripping the jumper cables from the battery, I grimaced down at the guy in the tub, watching as his body relaxed and his head slipped below the surface of the water.
The fucker deserved to drown for what he’d been planning to do to Sera. He’d caused nothing but trouble since the second I’d laid eyes on him in The Barrows less than twenty-four hours ago. Letting the fucker drown would have been the easiest, smartest thing to do, but…
Sera had asked me to stop.
That was the end of it.
And we still needed him. A cruel voice in the back of my head insisted otherwise, that I’d be able to figure this out on my own, that we didn’t need him, and his death was justified. That fucking voice had been niggling at me for years, trying to lead me down many a dangerous path, but I’d always managed to ignore it with relative ease. Today, though… Shit, today, that voice was practically all I could fucking hear.
Fisting the front of Zeth’s t-shirt, I reluctantly dragged him upward out of the water, grabbed him by the arm, hooked him partially over my shoulder, and then I heaved him out of the tub and dumped his limp body onto the tiles at my feet. “I’m not giving him mouth to mouth,” I said. “I won’t kill him, but there’s no way I’m fucking resuscitating him.”
Sera rolled her eyes. Stepping into the room, she seemed relieved as she skirted around the tub, studying the huge form on the ground. “He doesn’t need mouth to mouth. Look. He’s still breathing.”
“Bummer. I was hoping he’d have the decency to die anyway.”
Sera nearly jumped out of her skin when Zeth’s body bowed, his boots scrambling against the tiles as he regained consciousness. He drew in a strangled, gurgling breath, and then proceeded to cough and choke as he spat up a lungful of bathwater. He was pale, the blood absent from his face as he turned furious brown eyes on me.
“Thought you had more backbone,” he wheezed. “Couldn’t follow through, Father?”
I ignored his hacking and sputtering, along with his frustrating use of that damned name, and I crouched down beside his head. I would unfasten his restraints soon, because I had to. Because Sera would be upset with me if I didn’t. In the meantime...
Zeth’s eyes sparked with rage. I saw the death he was planning for me, shining out of his bottomless pupils, and it didn’t look like fun. “Don’t expect me to thank you for stopping,” he growled.
I looked around the bathroom, sighing heavily. The place was a fucking mess. This entire situation was a fucking mess; cleaning any of it up was going to be a fucking nightmare. “I don’t care if you thank me or not, asshole,” I said. “If it were up to me, I would have let you die. It’s Sera you should be thanking.” I looked up at her, feeling the weight of her gaze on my shoulders, her judgement more precious and terrifying than my father’s ever was. “I call her my angel, because she brings me back from the edge. She reminds me I’m not entirely lost. That there might be a way back for me, one day, when all of this bullshit is over. She spoke up for you just now. I’ve no idea why, but turns out she was your guardian angel today, too.”
EIGHT
SERA
PROOF OF DEATH
I’d imagined how I was going to die, and it was nothing like this.
I’d always figured I’d die alone, in my bed, of a stress-related heart attack in my sixties, much earlier than I should have, and that my body wouldn’t be found for days.
Lying on the cold concrete in the stairwell of the Eddison Gas and Electrical Works, my head twisted at a migraine-inducing angle, my hands bound behind my back, the rope digging into my skin so deep I knew it was going to fucking bruise, I felt as though I was somehow inviting a much more horrific end with this charade.
None of this was real, but it had to look real. That meant the restraints had to break the skin. That meant I had to bleed. That meant my body had to be tangled up and twisted in as unnatural a position as possible, and, according to Zeth, it meant that I had to be scared. I wasn’t having any trouble with that part, at least; I really was scared.
The last time someone had tried to tie me up, I’d slit their throat with a blade made out of glass. I hadn’t felt this vulnerable since then, and that was saying something. My troubles had far from ended the moment Sam Halloran died. No, there had been plenty more fucked up, damaging scenarios I’d had to endure after that day. Sixsmith had made sure of that.
“You okay?” Fix asked, as he finished binding my ankles together. He’d refused to let Zeth anywhere near me when he’d set him free, let alone help him. He’d given Zeth his freedom on the condition that he sent his boss, Charlie, evidence of my death, and then he leave New York immediately. Zeth had agreed, but even I’d seen the cold,
wicked look in his eyes as Fix let him go. The man was not happy. Personally, I thought it was insane that Fix had released him at all, but Zeth had grudgingly given his word that he wouldn’t do anything once he was free, and Fix had chosen to believe him.
“Yeah. I’m okay,” I muttered. “My back feels like it’s about to break in two and my hip’s bruised, but I’m fine.” I wasn’t just lying in the stairwell of Fix’s building. I was sprawled down a flight of stairs, head first, my entire body weight resting on my left shoulder and my jaw. To say I was uncomfortable was a serious fucking understatement.
“Just need a little blood and then I’ll be able to get you out of here,” Fix said quietly under his breath.
I hadn’t even thought about that. Of course there’d be blood if I’d been shot in the back and tossed down a stairwell. But where was he going to ge—
A thick, cloying, metallic, highly unpleasant odor hit the back of my nose as Fix began to pour something over my back. “You ever see the movie, Carrie?” he asked.
“No,” I answered through my teeth. “Why? Is it important?”
“Nope. Not in the slightest.”
I tried not to jerk away when he began to pour a thick, viscous, almost black liquid around my head onto the steps
“That stinks. What is it?” I hissed.
“Really. You don’t wanna know.”
“All right. Just hurry up. I hate this.” It was all a little too real for my liking. There was a chance I was going to end up this way for real, broken and bleeding, vulnerable and dying, tilted upside down as my vital lifeblood spilled out onto a flight of concrete steps. I almost laughed.
“What’s so funny?” Fix brushed his hand through my hair, and stupidly I thought he was being sweet, trying to reassure me. Then I realized his hand was covered in that vile, crimson-black fluid and he was rubbing it through my hair. Charming. “It just occurred to me. If Carver doesn’t buy this, we’ll be right back where we started, with yet another mystery hitman out to hunt us down.”
From the corner of my eye, I watched as a wan, almost sad smile twitched at the corner of Fix’s mouth. Earlier, standing over the bathtub with those jumper cables in his hands, he’d been terrifying—a shade of the man now crouched next to me, trying to make me look convincingly dead. He’d been a different person altogether.
The words he’d said to Zeth, that he called me his angel because I brought him back to himself, reminded him he wasn’t entirely lost, had been surprising. Did he really feel that way? How the hell had I managed to become such an important anchor to him, when I constantly felt like I was drifting toward ruin and destruction myself?
“I wouldn’t worry about it,” Fix murmured. “You’re the woman no assassin could kill. One look at you and we’re all fucking helpless, useless morons.”
From the top of the stairs, a very bored voice said, “Speak for yourself.”
Fix glowed with annoyance. “You ended up in a bathtub with twenty thousand volts flowing through you, if you’ll recall.”
“Didn’t happen because I’m useless. That happened ’cause she pointed a fucking assault rifle at my head.”
Fix’s top lip curled back. I couldn’t reach out to touch him—my hands were otherwise occupied, turning numb and probably blue behind my back—so I nudged his knee with the end of my nose. “You’re like oil and water. And the oil is on fire, and the water is boiling. Just ignore him, get him to take the damn photo, and let’s get out of here.”
He grunted in response. Standing quickly, he jogged back up to the top step where Zeth was waiting and said, “You heard the girl. Take the photo and send it.”
Silence flooded the stairwell. After an incredibly long minute, Zeth’s gravelly voice echoed off the walls. “Done. It might have been in your job description once upon a time, but I don’t forgive people, Priest. And I sure as fuck don’t forget. If I ever see or hear from you again, I won’t leave you alive. You feel me?”
Fix didn’t say a word. I knew the look he was giving the other man—a defiant, challenge-laden glare that was bound to be making things even worse. Still, Zeth didn’t cause trouble. I heard the slow, scraping approach of boots on the concrete steps, and then he stepped over me. Pausing a moment, he twisted and looked down at me. “Let me give you a piece of advice for the road, little girl,” he rumbled. “The man standing at the top of those stairs? There’s no such thing as a life with him. There’s excitement, there’s danger, and there’s adrenalin. But there isn’t much of anything else.”
“Is that supposed to be your ironic attempt at looking out for me, after you came here to kill me?”
Zeth huffed—maybe the suggestion of laughter. “No, not even close. If I cared, I’d probably be warning him away from you.”
My cheeks burned with…with…I didn’t know what I was feeling as Zeth Mayfair walked away. After Fix untied me and we went back up to the penthouse, I stood at the window, leaning my forehead against the glass, looking out over the sprawling city while my mind raced.
Fix hovered behind me, close enough for his scent and the warmth of his body to affect me in the most dizzying of ways, but not close enough to touch. He was a looming presence, intense and ominous, just like the storm that still warred over the skyscrapers and the flashing gunmetal grey of the river that wound like a serpent across the vista before me.
“Tell me what you’re thinking, Sera.”
The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. If anyone else had demanded information from me so bluntly, I would have told them to go fuck themselves. Fix had certain privileges, though. He could command anything he liked of me, because I could do the same to him. We’d reached an equilibrium. For everything he took, I took something. For everything he gave, I gave something. Without even trying, we’d reached this perfect balance of submission and dominance that I knew I’d never achieve with another human being.
I turned around, leaning my back against the window. “What’s to stop him? Zeth? What’s to stop him from telling his boss he didn’t complete the job as soon as he gets back to Seattle? Or worse, what’s to say he’s not going to wait for us to leave tonight and blow up the damn truck?”
“He definitely isn’t going to blow up the truck.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I left it outside The Barrows. Oscar probably had it torched.”
“Jesus! Can you be any more infuriating? I’m looking for some reassurance here, you jerk.”
Fix ran his tongue over his bottom lip, which was split and a little swollen. I couldn’t tear my eyes from his mouth as he approached. The color of his eyes had darkened to oxidized silver. “He won’t say anything to Charlie,” he said. “He won’t turn back and kill either of us. I know he won’t, because he and I…” He shook his head, his dark brows drawing together. “He and I might be like oil and water, but we’re also exactly the same. He gave me his word he wouldn’t touch a hair on your head, and I know he won’t. He won’t break his word, because I wouldn’t break mine.”
It made sense. Barely, but it made sense. If Fix felt strongly enough that Zeth would honor his promise, then I was willing to put my trust in that, at least.
“We’ll wait for the rain to stop, and then we’ll go,” Fix told me.
Was he as sad as I was to leave the penthouse? I’d hardly spent any real time here, to be fair, and I’d hardly had a peaceful, restful experience at that, but…this was Fix’s home. I read his personality in each and every little touch, every book that sat dog-eared on the shelves, and every piece of art that hung on the walls. I’d even gotten a kick out of opening the top drawer in his chest of drawers and seeing the numerous pairs of neatly folded socks and boxer shorts that lay within.
Every item inside the penthouse had been picked out, chosen and put there by Fix. This was his world. Until recently, I would have fought tooth and nail to avoid finding myself here, trapped amongst his things, everything smelling of him and reminding me of him, but things were chang
ing rapidly, faster than I would have thought possible. I wanted to see his world, to explore it and lose myself amongst it. More than that, however, I wanted to be a part of it. What a terrifying thought. In a weird, unexpected way, I was optimistic. If things worked out the way I hoped—with me living—then perhaps we could come back here, to New York. Go out for dinner in the evenings. Do touristy things. Go to museums. Visit the Empire State Building. Gawk at all the lights in Time Square. Go and see The Lion King on Broadway at Christmas.
But, shit. Christmas felt very far away. A life where we might enjoy the luxury of such simple things felt very, very far away. “Where are we going now?” I sighed.
“Somewhere we can breathe for a little while. Where we can figure out how all of these pieces fit together. That is…if that’s what you want, Sera. I’ll take you wherever you want to go.”
I considered it for a moment. Could I really just go back to Seattle and pick up where I left off? Aside from the most salient question—was it even safe to go back?—was my old life something I even wanted anymore? When I’d fled Montmorenci, I’d talked myself into studying business because it had seemed like a smart, safe, reliable thing to do. I enjoyed the security of my job, and I enjoyed being my own boss, but was I really bouncing out of my bed, raring to get to my office every morning, challenged and excited by what I was doing? Fuck no.
I could sell everything. I could give it all up. But then what?
“Sera.” Fix said my name quietly, but the word contained a well of emotion within it. “The fact that you’re having to think about this so hard says enough. Just decide where you want to be, and I’ll make it happen.” He about-faced and walked away, his back drawn straight, his shoulders stiff. I stood there, mouth open, not quite believing that he was bailing on the conversation. Stupid, idiotic, overly dramatic man.
“Hey! Where the hell are you going? I wasn’t deciding if I wanted to be with you. I was trying to figure out if there was anything left for me back home, that’s all.”