“Then what?” André asked.
Katrina smiled. “Then we begin our adventure.”
André laughed. “That’s if we live long enough to see the East Coast,” he drawled. He shook his head a little. “I can’t believe I’m agreeing to this,” he said aloud and glanced sideways at her.
“It would be really cool if we could steal a hovercraft,” she said and they stepped out of the woods.
“No.” André shook his head.
“What are you, a fucking Boy Scout?”
“It’s not right,” he said, getting his bearings. He looked around and then over at her.
She pulled her hand out of his. “How do you suggest we get there?”
“Hitch.”
She gawked at him. “I’m not getting into a hovercraft with a stranger.”
“But you’d rather steal one and end up in jail?” He raised his eyebrows.
“And you’d rather be kidnapped and killed?”
André smiled. “No one’s going to harm us, Kat.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Did you not see what I did to your dad at my house?”
She went to say something and then thought better of it.
“I can stop anything,” he said.
“You can stop a laser gun?”
“I can stop anything on Earth.” He grinned and put his arm around her shoulder. “So could you, if you tried.”
“Yeah, right,” she said as they walked to the edge of the road.
He escorted her across and began walking north. André turned at the sound of a hovercraft coming in their direction. He stuck out his thumb and the craft stopped.
“Where you headed?”
“Chicago,” André answered.
The driver hesitated. “That’s a long way from here.”
“My aunt is up there and she’s sick. Andy was kind enough to agree to go with me but neither of us has a hovercraft and I’d really like to see her before she dies.” Katrina’s eyes filled with tears and she offered a sad smile.
The driver nodded. “All right.” He unlocked the doors and André dumped their bags in the hatch, sliding in front with the driver. Katrina took a seat in the back.
“I didn’t want Katy taking the trip alone,” André said and glanced back at Katrina, amazed at her acting ability.
“I’m Paul, pleasure to meet you.” His eyes drifted to the rearview mirror at Katrina in the back seat.
André smiled a little. “Don’t even think about it, dude,” he said, seeing the look on Paul’s face and hearing his feral thought process.
Paul glanced over at him, sizing him up and smiling like he didn’t just have thoughts of carnal activities with the girl in the back seat.
“Where are you headed?” Katrina asked.
“St. Louis,” Paul answered. “That’s as far as I can take you tonight.”
“That’s perfect,” Katrina said.
“So, Paul, what do you do?” André asked.
“I’m in sales,” he answered, again glancing at Katrina.
André looked out the window, his mood turning dark at the stranger’s thoughts. “What kind of sales?” he asked, his voice a little strained as the anger ebbed its way in.
“Sales.” Paul glanced over at him. “What’s it to you?” he asked as they entered the connector tunnel between the Dallas and Topeka domes. Paul hit the hyper-drive and they shot through, faster than the speed of sound, the sonic boom absorbed in the material of the shaft.
André shrugged. “Just making conversation,” he replied, putting his hands up in the air. He already knew what type of sales and it figured. Katrina was right about the dangers of hitchhiking. This man was a slime bucket who sold body parts to the highest bidder and he had plans for the two of them when they got to their destination. Killing André was first on his agenda and Katrina was another story. The things he planned on doing to her made André see red but he took a deep breath, calming the rising fury in his belly.
He looked around at the hovercraft. “Nice craft,” he observed.
Paul smiled. “Thanks. Do you two have a place to stay in St. Louis?” he asked as they entered the Topeka—St. Louis tunnel way.
André shrugged. “No. We really want to get to Chicago before morning.”
“It’s not that far from St. Louis,” Paul said over another sonic boom. “You can catch some Zs at my place if you’d like,” he offered. “That way you can have a fresh start in the morning.” He glanced back at Katrina.
“Thanks but I think we’ll pass,” André answered.
“You sure? Because your girlfriend is sacked out in the back,” he said, glancing at André.
André looked over his shoulder and back at Paul with an easy smile and shrugged. “We’ll see.” He had every intention of making Paul regret he ever picked them up and scooping up this hovercraft for the rest of their trip. He just hoped that Katrina wouldn’t wake up when he made that happen.
“There is no aunt, is there, Andy?” Paul asked, glancing in his direction.
“What makes you think that?”
“I’ve seen my fair share of runaways and you two fit the bill.”
André laughed. “What kind of sales did you say you were in?”
Paul glanced in his direction, pulling out a laser gun and pointing it at André. “I didn’t say.” He smiled as the hovercraft began to slow down. “Now be a good boy. Just sit there and keep your mouth shut and you won’t get hurt.”
André morphed his expression into one of fear and his eyes flicked from the end of the barrel to Paul’s demented smile.
“Didn’t your parents ever tell you not to hitchhike?” Paul asked and pressed the tracking button on the dash, putting the hovercraft into autopilot. He turned his full attention to André, keeping the gun trained on him.
André tilted his head. “Didn’t yours ever tell you about the dangers of picking up a hitchhiker?” he countered, the fear no longer visible, replaced by a slow, evil smile of his own.
Paul leveled the gun to André’s forehead as they pulled into the stream of busy city traffic. “I’m going to have so much fun with your girlfriend.” He smiled and pulled the trigger.
Nothing happened and Paul looked at the gun, his eyes blinking rapidly. When he looked back at André, he screamed.
André felt the transition and knew from the horrified expression that his eyes had turned as red as the laser beam meant to explode through his head.
“Get out,” André ordered and the driver’s side door swung open. They were traveling at close to one hundred miles an hour and roughly thirty feet from the ground.
Paul looked out the door and then back at André. “I’ll die if I jump.”
“You’ll have more of a chance of survival jumping than if you stay here,” André said. “Now get out,” he ordered, loud enough to stir Katrina.
Paul glanced back at the drop and then at André’s red, murderous eyes. Opting for the remote chance, he jumped.
André slid over to the driver’s seat, closed the door and turned off the tracking system. He swung back toward the northern tunnel, glancing in the rearview mirror as the red hue diminished from his eyes, returning to the bright blue he was used to seeing. His gaze moved to the backseat, meeting Kat’s shocked green eyes.
“What have you done?” she gasped.
“Rid the world of one sick bastard,” he answered after a moment’s hesitation. “And gotten us a ride that no one will report missing until long after we’re in Chicago.”
“Stop,” Katrina yelled. “Stop the craft!”
“Kat, he was going to kill us. Do you know what he did for a living?” André asked and continued before she could answer, “He sold body parts and he had no problem killing healthy runaways to get those parts.” André shuddered, his adrenaline fading. “Hitchhiking probably wasn’t such a good idea.”
“How do you know what he intended to do?” she asked and the high pitch of her voice matched th
e tears streaming down her cheeks.
“He put a laser gun to my forehead and pulled the trigger. If I had been human, I’d be dead right now,” he said and reality settled into his bones, hitting him with its full force. The shakes started in his hands and worked their way up his arms and into his shoulders just about the time his stomach decided to roll. He pulled the craft down to the side of the road and threw the door open, shooting vomit onto the pavement below. Spasms racked his body and the knowledge he just killed someone slammed into his conscience hard.
He spit and then closed the door again, leaning back in the seat. Tears stung his eyes, blurring his vision and the tremors continued with the tears. “Holy shit,” he whispered and looked into the rearview mirror, wiping his face and shaking the bloody tears from his hand.
Kat’s eyes went wide. “You’re bleeding.”
“I’m fine,” he answered when the shakes subsided. “Do you have any gum?” he asked, still tasting the bile in his throat.
“No, but I’ve got a mint.” She pulled one out of her pocketbook, handing it to him as she climbed into the passenger seat. He swiped the bloody tears from his cheeks, wiping his hands on his jeans, leaving a maroon stain on the blue fabric, and pulled the hovercraft back into the stream of traffic.
“You bleed when you cry?”
He nodded without looking at her. Emergency lights blinked in the rearview mirror and he focused on the lane in front of him.
“He was going to kill us?” she finally asked after the silence had wrapped itself around them.
“Yes.” André glanced at his watch. “What time do you usually get up in the morning?”
“Why?”
“Because it’s almost five.”
“I must have slept.”
“You did for a while.”
“Did you?”
“Hell no.” He raised his eyebrows at her. “I wasn’t giving him an opening like that.”
Katrina took a deep breath and glanced out the window.
The hovercraft sprung forward into the last tunnel and he pushed the controls beyond eight hundred miles per hour, creating another sonic boom in their wake. Thirty minutes later, they entered the Chicago dome with the sun rising over the horizon.
“Now I need some sleep,” André said and slowed the hovercraft down. He cruised at street level and punched “Nearest Hotel” into the tracking system. A few minutes later, they pulled into the Millennium hotel chain. André pulled out his wallet and flipped through the bills he had stashed. He glanced over at Katrina. “I don’t know if I have enough.”
“I do,” Katrina answered. “Come on.”
André took the keys and grabbed the bags out of the back. He hesitated and glanced at her before activating the security controls. He hoped that all it took to deactivate was just a push of the button.
“We’d like a room,” André said, approaching the counter. His eyelids drooped and he imagined he looked every bit as tired as he felt. Twenty-four hours without sleep, along with the emotional rollercoaster of the last twelve hours, was finally taking its toll.
The concierge looked up at him.
André heard his train of thought and closed his eyes, sighing. “You will rent us a room,” he said softly, pushing the concierge mentally.
“And how would you like to pay for that?” The concierge smiled at him.
“Cash.”
“Certainly.” He nodded and punched a few keys in the panel. “That will be three hundred and fifty dollars.”
André glanced at Katrina and then back at the concierge. “Don’t you mean thirty-five dollars?”
The concierge’s smile faltered. He looked down at the paperwork and scribbled the fee. “Thirty-five dollars.”
André handed him the money and took the room key, leaving the concierge smiling and clueless that he had just been hustled.
Katrina didn’t say a word until they were in the room. “What did you do to the desk guy?”
“Influence,” André said and flopped down on the bed. The minute his head hit the fabric, blackness overtook him.
André woke hours later, disoriented until he glanced her way. The prior evening came flooding back and he wrapped his arms around her, pulling her against him and burying his face into her hair. He dozed again with the smell of her cascading into his nostrils.
Knocking on the door roused him from sleep.
He pulled himself free and opened the hotel room door.
The manager stood with the concierge. “I’m sorry, sir, but there seems to be a problem with your bill.”
André smiled. “You had a special and I qualified.” He pushed the influence on the manager and concierge and watched them blink, look around and then down at the bill the manager held and back up at him.
“Thank you again for staying at our hotel.” The manager smiled, folding up the bill and pocketing it. “I hope you have a pleasant stay.” They wandered away.
André closed the door and glanced at the clock. They had been sleeping for six hours, long enough for his parents to know he was gone. He wondered how relieved they were to finally have him out of their hair. He couldn’t imagine them being upset by his disappearance; angry at the disobedience was probably more accurate.
He sighed and stepped into the bathroom to clean up, letting the warm water wash away the sleep from his body. He leaned his hands on the front of the stall, closing his eyes and thinking about New York City.
What if she was right and there was oxygen outside the domes?
What if there wasn’t?
At that thought, his eyes popped open and he straightened, running his hand through his drenched hair. “What am I doing?” No answers came. He shut off the water, towel dried before leaving the steam-filled bathroom and pulling out a pair of jeans.
Katrina stirred and rolled, burying her head under her pillow, mumbling. After he slid his jeans on, he sat on the side of the bed and rubbed her back until she uncovered her head and opened her eyes.
“Last night was real?”
“As real as it gets,” he said. “Shower’s free if you want to clean up.”
She nodded and he moved, watching her disappear into the bathroom before sitting down at the table to count the money they pooled together.
Two hundred dollars.
Not enough to fade into obscurity.
He rubbed his face. “I didn’t think this through very well,” he muttered under his breath and swept the money off the table, stashing it away in his wallet. Instead of beating himself up for his piss-poor execution, he flipped the television on and settled back in the seat, hoping the droning of the news would keep his mind occupied away from their current situation, especially with the thought of Katrina naked in the shower just a few steps away.
It was all he could do to not act on the building need pooling in his lap, and when Katrina stepped back in the room with the towel wrapped around her, still dripping, he smiled, scanning her with his eyes, captivated. He pointed the remote at the television to turn it off and paused at Katrina’s picture filling the screen.
“Shit.” Instead of clicking the off button, he raised the volume. The reporter warned viewers that Katrina’s abductor had a violent history and should be approached with extreme caution and then his picture popped up on screen. “Goddamn it!” He tossed the remote onto the table and shot a glance in Katrina’s direction.
She wrung the water out of her hair, not looking concerned in the least by the news story or their pictures splashed across the airways. “My father is an asshole,” she said and crossed toward André.
“Kat,” he said and scanned her, torn between the instant lust and the need to run. “We don’t have time for this now,” he added as she straddled his legs and leaned on the arms of the chair, her wet hair dripping on his jeans.
She grinned and sat on his thighs. “What’s another half hour?”
Heat radiated off her. “Kat,” he whispered, his hands drifting to her legs and his heart po
unding against his ribcage.
“André,” she whispered and seductively licked her lips. “Marry me. Today.”
André stared at her. “Why?”
“Because it will piss off my father.”
He went to push her off his lap, annoyed by the answer. The idea of having her as his wife was a lifelong dream that started the moment he saw her in that infirmary and she just shot all his romantic notions to hell.
She pushed him back against the chair. “I’m serious,” she said and ran her hands down his bare chest. Her thoughts were as jumbled as the nerves in his stomach.
He leaned forward, kissing the soft flesh of her neck, wanting her with every fiber of his being, but afraid she just wanted him as a tool to make her father miserable. “Do you love me?”
“Yes. I love you, André,” she said. “I always have.”
He pulled away and met her gaze. “Why? Why do you love me, Kat?”
She sighed and placed her palm on his cheek. “I don’t know. I just do.”
“You sure it’s just not the curiosity speaking? Or a way to piss off your father?”
She pulled her hand away. “Yes, I’m sure. I was curious when I walked into your hospital room, but the minute our eyes met, I don’t know, it was like I knew you were meant just for me.”
“And then your father forbid you to see me,” André said and ran his hands through his hair, leaning his head back on the headrest.
“Why the hell do you think I’ve been such a nightmare at home? I was frustrated and you... you slept with anything with a skirt and hardly looked at me anytime I passed. That pissed me off.”
“I was trying to find a way to get you off my mind,” André said and a smirk found its way to his lips.
Katrina slapped his chest.
“Seriously, Kat. My father forbade me from seeing you too, so I didn’t have much of a choice. And you’re right. I screwed my fair share of girls, but not one of them came close to making me feel the way you do,” he said, turning serious. “You stole my heart in that hospital room and I haven’t been able to recover since.”
Wicked Legends: A Dystopian Paranormal Romance and Urban Fantasy Collection Page 101