First Fruits

by Amanda Carney

  I held the mug’s handle in a death grip. “You scared me.”

  He stared at me a moment and then turned away, running his fingers through his hair. “I’m just on edge.”

  Oddly enough, I couldn’t relate. Running for my life was just background noise at this point. The last couple days had been business as usual as far I was concerned. Not to mention, the best of my life.

  “It’s okay,” I said quietly. “I understand.”

  He took my hand almost before I was done talking, tugging me forward. “Come for a walk with me.”

  I hesitated. “What about your brother? He’ll be here soon.”

  He paused but then smiled. “We’ll be back before then. I want to show you something.”

  Considering him a moment, I was won over by the excitement in his eyes. I tossed the dregs of my now cold tea over the porch railing. “Let me just go get some shoes.”

  “You don’t need shoes.” He took me by the elbow.

  I looked down at my socks. “I don’t?”

  “No.” He scooped me up before I could protest. “I’ll carry you.”

  Laughing and flabbergasted, I wrapped my arms around his neck. “The whole way?”

  “Yeah.” He didn’t give me time to argue as he carried me off the porch and headed for the tree line.

  “What about my cup?” I asked in dismay, holding the thing up in front of his face.

  He took it from me and tossed it over his shoulder behind us. “Problem solved.”

  “Jesse!” I gasped, looking back at it. “I hope it didn’t break.”

  “It’s just a cup.”

  Shaking my head, I laid my cheek against his shoulder. “You smell different,” I murmured. Like unfamiliar aftershave and . . . cigarettes. I glanced up at him. “Do you smoke?”

  He carried me over a fallen log and didn’t meet my gaze. “Sometimes.”

  “Oh.” I was surprised I’d never noticed it before. And relieved, because it meant he hadn’t made a habit of it. Tom had smoked. Perpetually. His wife too. Everything in their house had smelled stale and bitter. The curtains, the furniture, the clothes. Even the walls and ceilings were forever stained yellow.

  “It’s so beautiful out here,” I said, gazing around as we went deeper into the forest. Though the treetops overhead had lost a lot of their leaves, they were still full of orange and gold color, and the sun only managed a twinkle through here and there. I wiggled my feet, feeling silly for being carried. “You know, I can walk. These will wash.”

  He ducked as we went under a low-hanging branch and didn’t reply.

  “Are you okay?” I asked after a moment. Something was off about him, and it took every ounce of willpower I had not to read his thoughts. It was a matter of respect and a boundary I was loathe to cross again.

  His smile seemed stiff. “Fine.”

  I glanced over his shoulder and realized I couldn’t see the cabin anymore. “How much farther is it?”

  “Not far.”

  I studied his face. His jaw was set and his eyes stared straight ahead as he walked. “Are you taking me to the tree?”

  For a heartbeat, he seemed taken aback by the question but then nodded distractedly. “Yeah, the tree.”

  My frown deepened. Suddenly I no longer cared about boundaries.

  Opening my mind, I listened.

  . . . the car, put the bitch in the trunk, and get the fuck out of here . . .

  I pulled out abruptly, fear seizing me. I struggled to remain outwardly calm.

  He planned to kidnap me. Again.

  But that wasn’t the scariest part. The scariest part was the voice that I’d just heard wasn’t Jesse’s.

  “Jesse,” I said, my voice surprisingly level, “do you know what my favorite food is?”

  He splashed through a tiny stream, his boots muddying the clear water. He seemed to consider it. “Pizza, right?”

  I forced a smile, dread gripping me tight. “Who doesn’t love pizza?”

  “Almost there,” he said, ignoring my question.

  My best chance of getting away from him, whoever he was, was to catch him off guard. I had to find a way to delay him. There was a distinct hatred for Jesse rolling off him like steam off a boiling pot. Hatred and jealousy. If I could tap into that, maybe I could find an opportunity to escape, or at the very least stall him until Jesse could get here. I didn’t plan on getting anywhere near the trunk of the car he was planning to put me in.

  Even if I had to get hurt in the process.

  Reaching out my arm as wide as I could, I used my telepathy to bend a healthy sapling just up ahead, its thin bark creaking loudly.

  He stopped, momentarily confused by the sight. “What the f—”

  The young tree hit with an impact of an explosion, leaves and branches cracking into the side of his face and shoulder, sending him flying to the side like a rag-doll. He let go of me, just as I’d hoped, and I hit the ground in a tangle of arms and legs, rolling. I cried out as my ankle collided with the twisted root of a tree. When I stopped, I scrambled to my feet and limped away as fast as I could, gritting my teeth at the pain.

  I’d almost made it to the stream when I heard a furious roar and the crashing of heavy boots behind me. Letting out a terrified whimper, I tried to go faster, my heart pounding as I splashed into the icy water, hurrying over the slippery stones in my soggy wool socks as best I could. Once across, I resumed my frantic limping, panic gripping me as I batted weeds and limbs out of my way, oblivious to the sticks and rocks jabbing into the soles of my feet.

  Before my next breath, a hand tangled in my hair and my head was snapped back with enough force to take my breath away.

  “Don’t fucking move,” he panted in my ear. I heard the metallic click of a switchblade swing open and then a sharp point pressed into my throat. “I will slit you open from one end to the other if you so much as twitch. Nod if you understand.”

  It was hard to nod with my head at such an awkward angle, but I did, the blade stinging as it cut.

  A second later, he yanked both my arms behind me, snapped a zip tie around them, and pulled it tight, the hard plastic biting into my wrists. I heard a tearing of fabric, and then something was wrapped around my eyes and tied at the back of my head. Without sight or the ability to move my arms, my fear went into overdrive. He picked me up and slung me over his shoulder and started back across the stream. I wheezed as my lungs compressed and the blood rushed to my head, my hair swinging down his back. He carried me that way until I began to see stars inside the darkness of my blindfold and then, without warning, he reached up and pulled me down, shoving me forward. I stumbled and fell onto my knees.

  “That was a fancy trick,” he said, walking around to my front. He crouched and pulled the fabric down slightly to look in my eyes. Though his voice was unfamiliar and cold, his face still looked like Jesse’s. “You’re telekinetic,” he guessed.

  I eyed the knife in his hand and gave it a mental flick. It flew from his grasp and sank into his neck with a wet thud. The sound was the most satisfying I’d ever heard, and I let out a shaky breath. He flinched, his hand going to the protruding hilt in shock.

  “Mother fuck.” He let out a guttural groan and reached up with shaking fingers to grasp the hilt. I could hear his teeth grind as he yanked it free. Blood erupted from the hole, and he held the heel of his palm to it, nostrils flaring as he glared at me. “Gonna take a lot more than that to kill me, sweetheart.”

  Though my head still swam, I forced strength into my voice. “I’ll have to see what I can do.”

  He replaced my blindfold. “Hard to aim at what you can’t see. So, telepathic and telekinetic,” he mused. “Sire will be so pleased. Can you do anything else?”

  When I didn’t answer, he backhanded me, his knuckles like marble. My head snapped to the side and I cried out, my tangled hair falling over my face

  “Speak,” he demanded.

  “No,” I whispered. “Nothing else.”


  “Amazing.” He reached out with the tip of his knife, lifting up my hair to presumably get a better look at my face.

  “Who are you?” I asked, trembling all over.

  “Jesse hasn’t told you about me?”

  “No.”

  “You can call me . . .” he paused, and I could almost hear his grin, “Fuck Me Please.”

  My mouth went dry and I fought my restraints, the implications sending spikes of fear through my brain. “Get away from me, you sick bastard!”

  It was the reaction he’d been wanting. “Say my name.”

  I gritted my teeth, heart pounding, and said nothing.

  He leaned in so I could feel his hot breath on my face. “Say it. Fuck. Me. Please.”

  Horror clogged my thoughts, and I tried to scoot away from him. Iron fingers grabbed my throat, holding me in place. “Say it, bitch,” he said.

  My eyes brimmed with unshed tears, and my voice was nothing but a shamed whisper. “Fuck . . . me . . . please.”

  His laugh was dark and triumphant, and for one horrid moment I thought he was going to oblige my involuntary question, but he only fisted my hair and hauled me to my feet again. “Let’s go.”

  Both relief and panic washed through me. I’d dodged a bullet, but I also hadn’t stalled him. His thoughts were now simmering with what he planned to do to me once we were on the road, miles away from here. He wouldn’t admit that he feared Jesse’s wrath, even to himself, but he didn’t want to be caught unawares, balls deep in Jesse’s whore.

  His thoughts soured my stomach like curdled milk. Whoever he was, he had strong ties to both Jesse and Patrick. His head swirled with thoughts of them, and it ratcheted my fear. Patrick. My unseen and terrifying enemy. Now more than ever I had to delay this man, even if it meant putting myself at risk. We could not reach that car. I had the overwhelming sense of foreboding that there’d be no coming back if we did. Blindly stumbling along at his prodding, I swallowed, calling on my courage. “I know you’re scared of Jesse. You should be. He’ll kill you for this,” I said.

  Though a splinter of anger shot out of him, he continued pushing me forward. “He’ll try.”

  My eyes were wide behind the blindfold even though I couldn’t see a thing. The urge to watch where I was going was as overwhelming as it was impossible. “Jesse told me how big of a failure Patrick thinks you are. How you’re just—” I tripped on something, but managed to stay upright. “—an errand boy.”

  Jesse hadn’t said any of that, but I was gathering enough from this man’s thoughts to draw my own conclusions, none of them pretty.

  His hand found my hair again, fisting it as he spun me around and lifted me over his shoulder once more. My breath left me on a painful exhale, and I fought vertigo. “Shut your whore mouth,” he said through gritted teeth. “You don’t know shit about my sire.”

  Unable to brace myself without the use of my arms, my head swung behind him like a pendulum, and the urge to vomit from the dizziness was powerful. I fought through it. I’d gotten under his skin, but I hadn’t stopped him yet. With what little focus I could manage, I burrowed into his brain, searching for something that would help me. It was like sifting through a miasma of debauchery and hate. It was a foulness I instinctively wanted to pull away from but couldn’t. Not yet. I had to find a trigger. Something that would stop him in his tracks.

  And then I had it. His Achilles’ heel.

  “You’ll never be as good as Jesse in Patrick’s eyes,” I said, breathless from the pressure on my ribcage. “He’ll never love you like he loves Jesse. You’ll never have . . . what he has. You’ll . . . never be him, no matter whose . . . face you wear.”

  The snap of his control felt like balloon popping in my mind. The oily swill of his bone-deep hatred of Jesse, and even Felix, slid over me like a tar pit. His anger was a blast of hot thought, singeing my synapses. With a ragged snarl, he snagged the back of my jeans and threw me off his shoulder and onto the ground. The impact rattled my brain, and my head and legs bounced, the crack of pain reverberating up my spine. I must have momentarily blacked out because when I came to again, I could see. The blindfold was gone, and the green-cast light of the forest was a stunning brightness all around me. He crawled over me, his body—Jesse’s body—a looming shadow. I blinked up at him, struggling to regain my spinning senses.

  “I can’t have what he has?” he asked, teeth bared. “Oh, I think I can. I can have it right now.”

  I turned my head and squeezed my eyes shut, breathing in the scent of damp leaves and dirt. My words had worked. His focus had shifted from eluding Jesse and pleasing Patrick to satisfying a centuries-old need. He was hotheaded and impulsive to begin with, and I’d ripped the scab off the festering wound of his jealousy. His thoughts spiked into me like he was firing them with a nail gun. All he cared about now was hurting Jesse. Taking what was his. Maiming him by cutting off the limb that was me. Having what he had.

  Just as I’d taunted.

  “I want you to know that I can remove your windpipe in under a second. Do you realize how fast that is?” He grabbed my throat, fingers digging in, making me cough. “If you try anything, you’ll choke to death on your own blood. Understand?”

  I said nothing.

  “Look at me,” he demanded.

  I didn’t. Couldn’t.

  Taking my chin with hard fingers, he forced me to. “Look.”

  I looked. My breath sucked in as I met his gaze.

  Here he was.

  Cold, ice-blue eyes stared down at me from a face too harsh to be beautiful. His hair was blond, almost white, and disheveled. So unlike Jesse’s. Too many facial piercings to count. They glinted in the muted sunlight.

  “That’s right,” he said. “I’m not your knight in shining armor.”

  I couldn’t speak.

  He smiled at my reaction, and then his face began to shimmer, the features distorting, forming something new. I blinked, trying to comprehend what I was seeing. Freckles. Long auburn hair hanging down around us. Familiar blue eyes.

  I was looking at me.

  It was wrong on so many levels.

  “Stop,” I croaked, turning my face away again.

  “Don’t like what you see? Or maybe you do,” he said in my voice. “Are you wondering what it would be like to fuck yourself?”

  Panic soared, and I sent a burst of energy out, heedless of his threat. If he killed me right now, it would be better than what he had planned.

  He whirled around as the great root system of a towering pine a few feet away groaned and erupted from the earth in an explosion of dirt. Pine needles rained down on us as it fell with a whine, snapping branches of other trees along the way. It hit mere inches from our heads with a deafening boom and bounced, shaking the ground and blowing my hair back.

  It was the distraction I’d been hoping for. I kneed him in the crotch as hard as I could. As he sucked in a breath and swayed, I rolled out from under him and scrambled to my feet. A difficult task without the balance of my arms. Once standing, I spun around and took off again, weaving in and out of trees, so desperate I could barely think. My lungs burned and my right eye threatened to swell shut, but I ran anyway, pushing my injured ankle to the limit.

  Jesse would realize soon that I was gone and he would come for me. He had to.

  I just needed to stay alive until then.

  When a body slammed into me from behind, it was like being hit by a bus, and the enraged howl in my ear was louder than any crunching metal or squealing tires. Together, we crashed into the ground, sliding over the damp leaves, the impact stealing my breath. Yanking a handful of my hair, he ground my face into the dirt. Leaning down, he growled, “You’re going to pay for that, you ignorant bitch.”

  Standing, he dragged me to my feet by the hair and slammed my back into a tree, its bark digging into my shoulder blades.

  “Move and I’ll snap your fucking neck, Patrick be damned,” he said. Not taking his furious eyes from mine, he pulled t
he blindfold into place, and my world went black and disorienting once more. He took the neckline of my sweater with both hands and tore it right down the middle. A strangled cry ripped from my throat, and it brought an excited grunt from him. He tore the two halves of my sweater down my shoulders and threw the thing aside. I could feel his eyes on my bare skin like a sickening touch. I rarely wore a bra and this morning had been no exception. I was completely, horrifyingly exposed to him.

  “You barely have any tits,” he noted. “What was it about you that captivated him so?”

  Tears streamed down my dirty face, soaking the blindfold. But it wasn’t until he reached out to cup me that an idea burst into my mind. One I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of sooner.

  “Please,” I gasped, shrinking back, my tree scraping my skin. “Do anything you want, but don’t take my necklace. Please.”

  He paused, and I knew he was looking at the black stone that lay warm against my heaving chest.

  “From Jesse?” He sounded amused.

  I nodded and gave a choked sob. “He loves me.”

  “Oh, I’m sure he does.” He yanked it off my neck. The clasp broke easily, and I gasped as I felt the magic tie sever with an almost tangible snap.

  He, however, didn’t feel a thing. I heard the pendant hit the ground followed by what sounded like his boot grinding it into the dirt.

  Despite the trembling in my lips, I smiled.

  Confusion flickered across his emotional wavelength. “What.”

  I had a feeling retribution was about to come down on him in a bad way. If the spell worked, that was. “I wouldn’t want to be you,” I said.

  He lowered his voice. “What did you do? What was that necklace?”

  “He’s coming,” was all I said, lifting my chin.

  I heard him take an involuntary step back, a tendril of his fear reaching out to me. And it was like a beacon of hope. I closed my eyes, shoulders sagging ever so slightly as relief surged.

  He’s afraid of Jesse. He won’t touch me now. He’ll leave. He won’t ra—

  He spun me around so fast it took me a moment to understand. Pushing my face into the bark, he pressed his body against my back. I went rigid as I heard the distinctive sound of a zipper going down. His breath was hot and heavy in my ear, as if he was both excited and terrified at the idea of what he was about to do.