“Thanks, Mrs. I.”
“Thanks, Mom. Allison’s dropping me off after lunch tomorrow.”
“Have fun tonight.” Worry filled her eyes.
I waved and smiled, hoping not to look as anxious as I felt. Buckling my seat belt, the only thing on my mind was how many drinks it might take to stop wondering if family curses were real, if the Hales knew first-hand about them and whether or not Liam had a part in what happened to Kristy.
Chapter 10
By ten, the field around Justin’s massive bonfire brimmed with cowboys. It seemed the party invitation wasn’t limited to Zoar High. He’d notified the local rodeo circuit and they obliged the invitation with gusto. Four by fours lined his driveway and barn’s perimeter. Country music boomed from speakers large enough to stand on. Several pickups were parked in the field, tailgates down and aimed at the fire. It was impossible to squash the joy filling my chest.
“Come on, Callie!” Allison beckoned from the bed of a silver pickup. A trio of girls in “Save a horse, ride a cowboy” shirts laughed with her. “Let’s dance!”
“Later.” I raised my drink into the air, certain she couldn’t hear me over the music and distance.
“Boo!” Allison cupped her hands around smiling lips and waved me off. The girls with her gave the guy controlling the stereo a big thumbs-up. The music grew louder and a thunder of applause erupted.
The outskirts of a party fit me best. I had a good view of the big picture, something I valued. My position also gave me another advantage. I had the first look at newcomers. Standing closer to the driveway meant I had a chance to duck behind the barn if Kirk or Hannah showed up. Fighting with them in front of all these strangers sounded horrible. Hopefully, they’d stay at their after game party and leave my good time alone.
“Ready for a refill?” Justin sauntered over like a boss and bumped his shoulder into mine. The brim on his hat fell low on his forehead, hiding his eyes in shadow. Flames and embers danced and jumped behind him, stretching into a clear view of heaven. Millions of twinkling white lights scattered across the black satin overhead.
“Thanks.” I accepted the fresh soda with a smile. He cracked the lid for me.
The yeasty scent of beer mixed with dry ashy wood smoke in the air. The pungent effect felt right. I filled my lungs, pulling it all in, making memories of a new beginning.
I savored the familiar sweetness of my soda. No matter how many drinks Allison came up with, I couldn’t shake the feeling I needed to keep my head tonight. Mom said I had a sixth sense about things. She thought I was a good judge of character and older than my years. I was cautious. That was all. My preoccupation with safety most certainly stemmed from the nurse who’d raised me to fear everything from crossing the street to monosodium glutamate. She mentioned my “special gift” so often I sometimes wondered if common sense was far removed from other people. All the “feelings” I had were based on facts. If it looked like a death trap… Whatever. Any illusions I had about being a good judge of anything had evaporated last Fourth of July.
“You want to tell me what’s really going on between you and Hale?” Justin’s blue eyes pinned me in place. He thought I was stubborn, but he rode bulls for fun. There was no avoiding this conversation.
Time for the talk.
“I like him, but he was with Kristy last night.”
He blanched. “You think he hurt her?”
“No, but I saw him with her. I don’t want to be stupid. I didn’t listen to people about Kirk and look what happened. No more ignoring the facts.”
He widened his stance and adjusted his hat. “What’s your gut say about him?”
My gut said I needed Liam for something. It didn’t say what, so I was no longer listening to my gut when it came to him. “I think he’s a good guy.”
Justin chuckled and tipped his beer back.
“What?”
“Nothin’.”
Justin nodded. He crossed heavily muscled arms over his chest, but I didn’t swoon. More had changed this week than I’d realized. I’d ogled Justin for a month before Liam slid into my head and extinguished everything else. Maybe my attraction to Justin had been a safety thing. He’d never hurt me like Kirk. As soon as the thought registered, I bristled. My obsession with safety bothered me. Kirk had made a big deal out of it all the time.
I wasn’t that girl. I was tough. Strong.
“What are you thinking right now?” Justin asked.
“Honestly?”
He shifted his feet, waiting.
“The last few weeks you’ve made the hell Kirk dished out easier, and I think it got me crushing on you.” I waved my soda between us, hoping for nonchalance. “I’m figuring that out and feeling like a damsel in distress.”
“Pisses you off, right?”
I laughed. “Yeah.”
“Callie Ingram, I’ve known my share of damsels”—innuendo heavily implied—“and you aren’t one of them. Not when you fell off the barn roof saving my cat. Not when you were ten and got yourself lost in the woods, and not when Kirk did his best to humiliate you. You’re tough. You’re a cowboy.”
His highest praise. I beamed, stuffing the soda against my lips to hide a dorky smile. “That cat needed saving and I thought you were in the woods. I didn’t plan on getting lost.”
“So, you and me?” he asked, point-blank. “You mentioned crushing?”
My smile melted. It was my turn now. “Friends.” I held still and waited for rebuff, or fallout or whatever came. I wanted the truth from him. Always. I owed him the same and I’d listen to anything he had to say, even if it hurt.
Justin blew out a long breath and shoved his hat off his head with one giant hand. He rubbed his hair and the back of his neck. “Ah, hell. Friends. Yeah.” He pulled me to his chest in a hug, resting his chin on the top of my head. “I’m not going anywhere. Remember that. You’re leaving for college. Taking off on your life adventure in a few months, but my adventure’s here. I know you’ll be back. When you are, guess where I’ll be?”
“Here?” I teased.
“Right. Here.” He pressed his lips to my forehead and my heart burst with emotions too numerous to name, though regret and hope battled for something in his sentiment.
A loud crack drew our attention to the fire. Logs snapped and popped as the fire burned. The night was dark and lovely. Heartbreaking and hope-filled.
“I’m gonna throw some more wood on the fire.” He stepped away, giving me a long look before turning to the crowd. Emotion, or maybe the beer, glossed his eyes.
A shadow approached from my periphery. “I thought he’d never leave.”
My heart pumped harder. “Good grief! Where did you come from? Were you watching us?”
Tony struck an oddly macho pose. Hands on hips, one foot forward. He looked like a pirate in an ad for How to be a Dick. I scolded myself. My emotions were far too stirred tonight. I blinked to regain composure when he didn’t answer.
“Where’s Adam? I didn’t think you two were coming.” Wow. I sounded rude. “Happy birthday.” There. Manners.
“Your friend, Allison, called to cancel us at the last minute. Adam stayed at the party in the city. I made the trip here for you.”
“Erm.” I scanned the crowd for someone I recognized who could interrupt us. Justin and about ten guys in tight jeans hoisted logs into a fire already reaching past the top of his barn. Allison swung her hips on the back of a pickup truck to a song I didn’t recognize. Her back faced me.
“Do you belong to that one?” Tony’s gleeful tone mocked me.
I tore my gaze from the crowd and glared at Tony. Did I what? He stared at Justin and his eyes blazed. A trick of light off the flames. A flash of green struck against his otherwise brown eyes. I turned toward the crowd. The fire glowed orange and gold. No green. Weird.
“He’ll fight for you?” he asked.
“I don’t belong to Justin. He’s my best friend
.” Was this some kind of college joke? It wasn’t funny. Mom ranted in my head, ready to hand him a speech on women’s rights.
“The other one, then.” His voice deepened. Maybe he was drunk.
“I don’t know what you mean. Are you okay?”
Shadows thrown from the fire danced across his face, mutating his features into something menacing. Again the green flashed in his eyes and I turned to look for the source of the reflection.
“I’m torn.” He straightened to his full height. “If you don’t belong to another, I lose the true conquest. Though, I will enjoy you thoroughly.” His eyes drifted over me, lingering in key places. Unbelievable.
“Ex-cuse me?” I squeezed my drink in my fingers, ready to brain him with it.
As if he heard my plan, Tony wrapped one hot hand around my elbow and tugged me against him, securing me there with his free hand, and tightening his grip with both. I squirmed against him and felt the rigidity in his body. Panic flooded me. I tossed my head, searching for Justin in the crowd.
Tony sighed, barely jostled by my wild struggle. “I will take you. Now, be quick. Who’s your clan?”
“My what? Have you taken drugs tonight? My mother’s a nurse. She can help you if you did.” I wiggled immobile arms to no avail. “Please, don’t do anything crazy because you sound nuts right now.” I regained enough sense to remember I had two feet and I stamped the heel of one boot into his toe.
He didn’t budge. His mouth dropped into my hair. “You have spirit. I like spirit in my women. I saw it in you the first night we met. To miss your fire is to be blind or unequivocally ignorant.” He pressed his face to my neck and sucked my skin into his hot mouth.
I kicked him, thrashing his shins with all I had while he held my torso tight to his, unaffected. A low chuckle rumbled over my neck, sending an icy chill down my spine. This wasn’t happening. Someone had to see us. Fueled with desperation, I found my voice and screamed. Humiliation be damned. I’d prefer the whole crowd see this oaf pawing me than the alternative I literally felt against my waistband. The alternative wasn’t happening.
Before the sound of my scream rose above the pounding bass and guitar, his mouth tightened over mine, silencing me. “I will devour you.” He breathed over my tongue. A strange tingling coursed through me. Something was very wrong. Worse than this jerk’s intentions. My muscles tightened in preparation for my last defense. When his tongue jammed into my mouth again, I bit it hard enough to amputate and something coiled inside my stomach like boiling lava. His blood poisoned my mouth.
He released me, slamming his lips together and clamping hands over his bloody mouth.
“Wench!” Tony snapped his hand out to hit me.
Wind whipped strands of hair into my eyes.
Tony disappeared.
Heart racing, I stared at the empty space before me as a deluge of tears blurred my vision. I turned in a slow circle, squinting past the tears into the shadows of the trees behind me. I wiped my mouth against my sleeves in frantic motions, spitting into the grass between swipes. The world tilted.
The trees whispered to me. Suddenly the woods where I’d played for hours as a child were gnarled arms beckoning me into the darkness. My feet shuffled forward, drawn to something I didn’t understand but couldn’t ignore. Leaves swirled over my boots, blowing unnaturally ahead of me, pulling me along.
Shards of moonlight pierced the ground between the trees. Muffled thumps and roaring whispers tickled my ears. Music from the party grew distant behind me.
“I know who you are.” Tony’s deeper, hoarse voice stopped me in my tracks. He hadn’t disappeared. Well, he had, but he was at the party. I wasn’t insane. I hadn’t imagined his assault.
Crack!
I ducked and covered my ears with both palms as a spattering of tree limbs rained down over the forest floor. Lightning flashed, burning my eyes.
“I cannot let you stay. I’m sorry.” Breath caught in my emotion thick throat. I knew the new voice. Liam.
“She is yours?” Tony asked.
“No.”
“She is. I see it in your eyes. Your eyes cannot lie, but she can. Very well. I believed her ruse and nearly missed my victory. Now I shall have it. I will take your woman and then your life.”
Good night! I shook my head, trying to regain my senses. What was wrong with me? Urgency lifted my heart. Tony intended to hurt Liam.
“Hey!” I ran toward the voices like a maniac, taking wide ugly strides, unable to think clear enough to maneuver through the sticks and roots dotting the ground under my feet. I tripped and floundered again and again, somehow staying upright. “Stop!”
The guys stood several feet apart. Neither wore a shirt and both seemed to have gained twenty pounds of muscle. Green flashed in both sets of eyes as they turned to me. Liam’s runes glowed as white as lightning against his skin. Tony’s arms lit in similar fashion, lined in strange symbols, like Liam’s but different. They were impossible to recognize from my research since the ones on my screen hadn’t burned my eyes. The white light shining through them had an eerie green cast when my eyes adjusted. My tummy coiled beneath my ribs, rolling back into my spine. Electricity zinged through the air around us. The fine hairs on my arms stood at attention.
“Callie, go back to your party. Find Justin. I’ll take care of this.” Liam’s rumbling voice startled me.
I stumbled backward until my heels hit a tree. I leaned my weight against it, fighting for clear thought. “I think someone put something in my soda.”
“Stay, Callie.” Tony ordered. “You should see how this ends and know the man you serve is superior to all others.” Tony changed his stance to Warrior Pose, something I’d learned in yoga last fall. The hand stretched behind him glowed.
“Go.” Liam commanded and my limbs twitched to obey.
“Stay.” A line of white light appeared in Tony’s glowing hand like a spear or weapon of some kind.
I rubbed my eyes until they were raw from the pressure. My back slid down the tree trunk to the damp earthen floor.
Liam groaned. “Forget, Callie.”
The words swept through my mind like a painful mist, aching like the feel of Tony’s angry mouth against my throat.
Liam growled.
Tony chuckled.
A wave of nausea knocked me over into the bed of fallen leaves. My eyes slid shut, forced by unearthly heaviness. Drugs.
“She. Is. Mine.” Liam vowed.
Leaves spun around my head, rustling and whipping against my face. Flashes of light illuminated the world beyond my eyelids, begging them open. Despite the weight of whatever had been in my drink, my eyelids parted. A narrow slit of vision revealed the pair in battle. They moved too quickly at times for my addled brain to comprehend. Other times they circled slowly, speaking in a tongue I didn’t know, looking like gladiators.
“Call Nike. Your clan loses another tonight.” Tony swung his rod of light in a low arc, leaving a blur of white in its path.
Liam jumped as the tip slid by, catching his bare ribs and spewing blood onto the leaves before me. My limbs twitched in response to his pain.
“The girl will beg me for more by night’s end,” Tony taunted.
More what, I didn’t want to ask. My twisted, intoxicated mind had some ugly ideas.
“Never.” Liam’s slow, cold speech reverberated through me as his arms stretched out between them.
The beam of reaching green light in Liam’s hand swooped through the air, cutting a sharp arc in the night and dragging a trail behind it. Liam spoke again in the foreign tongue. A guttural mix of pain, urgency and power emphasized each strange syllable as he pierced his opponent with unreasonable speed and strength. The blow knocked Tony back several feet, instantly changing his eyes to a darker, more human color. The sword in Tony’s hand extinguished and he fell to his knees, arms splayed wide, back arched, no longer inexplicably inflated. Liam nodded once and pulled the sword from Tony
’s chest with a grunt. Blood poured forward into the leaves and dirt. Liam moved lithely to the side, lifting his sword once more and delivering it upon Tony’s throat in a move so graceful it could’ve been something choreographed and set to music instead of what it was—brutal. Bloody. Lethal. Tony’s head fell into the blood puddle and rolled.
Vomit caught in my throat.
Liam turned to me. His eyes glowed like two emerald stones. His blank expression was devoid of humanity. I vomited. Tremors started in my chest and wracked me senseless. I curled into the fetal position and waited for it to end. Something was horribly wrong with me.
Chapter 11
My brain pounded against my skull hard enough to break through. Fire danced before my eyes. Embers soared into the starry night. “Ugh.” I rubbed my temples, readjusting to the world around me. Dozens of people danced and laughed in knots and clusters near the fire. The lawn chair under me wiggled as I pushed to stand.
“There you are,” Allison squealed. “Where have you been? I haven’t seen you in forever. I thought you left. If you didn’t show up by midnight, I planned to tell Justin. First, I thought you dipped out to have a talk with him. Then I saw him helping Pedro with a keg stand, so I imagined you snuck away with Liam.” Her eyes widened. “Did you?”
Liam. My mind twitched. Memories rubbed my subconscious like a forgotten dream just beyond my reach.
“Here.” She handed me a bottle of water. “Were you drinking? You don’t look so good.”
“Someone put something in my drink.”
Allison stiffened. She looked over both shoulders. “Who?”
“If I knew, I’d level them, then sic Justin on them and maybe have them arrested.” I scanned the crowd for Kirk and his goons. I couldn’t blame them unless they’d snuck in and out. Who else was that slimy?
The water bottle Allison gave me was cool and wet in my hand. I pressed it to my forehead before cracking it open and gulping half the bottle.
“Everything okay?” Justin jogged up behind Allison. “I heard my name.” He looked me over. “What’s wrong?”
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