I had a rebuff right on the tip of my tongue when the little, old lady approached our table, interrupting our heated argument.
“Are you dears ready to order?” she asked, smiling at us sweetly.
I let Isaiah order first, needing a minute to calm myself before I did something I would regret later, like snap at the lady for no reason.
“And you, sweetie?” she asked me.
“The omelet, please,” I said, offering her a forced smile in return. “Coffee and a glass of orange juice.”
I hadn’t meant to order the coffee. Some habits were hard to forget, I guessed. But it was done and I didn’t have the heart to un-order it.
“I’ll have those out for you in just a minute.” With a smile for each of us, she walked away.
Isaiah and I sat in silence, deliberately avoiding the other’s gaze. A sax solo poured from the hidden speakers, barely muffling the scrap of bottle against wood originating from the bar.
“Let me take you to your father,” Isaiah said finally.
“Why?” I looked at him, really looked at him. “Why is it so important that I go to him?”
“Because he can help!”
I laughed bitterly. “Help? Like he’s helped me my whole life? That kind of help? No thanks. I’ve done just fine without him this far.”
“You don’t understand, Fallon,” he leaned forward. “If you meet him—”
“I’ll come to love him the way you love him?” I snorted. “Don’t hold your breath, Isaiah. He hasn’t exactly been this golden idol in my life the way he seems to have been in yours, okay? In my world, he ignored me. In my world, he’s dead, and I’m not looking to start any father-daughter relationship with a man who couldn’t even bring himself to be a part of my life after my mother died, leaving me completely alone in the world.”
“There’s more to the story than that.”
I swung just my eyes in Isaiah’s direction. “Let me guess, I’m too delicate to handle that story, right?”
He shook his head. “No, it’s not for me to tell.”
I rolled my eyes. “Figures. It’s always something. Any excuse not to be truthful, and yet you expect me to just trust you.”
“I expect you to believe I would never hurt you!” he growled through his teeth. “That I will do anything, and everything, to keep you safe.”
“Sorry, dears,” the little lady appeared at our elbows, a small tray containing three glasses in hand. “Don’t mean to interrupt.” She placed our drinks down in front of us. “I hope everything is all right. I couldn’t help but notice you were having a bit of a disagreement.”
“We’re fine,” I mumbled, wanting her to just go away, so Isaiah and I could finish our talk. “Thank you.”
“You know, my Billy and I were married sixty-two years before he died in his sleep,” she continued as if I hadn’t spoken at all. “We had our own share of arguments I tell you. But we always worked it out. It’s all about communication.”
“And honesty, no doubt,” I added, turning my glare on Isaiah.
The lady nodded solemnly. “Oh yes, honesty is a big factor.”
“Thank you,” Isaiah bit out, dark pools of blue boring into me. “We’ll work it out.”
“Of course you will, dear. Now go ahead and have a drink. Sometimes a refreshing beverage is all you really need to put things into focus.”
When it became apparent that she wasn’t leaving until we did, Isaiah and I both lifted our drinks — me my orange juice and he his milk — and sipped.
“More!” she chortled, waving her hands. “Go on.”
Resigned, we took bigger gulps; both of us nearly finishing the contents before she was satisfied.
“There!” she exclaimed, clapping her hands together. “How do you feel?”
Not so great. The room was growing fuzzy around the edges and the tiny glass in my hand felt about a hundred pounds. The music was slurring in my ears and everything seemed to pulse with a colorful heartbeat.
“Wha—wha…” I tried shaking my head, but it was so heavy, too heavy on my shoulders.
“It’s all right, dearie,” the woman said, smile not so sweet anymore. “Just relax and let the drug work its magic.”
Drug? I was drugged? What the hell!
Chapter 16
“Isaiah…”
I raised my head towards him, feeling as though I were lifting a boulder. My neck wobbled uncontrollably, tipping dangerously to the left. The world swayed. The glass in my hand toppled, hitting the clean tablecloth with a crack so loud it could have been thunder. Orange juice splashed across the white fabric and trickled over the edge. I heard the splash and every drip as though amplified.
Somewhere in the room, a chair screeched across the hardwood. Glass shattered. Someone screamed — it could have been me, I wasn’t sure. A deep, penetrating growl pierced the chaos. More furniture was upended and I just sat there, fighting to keep my eyelids open. At one point, I blinked, and when I opened my eyes, I was surrounded by lights, large, flashing lights so bright they made my eyes water.
“Fallon?” Suddenly Isaiah’s face was in front of me and I realized I was on my back, staring at the ceiling and the fluorescent lights. “Fallon!”
“I don’t feel so good…” I groaned. Was it considered bad manners to throw up in a restaurant? I wondered. I’d never been drugged before so the protocol was a little hazy.
“I know,” he was breathing hard and his face was glistening with sweat. He didn’t look so good himself. “Just hang on, okay? I’ll get you out of here.”
I tried to say okay, but he was staggering to his feet, swaying as dangerously as everything else around me. I couldn’t be sure if it was because he was drugged too, or because I was seeing things.
“You’re not taking her anywhere, Isaiah,” a very sexy voice drawled from somewhere above me. “The boss wants a word with her, and you know that what the boss wants, the boss gets.”
I rolled onto my belly. Gravity, as thick as syrup, rebelled against my movement, pushing me down, crushing me into the rough carpet. My stomach protested the motion fervidly, but I had to see whom we were up against because that voice did not belong to any nice old lady.
The woman standing there was scary, gorgeous, but definitely scary. She was all legs — it was the first thing I noticed, even without the teetering, seven-inch ankle boots — long, toned legs clad in skin tight spandex that looked painted on. Her waist was tiny, cinched by a thick, black belt. She wore a tight, spandex top that plunged dangerously in front. Her hair, a shade shy of midnight was pulled back from her face and fastened in a tight ponytail at the very top of her head. The strands fell like a black waterfall down her back. In one hand, she held a gun aimed at Isaiah, while shaking off a pink sweater off with her other.
“Shifting into an old lady? Really, Maia, that’s a new low, even for you!” Isaiah was saying, his words slurred slightly.
Maia grinned, her ruby-red lips curving maliciously. “Don’t be sour, love. We always knew I was better at this game then you.”
“I wouldn’t know,” Isaiah growled.
Maia’s wide, almond-shaped eyes narrowed. “That’s right, you don’t remember.” She pouted her bottom lip. “That’s too bad. We used to have so much fun together once.”
Great, an ex-girlfriend with a chip on her shoulder. That’s all I needed.
“Now, say good-bye, pet.”
I heard the gun cock like a bomb going off. The sound scrapped like daggers along my spine. I felt the cold grip of fear wrap around my heart.
“No—!”
“Do not kill him!” an ethereal voice growled from somewhere on Maia’s body, interrupting my scream. For a second, I thought maybe she had a split personality, then, she reached around and pulled a walkie-talkie out of her... somewhere. Maybe her belt? Can’t imagine where one would find space to store things in that tight suit. “I repeat, do not kill Isaiah!”
“Copy!” She muttered into the device, e
xpression twisted in annoyance. She stuffed the walkie-talkie back into its hiding place. “Lucky day for you, Isaiah, you get to live.”
“Not sure I can say the same for you,” Isaiah taunted, staggering dangerously to the right.
Maia laughed. “Even you can’t pull a miracle this time. Just relax. This will all be over soon enough.”
Three menacing figures stepped up behind her, looking irritatingly familiar and seriously irate.
“Hello, boys,” Maia purred arrogantly. “Nice of you to join the party.”
I recognized the one on the right as Yuri. He had a gauze bandage wrapped around his forearm and an eye patch over his right eye. The other two were the goons who chased us at the school and killed my mom.
“You!” I growled, my limbs trembled as I heaved my deadweight up onto my hands and knees. “You killed my mom!”
Maia sighed, stealing a peek at her perfectly manicured fingernails. “What little good that did when they didn’t even capture you in the process. But you know what they say, never send a man to do a woman’s job.” With a smirk for me, she turned her head towards Yuri. “Call the boss. Tell him we have the girl.”
Yuri scowled at Maia, clearly disliking the idea of having to take orders from anyone. Nevertheless, he removed a cell phone from one of the pockets on his belt. The sleek device clicked audibly when he flipped it open and pressed it to his ear. He turned his back on the group while he talked.
The table I tried to use as leverage to stand crashed beneath me. My hard collision with the ground knocked the oxygen from my lungs, combined with the heavy fog settling like clam chowder over my senses, the only thing keeping me from succumbing to the darkness pressing in around me was the consuming hunger to tear the two in front of me into pieces. It was my only drive. I wanted to watch them die.
“I’m going to kill you!” I panted through my teeth, reaching for something else to steady me.
Maia laughed. Yuri glowered over his shoulder, silently telling me to keep quiet while he talked on the phone. The other two remained impassive, staring at me as if I were an insect put there for their amusement. Their blank expressions were worse than the mocking amusement from Maia. Being laughed at was easier to swallow then seeing my mom’s murderers standing there without remorse. How dare they look so smug when my mom could now fit in a tiny tin box?
The broken chair leg was in my hand before I could even remember picking it up. The floor bounced like rubber beneath the soles of my feet when I lurched up and lunged forward.
On a good day, when everything wasn’t shifting and multiplying in front of me, and I didn’t feel as though I’d stepped into a bouncy house, I probably could have nailed Maia. But she saw me coming before I was even on my feet. Her long, freezing fingers grabbed my wrist in mid swing. The chair leg tumbled from my numb fingers hitting the carpet with a clutter about the same time as her gun.
“Stupid girl!” Maia growled, tightening her grip on me. “The boss said alive, he said nothing about you being in one piece!”
I grounded my teeth, glaring furiously into her brown eyes. “Bite me!”
Her free hand closed around my throat with an inhuman vice. My windpipe creaked beneath the crushing assault.
“You really have no idea what you’re up against, do you?” Maia hissed right into my face, her breath smelling strangely like mint — I was expecting blood or venom. Something foul. “They send me when all the others have failed. I am the one who gets things done.”
“You also talk too much!”
I grabbed her wrist and twisted. It was stupid to think it would work, but I’d seen it done a hundred times on TV and it worked every time for the hero. But Maia didn’t drop to her knees screaming and writhing in agony the way the bad guys on TV did. There was no snap of bones, just me, tugging at her wrist like a child clinging to her mother’s skirt.
Maia smirked coldly. “I guess we can cross super-strength off your list of powers.”
“Let her go, Maia!” Isaiah snarled the words horribly incoherent.
“Or what?” Maia taunted.
“The boss will be here shortly. He says to keep them entertained,” Yuri tucked the phone away and turned to the rest of us. “I say we have some fun with the girl while we wait!” Yuri added, cracking his hairy knuckles menacingly.
The whole thing would have been funny if it hadn’t been so serious. I half expected him to cackle ominously and stroke his beard — if he had one. Was it in the bad guy manual that you had to crack your knuckles and make dark threats at the same time? But honestly, I preferred the talking to the kneecap breaking.
“You seem to be having some trouble staying awake there, Isaiah,” Maia snickered. “Go ahead and take a nap. We’ll take good care of your little friend.”
The strangling hold made it impossible to glance back to see how Isaiah was doing, but I could hear his labored breathing as though he were right beside me.
“What the hell did you do, Maia?” he groaned.
Maia shrugged indifferently. “The same thing we did to little miss peppy here, only we tripled your dose of sleeping powder, just to be safe. I’m actually surprised you haven’t hit the ground yet. That’s some seriously strong stuff.”
“I think he is worried about the little girl,” Yuri laughed in his Russian brogue, sounding as amused as Maia looked. “And he should be. I am very fond of the pretty ones!”
Maia nodded. “And I brought all my favorite toys. You might not remember them, Isaiah, but I assure you they are fun!”
“I’m not scared of you!” I growled without thinking. The lie was excruciatingly obvious when my voice wavered. I couldn’t have been more scared and she knew it.
“That’s good,” Maia purred, eyes darkening with a hunger for pain. “It’s no fun when my toys are broken before I’ve even had my chance to play. Watching you break will be the highlight of my night.”
With a flick of her dainty wrist, I was soaring, floating in the air like a balloon. It would have been serene had I not hit the ground with a crash that rattled my teeth and sent every bone in my body screaming. The dull throb left me paralyzed from the neck down, lying in a heap of arms and legs amongst a pile of broken dishes, furniture and food. Tiny black spots popped in front of my eyes, making it harder-and-harder to keep them open.
Behind me, something growled. The sound overpowered ever other noise, and still not coming anywhere near human. It dominated the room with a fierce rage that shook the ground and spiked a cold chill down my spine.
Had they summoned a massive dog to finish us off? Was that what we’d been waiting on?
The terror of being shredded to pieces had me twisting onto my back just as a large blur leapt over me and lunged at Yuri. I think it had been aiming for Maia, but she wisely dove aside at the last second, leaving Yuri to take the blunt force like a fly against a windshield of a car doing two hundred on a freeway. I half expected to hear the splat when Yuri flew into the wall across the room. The plaster caved, showering him with bits of drywall and paint chips. A cloud of smoke engulfed him, momentarily obscuring him from sight.
Standing like an avenging angel over Yuri’s prone body, Isaiah snarled somewhere in the back of his throat, sounding so much like a wolf. I almost cringed with fear. No human should ever be able to make such a sound. It was raw fury wrapped in feral and protective determination. It was beautiful. Every nerve ending in my body shivered. Goose bumps prickled up my arms. A feeling of pride and something else, something warm and intense swelled up inside me even as fear gripped me a second later when Isaiah swayed, barely catching himself on a table corner before collapsing onto all fours, energy taxed.
“Gaston. Mistral. Stand watch outside for the boss,” Maia reached around behind her and produced a lethal looking device from the same mysterious compartment as the walkie-talkie. “I’ll deal with this.”
The twins moved without a sound. They glided like spirits from the destroyed restaurant, disappearing a second later ou
t the front doors.
Maia twisted the knob on the side of the oval contraption. A low hum began to rise from it, sounding a lot like a bug zapper. My stomach churned with an icy grip. A bulge of panic lodged in my throat, suffocating the cry climbing up my chest.
“Don’t touch him!”
Shards of glass cut into my hands as I shoved to my feet, throwing myself at Maia in foolish desperation to stop her from harming Isaiah. But the Asian beauty saw me coming from a mile away. She never so much as batted an eyelash when swinging her weapon wielding arm and backhanding me into the darkness.
Chapter 17
Waking up was like flicking on every throbbing point in my body. I was instantly aware of the pain in my shoulders, my arms, my head, my jaw, my… well, everything. Everything hurt and I would have happily slipped back to that cool, dark place only a breath away, except I couldn’t let myself, not yet. I had to find Isaiah. I had to see if he was all right, if they’d hurt him, if he was alive.
“Hold still,” a soft voice, whispered. Something stroked my brow.
I pried my lashes open, squinting up through a murky white screen to the dark blot hovering over me. “Isaiah?”
His face materialized into view. “Hey.”
He was with me. He was alive. Relief had my eyes closing for a moment, silently murmuring a prayer of thanks before I forced them open again.
“Am I dead?” Was it possible to be in so much pain and be dead?
His lips curved into what could have been a smile if his eyes weren’t so serious. “Like I would let you die.”
I expelled a groan, closing my eyes again. “I feel dead.”
Cool, soothing fingers glided along the side of my face, brushing an especially tender spot just hugging the curve between my eyebrow and my cheekbone. I flinched at the touch as if he’d struck me with a lit match. A low hiss whistled through my teeth and I opened my eyes.
“Ow!” I whined, reaching up and capturing his hand. The rage in his eyes was unmistakable, even if his teeth hadn’t been bared in a snarl and his hands hadn’t balled into fists. “I’m okay,” I told him softly, squeezing the hand I held. “It probably looks worse than it is.”
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