Bone Hunter

by Thea Atkinson

  "Not like that," he said. "I told you. Clinical."

  I nodded.

  He laid his palm flat on my solar plexus and he inhaled deeply, eyes closed. I was paralyzed as I felt a hum run through his palm and into my tissues. My fingertips buzzed until I felt like I had to shake them out.

  And then the most terrifying thing happened.

  CHAPTER 13

  There was no longer just a hum, but a sound as though a jet engine was taking off between my ears. A thousand pinpricks on my skin came alive.

  And it hurt.

  A lot.

  Molecules and atoms and blood all strained from deep within my tissues toward his palm and each pinprick felt as though some long filament had been yanked on from fathoms of my core and come free all at once.

  I might have bowed beneath the onslaught, but Maddox's palm held me aloft. If my feet left the floor I wouldn't have been surprised.

  And yet that wasn't the most terrifying thing.

  The most terrifying thing came when he finally let me go. He staggered back, gasping for air as though he was too far beneath the waves of a choppy ocean and the pressure was trying to stabilize from too abrupt a resurfacing.

  I watched as his head snapped back the way one does when it's struck by a brutal fist. He collapsed to his knees and then to his side, curled into the fetal position. Every discernible part of his body convulsed. It looked for all the world like he was being kicked. Repeatedly.

  I stared, dumbstruck and terrified, and felt my feet uproot from the floor only when he sailed across the tiles of my bathroom through the open door and out into the kitchen as though someone had an invisible hand on his collar and was running with him.

  I broke free my paralysis right about the same time his name erupted from my lips. I didn't care what exactly was happening or how. I just wanted him to be okay. I rushed along behind him to the kitchen.

  I dropped onto the floor, running my hand over his ribs and throat.

  I felt for a pulse, not even sure if I would find one in an immortal. Was he immortal? I had no idea. I just kept running over the same things in my mind. What if he was dying? What if the fae warlord had somehow come back, and finding me still here, was throwing a hissy fit that involved hurting someone I cared about.

  Cared about.

  It couldn't be possible. I barely knew him.

  But he'd helped me. He'd shown compassion when I needed it. And right now, he was convulsing on my kitchen floor.

  And it was because of me.

  I pressed my palms against his shoulder, thinking I should roll him over to his back, but he swore at me and curled into a tighter ball. I wanted to help. I wanted it to stop.

  And I had no idea what to do.

  My heart was thudding in my ears with every contortion he made to defend himself from invisible blows. There was something eerily familiar about the way Maddox was reacting. He wasn't whimpering or crying like I'd done, but he was taking blow for blow by some invisible source and he was feeling each one the way I had.

  Somehow, he was reliving Alvin's beating.

  My stomach clenched into a hard knot as the realization struck. That had been me.

  I ran to the bathroom.

  I barely made it to the bowl before I emptied my stomach of bile and liquid. I was still hanging over the porcelain, watching the swirl of water make a vortex when I heard footsteps at the doorway.

  Maddox. Recovered.

  I couldn't look at him. I didn't want to.

  "Isabella?" he said.

  I hung there, too afraid of what I might see, to look up.

  "Isabella," he said again. "It's alright, Kitten. It's all alright."

  I swallowed another rush of bile and clutched my stomach. I could not look to him. I wouldn't.

  "Isabella," he said again. "You don't have to be afraid."

  I knew from his tone that he was worried. It seemed unsympathetic to ignore him. I was a lot of things: a thief, a cheat, but I was not a coward.

  I peeked sideways at him. Bruises had bloomed on his cheek and his left eye was a bulbous orb that nearly hung over his cheekbone. His lips bloated to twice their size and split in the middle.

  It was a flash of an image and no more. I heard my own gasp and then as quickly as I registered the damage, everything smoothed out to normal.

  He was the handsome, russet-haired giant again.

  Maybe I had imagined it. My body seemed to think it was real. I started to tremble all over and turned so I could sink down onto the toilet.

  "It's alright," he murmured. "It's gone. All gone."

  "Is it?" I said and planted my forearms across my knees. I didn't think I was going to pass out, but I didn't want to risk it.

  "It is," he said.

  I heard him take a few hesitant steps and looked up. He crouched in front of me and took one of my hands. He lay the palm against his cheek.

  "See? Normal," he said.

  I hitched in a few bolstering breaths. Normal. What had just happened was far from normal. Even so, I nodded.

  "Normal," I repeated and as though my voice had turned on a switch, I realized I didn't hurt everywhere. Stranger still, I didn't hurt anywhere.

  That shouldn't be possible.

  He gave me a sad look when I pushed him away and rushed to the sink. I yanked the towel from the mirror.

  I looked normal. My hair was wet and I was naked, but there were no blemishes anywhere.

  My throat went tight. My fingers clenched the sink because I knew if I didn't hold onto something I was going to collapse. This time for real.

  Magic.

  Good magic. Magic that felt uplifting and not terrifying.

  I could feel my solar plexus trembling. There was always a cost to kindness. Ulterior motives. I'd had to bully my way through protecting my house by blackmailing an outlawed incubus and when I refused to do the fae warlord's bidding, he had taken that earned magic away again.

  What would I have to do in return for this gift?

  I saw Maddox in the mirror behind me. He looked almost as handsome as ever. He was already smoothing his russet hair back off his face and tucking stray lengths of it behind his ear.

  "My God," I said. "What are you?"

  I hadn't meant it to come out like an accusation. I should have shown him gratitude, not fear, but I was too far in its clutches to think straight or give rational reactions. He pursed his lips together.

  "What did you do?" I asked. "How?" I wanted to be grateful for whatever it was he'd done, but I was too scared. No one did anything good for nothing.

  His shoulders sagged, and he wouldn't meet my eye. Strangely recalcitrant for the arrogant man I knew him to be.

  So he did want something. It was as good as an admission.

  I pushed away from the sink, disappointed that the near certainty had become certain. I spun around to face him.

  "Why?" I asked him, thinking he might answer that one.

  He sighed.

  "I don't know," he said. And then when I believed he would say more, he stooped to pick up the bath towel and stretched it across my bosom, wrapping it around me and tucking it into itself between my cleavage.

  I thought his fingers lingered a little too long between the swell of my breasts, but then he pulled his hand back and tucked it into his trouser pocket.

  "You can probably get a decent shower now," he mumbled and then turned to leave the bathroom.

  "Wait," I said.

  He halted but didn't turn to face me. I watched him place one hand on the door jamb and lean against it. Exhausted, I thought. He was spent.

  I could have asked a dozen questions, but I settled on the one that might tick off a few checkboxes.

  "Why are you here?" I said.

  "I'll tell you when you get dressed," he said. "I'll clean up the floor and walls." He jerked his chin toward the kitchen and he didn't need to mention that they were splattered with blood and spittle. "I should be finished by the time you are."


  I watched him leave and stood for a long moment before I turned on the taps. The warmth, the soap, the fragrance of the chlorine in the water: all of it felt like luxury. My skin felt fresh and new and as though it had been sheathed in something whose sole purpose was to drink in pleasure and spread it through my core.

  I could almost taste the chocolate in the cocoa shampoo.

  I made the shower as quick as I could and then skirted through the bathroom and into my bedroom to find my favourite pair of yoga pants and a fuzzy sweatshirt. Seeing myself in my bedroom mirror, I realized exactly how normal I looked. I hadn't felt normal when I'd woken up. Hadn't felt normal when Maddox found me cringing on the floor.

  I looked better than usual. My skin glowed.

  Stranger still, I felt distanced from the beating. I would've expected a tremendous amount of PTSD to be swimming around in the mire of memory, but each time my mind touched down on the idea of Alvin in my apartment, the image spread out like smoke when a hand waves through it.

  I could still remember each moment, but it had been softened somehow like the touch of fog on bare skin.

  I might not have understood why Maddox had done what he had or even exactly what he had done, but I knew that somehow he had taken the violence and the effect of it from me. I'd watched him suffer through it so I could let it go. I was certain that everything I'd seen happen to him, every bruise and swollen swath of skin, the bulging and sore eye had been exactly what I'd looked like.

  And that thought wasn't just discomforting, it was sickening.

  I knew only that kindness always had a motive. And this was the most extreme kind of kindness. I couldn't trust it.

  I crossed my arms over my chest, desperate almost to stick to the things I knew, not the things that I couldn't explain. I needed something to touch down on, something real and tangible.

  There had to be a reason he was here. It wasn't just coincidence that he'd found me at my worst. I needed to know what that was.

  I yanked on underwear and my sweats and fluffed out my hair. I grabbed his jacket from its spot on the floor and slung it over my arm. My bug-out bag hunkered under my bed and I grabbed that too.

  Time for someone to pay the piper.

  I took a deep breath and headed for the kitchen.

  Everything was such a confusing muddle that I just couldn't face him straight away. I stopped by at the fridge to pull out a carton of milk. It was half full, and I could barely remember the day I'd bought it, but I upended it without pulling a glass from the cupboard.

  It tasted divine. Cold, creamy.

  It felt normal.

  I could hear him behind me making mock gagging sounds.

  "Remind me not to ask you for a glass of milk," he said.

  He stood up and stretched, arching his back and reaching out to the sides. He took up a fair bit of space, and while most men would look weary stretching like that, in him it seemed a precursor to something else, the way a boxer warmed up or a musician warmed up his muscles.

  "I'm glad to see you're feeling much better," he said.

  It almost sounded as though something else was coming. I braced myself. I finished the last of it before turning around to face him and dropped the carton into the trashcan.

  "But," I said.

  "I need to be going."

  Going. The word had a ring of finality to it. I wasn't ready for that. I had so many accusations to level. So many questions that needed to be answered. I'd be alone here, for heaven's sake. I didn't even have my cat.

  I felt an almost unreasonable sense of panic at the thought of being alone again. It didn't matter that I was fully intending to grab for my bug-out bag and hightail it out of Dodge as soon as I could, I couldn't stand the thought of being alone in my apartment for even that long.

  "Oh no," I said. "You're not leaving until you tell me why you came here in the first place."

  He quirked one russet eyebrow. "You have literally zero boo-boos and the best question you can come up with is why am I here?" he said and shook his head.

  I assumed it was disbelief and not disappointment.

  "Cheap shot," I said, doing my best to keep my emotional footing.

  He shoved his hands in his trouser pockets as he eyed me. I could see his gaze falling to my hands and I noticed I was wringing them in front of my waist.

  Instead of answering, he crossed the room. Watching him move put me in mind of the old cliché of watching a big cat on the prowl. In comparison to Alvin's cement blockhouse stature, Maddox's was languid, but it was just as dangerous.

  He loomed over me for a long moment, looking down into my face. I thought his gaze landed like a moth on my mouth but then he lifted his suit jacket from over the crook in my elbow and dug his fingers into the pocket and the moment was gone.

  I bit down on my lip without meaning to as his fingers came out of his pocket holding a cell phone.

  "Silly me," he said. "In all of the hubbub at the museum, I forgot to take my cell phone out of the pocket before I rescued a damsel in distress."

  He ran the back of his hand down my hair. "Take care, Kitten," he said and spun on his heel.

  "I wasn't in distress," I said sullenly to his back.

  He paused with his hand on the doorknob. Encouraged, I scanned the room quickly for a pair of shoes.

  "Let me follow along for a little bit."

  "Oh, Kitten," he said, over his shoulder. "Where I'm going, you don't want to follow."

  CHAPTER 14

  "You still didn't tell me how you found my apartment?" I said, emboldened.

  "My phone's geo locater information led me here."

  I noted he said nothing about the way he found me. Nothing about how I'd ended up that way. I would have thought he'd be interested. Especially after what he'd experienced. No word about what he thought might happen to me if the person who had done that to me came around again. No question about why I wanted to follow him to God knew where.

  I glanced at the front door. The cars in the streets were already rolling by, pedestrians heading out for brunch or family's houses for Sunday lunch. Scottie would be out less than twelve hours now.

  He twisted the knob. In seconds he'd be gone, and I didn't even have a shoe on.

  "I know what you were after at the gala," I said.

  "Who said I was there to steal anything?" he said and pulled the door open. The sound of a cab horn blared in at me.

  I pushed the door closed and leaned against it, staring up at him.

  "I'm not a thief. Merely a broker," he said.

  "You were after something, same as Scottie was," I said, ignoring the way his body language told me what he thought of thieves. "Scottie and you and your hoodlums were there for a reason."

  He grinned, easing my anxiety some.

  "I've never heard Kerri called a hoodlum before," he said, "But do enlighten me. Who is this Scottie person and why would I be after the same thing he is?"

  I chewed my lip, trying to decide if he was toying with me. "Scottie was the burly guy with the gun."

  "Ah, yes. Your beau."

  "Not my beau. The man who..." I couldn't hold his eye as I thought about what had happened to me because of Scottie. I struggled to explain why it mattered to me that they were both at the museum and both involved somehow with my lesson.

  "So?" I said because I knew I'd already lost that fight. "What was it?"

  He sighed indulgently, if not a bit resigned, and then he slipped his fingers into his jacket pocket and pulled out a coin.

  I grabbed it from his fingers.

  "You used me to steal that," I said.

  I wasn't sure whether I was more incensed that he'd pretended not to be a thief or that it had been on me the whole time and I'd not known.

  I glared at him and the coin alternately. It was real. It had heft and it had a rough texture from being pocked with age.

  "Not steal," he said. "You don't steal something that's yours. We were on a recovery mission, not a robbery."
There was a specific inflection to his tone that made me think he was offended. "And it's not a coin. It's a stone."

  I glared at him, not the least bit mollified by his seeming umbrage. I doubted the coin was his, but I wasn't about to argue. I was the one who had been put at risk, after all. And I had the distinct impression that I'd been a happy happenstance that they'd exploited under the ruse of rescuing me.

  I ignored the fact that I would've done the same, after all.

  "And If I'd gotten caught with this in your pocket? What if they traced it here? To me?"

  "Easy, Kitten," he said. "No one's coming looking for it. You're safe."

  "No?" I demanded.

  "No," he said. "There's a pretty good fake slipped into the curator's pocket. I imagine he's having a devil of a time explaining things to the police right about now."

  "Now," he said. "I do have to go."

  Apparently, he wasn't going to wait, and I wasn't going to stay there.

  I grabbed a pair of sneakers from the landing and followed him out the door. I pulled it shut behind me, hopscotching across the stoop as I yanked the running shoes over each heel.

  I followed him down my steps and into the street. It was raining, a cold, driving sort of precipitation that clawed its way beneath my collar. I dug my cell phone from my bag, keeping it covered by my palm from the weather. I was surprised to see the screen show it was past 6 pm. Where had the day gone? I needed all the hours I had at my disposal.

  I had to make three strides for every one of Maddox's, and I even then it was a flat-out jog to keep up once I did fall into step with him. Wherever he was going, it was in a hurry. The raindrops had created a rivulet down his nape. One long hank of russet hair curled around his jawline toward the front of his chin.

  "Where are we going?" I asked stepping up my pace even more as he did.

  "Our separate ways," he said, without slowing down.

  I felt as though the further I got away from my apartment the better chance I had of escaping Scottie's clutches altogether.

  "The hell we are," I said. "You don't understand. I just need an escort for a short while. I'm not safe here anymore. Scottie will be back, eventually--he might even be somewhere lurking around right now. And with the glamor gone, he'll get in the same way you did, and I'll be a sitting duck."