Pushed

by Corrine Jackson

  Raising my chin, I grabbed my purse with my good hand and stormed out of the garage.

  Erin found me in the guest bathroom.

  I needed a bit of time to recharge before I could heal myself. In the meantime, I’d climbed up on the sink to rest my back against the vanity mirror while I let cold water run over my palm. Leaving the door ajar, Erin crossed the small room to sit on the toilet, giving me a wide berth. I threw up my defenses, uncertain if I could protect her from myself at this point.

  I sighed. “I’m not sorry. Your brother is a creep.”

  “A complete psycho,” she agreed.

  I gave her an uncertain look. She didn’t sound afraid.

  After a moment, I blurted out, “You need to take vitamins. Your immune system is weak.”

  Her brows shot up. “How do you know?”

  “Same as you, I expect. I touch someone and I sense what injuries or illnesses they have.”

  “Remy, our powers don’t work to that degree. I can’t see when someone is getting a cold. I can tell when they already have a cold.”

  I closed my eyes. “That’s super. I’m a cold detector.”

  She laughed. “Isn’t that a good thing?”

  I squinted at her to see if she was kidding. “Sometimes. Mostly, it sucks. I’m more of a vacuum than a cold detector if you get my drift,” I said, referring to how I absorbed what I healed.

  “I thought you were more of a badass weapon myself,” she observed in a wry tone.

  I couldn’t figure her out. She rose and grabbed a towel from a rack when I shut off the water. I took it from her to dry my hand, and we both examined the damage.

  “I wish I could heal you, but burns this bad are beyond me,” she said. “I didn’t say thank you earlier, did I? Thank you.”

  Her hug shocked me. Before I could figure out how to respond, my grandfather shoved his way into the room. Uh-oh, I thought. Someone told.

  I had to give him credit. He fussed over my hand instead of climbing up my back for hurting Alcais.

  “Franc, I’m seriously okay,” I finally protested when he kept on.

  “I’m going to kill Alcais,” he said. “You okay, Erin?”

  Erin smiled. “Yep. Thanks to Remy. And no need to kill Alcais. Remy took care of him.”

  My grandfather scowled. “I heard.”

  Delia told, then. Alcais wouldn’t have admitted I’d bested him, especially after I’d done it for torturing his sister.

  I jumped off the bathroom counter, cradling my hand against my belly. “Can we go, Franc? I’m tired.”

  On the way home, I concentrated on healing my hand. When that fun task was out of the way, I shivered and stared out the window, making it clear I didn’t want to talk. My grandfather didn’t push me.

  It had occurred to me as I sat in the bathroom with my injured hand that maybe I’d made a mistake in coming to California. What had I gained? Some knowledge, yes, but nothing that would help Asher and me. I hadn’t even gained access to the Healers’ library. In fact, the damage this trip had done outweighed the good. I was in danger of losing Asher, and I was lying to my family at home. And now I’d exposed my abilities to these Healers who wanted to experiment on me.

  The saving graces were my newfound relationships with my grandfather and Erin. I didn’t regret meeting them, but what would it cost me? Beyond my burned hand?

  My grandfather parked the truck in front of his house and turned off the engine. He made no move to get out, and I waited.

  “I think I get why you’ve been keeping the extent of what you can do hidden.”

  I could only see a bit of his expression in the light slanting into the car from the street. I’d expected blustering and anger, and when that didn’t happen I couldn’t tell what he thought about this latest discovery.

  He tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. “What you can do . . . It must be terrifying. When did you know you could hurt people, too?”

  My reflection appeared pale in the side-view mirror. “When Dean tried to strangle me a few months ago.”

  My grandfather swore under his breath. “It’s too bad the man disappeared. I’d like to kill him.”

  I said nothing.

  “Listen, Remy. I don’t want you to go back to New York this weekend. I think you should move here permanently.”

  I swung about to stare at him. It had occurred to me that this might come up, but as the weeks passed, he’d never brought it up. I wasn’t prepared to deal with it now. My grandfather put his arm across the back of the seat and held up a hand when I opened my mouth to protest.

  “I know you have friends you can stay with back there, but you should be with family. People who understand what you are. Unlike your friends, we can help you if you’re ever in danger.”

  “Franc, I appreciate the offer, but . . .” But I have family back in Blackwell Falls. A family I’ve only just discovered. And a boyfriend I love.

  “You’ve been lucky, kid. So damned lucky I think you must have a fairy godmother sprinkling dust on you. You don’t know how to spot a Protector much less how to evade them if they find you.”

  I could tell a Protector from a single touch, plus their energy felt different. My training with Gabe had helped me grow stronger in that area, and I could defend myself to an extent with the abilities I’d picked up when I’d stolen Asher’s energy. I couldn’t very well explain any of that to my grandfather, though.

  He dropped his voice. “Don’t forget that the Protectors are always going to be hunting you. You put your friends’ lives at stake when you stay with them. To the enemy, they are merely collateral to be used against you.”

  I hated that he was right. My family and Asher’s could get killed because of me. I yanked on the door handle and shoved the truck door open, jumping to the ground before my grandfather could stop me.

  His shout followed me into the house.

  “Think about it, Remy. You belong with us!”

  I wasn’t so sure. All I knew was that this trip had clouded everything. I no longer knew where I belonged.

  My stubborn streak had been handed down from my grandfather. All during dinner, he hounded me, listing all the reasons I should stay with him in California. I’d be safer. I’d be with my own kind. I’d have family. Others would be safer if I weren’t there to draw Protector attention. He even talked about how great the schools were in San Francisco, and how he’d be there to help me through college. But while he spoke, I couldn’t help wondering if maybe he was more interested in how I differed from other Healers. How did I factor into his plans for a new Healer race?

  He hadn’t given me a hard time for hurting Alcais. In fact, he hadn’t asked me two questions about it, except to understand how the ability to transfer injuries worked. If my father had heard that I’d used violence on another, he’d have reamed me but good. He would have expected better of me. Why hadn’t my grandfather yelled at me? Why had he let me off without a warning? I tried to convince myself that he thought Alcais deserved it, but the pieces didn’t add up.

  Franc left me alone when I locked myself in my room.

  I waited until I heard him go to bed, and then I raced out the kitchen door, running for the forest. I needed to see Asher. I’d texted him to meet me up at Inspiration Point, and I hoped he would be there. Too much was happening too fast. My world had shifted in some way, and I wished I could go back to the way it had been before.

  I hurried along the trail, moving too fast in the dark, but I couldn’t slow down. Climbing the stairs to Inspiration Point took forever, and the whole way I worried Asher wouldn’t be waiting at the top.

  One thing had become crystal clear to me today. When my grandfather asked me to move here permanently, everything in me had rejected the idea. A big part of the reason was my family, but my gut reaction had more to do with Asher.

  I loved him. End of story. He would never hurt me. Alcais, for all his connections to my grandfather and this community, was a psychopath in the ma
king. He had tortured his sister out of idle curiosity, and in my eyes that made him no better than the Protector who had hurt Yvette. My boyfriend, on the other hand, had stepped in front of a bullet to save me. He’d put his hand in a blazing fire to help me when I’d been little more than a stranger to him. How could I have forgotten who he was?

  I needed to apologize. The shame of my betrayal threatened to choke me, and I prayed I hadn’t screwed up things between us beyond all repair.

  The hillside steps stretched on forever, but I finally reached the top. Holding my breath, I faced the overlook, and then exhaled in a gust because Asher was sitting on a bench with his back to me. In a flash, I circled around the bench.

  Too late, I saw his eyes widen in panic when they focused on me. He shifted, fighting against whatever bound his hands behind his back, and the lamplight reflected off something shiny covering his mouth. Duct tape.

  My mind took ages to comprehend the scene, but when it did I skidded to a stop. Someone had gagged Asher and tied him to the bench. He tried to scream at me, to warn me. His terror-filled eyes were the last thing I saw before my head lit up in an explosion of lights.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  “Remy, please wake up.”

  The sound penetrated the dense black void.

  “Wake up!”

  Louder now, the voice acted like a flashlight shining in my eyes. Pain ricocheted around my skull, and I wanted to punch the screaming person in the face for amplifying the hurt.

  “Please, mo cridhe,” the male voice pleaded.

  Asher, I thought. That was Asher’s voice. For him, I could try to push the blackness away. I breathed through my nose. When I could handle the throbbing, I slowly opened my eyes.

  More blackness.

  “That’s it, love. You can do it.”

  His voice drifted toward me out of the shadows to my right. I couldn’t see him, but I thought he wasn’t too far away. I was lying on my back, and I rolled my head in his direction, regretting the move almost immediately when the pounding in my head increased in intensity.

  Memories came back to me in a rush. Asher tied to the bench. Someone hitting me over the head. It had to be Protectors, I thought. Who else could get to Asher with all his speed and strength? What did they have planned for us? Did they know about me? About what I could do? That I was part Healer? My head pounded more with each question, and I pressed on my forehead to make it stop.

  “Asher, where are we?”

  “I don’t know. They blindfolded me to bring me here. I can’t really move around much. Can you sit up?”

  I levered my elbows under me to raise myself up. I only got so far before I collapsed back again. Something dripped down my neck, and I thought it might be blood. I could swear they’d hit me with a brick.

  “Try to sit up again, Remy.”

  I wondered how he knew I’d already attempted it once until I remembered he could probably make out my outline in the dark with his Protector eyesight. After a minute of pumping myself up, I tried and managed a crouching position.

  Half-dragging and half-scooting across the floor, I pulled myself toward the spot where I’d heard Asher’s voice. I bumped into something. His leg?

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  The concern in his voice almost made me fall apart. I cleared my throat to push the tears back.

  “My neck hurts from where they hit me, but otherwise I’m okay. What about you?”

  His chest moved under my fingers when I finally found him in the dark.

  “I’m fine. I wasn’t the one they were after. I was just the bait.”

  Well, that answered one of my questions. They knew I was a Healer at the very least. And if I knew Asher, he was beating himself up for getting used as bait. I ran my hands up his chest to his shoulders and then up his arms, which were stretched above his head. They had handcuffed his wrists to some kind of hook burrowed into the cold concrete wall. He had to feel cramped in that position.

  “Can you break those?” I asked.

  His muscles bunched as he pulled against the wall, but the cuffs didn’t give.

  “I’ve been trying for the last hour. No go. These aren’t normal cuffs. I could break those. These are made of a stronger metal.”

  “Don’t tell me. It’s Adamantium,” I said lightly.

  “Thousand points for the X-Men reference,” he said, some of the frustration easing from his tone as I’d meant it to. “I’d love you even more if you could feel your way around to see if there’s anything we could use to get free. I only saw the room a second before they closed the door.”

  I traced my way back to his face, his day’s growth of whiskers rasping against my skin. “Do you? Still love me, I mean?” I asked in a small voice.

  I felt like such a silly idiot for even asking at a time like this. But hey, if we were going to die, I wanted to know. He strained against his bonds as if he wanted to hold me. He couldn’t, so I wrapped my arms around him, laying my cheek against his heart.

  “Always,” he whispered, rubbing his jaw against my hair. “You?”

  “To infinity.” I’m sorry I doubted you.

  I tipped my head to drop a kiss on his lips. I missed in the dark and ended up kissing the tip of his nose. Immediately, I corrected my error and he strained his neck to meet me halfway. The kiss lasted only a second, but I felt all the wildly spinning pieces in me fall back into place. Everything clicked, and my world made sense again.

  My needy impulse in check, I got down to the business of escape.

  “Can you help me heal myself?” I asked. “I want to explore, but my brain feels like it’s doing a mad tango around my skull.”

  Without a word, he sent his energy into me and I grabbed hold of it, using it to close the open wound on my neck. It took longer than I liked to take care of the swelling. I hated concussions. A small throb remained when I backed away from Asher, but the pain had become manageable.

  “Thanks,” I said, rising to my feet.

  Using one hand to feel my way along the wall, I put the other out to avoid running into any objects. I remembered I’d had my mobile phone and patted my pockets. No luck. They’d taken it.

  “How did they find us, Asher?” I asked.

  “I’m not sure. I must’ve done something to give myself away.”

  I paused. “Wait. That makes no sense. If they used you as bait to get to me, then it had to be me who screwed up.” I thought about it a moment, before a lightbulb went off. “Yvette. I was at Yvette’s after a Protector killed her. They were watching her house. That has to be it.”

  “Who’s Yvette?”

  Asher had seen glimpses of what happened in my thoughts, but I’d never explained that night. As I walked the four corners of the room, I told him everything that had happened in the last few days, from the car accident and discovering Yvette to hurting Alcais.

  “Someone knows about your grandfather’s community,” Asher said when I finished. “I bet they killed Yvette to draw the rest of you out.”

  He didn’t bring up how I’d compared what those other Protectors had done to Yvette to what Asher had done to Elizabeth, and I was grateful. I didn’t want to rehash that now.

  “But why come after me?” I asked. “Why not go after the rest of the Healers?”

  “I don’t know, love. Maybe they’ve figured out that you’re different. Could one of the other Healers have betrayed you?”

  I balked at that. “No way. They would never work with the Protectors. You don’t know how scared they are. Nobody would dare break one of my grandfather’s sacred rules.”

  Asher didn’t argue. Instead, he asked, “Any luck finding a way out?”

  I guessed the room had to be eight feet by ten feet. At the door, I twisted the knob, but either it locked from the outside or our captors had something wedged against it. Either way, it didn’t budge.

  “I hate to tell you this, but we are trapped.”

  I slid down the wall until I sat beside h
im on the ground. I dropped my head on his shoulder.

  Asher sighed. “I guessed as much.”

  Neither of us said anything for a long moment. What was there to say? We’d covered this territory so many times. I had a good idea what the Protectors would do with me, so why go there and scare myself more? I wanted to climb into the denial boat and take a trip down the “let’s pretend everything’s okay” river. If I was going to die tonight, I didn’t want my last moments with Asher to be full of thoughts of the torture ahead of me. Unbidden, a few examples of what might be coming flickered through my mind.

  “Please, Remy,” Asher choked out.

  It hit me that I’d had my walls down, and he’d been hearing my unpleasant thoughts.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered.

  “You’re going to make it out of this. I swear it.”

  He sounded so sure, but I couldn’t see how that could be true. I didn’t want to argue, though. No, I wanted something else. If these guys were only after me, then most likely they’d let Asher go once they finished with me. That thought comforted me.

  “Asher, do something for me? I don’t want my dad to know what happened to me. Or Lucy.” He started to protest, his entire body jerking, but I kept going to get the words out. “Tell them I decided to live with my grandfather permanently. Tell them I ran away. Whatever you say, don’t tell them the truth about how I di—”

  “Don’t you dare say it,” Asher said fiercely. “You’re not going to die!”

  “Sh . . .”

  Finding his face in the dark, I shifted until I could kiss him. He surprised me by kissing me back with more raw emotion than I’d ever felt from him. I couldn’t read his thoughts, but I sensed his rage at his inability to save me mixing with grief and love. I touched his face, and my fingers brushed wet skin.