Sevyn watched, helplessly, as the side of the bridge flew closer, rushing towards them at a rate of speed that even she couldn't contend with. She did three things: clutched Neal's hand, closed her eyes, and prayed.
The crunch of metal, and the bangs and snaps of her favorite car crashing into concrete, invaded her ears. She and Neal were helplessly slung about as twisted metal punctured, stabbed, and pummeled them. Flying debris and glass aided in beating and battering them.
Although it was useless, she fought to shield her face behind the bend of her arm. A sharp jerk sent her head and elbow smashing into the side window. Her eyes flew open long enough to see that their momentum was substantial enough to keep the car moving. They were going over the side.
Every bit of her breath was sucked from her body when the car went airborne. They were freefalling into the dark waters that waited below, waving and urging them to drop faster.
Sevyn’s heart leapt into her throat as her chest heaved with an attempt to take a breath. Drago's one good eye stretched wide with fright. She squeezed Neal's hand, only to have him jerk it free from her grasp. Snapshots of Neal's actions showed him frantically trying to free himself from his seatbelt.
What is he doing? We are about to die.
Once out of his seatbelt, Neal jumped on top of her, straddling and hugging her tightly to him. She admired that he wanted to protect her, but they were free-falling off the side of a bridge in a deadly drop. Covering her with his body wasn't going to save her. If the impact of such a fall didn't kill them instantly, the water would finish them off. Neal place his mouth to her ear.
“I love you.”
Before she could render a reply, her breath was taken and her body was ripped apart. Although she sensed herself being torn apart, there was no pain and her mind continued to produce logical thoughts. Sevyn was dying and didn’t have a chance to tell Neal that she loved him back. She'd had many chances to tell him how she felt, but she'd let her stupid fear of a four letter word deter her. She thought about her brothers and her father and fond memories of time spent with her mother surfaced as well. At least her family would be okay.
Sound, smell, sight, touch and the bitter taste of blood in her mouth all came to her at once. She was rolling, with no control of her body. Pain registered, a sharp reminder that she may have been still alive as something hard dug into her flesh, scratching and scraping her with every turn.
Had she fallen free from the falling car?
She thankfully stopped rolling. Her face landed against something warm and moving. She raised her head, slowly, praying the accident had left her in one piece. The sight of Neal glancing down at her put a smile on her face.
Are we dead?
A quick glance of her surroundings suggested they were on the surface of the bridge. Sevyn lay atop Neal in shock; it took her a moment to piece the events together. Their winded breathing had them both heaving to get precious oxygen into their lungs.
When she was finally able to talk, her words rushed from her mouth. “You did this. You pulled us from the falling car with your ability. Neal, you lovely genius. I lo—”
Again, her words were interrupted but this time by the red dot on Neal's forehead. When she turned her head, about ten well-armed men had them surrounded. It took Sevyn a few seconds to assess the men.
Their gear and precise tactical movements implied they were well-trained and possibly from some paramilitary group. If the monsters had taken to using well-trained combat types, her mission to find her mother's killer had just gotten more complex.
One asked, “Where is Drago?”
She couldn't contain her hate for that particular monster.
“He’s dead. I had his body burned.”
The man smirked at her.
“No, we picked up his body just in time. Don't worry; we didn't kill your friend. Despite what you may think, we're not all monsters.”
It sounded like the man was trying to convince himself more than her.
“Drago’s head was in the car. I hope the impact smashed it to oblivion.”
The gun wielder laughed this time.
“Darling, your car is floating. Drago is going to be all right. Bastard's got nine lives.”
Before she could get a word out, her horror was confirmed.
The radio chatter announced, “We found his head. He's missing an eye, but he's going to be all right once we get him reconnected.”
The man who did all of the talking glared at Sevyn.
“You better be glad we saved him. If you had killed Linkin's last brother, there is no telling what he'd do to you. You have likely started a war. You better pray that we’re not already too late.”
So, his name is Linkin and Drago is his brother.
Sevyn had no idea what the man was talking about where it concerned starting wars, but she didn’t take too kindly to threats, especially from humans who worked for monsters. She was as angry as a bed of disturbed fire ants because Drago was still alive. She sneered at the man.
“You better be glad you're human, otherwise I'd find a way to kill you.”
He didn't comment, but he did have a curious look on his face.
“How did you two get out of that car? I saw you both inside before it went tumbling off the side of the bridge.”
She didn't answer. She rested her head against Neal's strong chest. He'd been quiet the entire time; and if she knew him as well as she thought, he was trying to find a way out of this mess.
She was jerked up by two men and detained, at gunpoint, by two more.
What did these people think she was—a terrorist?
They handled Neal in much the same manner. Sevyn considered speeding away, but these guys had planned their setup well. There wasn’t anywhere she could run that would lead her off the bridge, except for over the side. And, there was no way she was leaving without Neal.
She imagined she and Neal appeared to be the bad guys being apprehended by the authorities. People sat in their cars and gawked, but none interfered as she and Neal were carted away.
Chapter 24
Dungeon
Neal had no idea where they were being taken. He'd considered morphing, but he wasn't going anywhere without Dana. They were chained up like dogs in the back of an old white van. The van, with its dark tinted windows, reminded him of one that rapist and kidnappers favored back in the day.
Their captors had been smart in not seating him within reach of Dana. He planned on breaking them out of the van, but he would have to have a physical hold of Dana to take her with him. Back on the bridge, he had no idea if his plan was going to work when he couldn’t stop her car from tumbling over the side.
He had never even thought it possible to take another person into a morph with him, but he had been desperate. The idea of Dana crashing to her death had been unfathomable, and he'd been willing to try anything to save her.
When the momentum of whatever propelled him through space sent him and her tumbling back to the top of the bridge, he realized he’d discovered a new twist to an ability he’d once cast off as a hallucination. Being around Sevyn had him embracing and discovering himself, despite the many years missing from his mind.
Now, he was anchored to the metal paneling in the back of a hulled out van. A black sack was thrown over his head, like the tint in the windows wasn't enough. Wherever they were being taken, it was a secret their captors intended to keep.
He wanted to morph next to Dana, so he could get them out of the van; but his ability had been stalled when they covered his head. If he couldn't see nor had an accurate picture of where he was going, he was reluctant to use his ability.
Although he didn’t have it down to a science, he knew enough to know that he could leap into Dana's body, or a part of her body, and kill her. He wasn’t willing to take the chance, so he sat in place, blind and filled with anxious energy.
The sound of yelling and rumbling indicated to Neal that Sevyn wasn’t making the men's task of restra
ining her to the van easy. The moment the struggling stopped; a small prick was the last thing Neal felt. They were being drugged, so he wasn't even going to get the chance to guess where they were being taken.
****
Dana grunted. She and Neal had a day from hell and it kept getting better. She stared around, wondering where they’d been taken. From the looks of things, she was inside a prison cell, lying atop a bunk with a mattress as hard as cement. The walls were insane-asylum-white with a dingy cement ceiling. A lopsided bulb sat within a socket that had spilled from its housing.
The faint sound of someone moaning drew her attention.
“Neal?”
He yelped in pain before returning her call.
“Dana-Sevyn?”
He’d been calling her that more often. After meeting Sevyn, he seemed unsure of what to call her. Although she believed she was one person with a codename, he insisted that Dana and Sevyn were two different people. When she asked him which he liked best, he claimed he couldn’t decide.
Dana was hesitant to take in the rest of her accommodations. She called back to Neal.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah. Got a headache from hell, but I’m okay. What about you?”
Dana scanned the rest of her surroundings before answering.
“Yeah, I’m great. It seems I've landed us in a damn dungeon.”
Her head ached like it had been ripped apart and pieced together by a bunch of kindergarteners. She forced herself to sit up. The chamber she was confined in appeared to be straight from the show Game of Thrones.
The entire front wall was thickly rusted iron bars and concrete. Dana heaved her aching body towards the bars and peered through the cracks. There was nothing but cement walls that created an eerily deserted hallway that led to two large iron doors. Neal’s low murmurs found her ears.
“Neal, are you sure you're okay?”
“Yeah, I’m trying, but I can't use my ability. Otherwise, I would have gotten us out of here by now.”
She attempted to use her speed, but nothing happened.
“I think they have blocked us, somehow. I think this place has been ability-proofed, so that we won’t have a way to strike back at them. It probably means that they know what we can do and likely have gifts of their own.”
“I used to think that I was crazy Dana-Sevyn. That my ability was a part of a psychotic break or some type of hallucination. Now that I know I’m not crazy, and would like nothing more than to use my gift, we are stuck in a building that restricts it. Go figure.”
Their low chuckles bounced off the solid walls despite their situation.
Dana was thankful that she and Neal hadn’t been separated. Although she couldn't see him, knowing he was next to her relieved some of her stress. She smiled, remembering the admission he'd made to her when he thought they were freefalling to their deaths.
“I love you.”
****
Dana didn't realize she'd fallen asleep, until the clink of the lock opening her whining door woke her. She and Neal had been right about their abilities being muted. She couldn’t use speed to get the upper hand on the approaching men.
As a matter-of-fact, she rose with a sluggish motion and her body ached down to the bones. Whatever they had been injected with kept her drained of energy. Since she couldn’t fight, she kicked uselessly, screamed, and acted like a fool as two men picked her up and carted her away.
“Put me down, you monster lovers. You’re committing acts of terror against humankind by siding with flesh-eating, blood-drinking monsters. Put! Me! Down!”
She and Neal were carried through a dimly lit maze of halls and sparsely furnished rooms. Although June had brought warm weather, the inside of this place was freezing.
Darkness seemed to covet this place, shielding it from being fully viewed or explored. Every once in a while, Dana noticed the flicker of a candle. Everything that gave off light was turned to the lowest possible setting.
Behind her, Dana heard Neal's feet scrapping against the hard stone floor. Neal was the civilized one while she continued to yell and curse. She intended to resist all the way to...
“Where in the hell are you taking us?” she shouted.
They stopped. The humans turned her and Neal over to the monsters. These were not like the ones she’d encountered previously. These were unnaturally pale and garnered a certain level of sophistication that was surprising to see.
As she struggled, Dana never stopped assessing her surroundings. Slowing their captors down was exactly what she intended to do, so she could see more and, hopefully, spot a way to escape this dark labyrinth.
They were in some type of mansion; no, lair was a better word for it. From what she could tell, almost everything was made of stone. She observed people milling about in the background ignoring the commotion she was making.
Did the men of this place carry around women kicking and screaming all the time?
During her struggle, Dana lost her wig.
Good, she thought.
Upon noticing that it had tumbled from her head, she caught a glimpse of it on the floor before the darkness swallowed it. She never stopped struggling, yet she started taking pins from her hair. Having her hair down couldn’t make her and Neal's situation any worse than it was, so she prayed it would at least distract these dungeon guards.
Neal must have seen what she was doing. His eyes met hers when she wiggled her way from one of the pale hands that carried her. Her partial freedom lasted only a few seconds, but it was seconds she used to pluck free pins and attempt to see where the hell they were being taken.
As they descended stairs, the darkness grew thicker. Dana's hair was nearly loose. She wondered if she were being taken to the man in charge, the one she'd been chasing for years. Each time Linkin crossed her mind, her blood started to boil.
She snatched her hand away from one of her captors and managed to kick the other in the face when he dropped her feet. She spun her body, which jerked her other arm free. Both of the pale-faced creatures were so stunned, they took a full second trying to grasp her actions.
A little of her speed had returned. She kicked one of the men in the forehead and spun quickly to kick his friend in the center of his chest. She had broken loose, and she planned to take advantage of her freedom. She sent her foot crashing into a nearby table made of what appeared to be glass. The table shattered into thick clattering shards.
Her actions caused Neal to execute his own uproar as he broke free of his men.
Not wasting a millisecond, she grabbed a piece of glass in each of her hands. One of the thick shards was as long as her forearm and about an inch thick. She didn’t know if it was shock or her hair that stunned the man, but it gave her a chance to send the largest shard of glass harpooning into one the guard's pale heads.
She didn’t wait around to see if the head shot dropped him. She sent the next piece sailing towards the other's chest. Her adrenaline—or whatever propelled her speed—returned, and she now moved at full throttle.
The next thing she knew, her hand broke through his body. Determined and focused, she'd shoved the shard so deep and hard it had punched clean through his body and came out the back. Although the glass had made it through, her hand hadn’t. Flexing her hand while it remained inside the man, she realized she’d jammed it against bone. The realization of her action didn't shock her as much as realizing she’d stopped herself from pulling her hand free of his body.
She'd missed his heart in her hurried attempt to inflict damage, but adjusted her hand so she could search for it. Finding her mark, she stood there, literally palming the man's heart. She didn’t understand, nor could she recall what propelled her to reach for his heart. Her brain seemed wired to know exactly where to go to take the monster's heart. The monster was too stunned or too afraid to move.
The thump of his heart as it pulsed inside her hand was the last thing she felt before she lost traction and went flying into space.
> Chapter 25
Truths be Told
Dana was airborne. And, at the rate she hurtled through the air, she was likely about to crash into one of those stone walls. She was fast, but not fast enough to stop a midair toss by a monster strong enough to throw a human. Someone, or something, had gotten a hold of her and tossed her.
She sensed the wall closing in on her head. She braced herself for a major concussion, or a possible skull fracture.
Puff…Swish…was the sound that whisked into her ear. Her body was snatched in a different direction. Someone incredibly fast had kept her from slamming into the wall, headfirst. The scent was familiar. The sensation of him was familiar. There was only one person who had the ability to make her feel warm and secure. She was in Neal’s arms, and had no idea how she’d gotten there.
Swish…Puff. They stopped so suddenly, Dana’s first order of business was to acquaint her feet with the floor again. A quick glance at Neal, standing before her, almost made her smile, until she noticed the distressed look on his face. His eyes were locked on her hand.
Dana hadn't noticed that something was moving inside her hand until she'd seen Neal's surprised gaze. Her mouth dropped at the sight of a bleeding, quivering heart as it sat in her cupped palm, pulsing with life.
Blood drizzled down her arm as she fought to put order to all that had recently happened.
The moment she realized she was palming the thing’s heart, her intent was to jerk it from his chest. At the moment she attempted to jerk the monster’s heart out, another monster—likely his friend—slung her in an attempt to save his buddy. The force at which she was tossed must have helped her snatch the heart. When Neal saved her from crashing into the wall, the detached heart was transported with them.
Dana raised the heart level with her eyes, not believing what she saw. A soft pop made her jump. The heart literally exploded in her hand, splattering her and Neal with blood. She didn't have time to analyze the details of the exploding heart as thoroughly as she would have liked.
Sevyn: Adult Paranormal Romance (BWWM Romance) (Supernatural Thriller) (The Smoke & Fire Series Book 4) Page 13