by Jillian Neal
As soon as the front door shut, Rainer pounced on Fergus. “Why the hell was this in your pocket, Fergus?” he spat furiously as he backed Fergus up to a wall in the entryway. He scowled at him hatefully, then jerked the article away from Emily, and tore it into tiny shreds. He dropped the paper shrapnel on the floor, much to Fergus‘s chagrin.
“No! Why did you do that?” he whimpered stupidly. In an infuriated huff, Rainer drew his fist back, but Logan caught it.
“Whoa, there, let’s hear him out before you make him unable to speak.”
“Well, you know,” Fergus chirped annoyingly. “We can’t all be dating a girl like Emily Haydenshire. Some of us are left to our imaginations.”
Rainer thought he was going to scream. Rage seared through his veins. All he could see was the red haze of infuriated energy as it rolled off of him in waves. It rang in his ears as his teeth were clenched so tightly it was painful.
Logan shook his head. “My God, Fergus, you cannot be this stupid. Rainer’s going to beat the shit out of you, man, and I’m not gonna stop him. I’m probably going to help him.”
“If I ever, ever find out that Emily has been on your sick, perverted little mind Fergus, I’ll fix it so that if you ever manage to get a girlfriend, she’ll be vastly more masculine than you!” Rainer bellowed furiously. “You got that?”
Fergus looked stunned. “Yeah, man, but what is wrong with you? I thought you’d be happy. I set up all the other rooms in the house as, you know, love caves. You and Emily can have first choice.”
Rainer was momentarily too disgusted to speak. “Ok,” he finally was able to draw a full breath. “We’re leaving.” he released Fergus, and grasped Emily’s hand. He desperately needed to feel her calm, but she was most definitely not calm. She was just as furious as he was.
“You can’t leave!” Fergus looked crestfallen. “I told everyone you and Logan were coming. I even invited Samantha for you.”
As if in some sort of Hollywood-scripted nightmare scene, at that moment Samantha Peterson and two of her cronies from Adminis sauntered up to Rainer. “Hey, Rainer...” she cooed and batted her eyelashes. “I was really hoping you were coming.”
Emily was livid. “Seriously?” she shoved Samantha to the side, and threw her left hand in her face. The large diamond gleamed right under Samantha’s nose.
“Whatever,” Samantha sniped haughtily, and then drawled something about standards, as she and her friends stalked away.
“Fergus!” Rainer shouted. “I’m not dating Samantha. I’m engaged to Emily. I didn’t even know Samantha existed, until some idiotic tabloid printed her picture!”
Fergus nodded, while Samantha looked highly put out. Emily grinned derisively at Samantha’s shocked scowl.
“Yeah, but I mean, you’re Rainer Lawson,” Fergus emphasized his name. “I mean, think about it, Samantha, Emily, it doesn’t have to be one or the other.”
Rainer had never wanted to choke someone so badly in his entire life. Logan pulled him off of Fergus forcefully.
“Ok, you need to stop talking,” Logan demanded of Fergus. “And you need a beer,” he shoved Rainer into the kitchen and withdrew a bottle from a tub. He chilled it quickly and then popped the top for Rainer.
“I’m going to kill him!” Rainer spat hatefully.
“Yeah, Rainer, listen to me for a sec.” Logan glanced around to make certain no one else could hear him. “I think somebody gave Fergus something. He doesn’t normally say shit like that. I know he’s an idiot, but this is extreme, even for him.”
As Rainer calmed slightly and heeded Logan’s warning, he agreed that Fergus had certainly never been so crude in all the years they’d known him. Fergus had always admired Rainer, seen him as an overblown hero, though Rainer had never wanted his admiration.
Rainer and Logan began to carefully study the area around them. There was a bartender neither Logan nor Rainer had ever seen before, mixing drinks in the dining room.
Emily and Adeline appeared in the kitchen, with Fergus on their heels. They were both scowling. Emily looked ready to commit murder.
Fergus was carrying two large, red, plastic throwaway cups. He was trying to get the girls to drink them.
“I do not want whatever is in that, Fergus!” Emily spat and rolled her eyes hatefully.
“He put something in there. I saw him!” Adeline rushed to Logan; she looked terrified.
“What the hell did you put in her drink, Fergus?” Logan growled ominously, and bore down over Fergus as his biceps flexed of their own accord.
Illegal substances or anything that might put a woman at a disadvantage was obviously something that Rainer and Logan found repulsive. After everything that had happened to Adeline, Rainer had never seen Logan react so furiously.
There were many enhancements that could be made when Gifted people used their powers on illegal substances. Most of them were created using heat, meaning that altering the energy could make them more potent and more deadly.
A student with a Predilect from Occamy, with too much time on their hands and a lack of conscience, could be an extraordinarily bad thing.
“Hey, it’s legal. It’ll just help ‘em relax a little. You know keep ‘em going for a while,” Fergus drawled reassuringly. Rainer grabbed the cups from Fergus‘s hands and tossed them in the sink.
“Give it to me. Right now!”
Fergus huffed and then dropped a brown glass bottle, which he’d pulled from his shirt pocket, into Rainer’s hand.
“Where’d you get this?”
“From this guy I met on the boardwalk a few days ago, and it really works. I mean I feel like a million bucks. Seriously, I bet if I had a girlfriend, I could go all night!” he boasted as Rainer shuddered in disgust. “But it’s totally legal. I swear. Look at it; you can buy it at gas stations.”
“I don’t give a shit where you can buy it, you stupid prick,” Logan fumed. “You do not ever, ever put anything in my girlfriend’s or my sister’s drink. Do you understand what I’m saying to you?”
“All right, geez, I should’ve put it in your drinks.” Fergus gestured to Rainer and then to Logan. “You two are so uptight tonight,” he huffed and then he sealed his own fate. “You can’t tell me you wouldn’t have a lot more fun if she was a little more wild and exciting. You know, willing to experiment a little.” he gestured to Adeline, who was crying.
Logan sank his fist into Fergus’s stomach with a tremendous amount of force. Air exited from Fergus‘s mouth in a hissed burst as he stumbled backwards and doubled over.
Rainer grimaced, shocked by the sheer amount of power Logan had thrown in his punch, as Emily’s mouth fell open.
As he drew a deep breath, Rainer studied the small brown bottle. The label stated that the substance was ‘all natural’, an herbal remedy, to help make things last a little longer and add to her pleasure.
“If this was legal, Fergus, why would some guy be selling it on the boardwalk?”
Fergus hadn’t yet regained the ability to breathe and couldn’t answer Rainer’s infuriated question.
“Answer him!” Logan spat.
Fergus nodded and was clearly heart-broken that Logan had hit him, not that anyone could blame him.
“He said he was a distributor for the company,” Fergus wheezed and tried not to cry.
“Like I said, it works great. I’ve been using it for days,” Fergus confessed as he reached back for the bottle that Rainer jerked away from him.
“Fergus,” Emily softened immediately. “That stuff that they sell at gas stations doesn’t really work. The guy was probably Gifted and altered it somehow. You’re acting really crazy. You need to stop taking that. You said some awful things, Fergus!” she shook her head in disbelief. “You really hurt her feelings.”
She gestured to Adeline, who still had tears streaming steadily from her eyes. Emily’s chin trembled. She was a Receiver and if someone she cared deeply about was hurting or sad, it affected her almost as much. Logan was
trying to soothe Adeline, but she seemed inconsolable.
A sudden thought plagued Rainer. “What’d this guy look like?”
“Cool, ripped, tattoos; the whole bit,” he smiled at the memory.
“What kind of tattoos?”
“I don’t know, but he had a bunch of them,” Fergus informed him, with a deeply impressed look in his eye.
“How much did you pay for that?” Logan asked. He was still furious over what Fergus had said about Adeline.
Fergus hedged, “Well, he gave me two bottles for a discount.” Rainer and Logan shared an ominous glance.
“How much of a discount, Ferg?” Rainer quizzed as his temper quelled slightly.
“They were originally $250 a piece, but he gave me both for $400,” he explained, and for the first time sounded a little less certain of himself.
“Four hundred dollars?” Logan demanded.
Fergus rolled his eyes. “No, four hundred yen. Of course dollars. Hello, this is America!” he drawled then laughed at his own joke.
“Fergus, I would offer to give you the money back after I do this, but at this point I think this needs to be a lesson for you. Give me the other bottle,” Rainer demanded.
“Why?” Fergus narrowed his eyes suspiciously.
“Because I’m your friend, Fergus, despite all of the shit you’ve dished up tonight, and I said to.”
Fergus looked uncertain, but then pulled the other bottle from his shirt pocket and gave it to Rainer.
“I’m sorry, Fergus, but this is for your own good,” he braced, and then melted the bottles in his hand until they were too hot to hold. He dropped them to the kitchen floor and watched them shatter.
“No!” Fergus fell to the floor sorrowfully.
“Fergus, that stuff isn’t legal. Do you see that?” Rainer demanded and pointed to the bubbling, chalky yellow substance that was evaporating on the floor under Rainer’s cast.
“That’s altered Ecstasy!” He wondered what on earth Fergus had gotten them all into.
“Fergus, if I called Garrett, he could come arrest you,” Emily willed Fergus to understand what they were trying to tell him.
Ecstasy in the form used by Non-Gifted people was bad enough. When the substance was altered by a Gifted individual, and turned into another form, it was even more potent; potent enough that there were men in Coriolis who had committed heinous crimes under its power.
Rainer suspected that what Fergus had stumbled into was something else entirely, a drug to make a nervous guy relax, and then raise his testosterone levels to all new heights. The hormone burst would make his arousal levels take over his entire brain. He was unable to think of anything else. It hadn’t made him angry or forceful, just unbelievably horny.
“I want to leave, now,” Adeline whispered.
It was the first demand either Rainer or Emily had ever heard her utter. Judging from the look on Logan’s face, it was the first he’d heard as well.
Rainer didn’t know what to do. He was afraid to leave Fergus in his drugged state. He was also certainly not in the habit of telling a woman who had ridden in his car somewhere that she couldn’t leave when that was what she clearly wanted.
Fergus had curled up in a ball on the kitchen floor, to lament the loss of his favorite new substance.
“Fergus,” Rainer jerked him up off the floor. “Get a hold of yourself. That stuff is dangerous, and you know better!” he huffed, and felt like he was talking to a twelve-year-old, not a twenty-year-old.
“I cannot believe you put that in their drinks!” Logan was still furious.
“I didn’t know it was that. I was just trying to give you guys a good time. I mean, I have the whole house set up for it,” he drawled despondently.
“Stop saying that!” Rainer demanded. “That’s sick and ugh....” He was unable to think of a word bad enough for what Fergus wanted people to participate in at his party.
“But the press is here, and you’re here. She’s here, and it would’ve been so perfect. If I could tell people that Rainer and Emily got it on here, I’d have the coolest house in Virginia Beach.”
Emily convulsed as Rainer willed himself not to strangle Fergus.
“He’s not himself,” he stated repeatedly, in effort not to kill his friend. Adeline looked horrified as she clung to Logan.
“Please, Logan,” she begged. “I don’t like this. I want to go.” Rainer handed Logan the keys.
“Take her back to your parents’. I’ll call a cab.”
“Rainer, that’ll be hundreds of dollars from out here,” Logan reminded him, though it didn’t seem he had any other ideas either.
“I know, but I can’t leave him like this. Take Em, too. I don’t want her around to hear what other repulsive things might come out of his mouth.”
Emily shook her head defiantly. “I’m not leaving here without you, with the entire press junket of the greater Virginia Beach area out there and Samantha Peterson in here!”
“Emily, come on! This is sick, and who the hell knows how many people’s drinks he added that shit to. This isn’t safe. Go home with Logan. I’ll get a cab once he’s crashed.” He shook his head. He was unable to believe everything that had happened.
“No!”
Rainer ground his teeth. “Fine,then you stay right beside me all night.”
“Fine,” she crossed her arms over her chest defiantly.
“Take her on,” Rainer urged as Adeline looked more and more terrified with each passing moment.
“I’ll take Adeline to the beach house, and you call whenever he’s himself again,” Logan shook his head in disgust. “Then I’ll come pick you up.”
Rainer nodded as he watched relief etch Adeline’s delicate features.
“Come on, baby,” Logan soothed as he clutched Rainer’s keys, and guided Adeline out the door.
Rainer heard the press start their chanting when Logan opened the door, but they stopped short upon seeing that it wasn’t Emily and Rainer.
The Agony of the Ecstasy
~Logan Haydenshire~
Logan rushed Adeline to the Mustang. He felt terrible for Rainer, after the press finally parted so that they could get through.
“I cannot believe this!” he said as he unlocked the passenger side door, and closed it after Adeline was seated.
She looked distraught. He whispered a quick prayer as he scooted to the driver side door. He was too enraged to even enjoy driving the Mustang, which was one of his favorite things to do.
“Adeline, I’m so sorry.” he pled as soon as he’d started the engine and engaged the clutch.
She didn’t respond; he glanced over at her as he backed away from the curb.
The press became interested suddenly and began snapping photos of him driving Rainer’s car. He rolled his eyes as he peeled away from the house.
“Ad, please, come on...talk to me, baby.”
“I’m sorry I made you leave.” Tears began falling down her sweet face once again. He reached and patted her leg. He wished he were in the Accord so he could hold her hand, but he had to shift.
“Baby, it’s fine. I’m glad you actually asked for something you wanted. I would’ve left sooner. I just didn’t know exactly what to do.”
She nodded. Her breath stuttered due to her tears. His heart broke every time she cried. It physically wounded him to watch her be hurt again. He’d love nothing more than to strangle her mother, and he was the first person in line to beat the seven shades out of anyone that hurt a woman.
“I just don’t like that. It scares me, really scares me.”
He rubbed her leg in between every shift.
“I know, and it should. Please believe me; I would never have thought Fergus, of all people, would’ve gotten into that, and I sure as hell would never have brought you out here tonight if I’d had any idea.” He was unable to sit there and let her cry without him even being able to hold her. Logan needed desperately to do something to fix this. He cupped his hand and har
nessed the energy of the motor, then summoned more energy from the air around him. After adding in a cooling cast, he floored the Mustang.
The streets were much less crowded, but he had to slow it down once they’d reached the highway.
“I love you so much, Adeline, and I’m so sorry I made you go tonight.”
She shook her head combatively.
“It’s not your fault, and Fergus needed you.”
After what seemed like an eternity, he pulled up to his parents’ beach house. He leapt from the car and moved to her instantly.
“Come here, honey.” He guided her towards the house.
Once inside, he sank onto the sofa and pulled her into his arms.
“Don’t call me honey!” she spat suddenly. Fury rang in her tone, which thoroughly dumbfounded him.
“Uh,” he gasped. He’d rarely ever heard her raise her voice. “I’m so sorry; I won’t ever say that again.”
She shook her head spastically, and then broke down in his lap and began sobbing hysterically in his arms. She couldn’t catch her breath.
“Adeline,” he soothed. “Shh, it’s ok. I’m right here. I’ve got you.” He still wasn’t convinced that he wasn’t why she was crying.
“That’s what they all called her,” she fumed furiously and convulsed through her tears. He nodded, concentrated, and tried to discern what she was saying.
“Honey, or sugar, or ugh...!” She lost it again, and he suddenly understood his mistake.
“I’m sorry...sweetheart?” he offered hopefully. “I know I usually call you ‘baby,’ because I want to take care of you so badly, but sometimes my dad calls my mom, ‘honey,’ and I guess that just came out. I’ll never say that again, ok?”
He’d never wished for his mother so badly in all his life. He didn’t know what to say to her, how to make her better, how to make her whole. She calmed slightly and moved her head off of his lap and onto his chest. He clung to her and willed calmness into her. He cradled her as he pushed his protective shield from his pores and spun it around her. His shield was always full of his protective and all-encompassing love for Adeline.