Crap.
“A strange young man in your bedroom, huh?”
“About that…”
Jenna held up her hand, and my heart sank. I knew what that gesture meant. My mom used to do it anytime she was at wit’s end with me. “I was a teenager once, too. And you’re almost eighteen. What you choose to do with your life is solely up to you.”
Oh yeah? Tell that to the jackass living next door…
“But it would still be irresponsible of me not to worry,” she added. “I know things haven’t been easy with your folks, and no one could blame you for wanting to act out a little—”
“That is not at all what it was,” I said, cringing at the very idea. “Trust me.”
She sighed, noting my evident disgust. “Who’s the boy?”
I followed her gaze down at the old beater truck rumbling down the street. “Ah…” Reese and I had never talked about what ‘this’ was between us, never put a label on it, so I called it the best I could. “He’s my best friend.”
***
Lazily stretching my arms above my head, I awoke from what I was sure to be a full night’s rest. Instead, I found bright blue letters glaring back at me, saying “10:09 p.m.” I’d only been asleep for a few hours. Rolling over, I nestled back into the pillows when lightning flashed through the edges of the window shades, followed up by a thunderous roar that rattled even my bed. No way was I going to be falling back asleep anytime soon with that racket outside. That figured. I’d been running on fumes the past few days. All I wanted was a decent night’s rest, and I at last got to sleep in a bedroom where Blaine wasn’t ten feet away. I knew that much, because that familiar heat in my chest was notably absent. He wasn’t home, at least for now. So of course, this had to be the night that the weather wanted to rival the freaking thunderstorm from Frankenstein.
So long, sleep…
I fished around my nightstand for my phone and shot Reese a quick text. “Where R U?”
“Heading back now. Be at your place as soon as I check into a motel. About 1 hr. Your aunt home?” he messaged back a moment later.
“She’s working a shift at the bar. House is empty.”
“Good :)”
I didn’t want to think about what that meant. After yesterday, I couldn’t bring myself to try anything…physical, again. Not till I got a better hold on my so-called ‘power.’
My eyelids sank shut, but a moment later, a voice suddenly cried out in the distance. I sprang awake, finding myself standing upright and…out in the freezing cold.
Broken branches cracked under my feet as I crept through a thicket of trees. Batting my way out into the open, I found myself standing at the edge of a forest with a massive field sprawling out in front of me underneath a dusk ridden sky. Iron posts were stationed across the border of the tree line with an electrical lantern hanging from the top of each pole. Strange cackling echoed behind me in the distance from what I prayed was only an animal, a very small, non-lethal animal.
“Hello?”
Dead leaves swirled about my ankles as I trudged further out into the grassy field. I could only faintly make out a few large, dark objects up ahead. A lump formed in my throat, encouraging me to turn back around. I hadn’t the slightest idea where I even was, but standing out in the open seemed just as risky as returning to the unknown of the forest. I started to turn back around when an ear aching boom erupted from the boundary line. A sharp whistle rang through the air before a devastating bang hammered into the ground in front of me, the terrain vibrating from the impact.
A scream lodged in my throat as I whirled back around, running further out into the field. I felt like a rat trying to scurry away. I didn’t know where I was going, what I was actually running from, or how the hell I even got here, but I continued to run until the dark objects up ahead came into plain sight. Cannons. Suddenly, blasts ignited in front of me as well, seemingly coming from the unmanned artillery.
Pattering triggers and a volley of gunfire accompanied the detonation, and I dropped to the ground as the shots whizzed right by my ears. I draped my hands over my head, as if that would actually help. The earth continued to shudder as thunderous roars hailed across the field. I managed to sneak a glance up from my trembling fingers, seeing nobody in sight. Bemusedly looking about, I saw the grass was completely undisturbed, despite hearing and feeling the impacts beside me. What the hell?
“Kat!” The voice barely managed to carry above the hysterics.
I stole a look over my shoulder, forcing me to stand. Long pale blonde hair whipped about in the aggressive wind, beating the woman’s face. I outright stumbled back, tripping over my own feet until I fell flat on my ass. It… It was me. Or at least my mirrored image. This imposter made her way out from the forest, not seeming to take the gunfire into account as she walked unreservedly towards me in plain sight. Every last detail from her nose to the curve of her lips was an exact rendering of me. She wore a long purple gown, the ends of the skirts muddied and tattered as if she’d been running through the forest for hours on end. I remained frozen, unsure of where to go.
“I’m not here to hurt you,” she called out.
Like Hell she wasn’t! Scrambling back up to my feet, I tried to run further when flames manifested in front of me. Shrieking back, I fell to the ground as the heat from the inferno rushed out at me.
“Listen to me, you must listen,” my creepy clone insisted, her voice frighteningly closer.
“Stay away from me!” I screamed, turning around to see her no more than ten feet away.
She stayed where she was, her opened palms extended up and out towards me, as if to signal good intentions. I cowered back on instinct, feeling the warmth of the flames breathing up my spine.
“I need to warn you,” she pleaded over the gunfire. “You’re in danger.”
“No shit, Sherlock!”
She shook her head. “No, this isn’t happening. This battle, it’s from the past.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“The past, it’s linked with the present. What’s happening to you now has happened before,” she insisted over the riotous clamor of cannon fire.
I whirled around, looking at the field again. “The vision,” I muttered. “This is where I die.”
“Yes, and that’s why I have to warn you!”
An explosion detonated not three feet away, the invisible force knocking both of us back from the other.
“He’s going to kill you!” she bellowed.
“What?”
Artillery fired and blasted and rocked the earth, drowning out the woman’s words. “…going to kill you! I’ve seen it.”
“Who?” I demanded. Blaine? Raelynd?
The world abruptly fell silent. Still. As if someone had thrown a blanket over us, the sky darkened so suddenly to the point that my doppelganger became barely visible.
“You need to wake up, now!” She sprang forward, her hands slamming into my shoulders.
Rocketing backward, I expected to hit the grass, but instead, I fell into a mass of sheets and pillows as a searing pain hit my arm. My omen rune.
“Shit, grab her!” barked a gruff voice.
My eyes flung open as I sprang up from my mattress, seeing two brawny men standing over me at the end of my bed. Screaming, I rolled sideways and scuttled out from under my sheets, hitting the hardwood floor. My bare foot thrust into one of the men’s shins as I grabbed the baseball bat out from under my bed, jamming the end cap up, right in his groin. He dropped to the floor with a howl, and the other attacker rounded the bed to my side.
I quickly climbed to my feet and gripped the bat, swinging all-out at him. He threw his left arm up, and it took the full impact. Barking out a painful cuss, he didn’t relent as I failed to draw the bat back up in time for another swing. He rammed his full weight into me, slamming me into the wall. My whole body stung and my diaphragm contracted, forcing all the air out of my lungs. The man gripped both my arms and tossed m
e down onto the floor. I tried climbing back up to my feet, but I couldn’t breathe and my legs buckled out from under me.
“Goddamn it!” The other assailant groaned, still holding his groin.
“Seems like this one’s got some fight in her,” laughed the man standing over me as he pulled out a syringe from his jacket.
I lamely swatted my arm at him as he approached with the needle primed and aimed at me.
“Okay, now you’re just embarrassing yourself.” The man snickered at my pitiful attempt and batted my hand away. He pushed me back onto the floor and laid over me, pinning down my legs and wrestling my arms away as my cell phone rang from the top of my nightstand.
“Stop!” I croaked, feeling the tip of the needle press into the side of my neck. A riotous hum vibrated in my ears, and every nerve in my body sparked to life as a rune ignited. My hands flexed outward, and the man laying over me suddenly catapulted across the room before hitting the wall on the far side.
With lungs heaving angrily with restored air, I rose to my feet with a ferocious surge pumping through my veins.
“Shit!” The guy on the ground looked up at me, eyes as wide as saucers. His shoes squeaked against the hardwood as he hurried back towards the doorway.
The energy brewing inside me burned through my fingers as I gripped my fists closed, ready to watch him hurl out into the corridor, clean off his feet. Only, my legs gave out on me. Confused, I collapsed to the floor, finding my limbs unwilling to cooperate with me. I couldn’t move! It was then that I acknowledged the soft pain in my neck. The syringe. It hadn’t just pierced my skin. It had been administered. Darkness immediately began clouding my vision.
I had to keep fighting it.
“Awww, what’s the matter, Blood Whore?” The man I’d tossed across the room limped over to me with a winded laugh. “You expecting your evil prince to come and rescue you?”
He leveled a swift kick to my stomach, sending stars to explode in my vision. All I could do was wheeze as the air was ripped from my body. I couldn’t even scream.
The man leaned over me, only laughing harder. “Well, well, well. Seems the bitch can feel pain, after all. That’ll only make this more fun.”
My phone continued to sound off, the vibration eventually rolling it off the stand onto the floor. It lay just a couple feet away, close enough that I could see Blaine’s name on the caller screen. I willed my body to move, thrashing my arms and legs any which way, but they weren’t obeying, not budging an inch. The only thing I could muster was a pathetic whimper. A muffled whisper resonated deep in my mind, but for the life of me, I couldn’t make out the words. Not with the heaviness clouding my mind, dragging my eyes shut.
“How long will that knock her out for?” asked the other attacker.
“About a half hour.”
“Reynolds is still at least a few hours out. What do we do in the meantime? Dose her again?”
“Nah, we don’t know how much her body can handle. Nathan wants her alive, at least until he can get some answers out of her.”
“So what, then?”
The man above me snickered, his arms reaching down to grab a hold of me. “Oh, I have an idea...”
I never heard what that idea was exactly, but I didn’t really need to. My conscious slowly slipped back into reality, my body sore and sluggish. What felt like cement lay beneath my fingers, a solid slab from what I could feel out in the darkness. And I quickly realized I didn’t have a lot of room. Lying flat, my elbows could barely move a couple inches to the sides, and my feet found the same resistance as I tried to flex my toes down.
The space was too warm. Every breath I took seemed to ricochet back onto my face. I raised my hands, only for my palms to press flat against another cement slab not half a foot above me. Panic tore through me in an instant, my hands desperately pushing against every surface without give.
Pale blue light poured into the limited space, confirming my worst fears. I was in a…tomb. Not a coffin or a wooden box you hear of people being buried alive in. It was an actual tomb. All four walls encasing me were aged concrete!
I screamed as loud as I could, even after my vocal chords went raw. “PLEASE, SOMEONE! HELLO, CAN ANYBODY HEAR ME? PLEASE!”
Hot tears blurred my vision as I continued pounding my fists into the unforgiving slab above me. Whether it was mere minutes or an entire lifetime, I couldn’t tell. My entire body felt like it was on fire as I began hyperventilating.
There was nothing.
Only silence met my pleas through my gasping breaths. I was losing oxygen…
I’d either suffocate to death, or manage to live just long enough for Mr. Reynolds to finish the job.
I was going to die…and so would Blaine. And it was all my fault.
You stupid, stupid girl.
“Please,” I whimpered, feeling the suffocation coiling itself around me, pressing into my lungs.
“Kat!” The voice echoed in the corners of my mind.
Blaine.
I cried out his name, though it didn’t do me any good. It wasn’t like he could hear me from in here, and I had no idea how this mental communication worked.
“Where are you?”
I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know.
Panic surged through me harder. I was trapped between four old slabs of concrete. That’s all I knew.
Blaine’s voice seemed to mellow in my mind, taking on a more soothing tone, as if trying to calm me in turn. “Breathe, Kat. Okay? Just breathe for me.”
I couldn’t. The air was getting thicker, and I had no idea where I was. No idea how to help him find me.
“I’m coming,” he assured, but all rationality was gone, only making me cry harder. My greatest fear since I was little was drowning, after my cousins threw me into their pool even though they knew I couldn’t swim. The half minute I spent underwater felt like an eternity as the water choked me, robbing me of any chance for air until Jenna leapt in to save me.
And it felt like that all over again.
I was struggling to drag in a feeble breath, and my terror only made it worse. I knew I needed to calm down, but instinct wouldn’t let me. Blind panic was real, and it was literally killing me faster.
The space only burned brighter from my runes, the heavy vibrations rattling my arm, all the way into the rest of my body.
“You have to calm down,” Blaine demanded. “If your runes ignite, and the power isn’t enough to blast away the concrete, it’ll rebound back at you. You’ll die.”
Concrete?
He knew I was in concrete!
I clung to what little hope that brought. Despite my panic and the flood of thoughts that came with it, he’d still been able to reach into our bond and sort through the chaos of my mind to work out what was happening.
Couldn’t he just shut down my runes, though? He’d already done it before—
“I have to be touching you for it to work.”
I shrieked, clutching desperately at my arm as the barely contained energy continued pushing against the inside of my skin. It begged for release, and the power soon turned baleful, eventually thrashing so hard I screamed. The very action smothered me as I tried to refill my lungs. The pale blue space started to dim, but it wasn’t from my rune dying. It was me. The details around me had distorted, and I couldn’t fend off the gray haze invading my vision.
“Kat?”
“I’m sorry,” I whimpered.
The invisible bond we shared tugged at me, trying to assure me I wasn’t alone. “Don’t,” Blaine whispered. “Don’t you dare say that to me.”
I’m sorry.
I’m sorry.
I’m so, so sorry.
“Stay with me.” The words were nearly inaudible, pained. “Don’t you fucking leave me.”
He was too far away. I could feel it, hear it in his voice. He was still trying to figure out where I was, and my body was already shutting down.
“I’m sorry,” I mouthed, unable to m
uster the breath.
“Don’t…”
I couldn’t even tell if my eyes were opened or closed. Everything faded to black, silence inviting me to enter into a freefall as the world collapsed around me.
Chapter 15
Control
An unspeakable calm washed over me as my body was suddenly suspended in a bitter abyss. The stinging cold encased itself all around me, the swirling vortex yanking me in every direction. I punched and kicked, and the thick atmosphere rippled as hollow gurgling filled my ears. It teased me, challenging my lungs to react on instinct. I tried to catch my breath, but to my horror, nothing but chlorinated water flooded my airways. I was drowning!
My chest heaved as pressure fell down on it. Not the same pressure that had stolen my breath.
Hands.
Hands pressed down into my chest in a repetitive pattern. It vanished, only for lips to cover my mouth as they invited air back inside my lungs. Again. And Again.
I gasped.
There was too much oxygen and yet not enough. My lungs heaved, desperate to take in as much as it could get, simultaneously making me choke on the abundance. My eyes fluttered open, the darkness slowly subsiding. For the first time in my entire life, I was all too happy at the prospect of finding those pale blue eyes resting above me.
Blaine.
But as I blinked and my vision cleared, I didn’t see that bleached blonde hair or iridescent gaze peering down at me. No…
Dark blonde hair and unfamiliar hazel eyes came into view, and a new wave of panic settled in.
Not Blaine.
I thrashed my exhausted limbs, kicking and clawing at the stranger like a cornered animal. The young man just gripped me by the forearms and pried me off the stone floor I’d apparently been sprawled out on. I quickly realized why he wasn’t putting up any ounce of a fight with me. The moment I was hauled up to my feet, my knees buckled, and I collapsed back onto the ground. Whatever drugs I’d been given were still kicking my ass as I pathetically swatted at the man to leave me alone.
Covetous: An Urban Fantasy Romance (The Marked Mage Chronicles, Book 2) Page 16