She raised her brows as if to say, Satisfied?
Naya purred gently.
“He won’t remember this, you know,” Pandora murmured under her breath as she turned away from the pilot. Sure, she felt a little guilty for ruining his day and probably scaring the crap out of him for the past few hours, but a mindbender would be here soon to wipe his memory clean. He’d probably wake up in the hospital in Las Vegas tomorrow morning with some doctor telling him he’d hit his head and was experiencing mild amnesia. It’d be as though his supernatural hijacking never even happened. But when she took one last look over her shoulder to find he was trembling, something inside of her wilted just a little.
“We’re sorry,” Pandora said loudly.
He paused, brows knotting together in a mix of apprehension and confusion. Their eyes held for the briefest moment as a flash of curious hope passed over his irises, the tiniest hint that he might actually believe her, might trust he was truly safe.
Of course, a moment later Pandora vanished into thin air.
He screamed.
And, well, that was the end of that.
Humans. Pandora sighed. Sometimes she envied their ignorant bliss, and sometimes she pitied them for knowing so little about the world they thought they ran.
But he’d be fine. It was she and Naya who had to worry, because the helicopter had no doubt been traced, and the trackers had no question been following Pandora as she’d slept. If they didn’t get the heck out of Dodge, that whole epic escape would be for nothing.
Pandora took off at a jog.
Naya followed, able to sense her spirit through the shadows.
While Pandora kept her gaze glued to the mountains in the north, her ears strained, listening for the sounds of cars or life. She had nothing against exercise, per se, but she was so over the running by that point. Which was why a grin pulled at her lips when she heard the rumble of an engine. It stretched wider when she saw a dirt-covered pickup truck emerge from a cloud of dust in the distance.
Her sympathy for normal humans was completely forgotten as she slammed her hands down on the hood of the car, using her enhanced titan strength to stop it dead in the middle of the old country road. The driver cursed, pressing the gas as confusion leaked across his features. The expression only intensified when his door opened on its own, and an invisible hand grabbed his shirt, then tossed him onto the side of the road. When Naya slinked out of the tall grass, a black jaguar on the prowl, his confusion turned to straight-up terror. And to be honest, Pandora didn’t even feel all that guilty as he let out a bloodcurdling screech—because, for a man who was six feet tall and seemingly solid muscle, he was a wimp.
I expected more, she thought sadly as she jumped into the driver’s seat and reached for the gearshift. If you’re going to drive a car like this, you’ve got to have the balls to back it up, buddy.
And while he clearly didn’t, she did.
So she revved the engine twice, ordering Naya to jump in, before taking off.
“We can’t just steal people’s cars,” Naya said once she’d slipped back into the form of a girl, buckling her seat belt and testily crossing her arms. “The helicopter was one thing. I understand why we needed it to get away. But this is different. We don’t need a car. We’re just as fast as this thing on our own feet, maybe even faster.”
Pandora wrapped the medium in her shadows, hiding both of their locations, and shrugged. Then she pressed the gas a little harder, seeing how fast this baby could move, and glanced at Naya, almost positive there was a wicked twinkle in her clear blue eyes. “Well, I hate to break it to you, but you did meet me in jail, Little Miss Prim and Proper.”
Naya deepened her glare. “Like I told you before, I might have been a prisoner, but I’m not a criminal. And I don’t intend to become one.”
“Well, I am when I need to be,” Pandora replied, totally honest. “And when it’s a matter of life and death, I do what I have to. I can’t waste my energy running at full speed when I need to conserve it to keep us both hidden from the many, many eyes chasing after us. We needed a getaway car, so I took one. That guy will call his friend, then his insurance company, and in a week, this will be nothing more than a crazy story to tell at the bar. But for us, this might mean safety, for a little while longer at least.”
Naya stared at her, gaze sharp.
Pandora kept her eyes on the road, chin set.
And for the first time since they had teamed up, she remembered they didn’t really know much about each other—or really, anything at all. And it seemed Naya was thinking the exact same thing.
“Why are the titans planning to kill you?”
Pandora sighed heavily. “Your guess is as good as mine.”
“Where are you taking me?”
“North.”
“Why?”
Pandora swallowed as a tingle tickled the back of her neck, a little spark of awareness. She darted her gaze to the rearview mirror, checking the back seat, but Sam wasn’t there—at least not anywhere Pandora could see him. But she could sense him, sense those penetrating eyes watching from beyond the edge of the darkness. Her attention slid to Naya, who was watching her demandingly, and she wondered if the medium’s presence in the shadows was the thing keeping Sam away.
Would she be able to see him? Would she sense his soul?
More importantly, why did Sam want to stay a secret?
Why was he hiding?
Naya repeated her question. “Why are we going north?”
Pandora pulled her thoughts away from the man she knew was eavesdropping to ask a question of her own. “This person from my past that I want to speak to, the conversation you owe me, I assumed I would need something of hers in order for you to make contact. Or is that not how it works? I never asked, but if we can do it right now, I’ll pull the car over. Just say the word.”
Naya raised her brows, surprised. But her expression also grew less intense, less scrutinizing. “No, no, I need something to help tie me to her soul, especially if she’s been gone for a while. A body would be best, something I can reawaken, but an item, something with meaning, would be enough to at least let me speak to her.”
“There’s no body.” Pandora frowned and took a deep breath. “Titans are always cremated. Our ashes are always dispersed…” she trailed off. The idea had never seemed odd to her before—it was a tradition she’d grown up with, a tradition her people had honored for her entire life. It had never struck her as strange until that moment. And she couldn’t help but wonder why. Was it just another layer of security for a society so secret it had to be protected even in death? Or was it somehow about her?
Without warning, her mind flew back to the day her mother had died. Pandora could hardly remember it. She’d been almost four, still a child. All she recalled were the tears, so many tears, so much crying. Her own, yes, but not just hers.
One memory stood out from that day, and it wasn’t of her mother, but of her father. He’d been absent mostly, dealing with grown-up things. A few of the mothers had come to the house to watch Pandora while he was away, and they’d put her to bed, but she hadn’t been able to sleep. And when she heard heavy footsteps on the stairs, she snuck out of her room, drawing the shadows even as a toddler to follow where she knew she was unwanted. After all, he hadn’t bothered to open the door and check on her, his innocent child. He’d walked right past her door and straight through his, not troubling to close it behind him. And then he’d collapsed on the bed, knees giving out as his shoulders shook silently and he raised his hands to cup his cheeks. She didn’t realize he was crying until he lifted his head, and the light from the lamp reflected off his cheeks, damp with grief.
The next morning, she thought she’d imagined the moment, that it had been a dream. Because her father had walked through the house, tearing down photographs and removing every trace that her mother had ever existed. It was the day her home had turned cold. The day her father had turned hard, had turned to stone. He’d
thrown away her mother’s books, her clothes, her jewelry. Everything. Everything except the one thing Pandora had managed to save—an antique silver brush, still full of golden hair.
“There’s no body,” Pandora repeated softly, sadly.
Naya’s brows twitched, maybe curiosity, maybe concern. Either way, she remained silent and turned her gaze back to the road, no longer pushing for more information.
Pandora cleared her throat. “What about you? You said the titans were keeping you there for your own good? That you pissed off some vamps while you were looking for somebody?”
She nodded, folding her hands in her lap and staring at them. “Someone I love, he was, um, turned.” Naya paused, taking a deep, shaky breath, letting her chest expand and contract slowly. Then she swallowed and spoke, voice barely a whisper. “My brother. My little brother.”
“I’m sorry,” Pandora told her.
“A local clan of vamps took him as collateral after finding out who I was, what I could do,” she continued in a guttural mutter, almost a growl. “And I was so close, so close, to getting him back. But I’d gotten too full of myself, controlling vampires left and right in my desperation to find him, and I garnered too much attention. Powerful people began to take note. Different vamps grabbed my brother, and they turned him when they couldn’t trap me. And when the titans came to me with an offer to help, like a fool, I believed them. Before I knew it, I was in a cage, being studied like an animal at the zoo. The titans hardly remembered I was there—but the government officials in that place were a different story. They ran tests, pushed my power to the limit, promising I could get out if I followed along, that it was all for my own good. But military men were always there, always watching, with hunger in their eyes, imagining what I could do for them, the weapon I might become.”
Naya closed her eyes and forced her lips shut, shuddering once. “But my power was never supposed to be used that way. I’m a force of good. Not an executioner, but a savior, a champion of lost souls…” She opened her eyes, finding Pandora’s with a hopelessly lost expression as her thoughts jumped from one to the next, a jumble. “I thought if I could just find him, if I could just track him down, I could do something. Where I come from, we don’t believe vampires can be saved. The sun god is heaven, and the undead die by his flames. Their souls are doomed, and their spirits can never find eternity in his kingdom. But with all of my power, and with all this talk of a cure, I thought I could save him. Somehow.”
Her brother. Despite the stream of emotional thoughts, that much was clear. Everything within her was dying to save her brother, destroyed by the thought that she’d lost her chance.
“Well, I was a vampire until about a week ago,” Pandora said, shrugging, trying to give her an ounce of newfound hope. “And personally, I think my soul is doing just fine.”
Naya’s eyes went wide. “You were?”
Pandora grinned. “What? You didn’t sense the stain of immortality on my newly cured soul?”
But the medium wasn’t joking. Her face was totally serious. “No, I didn’t. I couldn’t tell at all.”
Well, that’s good to know, Pandora thought, but kept it to herself, studying Naya for a second. “I know someone who might be able to help you.” Those alert amber eyes snapped toward her. “Kira, the conduit who discovered the cure for vampirism, she owes me one, sort of. But even if she didn’t, I got the feeling that she’s one of those truly good people, you know, the almost sickening ones with pure hearts and perfect honor who can’t resist helping whenever they have the chance.” Pandora lifted her gaze skyward and shook her head minutely, remembering the conduit’s infallible, and somewhat infuriating, optimism. “Anyway, after we talk to my ghost, I’ll do whatever I can to help save your brother.”
The medium narrowed her eyes ever so slightly, trying to decipher the truth.
“I promise,” Pandora said. To be honest, she wasn’t totally sure why. Maybe because they’d developed an odd sort of friendship over the past few days of mutual desperation. Maybe because she recognized another lost soul when she saw one. Or maybe because it was the right thing to do.
Naya nodded. A flash of gratitude passed over her face.
And then a prolonged silence stretched between them, the sort that only happened after a conversation got a little more real, a little more raw than anticipated.
“I think I’m going to take a nap,” Naya said into the quiet. “I never got the chance to sleep on the helicopter.”
“Good idea.”
She slipped into the back seat and into her jaguar form before stretching out on her side. Pandora let the shadows slip away from her comrade’s sleeping form, returning to their rightful place, pulsating around one body.
Well, two.
“You can come out now,” Pandora remarked, keeping her voice within the darkness so Naya wouldn’t hear.
Sam emerged from the depths of the shadows, casually filling the open passenger seat. One look and Pandora rolled her eyes. He was grinning like a child who’d been caught with his hand in the candy jar, trying to pass as innocent.
But she knew better.
Oh, she knew way better than to fall for that smile.
At least, she hoped she did.
Chapter Ten
“You were magnificent,” he said softly into the silence.
Pandora tried to ignore the way the words washed over her, like a warm caress, but she couldn’t. Not entirely. Because it was the first time she could ever remember someone referring to her powers that way—as though using them wasn’t scary or abnormal or something to hide. But as though her strength were magnificent—as though she were something to behold with awe and pride and passion. Even Jax, for all his professions of love, had never viewed her power that way. No one had ever seen her the way Sam did, and despite her hesitations, she was starting to like it.
“Spying on me, were you?” she commented airily.
The corner of his lip twitched. “I wouldn’t dare.”
She tossed him a pointed look and rolled her eyes, shaking her head slightly. “It’s okay. I’ll let it slide one more time. After all, you did save my life.” She paused, gaze flicking to the rearview mirror and brushing over the jaguar slumbering in the back seat. “You saved both of our lives by telling me to jump to Jax. The titans had us cornered.”
“No, Pandora,” he said, shaking his head. “You saved yourself. And you showed them, finally, after so many years, how strong you truly are.”
She swallowed, wringing her hands on the wheel, and then confessed, “I liked it.”
He gazed at her ardently. “You should.”
“No, I mean…” She inhaled deeply, shaking her head. Her arm tingled with a ghostly touch as she remembered the strong titan hand wrapped around her bicep, remembered how easily she escaped what would have once felt like an unbreakable grip, remembered how intoxicated she felt. “I was drunk on the power. For a moment, I really felt invincible, you know? And I liked it, feeling strong, feeling superior. I liked it, I think, maybe a little too much.”
Sam reached across the divide and brushed his fingers through her hair, pushing a wayward blonde strand back behind her ear. “Do you know what I saw?”
Pandora turned her head, just enough so his palm came to her cheek, holding her for a moment, a familiar half-touch that hinted at so much more. “What?”
“I saw a woman I haven’t seen for a thousand years, a person I feared for a long time had been lost,” he whispered, tracing her cheekbone with his fingers before slipping them slowly away. “A defiant woman, a confident woman, a woman who is headstrong and fully capable of saving herself. For so long, you’ve been a girl, lost and alone and trapped. They’ve never let you grow into anything else, never given you the time to mature. But now you’ve taken it. You’ve taken control. And they’re running scared, because they know they’ve missed their chance. They know they’ve lost. So like it. Enjoy it. Revel in it.”
“In my power?”
“What?” Pandora asked, hanging on to the fervor in his voice, trying to understand the depths of his emotion.
“Hope,” he said simply.
But Pandora needed more. She needed to understand. His words were ardent and fused with a past she didn’t remember, but they resonated, sinking into her bones and settling in.
“Who was I?” she asked, keeping her eyes focused on the road. “Who was I, that you loved me so much?”
“You were a dreamer,” he said, gaze like a physical touch as it traced her profile, burning every inch of her skin with its fire. “You always have been. It’s the one thing they could never take away. We used to dream together.”
Her throat was dry, but she was too afraid to move, too afraid to break the spell. “And what did we dream, Sam?”
“We dreamed of love in a place where it wasn’t supposed to exist.” He turned his head away, shifting his attention to the horizon, to a place just beyond the edge of the earth, a spot between the dirt and the clouds where time ceased to exist. “We were two soldiers who dared to question our orders, who dreamed of a life full of choices instead of commands, a life of freedom, of family, of love.”
While he spoke, he wrapped his hand around hers, entwining their fingers in a familiar embrace—one her soul remembered, even if her skin did not.
“Tell me more,” she murmured.
“We were forbidden to fall in love. All of us were. Our hearts were supposed to be full of loyalty to only one. And for a long time, too long, that’s all we were—mindless followers, blind subjects. Until one day, I used the shadows to escape our home, to run wild and free, and I discovered how much more life could hold if we just let it. At first, I was too afraid to say anything, too nervous to speak up. I traveled through the darkness and dreamed in the silence and solitude of another world.”
Freeze (Midnight Ice Book Two) Page 10