When footsteps thumped behind me, taking everyone’s attention, I grabbed a chair and heaved it through the kitchen window over the sink. An explosion of tinkling glass fueled the adrenaline pumping through my body. I leapt up on the counter and dove out, slicing my thighs on jagged bits in the sill. I tumbled into the roses, clutching at my wounds, wincing. Blood poured out, but I had nothing to wrap myself with.
Shouting erupted within the house. A gun fired, flaring into the darkness over my head. The sound careened around the valley into the night and drowned out the screeching insects. I threw myself to the ground again, cutting up my forearms on the fallen shards and cursing.
“Goddamn it, Sebastian,” Liam shouted. “Put the fucking gun away. If you so much as nick her, he will kill you, and then me.”
Scratched and bleeding, I stood and groaned as more shards pierced my bare feet. No time to pull them out. Holding my breath, I closed my eyes so I could determine where the magnetic push came from. The north.
With my pulse racing, I sprinted south toward the woods, imagining what I’d do to Sebastian when I found a way to release my energy. Liam would be next.
9
Pain screamed up my legs as I ran from the farm house and through the reaching arms of the trees. Shards of glass crept deeper into my soles. The cuts on my thighs dripped hot ribbons down my legs, soaking into the blue dress.
No amount of pain or blood would make me stop—not with the screaming of the insects growing louder. The silhouettes of trees whipped past me like scenery from a dark dream. I stumbled over a fallen log and crashed down, shredding my forearms. My body grew into a giant burning ache.
A deep base growl rose up from the shadows in front of me. My pulse galloped. Respect the wild things, and they’ll repay you in kind. I stumbled, picking bits of bark out of my wounds, and limped on. The glass in my left foot met with bone, and they weren’t having a nice visit.
A growl came closer. I stopped and stilled my body as I scanned the darkness. Deep in the woods, the moonlight didn’t penetrate the canopy, only dappled the forest floor.
Amber eyes appeared in front of me. A scruffy black wolf emerged. He barked and flattened his ears as he stalked toward me, his lips curled up over shining white teeth. Animals had never bothered me before. I did my best to breathe normally, holding my hands out as I sidestepped around him. My gaze never left the wolf, but I avoided his eyes. I’d learned never to stare a wild beast in the eye unless I wanted a fight—another rule I’d made.
A whine and a few yips came from my right before a second wolf stepped out to block the new path I’d chosen. When the third ruddy wolf appeared, I realized they were herding me. Hell’s bells. The Glass Man had made some new friends since I’d last seen him.
My mind spun as I looked around for a weapon. Nothing. Not even a dead branch or a rock. I tested the barriers around my energy again, poking and prodding at it, but the harder I pushed, the more impenetrable it became.
A fourth wolf, a white one, showed up, and the four of them stood in a u-shape in front of me. One way to go: the one direction I wouldn’t turn. I could climb a tree, but that would leave me trapped, so not much better.
“You are a hearty thing,” the Glass Man said in that amused tone he always used. He sauntered out from behind a tree, wearing a dark grey suit. A grey silk tie painted a shining line down a matching shirt. His wavy hair had been pulled back and secured with a black ribbon. I’d never seen him dressed up. In another life—one where he wasn’t a murderous sociopath—I might have thought him beautiful, but at that moment, he looked like cancer wearing an Armani. He stood in a little circle of moonlight a few feet away.
My upper lip curled in a snarl. “Where’s my music box?”
He straightened his tie, his gaze lowering from my face. “I chose well with that dress. Matches your eyes to perfection.” His eyes swept lower down my body. “Tsk, tsk. Look what you’ve done to it. Lucky for you, I brought extras.” He smiled as if I’d done something to impress him. “Bleeding like a stuck pig, and you still ran nearly four miles from the house before I caught up with you. I can think of better uses for stamina like that.” He gave a pathetic double-raise of his eyebrows.
“Yeah, I just bet you can. The only reason you caught me is because you called in your dogs. What’s the matter, not man enough to get me on your own?”
“I am no man!” He ripped the ribbon from his black hair, and it flew up around his face, dancing with the grace of fire. His skin glowed with veins of blue as if someone had switched on a light within.
I swallowed past the cotton lump in my throat. “You keep saying that, and I keep suggesting a psychiatrist. Maybe it’s time you took my advice.” I glanced at the four-pack of wolves to my right. “And since when do the beasts listen to you?”
His eyes brightened as he smoothed a hand down his suit. “Do you like it?”
“If you’re fishing for a compliment, you’re casting to the wrong girl.” I’d learned question evasion from him. Unfortunately, he continued to better me at it.
He sighed. “Oh, Lila, you do like to make things difficult, don’t you? If you’d stop being so stubborn, this could be such a joyous, erotic occasion.”
I didn’t want to know what he meant by that. “Well, you could leave me alone like I’ve been telling you, and you wouldn’t have to deal with me anymore. Looking at it that way, I think it’s you who’s making things difficult, not me.”
“Most females beg for my attention.”
Not too arrogant. My eyes rolled. “I’m not most females. I have standards.”
He dismissed me with a flick of his fingers. “Clearly you’re angry with me. Let’s go back to the house so I can get you cleaned up. I can’t take you to the Black City looking like a murder victim, now can I?”
I swallowed hard. “What’s the Black City?”
“Why, your new home, of course.”
Decade-old rage swelled in my belly. “I have no home. You took it from me. And I’m not going anywhere with you.”
The Glass Man laughed, a crackling sound like a lit fuse. “You still think you can escape me, don’t you? It’s pathetic, really.”
A smile bloomed on my lips, the one that always accompanied the answer to whatever puzzle I was trying to solve. “You always assume too much about me.” I turned and sprinted toward the wolves. He would have counted on me fearing their bite enough to avoid them, but he didn’t know me as well as he thought he did. I gambled that the wolves wouldn’t be allowed to hurt me.
The ruddy wolf whined, but the black one braced itself and snarled. When it moved to block me, I dove over top and rolled, landing on my throbbing feet. I made it a few yards when the patter of paws closed in behind me. Teeth tore at my calf, then locked jaws around my ankle. My scream rattled through the trees. Fuck! What a time to be wrong.
“Release her!” The Glass Man roared.
I rolled and kicked at the mutt with my other foot.
The Glass Man dug fingers into his hair as he strode toward us. An eerie glow flared from his eyes, an otherworldly god empty of all but the potential for bloody violence.
I cried out when the black wolf shook my leg before releasing me. Little pained groans came unbidden while I clutched my wound to stanch the gush of blood.
The wolf squealed as it fell into the leaves beside me. Dark liquid flowed from its ears and mouth. The eyes rolled back. Its body collapsed with the sudden evacuation of liquid from every orifice.
The other wolves paced and whined before abasing themselves in front of my hunter. He glared down at them.
I clawed at the ground, pulled myself toward the underbrush, but my vision went fuzzy and dark. Fading. Too much blood.
“Rourke.” The Glass Man’s voice sounded hollow and distant. “Has Liam returned?”
“No, my King.” Rourke’s pleased-with-himself tone grated on my last nerve.
King? King of what?
“He’s hiding something from me.
I want to know the moment he returns.” Footsteps disturbed the brush nearby. “Take her back to the house and clean her up. Share enough energy with her so she can heal her wounds. I have preparations to make before we can leave.”
“As you wish, my King.”
I blinked out for a moment, sank into that black place where minds go to die, but by sheer force of will, I fought back to consciousness. Leaves crunched under footsteps. Everything blurred into vague, dark shapes. A roaring silence dominated my head.
A man crouched beside me, Rourke I assumed. Definitely a man’s cologne I smelled. Something expensive.
“I’m going to tie you up now,” Rourke said in a singsong tone that raised my hackles. “But you probably like that sort of thing, don’t you?”
I found no energy to speak, but I gave him what I hoped to be a nasty look.
He laughed. A deep, barking chuckle, the sort a lion might give if they could laugh.
White waves of nausea rippled through me as Rourke wound rope around my ankles and hands. He looped my bound wrists around his neck, picked me up and cradled me to his chest.
The thought of landing back in that house unconscious with the Glass Man’s four cronies made my blood run cold.
I shivered as the pain ebbed. My essence slipped down into the abyss again, and I didn’t fight it. Nothing mattered but sleep. Darkness would take away the pain, and the Glass Man, and the men who weren’t men. I had a moment to think it might be better if I never woke up again before the blackness sucked me under.
• • •
“Wake up, Lilabear.” Mother’s anxious voice filled the darkness around me. “Come on, my love, fight back to the light!”
My body lurched with a nauseating sway. A headache raged at the back of my skull as if it had met with a sledge hammer. I groaned and forced my eyes open, confused when I still couldn’t see.
Shit, am I blind?
Am I dead?
Did I just hear my—no, I am not going crazy. Numbness deadened my arms, but my wrists burned. In my disoriented state, it took me a minute to figure out that I hung from them. A silky scarf or handkerchief had been tied around my eyes.
I thrashed, clanking chains, but forced myself still. Shoving the panic aside, I calmed my heaving lungs. Everything hurt, and I was too weak to do much of anything.
Ok, Lila, think this through. Dead was dead, but anything else I could deal with.
The room was cold and damp. The cellar of the farmhouse, maybe? I had no clothes on, only a bra and panties by the few brushes of satin against my skin. Rhythmic, raspy sounds came from somewhere behind me—steady, but heavy. Breathing. Not the Glass Man, though—nothing crowded my mind.
“Does he train you all to be creepy sociopaths, or is that a prerequisite before he hires you?” I asked.
Snickering turned into that barking laughter I’d heard in the woods. “I’m beginning to see Parthalan’s fascination with you.” Rourke’s shoes tapped against the floor. “I saw nothing but a head-strong bitch when you first came, but watching you force your will into that gun and drawing power from the Goddess herself—now that is a power to behold.”
Goddess?
“Parthalan? What kind of name is that, anyway?” I didn’t want him to know he had my mental cogs whirring into a tizzy.
“Old Gaelic, actually. Irish.”
“I know what Gaelic is, you little shit. Unschooled doesn’t mean dumb.”
That laugh again. “So it doesn’t.”
Rourke ripped the blindfold from my eyes. I blinked against the sudden brightness of the lantern light. Everything still looked blurry, but at least I could see the room: a cellar with cement walls, shelf after shelf of mason jars filled with fruit and enough canned food to feed a whole city for years, and a dirty chest freezer along one wall. Crooked wooden steps went up from the far corner.
“Better?” Rourke stood a few feet away.
“Better would be unchained and you getting your narrow ass out of my way.”
When my vision decided to focus, I wished it hadn’t. Fury pulsed behind Rourke’s ice blue eyes, and his lips peeled back over his teeth. His dark hair had been neatly styled—the greasy, slicked back look had gone—and he wore only black dress pants with a silver buckle on the belt. Shadow spread out from him as he strutted the rest of the way to me. He tickled his fingers along my stomach, stroking a soft line just above my navel.
I jerked back as far as I could make my chains swing. “Get your filthy hands off me.”
“The only thing saving you from me now is an order from my King.” A look came over him that forced a tremble through me—a devious grin and bright eyes as if he’d just thought of something terrible. Maybe I’d been wrong about the leader of the goon squad. Rourke seemed the more likely candidate. “But Parthalan’s attention span with women is terribly short, you see. He rarely goes spelunking in the same cave twice.”
I swallowed so hard my dry throat burned.
“And once you’ve used up his patience—which, judging by that gigantic attitude of yours, won’t be very long—he’ll give you to me as my plaything.” He slid his hand along the side of my jaw and into my hair as though he would kiss me. I grunted when he grabbed a handful and twisted instead. “I hope you enjoy pain.” He shrugged, snickered. “Not that it matters to me, really. Mmm, we will have some fun, you and I.”
“Dream on, you little freak.”
“Tell me, my pet, has it occurred to you that the human world began to crumble shortly after Parthalan killed your mother?”
My brows crowded together, and I couldn’t keep the shock out of my voice. “What are you saying?”
He shrugged again.
“Are you telling me that Parthalan destroyed all those countries?” Shit. It couldn’t be true. Even if he did, what did that have to do with my mother?
My fear gave way to anger, the hot kind that boils in from the top of the head and floods every corner of the body with a slow, deep burn. For one, I hated confinement of any sort. For two, I hated men treating me like a lesser person just because I happened to have tits. For three, I had no use for people who took pleasure in other people’s pain.
“You might be able to send some girls screaming and crying with that ‘I’m a happy little sadist’ act, but I’m not some girl, Rourke. I hope your king finds you with your hands all over me. I hope he pulls that fee-fi-fo-fum trick of his and melts your bones, too.”
He shoved. My head snapped back. He stepped away in a huff.
I rolled my eyes when he flexed his pecs. “Go put a damn shirt on. You’re not impressing anyone here.”
“You ruined my only one.” He leaned both hands down on top of the chest freezer, glaring at me through strands of his dark hair.
“Am I supposed to apologize for bleeding?” I gave a disgusted grunt. “What the hell is Parthalan, anyway?”
With Rourke somewhat distracted, I tipped my head back to see what held me. The shackles had been fixed to opposite ends of a metal bar. Chains went up from either end to the cross beams in the ceiling. The shackles were the kind that closed with pins. Good. I had nothing to pick a lock with, so I had to figure out a way to shimmy those pins out.
The muscles in Roarke’s arm flexed. His fingers had melted into the plastic top of the freezer or had gripped it so tightly the material molded around them.
When he stepped away, a blue string of electric current arced between the freezer and his hands. His eyes rolled up.
Oh, hell.
He soaked up electricity the way a sponge soaks up water. Grinning, he straightened and fixed his gaze on me, holding his hands out at his sides. He poised his thumb and middle finger as if he’d pinch them together but kept them inches apart. Power arced in a curved path between them, a popping blue fire drawn out in a thin strip.
“I thought you would be more concerned with what you are.” He laughed, the sound forcing every hair on my body to tingle. “Or what I am.”
Even though I
struggled to breathe and couldn’t shake the thought of what he might do, I couldn’t afford to lose any ground. I swallowed the fear down and forced my casual expression out. “God, not you too. You know, this got old with Partha whatever his name is about seven years ago. I’m certainly not going to start exchanging witty repartee about what I am with you now, too.”
His lips parted before they curled into a sneer. The tension in his body morphed. I expected it to go nova and fry me into a crispy slice of bacon.
“Look, if you’re going to kill me, then do it,” I said. “If not, get the hell away from me so I can think.”
He lunged at me, shoved his hands against my stomach. My mouth flew wide in a silent scream, and the rest of my body seized. Fire burned in my fingertips and in my head. The pain had no description in my vocabulary, but it flowed through me in endless waves until I gained controlled of myself. I gathered it into a little corner of my mind and stepped away from it. I could still sense it there but not so strong that my mind would break under it. I didn’t even know I could do that. Handy.
Rourke slipped his hand around my throat, squeezing until I choked in his grasp. Maybe antagonizing him hadn’t been the brightest idea I’d ever had. He didn’t get flustered like the other wannabe bad guys I’d met.
He relaxed his hand and spoke with his lips brushing mine. “You haven’t disappointed me yet, and that is a rare thing. To take so much and not scream, at least a little, means you are stronger than I gave you credit for. But all wildcats can be tamed if you whip them long enough.” He licked across my lips, but I refused to struggle. “You will do what my King commands. I only hope Parthalan doesn’t take all your fight away before I own you.”
A true sadist. Funny, I thought he’d been kidding. My fear level clicked up a notch, and I shivered. Could a person go into shock twice in one night? First time for everything.
I coughed when he let go of my throat, but I kept my trap shut. Cussing him out wouldn’t help me.
Rourke gave me a calculating glance, but I had no energy to ponder what dark thought went with it. Did they all have powers like his? If they did, they wouldn’t be packing handguns, would they? Unless they were more sadistic than I thought, or maybe just lazy. Nothing would have surprised me at that point.
The Glass Man Page 7