by C. D. Gorri
I found her.
But then the world flattens out and I am floating in the dark sea and the sea is made of stars and the stars are full of pain. If it weren’t for the sea I could roar into the heavens. I could shed my skin and become my wolf and howl into the night.
I could shout my victory on the wind so it would be carried around the world and through the realms to the distant kingdoms that once were called home. And the people would hear it. They would know what it meant. They would know we were coming. Because it’s over.
I found her.
I can’t stay here. Not in this place. Not this dark place. Not anymore. Because she is here. I found her. I must tell Max. I must tell Noah.
I must tell her.
The lashes come more frequently now. They slice through the clouds and strike against my back, tearing my skin like a thousand wicked knives and drawing blood and making the screams come louder. The screams fill my ears and ripple across the dark sea and I always forget that the screams are coming from me. The screams are so powerful that they make more stars. They fall from my mouth and glitter in the distance. So many stars from such an enormous sound. Enough to create galaxies all around me in this never-ending sea. Galaxies of pain.
In the sea I float with the stars but they come toward me, one by one. The stars crash into me and then everything is pain. My existence is all about ignoring the pain and managing the pain and trying with everything in me to deny the pain. The pain comes in on a wave of pink smoke, and the pink smoke sends me to the dark sea and the sea is made of stars and the stars are full of pain and around and around it goes.
But then she is there. She is with me in the sea. When she is there the stars fly away. The stars aren’t there for her. They are my stars but they cannot touch me as long as she is there. And she is there. I know it.
Because I found her.
She pushes the stars away. She shows me how to move the sea. She makes me strong enough to push away the pain.
She was there. I was there. But we are no longer there.
We are elsewhere. We.
She is here.
She is the one.
She is here with me now. I know it is true because the stars are gone. The dark sea still surrounds me but the stars are gone and without the stars there is no pain and without the pain I can begin to see the world again.
I open my eyes and wonder if I am dreaming. Because I found her and she is here.
Chapter Five
DANA
We drive for almost an hour before Dark and Angry pulls into a warehouse on the south side of the city in the industrial district. He rolls inside and then stops, turning around a nodding at Cheeseburger Breath.
“Noah, get the door.” Dark and Angry grabs the headrest of the passenger seat for leverage so he can turn around. The edge of a swirly black tattoo peeks out under his cuff and he’s wearing an expensive watch. He has a thick gold ring on his index finger, and I’m struck by how his long fingers grip the leather. It’s like even his fingers are angry and tense too.
“On it.” Cheeseburger Breath--Noah pulls the van’s sliding door open and hops out, disappearing from view.
“You can just let me out here,” I say. “I can find my way back. I swear I won’t say a word about anything to anyone. It will be like this never happened.”
Dark and Angry levels his gaze on me like I am a month-old, moldy cheeseburger he just found under his seat. “Not gonna happen.”
I plead with my eyes, turning on my witch charm, as if I had the power to hack his emotions the way I hack tech. “But you don’t understand. I have to go back. I really need my bag.”
His scowl deepens. “What you really need is to be quiet.” His voice is low and menacing, sending a ripple of fear through my chest and into the space between my shoulder blades.
The sound of a huge metal door slamming closed echoes through the garage. Then Noah is back in the van, squeezing in next to me, sliding the door shut as we drive on.
*.*.*.*
They carry us through the building like they have nothing to hide. Like it’s totally normal to get in an elevator with an unconscious giant and a handcuffed and bound woman in your arms. But there’s nobody to see us, and no hint that there’s anyone else here.
The elevator stops and Noah, who is carrying me with one arm, lifts the gate which makes the outer door open. He walks into the huge loft space and deposits me on a huge leather sofa.
Noah touches my wrists where the zip ties have cut into my skin. “Oh, man. Sorry about that.” He moves away behind me and I lose sight of him.
“Where are you going?” Dark and Angry heaves Jason off his shoulders and onto the other sofa.
“Max? Where’s the first-aid kit?” Noah calls out, his voice muffled and far away.
“There’s one in my room.” Dark and Angry, whose name is apparently Max, calls out. He adjusts Jason’s limp form lifting his legs and arranging him so he’s lying completely on the sofa. He moves slowly and gently, easing Jason into position, cradling his head while he places a pillow behind him.
Max touches one of the more prominent wounds on Jason’s shoulder, pressing the skin softly around the edges, as if trying to see how bad it is. He moves gingerly, as if Jason were some frail and delicate creature and not the enormous figure who is taking up every inch of the oversized sofa.
“Found it!” Noah appears in the living room and gets down on his knees in front of me. He snaps open the plastic lid and pulls out a tube of antibiotic ointment. He squeezes some ointment on a cotton swab and starts dabbing it onto the places around my wrist where the zip ties have broken the skin.
“What the fuck, Noah?” Max’s scowl is back.
Noah’s brows shoot up. He freezes mid dab and glances at Max. “What? We don’t want it to get infected.”
“Your brother is lying here with fucking chunks torn out of him and you’re putting band aids on her?”
Noah shrugs. “He needs to be cleaned up before we can tend his wounds.”
“Fuck.” Max gets to his feet and storms off, glaring at the back of Noah’s head as his boots pound across the floor.
“He’s got a lot on his mind,” Noah offers. “He’s not a bad guy.”
“You should let me go,” I whisper once Max is out of earshot. “I need to get back to Malovich.”
Noah just glances up at me and smiles like I have no idea what I’m saying. He continues tending my cuts, trying and failing to slip strips of gauze under the ties. After the third try, he gives up. “Be right back.”
I can’t believe how badly I messed all of this up. After everything, all the months of planning, all the work, all the courage it took for me to actually execute. My plan was perfect. I should be long gone by now. It would have worked. Except for Jason. I hadn’t planned for Jason.
I look up and realize that I’m alone in the living room. Jason is unconscious less than twenty feet away, but Noah and Max are in the other rooms somewhere doing other things. They left me alone. I glance at the door, which is really just an old freight elevator with a metal accordion grate and a low wooden gate.
“Forget about it,” Max says, the edge is back in his voice. “There’s no way to open that without one of us with you.” He places a tub of water on the floor next to Jason and kneels down next to him. He’s got a towel thrown over his shoulder.
I eye the elevator, looking for a security panel or something that tells me what kind of tech they’ve got installed. But it doesn’t look like there’s anything that would actually prevent anyone from using the elevator.
Noah returns with a pair of scissors and another set of zip tie handcuffs.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Max asks. He wrings the towel of excess water and starts washing the wound on Jason’s shoulder.
“You put them on too tight. Don’t worry. I have new ones.” I can feel Noah’s apprehension. He ducks his head a little and I feel like he wants to hide from his brother’s harsh criticism
. But then he shakes it off, almost visibly. He straightens up and cuts the ties off me.
A normal person would have tried to run. But something in me makes me pause. I don’t want Noah to have to face Max’s wrath if I did. I don’t want to give that bully the satisfaction. Dark and Angry won’t get any ammunition from me.
What the fuck is wrong with me?
Noah holds my gaze. It’s like he can tell what I’m thinking, and he can see the moment I finish my calculations and decide not to take this chance. He nods once and continues wrapping my wrists in gauze. Then he takes the new zip tie cuffs and locks me up again, careful to make them snug against my skin, but not painfully so.
“It wouldn’t work anyway,” he whispers.
“What?” I whisper back.
He tips his head toward the door. “You can’t get in and you can’t get out on your own. No point trying.” He taps my hands and gathers up all the first aid stuff and walks over to the kitchen. When he returns, he hands me a glass of water and then sits next to me on the sofa.
“How long until he wakes up, you think?” Noah asks Max.
“Hell if I know. Whatever they gave him, it’s really fucking strong.” Max runs the rag across Jason’s face. He touches his cheek, holding him still while he cleans him. He’s so careful, so gentle, it’s like he’s a different person. Dark and Angry nursemaid.
It’s fae,” I say.
“What’s fae?” Max glances at me as if he forgot I was there.
“Fae magic. It’s what they used to subdue him. He was surrounded by a constant stream of the stuff.”
Max leans back on his heels and rubs his hand over his face. “Fuck.”
He woke up when I first found him. And he came to for a second in the van. He’s got to be coming off it, right? I mean look at the size of him. I took one hit of the stuff and it lasted like twenty minutes in my body, and I weigh about as much as one of his legs.
“It’ll wear off,” Noah says, nodding.
Max looks at me. “How often did they drug him?”
I shake my head. “No idea. He was shackled to the floor and the fae magic was like all around him, he was in a bubble of it. I think it’s how they were keeping him from fighting.” My mind is back in that room. Back at the safe. I had the marker in my hand. I was this close to being free. “I didn’t even know he was there. I was supposed to escape on my own.”
Max’s brows shoot up. This news is unexpected. “Then why did you break him out?”
Why did I break him out? I flash back to the moment our eyes met and we were in outer space, and he was looking at me like I was the answer to every question he would ever ask for the rest of his life.
I tell myself that it was all him, that all the yearning was coming from him, but I felt something too. Part of me wants to blame it on the fae magic. We were delirious and high on the stuff… but the outer space thing happened before I took a hit and turned into Super Dana.
I look across at Jason and try to get back to that feeling that made me do it. I’d really like some confirmation that whatever that was, whatever I felt, that it actually happened and that I didn’t throw my life away for nothing.
But nothing comes. Nothing hits me. There are no parting clouds, no outer space. There’s nothing but the memory of it.
And yet the memory alone is enough to send a little thrill through my body. I don’t know what it was, but it was real, even if only for a second.
I shrug. “I couldn’t leave him.”
*.*.*.*
“I don’t understand why you won’t let me go.” I fumble with my fork in the Chinese food container, trying to skewer a dumpling.
Noah finishes off his second container of lo mien and reaches for another one. He’s like a bottomless pit when it comes to food, but there’s nothing about him that looks soft or even a little out of shape.
He catches me looking at him and shoots me a couple of eyebrow pumps. I bet even his eyebrow muscles are ripped.
Max drops his chopsticks into his container and leans back against the couch. He’s sitting on the floor next to Jason. Aside from ordering dinner and getting me a fork when my attempt at chopsticks while handcuffed didn’t work, he hasn’t left Jason’s side.
“You’re not going anywhere until I figure out why you’re here.” He takes a swig of beer and lets the bottle dangle from his fingers absently.
“I told you, I—"
Max waves me off. “Yeah, Dana. I got it the first three times. Magic hacker. He forced you to do the jobs. So, you’re telling me that you worked for Malovich—against your will—for years, and just let him keep you there?”
I nod. “Seven years.” I leave off the part about my marker. Nobody needs to know that thing exists. If I live long enough to get it back, I am going to destroy it first thing.
“Right. Seven years. And you were aware of his whole operation, everything tech. And you chose tonight to make a run for it.”
I nod. “It was the first time they were all away. I don’t think you understand how rare that is for all of them to be gone at the same time.”
“And you had no idea my brother was locked up in the basement. He was there all this time until you happened upon him tonight?”
“Exactly. I was leaving. I heard him and thought he was one of Malovich’s guards. I didn’t know he was there. Why is this so hard to believe? Why would I lie? Wait… you said all this time. How long was your brother down there?”
“Jason disappeared five months ago,” Noah says.
Max shoots Noah a dagger-eyed glare and then he turns his gaze on me. His scowl is back. “I need to know why Malovich took Jason.”
Five months? Holy hell. I glance over at Jason and try to imagine having fae magic mainlined into my body for five months. “I have no idea. I keep telling you that I didn’t even know he was there.”
“I don’t believe you,” Max says.
“Well, then I don’t know what to tell you.”
“You’ll tell me whatever I ask you to tell me. If you’re holding back information, you’re going to be fucking sorry.”
Noah leans forward. “Whoa, man. Take a breath.” He inhales and closes his eyes like he’s showing Max a technique.
“Fuck your namaste crap, Noah.” Max gets to his feet and in a flash he’s in my face, teeth bared and his voice like a growl. “Who else is involved with this? It doesn’t make sense for Malovich to have taken Jason. There has to be someone else. So, who?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” I say, and it’s true. But it doesn’t seem like anything I say is going to convince him.
Max shakes his head, dismissing my defense. “The wolves here don’t have anything to do with us. It’s got to be someone else. Someone with a link to…” His words trail off and he starts pacing, his eyes darting around the room looking at nothing.
“Was it the Falbors? They know we are here.” Max is talking to himself, running through scenarios and talking in a cryptic, incomplete way that leaves me feeling lost.
Noah looks at Max like he wishes he could take some of his stress away. “We’ve been over this a thousand times, brother.”
“I know. I just… There has to be a connection.” He stands before the window overlooking the city, his arm is up and leaning on the floor-to-ceiling glass pane. He steps one bare foot onto the other, his whole body settling into a long, languid line. The city lights twinkle in the distance, and he looks like he’s posing for a magazine photo shoot. I could almost appreciate his stunning form, if I didn’t know he was such a jerk.
Chapter Six
DANA
I lie awake on the sofa, unable to sleep. Noah snores on the floor next me, curled up with a pillow and a duvet that looks like it was taken from his bed. Max is on the carpet in front of Jason. He’s pulled a blanket off one of the chairs and it covers his waist and hips.
Max is on his side, facing me, his arms crossed and his whole body tight. Even when it came time for us to sleep, he was unwill
ing to go very far from his brother. In sleep, Max’s face is much friendlier looking. I could almost imagine him with a different personality, one that was softer, more open.
The apartment is dead quiet and the city lights shimmer and every once in a while, a car horn sounds in the distance. Jason stirs on the other sofa. He hasn’t moved a muscle since we got him here.
For the whole time Max and Noah cleaned him, and even when they stitched up a couple of the deeper wounds on his shoulder and arms—without any numbing for him at all—he never woke up or even opened his eyes like he had in the van.
I trace the lines of his body, enjoying the way the soft glow from the city plays on his skin. He’s shirtless, just like I found him, and he’s still wearing his black jeans that look like they’ve seen some things and probably just need to go in the trash once he takes them off. His bare feet are big and long, just like the rest of him. I linger a moment at the narrow portion of his waist, which is still wider than I am, but relative to his size, it’s almost slender. Then I move up to where his chest flares out toward his broad shoulders. He’s magnificently built and for a brief moment it’s as if I can conjure that feeling of floating with him, looking into his eyes and feeling his gaze on me. I want to remember how good it feels to have his attention. To know he’s watching me.
I close my eyes and draw the sensation back to me. I picture us floating in the darkness surrounded by stars. His chains are gone and he’s watching me, reaching for me across the vastness of the divide. He closes his eyes as if he’s relieved and the moment his eyes close, a longing inside me opens. It screams for him to open his eyes. I just need him to look at me again. I need it. I want more. I need more.
I need him.
He comes to me, floating in the darkness. When he opens his eyes, all I feel is relief. He’s back. He sees me. He wants me closer.
We float toward each other, meeting in a weightless embrace. His blue eyes are on me, looking into me, through me. The blue of his looks darker, shadowed by the vastness of this place, but nothing can hide the longing.