by Mac Flynn
Chapter 13
I ran over to the edge of the roof and leaned over the three-foot tall border. The drop was seventy feet down onto the hard ground, and even if the water had been close enough I probably would have killed myself in that tall a dive. The werewolves burst through the door and whipped theirs heads around.
They spotted me, so I did the only sane thing I could think of. I climbed onto the roof border and turned to my pursuers. "Don't come any closer!" I warned. They skidded to a halt and snarled at me, and I shuffled a little closer to the edge. Sweat trailed down my brow and my eyes kept flitting to the drop below me. "I'll jump, I swear!" Yeah, that was my plan. Pretend to be an aspiring suicide and hope they wanted me more alive than dead so they'd give in to my demands to leave safely.
The werewolves glanced at one another and evidently didn't take me seriously because they smirked and crept toward me. I cringed and glanced over my shoulder. It was a long way down, and I wasn't sure if I hated the long drop or the sudden stop.
Jump. I nearly fell off when that word erupted in my head.
"What?" I yelled at my brain. The werewolves paused, unsure if they wanted to munch on someone who yelled at herself.
Jump! That voice sounded familiar in an annoying sort of way.
"A moment, gentleman," a smooth voice spoke up. I turned my attention back to my persuer in time to see the werewolves part, and through their midst strode a man.
He wasn't any ordinary man, he was drop-dead gorgeous. The stranger stood a little over six feet tall and wore an impeccable black suit. His long black hair was tied back and accentuated his pale skin. He had a dazzling smile and a pair of blue eyes that shone like a fresh, clean lake, but were a little icy from the mountain runoff. His face was thin, his nose just the right amount of sharpness, and he had long, well-manicured fingernails.
"I don't think you really want to jump, Miss-?" the man asked me.
"Cognito. I.N. Cognito," I quipped.
The man chuckled. "It's a pleasure to meet Nobody, but allow me to introduce myself. I am Lord William Ruthven." He gallantly swept his arm in front of him and bowed to me. I cringed back and nearly slipped. That was the name of the guy four-eyes wanted to take us to. He raised his head and glanced at me left hand. A smooth grin swept across his lips. "I see you're the new partner for our mutual friend, Vincent. By the way, where is that interesting gentleman hiding? My men seem to have lost him in the bowels of my building."
"Maybe he was flushed out with all the other crap," I suggested.
Lord Ruthven chuckled and slowly strode toward me. I eyed him wearily, and he held out his hands as a show of good faith. "You're very amusing, much like Tim. Perhaps you and I can have a short chat inside?" He was five yards away. Four. Three.
Jump now!
I glanced over my shoulder at the fall, and his lordship didn't like that. Out of the corner of my eye his appearance changed. His face twisted with fury and he lunged for me. I dodged his hand, and in doing so my feet slipped and I dove over the edge. My scream pierced the air as I fell through it. I tumbled end-over-end with the world around me spinning in wild, uncontrollable circles. The ground raced toward me and I shut my eyes a few seconds before I hit. Only I didn't hit.
A strong and familiar pair of hands wrapped around me and plucked me three yards from the earth. I snapped open my eyes and found myself hugged against a dark coat. My savior landed us on the ground, and I looked up to find myself staring into Vincent's dark eyes. I'd never been so relieved, or relieved at all, to see those pair of eyes, but now I wrapped my arms around his neck and hugged him. He stiffened and quickly set me on the ground.
"Stop wasting time. We haven't escaped yet," he reminded me.
Indeed we still stood beside the Building of Doom inside the Compound of Death with the Big Bad Guy staring down at us from the roof. Our position in the Compound of Death was on the far side of the building close to the docks. I turned my head and noticed a couple of stacked bodies in the shadows of the building. They were the patrol guards and their dogs, and they weren't moving. I didn't see Tim's body.
Vincent didn't let me sightsee any long when he grabbed my hand and dragged me in the direction of the docks. "What'd you do with Tim?" I asked him.
"Worry about yourself," he argued.
Above us I could see what he meant because the werewolves dove over the side of the building. They scraped their claws along the wall to slow their descent so they could drop around us. We ran along the building and around the corner. There was another truck unloading more wooden crates, and Vincent pulled me toward the men who were loading the boxes onto the boats. He pushed me toward the boats and dove at the workers. Vincent smashed his hand into the box carried by the men, and the wood splintered apart and books spilled out. The workers screamed and scrambled back, but their feet kicked open the hardcovers and stepped onto the pages.
Phantom, demon, tentacle and monster hands reached out and sucked the men into the pages like an erotica novel come to life. Vincent dodged all the fallen books but one. His foot slipped on the corner of a page, and a skeletal hand reached out and grabbed him. He fell to the ground and twisted around to kick at the creature. At the same time the werewolves rounded the corner and ran at both of us.
I sprinted over to Vincent and the books, and proceeded to lodge the whole box at our furry foes. The book pages hit them and the things inside the paper kept the werewolves preoccupied while I grabbed the cover of Vincent's book and slammed it closed. The bony hand fell lifeless to the ground, and Vincent yanked it off and tossed it against the nearby truck so it shattered into a million pieces.
I grabbed a spare book before Vincent grabbed me and hauled me to my feet. He led me to the river boats where a few of the men stood, not daring to risk the books to jump us. I held out my spare book, and they screamed and jumped into the water to escape the deadly paper cuts. We commandeered the speedy jet craft and Vincent steered us out into the water. He shifted to full throttle and I fell back into the rear seat. We sped off, and I glanced behind us at the shore. The werewolves still tussled with book demons, but on the docks we just left stood Lord Ruthven. We missed him by a split second, and from the furious look on his face I was glad we hadn't exchanged parting words.
We shot down the river and I slumped down in my seat. I flung an arm over my eyes and groaned. "Let's never do that again," I pleaded.
Vincent scoffed. "That is a normal night," he told me.
I raised my arm and looked at him with a horrified expression. "You're kidding, right?"
"No."
"For once can't you make a joke?" I begged.
"No."
We traveled in silence for a few miles and Vincent docked us on the lonely, quiet shore where we abandoned the boat for the cloak of the city. However, I refused to be carried like a damsel too feeble to put one foot in front of the other. He tried to pick me up, and I jumped out of his reach. "I can use my super speed just fine now," I argued.
"I haven't seen proof of this," Vincent countered.
"Probably because you went the wrong way."
"I escaped much quicker than you."
"I haven't seen proof of this," I shot back.
"Then where is Tim?" he asked me.
My face twisted into disbelief. "You didn't lose him, did you?"
Vincent rolled his eyes. "I had time to remove his body to a safe place and return for you."
"Oh. So you-so you came back for me?" I wondered. To be honest, even with our ring bond ruling us both I didn't think he'd go to so much trouble to save me.
He held up his ring. "I had little choice."
I crossed my arms over my chest and frowned. "Of course you had choices. You could have made me squirm up on that roof, or told me to jump and-" I paused and raised an eyebrow. "How did you tell me to jump, anyway? All I heard was this ringing voice in my head."
"Telepathy
," was his bland response for a not-bland subject.
"Telepathy?" I repeated, and he nodded. I waved a finger back and forth between us. "So you're saying we can talk to each other without-well, talking?"
"Yes."
"Really?" I persisted.
"I will not lie to you," he returned.
My face broke open in a grin as I thought of the possibilities. We would perform at shows all across the country and show off our connection! We could make millions and retire to an exotic island where Vincent would probably end up turning into dust! All we needed to do was refine the act and-
A sudden, terrible thought struck me and I glared suspiciously at Vincent. "You can't read my thoughts, can you?" I asked him.
"No," he replied.
I mentally wiped my brow and dumped the idea of the millions. I was state-shy, anyway. "All right, so what do we do now?" I wondered.
"Now Tim's corpse must be destroyed."
My stomach fell and the color drained from my face. "How?" I squeaked.
"He wished to be cremated," Vincent told me.
I tilted my head and my face scrunched up. "Cremated? Isn't that kind of hard to do without a furnace?" Vincent's impatient reply was to turn his back to me and stride into the jungle of the city buildings. "Hey, wait!"
