A Midsummer Night's Scream (The Dulcie O'Neil Series Book 7)

by H. P. Mallory

  I tried to respond but I couldn’t. I was still completely out of breath. At the same time, though, there was a fire that was burning inside me. I started to recognize it as intense anger—anger for being thrown off my feet and into the ground. But the anger was also reserved for the death of any hope that had previously existed inside me.

  NINE

  “So you were able to eavesdrop on my conversation with Knight?” I asked Jax after I managed to sit up and catch my breath. But even though my breathing began to regulate, my chest still ached like an SOB, and my head ran a close second. I pushed myself up against a nearby tree and leaned the back of my head on the bark. Closing my eyes, I attempted to avoid the dizziness that threatened to disable me.

  “I’m a Loki so it goes without saying that whatever your man can do, I can do,” he replied, and I opened my eyes to see one of his eyebrows arched in obvious irritation. “So, yes, I was able to eavesdrop on both of your telepathic waves.”

  “I should have thought of that,” I grumbled, angry with myself that I hadn’t.

  I slowly breathed in for a count of four, and then exhaled for another count of four, closing my eyes and trying very hard to remain alert. Yes, I could have magicked the pain right out of my head, but I had an inkling that if I even tried to shake my fist, Jax would be on me like a werewolf on prime rib.

  “Regardless, the point is you’re caught,” he continued.

  Vexed by his cocky comment, I opened my eyes just to glare at him. When I did, I found him standing in front of me, with his arm stretched toward me and his hand only a few inches from my eyes. He was offering to help me get back on my feet. Help that I wanted no part of. After a few seconds, during which time I just studied him, he waved his hand, as if impatient for me to take it.

  “You look like you could use some assistance in standing,” he explained.

  Although he was probably right, I didn’t want to give him the gratification of admitting as much. Taking another few moments to deliberate while inhaling deeply and then exhaling, I decided I actually needed to accept the small olive branch he was offering. I doubted I could successfully get back onto my feet alone. I sighed in obvious aggravation and accepted his proffered hand. As soon as my skin touched his, he hoisted me onto my feet and studied me with narrowed eyes.

  “I wouldn’t recommend attempting to escape again.”

  “I wasn’t planning on it,” I barked back at him as I rubbed what felt like whiplash from my neck. Still feeling slightly off balance, especially now that I was standing, I had to use the tree behind me for support. “I doubt I could survive another one of your body slams anyway,” I added with a frown because my stomach was still upset from the fall I’d taken. “And while I’m on that topic, you could have gone a little easier on me. I am barely a third your size, you know?”

  “I did go easy on you,” he answered with a shrug as he leaned against the tree right next to me and considered me casually. “Not my fault you fell so hard.”

  “Really?” I asked in obvious anger but then just shook my head at his expression of amusement, because I found this situation anything but. “So what now?” It was better to change the subject since this one only kept pissing me off.

  Even though Jax was standing way too close to me, and scarcely five inches separated us, I couldn’t step away from him. My head was still too foggy and I half-wondered if I might pass out or throw up. Yep, I’d definitely hit the ground way too hard; I only hoped I didn’t have a concussion.

  “Now we get back to the original plan,” he replied before walking a few paces away from the tree. I stood up straight and gradually released the tree, testing the waters to see if I felt steady enough to stand alone.

  Knight, I’m with Jax again, I thought the words, hoping I could make contact with Knight again, even if Jax could overhear us. I just needed to give Knight any information that might help him locate me.

  “It’s useless trying to reach out to him,” Jax announced after a purposeful yawn. Then he shook his head. “I’m blocking the connection between you both.”

  “Were you the reason we kept cutting out on each other?” I asked, frowning at him all the while.

  “Yep, that was me.” Then he shrugged, as if he didn’t care that I was giving him the death stare. “I had to allow you enough rope to hang yourself, yet not let it kill you.”

  “What does that even mean?”

  “Apparently you don’t have much of an imagination,” he started, his expression one of disappointment. I chose not to respond, so he continued. “I let you reach out to him just enough to where I could pick up on your trail, but I didn’t want you to give him too much information, so I made sure I muddled up the rest.”

  “Really thoughtful of you,” I grumbled, and then rubbed my forehead when I started to feel a dull ache in between my eyes. I took another few steps forward, tuned to my body to make sure any damage Jax might have inflicted on me wasn’t permanent.

  “You skipped a step.”

  “What?” I demanded with a frown. Although I wasn’t as dizzy, which I figured was a good thing, my stomach was still sour.

  “Crawling before walking, remember?”

  “Really funny,” I growled. Narrowing my eyes, I exhaled a breath of complete frustration. “You’re lucky I’m not armed,” I finished.

  “Ah, come now, Dulcie, even if you were, you wouldn’t shoot an unarmed man!” he laughed with a smirk while holding his hands up to show he was unarmed. “That’s not the ANC Regulator way!”

  “What happens in the forest, stays in the forest,” I responded glumly as he broke into a hearty chortle. Feeling slightly better, I ventured another couple of steps away from the tree. As soon as I did, it felt like someone started repeatedly stabbing me in the knee cap. I immediately crouched down, cradling my knee until the searing pain morphed into more of a dull ache.

  “Told you to crawl first.”

  “Thanks, but I could really do without your peanut gallery comments,” I spat out before trying to stand up again. Once I was erect, I took a tentative step forward, more than pleased when the stabbing pain didn’t return. The dull ache, though, was becoming more of a moderate one.

  “You tweak your knee, or your ankle?” he asked, approaching me with sincere concern in his eyes.

  “Knee, I think.” I limped a few more steps away from him.

  “Let me see,” he said before reaching for my leg.

  “Don’t touch me! You’re the reason I’m limping in the first place.”

  “Well, if you want to study cause and effect, you wouldn’t be limping if you hadn’t tried to escape in the first place,” he remarked testily. Crossing his arms over his chest, he regarded me with ill humor. “So as far as naming the original wrongdoer, I would have to say only you fit that bill.”

  I took another tentative step, noticing with chagrin that every step hurt worse than the preceding one. “If you want to play that game, I wasn’t the one who orchestrated the worm hole in the first place,” I snapped, wincing all the while.

  He cocked his head to the side and smiled at me. “Yes, you do have a good point there. I can’t argue with you on that.”

  “I rest my case.”

  He heaved out a healthy sigh and shrugged, but continued to grin at me like the whole thing was one big joke. If only it were that easy … “Guilty as charged, I suppose.”

  I didn’t respond as I waddled forward, favoring my injured leg.

  “At this pace, we won’t reach our destination for another year or so,” Jax grumbled as he came up behind me.

  “Sorry I’m not exactly in a rush to get to my unpredictable future,” I retorted before another shooting pain in my knee made my breath hitch. I sought out the closest tree and hobbled over to it, leaning on it to take all the weight off my bad leg. “And getting back to our destination,” I continued, eyeing Jax as I started to massage the back of my knee, hoping I was just suffering from a pulled muscle and not something worse. “W
here exactly would that destination be?”

  “At this point, the only destination I’m interested in is the road,” he answered as he glanced up at the sky and then back at me again. “And if my calculations prove correct, which they always are, we should reach it very soon.”

  “Okay, so once we reach the road, what happens next?”

  He shrugged. “Then we’ll have a long drive ahead of us.” He started to smile again, and his teeth glowed very white in the moonlight. “Plenty of time for us both to get more … acquainted with each other.”

  “A long drive where?” I insisted, opting to ignore his last comment.

  “All you need to know is that you’ll be meeting my boss, the kingpin,” Jax finished. His expression told me he refused to discuss any more specifics. Or maybe he was just sore that I hadn’t acknowledged the whole “getting more acquainted” bit. Either way, I couldn’t say I cared.

  “What business does he have with me?” I demanded, nervous to be walking into a situation that I was in no way prepared for.

  “I don’t know the nature of the business he wishes to discuss with you,” Jax admitted as he shrugged and smiled at me again. “That, I’m afraid, is strictly between you and him but if I had to guess,” he started, before his voice trailed away and he just looked me up and down.

  “What does that even mean?” I demanded.

  “That’s one of those silent comments,” he informed me.

  “You’re stupid.”

  He immediately started chuckling to which I just frowned at him and shook my head. The last thing I wanted to do was encourage him.

  “It was supposed to mean that if my boss doesn’t already have plans to nail you, he will once he sees you.”

  “I’m dreading asking this, but could this day get any worse?” I grumbled before taking a deep breath and trying to walk again. Not that I was successful …

  “You’re limping,” Jax continued, eyeing my injured leg with what appeared to be distaste. He was, no doubt, realizing my debilitation was only slowing us down.

  “And you’re an asshole, but you don’t see me pointing out the obvious,” I flared back at him. My eyebrows knitted together as drops of rain started to fall from the sky again, bathing my forehead, cheeks and chin in their cold wetness. Angry and indignant plumes began firing up within me as I berated my luck which appeared to have just gone from bad to worse.

  “You’re a fairy; so why don’t you fix yourself?” Jax asked as he continued to assess my bad leg. Refusing to accept the pain in my knee as a legitimate concern, I continued to hobble forward. I took each step as gingerly as I could, but I couldn’t deny the pain was getting worse. And it really didn’t help to see the forest floor was covered in woodland debris, making it much harder to navigate without stumbling.

  “You mean, I should use my magic and give you another excuse to attack me again?” I murmured as I continued to limp alongside him while he looked at me like he was afraid I was going to keel over any second. “No thanks.”

  “If you promise to use your magic for good, I won’t attack you,” Jax answered with a wide grin that was instantly lost on me.

  “If I were to use it for good, I’d magick one of those flying monsters from the Netherworld and then I’d order it to swoop down and eat you. That or I’d magick a giant sinkhole to open up as soon as you took your next step and swallow you whole.”

  “So you do have an imagination after all?” he asked with a smile.

  “Apparently I have a fantastic imagination where getting rid of you is concerned.”

  “Such a shame,” he said as he sighed and shook his head.

  “What’s a shame?”

  “I don’t imagine your death at all, in fact,” he started.

  “Spare me the details; I’m already in enough pain as it is.”

  He dropped the smile and eyed me with what appeared to be real sincerity. “You need to heal yourself. You have my word that I won’t try anything untoward.”

  “No offense, but your word doesn’t count for very much,” I rasped back. I was barely able to speak when the pain in my knee began to radiate up my leg and expand throughout my entire body. Irritated with his pedantic expression, I faced forward and with my jaw set tight, plodded on, albeit slowly.

  “Well, regardless,” Jax started in a bored tone of voice, “I have a schedule to keep; and you aren’t helping me keep it.”

  “If you’re looking for sympathy, I have none to give you.”

  “I’m not looking for sympathy,” he quickly answered. “What I am looking for is a way to get this show on the road. And given your current breakneck snail pace, I’m going to give you two options.”

  “Two options?” I repeated in annoyance, without bothering to look at him. Truth be told, I preferred looking at the mud I was currently schlepping through. At least the mud wasn’t a lying sack of …

  “Yes,” he answered with no amount of apology. “Option one is you heal yourself so we can hurry the hell up. Or option two: I throw you over my shoulders and carry you the rest of the way.” He took a few quick steps until he was standing in front of me. “Option two is my preference because your ass will be in perfect spanking reach, which, as you can probably imagine, suits me to a tee.”

  “You never give up,” I said, amazed that such was the case. “I can’t even start to understand how you have the energy,” I started.

  But he interrupted me as he faced me squarely, and dropping his grin, his new expression warned me not to continue arguing with him. He stopped walking and clasped my upper arms, forcing me to face him. “I’m not a patient man by nature, so which one is it?”

  “There’s no third option where you get to go fuck yourself?” I asked as I scowled at him and my chest heaved up and down with indignation. The pain in my knee had become all-encompassing. With each beat of my heart, it felt as if the throbbing ache was invading all parts of my body. And it didn’t help that the heavens insisted on releasing a deluge of rain above us.

  FML.

  “The only option three that would involve fucking wouldn’t have me doing it to myself,” Jax answered.

  “Then I choose option one,” I snapped, crossing my arms over my chest as soon as his attention dropped down to my bust. I didn’t have the strength left to waste arguing with him anymore.

  “Shame, I was hoping for option three; or, at the very least, option two, but beggars can’t be choosers, I suppose.” Then he offered me a radiant smile and all I wanted to do was sucker punch him.

  “I’m still waiting for you to fall down a sinkhole,” I responded.

  “Sorry to disappoint you, baby,” he said, his left eyebrow rising impatiently. “You’ve made your choice so get on with it.”

  I declined to comment, but closed my eyes and clenched my right hand into a fist. The rain continued to assault me with its freezing cold drops, making me suddenly wish Jax had a car waiting for him. Or, at the very least, an umbrella …

  Shaking my fist, I immediately felt my precious dust filling my palm and leaking through my clenched fingers. When I opened my eyes, I found Jax studying me intently.

  “And don’t try anything funny,” he warned me. “No running away at ridiculous speeds, or sprouting wings like you’re back in the Netherworld,” he continued as we both honed in on a squirrel as he scurried up the side of a tree, ostensibly seeking shelter from the rain. “And no turning me into a ground squirrel either,” Jax finished with a knowing grin.

  “The only thing I could magick you into is what you already are—a pile of shit,” I said haughtily, my nose in the air.

  “Ah, don’t be a sore loser, Dulcie,” Jax responded with another boyish smile. “All’s fair in love and war, right?”

  I didn’t respond because my knee was aching to such an extent that all I could think about was healing it. As such, I held my fist above it before opening my hand. I watched the glittery powder sprinkle down on top of my leg and then imagined my knee acting like a ma
gnet. In response, the particles immediately clung to it. Then I closed my eyes and imagined a bright, white light enveloping my injury. I pictured the light growing even brighter as it healed, working little by little to return me to my pre-Jaxed state.

  I felt heat warming the area behind my knee. Pretty soon, it extended to the front of my leg and traveled to my thigh before returning all the way back down my calf, heating my shin and then my ankle. Once the heat dissipated and I could feel the cold wetness of the forest again, I opened my eyes.

  “Good as new?” Jax asked, his eyebrows arching like my little performance must have impressed him.

  “Damn it, you’re still here,” I ground out.

  This only made him smile even more broadly. “You’re too sexy for your own damn good.” I didn’t respond but lifted my bad leg a foot or so off the ground. Then I bent it, carefully lifting it up and down, back and forth, as I waited to feel any pain in my knee. “Good as new?” Jax asked.

  “Only one way to find out,” I replied, taking a deep breath as I planted my foot back on the ground and then I took a step forward. I took another few steps, trying to determine whether or not my magic had completely healed me. “Looks like I’m okay,” I announced before glancing up at Jax who was studying me again.

  “Good, then let’s be on our way,” he said with a quick smile which seemed at odds with how wet he was, completely soaked from head to toe. He took a step forward, but must have thought better of it, because he turned around again and reached for me. “Actually, I think I’ll be keeping you a bit closer to me this time,” he announced. He wrapped his mitt-like hand around my upper arm. “Don’t want you to get any more funny ideas,” he explained cheerily.

  “You know what happens when women get funny ideas,” I grumbled while shaking my head. Of course, I intended on escaping again, but at this point, I figured there wasn’t really anything more I could do. Jax had already demonstrated his innate ability to locate me, even if I were miles away …