“He’s mine,” I said to Fate, who stood beside me.
Doubt flashed across his face, and I didn’t have to ask why. “I know what I look like, but you need to trust me. I can handle this.”
“You’ve said that to me before.” His voice held no hint of teasing now.
His words stabbed deep into my psyche, and the self-doubt that plagued me returned. It felt like a condemnation, even though I didn’t think he’d said it with malicious intent.
His worries were justified. How could he feel confident when I was still trying to patch all the pieces that were once me back together? It was exactly why I had to be the one to take him down.
“This fight is mine. It has to be. He stole…” My mind flitted over how to describe what he’d taken, until it finally settled on the simplest explanation, and yet the most accurate. “Me. He stole me. Who I was; who I’d spent a lifetime becoming. I need this.”
He nodded in understanding, even though I knew he couldn’t possibly fathom what I was feeling. “I know you want him, but I can’t let him—”
“You aren’t going to have to.”
His eyes roved over me and landed on my left side, where I was resting all my weight to ease my knee, an older injury still plaguing me, made worse by dragging Kitty around. They then traveled to the rip in my shirt, and the bloody gouge peeking through, my newest addition.
“Even if I only had one last breath in my body, I could do this. You could tell me this was the moment you saw in your vision and I’d still go in there. He needs to die, and I need to be the one who kills him. Because if I don’t, I’m not sure I can get me back.”
He sighed as he turned to me. “Killing him isn’t going to do what you think.”
He believed what he was saying, but I didn’t want to. I was clinging to the idea that this would fix part of what had been broken.
He looked like he might give me a fight, but then he simply nodded.
“I’m going in alone.”
“You’ll have your space,” he said, not technically agreeing, but I could live with that. As long as Luke died by my hand, nothing else really mattered. I headed toward the building alone, just the way I wanted.
The room was dark when I opened the door. Luke sat at a desk, just staring at the wall. The door slammed closed behind me but he still didn’t turn around.
“Are you going to get to your feet, or sit there like a coward?” Anger and disgust dripped from my words.
He laughed, his voice bouncing off the walls. “Not at all. I’d prefer death to what would come at the hands of Malokin.” He got to his feet finally and turned. He slipped off his suit jacket and laid it over the chair he’d abandoned. His tie was tugged off and placed on top of it. “You couldn’t think I’d make it that easy.”
“Wouldn’t want you to. Where would be the fun in that?” I kneeled down and slid one of the knives I was carrying over to him, proving just how much I was looking for a true fight.
He picked it up with a look of disgust. “You’ll never learn.”
“To be like you and Malokin? No. I won’t.” I circled him, and he moved along with me.
He ran his fingers along the edge of the knife and smiled. “I told Malokin you weren’t for us.”
“Did you, now.”
“Yes. He thought there was some potential in you. He had big plans for you. He blames me for losing you.” He shrugged. “Malokin thought he was smarter than me, but I knew you better. I saw what you were, and he only saw his plans. You were never going to bend. Break, yes. Bend, never. You would’ve ended up a shell of yourself but never would have been useful to him. I didn’t care though, because I enjoyed breaking you. I almost had you, too. Broken, that is. The cracks had started to show.”
I wanted to deny it, but he was right. I’d started to break. And even though my physical form might not show the marks after I healed, I’d have the scars forever. And right now, I really didn’t believe I’d be the stronger for it in the long run. I felt like I was barely holding the pieces together.
All of my anger was wrapped up in one target at the moment. Luke—standing in front of me, smug as ever—was the inflictor of so much hurt, and it taunted me.
I looked in his eyes, the way he was staring at me, and couldn’t get past the degradation. His very existence was a reminder of what I’d become. What I’d let him take from me. And that was how it felt. I’d allowed him do this to me, even though I knew it wasn’t true in a logical sense.
“Before I’m done, I’ll hear you beg,” I said.
He cracked his knuckles. “Like your friend Kitty did? I understand. It’s quite enjoyable.”
Rage burst inside of me and I lunged at him, knife fisted in my hand. I caught the flesh on his chest but was deflected by his ribs. He, in turn, caught me with a slice to my forearm.
The new pain focused me. I spun around, out of reach of him now. No more stupid moves made in anger. I could feel Fate’s eyes on me. He was close by, even if I couldn’t see him. If this got messy, I knew he’d step in, and I couldn’t have that.
“You’ll see. Malokin will win, in the end. You have no idea what’s coming,” Luke said, trying to throw me off my game again.
“No, I might not know what’s coming, but I know where you’re going.”
I swung my leg back and kicked him in the head. I heard the crack of his neck breaking. It wasn’t the tortured death I’d longed for, but it was still by my hand.
He fell instantly. I stared down at him, but I felt nothing but numbness. I should’ve felt better. This was supposed to make me whole. This was going to make me okay, or something closer to it than I felt right now.
It didn’t.
He was dead, and so was part of me, still.
Fate walked up and stood beside me, to where Luke lay dead at my feet.
I stared down, wondering if I could somehow breathe life into him and kill him again. If I did it slower this time, would I feel better? If I had dragged it out, would that have made a difference?
“Doesn’t feel like you hoped.” He wasn’t gloating.
I looked at Fate. “No. That obvious?”
“It’s all over your face.”
I looked at Luke’s body. My kick had been so strong, so filled with rage, it hadn’t just broken his neck but ripped it partially from his body. Still, as my hands lay by my side, stained with some of his blood, I felt he’d been lucky. He’d died quickly. He’d deserved much worse. “I must be a monster, because I wish I could do it again.”
“No. You aren’t.” Fate sighed loudly, as if he were as weary as I felt. “I doubt that’s an option anyway, but it wouldn’t matter. Sometimes people take things from you that you can’t get back, no matter how hard you try.”
When he spoke, he sounded like he was intimately acquainted with loss. I waited to see if he’d expand on it, but he didn’t. I wasn’t going to press for details just to ease my own pain.
I stared at my dead nemesis. Even if this did make me a monster, so be it. I might have regrets in life, but not about this. Not even a speck.
This hadn’t made me feel better, but perhaps it had helped in other ways. “Did today change anything else? Do you know if I’ll still die like you saw?” When he didn’t answer immediately, I bit my lip and looked at him.
He turned his head toward me, and all I saw in his face were the words he didn’t want to speak. Nothing had changed.
“I wish I hadn’t asked.”
“We’ll figure something out,” he said, and his arm wrapped around my shoulders, pulling me in to him.
I replied with the obligatory, “I know,” but we were both full of it.
When Cutty walked in it was a welcome distraction. I wasn’t surprised to see him, either. I would’ve been more shocked if some of the guys weren’t lingering around.
“Whoa!” He said as he came to stand on my other side. “Dude, that’s some fucked up shit. Who did the honors?” Cutty made a circular motion over the ki
lling wound with his finger.
“That would be me.”
“Hardcore.”
“Thanks, I guess.”
Chapter 37
Reorganizing
Kitty’s desk sat in the corner of the office, papers still scattered about, bags of cat treats piled up along the perimeter. No one had touched it, not even Harold.
As people walked in and out, their eyes would dart over to it, pause a moment and look away. Everyone knew she wasn’t retired anymore. That something bad had happened, but no one openly discussed it. A lot of things were being whispered lately, almost all of them true.
“Karma!” Harold yelled from the door of his office.
I closed the manual I was still working on and left it on the table. It was there, out in the open, for anyone to see, as I moseyed over to his office. Things needed to change here, and the manual was my shot across the bow. Either get on board or it would be a hostile takeover. With what might be coming, things were going to have to come out into the open.
Harold was already seated behind his desk again by time I walked in. He motioned for me to shut the door. I obliged.
His eyes perused me. He sensed it. Everyone did. There was something different about me, and it went beyond just the regular transfer stuff. But like Paddy had guessed, they couldn’t quite figure out what exactly it was they were picking up on.
“What’s different about you now?” Most didn’t come right out and ask, though.
“Didn’t we cover this stuff like a week or two ago?” Messing with Harold was becoming one of my favorite pastimes.
“Just because I don’t know, doesn’t mean I won’t figure it out. When I do…” he waved a pencil in my face.
“You’re going to stab me in the eye with the tiniest stake ever?” I made a fake gasp and put my hand over my mouth.
“You think this is a joke?”
“No. I’m sure it would be quite painful.”
His face became almost as red as his hair, and I stood and walked to the door. I knew Harold well enough to know when the interrogation was complete.
“And stop working on that manual!” he yelled as I walked out.
“Sure, I will,” I shouted back, though we both knew I was full of it.
Grabbing the manual from the table I’d been sitting at, I walked out of the office. I passed some of the gardeners on my way out and could feel their eyes on my back. It had been like this all week, and I didn’t think it was going to be changing anytime soon. No one said anything, but they all sensed it, not just Harold.
Something was different about me, but no one asked. I was glad; I had no explanation for them. Whatever Paddy had done was changing me, but I didn’t know how. Neither did he, for that matter; I’d asked him.
But it was happening. Sometimes at night, when I was very still, I thought I could feel it churning and spreading within me. Whatever it was—whatever he’d done—it was slowly growing, reaching out its tendrils within me. Every day it wound itself a bit deeper, weaving a little tighter into the very essence of what I was. Soon, it might be so much a part of me I might not feel it at all.
Maybe I should have been frightened. A year ago, I wouldn’t have known enough to be scared. A week ago, I’d been too numb to be frightened. Now I knew that something was going on, but I just accepted it, just as I accepted a lot of things.
I walked out the door and left my car in the lot, deciding to get some air instead. Or so it appeared.
But I had another purpose, besides a little exercise. I could feel them watching. Malokin and whoever he had recruited now. It had started the very evening after the hotel incident, when we’d rescued Kitty. I’d felt their eyes on me every day since. They were always watching.
They were there when I left my condo in the morning, and they were there when I returned for the evening. I’d even taken to leaving the outside light on for them, a silent invitation that still hadn’t been accepted.
I hadn’t taken more than a few steps when Fate fell into step beside me, not saying a word. He joined me often enough for my walks now that I’d come to expect it.
He watched me as well, but that didn’t bother me. I’d finally accepted that we were on the same side of this fight, and I needed comrades, or whatever we were to each other. He knew they were out there too, and he knew they were watching me.
“Shit, I’ll be right back,” he said.
I paused to see what had aggravated him. He made his way over to a car, the driver in the process of taking a box out of its trunk.
“It’s supposed to go to my house, not here,” I heard him say to the guy.
I glanced toward the writing on the case he was holding. I could’ve sworn it said Maker’s Mark on the side.
The driver nodded and reloaded his trunk. He pulled out of the lot as Fate walked back toward where I was waiting.
“What was that about?” I asked, already having a good idea.
“Just someone who runs errands for me.” He shrugged it off as nothing. “Feel like coming by for a drink one night?”
“I’m pretty picky about the establishments I frequent. I’ll have to think about it.” I turned my face away so he couldn’t see my smile and looked out in the distance to the far off tree line.
I could sense them in there. I couldn’t pinpoint the spot, but I felt the disturbance. On a fluke, I tried to let the thing I’d sensed growing inside of me leak into my stare. The disruption that was there was suddenly retreated from the periphery of my senses.
That’s right. You better run from me because I’ll be coming for you, and I won’t be alone this time.
Epilogue
“Do you have anything you’d like to share with me?” Paddy leaned a hip against the column next to him. In his opinion, there were too many columns in this place, but he wasn’t surprised. He knew the decorator, and modern wasn’t his deal.
“Yes, why are you leaning like that?” Farah, one of the three forms sitting on the dais, asked.
An image of Fate sprung to his mind. He’d been watching him so often, he must have picked up the habit from him.
“It’s actually quite comfortable.”
“It looks awfully pedestrian and undignified,” Farah said.
Paddy smiled, completely content with his posture. “Would you care to talk about what you are truly upset about?”
He eyed the three sitting there. They weren’t bad, but he wouldn’t go as far as saying they were good, either. Like so many things in this world, they just simply were.
He wasn’t sure when he’d moved past the state of being that they were in, to actually rooting for someone or something. He didn’t want Karma to succeed, just to keep the peace and order. He wanted it on some deeper level he had yet to understand. He cared, now.
“I’m not upset about anything.”
Paddy pushed off the column and strolled around the enormous space. “She did well, did she not?”
“I must admit, I agree with Paddy. I was quite impressed with her,” Fia said.
The other man, Fith, nodded his head, as if Farah speaking out on Karma’s behalf emboldened him. “I have to agree, as well.”
“You both just want to agree with Paddy,” Farah said, throwing accusatory looks at them.
“Farah, you must admit, you might be wrong about her,” Fith continued.
Farah’s lips pursed in a tense line until they finally relaxed and she spoke. “We don’t know anything for sure, but perhaps.”
“I’m inclined to think she’s the one.” Fith leaned back in his chair, looking more comfortable with the idea by the second.
“I agree,” Fia said.
Farah remained silent, and Paddy slowly walked closer to the dais, where they sat upon their chairs. One chair—his—remained empty, and it would remain that way. “So?”
“Aye,” Fith said.
“Aye,” Fia said.
They all looked at Farah.
“We can’t proceed without a unanimous
decision,” Paddy reminded her. They didn’t have these votes often, but he knew she hadn’t forgotten. Farah never forgot anything. Ever. Even the smallest slight.
“Not until I speak to her,” Farah said.
“Then you’ll have to come to Earth, but you never do that,” Paddy said, stating the obvious.
“No. She’ll come here.”
Paddy was shocked, but he didn’t show it. The other two were a different story.
“What are you saying, Farah! No one comes here. You know what could happen,” Fith said.
“If she’s so special, why not?” Farah countered.
Fia leaned forward to look past Fith, who sat in the middle. “No. If she’s the one, we can’t jeopardize her like that.”
“I won’t agree if she doesn’t come here.” Farah leaned back, looking smug. “Well, Paddy?”
“I guess we’ll be having company,” Paddy said. It would be the first guest they’d had in eternity.
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JINXED: (Karma Series, Book Two) Page 23
