“Yes, I stole it, but I did it to protect them.” He reached out and caressed her shoulder.
“How?” She attempted to pull away, but his gentle grasp was like the soft kelp that could catch a person and slowly drown her.
“I destroyed it,” he whispered, drawing closer. “Cassidy, darling, I love you. Can’t you see it? I’d never do anything to hurt you.”
She made the mistake of looking at his face. If ever someone had regarded her with tenderness and passionate love, he did.
“How can he love me after such a short time?” she quoted a line from her journal verbatim because her soul believed his words.
“Your spirit. Your beauty. You’ve changed me for the better, just by being the wonderful person that you are.” He held her chin, so she would continue to look into his eyes. “Why else would I climb through a second-story window?”
The situation was not so different from a wave rolling her over in her surf kayak. Her body always surrendered itself to the plunge, while her guts tried to stay above the surface. She loved the acceleration of being pulled beneath the surf, but she always had ways to escape: a paddle or the release on her kayak.
“I want to give you everything.” His soft lips pressed against hers. She tasted bitter salt. “We can live together. You can go to the best law school. I’ll pay for it. I’ll buy you a nice car. And I’ll always be there to hold you. Anything … Everything you want.”
“Friends. My friends,” she said meekly, as she attempted to bring Danny, Aydan, and Donovan’s faces into focus.
“Yes,” he replied fervently. “They’ll be fine too. Let’s work together and everything will be perfect.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Tell me where the other journal is. Then we’ll get rid of it and everyone will be safe.”
“I don’t know where it is,” she said glad to have an easy answer.
“Of course you do. Or at least you know something I don’t know. You went to the University of Glasgow.”
Did I tell him I went to the university. I don’t remember, she wondered frantically. I always reveal things I don’t mean to with him. When strapped upside-down to the kayak there was no time to think about moral decisions. An instinct of self-preservation dominated her mind. As she suffocated in his deep kiss, Cassidy had the same thought: air. With the core energy she’d used to right herself she pushed away from him. “I need to use the restroom.” Before he could respond she ran past her room’s bathroom. Realizing the mistake she’d made in her lie she added. “I mean the one in the lobby. That one’s broken.”
If she stayed with him a moment longer, he’d wrap her in his sweet tentacles and drown her in his psychological warfare, of that she was certain.
She dashed down the hallway of the hotel in her pajamas, with no plan of action. Contemplating how he’d know where to find her, she felt Aydan’s card in her breast pocket. It was strange to be attached to an object just because it shined like jewels. Jewelry! She thought. I’m such a fool. The jewelry he gave me probably had tracking chips in them. No wonder he gave me so much, so I’d always be wearing it. She looked over her shoulder and saw him in hot pursuit.
“Come back. I don’t mean you any harm,” he called in his mellifluous voice.
Desperately, she tried to formulate a plan. As she rushed down the stairs, questions buzzed through her head: What would happen to her if he caught her? What would she do if she caught him? In the back of her mind another thought refused to be silent, Was he telling the truth? With her current knowledge, she realized she couldn’t justly categorize Taban as evil or even of malicious intention, but she had confirmed him to be untrustworthy. Then again, how reliable were the Tolymies? I blindly did as they asked because I wanted to protect Danny. But if I don’t make a choice soon, I could compromise everything. In her hurry to escape, she hadn’t thought to grab anything she could improvise as rope to tie him up. She attempted ripping part of her sleeve to roll into a rope, but the fabric was too thick and she had nothing sharp to cut it. There was also the matter of getting him in a position where she could bind him. In order to incapacitate him, she feared she’d have to break his leg or give him brain damage with blunt trauma. She stashed the option away as a last resort, unsure that she knew the right techniques to break bones. Next she considered reporting him to a hotel staff member. Even though he had broken into her room she quickly assessed that she had a much higher chance of beating him in a physical confrontation than in a situation where he could easily out charm her. She put her hand to Aydan’s card in her front pocket. If I have to face the Tolymies and Danny, then so does he, Cassidy decided, dashing out the hotel’s backdoor into the pale moonlit night. To slow Taban, who had gained to only an arm length behind her, she slammed the heavy door into him. The handle collided with his abdomen, stalling him long enough for her to get a slight head start. The cold bit her skin. Even in summer the nights could be cold, and this was a particularly frigid night for June. She’d decided to lead him to the hostel where Danny and the Tolymie brothers stayed a few kilometers north. Cassidy touched her arm, where her Ogham should have been and realized in horror that she’d left it in her room. The rough ground chafed her feet as she ran into Loch Ard Forest. Neither elf, dryad, nor woodland spirit, she raced barefoot through a dense forest in the dark of night. Grabbing the branch of a spruce tree, she let it fly backward into Taban’s face. She ducked under low-hanging branches, stumbling as she went. Based on the unsteady thudding behind her, the large roots and uneven ground were just as treacherous for her pursuer. Taking advantage of a tiny clearing among the coniferous trees, she located the cup of the big dipper and traced the stars to Polaris. Huffing, she started to feel tightness in her lungs. She’d never been a runner, as the sharp pain in her side reminded her. Her breasts ached without the aid of a sports bra. The cold night air constricted her throat and her feet throbbed. In the moonlight, she saw the blood on her slashed-up toes. How she envied Taban’s shoes, which being tennis shoes instead of platforms, improved his coordination impressively. His fingertips brushed her hand. She dodged, but he managed to grab her forearm.
“Please, I just want to talk,” he begged.
Twisting out of his grasp, she flung a particularly spiky pine branch in his face, and threw herself ahead of him. He fell, still calling to her. She fled. It would be too easy for him to talk me into anything, she thought as tears streamed down her face. I hate that I have such powerful feelings for him. The numbness in her body couldn’t conceal the place where his nails had cut into her wrist. For another half kilometer she managed to elude him, by viciously throwing rocks and branches. The hot tears burned her cheeks. She tried to stifle them, so as not to blur her vision, but with all the other components she was fighting, they continued to fall. A sharp branch cut into her arm. The woods opened up to a large clear-cut field. Without shelter, she quickened her pace across the clearing. Slamming her foot against a hidden rock, she screamed and stumbled, but managed to continue running. Unfortunately, her momentary lapse coupled with her lack of tree branch ammo, allowed Taban to gain on her. Cassidy readied herself for the gruesome confrontation. He caught hold of her arm and twisted it behind her back. As she threw a hard kick aimed backward to his shin, she felt a pin prick in her neck. She whirled around with a hard round-house kick, but he’d retreated with a jump. Planting her bloody feet, she faced him. He held his battered shin with one hand and clutched a syringe in the other.
***
“Cassidy is not answering her Ogham right now. Would you like to leave a message?” Danny listened to Cassidy’s awake mode for the first time. Danny’s circadian rhythm hadn’t shifted with the time zones, so she was wide awake at one-thirty in the morning. She’d decided to call Cassidy to see if her friend was in the same predicament, but had received only sleep mode replies until her most recent Ogham message to which she received an auto-awake mode response. Come on Cassidy, if you’re awake you’d answer, Danny thought. She
never leaves her Ogham on by accident.
Danny ran downstairs to Aydan and Donovan’s room and banged loudly on the door. After a couple minutes of waiting, the door opened and a boxer-clad Donovan glared at her.
“Where’s Aydan?”
“Showers,” Donovan growled and moved like he was going to shut the door. Apparently, she wasn’t the only one to enjoy the perks of international travel. Behind Donovan, Danny noticed Aydan’s whip with several ripped up cards around it. She slipped around Donovan and grabbed the whip. “Why?”
“I’m worried about Cassidy.”
Donovan looked her up and down coldly, then gestured to himself. “Need me?”
She shook her head.
“I’m coming,” he grumbled. After he’d thrown on a crumpled shirt and sweats, they went to the communal restroom.
“Aydan!” Danny shouted to the shower stalls. “Are you in there?”
Pulling a towel around his waist, Aydan yanked open one of the curtains. His expression rivaled the annoyance his brother had shown. “What’s your problem?”
“Is Cassidy with you?” Danny asked before thinking through her question.
“Why would Cassidy be in the shower with me?” Aydan replied. Danny opened her mouth to say something unrelated to his question, but promptly forgot it when he added, “Don’t answer that. What’s going on?”
“Cassidy isn’t answering her Ogham and it’s not on sleep mode.”
“So she forgot to turn it on sleep mode,” Aydan rolled his eyes. “Eadowen warned me not to bathe around people who have no concept of personal space,” he muttered.
“Cassidy never forgets.”
Giving her an incredulous look, he tightened the towel around his waist. “Are you sure?”
“Yes. She’s very exact about these types of things.”
“What did you want to do?” Aydan pawed at the suds in his hair, like a kitten who hated being wet.
“I want to go to the hotel and check on her. Please,” Danny begged. She handed Aydan his whip.
“Pants would’ve been preferable,” He squeezed the water out of his hair on the shower curtain and strode out of the restroom.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“I’m procuring you a vehicle,” Aydan replied. “Coming Donovan?”
His brother stepped forward affirmatively. He and Danny followed Aydan to Marja’s office where the young woman worked the night shift.
“Thank you so much, Marja.”
“Okay, I’m really bending some rules by letting you do this, so be back soon,” Marja said. “And contact me if there’s any trouble.”
Dictating Cassidy’s hotel address to Marja’s car, Danny settled into the driver’s seat of Marja’s electric-solar sedan. Donovan spread out in the back. “How come she’s so nice to us?” she wondered aloud.
“Eadowen has a way with people.” As Aydan buckled his seat belt in the passenger seat, his arm and core flexed accentuating a figure that a gymnast would envy.
“You have a great body. May I touch?” Danny asked steering the car onto the narrow street.
“Eyes on the road,” Aydan replied. “I stayed naked so Marja would see how urgently we wanted to see our friend. Besides, I didn’t think you’d let me take the time go back to my room to get my clothes anyway.”
“That’s probably true.”
“I’ve worn less than a towel on stage.” He shrugged.
***
“I’m sorry, Cassidy.” Taban gripped the empty syringe.
“What’d you do to me?” She threw a baseball-sized rock at him because she didn’t dare try to disarm him until she knew what he had injected her with. Her hands started to tremble involuntarily and her limbs felt numb. “I could’ve beaten you in a fair fight.”
“I know.” He advanced on her as a chemically induced weakness spread through her body. She punched at him, but he blocked it easily and grabbed both of her arms. Fighting a haze more sickly than the lust she usually felt in his presence, she bit his arm in defense. He yelped and bent her arms behind her back. Struggling against him with her increasingly uncooperative body, she kicked. He took advantage of the split second when she only had one leg to balance herself and forced her to the ground. Pinning her with his entire weight, he pushed the last quarter of the contents of the syringe into her arm. Several rocks in the damp grass embedded themselves in her back, but she continued to writhe underneath him.
“I’ve injected you with a neuro-inhibitor. It won’t hurt you, only slow you down. I made it with consideration to your size and age. I promise,” Taban said in a reassuring tone, as he held her wrists. “I need information. You don’t know how far Savali and Crane have gotten. I need to eliminate any evidence of the journal as soon as possible. Just tell me what I want to know.”
To show her refusal, Cassidy silently turned her head away from him. The wet grass padded her cheek. He suddenly shifted, releasing her left hand. The effort it took for her to bring her left arm up to block her face felt like she was pulling it out of molasses. She tensed, ready to receive a punch for not surrendering her knowledge about the journal. Instead, he slid his hand under her block and tenderly wiped away the tear trail on her exposed cheek. “You’re like Telyn,” he whispered to himself. The name she didn’t recognize caught her attention. “Telyn?” she repeated. His eyes widened to express that he hadn’t meant to say the name aloud. A gust of wind made her, now inactive, body shiver. Taban adjusted his weight to his arms. She tried to fight, but the drug had gone into its full effect. Appearing to determine she no longer posed a physical threat to him, Taban started to feel her body. “Are you injured?” he asked testing her legs and arms. “Yes,” she said quietly. He located the deep gash on her arm and produced a medical bag from his coat pocket. Padding it with antiseptic from his medical bag, he tended to her injury. She shook in her cotton pajamas. Initially, he appeared confused by this response. Then he removed his heavy jacket, lifted her up, and wrapped her in it, before laying her back down on the grass. A part of Cassidy wished he would treat her worse, so she would have more reasons to hate him—she needed all she could get.
He took another syringe out of the small medical bag. “This is sodium thiopental.” He held up the syringe. “I’m going to give you a very low dose. You’ll pass out for a few minutes. All it’s going to do is make it harder for you to lie to me.” Her screams and feeble squirming didn’t stop him from shoving the needle into her arm. Her world went black. When the stars in the moonlit sky came back into focus, she found herself still restrained by Taban.
“My goal has the same result as yours. What can I give or show to convince you?” he asked, his eyes bright and beautiful in the moonlight—not so different from the time they’d spent outside in May. Exhaustion swept through her body in the warmth of his coat. She let it consume her, so she wouldn’t have to answer. He lightly slapped her cheek to keep her conscious. “In your condition, there are things I could easily do to you to force it out of you.” He put his weight on her again as if to remind her of his strength. “But I’d rather not.” Releasing her again, he rubbed her hands to keep them warm. She attempted to force herself into sleep. All she could think to do was stall until the drug he’d injected her with wore off. This time he hit her with his open hand. “The drug won’t wear off for hours,” he said. “I have all night with you.” For the first time, there was a dark note in his sweet voice. “You don’t have your Ogham. No one knows you’re missing. And you’re weakened … there’s nothing you can do.” He removed the coat that was shielding her from the cold. Even as the rocks and cold cut her skin, she felt her eyelids grow heavy. What time had he broken into her room? Sometime between midnight and three in the morning, she guessed. Holding her nose he put his lips over hers to slip a bitter liquid into her mouth. In her somnorific state, she recognized the tangy flavor of a highly concentrated energy drink. If she wanted to breathe, she had to swallow. Choking, she pushed on his shoulders, but he u
sed gravity to his full advantage. In a few minutes, she felt the pulse of caffeine in her heart. Keeping quiet was getting more difficult. Taban held up another syringe. “Apparently, the sodium thiopental dose I gave you was too small.” A shout distracted them both. Taban clapped his hand over her mouth and pushed her harder into the ground. With Taban’s dark coat, the grass, and the uneven terrain, Cassidy realized it would be difficult for someone to spot her. As Taban pressed into her, Aydan’s card dug into her chest. She wiggled her head and showed Taban submissive eyes. He loosened his grip on her mouth.
“I’ll tell you,” she whispered through his fingers. “I want a kiss, first.” She slipped the card out of her pocket, hiding it under her hand. Though he seemed skeptical, Taban did as she requested. She let her arms fall heavily on his back, because she didn’t have the control to hold them up and he wouldn’t notice she held the shimmering card in one hand. Pulling back from the lip lock, he saw the card before she could hide it. With silent rage, he struck her hard enough to make her see fireflies. Kissing is supposed to distract people, Cassidy thought, as blood rushed to the point of impact on her cheek. Heavy footsteps hurried toward them. Someone had seen her signal.
CHAPTER 20
BLOODY MOONLIGHT
DANNY, DONOVAN, AND AYDAN rushed toward the old hotel on the edge of the Loch Ard Forest. “Message Cassidy again,” Aydan commanded.
“I did. She’s still not responding.”
“Okay, how do you want to get into the hotel to check on her?”
“Cassidy authorized me to visit her.” Danny tapped her Ogham to show Cassidy’s electronic signature.
“At this hour?” Aydan asked.
“Well, it’s not like I look very threatening.”
“True.”
“Can you guys get in?” Danny asked.
Seducer Fey Page 20
