Her fingers curled into the bark. It’ll be brain bleeds for you both. Vessels bursting. Blood flowing. Vessels bursting….
The soldier lunged in, grabbed her arm, and pulled her from the tree.
With the contact, the desire she couldn’t project sang through him to the Dust.
He froze. Stiffened. His hands jumped up to paw at the sides of his head until a long breath gasped out of his lungs. He fell.
Lucas stared at them in horror.
She gave him a little smile, just a quick flash of teeth. “A brain bleed,” she whispered. “A massive bleed for you both. Just like my mother. Remember?” She lifted her hand and wiggled her fingers, urging him to come closer.
Lucas lunged to the side and came up with a long, thick fallen branch, deadweight from a tree. “No. You’re damaged. You have to touch me, don’t you?” He laughed, lifting the branch between them. “That’s not going to happen, demon bitch.”
Lena moved toward him. Her fingers curled.
Vessels bursting. Blood flowing. Vessels bursting. Blood flowing.
He waved the branch between them, as if he could hear the chant she kept up in her head in anticipation of the moment she made contact with his skin. He glanced behind her, and new panic bloomed.
Dimly, above the throbbing of blood and her private chant, she could hear crashing behind her as someone came toward them through the woods. Jackson? Or Alex?
Lucas didn’t wait for the new threat to arrive. Desperate, he lunged forward, swinging the branch back and around.
She curled away from it. It cracked into her side and shoulder.
New hurt bloomed and then faded to join the pain already crashing through her blood. She scrambled away as he swung again, the branch passing short of her. She dove in, arms outstretched, hands reaching.
He scrambled back, then stumbled in the undergrowth.
Even as he regained his footing and swung the branch back, she rushed to take advantage of the opening. The branch swung around, but she had poured her body into the breach, fingers outstretched for his face.
The branch cracked into her chin and nose. Her head snapped back. Her lower jaw smashed up. She was weightless, flying away for a terrible, stomach-twisting second before landing facedown in a heap.
Her vision went dark. The must of leaves and the metallic tang of her own blood filled her nose. A rhythmic thumping came closer and closer, and something thrashed near her. Pain engulfed her face and neck like flames racing along her nerves, fire that consumed, leaving behind char with a glowing core.
Noise coming. Danger?
She got her arms under her, her push feeble with shock but enough to roll her over. Movement flashed by her feet, and a body came toward her with the sound of crashing leaves.
Her legs automatically kicked out and caught him, one foot low in the belly and the other in the thigh, sweeping his leg out from beneath him. She closed her eyes, braced for an impact on her body that didn’t come. The thumping behind her stopped and became air pressure shifting above.
Air rushed from a man’s lungs with a hoarse groan and the dull thud of bodies colliding. They crashed to earth beside her.
Even as she reopened her eyes, Lena scooted back away from them. She tasted metal. Blood bubbled as it flowed from her nose. She panted through her open mouth.
Jackson and Lucas both rolled to their feet. No longer worried about keeping her touch at bay, Lucas discarded the branch for a knife from his belt. Jackson bent forward, ready, and his own blade glinted. The men circled and then came together, grunting. They slashed and grappled, each searching for an advantage. They didn’t speak. No words, just thick groans of effort echoed through the clearing.
Lucas’s hand broke free to slash at Jackson’s face. Jackson feinted back. The blade cut him across the bridge of his nose and skimmed both cheeks. Blood spattered out and ran in fast rivulets like dark tear tracks. Lucas laughed hoarsely, an ugly sound. The men closed again, each holding the other’s knife hand away while kicking at his enemy in an obscene dance.
She focused, reaching for the Dust. Communication wavered away like a heat wave with every attempt.
You want to help. I know you want to help. Help me now.
One of them groaned in pain. Lucas tore away, spinning and landing on his belly before her.
He lifted his face, contorted with pain and rage. He brought his knife hand around.
Lena dragged up a handful of dirt and broken bark and leaves from beside her. She threw it in his face, hoping bits of it would catch in his hateful eyes.
He roared in pain.
Jackson pounced from behind, gripping Lucas by the hair and dragging him back. He smashed his foot down on Lucas’s wrist once, twice, then kicked the knife away. He flipped Lucas, pulled him to his feet, and then rocked Lucas’s head back with his fist.
Lucas staggered, gasping around a nose as bloodied now as Jackson’s. His glazed stare at Jackson shifted, looking behind him.
Footsteps pounded closer, dull impacts in the silence of the forest broken only by the labored sounds of the three of them breathing through blood.
Was it Alex? Or Lucas’s soldiers? She reached back, grabbed the rough bark of the tree, and pulled herself up. She didn’t know what she could do. She’d manage something.
Jackson didn’t turn. He didn’t wait. He smashed his fists again into Lucas, striking his jaw and cheek on the left and his temple on the right.
Lucas staggered to the left after the second impact, bent double, before falling sideways and rolling down a slope. A moment later, a splash echoed up as he hit water somewhere below.
Alex slid to a stop before her. His left hand pressed a long wet tear in his shirt. The leather binder was gone. He stared at her, chest heaving.
Her chin and lip pulsed, heat beneath the cold wet of torn flesh. Her face must be a bloody mess.
He reached out his hand to her face, as if his first thought was to heal.
“Lucas,” she gasped out, spattering droplets of blood on his chest and face as she tried to explain. She collapsed to the side, gasping for air.
Alex scrambled for her, holding her up, pulling her in to his chest. “Lena,” he said. And then again, and again. His voice was heavy with fear and something else she couldn’t name. He caught her to his chest, his arms like vises around her.
She tilted her head back to look up at him. Her blood smeared across his chest.
He lifted a shaking hand to her face. His lips compressed with tension and focus. Nothing happened. He gasped, his face contorted with disappointment and fear for her.
“Come on!” Alex bore down again, gaze trained on her torn face. A moment later a groaned sob tore from him before he snarled over his shoulder at Jackson, “Get over here.”
Jackson moved closer, but not fast enough for Alex. One arm uncurled from around Lena, shooting out to grab the front of Jackson’s shirt and drag him to them.
“Heal her. Heal her now!”
He scooted backward, pushing Jackson into his place before Lena. He rose, then, and scrambled away down the slope. His head dipped below her line of sight.
She blinked, fingers curling into loose soil and crushed leaves beside her.
Jackson reached out his hands to her face, as if to heal.
It took a few long, metallic-tinged wet breaths before the panic faded and she came back to herself.
Jackson nodded, little movements meant to soothe.
And Alex?
He was somewhere else, with a man who had almost gouged Jackson’s eyes out with a knife. He had gone over the slope.
She pushed Jackson away and struggled to rise. He leaned in to pull her back, and she batted him off.
“No, get off. Alex!”
He was still in danger. She surged away and staggered to the edge of the hillside. She managed two shaky steps over the edge before falling to her hip and sliding through the moldering remains of last winter’s leaves caught in the underbrush of the steep
slope. She came to a rest halfway to the bottom, her fingers caught in the branches of a fragrant honeysuckle.
Below, barely discernible through the failing light, Alex straddled Lucas, his hands around the man’s neck. Water half-submerged Lucas’s head. His body stretched out into the deepening river where he’d fallen.
She used the bush to pull herself to a stand. She half-slid and half-walked down the slope, until the forms of the two men became clear.
Lucas’s arms flailed. He tried to beat at Alex’s sides, but the impacts, and the arcs of his arms, grew smaller and smaller as his strength failed. His hands clutched at Alex’s shirt in a final grip before falling to the side. Lucas’s legs kicked out, splashing twice in the deeper water before they stilled and bobbed as they were tugged at by a swift current.
Alex leaned away from Lucas, pulling his shaking hands from the man’s throat. “No. It isn’t enough,” he growled down at the still man below him. “Not for what you did.” He stared down at Lucas, his features twisted.
She didn’t think it was just fury. What did he have to be ashamed of?
“It’s okay, Alex,” she called out to him. Her voice sounded wet and hoarse. Hearing it hurt as much as the effort of speaking.
He lifted his head to stare across the stream at her on the hillside.
“It’s okay. It’s okay to like it. Remember?”
His head fell to the side and grief twisted his face. He shook his head, rubbed his face, and muttered under his breath. “You did that, Reyes. Proud of yourself?”
She started to descend toward him.
“No,” he shouted. He waved her back. “I’m coming.” Alex swung his leg over Lucas. He slid on his backside through water and leaves and mud until he pulled clear of Lucas, kicking the man’s side as he pushed away.
The kick had enough force to dislodge Lucas’s head and shoulders from the hold of the muddy shore. Lucas slid out, spun as the current caught his lower body and then flowed loosely away in the water.
Alex started, then scrambled to his feet and waded in, following a few steps as if to retrieve Lucas’s body. When he stopped, he stared after his former partner for a long moment before turning back to her.
His beautiful face was a study in rage and shame. He splashed across the shallow water to the hillside then climbed to her. He moved as if in pain, but it wasn’t physical pain slowing him.
He stopped in front of her. “It’s not okay, Lena. It’s not.”
She stared back into his face. His expression was as haunted as that of the boy under the train car and filled with pain. The bloody slash showing through his torn shirt flashed her to a man crawling away, a gaping wound across his throat. It’s not okay. It’s not. But he does.
Alex cupped her cheek away from her wounds. He shook his head in small movements back and forth as he searched her eyes above her mangled face.
It’s not okay to like it. But I do, too.
“I just—I almost lost you.” His voice broke, and he swallowed.
She nodded. That made it okay? It didn’t. “It’s not okay to like it,” she whispered. “But we do. We do.”
He picked small bits of forest detritus from the blood thick on her face. His hand fell to her shoulder, and he pulled her close, wrapping his arms around her, not a vise this time, but a cradle.
Lena’s hands went up automatically, wrapping around his sides.
Alex bent into the embrace, lowering his face into the space between her head and neck. His voice was muffled, meant only for her, “We do what we have to. And I almost lost you.”
“Hey.” Jackson called down to them from the top of the hill. How long had he been there?
Alex’s arms tightened around her for a second before he pressed his lips to her temple. The warmth of his breath curled on her skin. When he pulled away, her blood coated his cheek and lips.
Jackson said something above, but Lena lost the words to the look on Alex’s face. Grief and guilt mingled with rage—darkness. But something else pushed at the darkness like light oil spreading through wine.
He ignored Jackson. He kept his focus on her. He swiped the back of his hand across his face, smearing her blood into his skin.
“Thought I told you to heal her, Lee?”
“She ran to you.” Irritation flared in Jackson’s voice. “Was he done? You want me to head downstream to find and finish him?”
Alex still didn’t raise his face. Instead, he looked back down the river as if he could see Lucas’s body, long gone like a log fallen in the night.
“He’s done enough. Let him drown.” The words throbbed with hatred, different from his usual agent cool. He pressed his hand to his side. “It’s going to be full dark soon. We need to get Lena to the rendezvous. Let him rot.”
“Yes, sir.” Jackson said.
She looked up at him. Jackson nodded, his expression as empty and implacable as that of the man he looked down on from above.
32
Alex took Lena’s hand and helped her up the hill. If he thought she’d let him, he’d carry her. When they reached the top, he could feel her resist, but he tightened his grip. He pulled her the last few feet to where he stood. The sharp twist of fear and guilt and anger at the ruin of her face eclipsed the burning throb of his wound. Somehow the smell of bruised honeysuckle that clung to her made the torn skin that much more devastating.
“It’s going to be okay,” he told her. “As soon as we get you healed.”
But would it?
She glanced back over her shoulder.
His eyes followed hers to where Jackson still stood behind them on the crest of the hill, gazing down. Alex wanted nothing more than to peel away the skin of the young agent’s face in retribution. He had one job. How could he have lost her?
Alex led her back to the tree and pressed her down in front of it, kneeling before her. He examined her face in the half-light and winced. Glancing back at Jackson, he growled again for the younger man to get over to them.
“Can you heal this?” He demanded of Jackson. “Really heal it this time?”
Jackson nodded without hesitation. “I’d have healed it last time if she hadn’t gone after you.”
Alex turned back to Lena. “I’d do it myself if I could.” The fact that he couldn’t bothered him more than he’d say. The way she tangled her fingers in his for a moment made it evident that his voice reflected his disappointment. The self-recrimination made his next comment come out as a rasp. “Hopefully Jackson won’t fuck this up, too.”
She shook her head. “I saw Lucas. I came after him. It wasn’t Jackson’s fault,” she managed to speak with a minimum of movement.
“No, just his responsibility.”
Alex rose, pressing his hand to the knife wound on his lower abdomen again. Jackson wouldn’t meet his gaze.
Guilty conscience, kid? He should feel guilty. He should feel damned lucky, too. If Lena had died, Alex would have carved his loss out of the Agent and left him to bleed out on the forest floor while trying to gather up his scattered body parts.
“Much as I hate to leave you in his care again, I’ve got to make sure our route to the rendezvous is secure and that there aren’t any more surprises in these woods.”
“Alex,” she protested, “you’re wounded, too.”
He looked back at her. The torn skin of her lower face oozed blood, and she had an enormous broken goose egg across her forehead where she’d been hit. Except for her eyes, her face was painted with dried and drying blood filled with debris. He shook his head.
“You have priority. I’ll be fine. I’ll be back soon and we can get you to the rendezvous. Once you’re there, you can take care of me yourself, if you want to.” Alex stalked away, moving through the darkening forest.
He moved back and forth, quickly and quietly. Their area of the forest secured, he headed back in a straight line. He swallowed, trying to push back the remains of the acrid near-panic in his throat. He couldn’t believe he’d nearly lost her.
He’d done everything right, even to the point of risking the loss of her affection. He had adapted to every change in circumstances, worked every scenario, before and after they’d set out. He had kept her protected from things he didn’t think she could handle yet, urged her to take on the things she needed to in order to grow into the powerful woman she could be. He’d achieved everything they’d set out to accomplish.
Except he hadn’t gotten to her first after Jackson lost her. Alex had managed to catch up to Jackson at the edge of the woods. It was Alex who had covered his back, pulling a knife after he’d run out of bullets to engage all three of Lucas’s soldiers who’d pursued them from the caravan. It was Alex who had urged Jackson on after Lucas and Lena, the distraction costing him the slash across the belly. Once he’d disposed of the soldiers, Alex had hauled ass to make it to her. And he’d been too late.
Watching from a distance as Lucas slammed her in the face and sent her in a crumpled heap across the clearing had nearly been his undoing. Too far away to do anything. Too far away to even make it there in time to engage Lucas. All he could do was run to her, mind blank and savage.
And now as he silently approached the clearing where he’d left them, Jackson’s voice snaked through the trees.
“—and I could go with you, help you build your own school, help you find more girls. There are more. There have to be. If they could discard some, there are more. And they need to be found. We can do it together. Stop listening to Alex. Don’t give him another opportunity to betray you. Everything out of his mouth is a lie. Everything.”
Alex felt a low throb of rage pulse at the base of his skull. Red washed forward and colored the forest in front of him. He might have charged forward, but for Lena’s response.
“No, he hasn’t lied to me. It’s hard for you to see, to understand, because you’re not like him. You can’t do whatever it takes and justify it and feed off of it. I can. I do. I know where I belong and what my role is.”
Alex enjoyed the exultant surge of emotion as she denied Jackson so much he almost missed her next quiet words.
Wicked Legends: A Dystopian Paranormal Romance and Urban Fantasy Collection Page 161
