Pushed

by Corrine Jackson

  His quick glance only lasted a second, but in that second, I saw a flood of emotions. Hope, fear, happiness.

  I clutched his arm. “You found Asher?”

  “Yes,” he said in a tense voice.

  A sob escaped out of me, and I shoved a fist to my mouth. I gasped, and Gabe’s fingers clutched my other hand so tightly I could feel his bones smashed against mine. I didn’t care. I gripped his hand back, and I didn’t have to say anything. He knew exactly what I felt.

  “Tell me,” I demanded.

  He kept his eyes to the road as he spoke. “I followed Alcais like you said. He left his house about ten minutes after you did.”

  “Did you steal this to follow him?”

  “Didn’t have to. He walked.” I stared and he continued, “Asher’s been just blocks from their house this whole time.”

  Had I walked right by Asher’s prison? I felt sick and rolled the window down to get some air. Another thing to set aside to process later.

  “You saw him?”

  “Through a window. He didn’t look good.”

  Gabe swallowed, and I looked away for a second. If Gabe said he didn’t look good, then Asher must be in terrible shape.

  “So my grandfather’s men have him,” I said bluntly when I could speak.

  Gabe shook his head again and turned the car onto the highway. “No. That’s the weird thing. Alcais went to this small cottage, and I hid nearby to watch the place. There were a few guys hanging about, coming and going as if they were on shifts. He definitely knew them, but they weren’t part of your grandfather’s community.”

  Okay. I didn’t know what to make of that, except that Alcais was dead. He’d known about Asher all this time. I was going to hurt him in such a way that no Healer could fix him. He would be sorry he’d ever messed with me. The only good thing I could see about this was that Gabe and I could easily manage rescuing Asher from a few men.

  “Remy, they were Protectors.”

  I stared at Gabe’s profile. “No. You have to be mistaken.”

  “I’m not. I knew a couple of them. At least the ones I saw. I told you. Protectors tend to know of each other.”

  Why would Alcais be with Protectors? That made no sense. Unless . . . Unless he’d been working with the Protectors all along. We’d thought that the Protectors had captured Asher and me because they’d been following Asher, planning to use him as bait to catch me. But why had they kept one of their kind hostage? And how had they discovered his connection to me in the first place?

  Franc. My mind latched on to a memory. My grandfather had seen me with Asher that one time. He’d seemed suspicious, but I’d thought I’d convinced him that Asher was a stranger. But what if Franc hadn’t been convinced? And what if he’d sent the Protectors after Asher, knowing that only a Protector could capture him?

  But why would my grandfather have let them take me, too? Unless that had been an accident. I’d snuck out that night. We’d thought Asher was bait, but maybe he’d been the target all along. My grandfather might not have meant for me to be taken, too. If he had allowed me to be taken, that would make him a sadistic bastard because then he purposely let them torture me. I thought about my return to his house, and how he’d used my fear to convince me to stay. Horror squeezed my heart. That couldn’t have been his plan.

  Things that hadn’t made sense before crystallized, forming an ugly truth. He pretended to hate them, but my grandfather was working with the Protectors somehow. He’d sent them after Asher. And he’d continued to have my boyfriend held hostage. Franc had known that I was dating a Protector and never said a word. And he probably knew what I was, too. What Gabe was. He’d truly duped me.

  Each new realization fanned breath on the smoke inside me until it blazed into a raging fire. I could kill him, I thought. If my grandfather were here, I could kill him.

  “Take a deep breath,” Gabe told me. “There’s more.”

  “What?” I bit off.

  “I counted at least five bodies guarding Asher. I didn’t see all their faces, but at least some of them are Protectors. I’m not sure how we’re going to get Asher out. We need a plan. A very good plan.”

  Our plan was half-assed at best. It was entirely possible that we were all going to end up dead. Gabe and I had come up with our idea during the twenty-minute drive to Pacifica. He boldly parked the car (which did turn out to be stolen) in front of the house where Asher was being held.

  “Here?” I asked, shocked.

  Gabe frowned. “You know this place?”

  “Sort of.”

  I left it at that. There wasn’t time to explain about Yvette or how the last time I’d been inside the house, it had been to see the body of a dead Healer. I wondered if Franc had betrayed her, too. Or maybe the whole thing had been more lies. Maybe Yvette wasn’t even a Healer, and Franc had been manipulating me again. Hadn’t that night threatened my relationship with Asher when I saw firsthand what a Protector could do to a Healer? Protectors would only work with Healers if they were getting something out of it in return. I thought of Yvette again. Had my grandfather used her life as a bargaining chip? I could hardly tell what the truth was anymore.

  I reached for the door, but Gabe stopped me.

  “If we do this, I need to know you’re going to be calm.”

  “I’m calm,” I snapped.

  He said nothing, and I turned away for a second. All right, I was the opposite of calm. A maelstrom of emotions torpedoed through me, ricocheting off every new realization of how I’d been betrayed and the sharp tug of fear at what we would find inside the house. But I had to focus. I thought back to living with Dean. He’d fed off my emotions, and I’d learned to hide them away. To shove them down until I could be alone to sort them out. Time to find that place again. I took several deep breaths and reinforced my walls so no stray bits of my energy could escape to clue anyone in on what I was. Then I met Gabe’s eyes.

  “I’m calm,” I repeated, and this time it sounded true.

  He nodded and passed me one of the handguns from the backseat. Gabe had lifted the weapons from the men parked in front of Franc’s house. I had never held a gun before, and I tested the weight in my palm. It felt heavy.

  Gabe took the safety off. “Point and pull the trigger if anyone even breathes in your direction. Understand?”

  “Yes. And if you go down, I run.”

  I didn’t know if I could really do that, but I didn’t want to argue with Gabe. There wasn’t time. We didn’t have long before my grandfather would realize I was gone. This was our only chance to take them by surprise.

  We climbed out of the car, and I tucked the gun into the waistband of my jeans at my back. Yvette’s house sat in darkness, but as we approached a light in the living room flipped on. Of course, the Protectors had heard our car pull up with their supernatural hearing. The door opened before we could knock on it. As we’d planned, Gabe and I launched forward in a display of Protector-speed and shoved past the man who stood in our way. Gabe bore the brunt of using his strength to knock the man aside, both of us wanting to hide that I was weaker. It worked. Within seconds, we were in the living room and the man had fallen to the floor.

  “Where is our brother?” I shouted.

  Everything hinged on these Protectors not knowing what Lottie Blackwell looked like, which would have been easier if these people didn’t bump into each other across the decades.

  A man and a woman appeared from the hallway, and I whipped the gun from behind my back. We’d woken the Protectors from their beds if their clothing was any indication, but they didn’t appear sleepy in the least. On the drive here, I’d suggested sneaking in, but Gabe had tossed that idea out. He’d been right, too, considering how alert the Protectors were. They’d have heard our approach even if we tiptoed.

  “Who the hell are you?” the woman demanded.

  I thought she might be in her late twenties. Everything about her seemed delicate, from her tiny bones to her short stature and pale
eyes. I stamped down a bit of fear. This delicate woman could break every bone in my body and steal my energy. I reinforced my walls, and she sent me an odd look.

  “Lottie Blackwell,” I said, doing my best to project Lottie’s attitude. “You have my brother.” I took three steps toward her, pointing the gun at her heart. “Since when do we hold our kind prisoner?”

  One of the men twitched as if to attack me and found Gabe holding a gun to his temple. The man didn’t look worried, and a wisp of fear swirled through me as I remembered how easily Gabe had once taken down Asher in a fight. I prayed Gabe hadn’t become too mortal being near me. Now more than ever we needed his Protector strength to make our story believable.

  “Lay a finger on my sister, and I’ll put a bullet in your head. Even you won’t get back up from that,” Gabe threatened in a soft voice that made the hair on my arms stand up. He gestured to the man he’d knocked over in the entryway. “You! Get Asher. Now!”

  The Protector launched to his feet. He shared one look with the man that Gabe held at gunpoint, and then disappeared down the hall. Sweat pooled under my arms, and I checked my defenses. The woman stared at me unblinking, and I met her gaze with false bravado. This wasn’t like facing Dean at all. To her, I would be a thing to torture and use and feed upon. She would kill me so easily, and I could do very little to stop her. The only thing holding her back was her belief that I was like her, so I wouldn’t give in to my terror. I had to be strong for Asher. He would need me.

  The woman’s muscles bunched and her gaze slid sideways, giving me warning.

  “Please do it,” I told her in a flat voice that made me proud. She froze. “Do you understand how much I hate you? You’re a traitor to our kind, working with the Healers the way you are.”

  The man made a noise of surprise, and Gabe laughed. “That’s right. We know all about you. And we’re not the only ones. You actually thought you could keep your arrangement secret?” He made a tsking noise. “There are more of us coming. A lot more. You’ll have to learn to share.”

  Deflect and confuse, Gabe had said when he came up with this plan. Make them think about something besides us.

  “How did you find out?” the man asked. He sounded enraged, and the woman actually flinched, her dark brows lowering in worry.

  “Now that’s a question I’d ask your friends,” I tossed out.

  “What are you—”

  The Protector’s sputtering was interrupted by the return of the first man. My entire body yearned to see if he had Asher, but I couldn’t take my eyes off of the woman.

  “What did you do to him?”

  The horror in Gabe’s voice almost broke my control. The gun in my hand wavered for a second, but a cunning light shifted across the woman’s face. One second of inattention and she would be on me. I leveled the gun again, and she scowled.

  “You’re going to carry him to our car,” Gabe directed someone. Then he said, “Lottie, back up toward me.”

  Without turning around, I took several steps backward until I stood beside Gabe. He passed me the keys to the car.

  “You follow her out,” he told the man holding Asher. “I’m right behind you, Lottie.”

  Torn between leaving with Asher and leaving Gabe alone with two Protectors, I wavered. And while I wasted time, a man appeared in the kitchen doorway. My heart stuttered, and then began to tap out a million beats per second. Fear slithered over me, and sweat trickled down my back.

  “Where do you think you’re going, darlin’?” Mark said. “I’ve been looking forward to seeing you again.”

  Xavier stood slightly behind him. His face looked scary calm. “She’s not one of us,” he told the others. To me, he simply said, “Hello, Remy.”

  The two Protectors had healed since I’d last seen them. Maybe they’d had help from the Healers. Gabe was probably kicking himself that he hadn’t spotted them at the house. These men hated me, and our odds were now five Protectors to one slightly mortal Protector, one unconscious even more mortal Protector, and one half breed.

  We’re so dead.

  “You’ve figured things out, have you?” Xavier said. “Good girl. I’m surprised it took so long, though. Marche must be a better liar than I realized.”

  He meant Franc. Any lingering doubts about my grandfather’s involvement faded. From out of nowhere, a new calm settled over me. Dean had taught me this. When death was certain, you had nothing to lose by fighting it.

  Nobody in the room breathed. They waited for us to move so they could attack. I could sense them assessing us, looking for our weaknesses. Gabe, they knew about. One Protector against five would never stand a chance. It was me. I was the unknown, the reason they hesitated.

  “Go!” Gabe shouted.

  I ignored him, tucked the keys in my pocket, and spoke to Xavier, who watched me without blinking. “So he ordered you to take Asher and me. He paid you to test me and see what I could do.”

  I’d refused my grandfather’s tests, but he’d found another way.

  Xavier smiled. “If by paid, you mean he gave us the lady of this house, then yes.”

  And they’d killed her right away. No hesitation like they’d shown with me. Which meant Franc hadn’t let them kill me. Part of me wondered why they hadn’t disobeyed his orders once he told them what I was. And then the lightbulb went off.

  “You have no idea what I am, do you? Even now.”

  It was a guess, but it hit home. Xavier’s mouth tightened. I continued. “Franc kept that from you. But you know enough to understand that I’m not like other Healers. And I’m certainly not like you.”

  Xavier pushed past Mark. The others watched him as if he was their leader. “Tell me then. What are you?” he asked.

  I smiled with all the confidence I didn’t feel. “I’m the one who can make you mortal again for as little or as long as you desire.” I took a step toward the man carrying Asher. “But you can’t force me to use my powers. And the way I see it, you have two choices.”

  “What’s that?” Xavier said softly, his eyes measuring my every movement like a cat about to pounce.

  “One . . . You let us walk out of here. You get to keep your sweet setup with the Healers, and you forget all about us.”

  “Or?”

  I hovered my free hand over Asher’s back and dropped my mental walls enough that the Protectors could sense it. They stared at me with hunger, and I had to hold back a shudder.

  “Two . . . I transfer every one of Asher’s injuries on to each of you. But first, I make you mortal enough to feel it.” I let more of my energy swirl in the air. The humming began, and I could see how the pain of it surprised them. I hoped it made them yearn for more sensation. Otherwise, this would never work. I let the threat hang in my words as I met Xavier’s gaze. “Trust me when I tell you that I can do it.”

  He studied me. At last, he said, “Option three. They can go, but you stay.”

  He gestured toward Gabe and Asher.

  “No!” Gabe yelled.

  “Done,” I said.

  “Give me your gun,” Xavier demanded.

  I shook my head. “Not until they’re outside and in the car.”

  Gabe gripped my arm. “You don’t honestly think I’m leaving you here.”

  “I do.”

  No way was he backing out now when we’d already jumped in with both feet. Everything was going as we’d planned. Sort of. They hadn’t believed I was Lottie, but we’d known they wouldn’t willingly let me leave. This is a stupid plan, but it’s all we’ve got. Gabe looked like he would argue, and I thought, This is our only option. Besides, it was your idea. Get on with it.

  Gabe’s mouth tightened. He held my hand for a second when I passed him the keys and whispered, “Stay safe.” He looked like he wanted to add more, but he couldn’t chance it when the others might hear him. He stepped toward the man who held Asher and gestured at him with the gun. “You carry him out to the car. Let’s go.”

  Xavier gestured for the
man to do as Gabe said, and then they left. The door closed behind them. Gabe had told me to give him thirty seconds to get away. Thirty seconds to get his brother in the car before he came back for me. Only we hadn’t counted on a Protector carrying Asher. Now Gabe would have to take out the Protector and save Asher. Thirty seconds seemed inadequate, but I figured that was all the time I had. I didn’t dare take my eyes from the others in the room with me. Everyone had that alert, ready-to-attack stance. I couldn’t blink. In my head I began to count down. 30 . . . 29 . . . 28 . . .

  “Remy,” Xavier said, taking a step toward me. “The gun.”

  I lifted the gun to my head. 27 . . . 26 . . . 25 . . .

  Xavier raised his hands, his expression changing to one of surprise. “You don’t have to do that.”

  “You tortured me. I won’t go through that again.” The fear in my voice was very real.

  The woman took an aggressive step toward me. My finger tightened on the trigger, and I prepared to squeeze it the rest of the way.

  “Back off!” Xavier shouted at her before turning back to me. “Come on, Remy. We didn’t know what you could do. It doesn’t have to be like before.”

  They need you alive, Gabe had said on our way here. If they knew what I could do, they would keep me alive long enough to take what they wanted. Sure, they would kill me, but on their terms. So I threatened to take what they wanted, and kept counting. 21 . . . 20 . . . 19 . . . Come on, Gabe.

  “You’re lying!” I shrieked. “You just want to use me!”

  I did my best impression of someone coming unhinged. The fact that I trembled in real terror helped. I sensed time running out. 16 . . . 15 . . . 14 . . .

  I took several steps back away from the big front window. “Stay away from me!”

  Mark appeared to Xavier’s left. “I’m tired of this. Let’s end this already.”

  “Not yet.” Xavier smiled at me. “You’re not going to shoot yourself, are you? You think your friends will come back for you. You think they’re different from us, but it’s a lie. They’re only pretending to care about you. They think if they’re patient, you’ll give them what they want.” A telltale emotion must have shown on my face because he smirked. “That’s the truth, isn’t it? I’ve spent some time with Gabe. How far do you think he’d go to feel again? Something tells me he would go pretty far.”