“Were you aware of everything, Alex?” His stare intensified, digging into my face, catching every nuance of my response to the slow, controlled question.
“Yes.” I flicked my eyes back up to his.
I caught a trace of a smile as the muscles around his jaw flexed. I also detected male satisfaction as the smell of something rich and thick hit my nose. I couldn’t put a description to it, but I knew instinctively that it was Greer’s own unique scent—his own personal brand.
The smile disappeared as his face went stone cold.
“Then I guess you also remember how you ended up covered in the smell of that beast.”
It took me a minute to figure out what he was talking about.
“Oh, tell me you’re not accusing me of—” My mouth dropped. “Constantine was there when I needed him. Where the hell were you?”
He moved around the island. “Go ahead, tell me,” he goaded.
“Don’t be such an ass. Between the beating some dickhole gave me, and an elf nearly sucking me into her vortex, I couldn’t possibly have managed more than a little telepathic blowjob. No hands. Honest.” I raised my palms in the air, giving him the universal hands-off sign.
“I wouldn’t go there if I were you,” he warned.
“Or what? You’ll ground me?”
The speed at which he made it around the island was fast even for him. I reacted just as fast. My back hit the counter behind me hard enough to knock a crystal vase to the floor. I glanced at the broken glass before darting past him, but I barely made it to the foyer before his arm hooked my waist and pulled me against his chest.
“Seriously Greer, let go.” I dug my fingers into his forearm, but it was like gripping an anaconda wrapped around its meal.
“Funny, you didn’t seem to mind my hands last night. If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were enjoying my hands.” His mouth was against my ear. “Tell me, Alex, do all men get you this worked up, or is it just me?”
“How original. If you think I’m going to sit back like an obedient dog while you manipulate me, you’re in for disappointment. Someone tried that with me once. I didn’t like it.”
“I’d be terribly disappointed if you did,” he said.
“Good. Now let go of me.”
“Why is it,” he asked against my cheek, “that every time I think you’re ready, you disappoint me and do something completely foolish?” His face grazed my hair while his free hand removed a strand from the corner of my mouth.
“Ready for what?” I asked. “What the hell should I be ready for? Tell me.” He grabbed my wrists as I jabbed my elbows into his side.
“Fight, damn it!” he growled. “If that’s the best you can do, you’ll be dead in no time.” He released my wrists so he could slide his hand up my neck and cradle my jaw in his palm. He lifted my chin and pressed my head against the hollow of his neck as his cheek ran down the side of my face. A warm breath crawled over my skin while his lips traced the outside of my lobe. “You think your hunters will be as gentle as I am?” he said as he stroked my jaw. His voice dropped to a low hiss. “They’ll use you up and discard your bones. Just like Maeve.”
“Son of a—” I jerked violently but only moved about a millimeter. “Say my mother’s name like that again and I’m gone.”
“Such audacity. Tell me, Alex. Tell me how much you hate me. If you can do that, I’ll let you go.”
He was baiting me, and like a fool I took it. “I hate you.” I regretted it as soon as I said it.
My knees hit the floor when his arms pulled away. Greer could be a real hard-ass, but he’d never been cruel—until today. I stayed on my knees with my eyes fixed on the finely knotted rug beneath me. Before I walked out that door, I had one question: “Why didn’t you come for me? You said you’d protect me.” I waited to hear something that would rationalize why he’d left me to be beaten by Arthur Richmond when he’d promised over and over again to protect me. He didn’t answer. “I never figured you for a man who would break his promises. I guess I read you wrong.” I could feel his eyes staring down at me. Coward, I thought before turning around to look at him.
He stood over me with his face twisted in an expression mixed with confusion and accusation. “I did come. You made a very admirable attempt to kill me, and you almost succeeded. I came very close to killing you in order to prevent you from killing me.”
There was an awkward few seconds where I realized I couldn’t balk at his accusations because the proof was racing around my head like a slideshow. I saw bodies flying around a room, lights smashing, the glint of razor sharp metal slashing through darkness, screams. And then the brilliant glow of a blue flame filled the entire space.
My head shook while I tried to scatter and rework the puzzle. Like fragments of a dream flashing through my mind, the memories kept teasing me with hints of what happened that night at Arthur Richmond’s party. Not one of my so called protectors managed to keep me from the hands of that sadist.
My mind raced. I remembered seeing the face of a man I recognized. The man with the black birthmark in the center of his forehead had come to our home. How could I not remember such a distinct mark and the heated confrontation between him and my mother? I must have been four years old at the time. I lay on the floor to listen through the crack under my bedroom door as he argued with her. I had no idea who he was, but the sound of him yelling at my mother was frightening.
My thought was interrupted by a different memory. We were running. Greer had me in his arms, and we were flying through a dark hall that was dimly lit by the reflection of light coming from the far end. My arms were wrapped around his neck while he locked me in a death grip against his chest. His heart beat like a wild animal trying to get out from under his skin.
“No matter what happens,” he said, “don’t let go. Do you understand? Answer me!”
“I won’t. I won’t let go.”
The hounds of hell decided to show up that evening after all, and Greer was doing his damnedest to keep his promise. The corridor was deceptively quiet, but I could smell them. Damp canine stench snaked through the air, vicious and ripe with the odor of pure frenzy. A sound vibrated off the walls. As I focused on its familiarity, I recognized it as the muffled snarls of an animal. We were being hunted.
We flew at inhuman speed down the long corridor. I unburied my face from Greer’s neck and glanced at the shapes against the wall. The moment I saw the motion of the shadows lunging and receding, I regretted looking.
I steered my eyes in the direction we were running, more to get my mind off of what was coming from behind than to see where we were going. There was a light ahead of us. Only a hundred more feet and we’d be safe.
Greer and I pushed through the light. We’d found our exit, taking us out into the night. I looked at the canopy of bright streetlights above us and wondered if we hadn’t walked right into a more suitable arena for the slaughter.
“Remember!” he snapped, “Do not let go!”
Something was shifting underneath me, or maybe it was the vibration scattering along the points where my body made contact with his. My ears buzzed, muffling the sounds of whatever it was that had finally caught up to us. It was like the first few seconds of a narcotic trickling into your vein as everything softens and your fears melt away. But then I heard the sound of something ripping.
No. This isn’t what I’m supposed to do.
I gasped as Greer’s body pull away from mine. Neither of us had let go. He simply disintegrated before my eyes. As I tried to make sense of what had just happened, the cold air seeped in where we were once pressed together, followed by a raw ache like my skin had been abraded from the separation. I was alone with whatever was bursting through the tunnel behind me.
Something yanked me down in the opposite direction of where Greer once stood. At first it was just a feeling of pressure as my arm submitted to the force of the clamp, but then the enamel against my skin sent a blinding pain through my entire body.
TWENTY-ONE
When I looked up, Greer was standing over me minus his sweater. His breathing deepened, accentuating the tension around his rigid jaw. I thought his teeth might crack under the pressure. My instincts told me to get off the floor and run, but that would only make it worse when he caught me.
“What the hell’s wrong with you, Greer?”
Even as I asked the question, I could see for myself. My eyes fell down to his exposed chest where I spotted the reason for the disrobing. A thick line ran from his clavicle bone, through the center of his pectoral muscles, ending just below his ribcage. I stared at the pink scar, resisting the impulse to reach up and run my fingers over it. It was clearly fresh, but not so fresh that it wouldn’t have been there for some time. I’d seen every inch of Greer’s naked body over the past few weeks, so how could I have missed a huge cut like that?
“My wounds heal fast,” he said. “The scars take longer.”
“How long have you had it?”
He appeared lost for words. It seemed like an eternity before he finally spoke. “Since the night you put it there.”
I shook my head, dumbfounded by the ludicrous accusation. He was fucking with me. There was no other explanation.
“Are you insane, Greer?”
“No. Just a little pissed off.”
“Okay. I’ll play. You want to tell me how I did this?”
“With a very big knife.”
The word knife triggered another round of disturbing flashbacks. The recollection of my time with Arthur Richmond and his colleagues started out with me waking up on a cold floor in a room that reminded me of a dungeon, followed by repeated attempts to make me answer questions I couldn’t possibly answer. I was beginning to remember those days in vivid detail. How could anyone forget being beaten and terrorized at the hands of a lunatic? What I didn’t have any memory of was what happened from the time I was beaten, to the time I woke up with a mouthful of grass in Central Park.
“Alex.”
Greer was calling me, but I was too busy regressing back into the images that refused to be ignored. The human mind has an uncanny way of letting you see things when you’re ready to see them.
Arthur Richmond standing over me with his pants unzipped was the first memory that got my attention. In order to make me talk, he’d threatened to rape me. I knew he’d do it anyway, regardless of whether I cooperated or not. He never got any further than unzipping his pants, though. I’m not sure how I knew this, because the second his zipper began to slide down, I passed out.
The first time I regained consciousness I couldn’t see a thing. I thought the blindness was from those steel-toed boots hovering in front of my face, because I was sure he’d taken my eyes out. But there was no pain, and I realized the blindness was coming from somewhere inside of me. Someone was with me, showing me how to survive. My eyes began to focus as part of my vision returned. The room was darker than before, and the few lights that were working had been replaced with blue ones that seemed to glow from every corner.
Something touched me and I screamed. I could make out an arm trying to slip under my legs. I lashed at whatever was at the other end of that arm, righting myself long enough to push my body in the opposite direction. I dropped back to the floor and closed my eyes, not giving a shit about the blood dripping into my mouth or the shoes hitting the concrete floor within inches of my face. The voices ricocheting off the walls got quieter and receded like white noise in the background. Either they were disappearing, or I was. I drowned out the noise and focused on that point of light in my mind and somehow managed to detach myself mentally from everything around me. If it hadn’t been for that warm breath grazing my face, it might have worked. My eyes flew open, and I saw a thick line interrupting the stubble on a cheek.
I know that scar.
The next images of that night seemed to belong to a completely different puzzle. One minute I was lying on the floor staring at a familiar face, and the next I was tracking a shiny blade as it rolled through the air straight at me. I wasn’t afraid, though. I wanted to catch it because it was mine—well, it was now. The instant the blade made contact with my hand, the room went up in a blaze of blue. Like a flying mirror, the double-edged dagger reflected the images of bodies coming at me from every direction.
A nervous laugh slipped out of me as the memories kept coming. The final one explained Greer’s hostility.
The final chapter of my evening with Arthur Richmond was an eye opener, to say the least. I stood up and began to stalk my prey. I could see everything as clear as day, and with the cold steel cradled in my right hand, I crossed the floor toward my target—Greer.
I snapped back to the present and looked up to see if Greer was still standing over me. He was. As I stood back up, I took another look at his chest and gasped.
“Any more questions?” he asked.
“Sorry.”
“Sorry?” He laughed, but there was nothing funny about the sound.
What else could I say? I tried to kill him. I couldn’t deny my memories or that healed wound on his chest. Something was very wrong with me.
“Look, I don’t know what happened,” I began.
“Well, I remember it quite clearly.”
“I don’t even own a knife.”
“It was mine.”
“Well, don’t you think it was a little irresponsible to give it to me?”
He looked at me like I’d grown a second head and began rubbing his eyes. “Look, I don’t know what happened back there, but I intend to find out.”
“You don’t really think I’d kill you? Do you?”
“No, but what I do know is that you managed to snatch my weapon out of mid-air and tried to filet me with it.” He looked at me curiously like I was some sort of enigma changing before his very eyes. “You knocked me out. When I came to, you were gone.”
“Was Thomas with you?”
“Yes.” His head moved back and forth as a short laugh escaped him. “You managed to drop both of us.”
“Did I—”
“You also managed not to kill either of us.”
“What happened to Richmond?”
“Living room. I’ll be right back,” He returned a minute later and tossed a newspaper on the table in front of me. On the front page, beneath a photo of Arthur Richmond, was the headline: NEW YORK ART DEALER MURDERED. The paper was dated four days after the party. The first line of the article confirmed what I already knew—Richmond died from a knife wound to his skull and was found with his head nearly decapitated. I guess it could have been someone else who killed him, but a rush of adrenaline shot through me as I read the words, and I knew this was my kill.
I couldn’t squash a bug, but here I was committing murder and thinking thoughts like my kill. I was that person who caught insects in the house and released them out the back door. I was the one who fished out the drowning beetles from the backyard pond. I once shared a shower with a spider for two months before it finally disappeared on its own.
A minute after realizing I was a coldhearted assassin, I was wrapped around the toilet in the foyer powder room, purging my breakfast.
“God. I’m horrible,” I moaned.
Greer stood behind me about to say something that I’m sure would have put it all into perspective, when the doorbell rang.
“Who the fuck.” he growled.
Greer’s doorbell didn’t ring very often. People usually just showed up in his living room. He pulled his sweater back over the long scar and answered the door. It was Thomas and Loden.
“Whoa. There a problem, man?” Thomas said. The two men were standing in the foyer watching me hug the commode.
Greer didn’t say a word, communicating whatever needed to be said with his eyes. The other men did the same, but I knew something wasn’t right. They were talking in low voices, trying to keep the conversation out of hearing range. Greer glanced back at me before waving the two men toward the living room.
I inspected Thomas for damage the minute I walked into the room. Other than the old scar left by someone else, he was intact.
“What is it?” I asked. Three sets of eyes locked on mine. I glanced down to see what was so damn interesting that all three were gawking at me. “What?”
Thomas and Loden looked at Greer, giving him the floor for whatever news needed to be delivered. His shoulders looked tight, telling me he was jumpy and wired up about something. Greer was never jumpy, but today was a day for firsts.
“Sit,” he said.
I stared at him without moving.
“Alex. Sit.”
“I’m not a dog, Greer. Stop ordering me around.” I took a seat on the sofa and glared at the three of them.
“Bit of a wildcat,” Loden said.
“You have no idea,” Greer replied while Thomas mumbled in affirmation.
“All right. You’ve all had your fun. Now tell me why you’re looking at me like that.”
Loden plopped down on the sofa next to me and flashed that killer smile that must have worked so well on other women. Thomas did the same on my other side. I was sandwiched between two very hot men, but it was wasted on me due to the recent revelation that I was a homicidal monster.
“Sorry,” I mouthed to Thomas.
“No problem, sugar. You’re not the first woman who’s tried to kill me.” The scar on his cheek twitched slightly as his grin deflated into a dark and humorless smirk.
I liked Thomas. He was honest and valiant, seeing how he marched into the fire alongside Greer to try to rescue me. That last part alone put him at the top of my list. Maybe Loden was there, too.
“So, what’s it going to be today?” I asked. “Demons? Zombies? Vampires?”
Loden’s right brow arched. “Zombies? Zombies aren’t real. Well, I’ve never seen one.” He leaned deeper into the sofa and sprawled his arm lazily across the back edge directly behind me. I could feel his hand mentally cupping the curve of my shoulder. “You’ve got quite an imagination, Alex.”
Greer fixed his eyes on Loden and delivered a warning. Confirmation of that came when the arm grazing the sofa behind me lifted and landed back in its owner’s lap.
The Amulet Thief (The Fitheach Trilogy Book 1) Page 19
