Stained

by Ella James

  “Are those marbles in your mouth, or are you just unhappy to see me?”

  “…I think you may have the wrong expression.”

  “But the right impression,” she said.

  “Huh?”

  “You’re unhappy.”

  “Pensive.”

  “Pensive?”

  He nodded. “I thought ladies liked the strong, silent type.”

  “We don’t.”

  “Hmmmm…” He pressed his lips together, so his mouth seemed to disappear. He glanced in the rearview mirror. “I’ve got a feeling.”

  Goosebumps spread across Julia’s body. “Is it Samyaza?”

  “No. But it’s something.”

  “Bad?”

  “Is it ever good?”

  It hadn’t been last time.

  Julia wondered what he was feeling, because all of a sudden she was feeling it, too. It was like a rock in a shoe, or a shopping cart that pulled left, or a missing button. Something just wasn’t right.

  “Should we pull over?”

  “No.”

  “Are you sure?”

  He nodded, and Julia settled back in her seat, hoping he sensed something like a thunderstorm. She glanced at the sky. It was completely clear.

  They passed several more towns, and Julia’s unease increased. Each new village was exactly like the one that preceded it, but to her eyes they had changed. They had been havens from whatever was lurking in the night; now they were traps ready to spring.

  They were near an itty bitty place called Gold Run when Julia noticed Cayne was paying too much attention to the rearview. “Watch the road.”

  He grunted and looked down. “We have company.”

  Julia glanced around her headrest. At first she didn’t notice anything, but once they started climbing a hill, two small white dots appeared, maybe a mile behind them.

  “So?” she asked.

  “They’re gaining.”

  Julia glanced at the speedometer. They were hovering around 105. After a minute or more, the lights were visible in the side mirror. Definitely closer.

  “So?” Julia asked. Maybe they were drag racers or something.

  “So I can’t get them to stop.”

  “Crap.” She wondered who was behind the wheel and just felt sicker. It wasn’t Sam, but neither were the two Nephilim that had almost killed them last. The vehicle was too far away to make out its size. What if it was a bus full of Hunters? “Could it be a cop?”

  “Do cops ride motorcycles?”

  “Yes. Those are motorcycles?” Cayne nodded, and Julia felt a little relieved. “Well, pull off!” she snapped. “Up here. Exit 143!”

  “Our best bet is to stay on the road.”

  “Why?”

  Cayne’s jaw twitched. “They haven’t tried to hide. I’m thinking they want us to pull off.”

  “Are they Nephilim?”

  “No.”

  “Then they’re people!”

  Cayne glanced at her. “If you mean human,” he said sourly, “I don’t think so.” He glanced at the mirror again. “Try to look at their auras.”

  Julia had never tried anything long-distance, but she couldn’t think of a reason why it wouldn’t work. Which sucked, because she really didn’t want to try.

  Nervously, she opened herself and pushed her energy toward the specs of light she could see in the side mirror. It kind of felt like pulling putty until it was very long and very thin, except Julia was the putty. “Nothing.” She found nothing but cold, and felt sick again. “What do we do?”

  The engine revved and the car lurched forward. Julia sank into her leather seat.

  “Let’s see if we can outrun them,” Cayne said.

  Julia bit her tongue and checked her seatbelt. The Audi was hugging curves and shooting over hilltops. The shadows made the rollercoaster ride ten times worse. Each dip into the dark was like freefalling through space. And the race kept getting faster. 115. 120. 125. 130. The car topped at 140.

  Julia watched the mirror until her eyes ached. For several amazing minutes, they seemed to put some distance between themselves and their pursuers. Then motorcycle headlights appeared over a hill.

  “They’re closer!”

  Cayne swore and eased his foot off the pedal. “We can’t outrun them.” He checked his side mirror and gritted his teeth. “You steer.”

  Cayne turned around in his seat, and Julia lunged for the wheel. “What the hell are you doing?!”

  He glanced back. “We’ve got a minute, maybe. Buckled in?” She nodded, and he wrapped both hands around the wheel. “Push the seat back as far as you can.”

  “Why?”

  Julia could see the motorcycles now. They were the souped-up racing kind that a lot of the guys in her class had wanted. The drivers were dressed in dark clothes; they looked large and vaporous under the city-bright sky, and for a terrible moment she thought they were ghosts. “They’re getting closer!”

  “I know,” Cayne growled. They were climbing another hill, and he pushed the pedal to the floor. Julia shut her eyes. Her stomach flipped. She opened them.

  They had just crested the top and were speeding down. At the bottom of the hill, the road was straight and relatively level.

  “Brace yourself,” he said softly.

  Julia could hear the engines of the bikes, straining to catch up. She could see the red of the Audi’s taillights glint off their rims. They were too close. Within 100 yards, easy. She felt like she was going to suffocate. Halfway down the hill they were within spitting distance. Too close. She saw the driver on the right reach into his black leather jacket. She thought she saw a gun.

  “Cayne!”

  “One second.” He sounded strained.

  They hit the bottom of the hill at more than 100 miles per hour and the front of the Audi scraping asphalt before it lurched up a good foot. Cayne slammed on the breaks and jerked the wheel to the left. The tires screeched, the car spun, and Julia felt gravity release it. They were going to tip over. “Shit!”

  The bike on the left smashed into their ride with bone-shattering force. It flipped in the air and landed on the hood, miraculously bringing the Audi back to earth.

  Cayne cut the wheel right and the car wobbled. The second driver shot past them but looped back around. Cayne grabbed Julia’s shoulders and forced her down as the back window exploded. The biker fired two more rounds at the back tires, hitting both. The car spun into a ditch and Julia watched in horror as Cayne flew through the windshield.

  “Cayne!”

  She tried to unsnap her seatbelt, but she couldn’t find the buckle. Then the passenger’s side window burst open. The biker reached in and unfastened it for her.

  She tried to scramble away, but he caught her wrist. “Come,” he commanded. His hand was cold and his voice was empty.

  He tried to pull Julia out the window but she twisted and managed to claw him in the face. He snapped her wrist and she screamed.

  Pain made her light and fuzzy, nearly unaware of what was going on as the grip on her arm loosened and she fell back, stunned. Her wrist hurt worse than anything had ever hurt before. Her good hand hovered over it, stunned by the pain, bumping into something that slid down to her forearm. It was thick and wet. She screamed again. Blood oozed from the biker’s severed hand, now resting in her lap. She didn’t see the rest of him—and it didn’t take her long to find out why.

  Cayne ripped the door off the car, scooped Julia into his arms, and carried her to a patch of grass. She gasped for air but couldn’t get any. She saw the starry sky framing Cayne’s face—his bleeding face. His hands cradled her head, and low voice rumbled in her ear.

  “It’s okay,” he murmured. “You’re safe now.”

  He looked at her face, eyes wide and concerned, and then his mouth flattened and he pulled her ear to his chest. “Listen to my heart.” He wrapped both arms around her, so she was sitting in his lap. “Listen to my lungs.”

  They were steady. Stead
y and soothing. Julia tried to emulate them.

  She felt Cayne’s hand moving up and down her back, fingers stroking like they were strumming a pattern on a guitar. “I think your wrist is broken.”

  She nodded.

  “I’m sorry.”

  She wanted to cry, but she felt dizzy and empty. Still hopped up on adrenaline, she pulled away from Cayne and looked into his face. He’d wiped the blood away and he didn’t seem hurt; she figured him jumping out the windshield had been intentional. But she gasped when she noticed a spot of blood on his shoulder. “You are hurt.”

  He shook his head. “I’m fine. One of the bullets nicked me.”

  Julia touched the spot, wanting to heal it. Before she could, her throat made a high-pitched sound and her body shuddered. A jolt of pain shot through her arm, and she leaned over, stifling a sob; failing to stifle another one.

  Cayne’s hands were on her shoulders; he gathered her hair atop her back and leaned in, cradling her body in between his raised knees, leaning close to speak into her ear. “It hurts,” he said, half question; his voice was throaty, like the notion hurt him, too. “We’ll take you to a doctor.”

  She gritted her teeth, willing herself not to cry because the movement—any movement—put her in agony.

  Cayne’s hand, still holding her hair back, was a solid, soothing weight between her shoulder blades. “We can wrap it,” he said softly. “I think it would make it feel better.”

  “Okay.” Julia sat still as Cayne gently disentangled his big body from hers.

  “There’s probably something in the car,” she panted.

  The pain was getting crazy. Her brain shorted out while Cayne helped her up. He leaned her against the mangled car and rummaged through the wreckage, while she stared dumbly at the dead biker. Tar-like blood oozed from several wounds on his torso, chest, and neck. His shirt was tattered, and just under one tear, on a blood-free piece of skin, Julia saw something that made her forget her pain.

  Carefully, she bent over the body and tore the piece of fabric away. Oh, shit.

  “Cayne!”

  He looked at the biker’s birthmark, blew a breath out of his nose, and trotted a few yards up the road. Julia followed him more slowly. They found the second bike beside a tree. Its driver had vanished.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Almost nothing could make the first twelve hours with a broken wrist bearable.

  Almost nothing.

  Julia was discovering that being fawned over by your gorgeous, usually stoic traveling companion made just about anything okay.

  Sure, the cast was about as cool as sandals with socks, the sling scrubbed the skin off her neck, and the thing hurt like…well, a broken bone, but in the context of her new life, it wasn’t such a big deal.

  What caused the bone to break—a zombie-like person with her birthmark (and oh yeah, he had a friend that got away)—was a significantly bigger deal.

  Julia assumed that Samyaza sent the birthmarked zombies. Cayne had conditionally agreed (his condition: don’t be 100 percent—or even 50 percent). Julia assumed Samyaza sent them to 1) snatch her and/or 2) kill her. Again, Cayne had conditionally agreed (same condition). Julia had decided there wasn’t much she could do about it, and she tried to be attentive when the doctor explained how to take care of her arm.

  The good doc was kind enough to remove the bullet from Cayne’s shoulder, too. (Yeah, that’s right. Mr. I Can Take a Bullet wasn’t just grazed.) Then the entire staff was kind enough to forget about the two banged-up drifters that rode in on a stolen motorcycle. West Coast people were cool like that.

  So, after a night of pain pills and panic and a day lost to sleep, Julia was trying not to think about what had happened. They were moving on, to San Francisco.

  Cayne had said they were very close to Samyaza, and maybe that colored her lens, but the main things Julia noted about the city were that it was busy and cold. The San Francisco Bay Bridge, all elegant angles and beams that touched the light-stained sky; the skyscrapers, glittering like the pyramid from her dreams: Everything reflected their situation.

  Cayne drove along the bay, where the pale, gleaming wake line of a sailboat ran parallel to the shore. He hung a left into Chinatown, then took a right, then a left, then a right and a left and a left…

  Eventually he let the car crawl beside a strip of doll house-looking houses that seemed conjoined at the sides.

  “Almost there,” he said.

  Julia thought she might puke. Here terror, previously masked by the lingering ache in her arm and the new city whoa factor, reasserted itself.

  Samyaza, the creature that had killed her family, that had almost killed her—almost killed Cayne—was close.

  Cayne’s fingers traced a line from Julia’s ear to her chin. He turned her head so she had to look at him. “He won’t hurt you.” His eyes were full of conviction. “I won’t let him.”

  His hand moved to her shoulder, and he squeezed it. Not even that could calm her. “Is he in one of these houses?” she asked, trembling.

  Cayne shut his eyes, and when he opened them, they gleamed. “I’m not sure.”

  “What?” The shrillness was back. “Why can’t you tell?”

  “Do you remember my dagger?” Julia nodded. “When I use it, some of my blood seeps into my victims. It works as a tracking system.” He flexed his right hand. “I’m following Samyaza’s blood. I sense it near, but it may be in someone else.”

  Julia cringed, and he said, “That’s not going to happen to you.”

  “Or you.”

  “Or me.”

  He turned their new car, a blue Subaru Outback, onto a side street lined with slim two-story homes in Easter egg colors. Downtown sprang from behind them like a giant steel forest with leaves of light. They stopped in front of a pale yellow house and got out.

  Cayne took the lead and cut through the yard, and Julia noticed a light on in one of the downstairs rooms. She took it as a good sign, until Cayne opened the door without knocking.

  A familiar odor filled Julia’s nose, and just two steps inside, she found the source. A young family of three was dead at their kitchen table. The mom and dad slumped into their plates. Pasta. The mom’s arm was still reaching for her son.

  Julia backed into the wall, wide eyes devouring everything. Theirs were open, too, staring dully at the blood that pooled around their heads. It was still dripping onto the floor.

  Julia felt a whoosh of air go by and yelped. Out of the corner of her eye she saw a shadow flitting deeper into the house.

  “Cayne,” she cried, but he was already dashing down the hall.

  Julia stayed on his heels, cradling her pink cast as she listened for the danger she sensed but couldn’t see. They went through a living room and a library and then up cedar stairs.

  The little boy’s room was the first on the right. The walls were bright green; the windows were open, and the long navy curtains rippled like tiny waves on a cool breeze. His bed had a sailboat spread and tiny pillows shaped like fish. A kiddie laptop sat at its center, the screen still flashing.

  Julia covered her mouth, and Cayne squeezed her elbow. “We need to search the rest of the floor.”

  She nodded and followed him into the parents’ room. All clear.

  “Maybe I just imagined it?”

  She was hopeful, but Cayne shook his head. “I saw it, too.”

  He also probably felt it. Julia certainly did. There was a dark presence in the house with them. Malice. Danger.

  She was almost relieved when something creaked in the hall. Cayne summoned his dagger and sprinted lightly to the door. He motioned for Julia to stay in the bedroom, but that wasn’t going to happen. She grabbed Cayne’s free hand and, quietly, they crept out of the bedroom.

  Both of their gazes darted to the only second-floor space they hadn’t checked: the bathroom across from the stairs.

  The door was slightly ajar, but Julia couldn’t see anything but shadows
within. She bit her lip and dropped several paces behind, so Cayne passed the boy’s bedroom a few feet ahead of her.

  That’s when the shadow darted out.

  Julia screamed as Samyaza thrust his dagger at her. Cayne lunged to deflect the blade, stopping it not an inch from Julia’s chest. He backhanded Sam and drove his knife into the dark Nephilim’s side.

  Samyaza tackled Cayne, and the two rolled down the stairs in a heap. The Nephilim king landed on top, and he brought his fist down on Cayne’s face. When Julia caught up, she did one of the bravest things she had ever done in her life: She plucked a framed picture from the wall and tossed it at his back.

  It bounced off harmlessly, and Samyaza whirled. Cayne locked his legs around the Nephilim king and punched him in the chest. They wrestled in what could only be described as fast-forward, tumbling through the living room at sprinting speeds.

  Cayne wrapped his arms around Samyaza’s neck, but Samyaza pushed off the floor and rammed Cayne into a wall. Cayne’s grip loosened, and Samyaza tossed him over a couch. Julia, who was still standing on the lowest stair, realized there was nothing between her and the murderous Nephilim. Samyaza realized it, too.

  He dove for her, but Cayne’s dagger sliced through the space between them. Samyaza dodged the blade and crashed head-first into the wall. Cayne plucked Julia off the stairs and tried to whisk her away, but Samyaza grabbed his leg.

  Cayne and Julia landed hard on the floor. Cayne pushed Julia forward and rolled to kick at Samyaza, catching his jaw. Cayne leapt to his feet, shoved Julia behind him, and raised his dagger. Samyaza matched his pose.

  While the two eyed each other, Julia tried to find a weapon. Fighting Samyaza was second to last on her fun things to do list, but letting Cayne get killed was at the bottom.

  Unfortunately, the only thing she was able to find was the dead family. She made a small “eek” noise—she had briefly forgotten they were still at the kitchen table—and Samyaza turned his crimson eyes on her.

  “You see what happens to the Stained.”

  Julia stepped toward Cayne. He glared at Samyaza and asked, “Stained?”

  “Don’t play the fool, Cayuzul.”

  “It’s Cayne. And I’m not playing.”

  Samyaza snorted. “It matters not what you call yourself. But changing your name does not change your mission.”