by Jenna Black
I pushed myself up to my hands and knees, scanning the parking lot to regain my bearings. My car was only a few yards away. I lurched to my feet and flung myself toward the car, but Jamaal caught me in a flying tackle before I took more than two steps.
Despite my breathlessness, I did manage a rough imitation of a scream of frustration as I went down once again. I kicked out blindly and got lucky, hitting Jamaal in the nose by the crunchy sound of it. He absorbed the pain with no more than a stoic grunt, but at least it distracted him enough to let me get to my feet again.
I had closed the remaining distance between myself and my car before I realized the fatal flaw in my plan. My evening bag, which had been draped bandolier-style across my chest while I ran, had come off sometime during the struggle. My car keys were in that bag.
Blood continued to trickle from my nose as I turned to face Jamaal once more. His nosebleed looked even worse than mine, but I saw no sign that it bothered him. He had drawn a knife from somewhere—his boot, maybe?—and was brandishing it in the occasional glimmers of moonlight that escaped the clouds.
I swallowed hard, tasting blood in the back of my throat. I hurt everywhere, from the punches, from the barefoot run, and from scraping off skin as I rolled around on the rough asphalt. My dress was in tatters, most likely indecent. Jamaal stood between me and the evening bag, and I was so hurt and exhausted already I didn’t know how I could hold him off a moment longer. But I had to. Somehow.
Jamaal wasn’t going to let me go. He’d long ago closed his mind to me, decided I was a traitor and that I was lying about Steph. Which meant that if I wanted to get into my car and drive away, I had to take him out.
It occurred to me that I’d been handling my fight with Jamaal as if I were no more than human. Perhaps I was shrugging off my injuries better than I might have before, not worrying that they would cause permanent damage, but I had abilities now that I hadn’t had when I was mortal. And maybe those abilities would help me now.
If Jamaal closed with me, I was a goner, and probably would have been even if he didn’t have the knife. So I didn’t dare let him close.
I started darting glances left and right, quick glances that were meant to suggest to Jamaal that I was picking out an escape route. Only I knew better than to think I could escape. I edged around the car at my back, giving myself room to move. Then, I feinted to the left.
Jamaal had been thinking of me as little more than a puny human female himself. A not-too-bright one at that. When I feinted, he fell for it, lunging forward on what would have been an intercept course if I’d really been making a run for it.
Instead, I took advantage of his distraction and threw myself forward, heedless of the pain that seared my already tender skin as I slid face-first across the asphalt. My hand closed around the discarded shoe I’d caught sight of when I’d been pretending to look for an escape route. I rolled over onto my back.
The feint hadn’t bought me much time. I hadn’t expected it to. Jamaal had checked his charge and now whirled to face me.
I hesitated for a fraction of a second, a part of me horrified by what I was about to do. But it was for Steph, and it was necessary. Wincing in anticipation, I took aim and hurled the shoe at Jamaal’s face with as much force as I could muster.
I had gambled that my throwing would be as accurate as my shooting had been. The gamble paid off.
Not surprisingly, Jamaal didn’t immediately think of a thrown shoe as a dangerous weapon, and he made only a halfhearted attempt to avoid it. But my supernatural aim could make a dangerous weapon out of a lot of ordinary objects, and those heels were fashionably pointy.
The spiky, three-inch heel slammed into Jamaal’s eye and lodged there. He screamed, a sound full of pain and rage. Even a tough guy like him wasn’t able to retain his calm after having his eye put out. He fell, wrenching the shoe out of the bloody socket and hurling it away. His hands clasped the wound and he bent over until his forehead almost touched the asphalt, unable to suppress his agonized moans.
Sobbing in pain, in terror, and in horror, I limped to my evening bag to get the car key. Jamaal was still down when I collapsed into the driver’s seat and started the engine. My stomach wanted to take a minute to empty itself out, but I’d run out of spare minutes about ten minutes ago, and I swallowed to keep my gorge down.
Trying not to look at Jamaal and what I had done to him, I slammed the pedal to the floor and pulled out of the parking lot at top speed.
EIGHTEEN
My hands shook and my teeth chattered as I drove, fear chewing a hole in my gut. How much time had Jamaal cost me? It seemed like forever, but my sense of time was completely out of whack.
My entire body throbbed from the beating I’d taken, and my stomach was still attempting to stage a rebellion. I’d fully intended to take out Jamaal’s eye when I threw that shoe at him, but even in my fear for Steph, I couldn’t help shuddering at the memory.
“He’s Liberi, Nikki,” I told myself, clenching my teeth, hoping that would make them stop chattering. “He’ll heal.”
At least, I hoped he would. For all I knew, the wound would heal and leave an empty socket. My gorge rose, and I swallowed fiercely. I’d done what I had to do. Besides, who knew what Jamaal would have done to me if I’d given him the chance? I suspected he had more than a beating in mind, a suspicion made stronger by the knife he’d brandished at me. He couldn’t have killed me, but I knew I’d have been in for a world of hurt.
I’ve said before I’m a bleeding heart. No matter how much I told myself Jamaal had deserved what I’d done to him, I couldn’t help feeling awful about it. Which is why I called Anderson while I was barreling down the street, trying to keep my speed to something that wouldn’t inspire the cops to pull me over. If the way my own wound had healed after the car accident was any indication, Jamaal would be in pain and without an eye for at least a couple of hours, and I didn’t want to leave him alone in that parking lot. Aside from any pity I might feel for his pain, I also didn’t want any innocent bystanders to stumble on him. I didn’t imagine having his eye taken out had improved his mental health.
Anderson answered on the first ring. “Nikki! Where are you?”
I blinked in surprise at the alarm in his voice. “On the road,” I said. “Alexis—”
“Has your sister. I know. I just got off the phone with Blake.”
Anger overwhelmed my fear, turning everything red. “Where the fuck was he?” I yelled. “He was supposed to be protecting her.” I couldn’t restrain a sob, and I had to blink away the tears that obscured my vision. I couldn’t afford tears, not now.
“Explanations later,” Anderson said curtly. “Do you know where he’s taken her?”
I blurted out the address. If one of Anderson’s people was closer than I was, then maybe they could get there in time to help Steph.
“And where are you?” he asked.
“Still in Chevy Chase, but going as fast as I can.”
There was a hesitation on the other end of the line, as though Anderson was surprised by my answer. But then, if he’d already talked to Blake, he knew when Steph was taken, and he had to wonder why I wasn’t already halfway to the rendezvous.
“Jamaal delayed me,” I said, no longer caring if that made me a tattletale. “You might want to send someone to the country club to pick him up. He’s not in very good shape at the moment.”
“I’ll call you back,” Anderson said, then hung up abruptly.
I frowned at the phone. Why had he hung up on me like that? Even in those few words, I’d been able to hear the rage in his voice, but it was Jamaal he was angry at, not me. Right?
I closed the phone and tossed it onto the passenger seat. It didn’t matter who Anderson was angry at or why he’d hung up. He was at the mansion, too far away to help. I’d deal with the fallout from my fight with Jamaal later.
The phone rang a couple of times as I sped through the streets of the city, cursing every red light I couldn�
�t afford to run for fear of police intervention. I ignored it, because at the speed I was driving, it was safer to keep all my attention on the road. I wouldn’t do Steph much more good if I wrecked the car than if I got stopped by the cops.
The minutes ticked away, and though I tried not to, I couldn’t help checking the clock on the dashboard every time I could spare the attention. I let out a sob when Alexis’s deadline came and went, although I’d known from the moment I’d run into Jamaal that I wouldn’t make it in time. I prayed Alexis would hold off for just a little while, give me a little grace period, since he knew just how unreasonable his deadline had been.
I turned the final corner a good ten minutes past the deadline. The street was quiet and secluded—which, of course, suited Alexis’s purpose. There weren’t any legal parking spaces available, but I wasn’t about to sweat legalities at this point.
As I pulled into a “space” blocking a narrow alley, the door to the house across the street—the one where Alexis had instructed me to meet him—flew open. I blinked in surprise when Alexis charged out at a dead run, vaulting the ornamental railing that lined the stoop and taking off down the street like the hounds of hell were after him.
Maybe I’d watched too many movies, but my immediate thought was that he’d planted a bomb in the house and was running to avoid the explosion. I slammed the car into park and decided I didn’t care why Alexis was running. I only cared about Steph.
The wounds on the bottoms of my feet had been superficial enough that they had already healed, but it wouldn’t have mattered if they’d been raw and bleeding. I still would have leapt out of the car and dashed up the steps. Alexis had left the door open when he fled, so I burst right in, not pausing for even a moment to consider the possibility of ambush.
“Steph!” I screamed, desperate to hear her voice, to know that she was alive and okay.
“In here!” answered a voice that most definitely was not Steph’s.
Dread making me shiver, I followed the sound of Blake’s voice.
I found them on the floor in a room toward the back. The house was up for sale and completely empty, but I suspected the room was meant to be an office, based on the desk-and-shelf combo built in to the wall.
Blake was kneeling on the floor, leaning protectively over Steph, her head on his lap. Her elegantly coiffed hair was a bedraggled mess and draped her face like a veil. She was naked, though Blake was doing his best to tuck her torn dress around her body to restore her modesty. Her shoulders were shaking with silent sobs.
I stopped in the doorway, clapping my hand over my mouth to stifle my cry. She’s alive, I told myself over and over, though the nudity and the tears reminded me of the difference between alive and well.
“Oh, Steph,” I whispered, my heart breaking.
Blake pulled her gently into his arms, rocking her as he cradled her head against his chest. His own eyes when he looked at me were rimmed with red, the evidence of his sincere distress giving me another shock. He did a double-take when he caught sight of me. I’m sure I looked like I’d been dragged behind a pickup truck on a gravel road, and I felt drafts in places I shouldn’t feel drafts while fully clothed, but I didn’t give a damn about my appearance.
“I’m going to kill him,” I growled, not sure if I meant Alexis or Jamaal at the moment. Maybe both.
I remembered seeing Alexis fleeing the scene, and my anger rose another notch. “You let Alexis get away. And where the hell were you, anyway? You were supposed to keep her safe!”
He flinched at the virulence of my tone, but rebounded quickly. “Somebody spilled a whole glass of red wine on me,” he said. “I went to the men’s room to clean up. She was right outside …” His voice trailed off and he gathered Steph even closer. “He locked me in, and he took her,” he said. “I wasn’t delayed for long, but I had to hurry after him. I couldn’t stop to look for you, didn’t have time.”
The expression in his eyes hardened. “As for why I let the bastard get away, would you really rather I left Steph alone and chased after him?”
I let out a harsh breath, wishing I could hit rewind on my life. “No. Of course not.”
I forced myself farther into the room, though seeing Steph’s pain was almost unbearable. Blake stroked her hair away from her face, and the hollow ache inside me went from bad to worse. I staggered and almost fell.
He’d beaten her. Badly. Both of her eyes were blackened, and her lip was split and swollen. A ring of bruises circled her neck, where Alexis must have choked her.
All at once, it was too much. The beating I had taken. The horror of putting out Jamaal’s eye. The constant pump of adrenaline through my system as I ran my losing race against time. And the awful, sickening revelation of what that sadistic bastard had done to my sister.
The room spun and bucked around me, and my brain shut down. My legs crumpled and I fell to my knees on the carpeted floor. I didn’t quite pass out, but it was a near thing.
“Nikki,” Steph rasped.
I fought to push back the gray fog that surrounded my mind. Falling to pieces would be the easy way out, and I was never one to do things the easy way. I swallowed the huge, aching lump in my throat and blinked to hold back tears.
Steph was holding her hand out to me, and I shuffled toward her on my knees until I was close enough to take it. Her fingers curled around mine in a surprisingly firm grip.
“Are you okay?” she asked. Her voice was rough and hoarse, either from screaming, from crying, or from being choked nearly to death.
My jaw dropped as I looked at her battered face, at the tears that stained her cheeks. “Am I okay?” I fought a hysterical laugh. After everything Steph had been through, she was worried about me?
She sniffled and blinked away some tears. “You look like someone shoved you through a paper shredder.”
For a moment, I’d actually forgotten what a wreck I must look. But I would be healed in a few hours, and Steph …
“I’m fine,” I assured her, the sound breaking in my throat as I struggled not to cry.
“You are not. And you have a lot of explaining to do.”
Even in her obvious distress and with her ravaged voice, Steph managed to imbue those words with a tone of command. I wondered if Alexis had revealed his supernatural nature to Steph while he …
I stopped myself from going there, although the question remained in my mind. If his threats were anything to go by, he’d never intended to kill her, figuring that leaving her alive and suffering would hurt me more. But he was an arrogant bastard, and he might have figured she’d be too terrified and traumatized to say anything about any supernatural powers he might reveal.
“Let’s get you taken care of first,” Blake said gently when I took too long to answer. “We can do explanations later.”
“Have you called an ambulance?” I asked Blake.
“No!” he and Steph answered at the same time.
I understood why Blake would object—he was worried about the potential of police getting involved in Liberi business—but if he thought I was going to let him stand in the way of Steph getting the medical care she needed, he was sorely mistaken. I squeezed her hand a little harder.
“You need help, hon,” I said, but Steph shook her head.
“No doctors,” she said firmly. She forced her swollen eyes open enough to meet my gaze squarely. “He didn’t do anything to me that won’t heal on its own in time. And I suspect siccing the police on him would probably get them killed. I don’t know what he was, except that it’s not human.”
Crap. That meant Alexis had spilled at least some of the beans. I wanted to pretend I had no idea what she was talking about, to keep her sheltered from the knowledge of how formidable a foe Alexis was. I wanted to urge her to go to the hospital, to talk to the police, to do all the normal things that a rape victim should do. But I was too run-down to manage it. I might be able to say the words, but I wouldn’t be able to make them convincing.
“We�
�ll bring her back to the house,” Blake told me. “She’ll be safe there.”
I was too depressed and guilt-stricken to argue. We helped Steph get back into what was left of her dress, and then Blake gave her his tuxedo jacket to cover up in. I retrieved my car from its illegal parking space and pulled up right in front of the door as Blake carried Steph out and bundled her into the backseat.
“I could have walked,” I heard her grumble as Blake climbed in after her. I supposed he’d come back to get his own car some other time.
“But carrying you made me feel less useless,” he said.
I glanced at his face in the rearview mirror, then had to look away from his raw expression. He couldn’t know Steph very well, but despite my earlier suspicions, it seemed obvious he genuinely cared about her. And that he felt almost as guilty as I did about failing her.
NINETEEN
I drove back to the mansion in a daze. Steph lay curled in the backseat, her head once again on Blake’s lap as he soothed and petted her. Her tears had dried up long ago, but I knew there would be more to come. The wounds Alexis had inflicted on her psyche were far worse than the physical pain, and I wished like hell I were still a mortal so I could have the pleasure of killing him.
Blake called Anderson while we were en route, giving him an update. I couldn’t hear anything Anderson said over the phone, of course, but I swear I could sense his anger. I wasn’t sure who he was angry with, and I wasn’t sure I cared. I did my best to retreat into a numb sense of unreality, not ready to deal with the emotions that roiled within me.
When we got to the house, Blake once again insisted on carrying Steph, despite her protests that she could walk. Maybe it made him feel better to be gallant, though I couldn’t help noticing how she curled into him, her arm slung around his neck, her head resting just below his chin. Protests aside, it seemed she needed the comfort, too. Maybe he was doing it for her sake after all. I raced ahead to hold the front door for him, then followed him into the entryway and came to a dead stop.
