God of Destruction (15 page)

She bit her lip. “I know.”

“And when we’re out there, we’re gonna hang
out after the hospital. We’re gonna go cliff diving, so I can break
your arm, too. Then we can split some KFC chicken and live happily
ever after. Y’know, normal stuff.”

Rolling her eyes, Janie mumbled, “Normal
stuff. We’re really gonna do this?”

“Yes.”

“You don’t know what they’ll do to you if it
doesn’t work out. They haven’t taken you for that, yet.”

“We have to risk it,” he swore.

“I…I…” she pulled her damp hair away from her
face, staring warily up into his face. “I’m gonna trust you on
this, Taran.”

He released a breath he didn’t know he’d been
holding. “Good.”

“So, when are we doing this?”

He reached over and pulled her, bridal-style,
into his grasp. She wrapped her arms securely around his neck in
return, ready at a moment’s notice. “Now. You’re dying. Act like
it.”

“This is crazy, we need to plan this better,
Taran!” she objected. “You’re gonna get us killed!”

“Just do it!” he hissed.

“Uhh…” she closed her eyes and let her head
loll over his forearm.

“Very good. Help! She’s bleeding out!
Somebody help her!” he screamed, waiting for the door to open.

Janie could foresee a tragic flaw his plan,
but remained silent anyway. There was no reason for them to want
her alive, anymore, so what did it matter if she was dying? She’d
given them what they wanted.

As far as they knew, anyway.

Which was why she was incredibly surprised by
the screech of the opening door.

“What’s going on?” the man’s familiar voice
snarled as he entered the room.

“You cut her too deep! She’s bleeding out!
She won’t wake up!” Taran insisted, pulling her closer to him as he
neared them.

“Where?”

“Where all the blood’s coming from,
shithead!” Taran screamed. Janie could feel his hand gently fold
over her wound.

“She’s breath—” he began.

The sharp smack of Taran’s head colliding
with the man’s silenced him.

“Hold on tight,” Taran ordered, his voice
thick as he recovered from the blow to his head. Janie could feel
it when he ran headlong toward the exit and adjusted herself until
she feared she had to be choking him with her death-grip. “Not that
tight.”

“Sorry.”

She looked around as he barreled down the
hallway, taking in the sights she’d seen only once before, when
she’d failed in her original escape attempt. Just like before, she
watched the door come into view once he reached the second floor
landing. She pointed in its direction. “That’s it!”

“Hey!” a voice called as someone’s hand
closed around her ankle.

It tore her from Taran’s arms just a few feet
from the door.

She toppled to the floor, rolling until his
grip on her leg kept her from moving further.

Taran stopped only when his body hit the
door. “Janie!” he yelled, turning back as more men ran toward
them.

Janie clawed at the hand binding her but her
bleeding hip hindered her. “Taran!” she cried, reaching for
him.

Her friend’s foot stomped on the windpipe of
her captor, releasing his hold on her easily. “Janie, go! You have
to go!” he yelled, shoving two men to the floor as they ran for
her.

“But what about y—”

“Go! I’ll catch up,” he hastily replied.

Janie rolled over, with much effort, and
crawled toward the door, crying out as her leg protested to the
hard ground. She reached up, gaining leverage with the push door
handle, and, painstakingly, wobbled to her feet. After several
failed attempts at standing on her good leg, her shoulder pushed
the handle into place in the door.

She fell out into the open.

The world was beautiful, just like she
remembered, but she couldn’t stop to admire it while she was still
vulnerable. Looking around, she spotted an armed guard patrolling
the grounds not fifty feet from where she knelt, but his eyes were
diverted from her, focused on the woods at the edge of the yard.
Without a plan from this point on, she realized that the woods were
her only chance without Taran. There was nowhere else to hide.

Taran would find her there.

She crawled silently toward the line of trees
separating her from freedom, marine-style, so she wouldn’t attract
the attention of the guard.

She was so slow.

Her heart pounded in her head to the
soundtrack of her fevered breaths as she pulled herself across the
short grass.

“Stop!” a male voice called from where she
assumed the guard was standing, watching her. She could do nothing
but continue pulling herself toward the woods with a renewed
determination.

Taran separated his throat from the grasp of
one of the men inside, throwing him away and into another man that
ran toward him.

He didn’t wait for any others to come his
way. Throwing himself outside, he found the edge of the forest
easily and nothing else. Janie must have gotten into the woods, he
realized, she couldn’t be hiding anywhere else.

He was impressed, he was worried she wouldn’t
get far without him, but he’d obviously underestimated her. Hearing
the door open behind him, he loped toward the trees, searching for
Janie as he went.

But, he didn’t find her.

He went back to find her, where she must have
been hiding low to the ground.

He stopped to catch his breath, knowing they
wouldn’t be pursuing him anymore. Janie would need to take a break
to nurse her most recent injury soon, anyway, and he needed to find
her to stop the bleeding. He bent over his knees.

“That was…exciting?” he chuckled, more to
himself than her, though he yelled to get her attention. “We need
to find a hospital. Are you bleeding, again?” He looked around
again by the very edge of the woods, hoping to see her lying there,
holding her breath, waiting for his return. “Janie?”

He was alone.

“Janie!” he called.

His useless scream received only its echo in
response.

Movement back in the yard caught his
attention, and he turned behind a tree to investigate. His heart
dropped.

As he stood safely in the shadows, he watched
his Janie writhe in the arms of an unfamiliar man as he walked
toward the door of the building.

He dropped her, and Taran briefly debated
whether it would be wiser to go in after her or get help. When the
guard reestablished a hold on Janie, this time on her hair as he
pulled her, screaming his name, into the building, Taran’s options
had run out. Now, whichever way he spun it, he could think of only
one thing:

He’d escaped the prison cell, but he’d left
Janie behind.

When the door slammed closed, he turned on
his heel, running as fast as he could toward where he thought he
would find civilization. He didn’t think he would have to do this
alone, now it was all he thought.

He was alone.

Janie was alone.

Janie could die without him there to help
her; as if he’d been such a great help when he was there. He forced
himself to run when he realized the only help for her now would be
to get the authorities. If they hadn’t already been corrupted by
Petrov and her goons.

Janie wailed as she was pulled back to the
room of her nightmares by her hair, now without a single person to
buoy her when she was returned to the cell. She could only pray to
whatever God would listen that Taran would come back for her. That
hope was all that got her through the next hour, while her head was
wrenched to and from the concrete trough. But, in all honesty, what
else could she do?

Don’t put me back in the tub. Don’t put me
back in the tub. Don’t put me back in the tub.

Chapter Thirteen

Paris, France; June 29
^th
, 2012

Thinking back on their adventure to “help”
James, Claire thought that there were a lot of things they
should’ve done differently before they ran off to follow him. One
of those things was to tie up Kierlan before they left.

When the four of them had run from the hotel
room, shoving past the others in the hallway that screamed back in
French, they’d been unable to find James or the man he’d been
following. And, as they left the hotel room for the second time in
the previous half hour, they realized how careless they’d been.

Alex led them through the lobby, Claire
following with Kierlan’s gun, shaking but hidden, in her shirt.
Scottie looked around the room for any sign of the escaped man,
but, so far, they’d been unsuccessful.

“He can’t have gotten far, we were only gone
for ten minutes!” Alex complained, pushing open the glass
doors.

Scottie shielded his eyes to block out the
intense sun streaming through the sudden cover of clouds closing
in. “That doesn’t matter, if he’s not in the hotel than he could be
anywhere in Paris by now.”

Alex grunted in frustration. “How the hell
are we gonna find him?”

“Well,” Hayden noted, “your boyfriend fried
his cell phone, Claire has his gun, and he’s gotta be a little slow
since he was just electrocuted. He’s gotta know that no one on the
street would believe him, so who would he have gone to?”

Claire readjusted her hold on the gun,
clutching it away from her body. “W…wait a minute, before…” she
pointed up to the third floor, “When James t…took care of him,
Kierlan said he was calling his office. He probably w…went
there.”

“But where is there?” Hayden demanded.

“His accent wasn’t French,” Alex growled.
“That
office
could be anywhere in Europe, maybe the
world
. There’s
no way
we’ll find it, Claire.”

“And we’re right back where we started,”
Hayden grumbled.

Scottie rubbed the back of his neck
anxiously. “This is
too
weird. Why do you guys
care
?
If this guy tells, all it means is he’s going away to the nuthouse
for the rest of his life, it doesn’t affect us. We should just go
home!”

Alex shoved him. “We are
not
leaving
without James, Scottie! So stop being an
asshole
and help
us! James didn’t want this guy exposing him so we gotta find him
before he tells. If you can’t
pretend
to be helpful, then
shut up. Any advice?”

Scottie narrowed his eyes. “Maybe we should
split up.”

Alex scowled back. “That would probably be
best.”

“Good. Me and Hayden’ll take this way,” he
gestured behind him with his thumb. “You guys go that way. We’ll
meet back here in an hour. Maybe he’ll be back by then.”

“Fine,” she grumbled, pulling Claire down the
sidewalk by her arm. “C’mon, Claire.”

They went their separate ways for a long
time, Claire and Alex keeping completely silent while their eyes
scanned the crowds for a man in a holey, black t-shirt. Claire was
the first to break the silence with her recurrent stammer. “I feel
like I’m dreaming.”

Alex shrugged, “Maybe you are. Maybe we both
are.”

“I just…I can’t believe that all t…this
time…” she began.

“I know. But…you need to think about his
reasons for lying,” Alex murmured. “His kind obviously has rules
about human exposure, and, I’ll be the first to admit it, we never
would have believed him.”

Claire stopped walking, forcing Alex to halt
as well. “You…You’re taking this awfully well, Alex.”

“I’m just trying to understand this from
James’s perspective before I judge him,” she explained. “And…I love
him. I don’t want to make him the bad guy. There are too many
real
bad guys around for us to turn on him.”

Claire nodded, though she didn’t know if she
could be as forgiving. “I h…hope you’re right about him.” She took
a step, eyes raised for their search once more.

Then, she found him.

Kierlan stood against the wall of a building
across the street, arms crossed leisurely over his chest while he
watched them smugly. Claire tried to say something, anything, while
she pointed uselessly in his direction, but her stutter held her
back while he disappeared behind the flash of a moving car.
Blinking feverishly, as if it would make him reappear, she finally
managed to yell. “Over there!”

Startled by her outburst, Alex jumped,
following Claire’s gesture with her eyes. “What? I don’t see
anything!”

“I…It was him. He’s across the s…street!”

Alex squinted in the hope that she would see
what Claire did, but she had no such luck. “Claire, I don’t…” she
trailed off, watching her friend take off running through the
traffic, gun held threateningly over her head. “Claire!” she
shrieked.

The sound of her voice was drowned out by the
blare of a horn and the screech of tires as the cars nearing Claire
came to a screeching halt. Waving apologetically at the people
exiting their cars, Alex went tearing after her, screaming her
name.

It wasn’t difficult for Alex to catch up when
Claire’s asthma started acting up, but by then they’d already
gathered a significant amount of attention. Women screamed when
they saw the gun in Claire’s hand and everyone parted like the red
sea when she came close. Alex made a grab for her shoulder,
spinning her around to meet her eyes while they both breathed
heavily. “What are you
doing
?” Alex demanded through deep
gasps.

“I—” Claire shouted.

“You could’ve been killed! You could’ve
killed someone else with that thing!” Alex interjected.

“Alex—!”

“Do you even know how to use that gun? If
he’s here, he definitely knows we’re close, now!”

“Can I talk, please—?” the blonde
demanded.

“You can’t attract so much
attention
,
Claire! It’ll lead Natalia straight to us, or worse!”