Love Beyond Sanity (18 page)

Chapter Twelve

Charma tried not to gasp as Jason gently shoved her into the elevator shaft. She grabbed onto the cable that kept the elevator from crashing to the ground or doing whatever out of control elevators did. The friction burned her hands and she did the best she could to not let go as her body literally froze with fear. There was no way she was moving. Let the demon come and get her.

One strong arm gripped her waist and the other one grasped the cable above her as Jason jumped around her body. "Look at your surroundings, Charma." She heard him but couldn't respond. If she even breathed, she might plummet to the ground floor. "Put your arms so they meet at the back of my neck."

"I can't move, Jason." She closed her eyes and hoped this would all be over soon.

"Yes, you can. You faced down the demon like a warrior woman when we were in my head. You're brave beyond anything I've ever known. I realize this whole thing is crazy, but you were the one who made me see the impossible is possible. So trust me. I won't let you fall. Come on, I can't have you frozen up here where anything can happen when we need to get down to the lobby."

She breathed hard. If she was honest, then she would admit there was nothing she wouldn't do for Jason. If he asked her to stand on her head, she would try, especially after the little bravery speech he had just given.

Letting go of her death hold on the cable, she threw all of her weight onto Jason who wrapped one arm around her like she weighed nothing.

"How are you going to maneuver both of us down this thing?"

His eyes lit up which made her heart flutter. "It's just like gym class."

"I hated that. It was like hell for me. All the jocks running about. Any chance I got, I faked an illness to get out of gym."

Using his legs to support them, they moved slowly down the spun steel line. "Admit it; you're just scared of heights."

Nodding, she closed her eyes and burrowed against his chest. She breathed in his masculine scent. How could he smell so clean after spending so much time in this place? There was no doubt that Jason belonged to her. She just wasn't sure she could claim him. Not when so much time had passed between them and not when she wasn't sure she could ever forgive him for deciding to rid himself of her so many years earlier.

However, for right now she would let him carry her down the elevator shaft. After all, the two demons might have temporarily chased Marina and Drew wherever they went, but it wasn't likely they would forget about Jason and Charma for very long.

A sudden thought rocked her brain. "Jason, I don't know if the demon can actually hurt me."

"I'm sure it can."

Shaking her head, she tried not to notice the way her insides heated at the sight of him so powerful. She wondered if he knew how much he changed in the hours since she'd left. Embracing the truth of his life had brought out a side of him she hadn't seen earlier. If she didn't know better, she'd think he'd been raised with Kal and Leonardo under the Alpha-male influence of their former leader, Veli. Biting her lip, she dismissed the thought. Since it wasn't how he'd been raised, it had to be a genetic thing.

Something encoded inside of them that made them think they were capable of handling all things and that everyone should listen to them.

"Didn't you see what happened when Self-loathing tried to attack me in the garden earlier?"

A thin sheen of sweat had formed on his brow, but other than that, he seemed unaffected by the physical strain he was under. Charma had seen this before. She'd grown up an Outsider. Their physical prowess was amazing, and most of the time they had to hide how strong they were. "You blocked her somehow." His voice held the same scientific, questioning edge she'd heard in the garden, and she knew he was thinking about what had happened. "Why do you think that happened?"

"I imagine it has something to do with what I did yesterday."

The cable jiggled and Jason's head flew up as he looked at what happened. "Shit."

"That word does not inspire confidence."

"Something pretty damn powerful must be shaking the line for that to be happening. My guess is that it's not an elevator repairman."

"So you think one of those things is up there?"

He raised an eyebrow. "What do you suppose is doing it?"

"I think I wish I was back in Maine, on our island, protected by Marina's spell casting where we held a fighting chance."

"Don't dwell on it." He looked up again. "You were going to tell me why you thought the demons can't hurt you. Something you did."

"Are you trying to distract me?" She couldn't help the smile in her voice.

A loud bang sounded above them. They had only a moments' vibration on the cord before it went slack. Charma realized the wire had come loose—or someone had made it that way. A loud thud shuddered through the shaft. For a split second they fell like a stone. Without warning the cable suddenly stopped slipping through the pulleys.

"A counter-weight must have caught at the pulley box. Hold on to me."

Jason's instructions were the last thing she heard as the sound of metal groaning filled the air. She was aware of screaming and knew it came from her own mouth as they plummeted towards the bottom of the elevator shaft towards certain death. Tears wetted her cheeks. There was still so much to do. She'd just found Jason. They had made no headway against the Darkness, not since Kal had found Isabelle.

If they died, she'd failed and everything would go to hell.

"Charma." She felt her body shake and her eyes flew open. Standing on solid ground, she looked around, alarmed. Blinking twice, she tried to figure out where she was. What was going on? Where was she? Something had happened. Had she dreamed something up? She looked around. Inside an elevator, that much was clear. How she had gotten in it, and why there was a hole in the ceiling, were questions she didn't have answers to. Jason held her, his face lined with concern.

"Where did you go?"

She shook her head. "What?"

"You vanished into yourself. Your eyes were open but you stopped talking, and I couldn't reach you."

Biting her lower lip, she tried to understand what he said. "I guess I blacked out when we fell."
And had somehow managed to land unscathed inside the elevator?

Jason ran his hands through her hair and rubbed the back of her neck. "Charma, baby, we never fell. We were about ten feet further up when your mind disappeared on me. Do you even remember how we got here or were already gone?"

She sucked in her breath. "The demon, Self-loathing, she said she was going to trap us in our own fears."

"Looks like she found one of yours right off the bat." He scratched his head. "It's not like we were doing much to hide how uncomfortable you were." Looking up at the elevator, he seemed to be considering something. "Do you think this thing still works?"

Charma blinked. The elevator was still there. The line was still present. It hadn't fallen. Wow, she'd been made to imagine the whole thing.

She shivered. "I'd really rather not find out." Just the thought of the clunky, elevator taking them anywhere at this point was enough to make her ill.

"Shh." He put a hand up to his mouth to indicate she should be quiet. "Not even in telepathy. I don't want her knowing anything about what makes either of us nervous."

"It's kind of weird, actually. I spend three quarters of my life soothing the fears of others and the other part recovering from it. Now I'm going to be destroyed by my own." At least she hoped they were her own and that she hadn't picked up other people's issues.

"That's going to stop. Big time." He pressed the lobby button and the elevator shook for a moment. Charma's stomach lurched. Then, disgustingly slow, it started to crawl to the ground floor.

When she could swallow through the lump in her throat, she smiled. "It's my special gift."

Jason grabbed her hand. "The whole 'you hate your powers thing' is ridiculous. What you can do is fabulous. Plant memories, take away pain, and then whatever it is that you did that makes you think you can't actually get hurt now. To me that speaks of power."

"None of it is offense."

"Seems to me that if we were designed by the Fates to work as a team then all of us have our uses. Not everyone should be blasting through walls."

Charma watched the way Jason narrowed his eyes when he spoke and wondered when he had seen someone actually do the last action he described.

"That's true, we need defense too. I watch sports. But, it might be nice to have something I could do, some way I could actually defeat a person who was coming after me as opposed to stalling them or putting them temporarily off."

He touched the side of her face. "The demon that attacked me for months and months in my mind couldn't do a thing to you. In fact, you drove it out of my mind where I had let it endlessly abuse me."

She sighed. It occurred to her that now would be a good time to tell him about what she had done the day before that had allowed her to acquire that power and some of her anxiety about it.

As he raised his eyebrows, she wondered how much of her private thoughts he was now privy to. "I'm getting the feeling that your ability to handle that demon is a new thing?"

"You could say that."

The elevator dinged and the doors creaked open. Charma looked around. It was clearly not the lobby.

"What floor do you think we're on?" She realized that she whispered and decided not to question the instinct.

"Four."

Charma widened her eyes. "How do you know? Did they bring you here when you were unconscious and somehow you remember?"

A slight smile appeared on Jason's lips, it was more of a sideways smirk than anything else. Raising one eyebrow, he pointed to the wall in front of them. On a large, shiny brass sign was the number four.

Charma groaned and shoved at Jason's shoulder. The man was teasing her. They were running for their lives from two demons, trying to rescue a member of the Outsiders who she had stupidly left in the lobby and he was making fun of her.

"The better question is why did our half-dead elevator open here?" He tapped his fingers on the wall and then walked forward leaving her in the elevator. Charma rolled her eyes. Jason might not have known what he was until that morning but his male Outsider genes were showing themselves in abundance. Walking into danger without thinking as if he was invincible was so typical she could have gagged.

Instead, she followed him into the hall. If he was going to get himself killed, she could at least be there to witness him do it. The thought made her chest tight. Even in sarcasm she couldn't deal with the idea that anything might happen to Jason, which meant that in reality she was going to have to work her hardest to keep him safe.

"So you were saying, you did something to make yourself immune to Self-loathing?"

"I never said I was immune. I bet she's found a way around my temporary resistance by now."

"Okay." He turned around and grabbed her arm pulling her closer to him. "Stop stalling."

"I heal things. It's what I do."

"That much I know, Charma."

Something banged behind them and she leapt three inches into the air. She gripped his arm tighter and bit into her lower lip. Jason remained calm and unfazed. She blinked a couple of times, trying to steady herself.

"Jason, why did we get off the elevator?"

"I wanted to see why it stopped here."

If she weren't so terrified and had something she could use, she would throw something at him. "That is the stupidest thing I've ever heard."

He shrugged. "I'm doing my best here to approach this destiny stuff with a certain amount of logic."

"Because Gods forbid you leave that behind."

Jason's laugh startled her, and she couldn't help the grin that crossed her face. "Look, I am who I am. That's not going to change. Even if I can take and give back life at will."

"You can bring back life?" If her words sounded like a gasp, she didn't try to hide it.

"Drew helped me discover my ability to do this. That's why the demons can no longer
scent
me."

"Kind of gross, isn't it?"

"I'm a doctor, we don't use words like gross."

"You just think them."

"Maybe." The dimple on Jason's left cheek appeared for a moment, showing Charma how hard Jason was trying to not be amused.
Trying, and failing
.

"So you were explaining why we are walking around this deserted hall at dusk when we should be making our way down to the lobby."

"Right. Here's how I see it. There is more going on here than just us, meaning you and me, versus them."

"Meaning the demon."

"Plural."

She nodded. "Right."

Jason had a way of looking at things that was so literal. In retrospect, she was lucky he'd come to believe in any of this at all. In his position, with his upbringing and natural tendency to only believe what he could see or feel, they should all be thanking their lucky stars he hadn't demanded to be drugged up for even having spoken with her to begin with.

"But there has to be more to it than that. Someone picked us for this job, designed us, and placed us here. So I took a chance that the reason the elevator opened was because the 'right side', if you will, wanted us to come down this hall for some reason."

"Why Dr. Randall, you're an optimist."

"Let's just say, I'm conducting an experiment."

"I don't have your positive outlook or belief. I think they dumped us down here, and we've basically been screwed ever since. Or maybe worse. It's just possible that it was an impossible task to begin with. Maybe humanity was always doomed, and we came down here knowing we were screwed."

"Charma." Jason pulled her into his arms and against his hard chest. She placed her hand on it and could feel his strong heartbeat under her fingertips. "You spend too much time in the head's of people who are having a hard time. I think you're going to have to start limiting your exposure."