Marked (9 page)

An excruciating twenty minutes of silence and discomfort later, Brielle says, “You lovebirds can come out now.” 

I can’t get the blanket off from me fast enough.  I push it to the floor and sit up.  A dizzy spell hits me and I almost fall back down again, but Roman puts a supporting hand on my shoulder as he sits up. 

“Steady now.  Sudden movements like that are a bad idea.”

Under his doctorly advice, I hear a faint trace of agitation.  He’s still annoyed with me.  Why wouldn’t he be?  I go from wanting to kiss him to throwing myself on the floor to get away from him in less than a minute.  Maybe my head injury made me bipolar.

I close my eyes and take a deep breath, attempting to calm myself while the dizziness passes.  When it finally does, I open my eyes and look at Roman.  “Thank you,” I say, hoping that he hears the apology in my voice.

Roman moves out from behind me so I can lean back against the seat.  “How long until we get to the safe house?” I ask Brielle.

“About two hours,” she replies.  That’s not so bad.  I settle back and close my eyes again. 

I must have fallen asleep because I’m suddenly standing in a fog so thick, I can hardly see my hand in front of my face.  I turn around and around, looking for a way out but there’s nothing but the white mist.  Panic starts to rise from the pit of my stomach.

“Skye,” a voice says somewhere in the distance.  “I had to bring you here.  I need to warn you.”

“Who are you?” I ask, turning around again, trying to determine the direction the voice is coming from.  “Where am I?”

“I don’t have time for explanations; it’s dangerous for me to communicate with you like this because I’ve only brought your consciousness here and I can’t do it for very long.  Trust Brielle.  Now that they know who you are, she is the only one who can keep you safe.”

“Okay…I figured that out already.  That’s why I’m letting her lead me around like I’m her pet monkey.  But what do you mean, ‘now that they know who I am.’  Why do the djinn care about me at all?”

A disturbance in the fog makes me spin around.  A low growl is emanating from somewhere in the mist and it seems to be moving closer.  “What is that?” I ask.

“We don’t have any more time.  I shouldn’t have brought you here, I’m sorry.  Know this my dear one, Roman is not who he seems.  Warn Brielle that you have been discovered.  Quickly.”

The mist is gone and I’m back in the jeep.  I’m lying on my back on the seat again with Roman hovering over me and shouting my name.  He’s pulling my left eyelid up and I’m getting a serious case of déjà vu.  I nearly choke as I suck oxygen into my lungs; something that they seem to be depleted of at the moment.  A coughing fit follows. 

Roman holds my shoulders until the violent racking of my body stops.  “You were dead,” he says.  No preamble, he just tells me I was dead.

I scowl at him.  When I finally stop coughing long enough to speak, I rasp, “I was asleep, not dead.”

He shakes his head.  His face is a finely tuned mask of a doctor who has to tell a patient bad news.  “You had no pulse, you stopped breathing and I’ve been doing chest compressions on you for the last five minutes.”

Now that he mentions it, my chest does hurt.  A lot.  I thought it was just from the coughing.  I still don’t believe I was dead, though.  “My vitals must have been suppressed by the deep sleep I was in,” I counter.  My voice sounds like sandpaper on flaking paint.

“What, you think the Doc was just trying to cop a feel while you were sleeping?” Brielle says from the front seat.  “He’s been in a panic since you fell dead.”

Could I really have been dead?  I take in another deep breath of air and my chest screams in protest.  Okay, I believe he was doing chest compressions now.  I still can’t wrap my mind around this, though.  “Why would I have died?  I don’t have a fever anymore and my wounds are healing without any trace of infection.  I don’t have any history of heart problems and I didn’t have a stroke because I’m too lucid at the moment.  So, what could have possibly killed me?”

Roman’s brow furrows.  An urge to straighten out the lines marring his beautiful face washes over me, but I keep my hands firmly at my side.  The voice from my dream echoes in my head. 
Roman is not who he seems
. 

Was it a trick?  Did the djinn somehow get in my head and try to plant seeds of doubt in so I’ll push away those who want to help me?  That can’t be it because the voice told me to trust Brielle; unless she’s the one leading me into a trap.  Maybe she’s psychotic.  She has shown some signs.  I don’t know what to think now.

The other warning surfaces from the depths of my mind.  If it was just a dream or a vision as I was dying, I’m going to feel pretty stupid saying this to Brielle.  But deep down, I really feel like it might save our lives.  “Um, Brielle.”  Her eyes meet mine in the rearview mirror.  “I’m supposed to warn you that we’ve been discovered.  They know where we are.”

Her eyes widen in surprise.  “And how did you come to this brilliant conclusion?”  Clearly, she doesn’t believe me.

I start to answer her but the words become tangled in my throat.  I feel the tug of sleep pulling at me again and my vision becomes hazy as the fog begins to roll into my subconscious.  Every hair on my body prickles.  I try to fight it.  Because somehow, I know that whatever wants me in there this time won’t ever let me go.  I don’t know how I know that, but I do.  I grab Roman’s arms and shout, “Don’t let it take me!”

“Skye, what is it?” Roman asks, not caring that my nails are digging into his flesh.

“What the hell is she freaking out about?” Brielle asks, her voice getting shakier by the syllable.

“I don’t know.”

“Hold me here,” I say desperately to Roman.  “Find a way to hold me here!  If I go, they won’t let me come back!  If I go there again, I will die.  For real this time.” 

“I couldn’t bring you back last time on my own.  Tell me how to do it,” Roman says, gripping my shoulders tightly as if holding me physically will keep my mind in place.

Tears are streaming down my cheeks.  “I don’t know.”

His hands move to my tear soaked flesh and he pulls me to him.  Roman’s lips are on mine in a bruising, desperate kiss.  I open my mouth to scream as the mist pulls harder and he uses the opportunity to deepen the kiss, his tongue gliding across mine, daring it to join his in an erotic exploration of our mouths.

The mist ebbs ever so slightly.  Enough to tell me this is working.  I push my panic away and I kiss him back.  My tongue tangles with his, demanding he kiss me harder.  My arms snake around his neck and a low growl emanates from deep within his throat.  I close my eyes and will the mist away.  It won’t take me this time.  I have an anchor to hold me in place.

The kiss is endless.  Long after I know the mist is gone, my lips are still pressed against Roman’s.  His right hand moves from my cheek and finds my braless breast through the thin shirt I’m wearing.  I arch my back, offering myself to him.

“Look, I know you guys have the hots for each other, but I’m not in the mood for watching porn,” Brielle snipes from the driver’s seat.

Roman chuckles as he pulls his lips from mine and his hands fall away from me.  But his eyes aren’t laughing.  They’re burning with a fire so hot, it just may kill me.  I shake my head and wonder where that thought came from.  I don’t usually think of passion as a death sentence.

“Are you okay?” Roman asks.

I nod, but I’m not entirely sure.  The mist is gone, but it left behind a lot of questions.  Questions nobody in this jeep can answer.  Not even Brielle, since she’s clueless about what just happened to me.

“How about if I drop you guys off at a motel somewhere so you can get your groove on and I’ll go to the safe house by myself,” Brielle grumbles.

Ignoring her, Roman smoothes my hair back from my face.  “Tell me what happened.”

I open my mouth to tell him about the mist when Brielle shouts.  “Holy fuck!  Where did he come from?”

She slams on the breaks and Roman and I are both thrown against the seats.  The jeep fishtails wildly as Brielle tries to avoid whatever is in the road.  When we finally come to a stop on the gravel shoulder, I crane my newly whiplashed neck to see what she’s seeing.

A man covered in blood is standing in the middle of the road looking at us.  There’s so much blood on him that it’s impossible to tell where it’s all coming from.  Roman’s instinct has him going for the jeep door, but Brielle stops him.  “It could be a trap.  Don’t go out there.”

Roman gives her a hard look.  “Not everyone is out to get you.”

While they’re chatting, the man in the road collapses.  Since I’m on the side of the jeep now that doesn’t have the child lock on, I open it and put my feet on the ground.  Roman grabs my shoulder.  “Stay in here,” he says.

I give him a dirty look and shake his hand away.  “Not everyone’s out to get me, either,” I reply and start walking slowly towards the injured man.  There’s so much blood it’s already pooling around his body.

Roman is right behind me.  He takes my right elbow to make sure that I don’t fall down as we both make our way to the man.  Roman kneels down next to him.

“If you get killed, it’s because of your own stupidity,” Brielle yells through her open window.  Humanitarian she’s not.  Roman and I both ignore her. 

“Where are you hurt?” Roman asks the man.

The man tries to speak, but blood gurgles from his mouth.  “Gross!” Brielle says.  She has gotten out of the jeep, but is keeping her distance.

I give her a sour look.  “You can watch a djinni’s eyes and ears bleed profusely, but this grosses you out?”

She shrugs.  “They’re not human.  It’s different.”

Roman has torn the man’s tattered shirt open and found the source of the bleeding.  Sources, actually.  Taking off his own shirt, which elicits a cat whistle from Brielle, he uses it to wipe some of the blood away.  I wish he would have left it there. 

Carved into the man’s belly is my name.  Skye. 

Someone tortured this man just to send me a message.   The cuts are so deep that some of his intestines are exposed and I’m guessing some internal organs are damaged.   I drop to my knees next to him and place my hand on the bloody mess.  I move my scared eyes to Roman and he appears to be in as much in shock as I am. 

“Who would do this?” I whisper, pressing down firmly to try to stop the bleeding.  But I know it’s useless.  There’s no way he can lose this much blood and survive.

“What the fuck did I get myself into with you?” Brielle asks over my shoulder.  I look up to respond, but she’s gone.  Not disappear gone, but she’s not behind me anymore.  She’s walking towards a dark haired, rough looking man almost three times as big as she is and she is pissed.  He’s amused.

“The little djinn hunter,” the man scoffs.  “You are no match for me.  Leave your passengers and you will live to hunt lesser djinn than the one who stands before you.”

“What’s the matter, fatty.  Afraid of a little girl?” Brielle asks.  It doesn’t seem like antagonizing him is a great idea.  He’ll squash her like an annoying mosquito.

“Your last chance,” he says.  The way his lips curl up into a lopsided, brown toothed grin, it’s obvious he wants her to stay and fight.

Why doesn’t she use her dog whistle?  It worked before.  I’m about to suggest that when a whip suddenly appears in her hand.  It lashes out towards the tall, leather clad djinni and catches a brown tooth.  Damn, she’s good.

The djinni howls in pain and grabs the whip before Brielle can pull it back.  With a hard yank, he has her within striking distance.  He reaches out to slap her, but Brielle lets go of the whip and rolls under his arm.  A hard kick in the back of his knee makes him stumble but not fall like she hoped.  He’s simply too big for her. 

I start running to help her, but Roman grabs me.  “No, you stay here.”

The djinni is grabbing for Brielle again when Roman sucker punches him in the side of the head.  The djinni staggers, but still doesn’t go down.  He turns his attention to Roman, who he assumes is the bigger threat.  He throws a punch and Roman tries to duck but it still clips his jaw.  That had to hurt. 

That doesn’t stop him, though.  Roman is throwing punches like a trained boxer, jabbing with both his left and right fists.  The djinni finally blocks the punches and backs up.  His nose and mouth bleeding after the multiple blows.  He wipes the blood on the back of his hand and begins to shift.  In seconds, his human form is completely dissolved and he now stands before us in his true form.  A demon.  It’s Roman’s turn to say, “Oh, fuck.