Mixed Feelings (Empathy in the PPNW Book 1) (23 page)

A growl drew my attention
back to the other end of the room and I caught sight of Mel before he charged
forward, teeth bared.
Dirk tensed, readying himself
for the attack, but he needn’t have bothered.

“
Debilus!
” the demon yelled, her voice strained. Mel’
s attack sl
owed to a crawl but he didn’t
seem to notice. His movements, while
extremely lagged
, remained determined, his expression
dangerous. Dirk
’s tension melted away and his emotions cooled to a
pleasant, bubbling warmth as he laughed at Mel’
s predicament.
We both watched Mel move like cooled molasses and
after a few seconds I felt frustration burble through Dirk. Sick of waiting, he
stepped forward, balled up his fist, and punched the bigger man square in the
jaw.

Mel dropped to the floor at
the same time Chloe’s gun went off and I gasped, whipping around expecting to
see Chloe standing triumphantly over the girl-shaped demon. I saw only her feet
instead, the rest of her out of sight on the ground outside. The demon stood
over her,
Chloe
’
s gun in her hand.

“
Chloe!
”
I yelped
, the threat of losing my best friend breaking my
paralysis. Dirk got to me before I could make it even a step
, grabbing my
hand and yanking me close like a dance. I bumped
against his chest and, while my instinct was to struggle, he wouldn’
t let me.
H
is arm lock
ed
around
my back, forcing the air out of my lung
s
, and
when I tried again to fight, he just smiled
his
sharp smile and
bent
close.

“This worked out well for us
.
”

I managed to squeak out my
last bit of breath before he nudged
my face to the side. His
dizzy pleasure swamped my psyche, doing its best to
drown my
manic anxiety
as
I
felt the heat of his breath against my skin. Little seeds of panic sprouted in
my stomach and, as I felt the pressure of Dirk’s fangs, a beanstalk of terror
grew out of them. With incredible speed, it speared its way into my internal
organs, wrapped its razor
-
sharp leaves through my
screaming lungs, and stabbed its thorny branches into my heart. I felt cold.

When his fangs pierced my
skin, the pressure on my chest let up and I felt air suck into my bruised
ribcage. I took two great breaths before I let out a sound that might have been
a call for help. I was losing my voice, my vision, my hearing. Sluggishness
swept over
my body and I was becoming
less and less aware of anything outside of the two of us. All I felt was the
icy stab of the terror inside and the wound at my neck.

Dirk loosened his grip on me
so the last thing I saw was his face and my blood on his lips.

Chapter
Seventeen

My body was in paralyzing
pain, though my mind still frolicked through a bloody
,
sharp dreamscape. My limbs felt bent at all the wrong angles and tiny
wounds dotted my skin. Distantly, I could feel patches of dried blood and scabs
on my stomach, along my arms and legs. The sound of a voice ordering me to wake
pulled me closer to consciousness, out of one nightmare and into another.

When I finally fluttered
opened my eyelids, I could see darkness and the corona of a bare bulb. Before I
had consciously decided to do so, I was pulling and kicking against the bands
of pressure holding me in place
.

If my mind was a factory and
my thoughts were its workers, every one of them was slacking off, getting high
by the water cooler instead of pulling levers and answering phones. I couldn’t
entirely tell why, but I knew my struggling was accomplish
ing
nothing.

“
She
’
s awake!
”

The voice was high, young,
and excited like a teen set free with a credit card in a trendy clothing store.

Shock and
t
error pulled through my lips in a quick shriek. After
another attempt at pulling out of my bonds, I discovered I could only move my
head. Wildly, I looked left, right, letting out another cry when I noticed
a
needle of terrifying size sticking out of the inside
of my elbow
. A
dark red cord was trailing
off the side of the cross-shaped table, channeling my blood out of my body and
out of sight
.

“Up you go!” The voice sang
from behind me just before I heard metal scream. The world flew by and then I
was upright, my head spinning as my slacker thoughts stumbled against each
other and tumbled around in my head like drunken astronauts
.

Dirk stood across from me. He
had no expression on his face but the young woman who stepped into my field of
view held enough excitement on her own for the both of them. I recognized her
expression, the smile and the wide eyes, but it was meaner than any excitement
I’d seen before. This wasn’t just glee, this was a bully advancing on the
scrawniest kid on the schoolyard because he knows who’s got the most lunch
money.

“Welcome
!
” she announced. I struggled against the strap
s
again
,
sure despite my weakness
that I could make headway this time. The girl
shook
her head, her
eyes darting to my right arm as I tried to fight
.
“Nice try,
dummy. He
’s got you well and truly
tucked.”

Dirk caught my attention by
baring his
fangs
,
tilting his head as if he knew the exact angle to make them appear their most
menacing. Her slang was odd, not entirely descriptive on its own, but Dirk made
the point for her. Even with a head full of lazy thoughts, I could put together
that the weakness holding me back and Dirk’s fangs were related.

The girl—the
demon—
looked
about my height, with brown
hair and
solid, inhumanly
black
eyes
like Laurel’s. She was wearing jeans, ripped at the
knee, and a plain black t-shirt. She seemed young, early twenties at most, and
her nails were painted a chipped baby pink. Her features were average, her nose
a little too bulbous to be beautiful, though her full lips tried to make up for
it.

She jabbed me in the kidney
with a hard left and I grunted, swore, and tried again to fight. When I lowered
my gaze to measure my progress, I realized I was worse off than I’d previously
assumed
.
When I tried to pull my left
arm out of the straps, nothing happened—nothing at all. Despite screaming
orders for my muscles to move, I couldn’t even manage to flex my bicep or pop a
vein. My pinky finger twitched a bit but my arm lay otherwise dead
.

“I think she’s gotten it, D,”
the girl said.

“She isn’t too bright.”

“
Hey,
”
I
said, more out of habit than
actual
offense
. Having my intelligence
insulted was the least of my problems, but it was something I heard so often
I argued without thinking.

“
You
’ll be fun to keep around, I think. Not to mention useful!” She bounced
forward and lifted her hands to my face. I felt her fingertips on my skin and
she
met my eyes.
Wooziness flooded through me
before a brick cracked my skull right between my eyes.

My lashes fluttered open
after what could have been minutes or days and I found myself staring down at
the top of her head. She’d tucked her hands up into my hair, pressing her palms
to my temples as she rested her head on my chest. I wasn’
t bleeding and I didn
’t feel any more battered
than I had before she’d touched me, but it was clear that whatever she’d done
hadn’t been as passive as it appeared.

“You have potential, but it’s
wasted
,
” she said, her tone
distracted. I felt the pressure of her fingers change slightly as if she’
d give me a
scalp
massage and it sent a
wave
of fear through me. I didn’t want to lose consciousness again, to be
left completely at their mercy. I couldn’t fight, thanks to Dirk’s paralyzing
bites and the aged leather pinning me to the table, but that didn’t beat back
the fear of oblivion.

“Get off me
!
” I tried to struggle again, not because I hoped it
would help but because terror had found my rational mind and socked it right in
the face. “Get away, get away!”

The girl laughed, rolling her
head up so she could meet my eyes with her chin on my chest. She watched me for
a few moments, as if trying to decide if she wanted to take my order, before
she shook her head.

“I can feel your real
abilities, thick like sludge below the surface of your sanity,” she said, her
voice much too young, much too casual for the content.
“
You
’re more than you will ever
be, but such is the problem with so many humans. You waste what you’ve got,
ignoring it rather than calling it forth and using your true power.”

“Speaking of below the
surface, may I?” Dirk asked, though he didn’t gesture or advance. The demon
stayed pressed close, her eyes still on mine. Seconds passed before her expression
twitched toward irritation.

“
It
’s half the reason we brought her here, isn’t it?”
Backing away from me, she flicked her wrist in a “go ahead”
gesture.
“Make it fast.”

Dirk stepped wide around us
both to crouch down by the side of the table out of view. The girl watched him
for a moment before a tremor of impatience ran through her and she began to tap
her foot. I struggled to see what Dirk was doing but my neck wouldn’t bend that
far. Despite the fact that he wasn’t hurting me, that he seemed to be
concentrating on something on the floor rather than planning to slit my throat,
I let out a whimper. When Dirk stood abruptly and spoke, the sight of a bag of
my blood in his hand
turned my whimpering into a
long whine.

“Do you need me to—”

“Get out,” the
girl
snapped, stomping her foot
.
I saw the rumblings of a tantrum in her—even though I’m usually
the one throwing them, I can recognize the signs in others—though I
couldn’t feel anything to back it up
.
I
wasn’t sure if my empathy was being repressed in some way or if I just couldn’t
read her.

I racked my brain at the
realization, trying to remember what I’d felt at the hotel. Had I sensed her
then?
I couldn’t remember. My other senses were still
having trouble fighting off disorientation and I couldn’t be sure what I was or
wasn’t feeling. It was rather like wondering if you’ve gone colorblind in a
black and white room. I wasn’t sure if my brain was to be trusted, considering
my situation.

Dirk didn’t need to be told
twice and had fled the second the first syllable was free of her lips.
I heard a door open and shut and
I tried to see where he’d
gone, but I couldn’t strain my neck enough.
Dirk was
gone, I didn’t know where, and
I was alone with the demon.

I didn’t want to look at her.
I wanted to shut my eyes and click my heels together and murmur, “There’s no
place like home, there’s no place like home,” and find myself in Chloe’s bed
again. I’d even take being assaulted by her cake-destroying cat over sitting
here and discussing my empathy with a demon.

Something familiar slithered
through my brain, bumping a slippery shoulder against my thoughts before
weaving back into the darkness. I turned to the
girl
, my eyes wide as the moon as I realized why I recognized the
feeling
.

 
“Did you miss me?” she asked.
“I wasn’t completely gone, but the witch was only as thorough as can be
expected.”

“
You
—it was you? In my head?”

“Of course.” She narrowed her
eyes. “Are you always this stupid
?
”

Fear, frustration, and pain
collided in my chest, splashing out through my mouth in an
insulted rush.

“
You
’ve had your pet vampire chew holes in me, you’ve sucked out half my
brain, I’m tied to a fucking table, and you’re draining my blood out through a
straw!”
I shrieked.
“I think I have an excuse to
be stupid!”

Rather than punish me for
yelling, the
girl
laughed,
hopping around and clapping
her hands together like an excited audience member at a taping of
The Price
is Right
. She gave a happy wiggle
of her shoulders as she
watched me thrash my head, struggling once again against futility.

When I exhausted myself and
met her gaze again, she lifted a knee, dropped it, and then did a complicated
dance move that reminded me of Fred Astaire. Soft-shoeing her way over to me,
she stopped with a flourish, one hand held up as if asking me to join her. I
just stared down, wishing I could at least punch her in the face or something.

Being paralyzed really blows.

I didn’t know why she looked
like she expected something from me. We both knew I couldn’t move and, while I
was now aware enough to really consider my situation, I couldn’t think of
anything else to say.

I could have sworn about it,
yowled and complained until I was blue in the face, but I didn’t think it would
get her to let me down. In fact, I would have bet my—er, something
definitely less significant than my life that my complaining would just make
her laugh at me some more.

Shifting out of her stance,
she half turned to make a show of surveying the darkness of the room
.
The part of her wriggling in my brain seemed to nudge
me toward something and I got the feeling I was supposed to follow her lead.

Craning my neck, I searched
what little I could see, curious despite myself about what it was she wanted to
show me
.
I couldn’t see much past the
bright light of the bare bulb
,
but the place smelled like
dust and old cardboard. Dilapidated wooden shelves along the right wall held
dented banker boxes and the curve of a rusting water heater peeked out of the
darkness at the edge of my view.

Recognition dawned and for a
moment I wasn’t sure how to feel about my predicament.
Was this nightmare taking place in a plain old dirty garage?

“There you go,” she said,
pleased with me even though I hadn’t said anything. “
You
’re coming around. There may be hope for you yet, though it took you
awhile to really figure out the obvious.”

I rolled my gaze to her,
wondering what she was talking about. What was obvious? That I was in a garage?
That the water heater was leaking and probably needed to be replaced?

“Maybe your soul isn’t worth
taking after all,” she said, narrowing her eyes at me.

“You want my soul?”

“Just the important part,”
she clarified. “
I don
’t need as much as your
buddy
once did.
I
’ve been
at this a long time and I know how to take what I need without leaving a
corpse.”
I
’d barely begun to relax at
the idea of not being murdered before she met my eyes. “That doesn’t mean I
won’t kill you eventually.”