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“Now, I realize you don’t want to share her, boy, but you’re going to have to get over that. Finders, keepers, and all that.”

Both men moved forward and again Asher countered their movements. “You can’t have her.”

The taller man who’d spoken first considered Asher for a long moment, crossing his arms as he leaned a hip against the doorjamb.

“You know, he said you had some kind of attachment to the Healer. We didn’t believe him, of course, but I’m thinking he was right.”

The man must have seen the shock on my face. He laughed. “You didn’t think it was an accident that we found you?” He shook his head. “No, we knew exactly where you would be. He even told us how to get to you.” He tipped his head toward Asher. “I’d never have figured on using one of us to catch a Healer, but I guess weirder things have happened.”

He shrugged and straightened. Every movement calm and casual, he pulled a gun from behind his back. He kept the muzzle pointed at the ground as he spoke almost kindly to Asher. “There’s no way you can take both of us, man. Let us have her, and we’ll let you go. You can walk yourself right out of here and find yourself another girlfriend. Maybe one less fragile.”

His smirk almost caused Asher to lose control. I could feel him trembling under my hand. The thing was, the Protector was right. I wouldn’t make it out of here, and what was the point of both of us dying?

“No!” he shouted.

He faced the men, but I knew Asher spoke to me, as well.

The black-haired stranger sighed. “I thought you might say that,” he said.

The gun flashed when he fired off three rounds in a blast of noise that threatened to blow my eardrums. Asher could have dodged the shots, but he stepped into them instead. A human shield, his entire body jerked backward into mine with the force of the bullets. We hit the hard concrete floor, with my body cradling his and the back of my head bouncing off the ground in a blitzkrieg of pain. My ears rang, and the smell of iron burned my nose. Sounds swirled around me, but it felt like listening to a conversation while underwater.

Stunned, I waited a moment for my eyes to stop seeing flashes of light and readjust. When they did, I realized Asher lay on me, unmoving. Asher, who’d become more mortal every day we’d spent together.

“Asher?”

He didn’t respond.

“Asher?” I yelled louder.

Nothing. I opened my senses, scanning him. I’d only begun when someone shoved his body off of me and pulled me to my feet. Acting on pure instinct, I fought back the way Gabe had taught me and my fist connected with a jaw.

The man couldn’t feel it, but the motion forced the arms holding me to fall away. Immediately, I dropped back to my knees beside Asher. I laid a hand on his chest, where blood had already soaked his dark blue shirt a deep scarlet.

I couldn’t hear a heartbeat.

“No, no, no . . .”

Frantic, I sent my senses spiraling out again to scan him. The keening noise distracted me, until I realized it was me screaming. I choked off the strangled cries.

“Oh no, you don’t.” Arms cinched around my waist, yanking me backward into a chest. They squeezed tighter when I began to fight, digging into my ribs and cutting off my air supply. Mark whispered in my ear. “Save all that energy for us, darlin’. We have big plans for you.”

“No,” I tried to say, but nothing came out.

They didn’t know. Asher might not be able to heal himself. Not from an injury this bad and not when I’d gone and made him more mortal than immortal.

I kicked my legs as hard as I could, and Mark grunted when my boots connected with his shins. His grip tightened. Cut off from oxygen, my vision blurred, bright dots popping everywhere I looked. I strained toward Asher. Blood pooled all around his unmoving body. With the last of my strength, I tried to gather my energy, to use my power against the Protector.

The black-haired man stood over Asher. Unsmiling, he pointed the gun at Asher’s head.

“He never said we had to keep this one alive,” he said.

I went nuts, scratching the arms holding me and tearing at the skin I could reach. The arms around my ribs became steel bands.

Everything went black, but the gunshot echoed on and on, until even that slipped away.

C
HAPTER
S
EVENTEEN

The Protectors had chained me to a wall and left me alone. I could sit on the floor, but they’d locked my arms together above my head like Asher’s had been. They’d long ago gone numb, and ached when I fought against the cuffs. I couldn’t free myself, no matter how I struggled. I turned my attention to the room, but the lighting was too bad to see much. With no windows or light, I couldn’t tell how long I’d been out, or even what time of day it was. Was I in the same room?

“Asher?” I whispered, my voice husky from screaming.

No answer. I stretched out my legs to see if I could feel him on the floor nearby. I wasn’t sure I wanted to find him. If Asher lived, the Protectors would never leave him with me. They knew I’d try to heal him.

Twisting against the chains, I flattened out, lengthening my body to extend my reach. Something wet soaked through the ankle of my jeans when I swept it across the floor, but otherwise I touched only air. I sighed with relief, hoping they’d taken Asher away to help him.

I wiped my damp face on my coat. Pressing my back into the cold wall, I pulled my knees in, wanting to curl into a ball.

Asher’s survived worse,
I reminded myself.
And he was still a Protector.
He could still be alive. Those men might have shot him to get out of the way, but maybe they didn’t want him dead, if for no other reason than he was a Protector, too. I tried to hold on to that thought, while my mind replayed that damned gunshot and Asher’s unmoving body until I wanted to scream.

The door opened, and I jumped, setting the chains to rattle like a damned ghost. The light blinded me for a moment, but when my eyes adjusted I saw the black-haired man. I was in the same room as before.

“Where’s Asher?” I asked, swallowing. “Did you get him to a hospital?”

Bewilderment and curiosity flickered over the man’s cold features. “Why would you care? He kills your kind for sport.”

I ignored that. “Please. Is he okay? He’s not like you. He might not be able to heal himself. I can hel—”

He waved a hand, and the onyx stone set in his silver ring glinted in the light. “You should be less worried about him and more worried about yourself.”

He crouched down beside me, bracing his hands on either side of the wall behind me. His knuckles brushed my bare neck, and I recoiled, trying to melt into the bricks to get away from him. He smiled, and I smelled peppermint on his breath.

“Remy, we’re going to have so much fun. I can tell you’re special. I bet that’s why your boyfriend was so happy to die for you.”

I heard one word and one word only.
Die. He died. Asher died.
A sob started in my chest and tried to claw its way out of my throat. I couldn’t catch my breath, as the weight of my grief crushed my chest. In the light, I saw that blood soaked the floor where Asher had been and stained the leg of my pants.

The wild shrieking erupted from me, and I couldn’t stop it. Didn’t want to stop it.

The black-haired Protector brushed my hair away from my forehead, almost as if to comfort me. My stomach roiled at his touch, and I wanted to kill him.

I twisted away from him and kicked out with both legs. The move didn’t even knock him off balance. Something dark and cold flickered in his brown eyes, and that was my only warning. His energy came at me with a force that nearly rolled my eyes into the back of my head.

I gritted my teeth and reinforced my mental walls. His energy crashed on me like stormy waves hitting a breaker wall. I’d never felt anything like it. Gabe and Asher had tested me, but they’d never unleashed the full force of their power on me. Another Healer would have had no way to block them. Healers had no walls to keep the Protectors from stealing what they wanted. Only Protectors had mental defenses. I’d never been so grateful for my Protector blood.

“What the hell?” the man whispered.

The surge of his power rolled at me like a tsunami about to overtake everything in its path. My defenses shook and shivered under the onslaught, but I refused to cave to this man who’d murdered Asher. Protectors killed to feel something, but I would die before I gave him what he wanted. Sheer willpower kept me together, and sweat sprouted on my forehead. One salty drop trickled down my cheek to the corner of my mouth, but I ignored it. I lifted my chin and imagined my walls made of impenetrable titanium.

The Protector’s right eye twitched, and the flow of his energy halted as he stood. He staggered back, weaving like a drunk person.

“What are you?” he asked at last.

“What you want from me . . . you’ll never get it,” I answered. “Go ahead and kill me, but I swear you’ll never feel anything because of me.”

Dean had told me once that he could read my defiance in my eyes, and he’d tried and failed to break me for years. I hoped this Protector could see that same defiance and know how much I wanted him dead.

Abruptly, he stalked out, leaving me alone in the pitch-black room once more. If he thought to scare me, it worked. Without my sense of sight, my imagination played messed-up games with me. My jeans stiffened as Asher’s blood dried, and I wondered how long they’d left him lying on the floor, dying, while I had been right next to him unable to save him. What good were these abilities if people died because of me? My mother. Asher. Like a nasty burr, sorrow had spikes that hooked into my flesh.

I wasn’t sure what I begged for, except for everything that had happened to be a lie. I yearned for him to pop up out of another room and tell me this had all been a test. One I’d failed, sure, but a test all the same, meant to show me how unprepared I was for the Protectors to overtake me. This couldn’t be happening.

I had known the Protectors would try to take my energy, to get some kind of high from it to feel human, but I hadn’t understood how it would happen. Once, before I knew what he was, Asher had threatened me, trying to make me afraid so I would stay away from him. I remembered the burning pain of it and how I’d thought him a kind of energy thief. My strength had faded as I’d felt his growing. And that had only been a small taste of what he could do. After that, I’d learned that I could block him, though he’d never done anything like that to me again. No, that ability came from my non-Healer side. All Protectors had them. Asher had explained to me that Protectors had once-upon-a-time trained their kids to use their mental walls to protect Healers back when they were all allies, to keep their energy from mingling with a Healer’s during a healing. I was the first Healer he’d come across who had similar defenses, and we’d only figured out why once we’d learned I was part-Protector, too.

Now these men knew I could block them. Would they make that leap in logic and grasp what I was? What would they do to me? The minutes pushed into each other. As time stretched on, it became harder to convince myself that Asher had done this to test me. He would never hurt me like that, not even to teach me a lesson. The last of my pitiful hope blew away when the door opened, and my two captors returned.

I nearly broke down again. Asher really was gone. He wasn’t coming to save me or fix this. They’d killed him.

The Protectors approached me with barely contained zeal, and I remembered what had been done to Yvette in their quest for sensation.

Then I heard Gabe and Asher telling me to be patient. These men didn’t know that I could inflict my injuries on them. If I waited, they would choose their own punishment and I would avenge what they did to Asher.

That was the thought I held on to when the torture began.

 

An eon of pain had passed while they’d held me prisoner. I thought it had been two days, but I couldn’t be sure.

The man named Mark slapped me awake for the umpteenth time. As soon as my eyes opened, he pressed a knife to my bare arm. At some point, they’d taken my coat and left me in just my tank top and jeans. The more skin they could reach, the better. The black-haired man—Xavier, I’d learned—had left while I’d been unconscious. I’d heard him talking to someone on the phone, but he never slipped up and said their name during these check-ins.

Mark leaned down until I could see my reflection in his irises. “I really need you to pay attention, darlin’.” The jerk berated me in a charming voice. “I know you’re groggy, but we don’t have time for these games.”

The ceiling beyond him had twenty-two panels. When the pain had threatened to crush me, I’d spent long minutes counting them. Every movement made my head pound, and I saw spots if I turned it too sharply. Suffocation could do that to you. That had been the last experiment they’d conducted in their ongoing campaign to break me.

Mark didn’t like my continued silence. While they’d tortured me, they’d asked me a litany of questions.
Did I know Asher was a Protector? How was I different? What could I do? Did I know others like me? Did I know other Protectors?
I’d clamped my jaw shut, refusing to answer them, and they carried on tormenting me.

Now, the pressure of the knife increased until the blade sliced through my skin. It amazed me how cold the metal could feel and then how hot the pain burned in comparison. This was what they had done to that other Healer, Yvette. These Protectors thought the cuts and the suffocation and all the rest would weaken me until they could steal everything from me. Like Dean had, they thought they could control me with pain. Stupid men.

Losing Asher had scraped everything out of me, except for the all-consuming need to wipe these men off the face of the earth. So far, an opportunity hadn’t presented itself, but the moment would come. I just had to wait long enough to gather my powers again, a difficult thing to do when they kept at me so relentlessly. Why wouldn’t they just kill me already?

I imagined I heard Asher’s voice.
Easy, Remy. Be smart. You can get out of this.
He might only live in my imagination, but I listened. I would never give in to these bastards. I would rather die fighting.

Mark cut me again, and I flinched, but my walls held strong.
Amateur,
my inner voice mocked. Dean had done far worse damage. I could withstand this, but it was wearing me out. Time to change tactics, even if it meant using up my energy stores temporarily.

I smiled. As Mark sliced into my thigh, I healed the cuts on my arms. His head jerked up when he noticed the wounds disappearing. I didn’t care. I
wanted
him to see what I could do. To know that I had power and would never use it to help him. I imagined Asher screaming at me to stop taunting these men. But Asher had died and left me on my own.

“What’s it like to be this close to a Healer and know you’ll never taste her power?” I taunted.

Mark cursed and lifted the knife away from me.

I pretended to think, then shook my head like I’d just remembered. “Oh right. You can’t
feel
anything.”

Mark jerked his arm back like he would plant his fist in my face.

Do it, you bastard,
I thought.
And I’ll heal that, too, while you watch like a salivating dog.

His scowl darkened before he spun on his heel. The door almost tore from its hinges when he slammed it closed behind him.

Alone again, I whimpered.

The next time the door opened and I heard people enter, I didn’t acknowledge them with so much as an eye blink in their direction. Why bother? Soon they would kill me and this would all be over. I was chained to a wall, and I couldn’t see a way out of this.

“I told you once that the only good Healer is a dead Healer.”

The familiar silky voice had me twisting toward the door. Gabe.

He stood in the doorway, looking as perfect and untouchable as ever. The shock of his presence surprised a relieved sob out me. Asher would be avenged. Mark and Xavier would die. Gabe had always told me that his family came first. He’d promised to kill anyone who put them in danger, including me.

I waited, soaking up that face that looked so much like Asher’s.

“Hey, Remy,” Gabe said softly, crossing the room to crouch beside me.

I stared at him. Why wasn’t he attacking the men? What did he have planned? His face gave nothing away, beyond disgust when his eyes flicked to the dried blood on my jeans. His brother’s blood.

Something wasn’t right. My brain waded through molasses, trying to make sense of what it was seeing. Gabe had entered the room
with
the Protectors. They were not threatened by his appearance. He wasn’t here to help me, or even to avenge Asher.

Our capture had made no sense. Someone had told the Protectors where to find us. That person had also known that Asher could be used as bait to catch me. Who else could have known these things other than the one person we’d trusted enough to confide in? Gabe had never liked me. He’d tolerated me for a time. Then, like Lottie, Gabe had betrayed me to the Protectors. Worse, he’d betrayed Asher. He’d been the one on the phone, the person giving information to Xavier.