Sliver of Silver (Blushing Death) (23 page)

When we got to the front door, Jade and Amblan giggled through the door. I caught a glimpse of them through the front picture window sitting on the couch, watching more Disney.

“Damn, I forgot about Amblan,” he swore. Kurt never swore.

“Ssshhit!” I slurred.

“Well here goes,” he said as he opened the door.

Amblan took one look at me and jumped up, running to Kurt and me.

“What the hell happened?” she screeched in a shrill tone that rang in my ears.

“She was in a car accident,” Kurt said, kicking the door behind us closed with his booted foot.

“Is she okay? She’s bleeding.” Amblan’s voice hitched as she examined me then glared at Kurt.

“This isn’t her blood but she does have a concussion,” Kurt soothed.

“I need a bath,” I slurred again. My slurring was much better than before we’d left the Manit. I promise.

“Jackson didn’t make it,” Kurt murmured to Jade.

Her answering sigh was filled with relief.

Amblan helped me upstairs, shouldering most of my weight as we took each step in a slow, practiced pace. I hurt all over. The adrenaline had worn off somewhere before we hit 315 South and my muscles ached, my throat burned, and my head was pounding.

Amblan got me into the bath and turned on the hot water. She threw the jeans and tank top away, not even bothering to put them in the wash. I’d left my gun and knife in the clearing. I hoped Dean or Kurt had picked them up. I was, for the first time since I was in college, free of all my weapons. I didn’t like being without them. I felt naked . . . vulnerable.

“So, are you really okay?” Amblan asked, washing my hair for the third time, still finding dirt and blood.

“Yeah, the Paramedic said to stay awake but I’m feeling better.” My head began to defog once we got off the highway and I didn’t feel like I was going to throw up anymore. “I’m so tired, though.”

“Well, if the Paramedic said you shouldn’t sleep then you aren’t going to. We’ll keep you up,” she ordered as she poured hot water over my head. “I could call off work tomorrow and take care of you if you want.”

“It’s not like I’m on my death bed.” I chuckled. A shiver of realization ran through me as I thought about how close I’d actually come to losing everything.

Amblan turned and reached behind her to get a new container of conditioner from the cabinet. She wore a tight razorback tank top that exposed her tattoos, a hint of silver peaked out. She’d gotten giant angel wings tattooed on her back from shoulder blade to the tip of her ass. The wings were white with metallic silver edging outlining each feather. It was the small sliver of silver that caught my eye and made the entire tattoo pop as she turned. It shimmered in the light of the bathroom as if the feathers were real, catching the daylight on her wings as the outlines glittered.

She’d sat in the shop four times to get it completed, falling asleep every time. The day she’d gotten the tattoo finished, she stopped by my house to show me the finished product. I chastised her about the money and the necessity of the tattoo like any overprotective parent.

Dahlia,
she’d said with a knowing smile.
This is my ticket into heaven. They’ll think I’m already an angel
.

I’d hugged her and listened to her soft tears. She’d meant it as a joke but somewhere deep down, she believed it.

She didn’t need the wings. She was getting in. No one who’d suffered as much pain in their lives as she had had to get in. Right? What else was all this for?

“You okay?”

“Just cold,” I whispered.

She ran some hot water and finished rinsing my hair. We spent the rest of the bath in silence.

Amblan fell asleep around one. She had to get up for work in the morning. Jade and Kurt kept an eye on me until about 4 a.m. when I convinced Kurt I’d healed and he let me climb into bed. I didn’t want to hear Kurt’s rehashing of Jackson’s murder to Jade. That’s what it was. No matter how much I sugarcoated it. I had murdered a man because it suited my purposes. I also couldn’t feel bad about it. In my gut, I knew I’d crossed some line. I couldn’t tell the difference between preternatural and human morality anymore.

I wanted to sleep and forget it, to pretend it never happened and that I was fine. I closed my eyes. Thankfully, I was so exhausted I didn’t have time to think about anything before I fell into a coma deep sleep.

The early morning, mid-July sun beat across my face, forcing my eyes open. I rolled over and tried to ignore the light streaming in. In the light of day, I felt empty, alone, and just worn out. I wanted something to make me feel like I was human again. Replaying the previous night’s events in my mind, never once did I think it was wrong. I should have. Somewhere along the way my ideas of right and wrong had become skewed and I didn’t know how to get back to the woman I had been.

Hungry and wanting a little time to myself, I got up. It wouldn’t be long before my entire house was filled with werewolves dedicated to protecting me. I got dress and left, then drove into Upper Arlington. I parked at the First Watch and entered the restaurant. I sat at the counter, ordering a cup of coffee and some pancakes.

“Is that all for ya, honey?” the waitress asked.

“Yes, thank you,” I said, taking a sip of the strong black coffee that she’d poured, barely noticing her.

“Is there gonna be anyone else?” she asked, eyeing the seat beside me with uncertainty in her dull, dark brown eyes.

“No,” I bit out. The restaurant started to fill. In groups of two, three, and four, the hostess filled the tables with happy, laughing people. I hunched over my cup of coffee and tried to block them all out.

The pop of Jackson’s neck in my hands kept replaying in my mind; the smell of his sweat and blood on the night breeze and the expression of pride in Dean’s eyes. Something had changed. Dean was coming to check up on me later. As much as I wanted to be near him, to touch him, it wasn’t right. He deserved better than the callous murderer I’d become. He and Patrick deserved better than the tangled web of desire and pain I offered.

“Here you go, dear,” the waitress said as she plopped a plate full of pancakes with berries on top in front of me.

“Thank you.”

“You okay, hon?” she asked, leaning over the counter.

I breathed deep and turned cold eyes up to her. “Perfect, thank you,” I snapped.

She finally walked away, leaving me in peace.

A young girl squealed behind me in laughter and I turned, following the sound of her ringing, easy laughter. She sat happy on her mother’s lap, her black curls loose over her shoulders, refusing to stay in the barrette her mother had attempted to clip it in.

I would never have that. I wasn’t even sure I wanted it; the child, the family, any of it, but I should have felt something other than the complete emptiness consuming me. It was as if all I was left with was the emptiness of the kill. What I envied was the pure happiness beaming off of both their faces. The feel of Jackson’s neck snapping in my hands rippled through me again, reminding me I didn’t deserve anything they had.

I returned to my pancakes. I didn’t want to ruin their breakfast, too.

I drove home in silence with no radio and the only sound was the rush of my blood in my ears. I parked my car in the garage and turned off the engine. I’d been left alone with my thoughts too long.

I’d destroyed more lives than I wanted to admit. Danny was dead, my family was broken, Patrick was hurting, and Dean was disappointed with our reality. Most of all, I had destroyed myself and become something unrecognizable from the woman I’d once been. I got out of the car and locked everything up tight.

My phone rang in my bag, chirping in an annoying, high-pitched tone. Crossing my yard, I dug into my bag for the phone as I approached the back door. I stopped, searching, my head bowed into my bag. The damned thing was at the bottom and I couldn’t find it. The air-conditioning ran just on the other side of my back door and I wanted to be inside. It was hot as hell outside and sweat ran down the side of my body, underneath my clothing as I held my arms out to search in my bag.

A breeze picked up and blew my hair into my face. It was a nice breeze and cool on my neck, drying a few beads of sweat on my skin. I took a deep breath and froze as a familiar scent filled my nose.

Strays!

A sharp pain thumped across the back of my head. I stumbled into the back door, stubbing my foot against the cement stair and banging my forehead against the door. I collapsed to my knees, slamming my shins into the cement walk. The rest went dark.

Chapter 22

My head pounded hard against my skull. My neck was stiff and when I tried to lift my head, pain seized down my shoulder, through my back, and down my spine. I gasped. I couldn’t open my right eye or move my hands and feet. The air was so thick, heavy, stifling hot that it was hard to breath. Even when I did breathe, my chest hurt like I had a couple of tons of bricks pressing on me. Each breath hurt. I was pretty sure I had a broken rib or two, maybe even three.

I opened my left eye, the one that
wasn’t
swollen shut. I needed to figure out where I was and how deep a pile of shit I was actually in. Once my vision focused and I could see through the pounding of my brain, I noticed boxes along the walls and a rack of clothing that seemed . . . familiar. It took a moment or two before I realized that I was in my own attic.

The air was thick with humidity and stuffy as I tried to force it through my lungs. The ceiling fan in the roof’s apex made long circular shadows on the ceiling as it spun slowly, circulating the stale air like a breeze through a sauna. Its long shadows passed over my head like a forties noir film.

My attic had windows at either end with the ceiling height peaked in the center A-frame at nine feet, allowing only a narrow trail down the middle for walking. The attic was dark, the only light coming from the dim ceiling fan above and the windows at either end of the attic. The air was stuffy, almost oppressive, as I tried to breathe and bring my heartbeat back down to a manageable rate.

My wrists were bound with zip ties to one of my dining room chairs, one wrist strapped to each chair leg behind my back. The plastic of the zip tie cut into my skin, burning and pinching my wrist with each move I made to free myself.

Jesus, these are tight.

I struggled harder. My ankles were zip tied to the front legs of the dining room chair, tightened to the point that pins and needles prickled in my toes. The zip ties cut the blood flow to my feet.

The bruises from the beating I’d taken after the Strays had knocked me out pulsed and throbbed as my blood rushed through my body. I rocked the chair back and forth. The ties were military grade and thicker than the everyday household ties. I couldn’t yank my way free from the plastic zip ties but I could break the chair. I couldn’t wiggle my wrists out unless I was willing to break my thumbs. If I couldn’t break this chair then I’d consider breaking my thumbs.

Since I didn’t want to think about having to break my own thumbs, I’d try the chair first.

The trap door in the floor echoed in the tension filled attic. Someone was coming. His head crested the floor with a smile that lit up his face with malice.

“You’re up,” he said in a heavy southern drawl.

“Lolek,” I snarled.

The approaching werewolf was an intimidating six feet, six inches with a solid muscular frame and wavy light hair that seemed impossible to tame. His eyes were black as midnight like they were all pupils and no iris. He had something haunting and empty about him that made me struggle just a bit harder to get free.

I tried to squirm out of his reach but there was nowhere for me to go. Snatching my chin with a crushing grip, he jerked my face up to meet his intimidating glare. Lolek did
not
have a delicate touch. My jaw ached in his grip as he shifted my face from side-to-side, yanking my face back and forth to get a really good look at me.

He checked my bindings and backed up a few steps, releasing my chin, tossing my head to the side. “You took a hell of a beating, you know that?” he said as if he was impressed.

“Thanks,” I huffed, still twisting my wrists and trying to loosen the ties behind me.

“Couldn’t take the chance you’d get the upper hand once I saw you in action. You killed that Beta all by your lonesome,” he said, glancing back down the stairs and then back at me. “Just couldn’t risk it.”

“Afraid I’d kill Migina?” I asked, venom making my words sharp. “I would’ve, you know. I still might,” I finished with a smirk, meeting his eye with a confident glare from the only good eye I had.

Raising his open hand high, he struck me across the face quicker than I was prepared for. Blood flooded my mouth as my cheek sliced against my teeth. I spit, turning a blood-soaked grin up to meet him.

“I heard you were a cold bitch,” he said, coming just a bit closer. “But you’ll die just as easy as the rest.”

“Why didn’t you do it already?” I spat at him.

“I knew you ran with the vampire but I didn’t expect the Alpha. He’s a big guy and from what I hear, he carries a grudge. I could’ve handled the vampire but not both,” he said as he glanced down the attic door again. “It wasn’t safe to rub it in their faces. Gotta make it look like an accident this time.”

“They’ll never believe it was an accident when they see my body,” I growled.

“Not gonna find your body,” he said with a grin. “See Miggy’s a shaman’s daughter. Got a bit of magic to her,” he said, a proud little twinkle in his smile.

So she’d been the magic I’d felt at the crime scenes. It wasn’t much but, evidently, it was enough to fuck me up.

“What’s she gonna do? Hide your scent? Whatever it is, isn’t gonna hide these bruises,” I said, my voice quaked with the first trace of fear.

“Burn the place from the inside out.”

“Someone’ll come,” I snapped.

He reached for my chin again, gripping my jaw in his beefy strong hands. He forced me to meet his eyes.

“Someone will come,” I whispered, my voice quivered with defiance.

“No smoke,” he hissed.

FUCK!
I struggled. I had to get the hell out of here. This sonovabitch was going to burn me alive and no one would know it was happening until it was too late.
Fuck me running!

“Brody!” a woman’s voice called through the open attic window.

She was already outside.
SHIT! SHIT! SHIT!

“Be just a minute,” he yelled. He swiveled back to me. There was a split second where I wasn’t sure what I was going to do. When I saw his eyes, satisfied and hungry, I knew I couldn’t let him leave unless he was in a body bag.

I lifted up on my feet, chair and all, then slammed my forehead into his face.

He stumbled back, holding his nose as blood poured through his fingers. “You broke my fucking nose.”

I smiled at him.

He took two quick steps forward and hit me so hard across the face that the chair left the floor. I sailed, weightless for a split second until I crashed into the wall. One of the legs had broken free and the seat had cracked beneath my ass but I was still attached to the damned chair. I tried to get to my feet. But with only one free leg and the other still strapped to the chair, I was unsteady.

He advanced then kicked me in the stomach, like an anvil slamming into my gut. Sending me to the floor in a hard
thunk
, he busted the rest of the chair against the floorboards.

My hands were free. I couldn’t breathe. I felt like my chest had collapsed onto my lungs, crushing them in my chest. He’d knocked the wind out of me, but at least my hands were free.

“Brody!” the woman called again from the backyard, panic making her voice shrill.

“I don’t have time to play with you. The fire’s reached the second floor,” he hissed, looming over me.

The acrid scent of smoke wafted up through the attic door as he tried to retreat, taking a very large step backward. The stifling heat from the attic and the growing fire below was making the small space on the top floor smaller, more claustrophobic by the second. The smoke was thick enough to make me pass out. He was right. There wasn’t a whole lot of time left.

“I’m not done yet,” I snarled, flinging a piece of the chair at his retreating form. The broken chair leg bounced off the back of his head, hard, probably leaving a knot. He turned, growling at me. There was a moment as he glared at me that he might have considered running and leaving me behind to the fire.

But he couldn’t. He couldn’t leave me awake and capable of getting out. He had to put me down now. I was too dangerous to leave alive. He knew it. I knew it.

Someone had alerted the neighbors, though, called 911. Sirens blared off in the distance and approaching quickly. People cried out for help around the front of the house near the street. This was one time I was thankful for nosey neighbors.

He made a wide circle around me. “You’re running out of time,” I taunted, crouching on the floor.

He pounced on me, quick, hitting me hard with the force of his body and all his strength as he slammed into me. We slid across the attic floor, stopping only as our bodies smashed into the wall with a hard thud under the window along the street. The glass pane in the window cracked in its casement above us, snaking across the glass from the force of our impact.

The crackle sound of approaching flames filled the attic as the fire climbed the wooden attic stairs and licked at the untouched oxygen of my attic.

He slammed his fist into my jaw. I felt the blow like a sledgehammer as my ears popped and pain shot like a bullet through my head. I swung, smashing a piece of the chair to his head, crashing the wood into his ear. He shook my blow off like I’d barely left a dent.

I was still exhausted and hurting from the fight with Jackson the previous night. The beating this asshole had given me while I was out didn’t help. I didn’t have it in me to keep it up much longer. I had no strength left. I ached all over. Each second I fought and lost promised a painless oblivion that seemed more and more appealing with each blow he sunk into my jaw.

He slammed my hand against the floor three or four times, forcing the chair leg from my grip. I lost count when I felt the bones in my hand crunch and crumble. He bashed my shoulders down into the floor and knocked the wind out of me again, bouncing my head off the floor. I willed myself to stay conscious with each slam of my shoulders into the hard beams of the attic floor. 

I gasped for air, feeling my lungs burn.

He punched me one final time across the jaw. My body gave out. Physically weak and beaten, I couldn’t focus. My vision was a blur of black spots and my brain throbbed in my skull. Tears streamed down my face as I panted, the air hitching with the ache in my chest. When I didn’t fight back, he crept away on hands and knees. 

“Jackson was right. You are too dangerous to live,” he growled, staggering to his feet. He turned his back on me and headed toward the other window.

I tried to shift over on my side to get back up. I couldn’t let him get away. I was out of energy and out of strength. A sharp pain shot up my calf as I rolled to my knees.

The bastard was going to jump and leave me to burn. I reached down to my calf and felt something hard pressed up against my leg. That dipshit hadn’t taken the bowie knife from me. He hadn’t even searched me. Bad for him. AWESOME for me.

I yanked my pant leg up and reached for the knife in a quick scurry of movement as he lumbered toward the window at the opposite end of the attic. I only had a split second or I’d miss my chance. He’d soon burst through that window and make a clean getaway before the cops got there, before anyone got there to stop him. I couldn’t let that happen.

I flipped the knife in my hand, feeling the weight of the blade in my grip. Like coming home. I heaved it with all the strength I had left, throwing it across the attic.

The next couple of seconds seemed to move in slow motion. The knife sailed through the air, turning over and over, catching the light from the ceiling fan and the windows at opposite ends of the attic. The light flickered against the sliver of silver of the blade as it sailed effortlessly from my hand.

I held my breath as he exploded through the window. The crash of glass shattering rang through the silence of the attic as the knife found its home between his ribs.

He yelped, a quick cry of pain as he disappeared from my sight, falling to the ground three stories below. A heavy thud sounded over the flickering flames as he hit the ground.

“BRODY!” the female werewolf screamed from outside. Her anguished cry gave me relief as she howled from the backyard, a lonely, painful sound that rang of her despair. I slumped back to the floor. I’d worry about Brody Lolek’s mate later. First, I had to get the hell out of the house before it burned down around me.

Getting to my feet, I limped over to the window facing the street and tried to kick it out. My foot just seemed to stop when it hit the glass like I’d kicked a brick wall instead of an already cracked pane of glass. The slice across the pane mocked me as I kicked it again. I collapsed in front of the window in a heap of defeat when my knees finally gave out.

Sirens blared, filling my ears with their angry shrill cries. An ambulance had already arrived and was parked half a block down the street. A crowd had gathered on the sidewalk out front, watching my house burn from the inside out. Confusion lit their faces as they watched my house burn with no smoke. Not even a whisper of gray billowed from the windows already burst from the heat. Bystanders shouted and pointed with furrowed brows and panicked expressions on their faces.

Maybe they would be better off. Maybe they’d all be better off without me. I could just sit here, alone in this house and let the fire take me. It would be so easy. If I were gone, they would all be safe. I wouldn’t have to worry anymore.

I stared back down at the crowd. Jade, Kurt, and Dean forced their way to the front, knocking people down when they wouldn’t get out of their way. I was suddenly thankful I was the only one in this tomb as it burned to the ground.

Jade screamed something at both of them with determination throwing her shoulders back and fear lighting her green eyes. She slammed her hand down on the crook of her hip, defiant.

They were crazy if they thought Jade was going to let a bunch of werewolves push her around. She was an Alpha if I ever met one. She just didn’t have the fangs or claws to go with it but that didn’t mean she wasn’t scary. 

Kurt took off running around the house with Jade yelling behind him. Flailing her arms wildly, she smacked an innocent bystander in the face with the back of her hand. She didn’t seem to care.

I smiled. I would miss her.

Dean ignored her. His expression was stricken, defeated like he was on the verge of crumbling as he watched my house burn.