Stained (6 page)

"What if that was me?"

She looked at Cayne with wide, sad eyes, and, sighing, he nodded. "Stay close."

Julia followed him across the street, and the abuser didn't even notice their silent approach. Cayne walked up behind the man, wrapped his fingers around his throat, and squeezed--all done calmly, like he was some kind of an abuser whisperer, and he had total confidence he'd tame the man. The woman fumbled to her feet and ran, sobbing, down the sidewalk.

The man, now red-faced, clawed at Cayne's arm. With his other hand, he reached inside his coat and pulled out a gun.

Chapter 8

Cayne jerked as a bullet exploded out his back. Julia ducked as a second blast knocked him a step back. He didn't let go of the gunman. Instead, his grip tightened, and the fat man's neck snapped with a horrifying
pop
.

Cayne pushed the corpse away and went to one knee, more kneeling than falling. Blood bloomed around the golf ball-sized hole over his kidney, where jagged pink flesh framed an ink pit of crimson that ran onto his jeans.

"Cayne!"

He shoved Julia away and was standing before she was, one hand pressed against a smaller leak in his lower ribcage, the other over the gory spot below his pec.

Before she could speak or get her hands on him to start healing, Cayne started toward the Minute-Mart.

"Cayne," Julia moaned. He kept moving, and she tried to follow, but all of her joints felt rusty. She was petrified that she would lose him. What would happen to her then?

The crimson dye had reached Cayne's knees, and Julia remembered suddenly that it was blood.
Shit
. She spurred her legs to action and caught his elbow at the edge of the parking lot. "Stop and let me help you!"

He grunted and shook her off. Julia ran in front of him and planted herself in his path. "What are you doing? Let me heal you!"

Cayne's eyes narrowed. "I don't need it."

"You're bleeding to death!"

"I'm fine!" he snapped.

Having no idea what else to do and terrified that he would fall, Julia wedged herself under his shoulder and wrapped her right arm around his waist. She glanced at his shirt, stuck to his skin; she could see his quivering muscles, bunching and flattening with each step.

The woman from the Minute-Mart met them at the entrance, her arms filled with gauze and ointments. Julia took the supplies, and the woman locked the glass doors behind them. Under the fluorescent lights, the scene took on a dream-like quality. Cayne, shot twice. Not dead. Still standing. Still walking on his own.

He lumbered into the bathroom and leaned on the sink, blood dripping from the wound above his pec. It splattered red against the porcelain.

"I need to get the bullets out," he said without lifting his head.

Right. Julia was too scared to feel stupid. But she noticed that his voice sounded strong and his legs seemed sturdy. Was he really okay? After two shots at point-blank range?

Cayne angled himself away from her and fumbled with the water knobs. When the mirror began to steam, he pushed his hands under the water, closed his eyes, and sighed.

He wasn't dead yet, so Julia set the gauze down on a paper towel dispenser and focused on reigning in her urge to heal. At least until he got the bullet out.

Cayne pulled his right arm inside his shirt. He groaned, and Julia decided sadism was not her thing.

"Stay still." She took a small pair of scissors from the first aid pile. Her stomach lurched when she lifted the back of his shirt; it was soaked in still-warm blood. Holding her breath, she cut it in half.

Cayne didn't flinch as she peeled the fabric off the already-scabbing wound on his back, making it bleed anew.

As she moved to examine his chest, he snatched the shirt from her, dabbed two mean half-dollar holes on his chest, and with quick precision, stuck two fingers into the top hole. He swore softly and pulled out a bullet.

Julia slid to the floor.

The slug clanked on the sink. After a few labored breaths, Cayne seemed fine. He washed his hands and splashed his face. As water dripped off his chin, he started to unravel the gauze.

"Wait." Julia pulled herself to her feet and handed him an economy-sized tube of Neosporin.

Cayne smiled tightly and shook his head.

"You--"

"Don't need it." He held out the gauze and she took it, feeling a little light on her feet. As Julia used the coarse gas-station paper towels to mop the blood away and wrapped his chest with gauze, she could have sworn she saw the wounds healing.

By the time they left the bathroom her head was spinning. Cayne, though more snarky than usual, seemed almost fine. He took her elbow and led her past the cashier, who was mopping blood drops off the floor; she smiled and waved as if strange guys recovered from gunshot wounds in her store every day.

In the parking lot, a man stepped out of his Volvo and handed Cayne a bomber jacket. Julia helped him into it.

The walk to the hotel seemed to take forever, and by the time they reached their door, Julia was burning with questions, but she knew she wouldn't get far.

"What should I do for you?" was what she settled on. She had a clawing urge to heal him, even though he'd said he didn't need it.

Cayne eased himself onto the couch, and a spasm of something--maybe pain--crossed his face. Then he sighed. "You've done it."

Julia felt fussy, so she fetched a uber-fluffed pillow from the bedroom and a bottle of water from the minibar. She stuffed the pillow behind his back, stuck the water in his hand, and propped her own hands on her hips. "Are you sure you don't need anything else?"

He grinned. "I should get shot more often."

Julia shot him a nasty look and fled to the shower, where she indulged a few post-trauma tears. As she let the warm water wash the blood off her hands, she forced herself to consider leaving him--he was obviously dangerous, and she wasn't even sure she needed him anymore--an option that was not nearly as appealing as it probably should have been. When she returned to the living area, the television was on ESPN, and Cayne's eyes were closed. She got close enough to feel his body heat and wrangled up the nerve to peek under his gauze. She found wounds half healed. Of course.

Now more than ever, she wanted to know the secret of what he was, almost felt he owed her an explanation. But the shooting seemed to have changed her personality.

It was just the trauma, and it would have to wear off...but Julia was curiously, stupidly, unacceptably tongue-tied. Her cheeks blushed all the time, for no reason. Her hands were clammy. And inside, things were even worse.

Her stomach was in knots, and she seemed to have become bipolar. One second she wanted to slap Cayne, and the very next--God, she really hoped he told the truth when he said he couldn't get into her mind--she wanted to put her arms around him and snuggle her face into his shaggy hair.

There was something wrong with her.

Of course Cayne, twice gunshot Cayne, seemed normal. A big quiet mysterious obviously not-normal normal, deep in sleep as if he hadn't been shot twice at point-blank range, good for nothing but making Julia crazy.

He woke up maybe an hour later in a mood; he was quiet, taut, over-obsessed with the windows and doors. As she fell asleep, he took up his usual post, beside a peacock-sized flower arrangement, watching her and the room. Maybe it was her imagination, but his eyes seemed to linger on her a little longer than usual.

Chapter 9

She was drifting, gliding, floating, flying under a moonless sky, in the shadow of a million stars, over a bare landscape of stone and dirt, through wisps of clouds. Miles and miles ahead, her destination jutted from the dead earth: a crystal pyramid, sparkling in its perfection.

It was the new Babel, a tower that touched the sky, a ladder to the gods. But the sun god peeled away the night in strips, and the light showed someone hovering above the pyramid's tip; Cayne, circling, searching for her.

Now she was frantic, beating her wings and desperate to reach him, filled with an urgency she didn't understand.

And the closer she came, the closer the sun, and the night was completely gone and Julia was flying at breathtaking speed and sweat was stinging her eyes.

The heat was too much. She felt her wings molt, white feathers fluttering off her bones in bundles. She began to sink, falling farther from Cayne, who was shedding his charcoal feathers. He flapped like a wounded bird, and she screamed when his face melted and his body fell. It bounced off the tip of the pyramid, and she watched it catch fire as it slid down the side.

Her skin began to peel as she screamed, and her eyes burned out of her head, but she could still see the sun as it came closer and closer to the Earth, and as the soil erupted and everything burned, it came closer to the pyramid, alone against the ruddy sky, closer and closer and closer for a kiss...

Someone was shaking Julia's shoulder. She snuggled deeper into the covers and covered her face with the satiny sheets. The shaking became more insistent, and her eyes popped open: Cayne.

Julia let her stomach recover from its emergency nose-dive. She was
hot--sweating; the sheets stuck to her legs. He shook her again and, more than mortified, Julia jerked the sheet off her head.

Cayne's face glowed in the morning light; the sun-kissed trimmings on the ceiling, the velveteen wallpaper, and even the sparkling chandelier paled in comparison.

He looked brighter than yesterday, and he was wearing clean clothes (underneath which, she was willing to bet, his wounds were smooth scars). His rich brown hair fell past his ears in the usual not-brushed-but-not-stringy look that made longish hair okay--at least on him.

Julia smoothed her own crazy locks and waited while he stuck his hands in his jeans pockets and rocked back on his heels, like he was putting off what he had to say. For a second, she worried he was telling her goodbye.

Instead, when he spoke, he said, "Samyaza's gone. He's traveling West." There was a phantom pause, while he inhaled deeply, that broad chest rising and falling. "I'm going after him."

"Oh, okay."
That
she could handle. Her own decision was almost immediate. "Me too."

"You think so?"

"There's a pretty good chance he could still come back for me, right? I'm still in danger."

She was surprised when Cayne nodded. "Transportation's going to be a problem. I can get around by myself, but not with you."

"You don't have a car?"

"No."

"Do you have a motorcycle?"

"No."

"A bus pass?"

"No."

"Then how do you..." Julia sighed as he smirked. "Should I even ask?"

"No."

"I guess it'd be pointless to ask how you know where Sam's headed?"

Cayne grinned as he walked over to the window; he pulled the curtains back, stared down at the city for a second, then said he'd "go find something," which in Cayne-speak meant that someone would give him a car. Julia banished the disapproving voice of her childhood Sunday school teacher from her head. Desperate times and all.