16. Rowan
SIXTEEN
ROWAN
Waking up to a woman in the throes of a night terror was not on my bingo card this week, but apparently, life seemed determined to fuck me in the ass at any opportunity.
It took me three seconds to wake up enough to recognize the sound, and another half a second to place the familiar pitch of it.
Harper.
Like a flash, I was out of bed and racing across the room, wearing nothing but boxers, frantic in a way I hadn’t been since Nash’s mental breakdown.
I should have expected it after her little episode of shock earlier.
I was the last one in the room; even Angel had beat me to her. She was currently backed into a corner in the entryway, a knife in her hands with a pretty nasty serrated edge.
Nash’s personal toy. How ironic.
Nash stood nearby, a tortured look on his face, his hip resting against the counter as he crossed his arms and watched her from a safe distance.
"What happened?" I moved toward him, but the look in his eyes was of a man broken. I wondered if he’d tried to help her and been hurt for his efforts. "Are you injured?"
"Not physically," he retorted, his voice hollow. "She woke up in a panic, and I tried to help her, but she won’t let me get close. I guess I nodded off a little, because that knife was in my fucking hand when I passed out. Now, she’s got it, and I’m not pleased. That thing can do damage if you get stuck in the wrong place."
I knew very well what kind of damage that knife could inflict. I’d seen him use it on many a target before. But I couldn’t leave her with it in hand and hope she’d come back to herself in time to make it unnecessary for me to bull rush her and take it away.
Angel was currently standing a few feet away from her, his hands out, palms up, frozen in place in his fucking sweats and nothing else. "Hey now, Harper, it’d be really cool if you could, like, you know, hand me the knife and let me go back to bed. I’m not here to hurt you?—"
"How am I supposed to trust any of you?" she spat, her eyes wild and wide open, but unseeing. "You’re just another ghost from the past, here to fucking take care of this loose end. You want to kill me."
Angel didn’t seem to realize she was sleepwalking. Or if he did, he didn’t seem to care. And he certainly didn’t notice how close she had gotten to that fucking door, either. Before I could stop either of them, she had her hand on that doorknob, and with a shout of triumph, she slipped out into the asylum.
Alone.
Armed.
And now, a very enticing target.
Three things happened at once. Nash seemed to wake up from his little stewing session and shot out the door after her, disappearing down the hall with some choice curses I would have to file away for future use. Angel shook his head and returned to his room, muttering not my problem anymore as he shut the door behind him. And I rushed out the door into the hall, not bothering with a pair of pants as I made a beeline to the security office, just in case Harper managed to evade Nash and run into a less savory killer in the halls.
"You what!?!"
I rubbed at the back of my neck as she gripped my bicep and dragged me into her room. "Tell me you didn’t break the biggest rule we have in here and bring back a normie who is now loose in my halls, at peak murder time, with nothing but a knife in hand, essentially sleepwalking through a night terror. Rowan Blackwood, I can’t believe you. "
I threw my hands up in mock self-defense as she stirred her coffee. "Listen, for the record, it wasn’t me. It was Nash."
"You’d just better hope Lilly doesn’t find out." She sat at her computer in the corner and brought up all the surveillance camera screens around the asylum.
We didn’t have to scan the history long before Harper came into focus, somewhere around the first-floor commons. "There, I saw her on that camera." My finger slammed against the screen in my haste, and I growled in annoyance as the night guard stifled a giggle. "Don’t laugh, this is serious."
She must’ve seen something I missed because she sat up straight and frowned. "You’re absolutely right; this is serious. Jackal is heading straight for her, and this was five minutes ago." She nodded to the bottom corner screen, where Jackal was indeed slipping into the kitchenette area, hot on Harper’s tail. Nash was still two floors above her on the screen, and a cold dread sank into my bones at the thought of her in Jackal’s grasp.
Especially with Nash on her heels.
This was bad, but it was about to be so much worse.
"I’ve gotta head him off," I shouted, heading for her door. "You keep an eye on her, and call me if you see anything helpful."
"She’s headed for the library, last I spotted her on camera," she shouted after me, and I was off like a rocket, my bare feet slapping against the concrete floor as I rounded the corner to the main wing of the first floor.
I wasn’t fast enough. In the distance, I could hear Jackal’s telltale laughter, a mocking, edgy sound that grated sideways along your nerves. It could only mean one thing.
In the center of the library, Harper stood barefoot—and no less dangerous for it—her eyes clearer as she stared down the encroaching Jackal as he made to close the distance between them. Her face screamed frightened doe, but her stance told me she was ready to fight.
Good girl. These fucks liked it when you ran. Holding her ground was the best option. Stupid, maybe. But still the only option that didn’t result in immediate death.
She spotted me over Jackal’s shoulder, and I held my finger to my lips and shook my head. The only chance she stood of getting away was if I could get the jump on him. Or position myself between them. And I was afraid they were already too close for option number two.
"You’re Ghoul’s girl, aren’t you, pretty little thing?" he taunted, stepping to the right as she stepped to the left. Always one step behind her, like a predator chasing its prey. "What are you doing out here all alone? He not so easy to look at when his paint comes off?"
Harper frowned at that, her eyes darkening as I watched her whole demeanor change. "Why do you care? You got some sick, perverted obsession with his dick or something?"
Her fingers tightened around the hilt of Nash’s knife, and my heart sank. She was prepared to fight. And Jackal could take her, easy, as long as he could get around that first jab.
Jackal snickered at her poor attempts to mock him, his mouthful of sharpened fangs glinting in the dim lighting. "Oh, honey, ain’t nobody wanna see that fucker naked, let alone clothed. You don’t have to be shy about it. We’re the only two here." He threw his arms wide, apparently oblivious to the fact that they had company. "No need to lie to me. We can be friends."
Harper’s whole face lit up as she tossed her head back and laughed. "That’s hilarious, all things considered, don’t you think?" Her laughter died in an instant, replaced by a sharp glare that might pin another man to the spot.
Jackal had no sense of self-preservation, and he knew when he had the winning hand. And for all intents and purposes, had I not been standing behind him, he would have been right.
But then Nash had to go and fuck it all up by rushing into the room, fucking up the careful assessment and plan I’d already worked out in my head .
With a snarl of fury, he snatched the Neons’ lead man by the throat and shoved him against the wall, slamming his head pretty hard into the solid wood paneling.
"What did I fucking tell you, Jackal? Keep" — slam— "your hands" —slam— "off her." His lips split wide, and for the first time tonight, Harper finally got a good look at Mister Psycho. When he bared those teeth, spittle flying from his lips in his rage, hand tight around his enemy’s throat, he looked like a true monster, fresh out of a slasher flick. Hell, he didn’t even need a knife to send fear shooting through every vein in your body. He did it all on his own, just by smiling when you least expected it. "What part of that simple set of instructions did you not understand?"
"Fuck you, Ghoul," Jackal spat, blood trailing from just above his ear in the back of his head. No doubt Nash split his skull open, or at the very least, his scalp. "You don’t own her. She came out here alone, which means she’s fair game."
"She’s ours," Nash snarled, spinning Jackal around to face the wall, his lips an inch from the back of the other man’s ear. "And I’m going to make sure you fucking remember that every time your bitch ass looks in the mirror from now on."
Nash gripped him by the hair now, pulled his head back, and smashed Jackal’s face into the wall one last time. I could hear the cartilage crunch under the force. Could tell when he pulled the other man away that his nose was fucked. Nash turned Jackal loose and paid the injured man no more mind. Instead, he turned on Harper with that same vicious glare and stalked over to her, not stopping until he had a hand around her wrist and his other around the hilt of his knife.
"If you’re going to take my knife, at least be prepared to use it next time."
He stormed off in a fit, leaving Harper and I staring after him in confusion.
She looked hesitantly in my direction, and I stirred to life at the look of frustration in her eyes. "He didn’t have to be such a heel about it. I didn’t know I was going to panic when I woke up?—"
I had her in my arms in a heartbeat, so relieved that she was safe that I didn’t even think about the ramifications of my next move. The only thing on my mind was reassuring myself she was okay.
"Don’t scare me like that again." She felt so good in my embrace, tucked neatly against my chest, like she belonged there. Fuck, it felt like coming home, holding her like this again. I could smell the scent of her shampoo?—
Lilacs and honey ? —
I could feel her heart beating in time with mine?—
Thump, thump, thump, thump ? —
I needed more. It was everything I’d ever longed for and denied myself, but right now, I needed more.
I was never selfish. I always thought of others, putting their needs above my own. But this time, with only the two of us here, I let myself be selfish with her.
My lips were on hers in the blink of an eye, melded together as her hands twined around my neck, and she leaned into me even more. Her fingers teased the hairs at the base of my neck, her touch electrifying as I felt my whole world shift.
We didn’t break apart as I backed her against the wall, inches from where Jackal’s blood was still slowly trailing to the floor. My hand slapped the sticky mess as I used it to keep her from getting it in her hair, and redoubled my efforts, my tongue teasing her lips for entrance.
She parted them with a sigh, and I felt like I’d been granted access to heaven. Harper fucking Daniels tasted like sin and desperation, bubblegum and a red hot in one package, spicy and sweet, the perfect combination of beautiful attributes in one package. I couldn’t get enough of her as my free hand gripped her hip and tugged her against me, letting her feel what she was doing to me.
"Fuck," she whispered, her hands trailing down my chest, "Ro?—"
"Ssh," I whispered against her mouth, biting her bottom lip as I pulled just far enough away to catch my breath. "Not here." I turned around and knelt, motioning for her to climb on my back. "Come on, you pain in my ass. Let’s go back upstairs."
She climbed aboard me with no argument, giggling in my ear the whole way up.
It was the most brutal two flights of stair climbing of my life.
Figuratively and literally.