Chapter 57 #2
Horrified, I took a step back. “I’m not . . . no way.”
She smiled a wicked little smile. “I’m just kidding . . . maybe.”
I headed back upstairs to change my underwear. I made it to the bedroom door when my phone beeped. I reached into my jacket pocket, the text from Ethan read:
‘You’re safe, little witch x’
I wasn’t sure how to process the news of my being safe.
It was disturbing and gut-wrenching to have to disentangle the knowledge that my safety came at the cost of another life.
I sat on the bed. I had my freedom, yes.
I could come and go as I pleased without Ethan trailing along with me.
Not that he ever really bothered me. I was safe now, but there was no sense of relief.
Instead, there was turmoil. A woman had died.
Her family or friends wouldn’t be seeing her again.
She’d died so I could live. The day didn’t seem brighter, and I didn’t feel any freer.
Guilt bled through my veins, spreading darkness like a black cloud.
I went back into the kitchen, hovered at the door watching Karson. His muscles rode his arms as he tossed the mushroom. He didn’t turn around.
“Was the text from Ethan?”
I nodded, then realized he couldn’t hear the nod. Or maybe he could he seems to hear the air breath. “Yes, she’s . . .” I paused as the words stuck in my throat. “I’m safe.”
He sat the spatula on the bench. Turned back, analyzing my face. He moved to me and pulled me against him. I rested my cheek on the top of his chest.
“It was her doing, not yours,” he murmured. I swallowed heavily. His fingers tilted my chin up softly to look at him.“She should have never killed the dog, nor threatened you. It’s not your fault.”
I nodded. “I know.” And I did know, but that didn’t make it any easier. He pressed a kiss to my forehead and stepped back.
The news churned in my stomach over breakfast and I had to force the food down.
“Right, let’s go,” Dahlia said, stuffing the last bite into her mouth. “Karson will fix the dishes.”
“Since you asked so nicely, Dahlia.” He stood up, moved around the table. He wrapped his arms around my back, planted a passionate kiss on my lips.
“I will see you later, sweetheart.”He looked over my shoulder at Dahlia, a smirk on his lips. For him it was an act, a stage show.
I stepped back out of his arms.
“Just hurry up, Amy.” Dahlia snapped. She strode from the room.
“Really, do you have to antagonize her?”
“I do not know what you are talking about.”
“You fib,” I said light-heartedly. I resisted the urge to reach up and kiss him goodbye. But it’s not a relationship. It was just sex, I reminded myself.
I went outside to find Dahlia, black backpack slung across her shoulder, anger planted on her face, waiting for me.
* * *
We stopped about ten minutes later. The trees opened up into a small open space. The grass was short, kept cropped by hungry forest animals. Sun feathered through dispersing clouds and towering tree limbs, a lacework of patterns etched across the forest floor.
I felt anxious, but also mildly excited at the same time. Dahlia hadn’t said one word since we left. From her stiff back and the tight movements, it was safe to assume she was still annoyed. I breathed in a deep, cool breath, trying to calm the flutter in my stomach.
“Here will do.” She threw her backpack onto a large fallen log. I caught a glimpse of Wolf, he stood lingering back under the canopy of trees, watching. She glanced at him. “He’s much bigger than I thought he’d be.”
I smiled affectionately. His amber eyes, framed brightly against a canvas of green, met mine. “He’s beautiful, aren’t you boy?”
She pulled out a round corked target, like a dart board, and sat it on the ground. She grabbed out a hammer, and she slipped a nail into her pocket. Then she pulled out five hunting knives. Long, silver, blades glittered in the early morning light, placing them on the trunk.
My stomach twisted.
“Relax, I’m not going to stab you.” She glanced up, and a dim smile lit her lips. “Unless, of course, you annoy me.” It was hard to tell if she was joking or not.
She moved off, carrying the target and hammer to a tree about sixty feet away. The sounds of the nails breaching the trunk echoed through the forest as she hung the target from the tree.
She walked back and threw the hammer in the backpack.
She stopped and fixed on a point in the forest. “Of all the vampires,” she said bitterly, turning to meet my eye. “Karson is the worse one you could fuck. He’s a vicious, cruel bastard.”
He saved my life three times. I raised my chin. “You don’t know him as well as you think you do. And you can talk. What about your coven. Slaughtering kittens, sticking knives in innocent people’s legs, leaving men to die.”
“To die.” She threw up her hands in a show of disbelief. “Murdered by Karson.” Her shrill voice sent birds scattering in alarmed flight from nearby trees.
“To protect BJ and me, because of your people,” I yelled.
We faced off for a long tense moment. She twisted her lips and abruptly wheeled her body toward the tree. She stood, her feet shoulder width apart, arms by her side, focused on the target.
“It’s all about intent,” she said briskly. “You need to see where you want the knife to land in your mind’s eye. Imagine it happening. Feel it happening. If you can see it in your mind’s eye, the physical realm has no choice but to follow.”
“Good one, Rhonda Byrne,” I muttered, folding my arms across my chest.
“You read self-help books. Why am I not surprised?” she shot back.
Then she exhaled a burst of oxygen, trying to calm herself.
“When you’re first learning it’s easier to say what you want out loud, your brain computes the words to an image.
So if I say dog you automatically picture a dog, because we’ve been programmed since childhood to assign certain things to certain words.
” She was looking at me to see if I understood.
It wasn’t rocket science. But I asked anyway, “So if you want to hit the target you might say, knife hit the bullseye?”
“Exactly.”
She focused on the target, flicked her wrist forward, pointing her fingers like she’d just hurled a spear.
With no more than a twist of movement, a knife lifted from the tree trunk, as if it was pulled by an invisible string, and shot like a silver bullet toward the target.
It hit dead in the centre with a sharp snap.
I was in awe of her talent, but there was no way was I going to admit it. “Is this the part where I clap?”
“Just move the fucking knives,” she snapped, stepping off to the side.
“Fine.” I stepped up and did exactly as she told me to do.
I focused on the knife. I imagined it sailing into the dead centre of the board.
Then I willed the knife to move forward.
I felt a surge of power like electricity buzzing through my veins, heating everything with a euphoric energy.
I didn’t have time to utter the words. The blade shimmered in the faint sunlight, split the air, and landed with a thud right beside hers.
Both our mouths fell open. We stood gawking at the target.
She looked at me, baffled. “How did you do that so quickly? You’ve done this before, haven’t you?”
“No”
She eyed me with suspicion. “It was probably a fluke. . . Do it again.”
I repeated the same steps. It knocked the first knife out. With lingering bafflement, she reached into the backpack and pulled out an arrow. It was shorter than average, green, and had a razor-sharp silver tip.
“That . . . anywhere on the board, go.”
I did.
It landed just shy of the centre. She grabbed the hammer out of the backpack and strode to the target.
She dug the knives and arrow out, turfed them to the ground and used the hammer to jack out the nail.
She caught the nail in one hand, held the target in the other, and nailed it back up to a tree about a hundred feet away.
She collected the knives and arrow and jogged back.
“Again,” she said, standing close. I couldn’t tell if my abilities pleased or annoyed her. I willed a knife to move to the middle of the target.
“It took me months of practise to get this good.” She scratched the side of her head. “Are you certain you’ve never done this before?”
“I’m pretty certain I’d know if I’d done it before, Dahlia,” I drawled.
“Has someone taught you how to throw knives before then?”
I shook my head. “No, my Dad taught me to shoot, if that counts for anything?” I refused to hunt, but when I went camping, Dad would set up targets and he’d taught me how to shoot.
We spent the next hour or so practicing throwing knives, until my head ached, and I felt so drained my hands trembled. But it turned out the first strike nor the second were flukes, hurling knives came as easy as any other natural born talent.
“Let’s try something else. Hold your hands up like this.
” She placed her palms up like she was about to give me a high five.
I held mine up opposite hers, we were about three feet apart.
I felt the pressure of her hands, a tingle of energy waver between us almost as if we were pushing against water.
It was as strange feeling. It was the same move I had seen Caron do to create the invisible field I couldn’t break through.
“Can you feel that?”
I nodded.
“Good, now concentrate and push.”
I pushed forward with my hands.
“No. Keep your hands still. The power comes from your mind, your hands are just the vessel it shoots through.”
My dad had taught me similar; he’d said, ‘You hold the gun in your hand, but you shoot with your mind, Amy, it controls your breathing, your hands, and your aim. It’s your mind that is the difference between hitting and missing.’