Simon Says, Freeze
Everything slowed to a complete stand-still, and the pain faded from my body as if it never existed.
Eros was mid-step, on his way back over to Sloan, whose face expressed intense anguish.
It was evident now that he’d been poisoned on top of being slashed and cut an inch from death. We were working on borrowed time.
Eros never intended to let Sloan live. He only wanted to give the impression that he’d leave it at cuts and stabs, but I smelled the putrid scent of fatal poison from the Hunter’s body.
Thanks to the last time Eros was an absolute bastard to deal with, we now carried an ample supply of the antidote to Sleeping Death, and I could save the Brit if that was the poison the Dark Fae chose.
My luck these days would mean it likely wasn’t, but a girl could dream.
Still, if I didn’t do something quickly, Sloan would be lost the way I nearly had been. That was when everything paused like this was a video game and not real life.
It didn’t make sense at first as the world around me paused, in a perpetual state of shit on a stick.
The air didn’t move. The clouds didn’t glide.
Even sound was gone. It was like being caught inside a still-frame overlooking a violent battle scene.
Like someone had screamed out “Simon says, freeze!” and the world went ahead and listened.
I blinked and moved inside of the magical hold, but I realized quickly that I wasn’t bound like I had been before everything stopped.
But why?
Eros injected me with the same serum as before. I shouldn’t be able to move so quickly. Everyone else was, for all intents and purposes, frozen in time. But I moved. For some reason, I moved without effort and made my way over to Sloan.
I didn’t question anything as I stabbed the reverse serum into my companion and doused his open, once-bleeding wounds with all the potions and tonics I carried in my jacket. After, I worked swiftly to inject the antidotes I had on me, hoping one would work if time decided to start again.
Or whatever the fuck this whole weird frozen event was.
Then I stole whatever I could find in Sloan’s pockets and repeated my first-aid treatment in hopes he’d heal quicker.
It probably didn’t work that way, but no one said it didn’t.
So, whatever. I’d do everything I could to keep the gorgeous Hunter alive.
It may seem a waste or amateurish to bet all on black the way I was, but a second ago, we were practically dead already.
Call me crazy, but I wouldn’t squander the miracle this was.
I’d do anything and everything to put us at the best advantage for when my luck ran out.
I didn’t ponder why I could do all this, or how with my hand alone I broke through the magic wrapped around my companion.
I didn’t even wonder why it all somehow worked out perfectly in my favor when it shouldn’t.
Instead, I took advantage of the stand-still time and threw Sloan over my shoulder.
You know, only after I stabbed an arrow through Eros’s chest, right where his heart was.
Though, I couldn’t be confident he even had a heart anymore.
With all that nonsense finished, I got the hell out of dodge with the unmoving, somewhat rigid Hunter slung over my shoulder.
A part of me was desperate to return to the house and check on Phillip, but I couldn’t trust however long this miracle might last. I didn’t know what caused it. I wasn’t confident I could replicate it, and if I couldn’t kill Eros with an arrow to the heart, we’d be right back where we started.
So I ran.
I ran as fast as I could through the immobilized window of time, all the way to the airport.
It was lucky I remembered which direction the airfield was in all the fucked-up chaos.
If I hadn’t been so terrified, I would’ve internally celebrated another victory.
But fear ate away at my insides every second it took to get to that damn place.
In only a couple minutes but what really felt like hours to my pulse, I reached the outer fence of our designated location, near an onramp for one of the parking structures.
As I slowed in front of the several-level lot, time started again.
I dropped to a knee, sucking in thankful gulps of air.
A heavy exhaustion overtook my body and weighed it down like my strength had been all but sapped entirely.
It didn’t matter. No matter how tired or anxious I was, I couldn’t be happier the two of us were alive. It was pure luck we survived.
Phil.
Closing my eyes, I thought of my partner who I left back at the house to whatever fate he’d been dealt. I’d never shake the guilt if he didn’t make it out of that fight alive. I’d never forgive myself for not going back.
The other Hunter beside me grunted, and I opened my eyes to Sloan moving into a crouch on the ground, completely on guard and confused.
Then he was in front of me, checking my face, my arms, my legs, my chest, my back.
Everywhere within eyeshot was examined by Sloan’s anxious eyes.
With a relieved sigh, Sloan’s forehead landed on mine, taking me by complete surprise.
“You’re not hurt.”
I smiled gently and covered his hand on my shoulder, squeezing to reassure the other Hunter acting nothing like himself. “Not at all. Wait a minute, shouldn’t I be the one saying that to you?”
Sloan pulled away slightly and cradled my face inside his hands. “I’m not important.”
“I beg to differ—” I argued angrily, but my tirade was abruptly cut short by a soft, barely-there kiss.
At first, I couldn’t figure out what was happening.
It wasn’t anything close to the heated kisses I’d shared with my overly passionate Austrian.
And it definitely wasn’t anything like Sloan’s previous kiss.
So I wasn’t quite sure what the meeting of lips would classify under.
And really, it was totally out of place.
Why would Sloan kiss me here, after we’d nearly been killed by a seriously sadistic Fae assassin?
Sadly, I wasn’t ignorant. The kiss wasn’t familial.
It wasn’t something shared between friends.
No, that baby was as intimate as kisses got, despite it only being a brush of his lips over mine.
Which was the entire reason it flummoxed me to the point where my face was one-hundred percent showing it.
I stared lamely at the other Hunter as he pulled away, his expressive eyes directed away from my face.
“What just happened?” he asked, ignoring my outright befuddlement.
“Don’t ask me. I have no fucking clue,” I commented, searching the area around us to hide the intense blush reaching my cheeks.
Nice, V. Way to play it cool.
“But we’re here, aren’t we? That’s all that matters.” I swallowed around the painful lump in my throat, fully aware that the ‘we’ I spoke of didn’t include Phillip.
I went on despite it being harder and harder to speak. “I even stabbed an arrow into the arrogant bastard’s heart before I got the fuck out of there. Pretty awesome of me, if I do say so myself, because most wouldn’t think that far ahead. Most would be off their asses with confusion.”
The other Hunter’s look was despondent, meaning an arrow to the heart wouldn’t kill the fucker.
Of course it wouldn’t. Why would it ever be that easy?
“You didn’t possibly decapitate him while you were at it, did you?”
Shit.
“No,” I said with a great, heaving sigh. “No I didn’t.”
“It’s on us for not mentioning how to kill Eros. Like you, only decapitation can kill him. For obvious reasons, neither of us have gotten close enough or depleted him enough to manage such a thing.” Sloan checked his pockets. “I need to consume the poison’s antidote.”
“Already gave it to you. And the reverse serum. Uh, and pretty much anything I found in your pockets, times two,” I remarked sarcastically.
“And you?”
I peered down at my body, confused. “Me? I’m not really injured or anything.”
“You were injected with the serum, right?”
Ah, that would be the elephant in the room.
“Seems so,” I remarked, diving a hand into my pocket and searching for the reverse serum.
I’d used all of them on Sloan, but I wasn’t going to outright admit it in case a multiple dosage of the reverse serum had side effects and he blamed it all on me.
After everything I’d just done, it didn’t seem at all like I needed the reverse serum.
But I was unnaturally tired after busting ass to get away.
Maybe that was something to do with whatever the coward asshole Cash mentioned?
Either way, better safe than sorry.
Sloan dug into his back pant pocket and offered me a syringe. “Use this.”
“Wait, did that just come out of your butt pocket?” I asked sarcastically but did what he said. Sloan was scary angry, and I didn’t want to try my luck after the day we had.
The Brit’s lips tilted with amusement. “At least your sense of humor is still intact.”
“Pretty much a part of who I am at this point, so of course it is,” I remarked sassily before tossing the syringe into the grass.
Sloan sighed to himself and retrieved it. “Better not to leave anything Eros can track,” the smart Hunter commented before putting the empty syringe into his inner coat pocket.
“Ah, right. Sorry.”
I still had a lot to learn, it seemed.
The dude was a sight, though. Despite being covered in torn fabric, dirt, and blood, the Hunter wore it like any other outfit. Honestly, it was a bit annoying how tasty Sloan looked post-attack. The man could wear a black trash bag and still make it look chic.
I, however, was likely to give the impression of a deranged mental hospital escapee.
My stomach was exposed by a large gaping cut along my torso—not sure how that one happened—and I’d seen Sloan’s ice-blue eyes drop to it more times than I could count.
Unfortunately, that was hardly the worst of it.
My hair was a woven nest mess atop my head, and only a bucket of water alongside a heavy-handed brushing would tame it.