Chapter 14 #2
The gun was enormous in her hands, like she was holding someone else’s weapon. Guns were useless. What is he? Like her to be sure, but so much more powerful. Emerson had mentioned that some Voíríans had the ability to wield objects with their minds.
Her brain raced through her assets. Emerson was unconscious. Her mother was tied up, gagged, and useless unless she could get her free. Audrey prayed Sophia would see reason and help her against this monster.
She tried to keep her breaths even. “I’m not here for Emerson,” she managed. “He wants Sophia. I want her more. I’m here for myself. No loyalty to him if you make him disappear.”
“Good,” Mihail said, pleased. “He’s noise we don’t need.”
“We?” she snapped. “Don’t group me with you. And don’t tell me what I need.” She fired again, this time multiple times at his feet, just to wipe that smirk off his face.
The shots blasted through the lot, ricocheting off the walls. He didn’t flinch. He glanced up to the sky as if appealing to some distant god while he tossed the bullets aside on the ground. “He’s going to fucking kill me,” Mihail muttered.
She knew exactly who he meant. The ghost in every file, the man everyone talked about, and no one claimed to see.
“Ryker?” she asked.
“What do you know about Ryker?” Mihail asked. He sounded casual—but his aura writhed at the name.
Her mouth pressed closed as she refused to reply.
He tilted his head at her lack of response, studying her more carefully now. “Most people think he’s dead.”
“I saw him at the club last week,” she spat. “And I saw him in my backyard ten years ago. Don’t tell me what I’ve seen.”
“Doubtful.” His smile came back, meaner.
“You were probably so high you couldn’t tell your head from your ass.
I’ve seen your habits. I’ve been watching you these past few months.
I almost got caught by this Aggregate Hunter a few times.
” He paused, jaw clenching, like he wanted to admit something, but held himself back.
“Why would Ryker waste his time in a place like that?”
Doubt inched in, like teeth on bone, but she shoved it down. She could not afford to give up the one thing she knew she had—her photographic memory. It had never been wrong before, and she wasn’t going to stop trusting herself because of one comment from a psychopath.
She shifted. “Are there others like me?” she demanded. “Who can hear thoughts. Feel everything.”
“Yes. But true telepaths are rare. Rare enough that people kill to control them.”
“You're not one,” she said confidently. Otherwise, his aura would have reached out to hers earlier.
“No, I’m not. Which makes you…special. And potentially valuable. Your release opened up possibilities. Ryker thinks testing you is a waste of time. He’s wrong.”
“What do you want with me?” she asked.
He gave her a slow, filthy smile. “The Simas line tends to hoard rare abilities,” he said. His eyes lingered on her longer than was comfortable. “But you…” He tilted his head slightly. “You don’t feel like the others. I was expecting something different.”
“What others?”
He ignored her as he continued to think out loud. “I’m here for Sophia. But I’d be stupid not to see what you can do.”
“Were you outside my house?” she asked, the words scratching her throat. “The night my family died. Did you kill them?” She knew it was Ryker, but she wanted to hear the truth from him.
He shook his head. “No, I wasn’t there. I don’t know how they died or what happened that night.”
“If it wasn’t you, it was Ryker,” Audrey said. “I know it.”
He didn’t bother denying it. “Your family wasn’t supposed to get hurt,” he said. “Quite the opposite.”
She wanted to kill Ryker. She wanted to kill this one, too. It didn’t matter who had struck the match if they’d all stacked the kindling.
Silence lengthened. Emerson breathed shallowly on the ground. Sophia writhed in her bindings.
Mihail ignored them and merely watched Audrey with his bottomless eyes.
Her hold clenched on the gun. Images of shooting him three times, just to hear the quiet afterward, came to her unbidden.
Voices sparked at the edges of her aura—Mihail’s thoughts finally penetrated his control, loud and staccato in their alien tongue. He just stood there, staring, and she hated not knowing whether he was inside her head the way she was inside his aura.
She switched fully to French, but her concentration frayed. She could feel herself slipping. “Stop staring,” she said quietly, lifting the gun once more to keep him back. Despite knowing it wouldn’t do anything, it was all she had. His black eyes were like pits, drawing her in.
“My,” he said, amused. “You do have a temper. Our kind doesn’t survive long by indulging every emotion. I’m surprised you’re still alive.”
“You’re still breathing,” she said, “so I’m more in control than you think, you arrogant motherfucker.”
He laughed again, like she told a joke he’d already heard. It caused her muscles to tense with panic. Everything Emerson and Alex had told her that past day, everything she’d swallowed since, made it hard to get air into her lungs.
If she could hide the fear—hide the bone-deep urge to just stop, to let all of this end—maybe she’d survive the next ten minutes.
Mihail’s head tilted slightly, studying her with new interest. “Careful,” he said quietly. “You’re reaching for something you don’t understand yet.”
Audrey froze. “What—”
Then the gun lifted, until it was in Mihail’s face.
Her hands were at her sides.
Her abdomen tensed.
She could feel the gun—not in her hand, but in her mind. Audrey pressed it right against his forehead. Her mind held it there, not her muscles.
The memory crashed into her. The knife from the scene of her family’s murders hung in the smoky air. A chill went through her body.
“Well,” Mihail murmured, ignoring the weapon as he came closer anyway, “you’re full of surprises. Definitely worth more attention.”
Mihail moved forward and was instantly in front of her. At this range, she saw the fine scars along his jaw, the light shadows under his eyes.
“For all her unforgivable mistakes,” he said, his voice falling, “I’ll give Sophia this—she did an excellent job hiding you from us. A potentially glorious creature like you, buried in a human cage.”
Audrey’s hands trembled.
He leaned in. “Once you were free,” he said, “she had one option left: kill you before anyone else realized what you were becoming.”
The words hit harder than any bullet. Audrey’s muscles went slack. The gun dropped, clattering off the pavement.
Just like Emerson told her, Sophia wanted her dead. Not just in theory, but in practice. Hearing it confirmed didn’t shock her as it should have—it infuriated her.
Cary. Gone. Her father. Gone. And now she learned she’d just been next on the list.
Her eyes burned, but she forced the tears back down. She would not show any weakness or cry in front of him. Her teeth clenched until they hurt. She held his stare and refused to look away, even as her world reassembled itself into something uglier.
Mihail watched the storm cross her face. He didn’t say a word, but she could feel the way he wanted to crack her open. To show her teeth.
Recalibrating, she focused on the pressure inside her chest. It stirred under her skin, restless and hot.
The gun lay inches from her shoe now. Mihail didn’t touch it, but he lifted the weapon slowly from the pavement until it pointed directly between her eyes.
While she’d done the same to him only moments before, she wasn’t sure she could do it again.
She had no idea how to control this recent ability.
The entire alley appeared to tilt. And all she could see were flashes of red—her skull open on the concrete.
Her empty eyes stared at the sky that didn’t care.
She wished memories of love would surface, but every face she remembered came with duplicity.
At least I’d see Cary, she thought, and hated herself for the relief in it.
Mihail pulled the trigger.
Twice.
Her body responded before her mind did. She didn’t catch the bullets like Mihail had earlier, all poise and assurance, but her hand snapped up, bare skin between steel and bone.
Two bullets hit an invisible wall and fell to the ground like useless pellets.
The sound resounded through the alley long after the bullets stopped moving.
Shock ripped through her. Every limb trembled while her lungs seized, dragging in ragged air. She doubled over, coughing, the world spinning around her.
She’d never been shot at before. The shock of it alone should have left her paralyzed, but what raked at her now was much deeper, much stranger.
It terrified her how instinctive it had all felt when her body and mind had slipped into something instinctive and foreign.
Deflecting the bullets had been as effortless as blinking.
That ease sank in, and her mind staggered with the consequences.
Could she ever trust her own hands again?
Even with terror growing inside her, Audrey knew she had a choice.
She could let this power control her, or she could try—even for a few moments—to control it.
She was done running from what she was. If she survived tonight, she would master these gifts, not bury them.
Whatever unfolded next—rescuing her mother, finding the truth, or facing Ryker—she would use every bit of her strength.
Audrey set her jaw, steeling herself against the fear because she was done being told what to do and who she was.
Mihail’s smile faded. “Interesting,” he remarked, watching her like he was impressed.
“What do you really want with me?” she croaked.
He moved closer, a secretive look about him. “I suspect you have value, Audrey. It’s why your mother wants you. I don’t intend to destroy you. But I do want to see if you’re an asset I can use, rather than an opponent I have to eliminate.”
She examined her hands again. Audrey had felt these sensations before. Like a god had filled her body and demanded she fight back.
The memories were difficult to process. The knife had lifted into the air by itself the night her dad and Cary were killed.
Of that she was certain, despite telling herself repeatedly she’d imagined it.
Ever since it happened, she’d buried that night under excuses and denial, convincing herself her mind had invented it to survive.
The burden of the memory took her breath away as the enormity of it hit her.
Guilt and awe tangled inside her, twisting tighter than any fear Mihail could inspire.
For years, she was sure her mother, along with the man from the backyard—Ryker—had been responsible for slitting Cary and her dad’s throats.
But as she stood shaking in the alley, it struck her that she had no idea who had truly killed them.