Chapter 15
Gunpowder singed the air, and the monster within her continued stirring.
Audrey’s power had torn through the space, leaving warped metal, scattered casings, and everyone reeling.
The alley waited, every fate tied to her next action. She was no longer only caught in the middle. Now, she was the thing everyone measured.
Audrey glared defiantly at Mihail. His aura touched her nerves—and an emotion that didn’t belong to her, something like admiration, moved in. It seemed like a hand on her back, prodding her to the edge. He was doing something empathic. Twining his aura through hers.
She could read emotions, but he could push them.
She flung her aura back at him, raw and unrefined. Get back, it said, wordless but direct.
He shuddered, just barely. But then he obeyed, stepping away with widened eyes, his face going from dominance to a startled wariness.
“Hmm,” he said, almost to himself. “How fascinating.” He moved closer, stopping just close enough that his heat licked her skin. “You’re smaller up close,” he observed. “But louder.”
“Likewise.”
He ignored her and raised his hand to her throat, heat building under his touch, and sparks shooting through her nerves. “She put you in a cage,” he said, holding her neck with intentional slowness.
“Get your hands off—”
His other hand grasped her upper arm, grip iron-tight. “For years, they thought it was only Sophia. I knew better.” A muscle twitched in his jaw. “I could kill them both for hiding you.”
He weighed her with an assessing look. “You have no idea how much depends on you being found at the right moment,” he muttered quietly, almost to himself. “There are those who have waited for someone like you. I made a promise I intend to keep.”
Audrey recoiled and snarled, “I don’t know what you’re looking for, but I’m not it,” shoving him as hard as she could. Her hands pushed against him, but he barely rocked back.
“Maybe not,” he said. “Let’s find out.”
Power leaked from him, and something latent in her answered, vibrating throughout her blood. She couldn’t tell what was his and what was hers anymore. “Stay the fuck away,” she said.
“No,” he replied, flat and final. “In fact, I’m going to push, and we’ll see if whatever’s swimming under your skin wants to come out.” His knuckles skimmed her cheek again.
Anger inundated her, hot and thick. “Push me,” she warned. “You’ll regret it.”
He didn’t stop touching her. If anything, his hand lingered, daring her. A snarl built in her, starting as a growl and ending as something rawer, almost desperate.
Audrey was suddenly very sure of one thing: if cornered, she wouldn’t break—she’d burn.
Heat crawled up her wrists.
At first, she thought it was adrenaline. Then, the air glimmered as bright light shone between her fingers.
Audrey looked down. Gold flames poured from her hands, intoxicating her.
Mihail watched wide-eyed. A ribbon of heat snapped out, striking his arm. The smell of scorched fabric and flesh saturated the air. Shock broke through his composure. “Well,” he whispered. “That’s new.”
No one moved for a beat.
Sophia lay unmoving on the pavement, the rope half-loosened around her wrists.
An emotion worse than fear shone in her eyes—it was resignation, like she was overwhelmed by finality.
Behind Audrey, Emerson’s rough, pain-filled breathing stuttered.
Fearful awe replaced his earlier pain. Mihail no longer touched her like a curiosity.
He withdrew, his eyes shifting from cold calculation to something predatory.
Their attention crawled over Audrey’s skin, leaving a stinging ache.
She’d always wanted power—if only for escape, revenge, or survival—but the instant it became real, apprehension had taken over as she sensed them recalculating her value.
Strength didn’t feel as expected. It was terrifying and lonely, but most of all?
Irreversible. Because the fire had come from her, and it could not be undone.
Mihail shook his hand out, fingers flexing as if he could fling the burn from his skin. His eyes thinned to shards of black as he watched her, then his knuckles scraped slowly over the stubble on his jaw, thoughts flying in that liquid, alien tongue.
The gold receded from Audrey’s hands.
After a long, measuring moment, his look changed—curiosity edged with hunger. “It’s buried deep,” he said. “But I can’t take you to him unless I’m sure.”
Audrey’s hands balled into fists. Whatever was curled up inside her, she didn’t want Mihail—or anyone he answered to—peeling it open. “I’m not going anywhere with you.”
The confession caused her heart to pound against her ribs, each beat full of anxiety and resolve. She knew she was going to lose this fight, but the need to make someone pay for Cary and her father swallowed everything else.
The moment she moved against him, Mihail’s aura came down like a bolt of lightning.
Pressure threatened to crush her body, dragging her forward even as it held her back; she twitched.
The air warped, turning hostile. Mihail grabbed both her wrists, wrenched them above her head, and shoved her backward.
She collided with a brick, pain biting into her back.
“You have no control,” he said. “That makes you dangerous. "
He was right. She heaved against his grip, frustration and shame roaring so intensely she almost gasped.
Whatever slept in her, whatever seized Erik and blistered Mihail, it wasn’t enough—not against him.
He was too fast, too practiced. Every unsuccessful effort lanced through her with humiliation. She hardly understood her power.
But God, she wanted to hurt him. She wanted to claw back some scrap of control. Red inched in at the border of her vision. The pressure around her wrists shivered as something under her skin answered—violently.
The atmosphere between them buckled.
Mihail’s grip broke.
A force blasted outward from her—clumsy and raw.
It knocked his arms wide and sent dust skittering off the brick.
Audrey stumbled, gasping. The gun at her feet scraped across the street with a shriek.
Mihail went preternaturally still, blood still coating the side of his head from earlier.
He arched a brow. “Now that is unexpected,” he said.
“Fuck you.”
She went for the gun, hand stretching out, but before she could touch the weapon, it flew away from her.
The gun spun in the air, caught between her panic and Mihail’s telekinetic pull.
Their struggle played out, neither using fists but both fighting for control over the weapon in the space between them.
Audrey threw herself at the gun with her mind before she even understood that was what she was doing. The weapon shuddered in midair, and Mihail’s head tilted.
The pressure in the alley rose, and the gun lurched toward him, then turned back toward her. She clenched her fists, focusing on the pressure—and the gun moved toward him again. It shook so hard the barrel rattled.
Mihail’s amusement thinned. “There you are,” he murmured.
Audrey made a strangled, furious sound and pushed harder. Her temples throbbed. Pressure built behind her eyes. The floating gun whipped to the side, smashed into the wall, and dropped. Before she could move, Mihail flicked two fingers and sent it skidding across the pavement into his waiting hand.
“We could use you.” The humor was gone. “You’ll need to be tested for all three abilities. You’ll need to be tough enough to withstand the stress.”
Audrey darted a look at Sophia.
Her mother was no longer struggling—she was actively working the bindings, and they were actually moving. The restraints shifted, loosening without the use of her hands, rope dragging over rope as if an invisible force worried at the knots.
Just like Mihail had torn the gun away.
Audrey faced him again, breathing hard, her hands empty now although buzzing at her sides. “Not tough enough?” she snarled. “Try prison.” Prison had taught her how to fight for respect. And she had.
His answer came without hesitation. “I’ve seen worse,” he said. “I collect people who survive it.”
The gun hovered between them now, no longer still, but tracking her—following the smallest shift of her weight while Mihail stood several paces back, not even bothering to raise his arms. The thing moved as if it were attached to his will. Or maybe to both of theirs.
A sense of foreboding grew inside her. Whatever he was, whatever she was, it was more than telepathy and cheap parlor tricks.
She drew in a ragged breath, fighting to steady the spiraling fear that she might be dragged off to some unseen hell, experimented on, cut open, and left alone with her worst nightmares.
“Why don’t you just fucking shoot me and get it over with?” she ground out. “If you want me dead, do it.”
“You’re volatile,” Mihail said. “Out of control. Just like your mother said.”
Behind Audrey, the brick cracked with a sharp pop. Her mother said that? Shame and denial clenched her guts. She certainly didn’t feel dangerous—only broken, smaller under Mihail’s cruel scrutiny.
“But are you like her?” he went on, studying her like a specimen. “Do you have all three abilities? Ryker was sure you didn’t. But I’m not.” His eyes narrowed. “It would be unwise to act rashly before we know.”
Her lip curled. “Over my dead body will you drag me to some lab and study me like a freak.”
“A freak?” he said, mocking, though his eyes were intent. “You’d never be like that to anyone.” His gaze swept her slowly from head to toe, and his voice lowered, oily. “Among our kind, you’d be considered particularly lovely. It’s in here”—he tapped her chest—“that you’re strange.”
She ignored the comment, forcing herself to think tactically rather than emotionally. Emerson was down. Sophia was bound but not helpless. Rope shifted and writhed near her wrists.
Could she use her telekinesis?