Chapter 15 #2
If she could get Sophia free, maybe they could take this bastard together. There had to be something left of the woman who’d raised her buried under the fiend she’d become.
Can I do it again? Move things without touching them?
The thoughts tumbled around in her brain before she made a decision, because there was only one way to find out.
She widened her awareness, letting her senses spill out.
Every person was wrapped in imperceptible threads—thick, rope-like vibrations she usually only felt at the edge of perception.
Among Sophia’s tangled aura, the restraints shone lightly in a different way, like dormant nerves.
Audrey focused on those faint currents, prodding at them.
The rope’s weave yielded, just a fraction, to her will.
Slowly, carefully, she started to worry the knot apart, coaxing fibers, twisting the tension.
Pressure built behind her eyes again, but she kept her eyes on Mihail, masking the effort with a sneer.
Those black diamond eyes narrowed at her mother, perceiving something invisible to humans. The motion was so predatory, so other, a chill slid along Audrey’s spine.
She bared her teeth in a smile meant to provoke. “If you’re going to shoot me, do it.”
It was a risk, but he didn’t want to kill her—not yet. He wanted to see what else she could do.
“You have a lot of potential,” he said.
Behind him, Sophia’s shoulders rolled as one of the main knots gave, the ropes sliding looser around her arms.
The gun dropped neatly into Mihail’s waiting hand.
He stepped in and cracked the butt against Audrey’s cheek.
Pain detonated along Audrey’s jaw. The blow snapped her head sideways and dropped her hard to one knee, copper flooding her mouth as blood streamed warm down her face.
The alley narrowed, the brick wall and burning alley lights smearing together.
Her hand came away red.
By the time she looked up, Mihail had already leveled the barrel at her head. He stood beside her like some statue carved for conquest, calm and towering and utterly certain of himself.
“Show me a peek,” he coaxed. “Come on. Where is she? The other Audrey. Prove I’m not wrong about you.”
His eyes burned. She could feel his pleasure in the havoc inside her, his aura thrumming more, more, more like a throb. For someone who preached control, he looked half-feral with excitement. This wasn’t about threats. He was leaning on the brink of her mind, waiting for something buried to lunge.
The trilling noise came from her throat again, low and alien, as she stared up at him.
He only smiled.
Movement flashed at the fringe of her vision.
Sophia’s rope loosened further. Her mother’s voice thundered through the electric air, ragged and furious.
“You bastard,” Sophia spat. “She doesn’t know how dangerous she is, or how dangerous you are, for that matter.
Audrey, fight him off. Get away before you kill everyone on this block. ”
Sophia pulled at Mihail’s attention, if only by a thread. Audrey used it. She let her awareness widen, ragged breath scraping in and out of her lungs.
Every surface in the alley suddenly felt too alive, too present—the gun in Mihail’s hand, the heat in his skin, the metal shiver in the battered trash cans, the shifting rope around Sophia’s wrists.
The whole lot seemed to beat around her as though it had slipped one step closer to some hidden frequency, and her body had finally learned how to hear it.
Something instinctive and old surged inside her, rearing up in defense of the woman who had ruined her life and still somehow needed protecting.
The scream that tore out of her was inhuman. Seizure-bright sparks burst in front of her eyes. Heat poured through her veins, molten and intoxicating, while pressure built behind her breastbone as though some sealed chamber inside her had split wide open.
For one crystalline moment, she knew without doubt that she could kill Mihail.
Right. Wrong. Hero. Monster. It didn’t matter.
At that moment, she felt no guilt at the thought of burning someone alive.
Mihail deserved it, and the sick relief she felt was justice.
And yet...was this what power always demanded?
To silence the parts of herself that still cared?
Her insides clenched, knowing the rightness of her rebellion was already tainted by the fear of what she was becoming.
Fire continued to burn under her skin. The taste of victory was threaded with a regret she tried to swallow.
Scenes flashed—Mihail sprawled on the pavement, the raw shock on his face, Sophia watching her like a stranger.
Was this who she was now? Audrey looked at her hands, errantly wishing that she could go back before she’d learned how easy it was to stop caring. The thought burrowed into her brain.
What a childish notion, though. She could never go back.
Audrey pushed again.
Fire roared out of her, invisible until it hit him. It crashed into Mihail hard enough to hurl him backward.
Devilish delight flashed across his face as the blast hit. Then he was on his back, skidding across the broken pavement, jarring the gun out of his grip.
A harsh, incredulous sound rose out of her as she watched him sit there, briefly stunned.
The mighty Mihail flattened. The man who had called her lesser, reckless, out of control—on his ass because of her.
She bared her teeth at him. He deserved every second of it, but whatever had just come out of her did not feel like something she could put back.
Mihail’s expression changed. Not with fear, but the grim realization of a man who had just determined the scale of what stood in front of him.
His shadow extended across the pavement, long and misshapen in the alley light, and Audrey knew, with a sick certainty, that nothing in her life would ever fit back into human proportions after this.
“There she is,” he said hoarsely. “The monster.”
“Stay away,” she snapped, lifting one hand like the gesture alone could keep him back.
Audrey reached for the fire again, but nothing came.
Only tremors and a hollow, scraped-out feeling went through her.
The immense thing had answered her once, but now it seemed to be listening to see what she would do next.
“My turn,” he said. His voice cleaved through her panic, like the snap of a whip.
“Please. Just stop,” she begged, afraid of what she knew was coming next—fire. Like the night of the murders. A feeling she never wanted to relive.
He ignored her plea as if it were nothing and turned his hand palm-up.
Flame blossomed above it, not red but an odd, unnatural blue.
At the same time, the dropped gun rose from the pavement and floated obediently beside him, held in place by nothing she could see.
The sight of both powers at once—fire and telekinesis, effortless and controlled—hit her harder than the strike to her face had.
“No,” she gasped, squeezing her eyes shut. “Stop.”
The fire from the night at her house swamped her memory.
“Look at me.” His shout snapped through the alley as he snapped his hand toward the trash cans. Blue flames burst. Heat rolled across the alley in a violent wave. The brick behind Audrey cracked with a pop.
He was trying to pull the monster out of her again.
“Now I understand why you fought so hard to keep her from us, Sophia,” he said, almost lovingly.
His grin turned vicious as he shoved the gun into the back of his waistband.
He switched to their native tongue for a rapid string of words, then back to English, his eyes glittering. “Another gold triad...rare.”
Sophia had gotten one arm free now, rope wrapped around her palms, knuckles white with strain. Audrey wanted her to lunge, to choke him out, to end this, but her mother advanced slowly and carefully, like someone edging toward a bomb that might go off in her face.
“Take her to him, and everything burns,” Sophia said. “You have no idea what she is.” She’d switched to English on purpose. A warning clearly meant for Audrey as much as for Mihail.
Mihail’s eyes widened, his eyebrows kicking upward. “That’s what you think he wants?” he barked, incredulous. He jabbed a finger at Audrey like a brand. “After all these years, you could not be more wrong about Ryker’s plans.”
Sophia screamed, the sound full of fury and something close to fear. Audrey whipped her hands up over her ears again, trying to shut it all out, but she couldn’t look away. Sophia looked less afraid of Mihail than she did of Audrey.
The flame above Mihail’s palm blazed back to life, but this time he didn’t send it around Audrey.
The fire struck the building behind him, and the roof went up in an instant. Blue flames devoured tar and old wood with obscene speed, racing over the structure like something sentient.
Audrey reeled back from the heat.
The alley turned into a furnace.
Mihail dragged his hand in a slow arc overhead. Blue fire rose around him in a ring, a crown from hell.
Sophia didn’t even look at the flames. In one quick motion, her fingers bent into a fist.
The fire was sucked out of existence.
Everything went silent.
One moment, flames had been towering around him; the next, there was nothing at all, as if Sophia had inhaled them straight out of the world.
The fire hadn’t gone out—her mother had taken it.
Audrey’s chest sawed in and out, every breath full of phantom smoke. She stared at Sophia, stunned.
“Try that again,” Sophia said quietly. “And I’ll have us both burn ourselves to ash.”
“Such a unique talent,” Mihail said, almost reverent. “To siphon power. That comes from your telepathy—a rare variation.” He paused, his hand rubbing his mouth in thought.
Audrey finally found her voice. “Why don’t you crawl back to whatever shithole spat you out and leave us alone?” she snapped.
“The same shithole you’re from?” he asked. “Don’t worry. You’ll be going home soon.”
“What do you want?” Audrey shouted. Her mind felt like it was ripping at the edges.
His eyes thinned to slits, hunger raw and unmasked. “You’ll see. But rest assured, no one will ever lock your family in a cage again...except mine.”
A streak of desperation spiked through Audrey’s aura like a sudden jolt.
“Your mother’s mind is fraying,” Mihail added.
“She’s suppressed her power for too long.
I see that now. She’s coming apart. Which means we’ll take you.
” He let the words rest, almost savoring them.
“Did she ever tell you about what she lost to the fire, or why she locked her mind away? Or did she pretend you might outrun your own blood?”
Audrey had found her mother, years ago, standing silent in front of the old fireplace.
When she asked what Sophia was looking at, her mother had only shaken her head, eyes hardening once more into that familiar tough exterior, and said stiffly, “Not everything survives the flames.” The words had stuck with Audrey and almost comforted her in prison.
With Mihail’s accusation ringing in the air, the fragmented memories suddenly meant something deeper: there was more to her mother’s silence than pain, and there always had been.
Mihail studied her a moment longer. “You have no idea what you could be.”
Sophia appeared at Audrey’s side, the speed nearly impossible.
“Mom,” Audrey breathed. Hope blazed stronger inside her.
A switchblade floated in front of Sophia’s face, twirling under her control. An unmistakable threat waiting to happen. The alley felt weighted with power neither woman could contain, and Audrey realized with a sick drop in her stomach that Mihail wasn’t afraid of it.
He looked at both of them—two fire-starters with telepathy and telekinesis—and smiled.
Sophia’s voice penetrated the silence.
“Audrey,” she said quietly. “Finally.”