Chapter 19 #2
Agony rolled through her, a burning as if every synapse had been doused with gasoline and lit.
Rowan thrashed blindly, heard a rabbitlike scream.
It was Justin’s pain, the agony of using his gift to break into a mind, the echo of the push screaming through her own nervous system. It seemed to last forever.
There was a long deathlike pause. Her vision returned fitfully, and she saw the ceiling—oddly skewed because she lay twisted, half on her back with her arm flung out—and something warm and wet was in her eyes.
Her lungs burned as she dragged in a breath.
Another. Blinked, vaguely surprised to find herself alive.
Oh, God. God. What the hell was that?
Her head ached fiercely, as if the party-hangover had only waited for now to make its true appearance.
The pulsing of some dark intent submerged below the layers of her waking mind; she felt vaguely horrified through the pain and weakness.
What was that thing? Where had that thing come from, and what was it doing in her head?
“When you get back to Sigma,” Justin said, hoarsely, “if you can still talk, you tell Anton I’ll do the same to anyone else he sends after her. Now it’s war.”
A short gurgle. Another of those wet, horrible sounds, and she heard distant sirens. Someone must have called the cops. Why?
The noise went on. A short, sharp explosion, a gunshot. A thrashing, crumpling sound. It was a wonder the cops weren’t already here. Oh, God. God, please.
Footsteps. “Rowan?” Harsh, a croak. “Come on, sweetheart. We’ve got to go.”
His face swam into view above her. Blood dripped down the right side, a shocking scarlet. He bent and his mind threaded with hers again, a tentative touch against bruised and scorched mental skin.
Still, she welcomed it. His mind was clean, not like the rotted thing that had tried to infect her, to break her to its will.
That wasn’t a man. That was a sickness in a human body. How many people did he torture to turn his gift into that? She was suddenly, utterly, glad to have Justin.
He’d saved her. Again.
Rowan’s mouth worked fruitlessly. She had to drag in another breath as he hauled her upright. “Come on, angel. Walk. We’ve got to go. Now.”
“J-J-J-Ju—” She stammered over the name, relieved when she heard her own voice. The dark thing pulsed, burrowing into her mind, but she couldn’t think, could not even imagine what it was. “What wa—”
“Never mind. Come on.”
“P-P-P-” Push me. He had to help her. There was something buried in her mind, something unholy. It was too hard to talk. Her throat closed up, refused to obey her. She tried again. You h-have to.
“No.” He had his arm over her shoulder and dragged her along. Her head lolled, her neck unable to work properly.
A slim man dressed in black lying on the floor, half-hidden between the two beds.
The lamp was knocked over, the television and mirror smashed, and blood painted the pale wall in a high arc, gleaming wetly.
The television’s shell smoked and sparked.
Her feet bumped something soft. She bit back a moan.
There was a long white stick, the kind blind people used, snapped in half.
“Not gonna push you, sweetheart,” Justin continued. “Come on, move with me.”
“C-C—” She was about to say I can’t when her legs began to work again. She almost tripped, but he lifted her over the moaning body in the entryway.
It was a pudgy white-haired man, his sweatshirt torn and khakis dewed with blood, scrabbling weakly on the floor.
The owner of the rotted-out voice. A knifehilt protruded from his throat.
A shattered pair of sunglasses crunched under Justin’s boot. “That’s my girl,” he said, calmly enough. He winced—she could feel the dragging pain in his chest, his scalp, his arm on fire. What had happened to him while she lay useless on the floor?
“Hurt.” Her wrist throbbed with pain. “You’re hurt.”
“Doesn’t matter.” He half-carried her down the hall. The elevator’s blank white doors loomed.
Elevator? “I thought you said—” Help me, please. God help me. Blurred, and shifted—she could no longer remember why it was so necessary he use his talent on her. The entire concept hovered just out of reach, her battered memory cringing from the last few minutes.
“This is an emergency.” The doors folded open, and she managed to help him drag her recalcitrant body inside. “You okay? He hit you pretty hard. He’s good at cracking empaths.”
“H-hurts.” That was an understatement. Lethargy and agony, a terrible restless duo, nerves twisting like insects pricking with needlelike feet. It wasn’t normal. Something was happening inside her head. The elevator dinged, and he pushed the button for the ground floor. “How b-bad are y-you—”
“Don’t worry about me.” He hissed in a breath, shifted his weight. The weightlessness of an elevator descending tugged at her stomach.
What if Sigma’s out there? She didn’t mean for him to hear the thought, but he did, and a flood of reassurance tingled through her tired, battered head.
God, even a normal person’s open sewer of a mind was better than that blind, rotting touch, squirming like maggots inside her skull.
Justin’s clear, cold calm dispelled the fog of pain, made it easier to think.
She had the uncomfortable feeling that a mental door between them had been blown off its hinges and she might not be able to put it back on.
Something else taunted her, something about what had just happened dancing just outside her mental reach.
Then I’ll get us out, Justin’s mind whispered. Brew and Yosh can’t stay forever. If they’re gone we’ll have to steal a car. Have to stop and wash up, get the blood off. Chest hurts. Don’t think about that. Did he get me with that damn stiletto? Ouch.
Beating under his thoughts was a collage of aches and burning. The needles all over her skin were his, from the Zed withdrawal.
“Justin.” She laid her head against his shoulder.
Whatever the other man had done, she needed a few minutes to close her eyes and find the wellspring of calm inside herself.
She felt filthy, every thought or emotion dipped in slime.
Her wrist hurt, a sharp pain under the fuzziness of approaching unconsciousness. “Glad you’re h-here.”
“Me too, angel.” He eased a gun out of the holster, gathered himself to blur them. It hurt; he discarded the pain. Rowan helped as much as she could, but she was exhausted. She doubted she could use any of her talent without passing out. “Nowhere else I’d rather be.”
The elevator slowed. “Please,” Rowan whispered, not sure who or even what she was asking.
The doors opened, and Justin went still and cold beside her. But Rowan couldn’t worry about it, because her tenuous grasp on consciousness failed entirely.