Chapter 9 #2
The man changes direction, lunging for me instead of Astin. His hand latches around my wrist, and I scream, trying to tug myself free. Instead, I’m spun round. Slammed against a tree. My head cracks against emerald, jarring me into focus.
The knife is held to my throat.
‘Please,’ I whisper.
The blade presses closer. Cold. Sharp. Astin is moving towards us, fury in his eyes, and although his steps are light, the man must sense him approach, because without glancing around he says, ‘Come any closer, and I’ll slit her throat faster than you can blink.’
Astin halts. His fury fades to dread, and I remember what he said about Olivia and his mother. I was powerless to save her and I hated it.
My fingers flex. I hate that Astin’s in this position again. The man smirks, and I can tell he means every word of his threat from the way his coppery smell intensifies.
‘Doesn’t have to be this way,’ he says. ‘Let me walk you away from these woods, and we’ll pretend this never happened.’
Lies may not be an emotion, but I can sense his all the same.
He has no intention of letting us leave these woods alive. I doubt we’re the first he’s lain in wait for today, picking off anyone foolish enough to travel outside a large group.
‘Fine. Let her go and we’ll leave.’ Astin’s voice is clipped, but there’s an undercurrent of something else beneath, a tremor of worry he can’t hide.
The man hasn’t taken his eyes off me. I wince as the knife nicks skin. Blood trickles down my neck while my chest heaves, my fingers flexing, and flexing, and flexing. Astin can’t reach this stranger before he swipes the knife across my throat, but I can.
But the only thing stronger than my urge to live is the knowledge that Astin can’t know.
‘Did you hear me?’ Astin says. ‘We’ll leave. Now get your hands off her before I –’
‘Before you what?’ The man grins. ‘I told you. One more step and I’ll slice her open.’ He leans towards me and murmurs,
‘Or maybe I will anyway.’
I tremble. He’s too close, breath as stale and rotten as his emotions, his mouth curving wide.
Wait. His mouth.
I fight to stifle my gasp.
I do have another power at my disposal.
One that’ll be easier for Astin to accept. One he won’t kill me for. One he’ll understand.
Bile rises up my throat, but I squash it down, down, as I lean forward, ignoring the pain in my neck as the blade cuts deeper, slicing into skin, and press my lips to the stranger’s.
Astin shouts several expletives, but I barely hear them, not over the disgust coiling through my veins about what I’m doing, at the press of his mouth against mine, dry and chapped and everything I don’t want.
His eyes flare with confusion. The knife clatters to the ground.
He tries to escape, but now it’s my turn to grip him – I don’t know the rules, don’t know how long it’ll take for this to work; for some reason my singular thought is, At least he doesn’t have wings, and he might die quietly.
Not quiet enough. He begins to choke, and I recognise the sound all too well.
I pull away with a gasp. He stumbles, his expression torturously similar to Michael’s – a blank, empty kind of horror, like he knows something’s wrong but can’t work out what.
His hand goes to his chest, scrabbling against his shirt as though he thinks tearing it off will be enough to save him. It won’t.
He drops to the ground. I can’t look away. Every breath sounds short, pained. The fingers clawing his clothes curl into fists, beating futilely at his heart as it pumps its final beats.
He goes still.
A horrified laugh escapes me. Well, at least that confirms my curse remains active, and I haven’t deprived myself of kissing for nothing.
For all my Souleater thirst, my throat is suddenly dry and barren, unable to produce the scream that scratches and writhes to escape.
I stare and stare at the dead body, tears running down my cheeks.
I did it again. I did it again.
Movement startles me – Astin, checking my neck, wiping blood away with his thumb. ‘Are you okay?’
He successfully decodes my high-pitched, garbled response as absolutely not, and squeezes my shoulder before facing the body. ‘How did you . . .’
Salty tears drip into my damned mouth. Several hiccups later, I manage to tell him, ‘It’s my hex. I kill anyone I kiss.’
A barely perceptual frown creases his forehead. His thumb, smeared with my blood, hovers over my mouth, the promise of a kiss that’ll never come, before his hand drops to his side. ‘Oh.’
It’s not clear if that oh means what a shame or well, how nice, I’m not the only killer out of the two of us.
My chin wobbles. I don’t want to be a killer. ‘I shouldn’t have done that. Why did I . . . What have I done?’
If I’d been brave enough to unleash my Souleater powers, I could have incapacitated him and left him alive, if perhaps hexed.
Astin rubs my arm. ‘He was going to kill you. You didn’t have a choice.’
The words are little comfort. I should have found another way. What’s the point in holing myself up in the middle of nowhere if I kill the first stranger I meet? I’m no better than an animal thought to be tamed until it’s let out of its cage and bites someone.
I lean into his side, ignoring the way he tenses when I slide my hand across his middle, wanting to pretend, for a minute, that I’m normal and everything’s fine and he is mine to hold forever.
Eventually, he reciprocates by banding an arm over my shoulders, wrapping me in a one-armed hug that’s more like a tiny blade burrowing into my chest, because not only is it more than he’s given me before, it’s more than anyone’s given me since I got hexed.
Leaves clank behind us. Louder and too violent to be wind-touched.
Trembling, I pull away from his embrace to see two individuals emerging from between the trees – the dead man’s missing comrades from the inn last night.
The woman is short, but no less dangerous for it, with twin daggers strapped to her thighs.
Her black hair is neatly braided. Towering at her side, her companion carries a bow and quiver of arrows.
Astin looks down at me, and the concern in his expression can’t be masked by the flippancy in his words when he says, ‘Reckon you can run over there and kiss them before he shoots?’