He was the one who’d introduced himself as Will. He was incredibly tall, to the point that she knew he had almost a good foot on her, and he was proportioned like a Greek god. His features were entirely disarming, handsome beyond measure, with a furrowed brow that spoke of concern and kindness, but a glint in the eye that hinted at the close and personal knowledge of cruelty. He had to bend to offer her his hand, and that hand was strong. Short nails, calluses, bruises across the knuckles.
Just like hers.
Now was not the time to be indecisive, so she mentally kicked herself up and down and sideways as she took that hand and regained her footing, once more pulling her weapon.
They turned to face the commotion together, he with his own weapon drawn and raised. She noticed he held it the right way, both hands wrapped tightly around the grip, left thumb over the right, one arm slightly bent, feet firmly planted shoulder-width apart, finger lightly on the trigger. Again, just like her.
Up ahead, in the floating dust cloud that remained of the explosion, shapes began to emerge.
“You got anything else in there?” came a hollered question from behind her. She glanced hastily over her shoulder to find the one who had introduced himself as Liam had also pulled a weapon. But she knew what he meant, and as it just so happened, she did have more in there.
“Check the trunk!” she said. With that, she concentrated, popping the trunk open with her mind so he could easily access the metal Taylor box she had stashed inside while reconstructing and refurbishing the Shelby. She popped that open too, because he would otherwise have needed a key to get inside it.
The box held everything she needed to properly do her job as warden, from spell components to extra weapons to a first aid kit that she’d made actually viable by adding prescription pain killers, caffeine pills, and sedatives.
A mere few seconds passed between the time she’d unlocked both for Liam and he and his warlock friend were suddenly standing beside her and Will. Liam hastily shoved one of her daggers into the inside pocket of his jacket, along with a few spell components like charms and spice bundles.
“Do you even know what those do?” she asked him off-handedly, her weapon still aimed at the commotion in front of them. The components weren’t exactly labeled, and every one was used for a different spell.
He just shrugged. “I’m guessing they snuff bad guys,” he said before pulling something very special from the nook at the small of his back. “I’m also guessing this beauty snuffs special bad guys.” He held it grip-out to her.
It was her gun. Her real gun. It was the .357 Magnum her father had given her when she was seven, just before he’d eaten the dust offered up by the monster he’d been battling. It was the last thing he’d ever given her, and it was the most important. It was old; Smith and Wesson had stopped making this model forty years ago. But more than that, it was strong, it had a hell of a kick, and Liam Slate was right. It was special. It was special because of the blood it had been unwittingly baptized in, and the pain that had seeped into the steel, both cursing and blessing it from the inside out.
She looked at it for half a second, then took it from his hand. “You could say that,” she told him as she shoved her Colt back into its holster and raised the Magnum, aiming down the barrel at the mess in front of them.
Figures emerged from the dust created by the explosion. There were seven of them, seven tall men. Or silhouettes that hinted at tall men, anyway. But of course they weren’t really men. Helena let her mental feelers creep out toward them, and almost at once, they recoiled. The figures weren’t even vaguely human. She had no idea what they were though; the sensation was foreign to her.
She glanced at Darryl the undead warlock. “Friends of yours?” she asked. Rumor had it all kinds of frightening creatures worked for Darryl Maelstrom.
He opened his mouth to reply, but someone else beat him to it.
“No,” said Will. “They’re friends of his.”
Helena glanced over. The silhouette of an eighth man stood alone and still in the moonlit darkness beside the road to their right. He was bathed in shadow but for his eyes, which were two stark rings of hot burning blue.
She knew those eyes.
Fear engulfed her, freezing her in place. Fortunately, she was frozen with her gun raised.
Helena watched as Will trained his weapon on the newcomer, and the others stood their grounds. She found herself grateful that the men with her seemed to know how to handle being flanked, especially when she heard more footsteps approaching from behind the car.
Again she lucked out because Liam spun and trained his own weapon in that direction. Helena had never felt more grateful. But she was also beginning to feel overwhelmed. They were surrounded.
Will suddenly lifted his gun with his right hand and clutched his head with his left. Helena could see that he was gritting his teeth in pain, even though he made no sound.
“Will?” Liam glanced at him worriedly, keeping his weapon trained, but his attention was clearly re-focused. “You okay?” he demanded in a deep, but worried and admittedly panicked voice.
Will didn’t answer. Either he couldn’t, or he didn’t want to admit that he wasn’t okay.
Helena assessed the situation. It was something she’d learned to do very fast from a very young age out of necessity. But she didn’t have to be a strategic genius to tell that any control she’d ever had over this particular night was good and gone. There had been invisible strangers in her car, for crying out loud. And for who knew how long, too? She was surrounded by strangers, in fact. Even if some of them were truly on her side, they were surrounded as well.
Then there was the man in the darkness with the blue eyes. He was… uncomfortably familiar. His eyes terrified her. He didn’t seem fully there, more shadow than man, but his presence was strong enough to abrade her senses and make her feel helpless.
She was outnumbered by negative possible outcomes, and she didn’t like it one bit. It was time to break out the big guns. She would pay for it, she knew. But she’d heard of the Slate cousins and truly hoped they were on her side and were smart enough to act quickly. If they did, her suffering could be kept down to a minimum.
She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. Then she licked her lips and spoke a word.
“Stop.”
It was one word. One simple, colossally powerful word.
And the world stopped turning.
Chapter Seventeen
Will Slate slowly lowered his left hand and turned around. The clawing in his head had come to an abrupt halt, and its accompanying searing pain along with it. Cain had been trying to get in, get control of his body. He wanted to talk to Helena, and apparently Will was the only way he could do it.
The First Vampire had used too much of his strength projecting himself into their realm, and what was left was without voice. But Will refused to give him control. So Cain had become desperate.
He’d whispered things to Will, promises. And then he’d made threats, things Will couldn’t bear to think about. And at last, he’d simply begun torturing him, sending agony sizzling along the insides of his skull.
Will knew it wasn’t real. Without the ability to control his physical form, Cain couldn’t actually bring him harm either. But pain was a mental game, and Cain was very good at those.
Now it was over abruptly and blessedly, and Will had no idea how. He took a moment to just breathe, and heard each ragged breath enter and exit his lungs. Slowly, he turned in place, taking in the change in their surroundings.
“What… the….” Liam whispered behind him.
Will glanced over his shoulder at his cousin. Liam was wide-eyed, just as he was.
Time had stopped. There was no other way to describe it. There were motes of dust in the air, thrown there by the blast in the road. But normally they would coast away or float to and fro and land unnoticed. Now they hung in place, frozen between two moments that were somehow never connected.
The dar
k figures who had appeared in front of them and behind the Shelby on the road were unnaturally stationary, seemingly held hostage by time’s broken stopwatch. And in front of Will, where the blue-eyed shadow had appeared, there was now nothing but darkness. Deep. Un-telling.
Will had no idea what Cain had been planning to do but could only assume he’d wanted to do exactly what the Slate cousins had feared: threaten Helena. Will supposed that was what the monsters were there for, and that was why Cain had projected himself into their realm. He wanted it to be as scary as possible so Helena would feel she had little choice but to acquiesce.
But whatever he’d planned, something made him recoil, something made him return to the realm where he was held captive. And it had happened when Helena spoke the word, “Stop.”
All of this, Will absorbed and concluded in the quick few seconds before he straightened and turned back around to find Helena rushing to the driver’s side door of the Shelby. “Get in now,” she commanded. “You have to trust me, and we don’t have much time.”
Her beautiful features were pinched as if with pain, or intense concentration at the very least. She opened her door and looked up at him with luminous maroon eyes, but he was already moving, damn well determined to claim shotgun this time before his cousin.
Liam and Darryl were of the same minds, and all three of them squeezed into the seats of the Shelby just as Helena started up the engine and rammed the car into reverse. The doors were slammed shut right before she draped her arm over the seat, looked over her shoulder, and floored the gas. She peeled away from the hole and the monsters who had made it, swerving expertly around the lot who had come up behind them.
As they passed the frozen figures by, Will took a head count. Another ten. That made eighteen monsters total. Three sixes. He almost smiled at the analogy and wondered whether Cain had done it on purpose.
Probably.
When she’d gone a good fifty feet, she stopped the car, put it back in first gear, and turned them around on a dime, heading back down the highway the direction they’d come.
“Hang on,” she said next. “This one won’t be as smooth.” Will found himself doing what his cousin had done when they were invisible, grabbing the “Oh shit” bar and clenching it in a tight fist. But his eyes were on Helena. She capably moved the car into second and third, one right after the other. There, she kicked up the rpm’s, and before shifting into fourth she reached out toward the windshield as if trying to grasp something on the road in front of them. Just like before.
Will held his breath. The car jerked violently, and its four passengers lurched forward. Metal cried out as it was literally twisted by impossible physics. The engine whined. Helena made a desperate sound, one that whittled at Will’s heart. The road in front of them stretched out like before, its yellow and white lines lengthening, its ending expanding, the horizon disappearing somewhere like an unattainable pinpoint destination.
For the second time that night, Will’s eyes were treated to a blinding flash. He shut them out of reflex, but opened them a split second later, when the car lurched once more and tires squealed.
The road now before them was different but familiar, and Will knew at once that they were somewhere in the south. Thick foliage on either side of the road, swamp between the trees, Spanish moss, and heavy cracks in the two-lane road made him think Louisiana. Headlights in the distance signaled a faintly traveled highway and an oncoming car. He couldn’t help but wonder whether Helena had known specifically where to set the car down so it wouldn’t collide with another vehicle.
He looked over at her again to find her running a hand through her shining thick hair. It fell in layered waves around her, framing her face as if he needed any more reason to stare at her. But her eyes were hard-trained on the road, and her lips were pressed tight. “Are you okay?” he asked her softly. Somehow she had not only taken the car and its passengers through a portal to some deserted road in the southwest, she’d then stopped time and teleported everyone back through it a second time. And he knew it had taken a toll on her.
Helena didn’t answer and she didn’t look up. Instead, she carefully pulled the car over to the road’s shoulder, left it in neutral, locked in the emergency brake, and flipped on the hazards. Shakily, she turned to him, glanced at Liam, and finally at Darryl. “Can any of you boys handle a stick? Someone else has to drive,” she said softly. Her voice quaked ever so slightly, ringing alarm bells in Will’s head. He was hearing a lot of things in his head lately. “I’ll direct you to the nearest bar. I need a drink.”
“Let me out,” Liam told Will. He had leaned forward and popped open the door beside Will so fast, it was like his seat had caught on fire. A stunning woman had just asked him to take the wheel of a pristine classic muscle car, and drive her to a bar. By Will’s way of thinking, that one moment summed up everything Liam loved in life.
But Will was still irritated by the speed of his cousin’s reaction – for two seconds – before Darryl smoothly said, “I call shotgun,” in his wicked English accent. He winked at Will.
And Will realized he was going to be alone in the backseat with Helena. And she wasn’t feeling well. And again, they were headed to a bar.
Helena and Will climbed out of the car, allowing the other two out as well. A wave of humidity washed over Will, confirming his assumption that they were in the south. The car that had been coming in the distance finally passed by, and he took note of the license plate. Louisiana. He was right.
Will passed Liam as the older cousin made his way to the driver’s side. When their bodies brushed, Liam handed him something. Will glanced down to find himself holding the potion Darryl had created for the second part of the spell.
He looked up. Liam gave him a meaningful look and a brief nod. The look said, the job is yours now. Put this in her drink. Kiss her. Make this happen.
Will slipped the potion into the pocket of his leather jacket and climbed into the backseat. “Darryl, move your seat up,” he said. The warlock adjusted the front seat to give Will more leg room, and then suddenly Helena was sliding into the back beside Will. The scent of shampoo and soap and sweat teased his senses. She was so close he could feel the warmth of her body. She was ethereal in outline, like a dream he hadn’t quite awoken from.
He swallowed hard as Liam put the car into gear and pulled it off the shoulder of the road.
Chapter Eighteen
Helena rested her head on the seat behind her and closed her eyes. She was all too painfully aware of the man sitting next to her. The sheer size of him was enough to make any woman take note in a primeval old-brain kind of way. But the green of his eyes, the way his hair fell in shoulder-length waves, the broad sculpture of his chest combined with the narrow waist and strong legs…. She smiled to herself as she sat there with those closed eyes and mentally kicked her own ass. Stupid, Helena. He’s too good to be true and you know it.
This couldn’t end well. It never did for wardens. And she’d heard tales of the Slate cousins. They were trouble makers. The older cousin in particular was a playboy. She wondered if the same could be said of Will….
“So I gotta ask you all again, and I need the whole truth or I might just telekinetically eject every one of you from my car,” she said, eyes still shut. She heard Liam turn a little in the driver’s seat in front of her, and knew he was adjusting the rearview mirror to get a look at her. She figured that meant she had their attention.
Not that she would really kick them out of the car while it was moving. She used her abilities in defense alone. And in fact, she was having a very hard time thinking of these three as potential enemies. Especially Will.
She could feel him next to her. Larger than life. Watching her.
She cleared her throat nervously and got down to business. It was easier with her eyes shut. “What the hell were you doing in my car, what do you want from me, and why were we all just attacked in the middle of nowhere?” How had the enemy even known where she was?
/> Just asking the questions in her head felt like it drained her a little. She’d used a lot of power tonight, and while teleporting had never caused her undo trouble – stopping time sure as hell did. It was hard. It was actually impossible. And for some bizarre reason, fate had given her the improbable ability to do the impossible for a certain amount of time.
The scene they’d left behind was probably moving again by now; she never managed to isolate an area from time for long. Time was an absolute force, strong and unstoppable. She could re-route it around something, like suspending a bubble of ice in a raging river. But eventually the bubble would melt or pop; the river was too strong. And what was inside the bubble would rejoin the water to be pulled inexorably along with the flow once more.
Even creating that bubble was such an affront to time, it took a terrible toll on Helena. Every time she used that power, she paid in some physical manner. Sometimes she was dizzy, shaky, or weak. Sometimes her vision would blur or go altogether. She’d had the worst migraine of her life after rerouting time one day. Once, she’d simply become seriously hungry. That was a lucky day.
Other times, every joint in her body began to ache as if she were an eighty-year-old with advanced osteoporosis. She had a good supply of strong prescription pain killers for those instances. And then there was her least favorite consequence of all, and lately the most common one… the Night Terrors.
A lot of people had what they called night terrors. Waking nightmares that were so dogging, they followed the dreamer into waking life and continued to scare the life out of them for full drawn-out minutes of screaming consciousness. Those sucked. But what Helena experienced were Night Terrors. Capital N. Capital T. Because what she pulled from her dreams and into her waking world… became real.
And then she would have to kill it. And that was never an easy feat. She had one hell of an imagination on her.
That was unfortunately the price she was going to pay this time around. It had been that way a lot lately. More and more frequently, it was the Night Terrors that got her afterwards. She could always tell when they were looming because she would begin to feel drowsy, as if she’d been given a sleeping pill. But she couldn’t give into that pull. There was only one way out of this, which was something she’d learned the hard way.