Destiny Calling (30 page)

Then it, or what had been Drake, was gone, leaving the pavement as broken as it had been prior to his arrival.

The sound of litter fluttering to the ground broke the silence, seeking a new place to nest until someone came along who cared enough to pick up the unwanted trash. Griffith sat looking dazed on the opposite end of the alley.

I cradled Chance’s head on my lap. His eyes fluttered open and focused on me. “I’m alive?”

“You didn’t think you’d be? You must not have much hope in me.” I smiled.

“It’s not that, it’s just that it doesn’t matter, really,” he said. “I’ve always known I was going to die. It’s our destiny.”

“You still don’t think we can do this? Dying is
not
our destiny,” I said. “Our destiny is to finish what we started with the Oppressors.

Chance smiled faintly and closed his eyes. “But now that Tessa has showed us there’s something more, I’m not afraid anymore.”

I laid my head on his chest, reassured with its steady rise and fall. “Too bad, because you’re not going to die on my watch, brother.”

Chapter Twenty

“Why are we going to the bar?” Chance complained from the back seat.

I peered back where he lay trying to regain his strength. I knew the true reason for his unhappiness was because he was in Griffith’s car. He continued to cast wary glances at him while trying to stay awake.

“I want to see if anything has changed now that Drake…” I cast a quick glance at Griffith. His face remained unreadable when I mentioned the creature that claimed to be his brother, who he killed, or banished, or whatever the hell happened to cause him to break like glass. “Just to see what’s going on.”

“The bar is going to be closing soon,” Griffith said.

“I know.” Gazing out the window at the night, I watched the trees rushing by as we headed deep into the woods, leaving the lights of the city behind us.

Truth be told, I was still pretty keyed up after the evening. Plus I wasn’t ready to part with either Chance or Griffith, yet. I wanted to keep an eye on both of them a little longer. “How did you do that, with Drake?”

Griffith shifted his gaze from the road to me, then forward again. The muscle in his jaw clenched and unclenched. “You destroy hate with love, just like you destroy love with hate.”

I put my hand over his. “I’m sorry.”

Griffith continued to stare ahead.

“That day at the orphanage…” I paused as I struggled with how to ask him the question that lingered with me. “Why didn’t you kill me?”

He hadn’t only saved me from Drake that day.

Griffith sighed, as if a burden weighing on him lifted, and could be released. “I was ready to—waiting for you to come out, alone and vulnerable, away from the nuns.”

He shook his head. “But when you walked outside into the freedom you never had. The look on your face was so…alive. It was everything I’d always wanted but could never have. I couldn’t take that freedom away from you.”

I put my hand on his leg, and we drove the rest of the way in silence.

We pulled into the parking lot where a few cars remained, and I turned to the back seat. Chance struggled to sit up, rubbing his eyes from sleep. “You can stay here, if you want.”

He slumped back down and laid his arm over his eyes without one mutter of protest. I hadn’t realized how much the cloning took out of him.

“I want to check on Ruthie.”

Griffith stared at Chance. “I’ll watch over him.” Then he looked at me to see if I’d object.

I didn’t. “Thank you.”

“I don’t need watching.” Chance mumbled, curling onto his side on the seat. “I can take care of myself.”

Since he didn’t complain about being left with Griffith, either he was beginning to trust him or was too exhausted to care.

Ever since we’d gotten in the car, I’d felt the overwhelming need to go to the Last Call
.
I couldn’t get Ruthie out of my thoughts and needed to see her, or I’d never sleep tonight. I kept visualizing her in my mind. I didn’t know if it was a vision like Destiny’s gift, or my desire to ensure all my family was safe.

Mother Nature was winning out over Ruthie right now, because I had to visit the ladies’ room first. Ruthie was certain to descend upon me with one of those rib-crushing hugs as soon as I saw her, and that could result in an unfortunate accident if I didn’t make this detour.

Plus, I wanted to decompress a minute or two before Ruthie started telling me how she
knew
how upset I was and began offering some terrible potion to
fix me right up,
like the one she gave Chance.

I latched the stall door and closed the lid on the toilet seat before plopping down onto it.

I sighed. My muscles relaxed as the tension and anxiety started to leave me. I rested my head into my open hands with my elbows propped on my knees. My hair pooled out through my fingers and hung down over my face.

The shaking started at my mouth and continued through my body until it rushed out my limbs. The toilet seat rattled as I trembled. The rush of adrenaline had left every inch of my skin tingling and the hairs elevated on my arms. The cool breeze drifting in through the window, open overhead, enveloped me, helping soothe my rapid heartbeat.

The chirping of the crickets was the only sound in the dead of the night, besides the thumping of my heart as its gallop slowed to a normal rhythm.

My phone buzzed, and I glanced at it, but ignored the text from Griffith. I’m sure he was wondering what was keeping me in the bathroom so long, but I wanted to regroup.

Three thirty-three glowed on the phone screen. The numbers comforted me, almost as if Destiny knew we’d avenged her and was somehow there with us. Even though Griffith had been the one to do it.

It was over
. With Drake gone, the Oppressors would have no one to follow and feed from. Granted there would always be some around, but without a leader to organize them and grow their strength, they wouldn’t be as much of a threat. We had a chance to make a difference.

The exterior door to the bathroom creaked as someone pushed it inward. The sound amplified due to the stillness of the night. As if a switch had been turned, the sounds of the night silenced. The quiet became absolute.

I lifted my head and tilted my ear toward the door, my eyes transfixed on the latch of my stall. A sense of foreboding filled me.

Click, click, click….

The sound of heels tapping across the linoleum echoed off the brick walls. I lowered my attention to the floor in front of my door, studying the grime built up in the past few days since the cleaning lady had been in.

A pair of feet stopped in front of my door. I raised my brows. Open-toed stilettos were not the norm for the few of us who worked or frequented the Last Call. Besides, none of them were physically able to bend over to achieve the glossy pedicure these feet sported, nor would they be inclined to spend their money on such a frivolity.

I’d never seen such a beautiful pair of feet look so ominous.

A sound of heavy panting penetrated the silence as a glowing light grew until it encircled the feet.

The bar was closed.

Ruthie and Chief were the only ones left here, and most likely Chief had already started sleeping off his evening. I didn’t have to be Ruthie to know those weren’t her feet.

There was no way this could be good.

I glanced at the four metal walls encasing me, lifted my feet to perch on top of the toilet, and braced my hands on either side of the stall as a familiar fragrance permeated the air. Though I’d usually welcome a more pleasant scent to overpower that of toilet cleaner and the general stench of a public bathroom, I’d take any stink over cinnamon.

I held my mouth closed to try to prevent the scent from invading my mucous membranes, but the bile rose in my throat regardless, almost an instinctive response, as my skull tightened.

“C’mon now, Hope, shit or get off the pot.”

The weak fluorescent light of the bathroom dimmed as a black cloud crept up the wall, enclosing everything within it. I squeezed my eyes shut and pinched the bridge of my nose between my fingers to try to stem the pain descending.

“I said…” The stall door thumped, and a bubble popped up from the end of the stiletto heel at the impact of the first kick.

“Get…” Another thump. The thudding continued, and I had a hysterical thought to find out what kind of heel this was, to hold up under such abuse.

“Off…” The lock strained on the door with the next kick as the door pulsed inward. I shimmied back as far as I could onto the toilet and bumped the handle, causing the toilet to flush violently. A cackling laugh pierced my skull.

“Who the hell are you?” I yelled, as I cupped my hands over my ears, trying to hold my head together as the pain of the migraine came on fast and furious.

I crouched on the seat and strained toward the window, sucking in the fresh air. The blackness was as thick as syrup, and I had trouble seeing in front of me. Hopelessness and anguish weighed down on me so heavily that breathing became difficult.

The flimsy lock exploded. I shielded my eyes. Pieces ricocheted off the cement wall I leaned against, while I tried to make myself as small as possible. The door shot inward and slammed off the interior wall, bending the flapping chunk of metal as it flew back and forth several times with the impact.

The door hung precariously on one hinge. Chief was not going to be happy.

I lifted my arm to get a glimpse of the door assaulter. The blackness parted around her. My mouth gaped as the image of Ms. Shaw flickered and disappeared, replaced by all sharpness and angles from the talons that sprung from the ends of her fingers to the elbows, looking as if they could cut as deeply as any knife.

Her lack of color was in stark contrast to the blackness she produced. Shiny hair danced around her head and crawled over her arms, spewing more blackness and despair like a silver medusa. Her lips were pulled back into more of a grimace than a smile, and her pointed teeth pierced through the skin of her lower lip, each puncture permitting more of the aura of desolation to leak out.

“Allow me to introduce myself, bitch.” As the she-creature spoke, more blackness and despair poured from her and a long, forked tongue flickered in and out of her mouth. “I’m the other woman.”

I’d heard the expression,
Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned
, but hadn’t expected something from the depths of Hell to return to avenge the likes of Drake.

Although I could imagine her allure could draw any man or woman, like a forbidden fruit. Evil seeped from her—all that is prohibited, all that is temptation. Her features, though not the standard beauty, were mesmerizing. The contrast of dark and light. Her skin glowed translucent, displaying black veins pulsating through her body.

“Drake?” I wondered what had become of Mrs. Shaw, or if she’d been hosting this creature all along.

While contemplating my ability to lift the lid to the toilet and drown myself in its murky waters to end this nonstop onslaught of hopelessness, I found I still wanted to know why this hellcat had felt the need to kill me. I slid down the wall into a puddle.

Her cackle started deep in her throat and rose to a crescendo, screeching through the room as it echoed off the walls.

I cringed, as the sound was more akin to fingernails on a chalkboard than one of amusement.

“Drake?” She waved a hand at me. “Oh, he’s just one of mine. One of many.”

She spread her arms wide and black particles fell off her skin as if she were shedding. “They’re all mine.” She flicked each finger-like appendage, shedding despair and anguish as she did so. “The homeless, the outcasts, the oppressed, all of those your world shuns and discards, I embrace.” She tilted her head to glare at me. “They make good pets.”

She put her hands back onto her hips and cocked her head at me. The tendrils of hair reached out blindly to touch the sides of the stall and crawl along like blind worms. “Did you seriously think a
man
was capable of all of this?”

She threw her hands into the air and a wave of emotions hit me so hard my head smacked off the back of the toilet.

She hunkered down in front of me, and for a moment, I saw Mrs. Shaw’s prim face looking back at me. Then it was gone.

“They’re emotions, you silly whore. Men don’t understand the power of emotions like a woman does.”

I cupped the back of my head and felt the wetness of the blood seeping through my hair but couldn’t work up the energy to care. It made sense now that it would be a woman who led and created the Oppressors. While men solved their problems with physical violence, a woman would utilize deep, dark emotions to overcome you without your knowledge, using actions against you that weren’t even of your doing.

“Those idiots aren’t smart enough to rein all this in.” She swung her hand in front of me, and the despair pulled back as if a vacuum sucked it in. When her arm passed back, the weight hit me in the face as if I were fighting against an ocean undertow.

“I hadn’t planned on my strongest man being overcome by his dick.” She turned and looked into the mirror, as if admiring herself.

As the blackness fled from her reflection, I searched the glass for any sign of Mrs. Shaw, or even Tessa, but found none.

“Then again, I hadn’t realized you’d be coming around shaking your money maker and taunting all your
cash and prizes
in their face like a two-bit whore. Leaking out
hope
like cocaine to a junkie… I thought they were strong enough to withstand my test. Apparently not.”

She turned toward me and leaned against the sink. Her gaze traveled up and down my crumpled form. “Never trust a man to do a woman’s job.” Her head whipped to the right, and she flung out her arm. The door to the bathroom slammed shut before I’d realized it had been opening.

“Hope.” Chance and Griffith argued with each other while struggling with the door and fumbling with the lock. The handle rattled violently.

My heart clenched, and some of the despair lifted as I thought of my brother and the man I could love if I lived to find out.

“How sweet. You like the half-breed? Give her a human, I thought. Well, kind of. As you know, he’s not quite human. He’s better.”