Fallen Eden (17 page)

Self
-preservation . . . I couldn’t escape selfishness. As if it was embedded in every pore and was now so extreme it exterminated anyone who threatened me.

“What do you think?” he asked me when I stayed quiet. “Sound logical?”

“I guess so,” I said, sounding more doubtful than certain. “But where does that put us? What good does a theory do us when there’s no way to test it? And even if we could test it, what good does that do us if I can’t train it?” I was growing more crazed sounding over each word, so I decided now was a good time to shut my mouth.

“I need you to take a deep breath and promise you’ll stay sitting right there,” he said, raising his finger.

“What—”

“No questions. Just promise.”

I rolled my eyes, my legs already bouncing. “Cross my heart and hope to die.”

He blew a loud breath through his mouth. “There actually is a way we can test my theory out,” he began, sounding careful again. “Since I have experience compacting and generating energies from my glamorous stint at Townsend Manor, I’ll attempt to pull energy from you.”

“Are you crazy?” I said, my eyes popping in horror.

“Only the tiniest bit imaginable—just enough for your body to switch into self-preservation mode.”

He’d misunderstood where my fear was directed. “I could kill you,” I shouted. “Or at the very least put you into a coma for a few days, just in case you don’t remember the last time your skin came in contact with mine when it was buzzing like a downed wire.” I shot up, not caring if I was breaking my promise of staying seated. “If you think I’m going to go along with this, you must have been lobotomized at the same time you were zapped by John’s men.”

He put on an unimpressed face. “Thanks for the concern, but I can handle myself. Especially against a newbie. Besides, I’ve got a theory about that too.”

“What a relief!” I said, throwing my hands in the air. “Is this one as asinine and crazy as the first? Because you’ve got the market on stupid cornered today, Patrick.”

“You’re just a barrel of monkeys when you’re upset, you know that?” he asked, looking as if my pacing and nail-biting were as amusing as a one-legged duck swimming in circles. “If you care to know, I don’t think you’ll be able to give me more than a quick zap, if anything.”

“You ever heard that saying that goes, ‘
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me?
’ . . .”

He smiled tightly at me. “I’ll be expecting it. I believe being able to anticipate it will give me the edge I need to break contact as soon as I feel your inner terminator charging ahead.”

“I don’t see how you think anticipating death will help you stop it, but we don’t see eye to eye on a lot of things.” I narrowed my stare at him.

“That’s an understatement,” he mumbled, his eyes creasing in the corners. “Listen, I don’t have all day to go round and round with you—entertaining as it is. I’m your instructor and this is my plan. Either we do this”—he took a quick look at his watch—“now or you’re on your own.”

My feet, fingers, and legs were tapping and swaying from the nervous energy begging to be released. “Can I at least think about this? Call me nuts, but I need more than a few minutes to agree to risk both our lives.”

“No time for that,” he said, putting the frame he’d “tossed” at me back in its place. “Besides, I’ve got a tee time in an hour and I’ll need a few minutes to recover from your
electric
touch.”

I stared at him, not able to understand how he could look so at ease with this whole thing. From his relaxed posture and expression, you’d have though we were going to be doing nothing more exciting than studying books all day.

I didn’t want to do this, not even in the slightest, but I knew Patrick was as stubborn and strong-willed as I was. If I didn’t play by his rules and go along with this, he would walk away and I’d be left to figure this out on my own, which would never happen.

“I can’t believe I’m going along with this,” I said, hanging my head.

“I can. I’m impossible to say no to.” He winked. “You wouldn’t be the first woman to think so.”

It was infuriating, he was making jokes now. Death was waiting to meet him, a mere few minutes away. He was as crazy as an inmate whistling
Zippity-Do-Da
en route to the lethal injection chamber.

“So how are we going to do this,
Professor
?” I asked, rolling up my sleeves.

His face flattened minutely, as if he was relieved. He hadn’t been as confident I’d go along with this as he’d acted. He was a good bluffer.

“Why don’t you lie down on the sofa since you’ll feel pretty rough when this is done and I’ll sit on the coffee table next to you.”

“Why don’t you take the sofa?” I said, moving towards the doomed furniture with heavy feet. “I think you’ll be worse off than me when this is over.” I made a silent wish that he’d still be lucid enough to feel pain when this suicide mission was finished.

“Thanks, but no thanks,” he replied, removing his wide leather-banded watch. “I don’t want to be stuck on a couch with no where to move—or collapse—if that’s the only way I can break contact.”

I bit my lip, taking a seat on the edge of the sofa. “That makes sense. You really have thought this through.”

“Was that a hint of a compliment I just detected, Miss Dawson?” he asked, tipping his ear dramatically towards me. “Couldn’t be.”

“Can we just get this done?” I closed my eyes and laid back on the couch, crossing my arms over my stomach. “Because I really can’t take any more of your sarcasm.”

He kneeled beside me, shrugging out of his jacket. “A woman of action . . . a girl after my own heart,” he said, thumping his chest with his fist.

I sucked in a breath and held it in while Patrick situated himself on the edge of the coffee table. He tossed one of the couch’s pillows behind him. “To break the fall, if need be,” he said, answering my silent question.

“I thought you were tough.”

“I am on the inside,” he said, reaching for my arm. Out of instinct I flinched away, but he caught it and pulled it towards him. “On the outside, I’m a delicate flower. You think I’d look this good if I let myself take a serious beating whenever the occasion arose?”

“Stop stalling,” I said with an edge, already damp from the clamminess coating my skin. “Let’s do this.”

“Commencing ignition sequence,” he said theatrically, lowering his voice an octave. His fingers ringed around my trembling wrist. “Ten, nine, eight, seven—”

“Patrick,” I said, my voice breaking. “The instant you feel anything—ANYTHING!—you break contact. You hear me?”

He leaned his face over mine, so close I could feel the warmth of his breath breaking over my face. “I’ll be alright, don’t worry. I can recover from your touch. It’s my brother who can’t.”

My skin prickled as he looked to the side. Before I could ask for further clarification, his voice boomed. “Three, two, one. Hang on.”

I felt a dull ache, something that was exponentially less intense than how it’d felt when John and his six other Council members had been pulling my energy from me, but it was still severe enough I couldn’t think about anything else. Severe enough I felt like I was watching the scene from an outsider’s perspective.

Patrick’s furrowed brow, his body shaking in its effort, his forehead beading with sweat, my entire aura emitting desperation that whatever was deep within wouldn’t roar to the surface and vanquish the life of the man sitting beside me, who was trying to help me—everything played like a slow-motion movie, reel for reel. 

Seconds passed, or minutes—it was impossible to know—and nothing changed. Patrick’s brow stayed concentrated and my teeth stayed gritted . . . and nothing. The dull ache moved up a few notches to where it was a debilitating kind of pain, but still nothing like what I’d felt a few months back—and my monster didn’t excise itself.

Patrick’s face flattened at the same time his eyes opened. He leaned back, removing his hand from my arm and studying me like I was something as confounding as an ancient rune.

“Are you alright?” I asked, popping up. I wanted to run a hand over him, but I didn’t dare. I hadn’t killed him during our experiment; it would be my luck I would now.

He surveyed his body, side to side and up and down, like he couldn’t believe he’d made it through whatever we’d just agreed to unscathed. “Impossible.”

I shook my head. “I’ll take impossible if it means you’re alright.”

He shot me a look. “I meant impossible in that, impossible I was wrong. I’m
never
wrong.”

I heaved a sigh, running my fingers through my hair. “Thank goodness you were wrong.”

“How are you feeling?” he asked, moving his attention to me. “A little worse for the wear?”

Certain he was alright, I took an introspective moment, regretting it immediately. I winced, ringing an arm around my stomach, and crashed back down on the sofa.

“That bad, huh?” he said, a hint of an apology in his voice. “I shouldn’t have held on for so long, but I was so certain that this would work.”

“Are you sure this little idea of yours wasn’t some twisted plan to get a little payback in?” I asked, trying not to move anything but my mouth. Everything else was tingling in that fresh fry-pan burn kind of way.

He grinned too angelically to be innocent. “I’ll never tell,” he said, ruffling my hair, which felt more like he was tearing out every strand from the root. I gritted my teeth.

“You look pretty bad off. You want me to find you a Tylenol or something?” he asked.

“You find me a magic pill that cures whatever I’ve got and I’ll take that. Actually, I’ll take two, just to be safe,” I said, looking over at him. To say I was relieved Patrick was alright was obvious, but it went beyond that. It almost felt like there was some newfound confidence, or assurance, growing from the knowledge I’d controlled my gift, although I had no idea how I’d done it.

“That would make my job far too easy and I love a challenge,” he said, repositioning his watch. “Why take the easy route when the hard one is so much more fun?”

Instead of it dulling as pain does with the passing of time, it suddenly spiked. The muscles in my neck tightened. “Are you sure you don’t possess a gift similar to mine?”

“I suppose we would have found out if I held on any longer . . . but no, I’m quite certain the universe couldn’t handle more than one being in existence that’s a walking, talking grim reaper.” I managed something of a glare at him. “Besides, that would ruin my reputation with the ladies and the world just isn’t that cruel.”

“So what’s Plan B?” I asked, looking at him from the side.

“It’s circling around up here,” he said, tapping his head. “Genius can’t be rushed. You think Einstein would have come up with relativity if he had someone breathing down his neck tapping their watch?”

“Yeah, well I don’t remember anyone going to Einstein and asking him to come up with a solution to death,” I said, deciding I’d try sitting up again. “So hurry it up,
Einstein.
”

He glanced at his watch. “At present, I’ve got to hurry it up to my tee time, otherwise they’re going to start without me.”

I grimaced my way to a seated position. “Who are you playing with?”

“My brothers,” he said over his shoulder as he headed into the kitchen. I heard him retrieve a glass from one of the cabinets. “William’s finally back and since we can’t get away to Pacific City, we figured we’d all surf the fairways to kill some time.”

I gripped the sofa cushions. I was jealous that Patrick would be spending the afternoon with William while I was halfway around the world waiting for my friend to die. “Why do you say
finally
? I thought you said he’s been home for awhile now.”

The water turned off and he was silent. I waited, long enough I was getting ready to call out to him to see if he’d suddenly decided to teleport himself to his golf game without saying goodbye.

“Ah, you know how it is,” he said lightly, coming back into the room with a glass of water in hand. “William can be so humdrum to be around it can seem like
forever
when he is home.” He handed me the water, like it was a peace-offering for pulling the life out of me. I took it, raising a brow at him. “Just teasing, you know how much I look up to William, but he can be a bit of a downer to be around. Especially lately.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, taking a long sip. “Is he alright?”

“Oh yeah,” Patrick answered, a little too enthusiastically to be genuine. “Never been better.”

I tried not to show my hurt. “I didn’t know William golfed,” I said, not able to picture someone like him mixing in with balding yuppies dressed in argyle sweater-vests.

“He doesn’t. You wanted to know if there was anything he wasn’t good at . . . well, golf would be it.” He chuckled, his eyes somewhere else. “He looks like a newborn giraffe when he’s putting— wobbling legs, neck straining for the sky. If there’s something I love seeing, it’s my saint of an older brother fumbling with a nine iron.”

I visualized it; William flustered on the golf course, throwing around his idea of cursing under his breath. It made me smile. “Then why are you planning on torturing him with eighteen holes if this is supposed to be some kind of welcome home shin-dig?”