Frost Fire (Tortured Elements) (17 page)

Her eyes lit with hope. It was just for an instant, and just long enough to make Drake cringe. She still thought there was a chance Shieldak was going to change his mind and take everything back.

“Luke told me he’s going to let someone else track you down,” Drake said, and the hope faded from her eyes. “I think that someone is Dad. Rhaize, I mean. Shieldak is going to save face and let the Keepers do the dirty work.”

He hated the way he sounded. Like Shieldak’s plan was actually going to work, like Dad would actually catch and kill Allai. No. He wasn’t going to let that happen.

Drake pressed one hand to his ribs, and used the other to push off the ground. Allai watched intently as he rose, he eyes scanning over his injuries. He didn’t like her staring like that, with pity in her expression. Pity was what he’d always felt for her, not the other way around.

He offered the girl his free hand. She didn’t hesitate before taking it, her soft palm pressing against his calloused one. The contact felt natural. Normal. Like something he might have been born for.

Blood still clung to her hand, darkening her skin and clinging to the crevices of her palm. It didn’t look right, and Drake had a sudden urge to wipe it all off. But he ignored the urge and helped Allai to her feet.

“I’m sorry,” Allai muttered as she stood. She brushed some debris off her skinny jeans, smearing blood across the fabric. “I’m the one who should be helping
you
up.”

“Where’s your knife?” Drake asked. He ignored her apology. There was no need for it in the first place, so a response would be pointless.

Allai pointed to the ground. Drake looked to where she pointed, and saw that the knife lay a few yards to his left. It must have been dislodged from Conrad during their last struggle.

Drake walked to the knife. He tried to keep his gait steady, but every step was like walking on a tossing ship. Unsteady. Unbalanced. He knew he looked like a bumbling idiot, but he just gritted his teeth and pushed forward. He would have to walk the quarter-mile to his truck in a little while. This was nothing.

When he reached the knife, he took a deep breath and bit his lip. Then he leaned over, his ribs screaming in protest, and snatched the knife from the ground. When he straightened, he let out another gasp. Gasping was good, gasping was distracting. It let him forget the pain, if only for a second.

Allai’s heartbeat approached, along with her footsteps, which were as loud as ever. Her gentle hand rested on his shoulder. It hurt. Her hand pressed right on a bruise Shieldak had given him earlier.

Her touch still felt good.

Drake brushed some dirt off the Hunter’s knife and flipped it around, so he held it by the tip of the blade. He turned to face Allai, and she stared up at him with wide eyes.

“Where did you get this?” Drake asked.

Allai slipped her hand from his shoulder, and he instantly regretted the question.

“You left it in my truck.” Her gaze was turned down, her fingers slowly bunching into a nervous fist.

Drake smirked. Even that hurt. Damn Shieldak and his punches. “You’re a terrible liar, little Nox.”

Allai shuffled her feet a little. “You won’t tell…” She trailed off and looked to the ground, hiding a frown. He watched as she swallowed hard, her hand reaching up to rub at her eye. She made a little choked sound, like she was holding back a sob.

Drake voiced her thoughts for her. “There’s no one to tell, little Nox. Just me.”

He hoped the girl didn’t balk at his harsh reality. And she didn’t. She just nodded and slowly unclenched her fingers, letting the tension run out of her. Maybe she hadn’t lost all her toughness over the years.

“I stole it from a Hunter a couple years ago,” she said. “Dad…
Shieldak
wouldn’t give me a weapon to protect myself with, and I thought I needed one. After, you know…” She trailed off and nodded to him.

Drake winced. Yeah, he knew.

“So I stole that from a young Hunter,” she continued, pointing to the dagger. “He nearly got expelled from the Sentinel for losing the knife. Shieldak never even thought to suspect me.”

His smirk grew. She definitely hadn’t lost all that toughness.

The dagger felt cold and heavy in his hand. It was foreign, such a human-like weapon, and useless to him. But to the girl…

He held the Hunter’s knife out to her, handle first. “Take it.”

She looked at the bloody weapon hesitantly, like she thought it might bite her. Or worse.

“Take it,” he insisted. He moved it another inch toward her. “It’s yours.”

She shook her head. “It’s against the laws to wield a Hunter’s knife if you’re not full-blooded Hunter.”

Drake scoffed. “Isn’t it a little late to start caring about the laws?”

She opened her mouth, and he could tell by her panicked expression that a protest was building. He held up his hand to stop it. “Whose laws are you talking about, little Nox?”

She slowly closed her mouth, but then opened it again to ask, “What do you mean?”

“You said it’s ‘against the laws’ for you a wield a Hunter’s knife. Whose laws?”

She paused for a moment. He could almost hear the wheels of her mind turning as she struggled to come up with an answer. “Everyone says that.”

“Everyone?” He let his skepticism show. Or maybe it was cynicism. Whatever it was, it made her reconsider her answer.

She stared at the knife in front of her as she quietly said, “Everyone in the Sentinel, I guess.”

“And who just completely screwed you over? And who thinks you’re the scum of the earth, and that you’re not equal, and that you deserve death?”

That was probably too far. There were only so many major realizations a person could have in one day, and Allai had pretty much used up all of hers when she found out she was a Mage. Scratch that—a
disowned
Mage.

Her fist bunched up again, but this time there was anger in her expression. He could hear her heartbeat quicken. Then she let out a deep sigh, and all the tension left her.

“Everyone in the Sentinel,” she whispered. She was still staring at the knife. “Everyone in the Sentinel thinks that about me.”

He offered her the knife again, moving it just a little closer to her.

This time, she took it.

One of Allai’s hands clutched the steering wheel, turning her knuckles white. The other she used to hug her backpack close. She remembered the first driving lesson Shieldak had given her when she was thirteen, and one of the rules he’d drilled into her:
“Never drive with one hand. It’s dangerous, and it makes you look lazy.”

He was probably right about the first part, but she was pretty sure she didn’t look lazy right then. ‘Shocked’ might be a better word. Or maybe even ‘terrified’, as she clutched her backpack so tightly that her hand was beginning to ache.

Drake kept shooting the backpack suspicious looks, like he thought it might bite him. And Allai couldn’t really blame him. Luke had gotten her the backpack a few years ago; he’d gone into the city, and she’d asked him to bring back a ‘hiking pack’. Luke had returned with this backpack: hot pink, with purple unicorns leaping across the fabric.

It was the last time she’d asked a blind person to go shopping for her.

But she didn’t care that the backpack was bright pink, or that Drake was suspicious of it, or that it made her look ridiculous. Because the backpack was all she had left. She remembered tossing it into her truck two, maybe three years ago. It contained the first aid kit and water Shieldak made her keep in her truck. She’d never ended up needing the supplies, but now the pack felt like the one thing keeping her alive. Because it was the only item she’d been able to salvage from her ruined truck, and because it reminded her of Luke and the Manor and
that
life. Her old life.

She should probably regret keeping the pack. It made her look weak—taking the time to dig through her truck, while she was being hunted, just to save a ratty pink backpack. But she didn’t care if it made her look weak. And she didn’t care if she should feel regret. Because she didn’t.

A deep sigh came from beside her. Allai didn’t turn. She knew the sigh belonged to Drake, and she knew he was sitting very, very close to her, and that he was staring
right at her
. When he hadn’t been shooting uncomfortable glances at her backpack, he’d been shamelessly staring at her. She was beginning to wonder if he’d gotten a concussion.

“Can’t you drive with both hands?” Drake muttered.

He sounded like he was in pain, which he probably was. No,
definitely
was. But most of her pity for him had faded away in the past five hours of driving. The entire time, he’d stayed unnervingly quiet, just staring at her. His gaze intense, his golden eyes boring into her. Couldn’t he stare at something else? Like the road, or the radio. Even if he would monitor the speedometer, like Shieldak always did, it would be better than this one-sided staring contest.

Allai clutched at the backpack tighter. She need to get his eyes off her. Immediately.

“We have no clothes,” she blurted.

Drake scoffed. “Are you wishing out loud? Or are you suggesting we make that happen?”

“No! No, I mean…” She took a deep breath. “I mean we don’t have any
extra
clothes. Or any of the other stuff we need. I think you lost that duffle bag.”

“Well excuse me for that. I was a little preoccupied saving your life.”

She sighed. “I’m not blaming you, Drake. I’m just saying. We have no clothes—
extra
clothes, I mean—or food, or money for any of that stuff. I put Luke’s credit card in that duffle bag.”

“It’s not a problem,” Drake said.

That could only mean one thing. She almost laughed as relief bubbled up inside her, and for the first time in days—weeks?—a grin worked its way onto her lips. “So then we’re not travelling far? The Chimeras are close?”

He smirked. Her grin faded.

“Little Nox,” Drake said, “I wasn’t kidding when I said we’re taking a road trip. We’re going to Idaho.”

“
What
?”

“Yeah. The Chimeras live as far away from the Sentinel and the Keepers as possible. Can’t blame them for it, either.”

Her heart beat a little faster, and she tried to take a deep breath. “But that’s days away! How can we get there? We have nothing, Drake.”

“We have this truck. And you. But you’d probably go for more. I hear human trafficking is big in Cleveland.”

She took her eyes off the road to glare at him. That was definitely breaking another one of those road-rules. And she really didn’t give a shit.

He raised his eyebrow. It was the one with the piercing, and somehow it made him look a little threatening, despite the benign nature of the gesture. “That was a joke, little Nox.”

“It was
not
funny.”

He scoffed. She wished he’d stop doing that and actually laugh. “You just lack a sense of humor,” he said.

She almost laughed at that. Almost. The general situation killed most of the humor. But, still, it was amusing. Drake Rhaize, the guy who couldn’t even smile correctly, critiquing her sense of humor?

Then it struck her. She actually knew Drake well enough to know his smile. And she let out a little sigh of relief at that. Because maybe all those years of fearing him hadn’t done as much damage as she’d thought. Maybe they could still be friends, or whatever they’d been back then.

The lockgem felt heavy around her neck, and she let go of the backpack just for a moment. Just so that she could reach up and touch it. It was strange to think that this simple stone could kill Drake in an instant.

And it was even stranger to think about how much that idea completely abhorred her.

She looked back to the road, watching as the cracked pavement sped past. It was dark, and her headlights only illuminated a small portion of the road. She wished Drake was driving. She hated driving in the dark. But Drake was injured, so she couldn’t ask him to drive. And, besides, there weren’t any other cars on the road, so it wasn’t
that
bad. Just dark and gloomy and a little scary.

Allai wondered if that was normal. Should she feel scared? She was a Caedes, after all. And she still remembered what Shieldak had once told her about the other three Caedes Mages:
‘Flacks and Corinth are fearless, Allai. The only thing that scares them is losing their magic. As for Matthias, the third Caedes Mage… He’s beyond fearless, and that’s what makes him so dangerous.’

Maybe that’s how she should feel: Fearless. She was born a Caedes Mage, and nothing should scare her.

So then why did she still feel so terrified?

“So,” Allai slowly said out-loud. She needed to concentrate on something else other than her fears. And quickly. “How are we
really
going to get to Idaho?”

“Don’t you have a solution?” Drake asked. “I’ve already saved you twice today. You’re welcome to repay me a little.”

“I saved you, too,” she snapped. She instantly regretted saying it. Because mentioning their encounter with the Trident made her remember it.
Really
remember it. She’d been trying to push it away for the past few hours; she’d just let the numb adrenaline take over. But now that adrenaline was fading, and the memories were staring to creep back. The scent of blood, and the warmth of it, and its slickness on her palm. The Trident’s cry of pain grating against her ears. The terror.

Allai had always heard Sentinel Warriors boasting about the excited rush they got before killing an enemy. Either they were insane, or they were liars. Because she’d felt nothing but terror as she’d plunged that knife into the Trident. She’d never felt that kind of fear before.

“Watch the road, little Nox,” Drake said gently. It was odd hearing him speak so soft. Like he knew what she was thinking, and didn’t want to scare her even more.

She shook her head and little and focused on the road. “How do you do it?” she asked.

“Do what?”

“Just
fight
people. You killed Silas, and you would have done the same to Shieldak and Conrad if you got the chance.”