Fusion (7 page)

So why, in all the world’s insanity, was Emma being stalked at night by two mutant sized Immortals? I needed the answers as much as I didn’t want to arrive at them, but this was all beside the point anyways because the behemoth twins were marching my way with slanted smiles and gleaming eyes.

My eyes trailed Emma’s direction, and relief flooded me for the shortest moment when I found her continuing on her way, totally unaware of the Immortal mono-e-duo taking place a few hundred yards behind her.

Emma was safe and oblivious. Number one priority accounted for.

And now, it was time to kick some ass.

Popping up, I wagged my eyebrows at the advancing duo, tempting them forward. Sure, they might have me outnumbered, outweighed, and taken by surprise, but what I lacked in sheer size, I more than made up for in skill and experience.

And ego‌—‌that couldn’t hurt my chances, either.

They sized me up with their gazes before looking at each other and smiling. Their lack of even trying to pretend they weren’t certain they could bend me over their knees and spank me was insulting and only added fuel to the fire that wasn’t lacking for any.

Their smiles vanished right before they charged me, the heft of their footsteps vibrating the soft ground beneath me. It was like experiencing an Immortal version of the running of the bulls, although this guy wasn’t going to run in the opposite direction of a pair of horns and flaring nostrils. This was the guy that turned bulls into dinner steaks.

It was over quicker than even I thought it would be. I usually liked to drag out a fight because I found myself in them so infrequently these days, but whether it was the built up adrenaline in my veins or whether these guys had a rock for a strength instructor was a question that would have to remain unanswered. A sweep of my leg to the right, a drive of a flat palm to my left, and two giants tumbled to the ground.

I spun around, everything at the ready for their retaliation, but none came. The two giants were still sprawled on the ground, looking from me to one another like they’d just encountered the Budda of kick ass.

And they weren’t far off.

These two were newbies, evident from their inexperience fighting, their sensitivity to the single moves I’d landed on each of them, and from the fear in their eyes. I remembered the first time I’d experienced real fear in my Immortality, just as these two were now.

It was when Hector had knocked me to the ground and held me there with his thumb, glaring at me the way I was at these two now. A newbie Immortal doesn’t realize just how fragile we are until moments like these. The moment something knocks us down from our eternal pillars.

Someone who’s been around the Immortal block a decade or two doesn’t let fear manifest in their eyes. It’s there, running through the very core of us, but we learn Immortality is a state of mind, not a guarantee.

I kneeled between the two, slapping both their cheeks to get their attention as if I wasn’t sure I had it already. Grinning manically between them, I pulled on their neckties, lifting their heads from the ground.

“Why are you here?” I hissed, grinding my jaw.

I waited, although neither looked anywhere close to answering me.

“Who sent you?”

I didn’t wait as long for their reply to this one. I knew these two would take some impressive interrogation to pull answers from. Impressive interrogation was old hat for me, but required time and focus.

I had neither right now. My thoughts were first and foremost on Emma. I had brothers who could carry out interrogation after these punks spent a little time behind bars. Hopefully not in the same prison as me or else I’d murder them if I saw them again. And then four months would become a life sentence, which would really suck for someone with my “life sentence.”

“If I ever hear, catch, or sense either of you two anywhere within one state of her again,” I stared each one of them in the eye for a good two seconds to let the threat and tone of my voice wedge its way into their less-than-bright minds, “I will rip each of your balls off and shove them down your throat.”

Both their faces curled with the image. Words were a powerful tool when wielded in just the right way.

“Sayonara, suckers,” I said before whipping their ties in the opposite direction of their owners, succeeding in an exemplary, unconscious-inducing bout of noggin’ bonkin’.

They were out. And probably still would be when the cops arrived after a certain someone placed an anonymous call that a couple hooligans were preying on unsuspecting female students. I knew the Mortal judicial system couldn’t hold them, but it would buy me time.

Time to figure out what the hell a couple of newbie Immortals could possibly want with Emma. And while I didn’t consider myself someone who readily stereotyped, these two were a couple of Inheritors if I’d ever seen some. A million and a half thoughts, conclusions, and guesses started running rampant in my head, but I stifled them all.

First things first, I needed to make sure Emma had made it safely back to her dorm and a third thug wasn’t laying in wait for her. That thought got me moving, fast. Maybe a little too fast, because just as I rounded the corner of her dorm, I barely had time to come to a screeching halt before I ran at blurring speed into someone.

A certain someone I really didn’t need to see me right now. And a certain someone who I was really glad did see me right now when her eyes amplified at the same time a smile burst like a stick of dynamite.

But once her senses caught up with her, that smile faded, and something else replaced the exhilaration that had just lit up her face. Something distinctive, something important‌—‌so, of course, I had no clue what it was.

I wanted to wrap every last inch of my arms around her, I wanted to whisper a trio of words into her ear over and over again, I wanted to kiss her senseless, I wanted to toss her over my shoulders and get the hell out of here until I found the closest vacant island to claim for our own. I wanted it all so badly I was an aching ball of damn emotion.

So I went with, “You need to get back to your dorm.”

She took a step back, like now she was certain I wasn’t just a mirage.

She didn’t move any more than that one step though.

“Now,” I whispered.

Her eyes trailed down, for a moment or for an hour, I didn’t know. I didn’t stay long enough to find out.

It was the most painful teleportation I’d made to date. The only one that made me wish I’d never been given such a gift.

“What dumbass Scarlett brother was on Emma duty tonight?” I shouted an instant later, driving my palm into the living room wall of Joseph and Cora’s place.

Joseph shrugged, unphased. My sudden outbursts, just like my appearances, were something that could be depended on like the rising and setting of the sun. “Austin,” he answered, inspecting and cleaning the items in his doctor bag. “What’s got your boxers in a twist?”

Smoke could have just billowed from my nostrils. When I’d assigned, without a loophole to veto, Joseph to scheduling Emma’s four brothers to ensure one of them was with her round the clock, I’d expected him to take his duty as seriously as he would if it was Cora’s life that depended on it.

“What’s got my boxers in a twist, brother,” I spat back, giving him every degree of a terse look I could muster, “is Emma was about to become victim to whatever the hell two Immortals on steroids wanted to do with her tonight.” Not that any one Scarlett brother, or all four combined, could have taken on two Immortals, but that was beside the point.

The stethoscope in Joseph’s hands fell into the bag with a thud.

“Had I not been there to show them messing with another man’s woman comes with a meet and greet with the death penalty, I don’t even want to imagine what could have happened.” I rammed my palm into the wall again, just hard enough it would feel cathartic without punching a hole in the drywall.

“Who were they?” Joseph asked, setting the black bag aside.

“Other than Inheritors, I don’t know,” I said, trying to add, subtract, multiply, and divide the possible reasons a couple of dudes on the evil side of Immortality would be following Emma. My equations didn’t wield any answers.

“How do you know they were Inheritors?”

Joseph and his giving the other guy the benefit of the doubt, innocent until proven guilty mumbo-jumbo was not going to fly with my mood tonight.

“Because I know,” I enunciated, giving him a don’t-challenge-me look.

He was familiar with that look and went with it.

“I’ll round up a few guys and have them do a little recon work. See if they can catch a whiff of who these guys are, where they’re from, and what they want with Emma.” He was already sliding his phone from his pants pocket when I interrupted.

“No, I don’t want
some guys
on this,” I said, hitching my hands on my hips. “I need my brothers on this. I trust you all implicitly‌—‌everyone else not so much. I need you guys on this. The three of you are the only ones I can be certain of who possess the hacks and damn Hayward determination to get it done.”

I knew I was asking a big favor, asking not one, but three of my brothers to put their lives, stations, and plans on hold to get to the bottom of this, but since I was locationally impaired and had a bit of a trust issue when it came to anyone other than a tight circle, I needed them. And I would have done it for them without a single question or thought. I
had
done the same for them before.

“You got it,” Joseph said, not missing a beat. “We’ll get it done.”

Everything inside me exhaled. “I know you will, brother,” I said, feeling everything else loosening with my shoulders. “And I know you’re not babysitters, but since Emma’s shit-for-brains brothers are incompetent, as evidenced tonight, I need you guys to work on rotating shifts. Again, I’m not comfortable trusting the safety of my girl to anyone else but my brothers.” It seemed I couldn’t trust her safety to her own brothers either. “Will you do it?”

“Done,” Joseph said, rising. “Since we don’t have this great nightly prison escape gift of teleportation and actually have to use a means of transportation that requires hours and not seconds”‌—‌the little punk was smirking at me‌—‌”we’ll each take seventy-two hour shifts. Since I’m the lucky one you happened upon tonight, I’ll take the first shift.”

He shouldered past me, smiling, as he pulled a backpack from the coat closet.

We all had the same thing, in varying colors and sizes of luggage, in our own houses. We called them our 911 packs, and they got more use than the luggage we used for R&R. Our existences, and career fields, meant emergencies were the norm, and we packed accordingly.

“I’ll hoof it over to William’s and see if he can jet me down to Stanford, and then I promise, I won’t take my eyes off of Emma once I’m there,” he said, sliding both arms through his backpack.

“Lucky bastard,” I muttered, jealous he was watching over her because I couldn’t.

“Green isn’t really your color, Patrick.” He shot me an obnoxious grin as he started up the stairs. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go explain to my woman why I have to spend the next three days with yours.”

“Joseph,” I called out as he climbed the last step. He tilted his head back. “Thanks. I owe you one.”

“No, you don’t,” he said, looking at me. “You’ve watched over Cora, Abby, and Bryn more times than any of us can count. It’s nice to be able to return the favor.”

Flicking me a wink, he loped down the hall towards his sleeping wife while I teleported west a few states to a sleeping cell mate named Mr. Rogers.

CHAPTER FOUR

If anxiety was a lethal disease, it would have killed me by now.

It took every rope of restraint and wrap of willpower to keep me from teleporting to Emma, to make sure she was safe, Joseph had made it there, and a new bunch of Inheritors weren’t tailing her. Disappearing in the cover of darkness and sleeping inmates was one thing; vanishing into thin air sliding my tray along the chow line at breakfast was something entirely different.

So my better judgment had a hell of a day beating my anxiety into submission. It was winning the war by a margin so narrow it was next to nonexistent. Of course, modern day essentials like email, texting, or even a damn phone call were a rare luxury when you stood on the other side of the judicial line in an orange jumpsuit, so there was no way for me to know with absolute certainty Joseph had everything I’d entrusted to him under control.

So I waited.

And waited some more.

By the time afternoon arrived, I was convinced I was five minutes away from combusting from the nerves, so I worked to outlet some of the worry into a rip-roaring set of bench press. I was busting out my fifth set, not even close to winded as I racked four hundred pounds, when a shout blasted my way.

“Hayward!” The prison guard who seemed to hate me just out of principle that I was better looking than him motioned at me. “You’ve got a visitor.”

I sprung off that bench like it was a vat of hot lava, untying the arms of my jumpsuit at my waist and sliding it back over my arms. The nerves wilted down; someone was here to give me an update. I didn’t care which brother it was, even if it was stick in the mud Nathanial, I was going to kiss them square on the face next time I saw them when a pane of glass wasn’t separating us.

I was all but skipping down the hallway while the grim faced guard followed along behind when I felt it. The shock that originated at the core of me and zapped down every last nerve I owned.

I felt her.

A burst of excitement was dampened by an internal,
oh, crap
.

Emma came every Saturday during visitor hours, exchanging flirty, longing, desperate, and‌—‌when it came time to say goodbye‌—‌sad looks and words. I
lived
for those ten minutes every Saturday afternoon. For those few minutes when she was aware I was near her and able respond when I told her I loved her.

However, given today was a school day and technically a no visitors allowed day, and given what had happened and what or who she’d seen last night when he should have been locked up miles away, I knew exactly the reason for today’s impromptu visit.