Ignited (2 page)

How had I missed the kind of man he was in those months I’d lived with him? I would never forgive myself for exposing my family and friends to him. I hung up on his threats and hunched my shoulders while I leaned against the phone booth. My breath puffed clouds into the air, and I shuddered. Anyone watching me would think me overcome with grief, but another kind of pain plagued me.

It didn’t take long for them to show themselves. Asher’s quiet whistle—three low chirps—signaled their arrival. One chirp for each man. Their footsteps echoed like mine had, thudding heavily. Healers then, like we’d hoped. Protectors could have attacked without warning, and these men sounded bigger and heavier than me. Lucky for us, the men of the Healer bloodline had no powers, despite Franc’s efforts. My heart pounded in anticipation, but I remained hunched over.

Warm breath lifted the hair at the nape of my neck in a moist gust, and I shivered.

“Remy,” a man said.

I looked over my shoulder. Three twentysomething men of varying sizes circled me, blocking escape. A stocky brunette with arms wider than my neck and a tattoo of a snake circling his neck. A whipcord-lean blond held a lethal-looking knife, but his hand shook as if he feared using it. He had to be shorter than my five-foot-ten height by at least six inches. The last man looked familiar, and I guessed I’d seen him in Pacifica when I stayed with Franc. Bald and sporting the ugliest goatee this side of the Mississippi, he lacked muscles and a belt to keep his jeans up. But then, he didn’t need to be muscle-bound with a gun in his hand.

Goatee-Man eyed my tall, skinny frame with disdain. “That was a stupid move calling your grandfather. He’s had a trace on that line for months.”

I twisted around. “I know.”

I dropped my hands to my side, allowing my coat to fall open. Their eyes fell to my waist. Blood stained my navy cotton T-shirt a deep violet. The blond’s eyebrows shot up. Snake-Tattoo took a huge step back, and Goatee-Man froze. Too late. My energy snapped through the air in a burst of red lightning that struck all three men. Wounds opened at their waists, the injuries duplicates of the stab wound I’d inflicted on myself in the alley twenty minutes ago. The injury would stun the men, but not stop them indefinitely.

I aimed to kick away the gun, but my body rebelled against the use of my powers with quaking knees and a thready pulse. Lucy appeared beside me, hooking her shoulder under my arm. I had six inches on her more petite frame, but she held up under my weight.

“Got you,” she said.

“Lucy, the gun!” I warned.

Goatee-Man raised the weapon. I swiveled to put my body between my sister and him. A grunt sounded behind me, and I turned. Asher had stripped all three men of their weapons and knocked them to the ground so they lay spread-eagled on their stomachs. My boyfriend hadn’t regained all the weight he’d lost in the months Franc held him hostage, but he possessed enough Protector strength and speed to take down a few powerless male Healers with ease.

Asher shoved a foot in Goatee-Man’s back. “Okay?” he asked me, the British lilt in his voice more pronounced than usual.

His question was our shorthand for
Are you okay?
and
Can you heal yourself?
I nodded.
I’m good
. Asher heard my thought, and the muscles in his face eased slightly at my reassurance.

“I can’t believe you fell for that,” Lucy muttered to the men.

In addition to the Protectors, my grandfather’s men had stalked us for weeks, tracking us from town to town. We’d hidden in a series of vacant homes, getting by on cold canned food and rare naps. Then Florida happened two days ago, and it had become clear that our strategy of running and hiding wasn’t working anymore.

The plan to use my grandfather to lure the men in had been Lucy’s idea, and Asher had gone along with it, much to my surprise. Usually, he vetoed any strategy that would put us in danger, but he hadn’t hesitated this time. Desperation and fear had infected our trio these last months, causing us to take chances we normally wouldn’t have. We’d needed to know whether Ben was alive so we could plan our next move. It didn’t hurt that we could use this to put some space between our hunters and us.

I wavered on my feet, a little light-headed from blood loss.
I can’t believe I have another stab wound because of Franc.

Asher frowned at my bitter thought and ground his heel until the man he held down cried out. I slammed my mental walls up to block Asher from my mind. He didn’t need my thoughts inflaming his hatred of the men.

“Now what?” Lucy asked.

“I saw them get out of that truck.” Asher gestured down the road at a vehicle I couldn’t see. His Protector vision beat out my twenty-twenty eyesight, and he could even see in the dark, so I believed him. He handed me the gun. “We can use it to move them. Wait here. I’ll go get it.”

“Ash—” I started, but he had already shifted into a run, the blur of his body barely visible. I sighed. “He forgot the keys.”

“You’re a traitor to your kind, turning your back on us for a Protector,” Snake-Tattoo practically spat at me.

I knelt down so he could see my face. My quiet voice sliced through the air. “He is my kind. Or didn’t Franc share that bit of news?”

His lips pressed together like he didn’t believe me.

These men had probably never heard of someone like me with both Protector and Healer blood. Nobody had, which was why both groups hunted me—either to kill me or to use me.

“My grandfather isn’t who you think he is. Ask him what really happened to Yvette.”

The blond’s eyes widened at the mention of the dead Healer’s name. Healer energy acted like a stimulant for Protectors, temporarily allowing them to feel the sensations of touch, smell, and taste that they’d lost decades ago. Franc had given Yvette to the Protectors as payment for their services, and they had tortured her to death to feel human for a few moments.

Snake-Tattoo looked away, and I gave up on convincing him. My grandfather had fooled them all into thinking he was their patron saint. I rose, wobbling a little as blood rushed to my head.

“Asher would make a killing as a thief,” Lucy observed with a wry smile. She pressed her scarf to my waist to stanch the blood flow.

I followed her gaze and watched a truck speed toward us.
Okay. My boyfriend knows how to hot-wire a car.
He pulled to a stop a few feet from us, and Asher and Lucy worked together to move the men into the truck bed with a combination of force and threats. Until I had time to heal my injury, I wouldn’t be lifting anything heavy. Asher clambered into the back of the truck to watch the men, while Lucy climbed behind the wheel and I took the passenger seat, holding the scarf at my waist.

Lucy drove toward our designated spot, an abandoned barn about five miles out of town. The scenery consisted of farmland and more farmland. We took a dirt road part of the way, and I bounced in my seat, almost crying out when my stomach screamed in agony. A trio of moans sounded from the back of the truck, and I guessed the men were wishing they’d driven a vehicle with better shocks.

“What are you waiting for? Heal yourself already,” Lucy said.

I shook my head. “Not yet. Not until we’re away from them.”

Healing myself or anyone else weakened me further. We couldn’t afford for me to be out of commission. First, we had to take care of the enemy.

The headlights shone on the barn a few minutes later. The structure leaned to the right, and weather and hard use had aged the wooden walls to a pale gray. If it had been painted once upon a time, the color had chipped off long ago. The place looked like it would fall down any minute, but it would serve our purposes. Crops stretched into the distance with no other buildings in sight. That meant nobody would stumble across the men while we made our getaway.

I jumped out to swing the huge door open, and Lucy pulled the truck into the empty space inside. As soon as she hit the brakes, Asher launched out of the truck and dragged the men from the bed by their feet. They hit the ground on their backs, one by one, their heads bouncing off the dirt. They moaned in pain, but it had no effect on Asher’s stony expression.

I shuddered at the violence in his movements. He’d changed since my grandfather’s men had held him hostage this past summer. Lately, he alternated between rage and sadness, growing more and more distant. He’d been tortured for weeks before his brother, Gabe, and I had rescued him. Maybe it was too much to expect Asher to treat these men with compassion when they’d happily hurt him all over again if their positions had been reversed. Still, the easy violence in Asher’s movements frightened me.

Lucy gathered the handcuffs we’d stashed earlier that day and helped Asher bind the men to posts a few feet away from each other. We’d also stored water for the men, and I placed a few bottles within reach of each of our prisoners.

“You can’t leave us here,” Goatee-Man said. “You can’t leave us to die.”

“Because you intended to show us so much mercy?” Asher asked.

A chill spiraled its way down my spine at the way he curled his hands into fists and stared at the man. Asher’s energy buzzed in the air, his lack of control raising the hair on my arms.

“Let’s go, Asher.”
Please,
I thought.
My stomach hurts.

Almost immediately, he snapped to attention. “Okay,
mo cridhe
. We’ll go. Lucy, do you mind driving?”

“I’m on it,” she said.

The three of us headed for the barn door, ignoring the men as they yelled. After we’d put a few hours’ worth of distance between us and them, we’d call in an anonymous tip to send ambulances their way. We passed through the entry, and Asher swung the door closed behind us, slapping on a padlock that we’d picked up at the hardware store. Then we circled around to the back of the barn where we’d stashed our latest transportation—another truck, except this one was older and more beat up than the one we’d left in the barn. The last owner hadn’t even bothered to apply a coat of paint to the gray primer, and dents lined every side of the body. It had been easy to steal because nobody would want it.

Asher tossed the keys to Lucy, and I climbed in the middle to make room for Lucy on one side and Asher on the other. A few minutes later, we rumbled along the dirt road back to town. At least the engine worked.

We hit a particularly bad dip as we turned onto the gravel road, and I moaned. An arm cradled my shoulders, and I looked up into Asher’s eyes as we passed under a street lamp. Normally, their color—a clear, forest green—distracted me, but we hit another bump and my eyes crossed at the fresh onslaught of pain. Asher’s forehead wrinkled in concern. He traced a finger across my brow and brushed my hair behind my ear, letting his hand come to rest under the thick waves against my neck. His breath warmed the skin there when he leaned close and whispered, “Let me help.”

It had been too long since he’d looked at me like that or touched me with tenderness. The love that had once blazed in his eyes had been banked or burned out for months. He’d been through hell at my grandfather’s hands, so I’d given him space, hoping and praying that he would return to me. I waited and savored every accidental touch and rare embrace.

My fingers curled around his wrist, as I closed my eyes in concentration. Then I lowered my guard to let him in. With a little time, I could heal myself from most injuries or illnesses, but borrowing a Protector’s energy hurried the process along. A second passed, and I felt it. Asher’s energy floated over me and into me, and pins and needles prickled under my skin. I used his power, manipulating it to seek out my injury. I pictured the wound and imagined the torn edges of the skin tugging together. Flames licked my skin, burning me from the inside out. Left on my own, the healing process caused me hypothermia, but when I borrowed a Protector’s energy, heat scorched through me. His power receded, and my eyes flickered open.

Asher’s dark brown hair fell over his forehead. It had grown back into a tangle of waves, hiding the scar his torturers had left on his scalp. The night Gabe and I had found him, his hair had looked as if a knife had been taken to it. Asher’s smile faded as I reached up to touch it, and he removed his arm, blocking me. He shifted toward the door, putting an inch of space between us. His physical and mental retreat cut deep when he raised his mental walls. I should have been used to the rejection after all these months, but every time he pulled away the pain rippled through me. I dealt with it as I always did—by pretending the pain didn’t exist—and Asher pretended along with me. I was afraid of what would happen if we acknowledged the cracks widening between us.

Now able to think past my injury, I shifted to meet Lucy’s worried eyes in the rearview mirror. Without preamble, I said, “Dad’s alive. Franc said he’s okay, and I think he was telling the truth.”

Lucy’s breath caught, and she gripped the steering wheel. She looked afraid to let hope in. I didn’t blame her, but I hated seeing my happy sister so changed and sad.

“We’re going to get him back, Luce.”

Her knuckles spread on the steering wheel so my fingers could slide between them, twining our hands together. “Promise?” she asked.

“Promise.”

No matter what,
I thought. I owed her that.

C
HAPTER
T
WO

W
e drove several hours before we stopped to send Franc’s men help. Asher wanted to wait longer, but I insisted. I wasn’t exactly of a mind to champion the men, but I didn’t want them to die because we’d left them bleeding. That would make us like them, and I didn’t want that.

After we called the Alabama police from another antiquated pay phone (and I’d changed out of my bloody T-shirt), Asher took the wheel. Lucy and I slept, leaning into each other and swaying with the movement of the truck. I woke when the engine shut off, the comforting roar fading into a deafening silence. I rubbed the grit from my eyes and looked around. We’d pulled off the highway at a truck stop. Harsh gray dawn light did nothing to improve the looks of the rundown café in front of us. The squat building sported dirty windows, and trash rolled through the parking lot like paper tumbleweeds.