Ignited (22 page)

“The day I became immortal, I hated it. Without my senses, I felt half-alive, and not a day passed that I didn’t wish for my old life.”

My fingers found the scar on his brow. Protectors couldn’t age, but there were ways for them to die. He’d once thought about ending things, and that scar had been a reminder of a day he’d come too close to acting on the impulse.

Asher reached for my hand, lowering it to my side. “I wanted to be human again, to feel again, more than anything. But when you came along, none of that mattered. You have to believe me. I love you.”

I nodded slowly. Despite what I’d accused him of earlier, I’d never doubted his love.

He closed his eyes as if in relief. “I would’ve done anything for you, but loving you changed me. The idea that I might become too human, too powerless to protect you, terrified me.” His eyes opened. “But if I’m honest, I still wanted to be human.”

He said this like it was a shameful thing, but I’d never blamed him for loving the return of his senses. I’d been grateful that I could give that to him.

“Then we were captured. Your grandfather’s men beat me, burned me, drowned me, suffocated me. When I couldn’t take it anymore, they’d bring in a Healer to take care of my injuries just enough to keep me alive, and then they’d start all over again.”

My breath hitched at the pain in his words. He’d said so little about how they’d hurt him. I’d known it was horrific because I’d seen the damage to his body firsthand. The damage to a spirit was harder to grasp, though. He’d gone so many years without feeling anything, and they’d shown him only the ugly side of mortality.

Asher didn’t cry. He looked into the distance and saw nothing but the past. “They took me to the edge of death so many times that I prayed for it. And I realized that I’d been wrong all those years that I’d wished for mortality—I don’t want to be human.”

He squeezed my hand, his fingers unconsciously clenching and unclenching. “You saved me, and I tried to convince myself that I could go back to the way things were. Love conquers all, right?” Bleak eyes met mine. “But the feeling didn’t go away, Remy. I’m a coward for thinking it, but I don’t want to be this . . . breakable thing. I’m sorry I let you down.”

“Oh Asher . . .” This was what he’d been holding on to all these months. The reason he’d pushed me away. He’d didn’t blame me for making him more human. He blamed himself for not wanting it anymore.

“I didn’t keep my promise. I told you I would do anything to be with you, but . . . it’s too much. They used me against you, and there was nothing I could do about it.”

I tugged my hand and pressed my palms to his cheeks so he would see me. We’d put so much effort into not talking and hiding how we truly felt that it hurt to see him with the blinders off. He’d given me so much, and he had no clue.

“It wasn’t your fault. Don’t you see? Loving you was never about your strength or how you could defend me. After Dean, I was so broken that I thought of myself as damaged goods. I didn’t think I could love anyone or be loved by anyone. You changed all that. You with your big heart and your patience. You’re my hero, Asher. I’m stronger because of you. I have a family because of you.”

The expression on his face was half-hope and half-disbelief. His arms surrounded me and his hands clutched my jacket, gripping me so tight that I couldn’t breathe.

“I still love you, but I can’t be what you need, Remy,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

“Me, too.”

I held him as he shuddered in my arms, crying without noise. And I cried, too, because I realized what this was. It was good-bye. What we’d had was over. Really and truly over.

Eventually, he pulled away, his hand tangling in my hair. “I think you’ve known that I wasn’t the right one for you for longer than you want to admit,” he said sadly.

I didn’t want to talk about our broken bond or my bond with Gabe. Asher didn’t seem to want to, either.

“Kiss me,” he said.

I nodded, and this time, I returned his gentle kiss. My blood didn’t burn, and I didn’t light on fire. Instead, I remembered what had been with open eyes and a bruised heart. He lifted his head, and we looked at each other, feeling the bittersweet sadness of something ending.

Then Asher’s gaze shifted over my shoulder. His eyes widened, but it was too late. Someone grabbed me from behind.

C
HAPTER
E
IGHTEEN

T
wo men held me, and I struggled to free myself. One of them muttered when Asher punched him in the stomach, and I almost got away. The man retaliated with a swift blow to Asher’s head that laid him out on the sidewalk. They left him there as they heaved me into the trunk of a waiting car, throwing a black hood over my face and binding my wrists together with a zip tie before they locked me in. Through all of this, the men never said a word.

They hadn’t taken Asher, and that knowledge consoled me as my body swayed with the motion of the car. The others would find him soon, and he would be okay. The pungent scent of gasoline and oil burned my nose. The hood they’d thrown over my head was stifling, and I fought off the sensation that I was suffocating. I really, really hated small spaces. I couldn’t get my hands free so I rubbed my face against my shoulder, using my teeth to work the hood off. At last, it slid off, but I could only see the black interior of the trunk.

I considered my options. Sadly, they were few and it didn’t take long. The men had been careful not to hurt me. In fact, they’d almost been gentle, which led me to believe that they knew how my powers worked. I had no injuries to inflict on them. The element of surprise could work in my favor if they didn’t know about my speed. Then again, I was pretty sure they were Protectors, which meant they were as fast, if not faster than me.

Super. I just have to wait for a chance to escape.

Gabe’s face flashed into my mind, and I knew that Asher and Gabe had both been right about my feelings. Gabe would do anything to save me, even put his life at risk for mine. He would do all that for a girl who’d never kissed him, or been brave enough to take a chance on him. Suddenly, I regretted that immensely. My life had never looked to be long, and putting things off until tomorrow suddenly seemed like a stupid strategy. If I made it through this, I was going to kiss Gabe and throw myself into finding out what we might have together. I hoped that Asher would forgive me.

The car’s brakes squealed as we arrived at our destination, and I braced myself against the jarring impact as I rolled. I thought I heard the motorized sound of a gate opening, and then the car started again. Less than a minute later, the engine shut off and car doors opened and slammed. I blinked when the trunk opened and sunlight blinded me. One of the men—had I seen him before?—grunted and pulled the hood back over my face before I could get a good look.

Gentle hands lifted me from the trunk, ignoring my attempts to struggle. Strong, impersonal arms carried me, and I gave up fighting for the moment. That tactic obviously wasn’t going to work right now, and I concentrated on memorizing the turns the man took as he walked. That might have worked in movies, but I ended up dizzy.

“Where are you taking me?” I asked.

Silence.

I sighed. “Can you at least take the hood off? I can’t breathe.”

“If you can talk, you can breathe,” the man carrying me said. His accent sounded Irish with softer vowels and a lilting rhythm to the words.

Triumph flashed through me because I’d gotten him to respond. “So you can talk.”

He grunted again and merely shifted his hold on me. We must have reached our destination because he plunked me down in a hard chair and backed away. I let my mental walls down enough to try to sense how many bodies were in the room. I thought I felt at least three Protectors before I raised my defenses again.

“That hurts something fierce, girl,” a voice said in a thick Irish brogue.

He’d confirmed my suspicion that I was surrounded by Protectors. Only they could feel the pain caused by the hum of my powers. Someone whipped the hood off my head, and I found myself sitting at one end of a large table that could easily seat twenty people. The grand dining room had cloth-covered walls, ornate molding, and a sideboard that could have probably paid for my college education. Beside me, at the head of the table, sat the man from Muir Woods that I’d dubbed Knockoff Bond.

“What happened to the accent?” I asked him. He’d sounded British before. Now he sounded like Jonathan Rhys Myers, pronouncing his “th” as a hard “t.”

He smiled and didn’t answer. He gestured to the bowl in front of me. It contained some kind of rich, meaty stew. “Are you hungry?”

“No, thanks. I’ve never mastered the art of eating without my hands.”

I pulled up my arms to show him they were still bound behind my back. He signaled to one of the other men in the room and a moment later my hands were free. I rubbed my wrist to ease the blood flow back into it and sighed in relief as the ache in my shoulders eased.

“I remember you,” I said to the man who’d cut my tie. He was the same man who’d carried me into the house. I bared my teeth at him. “You broke my friend’s arm.”

I’d only had the briefest glance at him in Muir Woods since I’d been occupied by Knockoff Bond, but I recognized the birthmark on his forehead. The oversized man had tree trunks for arms. I sounded dangerous to my own ears, and I wondered at my daring. Who was I to threaten these men when they had me outnumbered? Despite his advantage, the man looked suddenly cautious.

Knockoff Bond laughed, breaking my concentration. “Quit threatening Sean. The man is terrified of you.”

“And you’re not?” I asked, narrowing my eyes.

He lifted a glass of red wine to his mouth and sipped. “I am not your enemy, Miss O’Malley.”

I crossed my arms over my chest. “I beg to differ. You’re working with Franc Marche, and that most definitely makes you my enemy.”

The wine sloshed in his glass when he slammed it down on the table. “I am not working with that man, and I would thank you not to accuse me of it,” he spat out, his dark blue eyes pinched in a glare.

I leaned forward in my seat, and my hair fell over my shoulder. I shoved it out of my face and scowled. “Then why did you follow Erin into the woods? How could you have known we’d be there if you weren’t working for my grandfather?”

He raised a brow, appearing bemused. “You are mistaken. I wasn’t following your little Healer friend. We tracked Gabriel Blackwell from Paris, and he led us to you.”

Crap.
Hadn’t I thought the whole setup was odd? We’d escaped with few injuries when the Morrisseys were touted as sadistic. And this man had let me go when I’d been vulnerable. In the forest, he’d asked his cohorts where “the other one” was. At the time, I’d thought he’d meant Lottie, but my grandfather’s men hadn’t known about her. No, this man had been referring to Gabe, wondering what happened to the man they’d followed into the woods.

Just to be sure I demanded, “Are you working with the Morrisseys?”

Knockoff Bond paused in the act of dipping a fork into his stew, his black eyebrows lowering in menace. “First Marche and now the Morrisseys. If you are trying to insult me, you have succeeded.”

Fear tickled at the back of my neck. Who the hell was this guy if he wasn’t working with my grandfather or the men who had my father? And what did he want from me? The unknown suddenly seemed a much worse fate than facing the enemies I knew. I glanced around the room, looking for the exit and calculating my chance of making it out of the house alive.

“Look, Miss O’Malley. I think we have gotten off to a bad start . . .”

I interrupted him, pushing my chair back from the table. “You kidnapped me off the street and you hurt my friends. No shit.”

The men behind me started toward me, and I prepared myself to fight them. But Knockoff Bond gestured for them to back off. He rose and held out an arm, offering to seat me again. “Let me explain. Please . . .”

Charm rolled off the man in waves. He exuded it, and I didn’t trust him a bit. I sat anyway because I didn’t really have another choice. He retook his own seat and motioned for me to eat. I picked up a fork, but didn’t take a bite. I wouldn’t put it past him to drug me, and I wasn’t going to chance it.

He sighed. “Lord, you are stubborn. My name is Seamus, and the two men behind you are Sean and Alec. We had been tracking reports of a Healer in New York City for months. Stories were cropping up of serious illnesses suddenly healed. A woman with cancer whose disease disappeared one day.”

“And you make a habit of tracking Healers?” I asked. That wasn’t a comforting thought. Protectors had one reason for hunting Healers.

“When they can cure cancer? Yes.”

Erin and the others had told me that I was curing things that only the most experienced and powerful Healers could. Using my powers had triggered their hunting like I’d been warned it would.

“We thought we’d found the Healer in Brooklyn when a story got back to us of a man who claimed his daughter had attacked him with her mind and that she’d given him injuries like hers. He spoke of a scary, flashing light that went off when she attacked him. The officer who wrote that in his report thought the man was crazy, but we pay attention to things like that.”

Dean.
I’d never thought he would tell anyone what really happened because it made him look crazy. That bastard had led these men to me.

Seamus paused to eat a bite of his stew before continuing. “But the Healer and her parents had disappeared before we arrived. The mother had died, and the father had skipped parole. We found no record of the mother in our Healer lineage and so we thought the matter closed. It was a fluke, a crazy man telling tales to cover up how he’d abused his daughter.”

“Stepdaughter,” I snapped. I heard my breathing and realized that I was close to hyperventilating. I focused on calming myself as he continued his story.

Seamus didn’t give me the pitying look that others often did when they found out about how Dean had treated me. His face revealed nothing about his thoughts, and I almost wished for the pity so I would know he had some kind of compassion.