Shadowed Ground (3 page)

She’d twisted left. Eliot’s right arm was extended mere inches from her. Enough, something inside her said anyway. She pushed into the curve of his body, his needle-tipped right arm already pulling back from its swing. Instead of toppling him, as she’d expected, she found herself held tightly in his arms. His grin was huge. “Now you’re getting the hang of it,” he said.

“Son of a bitch!” she shouted, enraged. She kicked at his shins, her fists trapped against his chest, useless.

“Not that you’re hurting me,” he said mildly, “but you are wasting energy you’re about to need.”

“You let me go, you son of a…”

“Almost every fight winds up on the floor. If you find yourself in a hold like this, instead of struggling, hook your foot behind the attacker’s knee and push. Go ahead. Trip me.”

“But my arms,” she started to complain. His face darkened. She felt a foot behind her knee; they were falling before she finished the third word. He landed on top of her, holding his weight off her with the palms of his hands.

Inches from her, blocking all light, his entire body radiated heat and anger. “You don’t get second chances.” His soft voice was velvet over steel. “Not when someone really, really wants to hurt you.” She was acutely aware of the jeans-clad legs tangled with her own. “Did you get a second chance when that creature burned you? Did your boyfriend give you one?”

“He was not,” she hissed, moving her arms to hold him while she kneed him in a very painful place, “my boyfriend.”

But he was already gone. “Excellent,” he told her, grinning, pulling her up beside him so fast the room was a blurry tunnel with him at the end. She wanted to ask if he meant excellent that Griffin wasn’t her boyfriend, or that she had tried to make a eunuch of him. She decided she didn’t care, and that she would make a eunuch of him anyway.

Next, he made her stand, poised on the balls of her feet, watching her. He moved so close they were almost touching; he, too, stood on the balls of his feet, but he had a tense, coiled readiness she lacked.

“Look at my eyes,” he said.

“Mmm-hmm,” she agreed, narrowing her own. “I doubt I’m going to be attacked by deranged hypnotists.”

He ignored her sarcasm. “An attacker’s eyes always change before they strike. They’ll move their eyes the second they decide which way they’re going. Watch closely.” He tapped her, lightly but fast, with his needle. “Did you see it?”

“No.”

“Seriously. Watch my eyes for the change.” He poked her again and again, lightly this time, while he stared intently at her. After a few moments and countless stabs, she began to see it. There was an almost imperceptible flick of his eyes towards his target before he moved.

“Ok, I see it now. I’ve got this. You don’t need to stick me anymore.” She tried to keep the pleading sound out of her voice. She had a feeling it would only earn her more torture.

That’s when her muscles decided to remind her they existed. She started shaking. Just a little, at first; then her calves seized up from standing on the balls of her feet for so long. Her arms, worn out from blocking, soon followed. Every strike he’d made against her swelled into a single, huge throb of pain. The muscles in her arms and legs spasmed and there was not enough oxygen in the room.

“Chloe?” he asked, his breathing already steady, his voice completely calm and reasonable. His left arm joined his right one at her waist, holding her lightly. “Are you ok?”

His stupid, casual, comfortable question enraged her. Her rage was so blinding and instantaneous it burned cold deep within her. She felt frozen inside, and inside the frozenness, she found a calm place that pulsed with power. She didn’t even have to reach for it; it wrapped itself around her and turned off her brain. Her body temperature dropped a few degrees. She felt distant waves pounding against her skin exactly as if she was made of sand, and not a person in a living room at all.

“No,” she heard herself say flatly. “I am very much not ok.”

Eliot’s eyes widened and his entire body tensed as he felt her building fury. “Chloe, don’t,” he half snarled, half warned as he pulled her flat against him and dropped, burying her face in the crook of his neck. His arms scissored up, covering their heads as all the windows in the room exploded inward. Glass and wet sandy wind smacked against walls and furniture, sweeping objects off tables and knocking pictures from walls. His hold on her convulsed and tightened as another gust of water-soaked wind swept through the shattered windows. It sent broken glass skittering and soaked them both. Eliot jerked; she felt, then, that he’d been hit, and she struggled to get out from underneath him.

“Not yet,” he cautioned. He waited before easing off her and onto his knees. He pulled a chunk of glass out of his bicep with a wince. For the first time, she noticed he was bleeding. She looked at the mess around her. In her blind rage, she had completely and totally trashed the house. Everything was covered with glass and sand. Pools of water dotted the floor. Shredded curtains dangled in shattered windows like shrouds.

Eliot held a six-inch long shard of glass tipped with his blood.

“Oh my god.” She started crying, hard. “I don’t know how I did it. I don’t know. Everything hurt, and then I felt cold all over and it wasn’t me anymore.” She hiccupped. She always hiccupped if she got upset enough.

He ignored the house and the blood and watched her closely. “Ssshh,” he said. “It’s ok. Just calm down.” He was concerned, but not for himself or his trashed house. His was concern was for her, and that made her cry harder.

“You’re,” hiccup, “bleeding. And I,” hiccup, “destroyed your house.”

“I expected some kind of reaction. Hoped for it, even.” He took in the damage with a swift arc of his head. “Not that reaction, exactly, but that’s ok. Do you feel better? Can you get up?” She nodded. She wanted him to hold her so badly she could taste it, but he was soaked and injured with the force of her anger. She was suddenly terrified of that anger, and of the other unexplored, powerful parts of herself she had just brushed against. “Good,” he exhaled, relieved. He brushed her hair back from her forehead with a relatively uninjured hand. It trembled a little, and she realized he was afraid, too. Her Guardian was afraid of her. Or for her. Great. Just great. “Let’s get out of here for a minute.” He hauled her up quickly, decisively. “I have glass in my back and I can’t get it out by myself. It stings like hell.” She started crying and hiccupping again.

He took her away from the house, to the very end of the boardwalk, before he let her see his back. Her hands shook as she pulled out large chunks of glass. The smaller shards came out when he pulled off his shredded shirt. Old scars and bloody new marks decorated his skin, so different from her own pale smoothness. Except for my burn scar, she realized, startled.

After she removed the glass from his back, he patted the boards beside him. She eased herself into a reluctant crouch beside a shirtless Eliot who had his legs stretched over the side of the boardwalk. For a long time, they just listened to the waves.

“You were doing so well, moving quickly and concentrating so hard.” He curled bare toes in sand. “When Cass first ran me through those exercises, I cried and screamed like a baby.” He grinned and kicked at the sand. “Of course, I was a lot younger. And Cass used a real knife.”

“Of course,” she returned dryly.

He grinned at the sun instead of her. “But you didn’t. You kept going. I should have seen, and known to stop. I’m sorry.” He paused, hunting words. “You can hurt yourself, pulling on the elements like that. You’re not supposed to be able to do it before….” He hesitated. “Before we get to the Landing. We’re alone in this and in a lot of ways, I have no idea what the hell we’re doing.”

“Neither do I,” she almost wailed. “I couldn’t control it. It just took me over, Eliot. That was scary as hell.”

“But that’s a good thing,” he insisted. “I mean, the house is well and truly trashed, don’t get me wrong. But this is a part of you that’s coming to life, and it will only get stronger. Better to know now, and figure out how to channel it at our enemies.”

“What if I do it again, but worse?” she whispered.

He looked out at the waves for a long time. “Everyone I know who can help you with this is dead.” The last word came out in a whisper. “I can’t help you with the elements, Chloe. I can tell you that using them around the Abandoned will draw them, quickly. I can tell you that drawing on land that’s been poisoned- by their presence, by chemicals and industry- can make you very sick. That’s part of what happened in Atlanta. I can tell you that you’re the best weapon we’ve got.” He grinned at her suddenly. “And of course, I can get better at not pissing you off, and getting us the hell out of the way when I do. But a lot of people want to kill you, so we can’t afford to stop training. As much as it kills me and hurts you, a little pain and soreness is a decent trade for an increased chance at your survival.” He squeezed her fingers and pulled her up beside him. “There is something that may help, though. Your aunt’s diary. You should read it. I’ll start on the house.”

She eyed him guiltily. “I should help.”

“Uh-uh. You should try and find out how to control yourself so neither one of us has to clean up a mess like this again. Unless it’s on purpose, of course.”

He held lightly to her hand while they walked up the boardwalk. He kept himself slightly in front of her. She had a good view of his sliced-up back. “Let me do something to bandage your back and arm, then I’ll read,” she countered quietly, still not quite able to believe she had something so powerful buried inside her somewhere.

Chapter Four: Annwyn

With an entire floor separating her from the unsettling Eliot Gray, Chloe gingerly peeled off her clothes. She heard him turn on music, heard him sweeping up glass, and hung her head. He was stuck cleaning up her mess while she dealt with old ghosts in the form of a dead aunt’s diary and unwanted new memories.

She ruled out a shower almost immediately, conscious of the burns across her shoulders and neck. She wanted to feel streaming heat, to feel the stink of fire and fighting literally wash off her and disappear down the drain. She knew it wasn’t possible. Forgetting would never be possible; she’d carry the events of that night with her forever, branded into her skin, a silvery map of how screwed up her life was.

It would have to be a bath. At least, in the bath, she would be able to keep her neck and shoulders above water, and the sting of Eliot’s little needle would lessen after a moment or two. She would change the bandages on her neck and shoulders after, anyway, and then maybe Eliot could help her wash her hair at the kitchen sink. She felt herself flush with anger and embarrassment immediately after having the thought.

While the tub filled up, she rooted around in the bathroom closet with shaking hands. She found huge fluffy towels. There was a large basket stuffed full of toiletries. It was obvious a woman had stayed here. Chloe thought briefly of her unknown aunt, and of the journal she’d cast aside as soon as she trooped back up to her strange bedroom. I wonder what I’ll find out about her, she thought, and about myself.

She got a nasty surprise when she finally, after what seemed like days, stripped to the skin. Her knee was swollen and bruised. She remembered twisting it when she fell in a heap in a darkened room. She remembered kicking Griffin. Chloe’s fingers curled into fists as she looked swiftly away. Later. There would be time to deal with her feelings about Griffin when her life wasn’t in imminent danger. One deep breath, then she swept up her hair on top of her head and turned her back to the mirror.

Chloe saw red flesh scabbing over in places. Two hands spanned her shoulders and neck, burned into her skin like skeletal wings. The thumbs met right at the base of her skull. That part was the most healed. She could just make out a faint silver color pooling in the middle of the thumb-shaped scars.

Branded, her mind kept repeating. I’ve been branded with their poison and now I look like a tattooed freak.

She realized her fist was in her mouth to keep the screams inside.

It’s ok, it’s ok, she told herself fiercely. Things are going to get a lot worse than that.

But she wondered how she could possibly stand it when they did.

Wet from the fastest bath of her life, Chloe collapsed into her borrowed bed. She’d scavenged a soft, oversized t-shirt from the room across the hall and threw it hastily on over a pair of too-big boxers. I’m going to need clothes, she thought grimly, rolling up the waistband of the baggy shorts. Her sundress from what seemed like lifetimes ago lay in a singed heap at the bottom of the bathroom trashcan, where she’d stuffed it as soon as she found it in a corner of her room. The fewer physical reminders she had of that night, the better.

She snatched up the diary, for once grateful the red leather book had the power to distract her. Chloe ran her fingers over the cover of the only recorded history of a past she didn’t remember. Her fingers fumbled with the ribbon. The trembling only got worse as she tore open the envelope with her name on it.