Stolen

Copyright
©
2012 by Ella James.

All rights reserved.

Chapter 1

He is to be put to death. For crimes. Against
us
.

The words rang in her ears like gongs, inciting horror. Cayne—put to
death
? For hurting people like her? No freaking way.
 

Julia opened her mouth to argue. To tell the dark-haired Stained guy what an idiot he was. Then she saw the harsh glint in his eyes and bit her tongue.

Okay. So he didn’t
look
like he was lying. Didn’t mean he wasn’t. The thought steadied her a little. Made the too-still museum parking lot churn back to life. She heard sirens over the roar of the confused crowd, saw the flicker of streetlights as somewhere in the vast city, the power surged.

She took a deep breath.

“Look—”

Before she could go further, the guy caught her wrist and squeezed. “You don’t know who he is.” His brown eyes burned. “You don’t know what he is. You don’t know anything. If you did, you wouldn’t even want to look at him!”

Julia snatched her arm away. “I don’t know who
you
are!
Freak
.”

She wobbled back, her fists unclenching, fingers grabbing at the chilly air. The hard-eyed guy moved with her, following her retreat in-step, grabbing her shoulders like they were partners in a dance.

“Listen to me, Julia. Your ‘friend’ is not a friend. I don’t know what he wants with you, but disregarding this—” He waved from his chest to hers.
 
“Disregarding any allegiance to
your
own kind
—which should come first—he’s not whatever he made you think he was. He doesn’t have a conscience. If he told you he cares about you, he’s—”

Julia wheeled around, planning to run to Cayne. Screw the Stained guy and his lies. She pumped her arms and threw one leg out, leaping into a run. A run away from ‘her kind.’ She didn’t get far.

A millisecond later, the guy slammed down on top of her, his boyish features weighted by regret that didn’t reach his eyes.

They took her
prisoner
.

The Stained—
Nathan
, the prick’s name was—caught her by the arm, apologizing tersely for the rough treatment even as he dragged her toward two windowless white serial killer vans parked along a nearby curb. Every cell in her body cried
run
—and she could have. She maybe could have. She could have screamed and struggled, fled into the crowd. But if this guy’s posse really had Cayne—and judging from the lack of rescue, they did—she had to get to him.

How? It was hard to believe they had snared him in the first place. He must be hurt. The big question now: Would she be able to heal him? If he was hurt enough to not rescue her, their chances of fighting their way out of this were practically zero.

Julia’s heart rose to her throat when Nathan opened the door of the rear van…but when she got a look inside, it fell into her stomach. Cayne wasn’t ‘in custody’ as the guy had promised.

She tried to whirl, but Nathan’s hands clamped tightly on her shoulders. There was an instant of That Sinking Feeling…a fragment of time in which she knew she had screwed up. Screwed up
bad
. But it passed quickly, fury growing in its place.

“Where
IS
he?”

“The Nephilim is contained inside the van in front of—”

“Let him go!” She struggled, freeing one hand, slapping his chest before he snatched her hand in his. “LET ME
GO
! We didn’t do anything!”

“He did. If you want to see him, you’ll have to come with us. In
this
van.” He must have mistaken her rage for fear, because he widened his eyes in a way that conveyed irritated reassurance. “You’re one of us. We won’t hurt you.”

That as his death grip pressed a bruise onto her wrist. Julia fought the urge to scream. Just open her mouth and shriek—
this is wrong this is wrong this is WRONG!
She tried to think of a way out, but his grip tightened. “You’ve got ten seconds.
Nine.”

She couldn’t think.

“Eight
.”

What if they took Cayne and she never saw him again?

“Seven.”

She’d be alone again.

“Six.”

“Fine!” She locked her jaw, and Nathan pushed her forward.

“Good,” he grunted. “Get in.”

He stuffed her onto the middle bench between two college-aged guys in gray suits and slammed the door behind her, appearing a few seconds later in the driver’s seat.

Julia’s eyes darted around, her vision pulsing with each heartbeat. She crossed her arms and forced herself to assess her surroundings with a clear head. She could see out of the corner of her eye that there were three more
weirdos
in gray uniforms—two guys and a ball cap-wearing girl—on the back bench.

The van lurched into gear, and Julia felt the walls close in on her. How had this happened? Was Cayne really in the other van? She stared at it, willing his aura to pop into view, but it didn’t.

That’s okay. No biggie. Stay calm.

She usually had to be able to see people to see their auras. She’d thought it might be different with Cayne, but obviously it wasn’t.

You’re going to get him out. No problem.

Sweat ran down her temples, dripping down her neck. Outside the van, downtown D.C.’s huge buildings sailed by. If she let herself, she could really freak out.

Not an option.

She turned her attention to her captor, the one called Nathan. She could see his face in the rear view mirror. Short dark hair, almost buzz cut, not-bad-looking face with big brown eyes almost too pretty to be a boy’s. Long lashes… Julia’s gaze clung to his eyes and she realized:
she knew that face
. Oh God, she knew it from a
vision
, the one she’d had at Rosa’s house—the one with the pretty Korean girl on that weird train. All well and good
EXCEPT SHE DIDN’T HAVE PROPHETIC VISIONS!

And yet she’d seen him.

What did it mean?

Vaguely, she remembered the Korean girl’s friendliness.
She
hadn’t liked the guy—Nathan. But she hadn’t disliked him, either. Oh, damn: Julia thought she remembered the girl saying something like
I look forward to meeting you.

If she was going to meet some girl, she was really, truly going somewhere with these people.

And if she was going somewhere with the Stained, and they thought Cayne was a murderer… Her mind spun. Why did they think that? It couldn’t be true, could it? He’d said he’d done bad things, roamed with Samyaza… But that was a long time ago.

Was Cayne—
her
Cayne—the Cayne that had sworn to protect her and patiently helped her find these people—actually Enemy Number One?

Oh, God
. What if he was? He probably wasn’t even in the other van!

Adrenaline surged through her veins, until her vision was swimming and her breaths weren’t enough and she felt like she was going to shoot out of her skin. She looked left and right, then tried to turn around in her seat and felt a firm hand seize her wrist.

“Calm down,” the hand’s owner said softly, and she had the wherewithal to think
at least
he’s not a mind-controller, ’cause I don’t feel calm.

Her mind was slipping into aura-seeing mode, and out of long habit, she did her breathing thing. In through the nose, out through the mouth, in through the nose…

She told herself
she
wasn’t in any immediate danger. He’d said they wouldn’t hurt her. But Cayne was clearly a different matter. Whatever they thought he’d done… She shut her eyes. And if he wasn’t in the other van at all…?

The hand released her wrist, and she wondered about its owner; he was clearly a guard, but she wasn’t ‘with it’ enough to coolly look into his face. She’d started shaking, and her stomach felt like a playground for hyperactive earthworms.

She focused her bleary gaze on the windshield, half surprised they didn’t have a sack over her head. She could see the winding highway perfectly. The shoulder was choked by trees that bent and shifted in the wind, so the light of the moon flickered eerily over the roof of the van in front of them.

She decided, just for a little while, until she felt less rattled, to let herself think of it as Cayne’s van. She and Cayne were going to the same place, each in their own van, and when they got there, she would get this whole mess settled.

She thought about Cayne pressing a kiss on her lips in the Amtrak station. He wasn’t a bad guy. He wasn’t. Whatever had happened… They could fix it.

Feeling more gathered, she braved a glance at the face of the guy who’d told her to calm down. He was black, and English, if she had his accent right. Automatically she did the thing she did to read people—kind of like the way you crossed your eyes to see those 3D pop-out pictures, only she focused with her whole mind.

Whoever he was, his aura was okay. Kind of subdued—a placid amber color—but there were worse things than a boring aura. She shifted her senses to her captor, behind the wheel, and felt a sharp burst of pain under her ribs.

“Ow!” She doubled over, stunned and panting.

“Stop.”

Julia sucked in a painful breath and glared at the front seat’s headrest. The prick had sensed her probing. Obviously. Did that mean he could see auras, too? What if they were the same? These crazy kidnappers and her. They
were
the same. They were all Stained.