Touching Smoke (20 page)

The broken chair leg was in my hand before I could even remember picking it up. The floor bounced like rubber beneath the soles of my feet when I lurched up and lunged forward.

On a good day, when everything wasn’t shifting and multiplying in front of me, and I didn’t feel as though I’d stepped into a bouncy house, I probably could have nailed Maia. But she saw me coming before I was even on my feet. Her long, freezing fingers grabbed my wrist in mid swing. The chair leg tumbled from my numb fingers hitting the carpet with a clutter about the same time as her gun.

“Stupid girl!” Maia growled, tightening her grip on me. “The boss said alive, he said nothing about you being in one piece!”

I grounded my teeth, glaring furiously into her brown eyes. “Bite me!”

Her free hand closed around my throat with an inhuman vice. My windpipe creaked beneath the crushing assault.

“You really have no idea what you’re up against, do you?” Maia hissed right into my face, her breath smelling strangely like mint — I was expecting blood or venom. Something foul. “They send me when all the others have failed. I am the one who gets things done.”

“You also talk too much!”

I grabbed her wrist and twisted. It was stupid to think it would work, but I’d seen it done a hundred times on TV and it worked every time for the hero. But Maia didn’t drop to her knees screaming and writhing in agony the way the bad guys on TV did. There was no snap of bones, just me, tugging at her wrist like a child clinging to her mother’s skirt.

Maia smirked coldly. “I guess we can cross super-strength off your list of powers.”

“Let her go, Maia!” Isaiah snarled the words horribly incoherent.

“Or what?” Maia taunted.

“The boss will be here shortly. He says to keep them entertained,” Yuri tucked the phone away and turned to the rest of us. “I say we have some fun with the girl while we wait!” Yuri added, cracking his hairy knuckles menacingly.

The whole thing would have been funny if it hadn’t been so serious. I half expected him to cackle ominously and stroke his beard — if he had one. Was it in the bad guy manual that you had to crack your knuckles and make dark threats at the same time? But honestly, I preferred the talking to the kneecap breaking.

“You seem to be having some trouble staying awake there, Isaiah,” Maia snickered. “Go ahead and take a nap. We’ll take good care of your little friend.”

The strangling hold made it impossible to glance back to see how Isaiah was doing, but I could hear his labored breathing as though he were right beside me.

“What the hell did you do, Maia?” he groaned.

Maia shrugged indifferently. “The same thing we did to little miss peppy here, only we tripled your dose of sleeping powder, just to be safe. I’m actually surprised you haven’t hit the ground yet. That’s some seriously strong stuff.”

“I think he is worried about the little girl,” Yuri laughed in his Russian brogue, sounding as amused as Maia looked. “And he should be. I am very fond of the pretty ones!”

Maia nodded. “And I brought all my favorite toys. You might not remember them, Isaiah, but I assure you they are
fun!”

“I’m not scared of you!” I growled without thinking. The lie was excruciatingly obvious when my voice wavered. I couldn’t have been more scared and she knew it.

“That’s good,” Maia purred, eyes darkening with a hunger for pain. “It’s no fun when my toys are broken before I’ve even had my chance to play. Watching you break will be the highlight of my night.”

With a flick of her dainty wrist, I was soaring, floating in the air like a balloon. It would have been serene had I not hit the ground with a crash that rattled my teeth and sent every bone in my body screaming. The dull throb left me paralyzed from the neck down, lying in a heap of arms and legs amongst a pile of broken dishes, furniture and food. Tiny black spots popped in front of my eyes, making it harder-and-harder to keep them open.

Behind me, something growled. The sound overpowered ever other noise, and still not coming anywhere near human. It dominated the room with a fierce rage that shook the ground and spiked a cold chill down my spine.

Had they summoned a massive dog to finish us off? Was that what we’d been waiting on?

The terror of being shredded to pieces had me twisting onto my back just as a large blur leapt over me and lunged at Yuri. I think it had been aiming for Maia, but she wisely dove aside at the last second, leaving Yuri to take the blunt force like a fly against a windshield of a car doing two hundred on a freeway. I half expected to hear the
splat
when Yuri flew into the wall across the room. The plaster caved, showering him with bits of drywall and paint chips. A cloud of smoke engulfed him, momentarily obscuring him from sight.

Standing like an avenging angel over Yuri’s prone body, Isaiah snarled somewhere in the back of his throat, sounding so much like a wolf. I almost cringed with fear. No human should ever be able to make such a sound. It was raw fury wrapped in feral and protective determination. It was beautiful. Every nerve ending in my body shivered. Goose bumps prickled up my arms. A feeling of pride and something else, something warm and intense swelled up inside me even as fear gripped me a second later when Isaiah swayed, barely catching himself on a table corner before collapsing onto all fours, energy taxed.

“Gaston. Mistral. Stand watch outside for the boss,” Maia reached around behind her and produced a lethal looking device from the same mysterious compartment as the walkie-talkie. “I’ll deal with this.”

The twins moved without a sound. They glided like spirits from the destroyed restaurant, disappearing a second later out the front doors.

Maia twisted the knob on the side of the oval contraption. A low hum began to rise from it, sounding a lot like a bug zapper. My stomach churned with an icy grip. A bulge of panic lodged in my throat, suffocating the cry climbing up my chest.

“Don’t touch him!”

Shards of glass cut into my hands as I shoved to my feet, throwing myself at Maia in foolish desperation to stop her from harming Isaiah. But the Asian beauty saw me coming from a mile away. She never so much as batted an eyelash when swinging her weapon wielding arm and backhanding me into the darkness.

Waking up was like flicking on every throbbing point in my body. I was instantly aware of the pain in my shoulders, my arms, my head, my jaw, my… well, everything. Everything hurt and I would have happily slipped back to that cool, dark place only a breath away, except I couldn’t let myself, not yet. I had to find Isaiah. I had to see if he was all right, if they’d hurt him, if he was alive.

“Hold still,” a soft voice, whispered. Something stroked my brow.

I pried my lashes open, squinting up through a murky white screen to the dark blot hovering over me. “Isaiah?”

His face materialized into view. “Hey.”

He was with me. He was alive. Relief had my eyes closing for a moment, silently murmuring a prayer of thanks before I forced them open again.

“Am I dead?” Was it possible to be in so much pain and be dead?

His lips curved into what could have been a smile if his eyes weren’t so serious. “Like I would let you die.”

I expelled a groan, closing my eyes again. “I feel dead.”

Cool, soothing fingers glided along the side of my face, brushing an especially tender spot just hugging the curve between my eyebrow and my cheekbone. I flinched at the touch as if he’d struck me with a lit match. A low hiss whistled through my teeth and I opened my eyes.

“Ow!” I whined, reaching up and capturing his hand. The rage in his eyes was unmistakable, even if his teeth hadn’t been bared in a snarl and his hands hadn’t balled into fists. “I’m okay,” I told him softly, squeezing the hand I held. “It probably looks worse than it is.”

He shook his head slowly. “It looks fine.”

It was a sweet lie. I could see it in his face. He was trying not to show it, but there was a dangerous spark of anger in his eyes every time they flicked to
that
side of my face.

“How are
you?”
I asked, turning the topic away from me. “Are you hurt?”

Instinctively, I raised a hand and touched the side of his face, letting my thumb brush his cheekbone, the line of his nose, the curve of his jaw. I don’t know what possessed me to do it, but it felt as natural as the sun coming up every morning. The muscle in his jaw twitched beneath my palm. His eyes darkened with an intensity that sent fire blazing in my gut, and for just a split second, I thought he would kiss me. I hoped.

“Nothing that hasn’t already healed,” he murmured quietly, shattering my desire to feel his lips on mine. “It’s you I’ve been worried about.”

I grinned. “Mom always said I had a thick skull. Nothing can dent it. Where are we?” I asked when he didn’t comment on my teasing.

He sighed heavily. “Still at the restaurant. They threw us in the storage room and have all the exits blocked.”

I surveyed our surroundings, not sure at first what I was looking at. The narrow tunnel looming high up above us seemed out of place from my reclined position on the ground. The floor was laminate, the cold bleeding through my clothes. My head was on Isaiah’s lap, but the rest of me, from the shoulders down, were stiff from having lain in the same position on the hard ground for so long.

I pushed upright, wincing as all my joints protested. Isaiah helped, holding my elbow until I was standing on my own feet without swaying.

The room was small and lined with row-after-row of shelves, brimming with an assortment of vegetables, canned goods and other food items.

I picked up a can of corn, examined it, then set it down and turned to him. “Why are we in the stockroom?”

He shrugged, shaking his head. “This is where they put us.”

“Why hasn’t Garrison come for us yet? How long have we been here?”

“Roughly about two hours,” he guessed, scratching his jaw, “and I don’t think Garrison is as close as they like us to believe, otherwise, he’d be here already.”

“Have you found a way out yet?” I asked, doing a circle in the cramped space.

He folded his arms. “No, I haven’t.”

I turned to him, frowning. “Why not?”

His brow arched. “Because up until two minutes ago, you were still passed out.”

I blushed. “Well, I’m up now so come on!”

“Easy, Rambo!” he snatched up an open bottle of water off a shelf and pressed the drink into my hand. “Sit down. Just relax for a minute.”

“We have to get out of here!” I protested, but sat on a crate of potatoes, cradling my loopy skull in one hand and taking a gulp of water with the other. I rinsed the cotton from my mouth first, gurgling and then spitting the water out into a nearby mop bucket. I repeated this twice before drinking the lukewarm water.

 “We will, just let me think,” Isaiah said, ruffling a hand through his unbound hair.

I watched him pace, taking three short strides in either direction, anxiety creeping up the back of my throat. Any minute now, Garrison and his circus clowns would come barging through the door and we had no way of defending ourselves, unless we threw vegetables or cans at their heads.

I set down the bottle of water and plucked up a large, dented can of beets. I tested its weight in my hand. My mother always signed my notes to get out of gym class because of my hunger problem, so I wasn’t sure how well I would do if I had to pitch anything, but I was willing to try if it meant getting out of there alive.

I tossed the can up in the air and caught it with both hands — heavy, just enough weight to really bash a person’s skull in, but would it work against superhumans? Well, there was only one way to find out.

The beets inside sloshed as I repeated the toss a second time, a little higher, attempting to catch it with only one hand, just to see if I could. The metallic corner caught a sliver of something about halfway up. The spark had me forgetting to catch the can. It hit the concrete floor with a dull clunk and rolled beneath one of the shelves. I left it there as I leapt to my feet and spun around.

“Isaiah!” I blindly grabbed his arm and pulled him to my side. “Help me!”

Using the potato crate and the shelves as a ladder, I dragged myself up the wall, following the narrow slit of light filtering from between two shelves somewhere near the top. Isaiah’s hands were firm and warm on my waist as he helped guide me up.

“I see light up here!” I told him, excitement puffing out with every pant.

It got tricky around the top where it seemed the shelves were a little more out than the ones at the bottom and the ceiling was pretty low, squishing me into a dangerous position where I was balancing just on the toes of my sneakers on the shelves below and grappling on with my arms and elbows at the top. At that height, Isaiah’s hands were just brushing the bottom of my sneakers. If I slipped… he would never catch me in time.

My sweaty fingers pinched tighter to the dusty plank. I swallowed audibly. My limbs trembled slightly as I unlatched one arm just enough to push aside the rows of ancient canned corn and green beans. A can missing its wrapper slipped off the shelf.

“Watch out!” I called, struggling not to glance back over my shoulder in case I lost my grip. The can hit the ground with a loud clung and rolled somewhere. “Are you okay?” I called down, breathing hard, choking on the dust blanketing everything around me.