Mixed Feelings (Empathy in the PPNW Book 1) (25 page)

She lifted her arms to box
the air in front of me, breathing out delicate puffs of
onomatopoeia
to match each jab of her
fists. I watched her shuffle her feet like
Mohammed Ali
as she mimed punching me and it just made me
frustrated at her freedom.

“
So
where did we land on you going?” I asked when one of her hits barely
missed my already bruised kidney. Her eyes darted to my face before lowering
back to her imaginary
opponent
. She danced minutely
forward, close enough that I
worried
for my stomach with every
move of her fists. “You know, far away from here?”

Rolling her upper body like a
snake, she weaved, hooking her
left
fist
toward my face in an arc.
When I yelped and tried to flinch away, she shifted tactics and slapped me hard
with her other hand. I tasted blood inside my cheek and my ear hurt from being
smashed between my skull and the wood.

“
Dammit,
” I hissed.

“Damn what? Damn you? All
done
! You
’re with us until we’re done
with you. I wasn’t going to go after an empath, especially not a level
three
who doesn’t even know what the hell she’s doing, but I can make an exception.
With a little finesse, your empathy could be so much more than a sponge.”

I wiggled my jaw, wanting to
make sure the pain radiating down from my ear didn’t mean she’d broken my
pretty face. My silence seemed to annoy her and she shook her head.

“There’s a ritual involved
with this, one I
didn
’t used to need to
tug
out souls, but Bossman knows his stuff,
unfortunately. So, I’m stuck doing things the hard way. It’s going to take some
time and a whole lot more sad little kids but—what’s that they say? New
year, new you? Come January first, my new me will be part you!”

That broke the camel’s back.
A bevy of emotions exploded inside me: fear, anger, despair, and a tiny thread
of hope that suggested I try to escape just one more time. I shot into another
round of struggling, fighting
against the paralysis
.

The demon just watched me,
her shoulders sagging as
if
her interest in me
was waning
. She let me thrash my head a few times before
she leaned close to catch my eye.

“I think you need some time
to yourself. You’re clearly having issues right now
.
” Straightening, she lifted her hand to give me a cutesy little wave
from next to her cheek, then stepped past me and out of view. A door opened and
almost immediately slammed. It made me jump, which amounted to my head jerking
to the side in shock.

And there I was. Strapped to
a table, bitten everywhere, with a
gigantic
needle
sticking out of my arm. I did my best to concentrate, to try to figure out my
chances for survival. Chloe had been shot, probably killed. I had no idea if
Mel had made it out of the hotel room at all.

If
he was alive, what had he awoken to find? What had the
demon done to him that allowed Dirk to knock him out with one punch? If he’d
survived, had he woken in time to get Chloe to a hospital? And where were the
children? Had the demon gathered them up and brought them to remain captive
alongside me? My empathy was still no help and I still had no idea why.

The demon had said that my
powers weren’t enough to make me important and so no one had taken much notice
of me. Maybe there were tons of special humans out there, meeting to change the
world for the greater good. Maybe I was just a few shades away from being
in
some real
-
world version of the X-Men.
Was there a chance they’d find out I’d been smacked around and abducted and
come rescue me?

“
Shut up,
” I told myself, trying to
think through the blood loss and psychic abuse. Mulling over what-ifs wasn’t
getting me anywhere. I made the conscious effort not to struggle anymore, not
to waste my energy,
but I did let myself swear
like it was my job. Anger generally makes my vocabulary more limited, though,
and my cuss concoctions came out nonsensical, physically impossible and, at one
point, heavily reliant on dessert foods.

Judging by the pit in my
stomach, I figured that I’d been out
for
probably five or six hours. That gave me a starting point for doing something
useful.

“
Okay.
So you’ve been kidnapped by a demon
,
” I said to myself, trying not to dwell on the fact
that I sounded like the worst educational video ever.
“
You
’re strapped to a table,
unable to even struggle properly. This bitch is aiming to snatch your soul and
a vampire is bleeding you dry. Chloe and Mel might be dead and there’s a chance
no one even knows you’
re missing.
Your
pet bird is home alone, for god’s sake, with no one around to feed him. He may
starve—no. Stop that. Let’s look at the upsides, Gwen. Come on.” I
blinked into the darkness, my mind a blank. “Any upsides. Come on. You can do
it.”

I couldn’
t.

Chapter Eighteen

“I brought you a present.”

The pain in my neck was
excruciating.

“
Don
’t you want to see what it is?”

“What?” I asked, groggy. I
had no idea how much blood I’d lost
,
but it
was getting pretty bad. I wondered how much more I could lose without dropping
into a coma from which not even the snarkiest voice could wake me.

“Over here.”

“What?” I asked again. For a
second, I was fuzzy on the details of what was happening, but when I finally
got my eyes to focus on Dirk’s face, I remembered. I let out an exhausted
whimper
,
squeezing my eyes shut
against the urge to start crying. I was so tired, hungry, and sick. I wasn’t
sure how long I could last before my body just gave up and I passed out again.

“
Hey,
” Dirk said, snapping his fingers a few times to call my attention. I
considered sinking back into sleep instead of giving him the satisfaction of
answering. “You might want to take one last look at your boyfriend before the
demon carves up his eyeballs.”

Boyfriend?

Curious despite myself, I
opened my eyes, doing my best to focus my bleary
gaze
on Dirk and the bundle at his feet. It looked kind of human-shaped the
longer I stared at it. Even in the shadows, I could make out the curve of a
shoulder and dark hair peeking up from beyond.

Recognition snapped it into
focus
and I gasped, going tense.

“
Mel!
” I yelped, leaning forward to fight as hard as my paralysis would let
me.
 
“
Mel! Wake up!
”

“He can’t hear you
.
He was harder to bite than you were, what with the
werewolf skin and all—I nearly cracked a tooth.” Dirk lifted a finger, curled
up his lip like Elvis, and pointed to his exposed fang. “Nys threw out a little
magic, though, and now he’s sleeping like a baby.”

I
darted my gaze to Dirk, anger simmering in my belly,
bubbling upward through my throat like heartburn. It wasn’t just that he was
talking so casually about chewing on Mel—a few days ago, I probably would
have encouraged it, maybe taken pictures and posted them online—but that
it represented a larger problem.

Mel was
right there
, absolutely lousy with
car-crushing strength
and blurry speed,
and yet we were both looking
pretty screwed.

“Come on
, Mel,
” I mumbled, eyeballing him harder than I’d ever done
before. Had this been any other situation, he’d have woken up and assumed I was
propositioning him with just the strength of my will. Unfortunately for me, he
didn’t budge, remaining an unconscious lump of stylish clothes and sculpted
muscle.

I called his name a few more
times, getting louder when Dirk started laughing.
Chloe had said
Mel ha
d woken up quickly the last time he’d been knocked
out. That had to mean something now, didn’t it? Fate wouldn’t send him to me,
drop him nearly at my feet, and leave him to snooze through my execution
.

Dirk was still laughing at
me, his amusement rumbling through his lips in fitful, snorting jerks like he’d
never seen anything funnier.

I paused long enough in my
rescue attempts to throw him a glare and
i
n the
bad light, I could see what I hadn’t really noticed before.

His features held an echo of
the bony, cancer-ridden vampire Mel had described. He was healthy, whole and
strong, but with the extra shadows along his eyes and below his cheekbones, I
could see the history of illness in him. Without thinking, I jerked my
body—well, my head and neck—toward him, as if posturing.

“
I
’m going to wake him up and he’s going to kick your sorry, sickly ass.
Whatever you got from the demon or whatever virgin you sucked dry, it isn’t
going to help you when he beats you to a cancerous pulp.”
Dirk
’s laughter trailed off and his grin retreated
. I sneered.
“That’
s right, Bubble Boy. I
’m going to laugh so hard
when you’re back to the bald, germ-phobic
weakling
Mel and I laughed
over just the other day.”

Mel still wasn’
t stirring,
but something in me was. Nerves were firing
like lightning through my arms and my left foot. When I lashed out once more, I
felt the rope press against my bicep ever so slightly. My victory was
short-lived, however, as Dirk took a step over Mel’s head and stalked toward
me. I tried my best to
stay
tough but I couldn’t stop
the butterflies in my belly. Dirk stopped a breath away, baring his teeth.

I stared at him, feeling my
emotions run from anger to panic. When he snapped his jaws, I felt the scrape
of one of his fangs against the top of my lip. I cried out, jerked my head
back, and felt it crack against the table. Immediately I regretted the pain of
the impact, even while the area around the scratch went numb.

I tried to swear at him but
my lips were no longer
under
my control, numbness
spreading through the bottom half of my face. Dirk stood there, still close
enough that I could smell my blood on his breath, and laughed.

“Nys likes you talking, but I
think this is a better look on you.”
I
did my
best to glower but the paralytic had probably kept my expression several shades
away from “die in a fire!” and left it somewhere around, “did you hear
something?”

The door opened behind me
again and as the demon approached, I felt something tickle the back of my
throat. It was subtle, like taking too deep a sniff of freshly lit incense
,
but it felt familiar. She spoke and stepped into
view, distracting me from investigating the new sensation
.

“Why is he out?”

““I thought you’
d
—”

“Just because you’re walking
around like a big man again doesn’t mean you get to
think
. I give the
orders and you follow them. I didn’t give this order.”

“
Nys
—” He was cut off as she shoved into his space,
jamming
a finger into his chest. The tickle in my throat grew
into an itch, a smoky feeling of… of… what was it? Why couldn’t I put two and
two together?

The demon started in on a
lecture that I had the feeling she’d given time and time again and I did my
best to tune her out.
M
y face seemed to be waking
up, judging by all the pins and needles being repeatedly stabbed through it.
I could move my jaw again, and bite my
tongue
in an attempt to quell the itching. I sucked my lips
into my mouth, trying to get rid of the slimy feeling that reminded me of
putting
on
too much of
my mom
’s lipstick as a child. The
irritation
was growing, spreading through my throat and along my
tongue, but my lips and cheeks felt overly gooey.

I watched my captors turn on
each other, Nys giving
Dirk
a piece of her mind and him
looking like he’d had enough pieces and he’d like to give this one back. Hoping
they didn’t see my wincing attempt at bringing life back into my mouth, I
opened and shut my jaw a few times. If it was anything like coming home from
the dentist, I hoped I could solve my vampire Novocain problem with a little
extra blood flow.

I failed to remember, in that
moment, that I had no extra blood to flow.

“If you’
d just let me explain...!
” Dirk argued.

“
Oh, sure, let
’
s
hear what you think you’ve
accomplished by letting the werewolf out of his cage!”

“
It
’
s
fine,
” Dirk
insisted. The gooey feeling on my mouth had spread to the rest of my face and
it warmed. I stopped dead, my jaw hanging open, when I realized what was
happening.
“I got him good and—uh,
tucked.”

“You think you slobbering on
his neck one time is enough to keep him out of my hair for the whole day?” Nys
demanded. The
irritation
in my throat intensified,
expanding through my mouth like smoke until even my teeth itched. My empathy
was waking up much quicker than the rest of me, but I was really wishing it
would conk out again.

I
gagged hard against the
itching
of the demon’s emotions, recognizing them as
frustration just as she shot a hand out and gripped Dirk’s throat. He choked
out a strangled cry and their distraction urged
me
to be
bold
. I
concentrated on my right hand, doing my best to wiggle my fingers. My wrist
twitched, my bicep tensed
,
and then, with a flood of
pride, I bent my index finger a few degrees. The paralysis was finally wearing
off! Happy visions of a demonic murder-suicide danced through my mind, followed
by images of me freeing myself, waking Mel, and dancing into the sunset.

“Get him out of here before
he wakes up
,
” the demon ordered.

“
Relax,
” Dirk wheezed, his hands fighting against her little
fingers. “
He
’
s still out.
”

The sharp sound of glass
cracking made me jolt as Dirk’s head snapped to the side. It was dark, hard to
see, but I thought I caught sight of blood blossoming out the other side of his
face.

Nys
’
s
arm was forced to follow and
she dropped her captive. I blinked at them and then she and I sat in silence,
watching Dirk crumple to the ground. After a second, she turned to me, one
eyebrow up. I felt a single puff of what I decided was her confusion and I did
my best not to turn it to something worse. When I appeared to be no
threat—strapped in and numbed as I was—
Nys swiveled
to look around the room and consider the source of
the bloody hole in Dirk's temple.

Almost casually
,
she twisted, her hands up in front of her like a
magician coaxing a rabbit out of a hat. When Dirk groaned and struggled,
another low
thud
sounded and his head jerked again. He went still and
his emotions flatlined, all the wet slimy feelings retreating from my face like
I’d wiped away a smear of honey.

Nys shifted like lightning,
grabbing the side of my table and yanking it back. My body screamed in pain as
it hit its mark and I found myself staring up at the ceiling. The demon
crouched next to me, completely silent. The murky cloud of her emotions grew
out through my mouth, spreading along my neck and shoulders. Whatever was
holding my power
at bay
seemed to be waning, and I was entirely sure if that was a good thing. At that
moment, she was all I could sense and it wasn’t a pleasant experience. Even Mel
was a void, though he was still breathing, so optimism demanded I assume he was
still wearing the necklace.

Nys
peered up and moved her gaze past me to the opposite
wall. Swallowing the lump in my throat, I turned to follow her line of sight. A
tiny hole had appeared in what I had previously thought was a solid wall.

The demon hissed out
something guttural and a smoky wave of anger threatened to choke me. I coughed
and fought to flex my hands some more. With Dirk catching some Zs and the demon
distracted, I figured there would be no better time to free myself. Sunset,
here I come!

I could feel something above
me, to my right. It was coming from behind Nys but she seemed oblivious to it.
The ebb of it was familiar, a pattern I’d spent plenty of time with. It was
faint, though, and I wasn’t entirely convinced it was even there until I heard
Nys gasp.

“
Trash!
” she yelled as I saw her pop back, dropping slightly
into a loose stance, knees bent, hands held out as if gripping an invisible
basketball. She swirled her hands around each other but nearly the instant a
purple glow appeared between her palms, there was a whistle and the handle of a
small blade appeared
,
sticking out of her neck.
She stumbled away from me and I lifted my head to follow her trajectory.

Her arms pinwheeled, sending
power crashing off clumsily into the walls. I yelped as a bolt came toward me
and I did my best to avoid it. My best, of course, went as far as twisting my
head to the right and closing my eyes. Adrenaline was making my sluggish body
feel light and cold. I had honestly never been this scared before in my life.