The Glass Man (8 page)

The muscles in Roarke’s arm flexed. His fingers had melted into the plastic top of the freezer or had gripped it so tightly the material molded around them.

When he stepped away, a blue string of electric current arced between the freezer and his hands. His eyes rolled up.

Oh, hell.

He soaked up electricity the way a sponge soaks up water. Grinning, he straightened and fixed his gaze on me, holding his hands out at his sides. He poised his thumb and middle finger as if he’d pinch them together but kept them inches apart. Power arced in a curved path between them, a popping blue fire drawn out in a thin strip.

“I thought you would be more concerned with what you are.” He laughed, the sound forcing every hair on my body to tingle. “Or what I am.”

Even though I struggled to breathe and couldn’t shake the thought of what he might do, I couldn’t afford to lose any ground. I swallowed the fear down and forced my casual expression out. “God, not you too. You know, this got old with Partha whatever his name is about seven years ago. I’m certainly not going to start exchanging witty repartee about what I am with you now, too.”

His lips parted before they curled into a sneer. The tension in his body morphed. I expected it to go nova and fry me into a crispy slice of bacon.

“Look, if you’re going to kill me, then do it,” I said. “If not, get the hell away from me so I can think.”

He lunged at me, shoved his hands against my stomach. My mouth flew wide in a silent scream, and the rest of my body seized. Fire burned in my fingertips and in my head. The pain had no description in my vocabulary, but it flowed through me in endless waves until I gained controlled of myself. I gathered it into a little corner of my mind and stepped away from it. I could still sense it there but not so strong that my mind would break under it. I didn’t even know I could do that.
Handy.

Rourke slipped his hand around my throat, squeezing until I choked in his grasp. Maybe antagonizing him hadn’t been the brightest idea I’d ever had. He didn’t get flustered like the other wannabe bad guys I’d met.

He relaxed his hand and spoke with his lips brushing mine. “You haven’t disappointed me yet, and that is a rare thing. To take so much and not scream, at least a little, means you are stronger than I gave you credit for. But all wildcats can be tamed if you whip them long enough.” He licked across my lips, but I refused to struggle. “You will do what my King commands. I only hope Parthalan doesn’t take all your fight away before I own you.”

A true sadist.
Funny, I thought he’d been kidding. My fear level clicked up a notch, and I shivered. Could a person go into shock twice in one night?
First time for everything.

I coughed when he let go of my throat, but I kept my trap shut. Cussing him out wouldn’t help me.

Rourke gave me a calculating glance, but I had no energy to ponder what dark thought went with it. Did they all have powers like his? If they did, they wouldn’t be packing handguns, would they? Unless they were more sadistic than I thought, or maybe just lazy. Nothing would have surprised me at that point.

Rourke’s barking laughter faded as he climbed the stairs.

One question sat at the forefront of my mental chaos. What did his king want me to do?

10

My body shook with searing agony in my feet and thoughts of Rourke having me at his mercy. After a moment, I let it go. The tightness in my throat relaxed.
No time to lose it.
If I didn’t figure out how to get away, nothing mattered. If I didn’t get out, I would have failed my mother.

I looked down and found one end of the chain attached to the shackles on my ankles and the other end looped around a cinder block. An idea bloomed in my head. I swung my legs back and forth until I could gather the slack part of the chain around one ankle. After several tries, I lured the block close enough to hook it with the top of my foot. Grunting, I dragged it closer, flipped it on its side and stood on it. My feet screamed, pressed against the rough surface.

Sweat poured down my skin as I stood there. After calming my body and mind again, I concentrated on pushing my toes against the block, but it didn’t boost me enough to get my teeth around the pin. I used my arms to pull myself the rest of the way. The top of the pin—slick with blood flowing from my wrists—sat flush with the shaft. Before I moved it even a little, my arms gave out, and I fell back to the floor. “Fuck!” Pain surged up my legs and hands once more.

A squeak escaped me when something crashed through the window at the top of the wall in front of me. Flares of multicolor light invaded the room before it faded.

When the light went back to normal, Liam stood naked before me. He crouched, his wary eyes sweeping the room. The sight of his body raised my temperature before my anger took over and jacked it up more.

The upstairs door crashed inwards and shouts carried down. Liam searched through the mess of glass on the floor from the window he’d broken and yanked a gun from a pouch lying there. He fired at the stairs.

“I’ll kill you!” Rourke bellowed from beyond the upper door. I heard a clip snap into a gun. “Have you lost your damn mind? You can’t shoot while Lila’s down there, you imbecile. Those bullets have iron in them.”

What does iron have to do with anything?

“Oh, hell,” I said to Liam. “Why did it have to be you that showed up?”

“Shut up.” He reached for the shackles.

“Don’t touch me. Don’t fucking touch me.”

Liam shook his head, flexed his jaw. “We don’t have time for this! Do you want to get out of here, or not? Because if you do, then shut your God damned mouth, and let me help you.” He fired another shot at the door, where the two men continued to curse at one another.

I forced my scowling face back to neutral. Stay and wait for Parthalan, or let the guy who’d betrayed me put his hands on me? Yeah, not much of a choice. Liam would get his later.

“Fine,” I said.

With a nod, he pried up the pin on my left wrist while I pulled myself up and chewed on the right one. When he finished, he freed my ankles and helped me with the last bolt. I fell to the floor with a wet slap, right into my own congealing blood.

Gun still extended, Liam yanked me by the arm and shoved me toward the window. “There’s a blanket just outside. Climb up on that shelf and pull it through before you crawl out. And Goddamn it, hurry. Parthalan will be back any second, and I don’t know where Clancy is.”

“Great.”

I did as Liam said. Once I climbed through the window, I turned and thrust my hand down to him. “Come on. I’ll pull you up.”

“Just get out of the way.” He fired a few more rounds before the gun clicked—its magazine empty. I moved in time to see something pale streak past and land on the grass a few yards away.

“How did you do that?” I gaped at Liam but averted my eyes when I remembered how little he wore. “And why are you naked?”

“Shut up and get in the Goddamn car!”

“I don’t like cars.”

“Move!”

I did, but my legs collapsed beneath me. Had the shackles drained something out of me? I pulled myself along the grass, gritting my teeth as I crawled, shivering in the damp air.

Liam grabbed me by the waist and sprinted, dragging me toward a red sedan parked alongside the house. He wrenched the door open and rammed me into the back seat. I pulled the door shut while he ducked behind the other side of the car.

Bullets flew again.

“If you don’t put up that fucking gun, you’re going to eat it, Sebastian!” Rourke screamed.

When the crackling of energy met my ears—the same sound I heard in the cellar as Rourke drew power from the freezer—I screamed. “Get us out of here, now!”

The driver door opened, and Liam crawled in, staying low as he fumbled with the keys. The crackling grew louder. Blue light arced into the night. All the little hairs on my arms rose, and the hair on my head prickled.

“Now, Liam.”

Rourke wasn’t supposed to hurt me because of his king’s edict, but he was, after all, a psycho.

A moment later, the car roared to life and fishtailed on the grass before heading for the road. The night lit up blue behind us. The bumpy gravel driveway gave way to the smooth Route 59. I thought I could hear Sebastian screaming.

“I need you to undo what you did to me,” I said. “I’m healing somehow, but I’m still bleeding all over your car, and I feel weak.” My mostly bare skin perked up in a rash of goose bumps against the cold leather seats and Liam’s nearness.

“Not until I get you away from here,” Liam said on a huff of air. “I need to touch you, and I need to concentrate.”

I glared at his profile. “You’re just afraid I’ll hurt you.”

A heavy pause stretched out the silence. “That too.”

Neither of us spoke for a few minutes, our eyes watching for movement around us. “I don’t hear anything.”

Liam turned to look at me. “Why are you whispering?”

“I don’t know.” I scowled and scanned the empty road out the back window. “They’re not following us. Why?”

“I knifed all of their tires, but it won’t slow them for long. Parthalan will know we’re gone by now. It’s him we need to worry about, and he doesn’t need guns or cars.”

Questions piled up in my head. “Where did you get the gas for this thing? I didn’t think you could buy it around here anymore.”

“This car doesn’t run on … conventional fuel.”

I shook my head. No time for cryptic shit. “I need to know a few things before I decide whether to go with you or to get the hell out of this car.”

“Not now!”

“Yes, now. It wasn’t any coincidence I ended up at that farm, was it?”

A growl rumbled in his throat. “No.”

Using the headrests of the bucket seats, I pulled myself forward so I could look at him. Reminded of his nudity, I stared at the dashboard. My hands strained to reach out and touch his skin, but I dug my fingers into the leather, instead. “I need more than that. Why did I go there, and no one-word answers. I know I felt a surge of power, but it disappeared as soon as I got close to the house.”

“Because I lured you there with my energy, that’s why. And it’ll take too long to explain, so don’t ask me.” His tone ratcheted up.

“Don’t you dare yell at me, Liam, if that’s even your name! You have no right to be pissed. I’m the one who was royally fucked over.”

“My name’s Liam Kane. We were told to keep you there until Parthalan arrived. I don’t know about the others, but I had no choice.”

“How did you heal the bullet wound? I could feel it, so I know it was real.”

“We don’t need our Light to heal. Anyone like us can do that. Now, shut up. I need to think, and I can’t with you yammering on like that.”

“What do you mean by Light?”

“The well of energy inside us that gives us our power.”

So, he has it, too?
“What happened to the real Conners? Or were they already dead when you took their place?”

Silence. His jaw flexed as he drove.

“Liam!”

“All right! We had them tied up in the barn.”

I covered my eyes with my palms. “How many?”

“Parents, two boys, and a girl. Happy now?”

“Happy? No, I’m not fucking happy.” My breath hitched in my throat. “When Clancy left the shed that night—” I sucked in a trembling breath, certain I didn’t want the answer. “How old is the girl?”

After a long, strained pause, Liam said, “Don’t ask me. I didn’t know until—I won’t talk about it.”

I shook my head. Rage turned my guts into a pool of black fire. Another family’s life destroyed because of me. “Why the accent and the cop story?”

“Because you’re too damn observant for your own good. I knew shit about farming, and I wanted to ask you questions, so I came up with a cover you might buy.”

“Fine. Why are you helping me now? I thought you were afraid the Glass Man would hurt somebody.”

Liam uttered a pained cry and pounded his palm on the steering wheel. “Their bodies were dumped at the front door of the Black City while we were—” His breath hitched. “My sisters.”

I rubbed my aching head. “Rourke?”

“Of course it was Rourke!” His voice thundered.

I jumped back against the seat and stared at the profile of pain and suffering: jaw held tight, eyes narrowed to slits, and a vein jumped in his temple.

“They were carved up.” He let out a wail, but it turned into a piteous scream. “Fuck! Fuck, fuck, fuck!” A fist pounded on the wheel punctuating each word. If we’d been going fast, we might have ended up in the ditch.

Saying ‘I told you so’ would have been cruel. Saying I was sorry seemed inadequate. Before I thought about whether or not I should tell him, my story spilled out of my mouth.

“When I was thirteen—the day I became a woman, or hit puberty, or whatever you want to call it—I accidentally turned my bedroom into a pile of rubble when I got angry at my brother.” I gripped the leather until my fingers ached. “I hurt him. He just stood there while I hit him in the face, again and again. I didn’t even know what I was doing, or why. And I couldn’t stop.

“I woke up the next day. My room and Milo were back to normal. He and my mother told me I just had a dream, but my little sisters acted weird around me for the rest of the day.

“That night, my mother grabbed me out of bed and dragged me down the street to Nan’s house. My whole family was there inside Nan’s door—in their pajamas—even my little sisters. They were five. I’ll never forget the look of terror in their eyes. Mother pushed me ahead of her until we came to Nan’s bedroom. She put a backpack into my arms, and then put her hand on the hardwood floor. It opened like a flower. I was so stunned I couldn’t even ask her how she’d done it. It was the only time she’d done something—out of the ordinary.”

Some of the tension went out of Liam, and his shoulders lowered. He turned a little in his seat.

“She shoved me into the hole, a tunnel that must have taken months to dig out.”

I clutched at my chest, the sounds and sights of that night gripping me by the throat.

“Go on,” Liam said. “Please.”

I swallowed the sob and wiped my nose. “She told me a man would come for me. She handed me the music box and told me it was the key to our people, that I would meet a man who would show me the way home. She told me to run. She told me to listen to the earth and the wind, to look for kindness in unlikely places, to not be afraid of the wild things—that they would care for me. She told me a lot of rules to follow when I left.

“And then I heard the screaming.” My words were all mixed up with a sob. “From the other room. They were dying. I could smell the blood, could hear their cries. I heard crashing and saw light leaking in under the door from Nan’s living room.

“Mother smiled at me, touched my face. She made me promise to be brave and to outthink him so I could live to put things right. I gave her my promise, and she closed the floor above me.” I drew in a jagged breath and let it out. “But I stayed. I listened to her die, the last of her breaths while he howled like a deranged god. I stayed until her blood dripped through the floor and covered my face, and I couldn’t do anything to help her but scratch at the floor.”

“Jesus,” Liam said.

“The Glass Man killed them all, and I have a promise to keep, but I don’t know how. Hell, I don’t know what all of it means, and now I don’t even have the music box.”

“Parthalan has it, but I don’t think he knows what to do with it.”

That made two of us. “I’m just one person. How can I possibly stand against him?”

Liam didn’t answer. I didn’t really expect him to, but I’d hoped he might have something encouraging to say.

“How did your mother explain your hair and eyes to you? You had to know you weren’t like the other people around.”

“She must have done something to alter my perception. We all looked just like everyone else, peach skin and blue eyes. I saw my true skin for the first time after she died. When I saw my eyes a few weeks later in a gas station bathroom, I cried.” I blurted a laugh to cover the hurt. “She must have been so ashamed, homeschooling me so nobody would find out what a freak her daughter was.”

“She was trying to protect you, I’m sure—”

“It doesn’t matter. I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

After a long silence, he said, “Do you know who your father is?”

“I asked my mother once when I was eight. The instant the words left my mouth, I wished I could take them back. I’d swear her eyes changed color, almost to black, and her skin went to ash. She opened her mouth a few times, but I stopped her. I would have done anything to take that agony from her eyes. I never asked again.”