Equal Parts (18 page)

One big tub of white, a tub of black, and smaller pots of red, blue, green and gold. He even had a set of brushes for each paint, and a sponge to apply the white with.

It shouldn’t have thrilled me so much to know I was the only person who’d ever seen these tools for Achilles’s mask. His mask
meant
something. It inspired fear and greed and respect, all because he happened to paint his face into a mask of death. How did it feel to hide under all that paint? How did it feel to have such power, all thanks to a bit of color?

I convinced myself to find out.

With shaking fingers, I dabbed the sponge into the white paint and gradually applied it over my neck and face, leaving only my eye sockets free.

“He isn’t here,” I murmured to myself sternly. “He’ll never know.”

What was worse than the dread was the slight thrill at being caught. God, there really was something wrong with me. Maybe I had some kind of extreme boredom syndrome, where I’d reached the lengths of playing with fire simply to alleviate the monotony of everyday life in this apartment.

Steeling my nerves (and keeping an ear out for any slamming doors), I covered my eyes and the end of my nose with black, painted my lips into a sewn-up smile, and used the blue and red paints to decorate around my forehead and cheeks with flowers and swirls.

Smiling back at me in the reflection, as eerie as Achilles could be at times, was my skeleton self.

I used hairspray to mess my auburn hair into a radical version of bed-head and giggled at the result. Hidden beneath the mask of a sugar skull, I could be anyone. Without the cover of my baggy clothes, I saw just how much weight I’d lost since my abduction – my ribs stuck out against my skin, and the extra muscle on my thighs had disappeared. Usually I would have been happy with the weight loss, but I knew it wouldn’t benefit me  long-term – if I had to make a run for it someday soon, or use large amounts of energy at once, I’d be done for.

As it was, I was too entranced by the girl looking back at me to hear the bathroom door creak open.

A moment later, Achilles appeared in the doorway.
             

And time seemed to come to a halt.

“I found your paint,” I rasped lamely. My brain was too stupefied to think up anything better.

Even behind the contact lenses, I could see the fire in his eyes. Crap. He was livid.

“I’ll wash it off,” I told him quickly, turning back to the sink. I felt his eyes rake my near-naked form, but for whatever reason, I wasn’t embarrassed.

Right as water came rushing from the faucet, his body sprang back to life, moving towards me and emanating all sorts of power.

“Achilles –” I started, but he spun me around and cut me off with a look before I could finish. Not that I knew what to say.

His finger traced the paint across my lips, and a heat not unlike the one from ‘the incident’ washed through me, making parts of me ache with desire. Oh God,
not again
!

I clutched the basin behind me with both hands, afraid I’d fall if I let go. I was throbbing, and I had no idea why. My breath came out in heavy rounds, the air between us suddenly filled with an electricity that wasn’t there before.

The fingers danced down the side of my neck and slid around to tangle in the hair at my nape. We were inches apart. I knew he could only do one of two things: strike me, or walk out. I had gone too far, and somehow, he was going to punish me for it.

So why the hell wasn’t I fighting him off? Why did I want, more than absolutely anything, for him to kiss me? My body was screaming at me, demanding we kiss, demanding I cross the last threshold between us and go to the point of no return.

Once again, I saw how wound-up he was. He was always so cool, so controlled. I wanted to break that control. I wanted him to lose his mind to me, as I had to him so many times.

I wanted to see him lose his cool.
For me.

“You,” he said in a voice as tight as I felt, “are in
so
much trouble.”

With a cracked moan, I threw caution to the wind, fisted his collar, and dragged his lips down to mine.

Not that he needed much encouragement.

I’d been kissed before, in high school, before my powers developed. After moving to Carova, I’d pretty much banned romance from my life. My power, after all, could be let loose at any moment, and chances were, my boyfriend would fall in love with my ability instead of me.

But kissing Achilles made me quickly reassess that theory.

His body pressed mine against the bench-top, until it didn’t seem to be enough, and he lifted me onto the surface and wound my legs around his waist. He kissed me as though he’d been waiting for it for
a lifetime
, as though he’d planned every nip and lick and swipe out in his mind to perfection. And it
was
perfection. Happiness poured off him in waves, enough to fill my power to the brim – just like the night before, and the night before that. Why could Achilles affect my power so potently? Was he happier than normal people because he felt emotions more intensely, or was it just because I was closer to him than I’d been to anyone in a long time?

I must have been momentarily distracted by the hit of power, because he broke away long enough to breathe, “Don’t leave me just yet, darling.”

I made up for the lapse with a bite of his lower lip that ripped a groan from his chest. Empowered by his reaction, I dug my heels into his lower back and rubbed my chest against his, wishing I could feel his skin against my own.

“This is wrong,” I managed to choke out as he moved to kiss my neck. The fire from the other night returned with a vengeance, but this time I was fully conscious. This time, it didn’t feel wrong – and that thought in itself was terrifying.

“So wrong,” he agreed, but didn’t stop.

His face returned to mine, our tongues tangling once more, until I could taste that citrus scent and paint and something uniquely Achilles, and he was pressing the his length right into the core of me through his black jeans, and I was clawing at his shoulders, wanting something
more
, but I didn’t quite know what.

Just when I thought he was going to give me whatever it was I wanted – he seemed to know my needs better that I did at that moment – a knock at the door sounded, and we froze, hands, lips and legs intertwined.

“Boss?” came a gruff voice.

My eyes met Achilles’s, our breaths mingling with the effort of whatever it was we’d just done. Suddenly overcome with shyness, I dropped my head, hands, and legs. Once again, I had all but transformed into some slutty version of myself, probably making him think I had a serious case of split-personality disorder.

“I can’t,” he whispered, though it seemed more to himself than to me. I’d messed up his paint. Smudges were everywhere, blending the black to shades of
gray
. Holy crap. He’d let me touch his face.

Can’t what?
, I wanted to ask, but my voice wasn’t working properly.

Without another look at me or word, he left the bathroom. I tried to climb down from the bench, but my legs were shaking so badly, I almost toppled over into the bath.

When I looked in the mirror, I saw the havoc he’d wreaked on my paint – the black of his lips and mine was smudged across my cheek and chin, and the red flowers near my eyes had bled into my hair.

Suddenly inexplicably furious – mostly with myself, but also at him – I scrubbed the paint off my face with enough vigor to rub my skin red raw. The black and white swirled down the drain, taking the heat in my blood with it.

He couldn’t have kissed me because he actually wanted to. It had to be the paint; he was so infatuated with himself that he would willingly make out with his female counterpart. It had nothing to do with me. Right?

I hastily donned my clothes again and resisted the urge to go looking for him. I was growing too attached. I had to distance myself, because otherwise, when the time came for me to escape, I might not take it.

When I exited the bathroom, he was nowhere to be found. Telling myself that was a good thing, I balled upon the sofa and watched yet another movie, though I wasn’t really watching it. The only thing swirling through my mind’s eye was the look on Achilles’s face right before he kissed me. Or did I kiss him? I couldn’t remember.

Either way, it was best if I just forgot about the whole thing. If he came back anytime soon, I would act as though nothing had happened, and keep out of his way until the awkwardness blew over.

Hours later – it must have been hours, because the sky outside had darkened to pitch black – a thug came into the room, yet another unfamiliar face in this new world.

“Get your stuff,” he said gruffly to me.

“Huh?” I blinked, unsure if I’d heard him correctly.

“Get your stuff.” Okay, nothing wrong with my hearing. “Boss says you’re to move back to your cell before he gets back.”

“W-what? Why?” A whole maelstrom of dark emotions churned in my gut, clawing at the happiness Achilles had fueled me with.

The man shrugged. “Guess your stint of luxury is up. Get a move on– he’ll be back soon.”

In a kind of stupor, I grabbed my sports bag from Achilles’s bedroom, taking the hammer and pills from the night-stand for good measure – hey, if he didn’t want me to take them, he should have hidden them better – and followed the goon out. The apartment disappeared from view behind the door, and I stifled the feeling of abandonment that threatened to grab hold of me.

I heard the snickers and comments of thugs as I walked back through the office, though none of their words actually registered. I made eye contact with Hugo, standing by the window, who gave me a look of utter pity. I gave him a pathetic wave before I was led down the stairwell.

When we reached the ground floor, we passed the front door of the building – how absurd, that I still didn’t know where I was being held, after all that had happened – right as a black-clad figure with his arm around a waifish girl with fire-red hair stumbled through the entrance, almost right into us.

Then his eyes, though I couldn’t see their pupils, met mine. And I felt as though I’d been slapped across the face.

“Come on,” snapped the thug, shoving me through into another corridor lined with cells – we had to be in some kind of abandoned police station, right?

Of course, my surroundings weren’t the cause of tears welling up in my eyes. It was the giggle of the girl, the stench of perfume tickling my nostrils, the way her hand was clutching at the same collar I’d touched only hours ago. And worst of all, the stony expression he gave me as he passed, as though I was just another bullet hole in the wall behind me.

I was too tired to fight. I would like to think I would have said something, yelled something,
screamed
something at him in that four-second period, but I knew, deep down, that it wouldn’t have done any good. That was the only consolation I had when the thug shut me in my old cell, locked the door, and disappeared.

I couldn’t believe it. He’d used me. Worse than that, he’d abandoned me for someone else.

What did you expect
? asked a voice in my head.
He’s a villain, you idiot. Abandoning and ignoring are the things he does best.

The hurt punched at my gut until I gave into my tears, and cried into the pillow until my head pounded and my throat was dry. Stupid girl!
Stupid
! I’d brought this on myself, from the very beginning. I’d let him get under my skin, let him think I saw him as something other than pure evil. Everything was turning to crap, and no doubt it would get much worse before it got better.

“Things
will
get better,” I told myself, leaking some of the sunshine I’d collected from Achilles that afternoon into my system. It made the world a little brighter, cushioned my soul, but didn’t erase the image of that girl’s hand pressed against Achilles’s skin. “Things have to get better soon.”

Little did I know how soon was soon.

Chapter Twelve

Caught in the Crossfire

I woke up to an explosion.

For a moment, I thought I was still in Achilles’s bedroom, so naturally, I looked to my right to see if he was there. Then my new setting sunk in, and I jumped up, hammer in hand.

Shouts resounded from upstairs, the walls quaking slightly as another explosion
boom
ed somewhere. What the hell was going on?

I tried to look out the glass door down the corridor, but everything was still dark. Shots were fired nearby, making my ears ring. This couldn’t be good.

More cursing, more glass breaking, more doors slamming, until light flooded the corridor, and I realized part of the ceiling had fallen through from Achilles’s apartment above me.

I scrambled into the corner, praying this was the ‘something better’ I’d wished for, and not the ‘something worse’ I was dreading.

Someone – or something – crunched towards my cell, and I sunk back into the darkness, prepared to throw the hammer at whoever it was, should they try and get to me.