Equal Parts (31 page)

“No! Hugo, he will
kill
you!” But before I knew it, he’d pushed me over the gate, right as a male voice through the phone said:

“Hello, Finn Cole’s phone.”

“I need Finn!” I cried. “Put Finn on the phone!”

“Who is this, sorry?” asked the lazy voice. Beyond the fence I could hear grunts of pain, but from who, I didn’t know.

“Put him on the fucking phone or I will hunt you down and scalp you! It’s an emergency!” I continued to back away from the fence, into the open street.

“Crazy bitches,” I heard the voice mutter, then, blessedly, Finn’s voice said, “Hello?”

“Finn, it’s Felicity. Achilles has … he’s trying to kill me! He’s not himself! You need to get down here, I need your help, please!”

“Where are you?” Thank Christ, he was taking me seriously.

“I don’t know … some street near the racetrack…” I frantically looked around for a sign, a landmark, anything. “Lots of cherry blossoms. And new houses.”

Suddenly the gate
boomed
. A roar of pain, then silence. I froze by the curb, clutching my phone for dear life.

“Shit, I still can’t teleport. I’m sending Ellis and Colby to you, okay, Felicity? Stay on the phone, don’t leave me, sweetheart.” I could hear the panic seeping into his voice, and knew this had to be a bad situation for
Finn
to be alarmed. Mumbles in the background, then a door slamming.

“He’s being controlled by this guy who used to work for him – he’s not doing it himself, he would never hurt me, never try and kill me,” I babbled, and the gate
boomed
again. Someone was trying to break through to the other side.

“You have to stop him, Felicity, okay? Throw something at him, hurt him, put obstacles in his path. Just hold out a little longer.”

I took out the sewing kit Achilles gave me earlier – a flimsy defense in this scenario, but it would have to do. With shaking fingers, I also grabbed a rock from the garden.

Suddenly the wood on the gate splintered, and the whole thing crashed to the ground. Achilles stepped over the mess, as though he was simply taking a stroll. I couldn’t see Hugo anywhere behind him, but I suddenly wanted to vomit.

“He’s coming for me,” I dry-sobbed to Finn.

“Run!” Finn yelled. Again, didn’t need the warning. I dropped the rock and made a run for it, sprinting all of ten yards before Achilles tackled me from behind, sending us both into the rough asphalt. The phone skidded out of my reach, and as I screamed, I heard Finn calling out for me.

“Achilles, stop! Stop!” I shrieked as he pinned my arms to my sides with his knees, straddling my waist. “It’s me! Felicity!”

Those empty black eyes gave nothing away, but his head stilled for a very brief moment. Blood dripped from his face to mine, making me gag.

“Molten!” I screamed into the night. “Get out here and fight me yourself, you son of a bitch!”

I saw the passenger’s window of the Jeep roll down enough to expose a pair of ice-cold eyes and a wholly predatory smile, and knew this was it. Molten had won. He’d instructed Achilles to kill his men, then me.

“Fight me,” choked Achilles. “
Kill me
, Felicity!”

Tears streaking down my face, I bucked under him, shifting his weight, but not his knees. The coppery scent of blood hung in the air.

I managed to muster enough strength to roll us to the side, thanking God he wasn’t any heavier or bigger. As soon as I was free, I scrambled away from him, grabbing a knitting needle from the sewing kit in one hand and a pair of scissors in the other.

“Don’t make me hurt you,” I sobbed, but he was past listening. His body collided with mine once more, hands going for my throat, so I did the only thing I could think of, and stabbed one of the needles straight into his thigh. With a cry of pain that tore at my heartstrings, he went to his knees.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” I went to stand, but his hand shot out and pulled me to the ground beside him. Apparently the pain didn’t slow whatever command Molten had given him. He snatched the scissors from me and put them up to my face, pressing into my cheek, drawing blood.

“No,” he croaked at himself. I could see the weight of the spell crushing him, crushing his willpower. “No, don’t hurt her. Mustn’t hurt her.” His hand shook, the pressure of the blade on my cheek waning.

I threw him off me, ignoring the sting that accompanied the movement as the scissors slashed deep. Being on my feet would give me an advantage – that was a start.

He mirrored my movements, standing before me, hammer in hand, blood drip, drip, dripping from his chin.

“I meant to tell you,” the man of my dreams bit out, straining against his own body, “a confession of the day we met.”

“I thought we were past confessions,” I choked, throwing him off to the side once more. Grabbing a tree branch in one hand and scissors in the other, I jumped to my feet, frantically trying to reassess my options. There had to be a way out. There was
always
a way out.

A cry of pain from Achilles tore at my chest; he slashed out at me with the hammer like a puppet on strings. “I wanted to kill you,” he rasped. “I wanted to let the police just shoot you, so I wouldn’t have to do it myself. Know why?”

Wow, I was expecting something a little more romantic in our final moments together, but I indulged him because I knew he wouldn’t say it for no good reason: “Why?”

“Because you made me
feel
, Flick. Everyone is so predictable, but you? You showed up and rocked my world.” Another swing. I dodged it and backed toward the house. Maybe there was something in there I could fend him off with. “I wanted to end you because you were everything I wanted, but everything I wouldn’t let myself have.” Another cry, another swing, another miss. They were getting closer. “But then you fixed my shoulder – you
helped
me, even though we were surrounded by armed morons and you didn’t know a thing about me. So I did something I’ve never done, and put your life above my own, because no matter how hard I try to convey it, I’m not heartless. I
have
a heart, and…”

His hammer swung down towards my head. I intercepted with the tree branch, holding him at arms’ length, until our faces were inches apart.

“And it beats for you,” he finished in a voice that made my throat tight with tears.

The
crunch, crunch
of footsteps across gravel behind me hardly registered in my mind. Achilles’s eyes were the only thing I saw – only thing I
wanted
to see. “I couldn’t kill you then, and I can’t kill you now. But now you have to make that choice, darling. Just end me.”

“I
won’t
,” I sobbed. The branch began to crack where the hammer was pushing down. “You’re the only good thing I have! Don’t leave me!”

He smirked, and the trademark gesture simply made me sob harder. “Flick, we both know I’m no good.”

“I’ll say,” commented a familiar, velvet smooth voice from behind me. “Well, you’ve certainly worked yourself into a pickle, haven’t you?”

Molten.

“Stay away from her,” bit out Achilles. I half-turned, forming a triangle between the three of us.

Molten held up both hands in defense. “Hey, I wasn’t the one with the blade to her face. Her blood’s on your hands.”

With a roar that sent shivers right through me, Achilles wretched the hammer away from me, throwing it across the yard. “I won’t kill her!” he snarled at his old employee.

“I didn’t ask you to kill her, if you recall.” Molten dusted lint from his suit jacket and sighed. “Drama, drama. Just do what you need to do and we’ll leave.”

I didn’t know what he’d asked Achilles to do. I didn’t want to know. I could see the control slipping from Achilles’s body at the sound of Molten’s voice; his face was turning from pained back to indifferent.

“So, what? You’re keeping Achilles as a pet now? Can’t even man up to do your own dirty work?” I spat.

Crunch, crunch
, Molten came towards me. “Let me make something very clear: what I want, I get. Always have, always will. So when I say that I
want
to be mayor of this shithole of a city and turn it against itself, you know I
will
do it. Your boyfriend is just a pawn in this, Felicity.
You
, on the other hand, are something a little better – and I plan to make sure your potential is realized.”

I had no time to register the slip of a confession about becoming mayor – I simply filed it away for later use. That was, if I lived long enough to tell anyone.

“We’re surrounded by witnesses,” I pointed out. “Soon enough someone’s going to look out their window and see you, Molten.”

He laughed, and it even sounded a little maniacal. Great. He’d turned legit bad guy. “I don’t think so, Felicity.”
Crunch, crunch
, towards me. “I guess your beloved didn’t tell you, then.”

My eyes flicked to Achilles, who still wore a mask of stone. “Tell me what?”

Molten flashed those pearly whites at me in a shark’s smile. “This is a display home village. Not a soul for miles. So scream all you want.” His hand found the patch of bare skin on Achilles’s shoulder. “
Stay right here until the police arrive, then confess to the murders
.” Then that shark-like grin turned to me. “I’ll take good care of your used toy for you.”

“NO!” Achilles’s roar of anguish physically hurt my heart. He tried to fight against Molten’s words, tried to break free of his restrictions. It was like watching a tiger try to batter its way out of a cage. I latched on to his arm, found the skin there, and pushed all of the sunshine I had at my disposal into his soul.

He’d need it more than me, especially after all that had happened here.

“I will find you,” he hissed at me as Molten wound an arm around my middle, underneath my shirt.

“
Pass out
.” I didn’t have the power to fight off his influence. I didn’t have
time
to resist the words.

I simply reached out to Achilles as the world fell out from under me.

Chapter Twenty

Girls Like Us

“…for you to wake up for
ages
. Come on, you should be totally psyched!” A melodic, rather husky voice from the end of a tunnel somewhere. “I just hope you hold out longer than the last one.”

As if waking from a ten-year sleep, my transition back to reality wasn’t easy. My ears registered everything before the rest of me, alerting to me to the deathly quiet of my surroundings, save the feminine voice. Slowly, painfully, I cracked open my eyes, only to be instantly confronted by blindingly bright lights.

“Wait for your eyes to adjust,” advised the voice. I obeyed, seeing no other option, excuse the pun.

Soon enough, feeling returned to my limbs, the pins and needles in my skin dying down to a low hum. Something heavy weighed on my hands – cuffs? Chains? Something metallic.

Again I opened my eyes. The light was harsh, but not so impossible to look at. Eventually the room around me came into focus.

Everything was white – white bricks, white tiles, white ceiling, white light. Across from me, her arms behind her back, her face so bloodied it took me a moment to recognize her…

“Skye?”

Her bright blue hair was a dead giveaway. Finn’s right-hand girl, the one who had been labeled missing for months…

Was here. Alive. In front of me.

“You know me, huh?” She sounded rather defeated. “Urgh, stupid publicity. I bet they have me on milk cartons as well, yeah? Typical. I should’ve known Finn wouldn’t give up without a fight.”

“W-what … what are you doing here? Where are we?” Was I dead? Was this some sick version of Heaven? It had to be Heaven – Skye was too much of a goody two-shoes to be in Hell.

She huffed. “You know, you should be grateful I’m being nice to you. Patrick said not to talk to you, but I’m doing it out of the goodness of my heart. He’s always saying I’m too nice.” A sigh. “What’s your name?”

Okay, so she’d clearly gone insane somewhere between being taken and now. Ignoring the question, I looked over my shoulder to see my hands cuffed behind my back. Damn, but it was uncomfortable. My shoulders felt as though they’d been hammered down a couple of hundred times, and there were some nasty bruises on my legs that hadn’t been there at the display home village.

“How do I get out?” There was a door – heavy, metal, white, with no latch on the inside – but no window. Not even a grate or air vent.

Skye smiled at me in a very creepy way. Okay…

“Give me a rundown of what happened with you,” I told her, trying not to let the panic flooding my system overwhelm me. “At least take my mind off things.”

“A few months ago, Patrick and I met at a coffee shop downtown. He told me he needed my help to save the city. I ran away with him, and I’ve been here ever since.” The smile that crossed her face made me rather ill. “I love Patrick. He’s so beautiful, and he treats me really well. Much better than my so-called friends.” Her expression turned sour. “They didn’t even bother looking for me, I’ll bet.”