Evernight (The Night Watchmen Series Book 2) (11 page)

She steps in front of me and her eyes narrow, boxing me in. Without a word, she walks around me like a predator, assessing me. Sizing me up. Her heels click against the floor as her steps carry her in a full, scrutinizing circle. I’m wondering how I’m still hanging on, why I haven’t snapped, when she finally stops right before me.

“You know, it’s direly important we know, but even more so that
you
know, what you can do. I tried to explain this to Maddock in the beginning, but he wouldn’t listen. He’s incapable of seeing past his own needs—just like every other man, which is why I had to amputate myself from him. I couldn’t bear another moment of mopping up his messes.”

My insides run cold. “I don’t understand—”

“He thought he could keep you hidden from the Priesthood. From the world. He thought his silly round of training with the emotionally unstable, not to mention, cursed, Gramm brothers would be enough. That you’d come into your own and help him with his own personal,
illegal
matters.” She shuts her eyes and drops her chin to her chest, laughing softly—mockingly. “But you’re far more powerful than he could ever comprehend.” Her eyes open, locking on mine. “And far more dangerous. Which is why you have been placed under my control.”

One word slams against my brain like a balled-up fist.

“Control?” I blurt out, flinching back. “I thought you were only overseeing my training?”

She stops. Looks at me like she’s irritated and bored. Like she’s dealing with a small child who refuses to stand in the corner she put me in. “I am overseeing your training, but as I’ve said before, many times over, you’re a loose cannon, Faye Middleton, and loose cannons have no business in this Coven. You must learn your place, and that is underneath me, not beside.” She pauses, wearing the same exact smile she wore in my dream. “I’m asking you to—” she swallows, like she’s having trouble forming the next word, “to
please
be understanding. Don’t make this hard on yourself because I promise you, this can be much worse.”

I know I should control my emotions, maybe even shut them off, but doing that would be like holding my breath. I could for a short amount of time but, eventually, my lungs will want to expand and my brain will force them to work. To feel.

My eyes are locked on hers and I’m shaking, swirling with anger, and rage, and all the other awful things she makes me feel. Rationality decided to take a vacation and leave my mind scrambling for the right answer. For the correct move I should make next. But all I see is the hatred in her eyes. All I hear is her threats.

I am a match struck awake from the force of her words.

“I already told you. I will not be controlled.” I turn for the door, but before my hand even touches the handle, I’m slammed up against the wall, pinned by the force of her forearm.

“Now, you listen here, you little shit,” she says, her eyes wide and fierce.

I struggle under her, blinking several times, trying to make sense of what’s happening. “What are you doing? Let me go!”

“Shut your mouth!” She barks the order out so hard, some of her hair falls free from her bun. “I told you not to push me. My patience is thin. It has been ever since I released you and all of your idiotic friends from the Correctional Facility. Now, I told you this can go two ways. Apparently, I wasn’t specific enough before, so let me make this crystal clear. You’re on my turf now. You speak when I say you can speak. You move when I say you can move. You breathe when I tell you to. You fight when I tell you to. You heel when I tell you to. Do you understand the pattern?”

Seconds pass, and in them, I’m hoping this isn’t real. That she’s going to laugh and tell me she was just kidding. That she was just testing my control over my emotions. But when the seconds turn into minutes, and her arm is still pressing against me, eyes still daring me to try her, I realize this
isn’t
a sick joke.

This is every nightmare I knew would come true.

Words. So many of them. They fill my mouth and transform into wasps, all with their stingers pointed in Clara’s direction. I push back against her, glaring in her face. “I understand you’re a heartless Witch. I understand that I’m not going to spend a minute more in your presence.” 

I shove her hard enough to release her grip, reaching for the door. But it’s the chilling laughter filling the room that makes me hesitate. The image of her standing in front of the burning flag, smiling wickedly down at me, that makes me reconsider my position.

“You think you’re free here? In
my
city?” she says, her face so close to mine that I can make out the tiny, purple veins behind her skin. “You’re not free. You never were. You’re only here because
I
allow you to be here. Your friends are only here because
I
know you’re useless to me unless you know they’re okay. That’s the only reason I’ve attempted to gain their trust. But that can change. Death can happen just like this.” She snaps her fingers.

Terror has once again wrapped its cold hands around my neck. “What are you talking about?”

Her eyes are so dark they’re almost black. “It’s really simple. All it would take is one phone call. One order given to the many Elites who have been placed under my regimen, and your precious friends will be no more.” She moves in, taking a sharp breath, making sure the threat in her eyes is plainly visible. “Therefore, you are mine, Faye Middleton. We have a lot of hard work ahead of us, and there will be things asked of you that you might not agree with. I’ve fought too long and too hard to get to where I am today, and I won’t have you screwing that up for me. I won’t back down to a few lousy Watchmen who dare question me, and so long as they trust me and cause no problems, then they can stay. Their survival is in your hands.”

She pauses, letting her words sink in, letting the threat wrap its noose around my neck, but my brain is nowhere near ready to accept all that she has said. I’m shaking my head. Wishing away this moment. Retracing my steps back to the moment when I should have made a different decision. Back to when Weldon told me her mask would fall.

Like a cornered animal, the need to survive jerks me back to reality. Breaks open my self-preservation. Snaps awake my need to protect those who have become my family. I spin on her so fast that I barely register what I’ve done. The force pushing behind my muscles feels so good. Too good. It’s a rush I didn’t know I craved. An all-consuming need that’s taken hold of my brain and lit every neuron on fire with power.

Everything around me becomes so clear. Crystal clear. The premonition. The first choice. I made the wrong choice. I trusted her just enough to let her take me away from my friends, to give her a chance to separate us again, and I don’t know what’s going to happen. How I’m going to get myself out of this, because she’s a monster. A horrible monster who my mother tried to warn me about… and I could kill her.

I want to kill her.

It isn’t until I see the fear in her eyes that I realize I have her pinned against the wall by her throat. That I notice the bluish-purple hue to her face and the gurgling, choking noises squeezing out her mouth. Her feet dangle in the air, her hands clawing at mine, but I don’t feel any pain.

My whole body is vibrating, covered in rippling volation. The lights in the room flicker on and off as I pull hard on the electricity, using it to fuel my muscles.

“You will not go near Jaxen, or any of my friends,” I say, but my voice is not my own. It’s filled with too much rage. Too much adrenaline. “I should have listened to Weldon. To all of them,” I say, squeezing her throat harder.

“Yes,” she squeezes out. “But… you… didn’t. Someone… had to… break your… blind faith… in the world.”

I squeeze even harder, enjoying the veins that now bulge behind her eyes like strings popping loose, unlacing her evil from the inside out. “We’re done here.”

A door bursts open from the other side of the room. Two Elites with guns pointed at my back storm in. “Put her down,” one of them says. I hear the safeties being released on the guns, the easing of their breath as they aim. “Now!” the other yells.

I drop her like she’s nothing more than garbage.

She gasps, coughs, and claws for air as I look down on her. I make sure I’m wearing my enjoyment in my smile. Make sure she knows just who she’s dealing with.

She’s yelling out for someone, yelling out at me, and her voice is hoarse and strained. The sound is like music to my ears. Her pain… her suffering, I’m reveling in it, swimming in the satisfaction of having done what I’ve wanted to do for so long.

Shut her up. Even if just for a moment.

A Witch walks in the door, and I sense her magic enveloping Clara, wrapping her in healing energy. Slowly, Clara makes her way to her feet. I stand my ground, feeling every eye in the room on my back, just waiting for my next move.

Clara dismisses the Witch with a wave of her hand. The marks left from my grip have faded with magic. She takes her time walking up to me, and I think I sense her hesitancy, maybe even her fear, but then she strikes me hard across the face, so hard I stumble back. Blood coats the inside of my mouth.

I don’t know if I want to laugh, scream, or rip every hair from her head. I feel like I’m standing in an alternate universe where bad is good and good is bad. I reach for her again, ready to finish what I started, but the Elites press forward, their guns raised high and ready, stopping me from moving any further.

“Not a single thing I’ve said has sunk in yet, has it?” she says wildly. “One more mistake like that and I will end your friends. Do you understand?”

I spit blood at her feet and endure another slap. White-hot rage crowds my rationality. I’m breathing like I’ve ran a marathon and my mind can’t catch up to the fact that I’ve stopped. I feel so sick, like I’m two sips of air from my last. Two heartbeats away from the end.

She must see the fear taking up residence in my mind, because she moves in, breathing hard through her words. “The choice is inevitable. That’s why you need to be separated from them. You need to harden yourself, Faye Middleton. The Coven’s needs must always come first.”

“The Coven’s, or yours?” I blurt out, lips curling in disgust.

Her eyes disappear into slits. Her smile has run off with my obedience. “The seal will be broken, either by you working with this Coven, or by you being forced under the hands of the Darkyn Coven. It’s been foretold by the great Divine Cecilia, and it’s in your hands as to who you help.”

I can’t help the snort that rips past my lips, riddled with suppressed laughter. “You want me to harden myself? To accept that either way, I’ll be a pet, a tool, a piece in a chess game played by whichever side I choose, who in some way or another believe they’re both right?” I swallow down my rage and bore into her eyes, really letting her see just how I feel. “You want me to choose? To take the reins? Then don’t think for a second that I’ll ever be your pet, Clara. I won’t be pushed.”

She throws a look over her shoulder. Both Elites move forward until cold steel is pressed against the warmth of both my temples. My spine is stiff, so stiff I can’t move a single muscle. My brain is on overload, trying to escape this body that seems to have a death wish. I feel like I’ve been strapped into a harness. Pinned against a wall. Nailed inside a coffin that has no escape.

Breathe,
I tell myself, but my lungs won’t expand. They don’t want to touch the two Elites who are a breath’s length away from me. They don’t want to fuel the mind that controls the mouth that keeps getting us into this mess.

“As you can see, my pull is stronger than you can imagine,” Clara says, staring crossly at me, “and I will use it if you do not obey.”

“You’re bluffing,” I say, wishing I could believe my own words. “You won’t hurt any of us. You need us too much.”

“Show her,” she says aloud to whoever is on the other side of the door watching us.

A wall shifts into a screen across from me and, slowly, the image of a sniper comes into view. He’s standing in the rear of a classroom with his rifle targeted on the back of Jaxen’s head.

I gasp. My premonition. The second choice.

This is happening too fast. I don’t understand how the world could be spinning, passing me by so fast, yet my feet are rooted in place. I don’t know how I’ve managed to continue breathing when my heart has surely stopped working.

“My guards are ready to take him, and anyone else, out at my command should you make the wrong choice here, Middleton.”

The hand covering my mouth, stifling my ability to warn him. It was Clara. But the flag burning behind her…

“You wouldn’t. It wouldn’t look good for your reputation,” I breathe out, praying I’m right despite the churning feeling in my stomach. Despite the acid that’s grown fingers clawing up the back of my throat.

She turns and levels her hateful gaze on me. “Do you want to test that theory? People die in these rooms every day for a multitude of reasons. You think I can’t cover it up? Spin it to my advantage? You think I’m new to this game?”

All I can see is the little red dot on the back of his head. See his smile vanishing because of my stupidity. I have to make the right choice. I have to keep him safe.

“Fine,” I relent, feeling myself hollowing out from the inside out. Feeling like this one syllable word is stronger than any ink a pen could provide when signing away the rights of a living, breathing person.