Gifted, A Donovan Circus Novel (13 page)

An explosion lit the night sky
and I heard several screams. I looked up to see the parking lot in a red and
yellow glow, flames coming from where I left everyone. Son of a bitch, Nikolas
lost it. I hoped it could be blamed on faulty wiring, a gas explosion, anything
else. I heard tires screech and just knew that it was Delia coming to get me.

“Found you,” I heard a
now-familiar grizzled voice behind me. I tried to stand but he shoved me into
the car. My head hit the door and I saw stars. Dazed, I looked up at him. He
kicked me in the side and I yelped.

“Don’t do this,” I choked out.

He grabbed a hank of my hair and
dragged me across the dusty gravel lot. I kicked as hard as I could and tried
to grab his wrists but I couldn’t get a grip to hurt him. Surprisingly fast for
an older man, he hauled me into a bush behind a broken streetlamp. It was
almost pitch-black. My fingernails clawed at the dirt and brambles scratched my
face.

I reached up to grab his wrist
again, but he only yanked on my hair harder and whacked my leg with his
baseball bat.

“Touch me and I’ll swing this
into your head,” he snarled. “Don’t think we don’t know about your kind. You
freaks think you’re so superior. Buncha scum who cause nothin’ but trouble. You
set things on fire, you meddle with people’s thoughts, you think you can tell
us what to do. You’re all trash who shouldn’t be here!”

He had a remarkably strong grip
on my hair. Tears formed in my eyes but I was ready to set this bastard on
fire. Sheffield would have to be angry with me. I went to my last resort: I
screamed bloody murder. He swung at my ribs with the bat, cutting off my scream
into a gasp of pain. I hurt so badly I came close to puking.

“Don’t do this,” I garbled out.
“I don’t want to hurt anyone.”

“Too late. Your attitude handled
that back at the bar. Should’ve let me buy you a drink. It could’ve gone a lot differently.
I just wanted to see what you were like in bed, but then you had to go and show
your true colors.”

The man let go of my hair and
kicked me completely down. Before I could get up, he lifted up his bat.

“Get on your knees and beg for
your life,” he said.

“Never gonna happen,” I
muttered, trying to shake my daze and steady myself to fight back. I had no
energy to even form a fireball. He had beaten it out of me and I was on the
verge of panic. I couldn’t focus, couldn’t even produce a tiny flame. What was
wrong with me?

He undid his belt and pants
zipper with one hand. “I might think about letting you live if you beg me the
right way.”

“Fuck you,” I spat. Where was
Delia with the car? Surely someone wondered where I was by now. We were all
gifted for god’s sake.

“Have it your way. Maybe I’ll
take you back to my place and when you wake up, you’ll have a change of heart.”

“I will set everything you own
on fire, you dumbfuck,” I mumbled. I needed to concentrate.

“You and your kind shouldn’t
even be in this world.
You’re not human
!”
he roared. I would be crushed to death by an idiot townie. This was not what I
could call going out in a blaze of glory. He swung the bat down.

Chapter
8

I threw my arms over my head to
try and protect my skull. My father’s face flashed in my brain and bizarrely, I
wished I could say goodbye to him. I braced myself, but instead of a bat
cracking into my bones, I heard a crash and loud grunt as body met earth.

I opened my eyes and peeked
through my arms to see Gabriel picking himself up from over the guy. He’d
thrown the old man into a tree so hard it knocked him out. His entire body was
limp; blood trickled down his face from the head wound. The baseball bat lay in
front of me from where he dropped it upon the body slam. Gabriel picked up the
bat and slammed it into the man’s side, for good measure I guessed, and threw
it away into the bushes.

Gabriel walked over to me and
knelt down. “Hey. Lucy.”

My whole body shook from rage
and fear. By far the worst experience of my entire life, I couldn’t even move.
My limbs refused to cooperate with my brain’s commands.

“Boy, that was anticlimactic,” I
mumbled.

“Lucy, you’re okay,” Gabriel
tried again. His voice was gently, buttery warm. I felt his hand on my arm and
jumped. I looked up at him, but couldn’t register my thoughts. His face swam in
front of me. My lips parted and a voice came out, but it didn’t sound like me.

“I couldn’t form a fireball.”

“You’re in shock. We need to get
up. Brooklyn’s got the car.”

I stared at the man’s
unconscious body. His pants were still undone. A shiver racked my body and
Gabriel tried to get my attention again.

“Hey, we need to leave. Cops are
headed here and we’ve got huge trouble if we don’t leave right now. Lucy, come
on.”

When I still didn’t respond, he
made the decision for me. He grabbed my arms and pulled me up off the ground. I
didn’t want to be picked up like a damsel and instead tried to fight him. As he
half-dragged me out of the bushes and back into the lot, I started to get my
bearings back. My body hurt from where the bat hit me and I limped back as he
carried part of my weight. I started to focus on current events.

“Where is everyone? Are they okay?”
I asked.

“They’re fine. We’re all a
little worse for wear, but okay. Nikolas finally lost it and when he aimed a
fire streak for a guy, he hit a car. The gas tank exploded and it scared most
of them away. That’s when we tried to find you. We saw that guy chase you.”

“This was my fault.”

“You can’t control what those
idiots did.”

“You saw how it started,
Gabriel. All because I couldn’t handle my temper and let you take a normal
approach to stepping in. If I hadn’t burned that guy, this wouldn’t have happened.”

“Fuck him! He didn’t have to get
his goons to jump us. He was wasted and couldn’t stand his ego taking a hit
from a pretty young girl. He’s got problems with people like us but he took it
too far. His ignorance far outweighs your reaction to a drink. He was probably
itching for a moment like this to happen. There’s the car.”

I looked up to see everyone
around the vehicle ten feet ahead of us. Brooklyn was now in the driver’s seat,
cursing at everyone to get in the car. Keegan turned and saw us. He, as well as
Nikolas and Delia, ran to help.

“Ugh, you were right. I
hate
that,” I grumbled to Gabriel.

A guffaw escaped him. “Almost
raped, beaten, and killed, and you’re more upset about the fact I was right? I
don’t have you figured out at all.”

The others reached us and
overheard his statement. Delia’s eyes grew wide on my appearance.

“Almost raped and killed? Are
you okay?” she asked me.

“Where is he?” Nikolas asked in
a snarly tone. I half-expected claws to appear.

“Where I left him. I tackled him
into a tree. He won’t be up for awhile. Be lucky if he remembers anything, I
hope,” Gabriel answered.

“We need to get the hell out of
here,” Keegan said. He grabbed me away from Gabriel. We all rushed to the car
and crammed inside. Keegan and Gabriel sat on either side of me. The doors
weren’t even shut before Brooklyn screeched out of the lot towards the circus
lot.

“Seriously, is everyone okay?” I
asked as we left the bar.

“We should be asking you the
same thing,” Brooklyn replied. “I saw what Gabriel witnessed and we ought to go
back and kill that guy.”

“No,” Delia said firmly. “We
need to get back and find Sheffield. Someone needs to warn him that we might
have trouble from the locals.”

“Seriously, Gabriel, cut that
shit out. Think of something else. Ponies and rainbows, I don’t care. I’m going
to have nightmares of those images,” Brooklyn barked from the front seat.

“What images?” Finley asked.

“Of Lucy on the ground, about to
get killed by that guy,” she said.

“Get out of my head, then, why
don’t you?” Gabriel snapped.

“Oh, pardon me if I’m having
trouble focusing right now. I figure with the circumstances, we all understand
our talents are a little shaky.”

I felt him soften a little. “I’m
not happy about it in my head, either.”

“I’m so sorry, you guys. This is
my fault,” I apologized.

Protests filled the car. I could
barely keep track of who said what.

“You can’t control anyone else’s
actions.”

“They were drunk and stupid.
Fucking malakas.”

“We’re glad you’re okay. You
definitely had the worst of it.”

“It’s over. We’ll go back and
drink the bruises away.”

“I
told
you there’d be a bar fight tonight!” Finley was the clear
winner for this one. He said it with a maniacal grin.

The car went silent for a moment
before Bianca groaned at him.

“What? Everyone’s fine. We won!”
Finley exclaimed. “Those bastards ran for their bourbon-covered hills when
Nikolas hit that car. Sucks for that bar owner, though.”

Keegan put his arm around me and
lowered his head. “You can relax. It’s going to be fine,” he whispered. I put
my head on his shoulder and tried to bite back the pain. My hand flew to the
back of my head to gingerly feel the sore spots.

“I’m never going to feel the
back of my head again,” I muttered.

“Why do you say that?”

“After he rammed my head into a
car door, he grabbed my hair and dragged me across the lot into the bushes
where Gabriel found me. He’ll remember what happened when he wakes up and sees
a chunk of long red hair in his hand.”

“I don’t understand. Why didn’t
you defend yourself? Set him on fire or at least the area around him to get
away?” Keegan asked. The car grew quiet and I saw Nikolas cock his head towards
me to better hear my answer.

“I tried. He kicked and hit me
so many times that I couldn’t get a grip on his hands. After my head hit the
car, I couldn’t get the stars out of my eyes to focus. When he threw me to the
ground, I tried to coax enough energy for a fireball, but I guess he hit me too
much. I didn’t have it in me. After he offered his genitals as a reward, I told
him to fuck off and he lifted the bat before I could even warm my palms.”

Brooklyn obviously had a lead
foot, because we arrived back about a minute later. Delia, Bianca, and Brooklyn
decided it would be best if they told Sheffield of the evening’s events. I
offered to go with them, but they insisted I go take care of myself. I think
they were scared I’d break down in front of Sheffield. I would never let that
happen, but I was glad to avoid it all the same.

The boys and I walked back to
the camping area. Finley and Nikolas decided to go catch the end of Angel’s
poker game and maybe a few shots of whiskey.

“I can’t thank you enough,” I
tried.

Nikolas waved me off. “We
protect one another. Glad you’re okay. Let’s try to avoid that kind of
excitement in the next city.”

“Speak for yourself. I had a
great time. The explosion made it way better than the last one,” Finley said,
always the optimist. “I wanted to get into a fight, so thanks.”

“Um, you’re welcome, I think,” I
responded. He gave me a boyish smile.

“Hey, we’re all okay. It’s over;
Sheffield’s gonna be in the know so we can be protected. It’ll be fine. We’ve
had stuff way worse than this happen,” he said.

I didn’t even want to fathom the
possibilities. Nikolas nodded at me and they walked off. That left me with
Gabriel and Keegan.

“I’ll walk you back to your
camper,” Keegan offered.

Gabriel lit a cigarette and
looked around. “Guess that’s my cue. Thanks for the exciting night, Lucy.”

“Gabriel…” I began. I couldn’t
even begin to thank him.

He gave me a long look that I
couldn’t read. Then he turned around and walked away to his end of the
campgrounds.

I watched him walk away, unsure
about any of my emotions. He was such a guarded person, even more than me.
Gabriel, whether I liked it or not, saved my life. I could never repay him. As
his lean figure disappeared into the shadows, I couldn’t help but wish for
Brooklyn’s gift—I wanted to know what his thoughts were about the evening.

“Are you okay?” Keegan asked,
jarring me back to reality. I turned away from Gabriel’s back, looking up to
see Keegan with a worried look. Blood still coated one side of his face. I
lifted my hand to his face and my fingertips brushed his skin; his eyes closed
briefly before focusing on me again as I dropped my hand to my side.

“I’m okay. It’s been a rough
night. I’m ready to go to bed. And you need to get ice on your head,” I said.

“Let’s get you back to your
camper, then. Delia can fill you in when she gets back,” he replied. We began
our walk to the living quarters.

“We don’t have to talk about
what happened, but it was clear Brooklyn was really freaked out by what Gabriel
saw. If he hadn’t gotten there in time…” he trailed off. There was a brief
pause and he squeezed my hand, but didn’t let go.

“I know. That’s what I was
thinking. I owe Gabriel my life. I’m not sure how to feel about that,” I
admitted.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I don’t know if it’s
necessarily a good thing to owe him so much. I don’t know him, so I can’t guess
how or when he’ll ask for a favor.”

“Maybe he won’t ask at all,” he
suggested.

“No. I think when Gabriel thinks
he needs something he’ll call this in. I don’t know why I feel this way, I just
do,” I firmly replied.

“I hope you’re wrong. I don’t
really have anything against him after he saved your life, but he doesn’t
strike me as someone you want to owe.”

“I know. I can’t put my finger
on it, but something’s off with him. The fact that he refuses to talk about his
gift is clue number one.”