Indebted: The Premonition Series (45 page)

With strong, manicured fingers, Casimir grasps my chin and turns my face to his. “If you try anything, I will take my knife and impale you to the seat. Do you understand?” he asks me. I nod my head, feeling my blood draining from my face.

He eases the car out of the garage before he presses the accelerator to the floor, rocketing along the winding drive that leads away from the house. “Where are we going?” I ask in a weak voice, hoping to come up with an exit strategy if I know the plan.

“Just to the end of the drive. I have soldiers in position waiting for us. We have a portal to Sheol,” he says. Bile rises in my throat while he rubs his thigh where I had shot him earlier, scowling like it hurts him.

I have to fight now, or I’m worse than dead,
I think as my hand inches downward to my boot where Brennus’ knife is hidden.

As I watch Casimir’s profile, a movement catches my eye beyond the driver’s side window. It looks like a charcoal-gray missile is coming towards the car and my hand moves to the handle of the door to brace myself just before it flies straight into us.

On impact, the vehicle begins flipping over and over on its side as the momentum of being broadsided propels us in a different direction. As the car comes to rest on its side, I lie against my door that is on the ground. Feeling dizzy and sick, I groan in pain, gazing at the grass covering my window.

The car moves then as something leaps up onto its quarter panel. A sharp groan of metal sounds as Casimir’s door is torn off of its hinges and thrown away in a blink of an eye. The car crashes downward as it is righted and comes to rest on all four tires. The car is still rocking as a hand reaches in and pulls Casimir by the throat from the driver’s seat.

Charcoal-gray wings unfold by the side of the car to the raspy sound of my shallowly taken breath. There are other, more-distant noises, but they don’t make much sense to me—like screaming—the screams of someone in agony.

I look dazedly out the shattered front windshield and blink when an arm falls with a
thump
on the hood of the car. It’s bloody and gory, with sinew and cartilage hanging from it. Something else falls then—an ear?

My vision swims, making me see double. Running my hand over the frame of the door, the smooth handle brushes against my fingertips and I pull on it weakly. It won’t open. Blood from my head drips onto my arm; I reach up to touch it, but I am distracted by a cracking sound. Outside the car, one of Casimir’s wings is being brutally shredded from his body.

I pale even more and I feel like I’m going to be violently ill soon. As my hand goes to my mouth, I see a hulking ogre-like creature ambling towards the car on my side. Just behind the Kevev are three Inikwi, moving fast and overtaking it to get to me first.

They run like animals…dogs
, I think as I see them use all four limbs while their strides stretch out the length of their bodies, but they look human. A whimper of fear escapes me while my trembling hands go to my seatbelt to undo it. A warm, blood-spattered hand covers mine, stopping me from freeing myself.

“It’s okay, love. We’re leaving now,” Reed says in a gentle tone, staring into my eyes with his perfect green ones.

He sits in the driver’s seat and starts the mangled vehicle. The car purrs like it had in the garage. Reed leans forward and pushes the shattered windshield out of the way. He then uses his hands to push the drooping roof of the car back up. Wheeling the car around, the arm and ear slide off the hood to the ground as we head back in the direction of the estate. In confusion, I rest my head limply against the seat. My brain cannot make sense of what is happening.

How is he here? Why is he taking me back to Brennus’ house?
I wonder as the scenery whips past the car at an insane speed.

“Hold on, love,” Reed says to reassure me as something
thumps
on the roof of the car.

Reed pulls out an automatic weapon, aiming it one-handed above our heads. He sprays bullets and punctures the roof while he maneuvers right past the circular drive in front of the estate and onto the manicured grass. Another
thump
comes from the trunk. An angel is holding on to our car, trying to stop us Fred Flintstone-style—with his feet dragging on the ground.

In the next second, light brown wings shroud the angel holding our car as Zephyr dives at him, impaling the Fallen angel on his broadsword. The back of the car bounces back onto the ground, causing us to fishtail before Reed gets the car back under control.

“Thanks, Zee,” Reed says under his breath, looking in the rearview mirror.

Salty wind courses through the open windshield while the performance tires chew up the lawn. My vision doubles again as the rapidly approaching edge of the cliff sends red flags to my brain.

Moving my head to look at Reed again, I say just above a whisper, “Cliff, Reed.”

Reed’s eyes widen and he looks stunned as he says, “Evie?”

I raise my hand and point at the cliff that we are hurtling towards as I croak, “Stop, Reed!” My brain is swirling.
Why doesn’t he see the sea ahead?
I wonder dizzily, as reality is distorting.
Maybe this isn’t real…

Reed places his hand on my cheek. “He broke the contract?” Reed asks, not caring about driving us to what seems like the edge of the world. “You are free?”

I nod slowly, not taking my eyes from the brilliant stars in the big sky ahead of us. “He let me go, so Casimir wouldn’t kill me,” I say shakily as my hand reaches out to take his.

Reed watches me entwine my fingers in his. His eyes soften as he speaks to me in Angel with a euphoric expression on his lips. It makes me forget what was making me panic as I give all control of my destiny over to him in an instant.

The rotten flesh of an Inikwi leaves a smear on my window when he lands on the car and clings to the roof. Several more
thumps
hit the car as more of his pack joins him. “Don’t worry, Evie, I have a plan,” Reed says, while reaching into his body armor and pulling out something shiny from it.

“I trust you,” I whisper.

Reed opens the compact in his hand the moment the car begins its decent towards the sea below. The interior of the vehicle becomes a swirling, chaotic mess, as everything distorts and twists as if being stretched and pulled in a taffy machine. With no air to breathe, the feeling of being pulled like metal to a powerful magnet consumes me.

I land on the ground on my hands and knees. The moment I am able to take a breath, I can’t because I am vomiting everything I have ever eaten onto the ground in front of me. A growl sounds from Reed as he stands with his back to me, facing the four Inikwi that came through the portal with us. They speak to each other with garbled voices.

“Love, can you move?” Reed asks, not looking at me. I push myself up to my feet, but I have to lean against a wall so I won’t crash back down. My bullet wounds are healing, allowing me to stand, but my legs still ache.

“Yes,” I respond, looking around in a daze and realizing that we are in some kind of underground tunnel. The metal scraping sound of a train pulling into a station registers in my mind as subway cars pulse by me, blowing my hair back from my face with stale air.

“Board the train, Evie,” Reed instructs me gently, pulling knives from the notches designed into the thigh area of his body armor.

“Umm…Okay,” I mutter, pushing myself off the white-tiled wall and moving in a crooked line across the platform to the entrance of an open subway car. The car is nearly empty, except for a handful of rowdy twenty-somethings that look like they are on their way home from the pub. I can hardly understand what they are saying because of their heavy, British accents.

I hold on to the metal handrail near the open door as I turn to look at Reed. One Inikwi is already dead, lying in a pool of silver liquid that has the consistency of maple syrup. Laughter and jeering comments drift to me from the other end of the car. The entry-level, corporately-attired humans have no idea what is really happening here. Before the doors of the subway car close, Reed is by my side, pulling me against him and backing away from the doors as they shut. Fog clouds the glass panel of the train door as an Inikwi presses his face to it. He is wearing a filthy, navy blue suit jacket with a moldy red tie over a dingy white shirt. His skin is deathly pale and black mold crusts around his hairline. His dark hair is matted and clumped.
Did the Inikwi dig up that body?
I wonder. As I gaze beyond the snarling monster on the platform, I see that there are now three, inert Inikwi bodies on the ground, dead.

The train moves away from the station, slowly gaining speed. My eyes follow the one remaining Inikwi as he keeps pace with our train car. Aching fear squeezes my chest as he weaves between columns along the underground platform and analyzes the attributes of our car. The humanoid body of the Inikwi drops down on all fours when the train gains momentum, then he leaps to the roof of the car behind ours.

Shivering, I glance at Reed, seeing the blank expression on his face. “Remind me to explain to Buns and Brownie exactly what I mean when I say, ‘leave the portal open in a safe place,’” he murmurs in a rueful tone, before gazing around at the contents of the train, gauging its defensibility.

“OY, ANGELS! Where’s the bloody costume party?” one drunken human calls from the other end of the car. He looks like he started drinking during happy hour and had to stop when they closed the place. His comment elicits laughter from his buddies who begin to discuss us from their seats.

“Reapers,” Reed mutters under his breath. “I’ll be right back, love,” Reed says in a concerned tone, looking towards the back of the train. Through the glass panel at the back of our car, the Inikwi climbs through the window of the car attached to this one. “Sit here,” Reed says, gently pushing me into a seat that faces the exit on the side of the train where we entered. “Oh,” Reed says as an after-thought, “Buns said to give you this after you came through the portal.

He hands me an envelope from inside his armor before he turns and strides towards the car attached to ours. I open the envelope and a pack of breath strips tumbles out of it. In a daze, I pop a couple of the minty strips into my mouth and sit numbly in the seat, trying to shake the sense of unreality that I’m experiencing. I have been living in Faerie-land for months now where everything is Gancanagh, fallen angels, magic, and terrifying creatures. I am the queen of the wild things. But, in an instant, I have been thrown back into the “real world,” only to find that this now feels like a fantasyland—unreal.

As I peer into the next car, I see Reed lift the Inikwi off his feet and hurl him into a row of plastic seats. I shift my gaze the other way and listen to the humans continue to discuss me, never noticing the Inikwi in the car next to ours getting his head beaten in.
Will I always be caught in the middle between two worlds?
I wonder in a detached way.

When the train pulls away from the next station, Reed walks in front of me. Crouching down, he gently touches my face, assessing the cuts on my head. His hands slip over my body next, checking for broken bones and contusions. When his hands move over my gunshot wounds, I flinch, sucking in my breath sharply.

Reed’s eyes narrow. “You’ve been shot,” he states as his jaw clenches tight, making him look lethal.

I nod. “You already avenged me,” I whisper, seeing the fury in his eyes. “Casimir…” I trail off as flashes of his dismemberment at Reed’s hands flicker in my mind.

Reed rises up from his crouched position and walks towards the humans in our car. Using his voice that has the power of persuasion, he instructs them to exit the train at the next station. He also tells them to forget everything they saw on this train. He walks back to me and begins to take his body armor off, exposing his beautiful, bare chest beneath it.

When the train pulls into another underground station, everyone exits the car, leaving us alone. Reed moves to the doors, pulling the wiring so that the doors malfunction and won’t open again automatically. He pulls a couple of handrails off the wall and uses them to lock the doors at either end of the car. Then he strips the rest of his armor off so he is left in just his tracksuit bottoms. He kneels down in front of me, tearing the bottom of my pant legs up and exposing the healing gunshot wounds in my thighs. Ripping the fabric lining out of his body armor, Reed makes strips, wrapping them securely around each thigh. When he finishes, he hangs his head, looking down at the floor.

“I’m sorry. Please forgive me,” Reed says in a voice filled with contrition, letting his forehead rest lightly on my knees.

“What?” I ask, while tears I have been trying really hard to hold back, fall from my eyes. The tips of his fingers gently smooth over his soft hair, just as my heart contracts painfully in my chest.

“I swore to you that I would protect you,” Reed says with bitterness. He lifts his head and looks at my face with torment in his beautiful green eyes.

“You did. Casimir didn’t drag me down into the abyss because you were there. You did everything right—everything, and I’m so grateful that you still want to fight for me after what I did,” I whisper, crying now.

“Evie, you are my
aspire
…my only love. Don’t you understand? It’s just you,” Reed says solemnly, reaching out and holding my cheek, while wiping my tears with his thumb. “I am no longer whole without you.” His other hand goes to the mark of my wings branded on his chest above his heart. “I will never love anyone but you,” Reed promises with the certainty of billions of years.

“I love you…I’m sorry…” I can’t continue because my throat burns with emotion.

“Evie,” he whispers, seeing my anguish and regret for what he has gone through to be with me. Rising from his knees, Reed reaches down and picks me up off the seat before sitting down in it and placing me in his lap. He holds me to his chest, stroking my wings hypnotically as he speaks to me in Angel. The dark tunnels of the subway flicker by, illuminated by florescent lighting where advertisers have placed their latest ads.

Listening to Reed’s voice, I calm down as the sway of the train lulls me in a different way. “What did you say?” I ask him, feeling better.