Perdition (4 page)

The lid slammed shut. We broke the kiss. A teenager in an aqua and white striped shirt still had his hand on the dumpster. The kid laughed and muttered, “Old people,” then shook his head and walked away. I wanted to snark at him that I was only twenty-six, but it seemed like too much effort at the moment. My head felt like it was floating ten feet above my neck.

Rune’s deep chuckle drew my attention, but one look at his face doused all further thoughts of intimacy. The whites of his eyes glowed like paper under a black light, and the deep blue of his irises now shown electric ice blue.

I tried to push him away but only managed to move him a few inches.

“What’s wrong with your eyes?” I said.

A slow smile lifted his lips. “It is your power that you see.” A hint of an exotic accent now tinged his voice.

“I may see it, but I don’t feel it. I don’t feel energy from you at all.”

Another push to his chest didn’t budge him, but the feel of the wall of muscle under my palm produced the almost overwhelming urge to step closer to him. After a lifetime living a nun-like existence, I’d suddenly turned into what my grandma used to call a hussy in the last five minutes.

I pulled my hand away. “You’re seriously weirding me out. Back off.”

The relief when he backed off was quickly replaced with alarm when I tried to move. I grabbed the dumpster in time to save myself from going to my knees. Rune grabbed my arm to support me, but I shoved his hand away.

“No, don’t touch me.” I grasped the dumpster with both hands. “What’s wrong with me? What did you do?”

Concern flashed in his eyes. He reached for me again, but dropped his hand when I flinched.

“I may have fed too much. It is hard to tell with you. You are not normal human energy. Yours is intoxicating nectar.” He reached out again. “Let me help you.”

The world swayed as I shook my head. “Ohhhhhh, noooooo. You helping me is what caused this.” My hands had a death grip on the dumpster. I lowered my forehead to rest on them. They were cool and clammy.

“My apologies. I meant you no harm.”

“Well you should have been more careful. It feels like you could have killed me.”

He didn’t reply. In fact, he became so still, I thought he’d gone. I tilted my head and peeked up at him. His unmoving stare spoke volumes.

“You couldn’t have really killed me. Could you?”

He looked away to the dark alley and took a shuffling step back. I straightened and leaned against the wall, leaving a hand on the dumpster to steady myself.

“Oh my God.” My heart hammered out slow, thudding beats. There wasn’t enough energy left in me for it to race. “You could have killed me.”

I scooted along the wall away from him. Leaving my hand on the dumpster until the last possible second, I reached for the other dumpster and fell toward it, willing my legs to take each step. Vertigo twisted horizontal and swayed vertical like a flag pole in a hurricane. The energy void of the alley now worked against me. I needed to get out into the quad area and restore myself with the ambient energy of hundreds of busy students from the surrounding classrooms. The food court ended twenty feet away, but right then it might as well have been twenty miles.

He looked back, but didn’t pursue me. “I . . . do not wish to hurt you.”

“Yeah, yeah.” I drug myself around the dumpster, using my hands as much as my feet to propel myself. “I’m sure the lady who ran over my dog when I was twelve thought something like that just before she squashed him.”

He reached out to me again, and I threw myself out of his reach. My shoulder and head connected with the brick wall with a sickening crack. Lightening bolts of pain streaked across my vision.

“Stay away from me, or so help me I’ll scream bloody murder.”

“Let me . . . I . . .” He lowered his hand and sighed. “I have encountered no one as unique as you in such a very, very long time. I do not wish to frighten you.”

I snorted and slid along the wall toward the end of the alley. “Too late, bucko. You scare the manure out of me, and I want you as far away as possible. I have enough problems in my life without some glowing-eyed gigolo sucking the life out me.”

Angry tears flowed freely down my cheeks. Hysteria bubbled up from my thudding heart. A shrieking tone tightened my voice, and I felt a supreme rant coming on.

He drew a deep breath and looked toward the night sky. When he looked back at me, his eyes lacked some of their earlier glow.

In a quiet controlled voice he said, “I will see you again.”

A blur of motion rushed forward and lifted me. The world streamed by in a smear of colors, and I was suddenly sitting on a bench in a dark corner of the quad—alone. My backpack rested beside me. My gut heaved, and if I’d had enough energy or anything in my stomach, I’d have lost it in the bushes behind me.

I sagged back into the bench back. I’d always tried not to absorb power, tried not to call the monster that was my “gift.” Now, I concentrated on pulling the energy all around into my body, but nothing happened. Had Rune drained me so much that I couldn’t recharge? Mixed feelings of hope that my strange abilities were gone and fear that I would remain drained and listless the rest of my life battled as I pulled again, trying to absorb regenerating power. After a few minutes, I slumped down, rested my head back on the bench, and gave up. Despair and bone-deep fatigue wiped my mind clean. I was so drained, I waited for my heartbeat to stop.

As soon as I gave up and stopped fighting for control, a cold spot formed on top of my head and blossomed outward. The top of my skull felt stripped bare, with my brain exposed to the cool night air. Warmth poured into the chasm and spread from my head down. As the heat passed, small twisting balls of energy formed on my forehead, throat, heart, two places down my abdomen, and finally between my legs. After a few minutes, the weakness passed. I sat up, and the flow shut off.

I sucked in a breath and took stock of my body. I felt normal, or at least what I imagined a normal person felt like. My gaze fell to my backpack, and I pushed at it with my telekinesis. Nothing happened. I laughed and shoved the backpack with my hand. I was alive, and for the first time in a long time, I couldn’t feel my abilities.

I stood in stages to make sure that I wasn’t going to fall flat on my backside. Once fully standing, I waited for a few seconds to make sure I wasn’t going to run out of oomph, then picked up my backpack and walked to the parking lot. One row away from my car, two things occurred to me. The first was that I was winded, which probably meant that I’d shut off the flow of energy too soon. And the second, was that there was a dark van with heavily tinted windows parked next to my car on the passenger’s side.

The van didn’t feel threatening, but as I looked around the parking lot, I realized in a panic that I didn’t feel anything at all. I wasn’t picking up any signals from anything. Did “normal” people get feelings and hunches, or was that just one more of my little abnormalities?

Whatever the answer, the van posed a sensory black hole. Since it was during regular evening-class hours, not another soul was around. I stopped. The main campus sat in the distance, an island beyond a dark sea connected by small buoys of parking lot lights. I tried to see through the van’s windows but couldn’t.

This was stupid. The day’s events had made me paranoid. I fished my keys from my backpack and started walking again. My hand had just fastened on the car door when a man stepped from behind the van. Relief sang through me when I recognized him as the man who’d returned my cat.

“Mr. Smith,” I said and smiled.

He smiled back, but his dull eyes darted to the front of the van. Another man stepped out from that direction and took a few menacing steps toward me. This guy wore an all black fatigue-looking outfit, and his expression was dead serious. I didn’t need extra senses to realize I was in trouble.

“Mr. Smith?” I said again as I backed away. Wait a minute. Bob Smith? How stupid could I have been? His partner’s name was probably John Doe. Yeah, sure. Why not? Maybe Mrs. N was right, and I was a naïve idiot. Growing up with home-schooling that included no human contact with anyone but my family and learning about life from old television reruns had left me completely unprepared for life.

I dropped everything and darted toward the front of my car, but Mr. Doe blocked me. I started toward the back of the car, but Mr. Smith cut off my escape. He held a nasty silver gun contraption with a small canister on top. Mr. Doe looked the lighter of the two, so I raised my hand and tried to push him out of the way with my telekinesis. He flinched, but nothing happened. For once in my life, I missed my special abilities.

If I couldn’t use the telekinetic whammy, maybe brute force would work. I ran as hard as I could toward Mr. Doe. His eyes went wide and his mouth dropped open when he figured out what I was doing, but it was too late. Already a foot away, I ducked and plowed into him like I’d been taught in last semester’s self-defense class. He went down. Unfortunately, so did I. I scrambled to my feet, but he grabbed my ankle. Mr. Smith ran up on the other side of my car with what I now recognized as a silver injection gun.

Mr. Doe closed another hand on my ankle. I screamed, but no one was there to hear. Hoping against hope that my fear had given me enough energy, I raised my hand and tried to gather power to push Mr. Smith away. Nothing happened. He was almost on me. I gave up using my ability and just raised my hands to fend him off as best I could. Frigid cold enveloped my head as scalding energy flowed from my ankle up my body and built into a fiery ball near my shoulder. Mr. Doe screamed as I sucked the energy from him, and he released my ankle. Power shot down my arm toward Mr. Smith. His chest concaved. His arms and feet shot forward, and he hurtled backward and landed on the trunk of a car across the parking aisle.

A grunt sounded behind me. Mr. Doe lay on his stomach. He looked at me in wide-eyed horror, his eyes rolled to white, and his forehead crashed to the pavement. The blue light of an emergency call pole glowed a few aisles away. If I could get to it, the University Police would be there within a few minutes. Not wanting to step over Mr. Doe, I turned around and ran into a man’s solid chest. Hands like steel bands fastened on my elbows and pinned them to my sides. I looked up at the face of a stranger in the same type of black outfit as the other guy. A fourth guy dressed the same way walked up holding the injection gun. He pressed it to my arm and pulled the trigger. A trail of fire snaked up my arm. The stranger holding me grinned.

A blur of black flashed from my right. The man with the gun flew backward through the air and crashed next to Mr. Smith. Rune now stood where the man had been. The goon holding me let go and reached inside his jacket.

Rune grasped the man’s arm so fast my eyes couldn’t track the movement. There was a loud snap, and the man’s scream pierced the air. With one hand, Rune picked the man up by the front of his shirt and threw him on top of the van.

My vision blurred. Rune turned to me. His eyes glowed as they had earlier and his mouth seemed different somehow, but my brain couldn’t figure out why.

The world slowed. Heartbeats and moan-laced breaths filled my ears, and I realized they were mine. My legs buckled, sending me into a twisting, lifeless fall. My brain told me to prepare for contact with the pavement, but my body was no longer accepting signals. A slow-speed rendition of my voice announced in my head,
This
 
.
 
.
 
.
 
is
 
.
 
.
 
.
 
going
 
.
 
.
 
.
 
to
 
.
 
.
 
.
 
hur—

My fall stopped short of the concrete, and Rune’s face floated in mist above me.

“I’ve got you, little
fotia
.”

Darkness closed in until only his lips remained in my vision. The peaks of his upper lip dove sensuously to a point over a full bottom lip.

“What a great mouth,” I slurred through the fog.

The mouth twitched up in a smile.

Then all went black.

CHAPTER FOUR

B
ACK
F
ROM
O
BLIVION

I came to in stages, fighting each one.

Hearing intruded first. Voices. Chairs scraping. A door opening. Music booming. A door closing. More voices.

I willed the noise away like a petulant child woken up on a school day. I wanted to turn away from the sound, but I couldn’t. My brain was only in contact with my ears. It was accepting sounds, but it didn’t have the capacity to process them into logical thought or corresponding reaction. At that moment, it didn’t have the capacity to care either.

Retreating inside myself, I floated back down into peaceful oblivion and dreamed of green moths with fluffy orange antennae.

“Marlena. Do you hear me?” The voice was rich and smooth and slightly familiar. The kind of voice you wanted to wrap yourself in and snuggle down with into soothing slumber.

“Marlena?” A hand on my forehead stroking down my face. A thumb brushing lightly across my lips. My mind pulled away again and glided into warm blackness.

“Marlena. It is Rune.” Again the soft touches on my face. “You are with me. You are safe.” The lips that whispered to me brushed my ear. The smell of cedar, musk, and man warmed my senses. I smiled and turned my face into the hand stroking my cheek. A sigh was all I had energy for. The world slid back to the depths of solitude.

“Marlena.
Foteinos Fotia
. Come back to me.”

Another voice in the room, one with an energy source attached to it.

“She’s been out all day, boss. I did just what you said and let her sleep.”

A cool hand stroked my brow. “Yes, you did as I instructed, Tony. I wanted to let her rest. She’s been through much that she isn’t accustomed to. I just didn’t know she wouldn’t wake at all.”

Cool damp air drew goose bumps on my legs and arms. I reached for a blanket I had vague recollection of.

“No, Marlena. Time for snuggling under the covers is over. It is time to wake.”

Strong hands slid under my back and lifted me to a sitting position. My head twirled around once before my brain remembered where my neck muscles were. I wiped my dry lips with the back of my hand and cracked my eyes open a sliver.

“There you are,” Rune said. His hands on my back and stomach were all that kept me from flopping back again.

“How are you feeling?”

Eyes closed against the brightness, it took two tries to get sound to come from my throat.

“Tired. No . . . energy.”

“Tony,” Rune said over his shoulder. “Are Tweak and his girlfriend still outside?”

“Yeah, boss.”

“Get them.”

“But I thought you said they were never to come down to your apartment or—”

“Tony, now.”

“Sorry, boss.”

Footsteps pounded up what sounded like wooden stairs. A door opened, music filtered through, and the door closed.

“Marlene, drink this.” A glass pressed against my lips, and cool liquid poured slowly into my mouth. Three sips into it, I realized it was Gatorade. My hands surrounded Rune’s hand and the glass, and I gulped the rest of it down.

I let out a big “Ahhhh,” burped, and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand.

“More,” I whispered.

Rune’s rumbling laugh filled my ears.

“I’ll get more,” he said, “but you have to sit on your own.”

I nodded, still keeping my eyes closed. Rune turned me so my legs dangled over the bed. I propped myself up with my hands behind me.

I tried opening my eyes again, but the room was still pretending to be a merry-go-round. A few moments later, Rune sat next to me on the bed. He placed one hand on my back and helped me drink. I drank this glass a little slower than the last, but still nowhere near a speed in the range of ladylike.

The door upstairs opened again and more than one set of footsteps descended.

“Whoa, look, Darcy,” a male voice said.

“I don’t think we should go down there,” a woman replied.

“Tweak, Darcy, come here,” Rune said. “Sit on either side of this young woman on the bed.”

This was beginning to sound a little kinky.

“Whaaaa?” I said.

Rune stood, and the bed dipped down on either side of me.

“Closer, so you’re touching her. No, don’t ask any questions, either of you. Just do as I say.”

Tweak and Darcy scooted closer to me, sandwiching me between them.

“Like this?” Tweak asked.

“Perfect,” Rune said.

He cupped my chin in his hand and tilted my face up. My eyes fluttered open, and he stared into them. I felt him in my muddled thoughts.

“Marlena, open yourself. Wake up and gather the energy you need.”

Energy? Yes, I needed energy but . . . it hit me then. Two very high-energy sources pressed against me on either side. On my right, Tweak sniffed every few seconds. On my left, Darcy jiggled her leg so rapidly the whole bed vibrated.

The hair on my arms stood, and the small hairs at the nape of my neck waved to my close companions.

My head began to clear. As the fog that had blurred my thinking dissipated, pain rolled in.

I pressed my hands to the sides of my head. “Owwwwww.”

“She hooked on something, Mr. S?” Darcy said.

“No, Darcy. She was given something against her will, and we’re helping her.”

“Bummer. Like Roofies? Did it happen in your club?”

“Shut up, Darcy,” Tweak said. “Sorry, Mr. S.”

“That’s okay, Tweak. No, Darcy. It didn’t happen here. I need you two to keep this quiet, though.”

Rune pulled his wallet out of his back pocket and took out some money. He handed both Darcy and Tweak several bills.

I turned my head slowly and looked at Darcy. She was pale and thin to the point of being gaunt. Blonde hair hung past her shoulders in greasy lumps. Her most prominent feature, beside two protruding bloodshot eyes, was a huge mole in the center of her forehead. A filthy black T-shirt and khaki shorts hung off her like laundry on a clothesline. Her eyes darted constantly around the room, and her body exuded nervous energy.

Tweak sniffed again, and the room spun as I turned to look at him. I found it hard to believe that the scrawny, greasy man next to me could throw out so much energy. He stuffed the bills in his shirt pocket and grinned at me.

“Hey,” he said. There were more bare spots in his mouth than teeth. The odor of sweat and urine invaded my nose and barricaded itself in the back of my throat.

I gagged and covered my mouth with my hand. Darcy jumped off the bed. I immediately missed her energy.

“Uh oh, Mr. S,” she said. “I heard those Roofies could make you sick.”

Rune helped me to a bathroom several feet away and sat me down next to the toilet. The cold, black marble tile under me helped clear my head and stomach. A few cool compresses later, I felt much better.

Rune crouched in front of me.

“Can I get you anything else?” he said.

The urge to reach out and touch him battled with my ingrained fear of him.

“I’d . . . uhhh. Really like to clean up a little.” A few minutes to myself to think and scrape some of the stink of the drug and fear off myself sounded like the next logical step. Jumbled memories floated in the drug-tainted ether of my brain. I needed to put them together and fill in the gaps before I could figure out how to proceed in the nightmare that had become my life.

“I only ask one thing,” he said.

“And that is?”

He stood and stretched. Hands locked above his head, he leaned back, pulling his  polo shirt taught, and I could swear I could count every can in his six-pack abs. A few pops issued from his back and he lowered his hands and sighed.

“Please do not lock the door. I have no wish to break it down. I will safeguard your privacy.”

He walked to the door without waiting for my answer. The door was almost closed when I called to him.

“Rune?”

He opened the door a few inches but didn’t reenter.

“Yes?”

“Thank you.”

He didn’t reply for a moment.

“Will it help if I leave Darcy and Tweak outside the door?” he asked.

“Yes. They don’t have to be in the same room for me to feel their energy. That should be close enough.”

“There are clothes for you on the counter. Take as long as you need.”

The door clicked shut. I struggled to my feet and checked the clothes on the cabinet as I undressed. The black knit shorts were my size but were in a tight butt-hugging cut that wasn’t my usual style. The black T-shirt had the same logo as Rune’s, a large orange-yellow moon with a wave across it. The word “Perdition” arched in a semicircle above the moon and “Venice Beach” in smaller letters stretched below it. There was also a pair of underwear (also my size, though I didn’t want to fathom how he knew what size to buy) and some white socks.

Black marble stretched across the cavernous bathroom. A dark, wood cabinet ran the length of the opposite wall. Two ruby-colored glass bowls were inset on the surface and served as sinks. The black toilet and bidet had gleaming silver plumbing and looked like they cost more than my car, but they paled in comparison to the shrine that was the shower, sauna, and tub, which was more black marble and shining silver with a lot of smoky glass thrown in for good measure.

Deciding on a bath, I searched for knobs to turn on the water. After a few minutes, I found a small computer panel near the faucet. I pushed “On,” and with a couple more key presses, I’d programmed the tub to 101 degrees with jets and bubbles. I undressed and eased into the soothing water.

Almost an hour later, I opened the door, told Darcy and Tweak they could leave, and, now that my brain was quasi-working, took stock of the room I’d awakened in. It was like an entire loft apartment underground. It had to be underground because there were no windows, and there was only one way out, a flight of stairs. It held all the comforts of home, decorated in the same sleek, masculine style as the bathroom. Black, gold, and burgundy dominated the décor. Black appliances gleamed from the kitchen area, which was delineated from the rest of the space by an island cabinet with a wet bar on one side and a breakfast bar on the other.

I crept into the room, unsure of what to do next. Rune reclined on the black leather sofa next to the fireplace. In his black T-shirt and slacks, sitting so still, he was almost invisible with only his eye movement setting him apart from the other immobile items in the apartment. His eyes tracked my progress across the cool, marble tile.

“Come, Marlena. Sit. We have much to talk about.” His voice reverberated through the room.

Torn between the desire to escape up the stairs and conversely to not only sit on the sofa, but on his lap, I chose the middle road and curled into the armchair beside the sofa.

Not willing to test fate and lock gazes with him again, I stared at an enormous fish tank that took up at least eight feet of the wall next to the kitchen.

“How do you know my name, and where am I?” I asked. The more my gray cells came alive, the more I realized was completely wrong about my situation.

“I took the liberty of checking your ID while you slept, and you are in my apartment below my nightclub, Perdition.”

“The ID in my wallet at the bottom of my backpack? So not only did you bring me to your underground apartment without my permission, but you went through my stuff?”

He stiffened.

“You were unconscious and your safety outweighed social niceties. How much do you remember of yesterday’s events?” he asked.

“Well, technically, how would I know if I didn’t remember something?”
He wasn’t the only one who could change the subject fast enough to give someone whiplash.

Confusion turned to irritation in his eyes.

“Okay, sorry,” I said, after all, the guy had saved my bacon. “I tend to go all smart-ass when I’m nervous.”

“Let me rephrase. What do you remember?” He held up his hand. “No, better yet, what’s the last thing you remember?”

The dull thud behind my eyes intensified as I tried to piece together the events of the previous night.

“I remember slamming Mr. Smith into a really nice Buick and—oh my God!”

Caution forgotten, I looked Rune in the eyes.

“Did I kill Mr. Doe?”

“Who?”

“The guy on the ground. I think I somehow sucked the life out of him.”

“All four gentlemen were alive when we left, although your Mr. Doe won’t be up to any strenuous activities for some time.”

He sat up, then leaned forward, putting his elbows on his thighs. He searched my eyes for a moment and seemed to find something there that surprised him.

“So you did not intend to drain him so severely?”

“So severely? I didn’t mean to drain him at all. I didn’t even know I could do that. It’s just another little nasty surprise about my abilities as far as I’m concerned.”

Tears threatened just behind my eyelids.

I hid my face in my hands. “I’m like a bomb that could go off any time. I just need to figure out how to turn this thing off.”

“Turn it off?” The anger in his voice made me look up at him again. “Why would you want to deny what you are?”