Touching Smoke (23 page)

The image in front of me blurred behind the tears and I would have given my right arm to save her from the pain she would face in the morning.

I looked at the mother again. “You’re all she has,” I whispered.

The mother looked unmoved or if she was, she hid it well. “Leave now before I call security.”

What else could I do? Tie the woman up and make her promise not to do it? Call someone and tell them? Somehow, I doubted anyone would believe me without evidence. I could hardly just say I’d had a vision. Maybe I was crazy. Maybe it was in my head. Maybe I imagined it. For a split second, I felt a flicker of hope. Maybe it really
was
all in my head. Maybe I
did
imagine it, and then I saw the tremor in Marian’s hands, the sheen of sweat along her upper lip and finally the way she refused to meet my eyes and I knew I wasn’t so lucky.

“Come on.” Isaiah led me away from the group.

We didn’t get any food. We didn’t speak. We walked to the bike, got on and drove to the cabin without a single word.

“What happened, Fallon?” he asked when we reached our hideaway and he cut the engine.

“I don’t know!” I hadn’t realized I’d been crying the whole way until he pulled the helmet off my head and wiped my cheeks with his knuckles.

“Tell me,” he murmured, helping me off the bike and into the cabin.

The springs of the cot jingled as we sat. The steel groaned and dipped beneath our combined weight.

“I touched her and…” I shook my head. “I don’t know what happened. I saw her in a bathtub… blood…
everywhere!”

“Are you sure?”

I nodded, rubbing fiercely at the tears falling without end. “How could she? How could she just leave her daughter like that? On her birthday! What kind of mother does that?”

His fingers closed over mine. “Don’t,” he tipped my face towards him with his free hand. “Don’t make it personal.”

I wrenched my chin free of his grip. “I’m not—”

“You are. She isn’t your mother, and there is nothing you can do to stop her.”

“But—”

“Nothing!” he stressed when I started to protest.

“That little girl—”

“—will learn to survive.”

“Maybe it wasn’t real?” I couldn’t keep the hope out of my voice. “Maybe I was seeing things.”

“Maybe.” But his eyes said I hadn’t.

I sniffled, looking down at my hands. “So, is that’s my gift? Seeing the future but being unable to do anything to change it?”

Isaiah shrugged. “Just because you see the future doesn’t mean you can change it. Some things just happen and you can’t stop it.”

A sob slipped from somewhere inside me. My palms tasted like sweat when I dropped my face into my hands and cried. Isaiah let me, doing nothing to stop me. He didn’t coddle me or tell me everything would be okay. He sat quietly, moving my hair off my neck and waiting until I stopped.

“That poor girl!” I finally stopped enough to say.

“She’ll be okay,” he said, tucking a piece of hair behind my ear.

I frowned. “Why can’t I see your future?” I took his hand, waiting for some kind of vision to happen. “I don’t see anything when I touch you.”

“Maybe it doesn’t work on others like us.”

Like us. Freaks.

“Don’t!” dark warning slapped me hard across the face. “What she said… it’s not true!”

“Isn’t it?” I peered into his eyes. “We’re not normal, Isaiah. Normal people don’t run the way you do or see the future. We belong in a circus, behind glass or something. We don’t belong with regular people.”

“We,” he took my chin between his index and thumb, “belong, just like everyone else, and you, you belong more than anyone.”

“You don’t know me.” Or maybe he knew me better than I knew myself.

His knuckles grazed my jaw. “I know you. You’re perfect.”

He was suddenly so close. My heart jumped. My pulse raced. I stared into his eyes, my mouth dry. I swallowed the urge to slick my lips, too afraid to move in case he came to his senses as he had so many times in the past. My stomach fluttered as I sat perfectly still, waiting. Do it… the voice inside my head begged. My eyes started to close, anticipation thick.

His warm breath tickled my lip, making them tingle and part. One of us shifted closer. Our noses bumped. But just when we were a hair-width apart, something in the air stirred. It shifted like the hum of static electricity during a storm. Isaiah was off the bed in a single leap. The springs bounced violently, nearly sending me toppling over backwards.

“Get up!” he growled, not looking at me, but something across the room, as if he could see straight through the closed door. His nostrils flared. “Get behind me.”

“What is it?” I asked, getting to my feet, but staying in place. I tried to listen, hoping to hear something the way I had the night at the motel, but my heart was still surging with adrenaline, only this time it wasn’t the warm, fuzzy sort.

“Someone’s here,” he answered, reaching blindly for my hand and dragging me towards the other end of the cabin, as if putting as much space between us and whatever was on the other side of the northern wall was going to help. Halfway across the room, he froze. His grip became crushing. His eyes narrowed. “Garrison!”

My heart stilled for a full second before I remembered to breathe. The taste of fear sat bitter in my throat. I tightened my sweaty grip on Isaiah’s hand, holding on for dear life as the nightmare descended upon us like vultures on a carcass. I willed myself not to panic or scream. We would somehow get out. We had to.

“Any ideas?” I squeaked.

Isaiah shook his head, still staring at the door across from us. “They have us surrounded.” I heard the grind of his teeth. “Why the hell didn’t I sense them?”

I hadn’t heard anything either. Shouldn’t that many people have made some kind of noise? Yet at the same time, I asked myself,
are you really surprised?
I really shouldn’t have been. Garrison had proven more than once that he could creep up on us when we least expect it.

“Maybe we can fight—”

“Too many,” he said before I could finish.

The growing urge to vomit intensified. “What do we do?” I croaked.

“You can come out with your hands up.” I nearly screamed at the disembodied voice that rang through the cabin. It seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere like some evil spirit.

“Isaiah?” He was the expert here. This was his forte. He knew more about these people than I did, and if he said run, I was running!

“Stay close.” That wasn’t what I was hoping he would say. Leaving the safety of the cabin was not what I wanted. Going out and facing whatever was out there was not an option I liked. But what choice did we have? Either we went out willingly or they came in and got us, and something told me they wouldn’t be gentle.

“Okay. Together?” I whispered, not in the least bit ashamed of my pitiful plea.

His fingers threaded through mine, locking them together. It was a silent promise. I understood it. He wasn’t going to let go, not if he could help it. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to ease some of my tension.

We set off at a stiff march. The sun outside was beginning to set, bathing the world in a soft, orange hue. The glow washed over the looming faces surrounding us, twisting their already menacing features into ghastly, demonic scowls. They looked much bigger, meaner in that light. Maia was there, heading a group of men. Her spandex outfit was blinding red this time, matching the strips of crimson in her long, unbound tresses and the full pout of her lips. I silently cursed her. Why did she get to look so flawless when I couldn’t even brush my teeth?

As if reading my mind, Maia smirked, her brown eyes promising a painful death. I doubted my glower was half as intimidating, but I did my best.

I turned away from her and glanced at the others taking position around us as if we were a pair of radioactive beasts. Yuri was there, standing surrounded by… himself. Apparently, he could divide himself into more than just eight men. I counted at least ten. Further along was the black van. Three men stood in front of it, looking very CIA in their black suits and glasses. At the opening in the forest, the only way in or out of the clearing was a sleek, black limo. The back windows were tinted and no one came out. I couldn’t fathom how they managed to bring that long thing in backwards like that, but there it was. I also didn’t understand how we hadn’t heard the approach of cars in the absolute silence that blanketed the clearing. Clearly, they were far stealthier than Isaiah had led me on to believe.

We were so screwed.

“Step away from the girl, Isaiah,” Maia taunted, taking a swaggering step forward in her kick-ass boots.

Isaiah didn’t respond, but his single step back spoke volumes, especially when he positioned himself between them and me.

“This is now how you want to end this, Isaiah.” Yuri cracked his knuckled, smirking coldly. “There are more of them than you!”

The lot seemed to move in as one, closing us in.

“You’re making this too much fun, Isaiah!” Maia cackled, unholstering her gun from the nifty gadget belt circling her tiny waist. “Don’t worry,” she taunted, cocking the weapon. “You won’t die from a flesh wound, but it will hurt…
a lot!”

I’d never been shot at, and the longer I stood there staring down the barrel of her gun, the more I was certain I wouldn’t like it.

“Wait!” I put my hand up and slipped out from behind Isaiah, ignoring the tightening of his hand and the deep growl in his throat. “Look, there’s no need for violence! Can’t we talk about this?”

Wild dreams and false hopes, that was me, but I really did not want to be shot. Besides, if we staled for enough time… maybe one of us would come up with an idea for an escape plan.

“Absolutely!” Yuri crowed. “We will talk… after.”

Isaiah gave me no chance to respond. I was thrust behind him again as he crouched low, preparing for attack. It was a Mexican standoff, two against thirty, or maybe more correctly,
one
against thirty, because I had no idea what I could possibly do to help Isaiah. If I had any sort of
useful
superpower,
this
would have been the perfect time for it to present itself. Instead, the thing that saved us was the soft whirring sound that muffled the scuffle of approaching feet. The advancing group froze as one and turned to the limo. We all watched as the back window scrolled down by a few inches.

Maia hurried over, bent at the waist, her nose practically touching the dark glass, and peered in through the thin slit.

The wind whispered through the trees, sending a sort of hush through the clearing. The sun was nearly gone and a smear of orange, pink and blue quickly trailed after it. It would have been a beautiful evening if we hadn’t been facing certain death or worse… imprisonment.

Maia returned, a sour look twisting her face. “The boss wants her in the car. Put
him,”
she gestured to Isaiah with the jerk of her pert chin, “in the truck.”

We were surrounded at once, so fast that I hadn’t seen anyone move until there were hands digging into my arms, fisting in my hair and dragging me away from Isaiah. Our locked fingers grinded together, bone against skin. It held us together, but it also made it impossible to fight properly with one hand attached to something else.

“Let go!” I shouted at Isaiah.

“No!” he snarled, delivering a perfect punch to one of Yuri’s double’s face.

“Knock them out if you have to!” Maia snapped impatiently, walking straight up to me with that sole purpose in mind.

I was stuck, I couldn’t retreat and I couldn’t fight with one hand held behind my back and the other clutched in Isaiah’s.

“Let go!” I snapped, shoving his hand off at last.

I spun on the spot, twisting around to face the trio that held me. It was far less than the seven piling up on top of Isaiah, restraining and bringing him to his knees. Maybe I wasn’t enough of a threat or they didn’t think I knew how to fight back, which was technically true. But I knew enough.

The foot I crushed with the heel of my sneaker crunched. The man howled, hands falling away. I drew back the same foot and kicked him in the knee for good measure before delivering the same blow to the second guy’s kneecap. The third was faster, jerking away before I could make contact. But his retreat gave me just enough slack to wrench free and run to where they were dragging Isaiah down, even though he was putting up a pretty good fight of his own.

“Get off him!” I screamed and kicked at the Yuri closest to me in the back of the knee.

With the grunt, he hit the ground hard on one knee. His hands fell away, flying out to save him from a face planting. For a split second, I wanted to whoop with glee, but my moment of triumph was short lived when he regained his footing and turned to me, menacing scowl turning his face demonic. Stars burst across my vision with the unexpected backhand and my whole face went numb. I was tasting blood when Maia’s face appeared above me, smirking. I didn’t remember falling, but I was on my back, watching the navy blanket of night take over the sky.