Vengeance Borne (27 page)

“Jax.” He buried his face in her hair. “I love you. I love you so damned much.”

Tears pricked at her eyes as Jacquelyn eased her hands between them, her palms flat on the wide expanse of his chest. Their relationship might have been salvaged if Finn would have let her feel something
real
just once. And she couldn’t help but wonder if any of their moments together over the past five years had been real or simply what Finn had wanted her to feel.

“Finn, this has to stop.” She pushed at his chest, but he was as immovable as a boulder. “We can’t do this.”

His influence surged within her and her resolve slid away like an avalanche as her elbows buckled.
No
. Damn it, she couldn’t let him get away with this anymore. If he claimed to love her so much, why plant emotions inside of her that weren’t real? Jacquelyn drew on her strength, pulled up the barrier that would keep him where he belonged: out of her head and heart. She pushed against his chest again, harder, and he took a stumbling step backward.

“
Stop
.”

“Jax…” Finn’s eyes grew wide with disbelief.

“I refuse to be complacent, Finn. I’m not a toy, I’m not anyone’s thing to be controlled. You can’t just wind me up and play with me whenever it suits you.”

“That’s what you think I’m doing?” How could he possibly sound shocked at the accusation? “Playing games?”

“Have you gotten to the point that you can’t even recognize when you push your emotions?” Finn took a step toward her and she held up her hand. “Don’t even think about it.”

“You don’t listen when I tell you how I feel, so I have to show you.”

“That’s the problem, Finn. I don’t want you to show me. I don’t want you dipping into my psyche anymore.”

He gave a derisive snot. “You never used to mind.”

She should have put her boot up his ass for that comment. “What is it with Bearers that you’re all so goddamned high handed?”

Finn laughed and Jacquelyn resisted the urge to stomp on his foot. “What is it with Waerds that you’re all so suspicious and guarded?”

Oh, hell no. It was like he
wanted
her to kick his ass or something. “You did not just say that.” His answering expression was a challenge Jacquelyn couldn’t back down from. “I have every reason to be suspicious and guarded and you know that.”

Finn flopped down on the couch and propped his feet up on the coffee table. He folded his arms across his chest and leveled his gaze on Jacquelyn. “Not with me. You have no reason to be guarded with me.”

Jacquelyn had met a few brick walls less stubborn than Finn. “No harm, no foul, is that what you’re saying?”

Finn shrugged. “You know I would never hurt you.”

“You don’t think manipulating my emotions,
forcing
me into something hurts me?”

He leveled his gaze on her, his blue eyes piercing. “I would never, ever force you to do anything I didn’t
know
you wanted. I’m not a total dick. And as for manipulating your emotions, that’s sort of my job, Jax.”

“Bearing my emotional pain is your job, Finn. Healing my wounds is your job.” Her voice escalated as the words ripped through her throat, “Helping to keep my goddamned head on straight so I do what has to be done is your job. Manipulating me, making me feel what you want me to feel is as far from your
job
as it gets!”

“Jax—”

Exhaustion settled on her, the weight too much for Jacquelyn to bear. She knew deep down that if she’d told him no, he would have stopped. But pushing his emotions on her, urging her to feel something that wasn’t real was dangerously close to crossing a line that couldn’t be uncrossed. “I’m going to bed,” she said. “Go home, Finn. Go home before we both say or do anything more that we’ll regret.”

Finn stayed perched on the couch, unmoving. “I’m not going anywhere until we talk this out.”

Ugh. “Fine.” Jacquelyn headed for her bedroom and turned to face Finn when she reached the door. “Suit yourself. Like I said, I’m going to bed. You can stay out here all night if you want because I’m not talking anything out with you tonight or any other night. And just so you know, if you take one step into my bedroom, I’m going to shoot your stubborn ass.”

“You wouldn’t.” Finn’s voice rang with confidence and he flashed her a smug grin. “Trish’d have your ass if you shot me.”

Jacquelyn shrugged and walked into her room. She poked her head out of the doorway and said, “True, but I doubt she’d blame me if I capped you in the foot. Have fun on the couch, Finn,” and closed the door behind her.

Chapter 21

“DO YOU THINK she’s okay?” Micah paced the confines of Trish’s living room, unable to sit still. “I mean, it was a rough day and she seemed pretty shaken up. Shouldn’t we have heard from her by now?”

Trish raised a silver brow, her focus on the knitting in her lap. “Micah, you’ve got to get a handle on your emotions,” she chided. “You’re making me damned jumpy and I don’t like it a bit.”

Micah paused mid-step and turned to stare at the old woman working the needles with dexterous grace. “Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t realize—”

“Of course you didn’t.” Trish cast a sidelong glance and smirked. “Go put a kettle on, will you? Some tea would do us both good.”

Tea. They hadn’t heard from Jacquelyn in over twelve hours and Trish wanted tea.

“Yes, I do,” Trish said, still not making eye contact. “She’s not a yearling like you, kiddo. I’m not worried.”

“I thought you said you can’t read minds,” Micah snorted as he headed for the kitchen.

“I can’t, dear. But, like I said, the way you project your emotions makes you a very easy read.”

The click-clack of the knitting needles carried from the living room and Micah let the soft rhythm calm him. Anxiety wasn’t new to him. Before he’d come to McCall, the building ripples of distress had been a daily battle. Worry over what he felt, the surges of emotion with no foundation or origin. The bursts of anger, worry, confusion, love, sorrow… He’d never known they were merely echoes coming from the people around him. And in his ignorance and fear, he’d turned to the pills.

One wouldn’t hurt. He needed to relax, to banish the feeling that he was jumping out of his skin. It’d been days since he’d taken one, it wasn’t like he was an addict, he just needed to feel calm, safe. The worry would stay with him all night if he didn’t take at least one.

The kettle screamed on the stove, shaking Micah from his thoughts.
No
. He poured boiling water into two mugs and dropped a tea bag in each.
You don’t need one. Get your shit together
.

Micah walked back to the living room, feeling a little like a tightrope walker as he made sure not to spill on Trish’s floor. He set a cup on an old, weathered end table next to Trish and forced himself to take a seat on the chair next to hers. His knee bounced impatiently as he pondered the steaming amber liquid sloshing with each movement of his leg.

“Did you know that chamomile naturally relaxes the body and mind?” Trish set her knitting aside. “It can help you sleep.”

Micah stared hard into the cup, as if its contents would reveal Jacquelyn’s whereabouts. “I’ve never tried that.”

“Why would you?” Trish asked. “Not when you have a simple solution waiting for you in a plastic bottle. Those pills won’t do you a damn bit of good, Micah. What you need is to get a grip on your gift. Control is the answer, not oblivion.”

Micah didn’t care what she said to the contrary. Trish could read his mind as if he’d spoken the words. “I don’t know how to do that,” he replied. “How do you cope with it all? I feel…I don’t know, too full or something. Like my brain and chest are going to explode.”

“That’s one way to put it.” Trish laughed. “Maybe you’re looking at it all wrong. This gift, it’s not the curse you believe it is. You need to think of it as a tool. Waerds can’t function without Bearers. We’ve been paired for centuries. You’ve been charged with the responsibility of seeking out evil. And your weapon against it is the hunter.”

Micah took a large swallow of his tea, rolling the mellow flavor around on his tongue and focused on the warm passage of it down his throat. “It all seems so underhanded to me. I mean, Waerds don’t seem to have a choice. You use them, just like you would some inanimate thing. They’re forced to follow orders, and why? They’re as human as we are. Why are Bearers given a choice, but Waerds are not? Why aren’t we taken from our families, raised in a barracks and taught to fight. If we’re the seekers of evil why do we need Waerds at all? We should be able to take up the cause without dragging someone in against their will.”

“It doesn’t work that way, dear. And if you think Waerds or Bearers are just ordinary humans, than you’ve got another think coming, my boy. We’re anything but ordinary. I know you saw how Jacquelyn moved in the woods the other night as she tracked that Goblin. No matter what that stubborn girl thinks or tells you to the contrary, she isn’t any less ordinary than you or I, Micah. And the things you feel, your ability to heal are anything but mundane. You think we trawl the hospital nurseries, plucking potential killers from their cradles to do our bidding, and why would you assume anything else after hearing her story. But that’s just not the case. True, Waerds are often found by the Sentry in their infancy. And yes, they begin their training at a very young age. Perhaps too young, but that’s not for me to say. Waerds are very, very special individuals, Micah. Not even Jacquelyn understands what she truly is. What’s she’s capable of. And Bearers aren’t just folks who’ve got a good read on their neighbors. Our purpose is fated, I suppose you could say. And the Sentry does not choose their members indiscriminately. Bearers are born. Waerds as well. Our existence is our calling.”

“How do you recruit your members, then? Why doesn’t the Sentry go out in search of Bearers when they’re infants as well?”

“Bearers are drawn to Waerds. They are two halves of a whole. There’s no need for the Sentry to look for Bearers because the Bearers find them. A Waerd possesses a very specific fire in their soul, Micah, and only a Bearer can see that flame. Only a Bearer can truly feel the heat of it. You saw it in her when you met her, didn’t you?”

Micah thought of the moment he met her at the gas station. How he’d been compelled to reach out and touch her, despite the fact that he didn’t know her. Power pulsed from her, caressing every fiber of his being, sparking something to life inside of Micah, as if he’d never actually lived a day of his life until the moment his skin touched hers. Every thought since the night he’d dreamt of her had been occupied with her one way or another. Is that what Trish meant?

“Finn,” Micah started. “Jacquelyn mentioned that he wasn’t taking their separation well. Is that why?”

Trish sighed into her cup. “Those pills you take, you don’t need them. They help you, though. Make you feel like you’re not falling into the abyss. That’s what Finn is feeling right now. That want of her nearness, the need to warm himself with the heat of her presence, it’s like your pills. It pulls him from the edge of the eternal dark.”

Of course. Micah couldn’t help but sympathize with Finn. Since he’d arrived in McCall, he’d needed the anti-anxiety meds less and less. He’d replaced one drug with another. “Does Finn realize that?”

“Oh, we’re always warned by our elders,” Trish explained, her voice, sad. “But none of us ever pays heed.”

“Why not just tell her, Trish?” Could the truth be that bad? “If Jacquelyn is so convinced that there’s nothing special about her why not just lay it all out?”

“She’s not ready to hear the whole truth, Micah. And for that matter, neither are you.”

The moment had become too awkward, the implications of the bond between Waerd and Bearer another burden Micah didn’t know if he could bear. He looked into his cup, the tea, gone. A heaviness crept into his limbs that hadn’t been there before. Finally, he felt relaxed enough that he might be able to sleep.

“Good night, dear.” Trish traded her cup for her knitting. The click-clack of the needles filled the silence eating up the room.

Yep. Definitely a mind reader. “Good night, Trish.”

A thick fog crept over the distant hills, like an approaching firestorm illuminated by the rising sun. Micah stood on unfamiliar ground, staring across the misty dreamscape that overlooked a small valley and a weather-aged, dilapidated house. A tiny ribbon of smoke twirled from the chimney as though reaching out to join the spectral mist.

He walked, the grass beneath his feet slick with frost. His chest ached with the onslaught of emotion funneling toward him. So much hatred and, beneath it all, desire and lust so strong it nearly stole the breath from his lungs. He’d never felt wanting like that before, so all-consuming. Micah’s body stirred in response, and he quelled the sensation, reminding himself that what he felt was merely an echo of emotion and his body obeyed, relaxing. His pulse slowed and he took a deep breath, holding the cold morning air in his lungs.

A woman’s defiant voice drew his attention. He knew that voice, felt the pull of it on every string of his soul. And she sounded pissed. But soon, her shouts of protest turned to screams and Micah’s shoes dug into the frosty ground as he pushed himself to run. The house seemed to move, just beyond his reach, no matter how fast he ran, the screams, bursting like a mortar shell in his ears.
Hold on!
I’m coming
.