It was my turn for my mouth to fall open. “Excuse me?”
“You’ve either got a warped sense of self, are a woe-is-me type of girl, or are just downright mentally ill if you believe him, or any man for that matter, deserves better than you.” He kicked a can in our path, sending it sailing into the park I cut through to get back to my apartment.
I didn’t respond, not sure what to say. He picked up his pace so I was a step behind him. As we passed through the park’s entrance, there was a row of prostitutes on either side, two deep, hoping for one more transaction before dawn.
One of them ran her hand over Paul’s stomach in passing. “Hey baby, I got something you can do with all that pent-up anger.” The inflection in her voice was as dirty as the deed she was advocating, but Paul paid her no attention.
I caught up to him and lengthened my step to keep stride. “My vote’s for the mentally ill theory,” I said. No sane person would have left William, travelled to Paris for no reason more than a pointed finger at a departure board, and ended up employed in the skuzziest haunt in the free world.
Depleted from just one of his questions, I decided to shift the conversation. “So what did everyone have to say when you told them you’d be spending the quarter in Europe?”
I looked at him from the corner of my eyes, reading his reaction from my turn in conversation.
“Okay, so I get a question and answer and you get a question and answer, so on and so forth until the questions run out,” he commanded, his voice back to normal. “Agreed?”
“Agreed.”
“It was kind of a last minute decision to do this whole see the world thing,” he began, sounding guarded. “I never knew my mom—she left when I was one—so that was one less person to tell.”
“I didn’t know that.” I hooked my arm under his and gave his forearm a squeeze. “I’m sorry.”
He shrugged his shoulders. “My dad’s an officer in the Marines and deployed nine months of the year—more if he can help it—so he didn’t care if I was at OSU or in Timbuktu.”
I hadn’t known that either—some friend I was. I knew little, if anything, of the important things that made up Paul’s life. It was like meeting someone for the first time.
“Coach was upset at first, but he got over it once he learned I wouldn’t be much of an asset to the team. Didn’t even call to wish me a safe trip,” he finished, sounding bitter.
My eyes squeezed from my confusion. Having been the Captain last year and with the rumors of making the big-times, it didn’t make sense that his basketball coach wouldn’t want him playing every second of every game. Something was definitely wrong.
“So I answered your question.” He stopped and turned to me. “My turn again.”
I tried to warn him with the look on my face that William was off limits. He didn’t catch my drift.
“So where is the SOB?”
“I don’t know,” I sighed, trying not to think about it. “Why?”
“Because I want to slug him in the face as hard as I can since you didn’t let me have the pleasure last time.”
“That’s mature,” I scolded at the exact time I sensed something out of place. I froze my body and mind, allowing nothing but instinct to have control of me.
“We need to keep moving,” I ordered, steering him forward by his elbow. A moment later, I heard the tread of expensive-soled shoes crash into the concrete path behind us.
“Run!” I yelled, pushing him. “I’ll catch up.”
I spun around, preparing for whatever was coming.
“Run?” A silky voice came from the man standing in front of me, his outline a stark contrast from the light ghosting around him from the early morning fog. “Don’t you mean courir or couru or cour-something. I was never very good at conjugating my French verbs.”
Two more shadows came up on either side of him, leaving nothing to interpretation as to why they were here and who’d sent them.
“It took us awhile to find you, but John is as persistent as he is vengeful. It was only a matter of time.”
I didn’t recognize the voice, but the words and tone were a carbon-copy of the other associates I’d had dealings with from John’s Alliance.
Paul took a step in front of me, pushing me behind him. “Someone mind telling me what the hell is going on here?” he ordered, reaching for something in his pocket. “Because I’m about to unleash a serious case of ass-whooping.”
I pushed him aside, perturbed he hadn’t run as instructed. Paul had no idea what he was dealing with here, nor was he as sturdy as the four Immortals around him. “Get back. You have no clue what’s going on.”
“And you do?”
“Unfortunately.”
One of the men chuckled. “You consider this a trade-up in security? Going from the vigilant Haywards to this weakling with nothing more than empty threats?”
“Alright, ass-whooping commencing.” I rammed my hand into Paul’s chest, stopping his advance. He looked at me with the same wide-eyed speculation he had in the diner when I’d stopped his charge at William like he were as ferocious as a charging lamb.
“Losing one man wasn’t enough for John?” I said, trying to keep my voice even. “He sent a few more to share his fate?”
“John’s well aware that he might not be able to finish you off . . . yet,” the man in the center said, his teeth gleaming in the moonlight “But he can destroy those around you—those you care about,” he said, eyeing Paul.
I pulled my shoulders back. “That ought to make your jobs easy since I care for no one but yours truly,” I said, hoping he wouldn’t call my bluff.
“Liar,”—his lips pursed around the word—“you care for everyone but yourself. Which will make our jobs so long and so very enjoyable.”
I felt a growl trying to erupt from deep within, as if the knowledge that John would settle for the lives of those I cared about since he couldn’t have mine brought out sheer animal instinct.
The three men crept forward, two skirting around the sides to attack us from different angles.
“Each of you will die before you set one finger on him,” I warned, wanting to wrap Paul up in a bubble of protection—not just from these men, but from me as well. I’d inflicted worse damage on those I cared for than those I’d meant to damage the last time I’d been in a hand-to-hand brawl.
I heard a whoosh come from above us and my eyes shot skyward in time to see the tree branch reverberating from the body that had just catapulted from it.
“Boo,” a voice whispered from behind, flowing over my neck.
I spun around to another whoosh and a blur of light, Paul no longer behind me.
“Paul!” I yelled, my eyes bouncing between Paul and the fourth man who had him in a choke hold a hundred meters down the path.
“Rule number twelve from the first week of strength training,” the man clutching Paul directed at me. “Always expect the unexpected.”
“Get your hands off of him,” I ordered, crouching, preparing, praying I could cross the distance faster than the man could snap Paul’s neck. The slightest muscle flex could end Paul’s life, leaving another dead body in my wake.
“The first of many to come,” the man said, bowing Paul’s neck back. “Say au revoir, mon cherie.”
“No!” I screamed, my eyes wild as I looked into Paul’s, knowing they’d be lifeless in the next instant.
As if my scream had ordered it, a specter rushed down upon them, like an angel being thrown from the heavens. The man holding Paul was smashed to the ground from the force of the man wearing a dark ski-mask. The fallen man didn’t have a chance to move before the masked-man picked him up and tossed him into the side of a tunnel. The wall shattered, crumbling basket-ball sized chunks of concrete on the man, burying him in a heap of rubble.
Three sets of footsteps broke into a run behind me. Assured Paul was safe—for the moment—I turned to the three barreling at me, feeling the stirrings of anger and revenge taking over. I didn’t care that I’d sworn to never take another being’s life—no matter the reason—I only cared about stopping these three men from escaping to carry out their missions of brutalizing those I loved.
I realized that even if these three men were out of the picture, there’d be others—countless others—but I didn’t care. I had to do what I could with what I had right now.
The men were closing in on me and I was welcoming them with outstretched arms, feeling that dark energy sparking across my skin like a live wire, when the masked man leapt in front of me, as noiseless as gravity. His grace of motion was familiar.
He threw a piece of the broken tunnel at the man in the center. It sent him backwards, crashing into a park bench and splintering it.
The masked man glanced back at me, as if ascertaining my position, and moved to put himself directly in front of me as the remaining two descended upon us. The one on the left targeted the masked man, the other coming for me. The masked man drove his palm into the chest of the man barreling into him before spinning to the one coming at me. I was able, and eager, to have a piece of this man sent from John to upend my world, but our nameless ally seemed intent that I wasn’t going to be touched by anyone tonight.
His fist connected with the man’s jaw, delivered with the kind of power and precision that sent the man’s body spinning backwards. He hit the ground face-first, the rest of his body crumbling in an unnatural position over the asphalt. He wasn’t going to be getting up anytime soon—or at least until the sun had risen.
The man who’d taken the palm to the chest was back, coming at the masked man from behind.
I noticed him as he was inches away from wrapping his arms around him. “Behind you!”
At my warning, he glanced over at me, still as a statue. John’s man was inches from smashing into him when he threw his head back, crushing the charging man’s face. It sent him to the ground, where he gripped his skull as if experiencing an aneurism. The masked man turned slowly, purposefully, like he was savoring his next move. He knelt down beside the man and whispered something so quietly into his ear I couldn’t hear. He stood up, looking down at him like he was a bottom feeder.
“You’re next,” the man whispered, his teeth clenching from the pain. He looked at me, his eyes crossed and saliva dripping from his mouth. “She’s last.”
The air stirred as the masked man’s movements blurred. As if he’d been launched from a cannon, John’s man sailed two hundred feet away from us, careening into the ground. He created a school bus-sized crater.
“Wait!” I shouted at the masked man retreating into the shadows. For no reason I could explain, my heart felt like it would break all over again.
His shoulders stiffened before he took another step forward. He stalled mid-step—as if thinking the better of it—before turning to me like the weight of the world was pushing against him.