Equal Parts (6 page)

Stuffing the cards back in random pockets, he pulled out the more personal touches.

“Well, well,” he commented as his long fingers went through photos of my mom and dad, a packet of painkillers, appointment cards, and – most embarrassingly – a condom wrapper. I felt my cheeks burn bright red. “Somebody’s taking the Boy Scout motto a little too literally.”

“Shut up,” I grumbled, though I didn’t know why. Achilles certainly wasn’t the kind of man to appreciate being told to shut up, especially by someone like me.

He just laughed, though. “You’re fun.” Taking special care with the cause of his amusement, he slid the things back in my wallet and handed it to me. “See? I’m a man of my word.”

“You’re also a psychopathic murderer,” I told him.

He blinked those huge, fathomless eyes at me. “If you’re referring to the man I just killed, let me remind you that had I not done what I did, you would be, at best, violated with half your brains hanging out. Would you be calling it murder if Finn Cole had done the same thing?”

“Finn Cole didn’t abduct me and keep me starved and mistreated,” I retorted heatedly.

“That isn’t an answer.”

“It’s the only answer you’ll get until I have a shower.”

“You sure you want to request that? The only showers are group ones in the change-rooms.” The evil grin was back in full-force.

“Fine, then I’ll settle for wet wipes. You aren’t going to get whatever it is you want from me if you insist on treating me like a dog.” My chin stuck itself out of its own accord, another gesture those ebony eyes caught.

“Me-ow. Where did this sudden defiance come from? I was under the impression death didn’t scare you, if the gazebo and hospital incidents were anything to go by,” he said. I couldn’t tell if it was sarcasm or not.

“I’m only defiant around you, it seems,” I muttered, but I knew he heard. It was the truth. I was usually a complacent person, passive to the point of a doormat. But Achilles was … different. Like it or not, something about him made me want to stand up for myself for once. He made me confident, and it was terrifying. “And death scares everybody. Some people are just better at hiding it.”

Silence fell once more. He absentmindedly unlaced my sneakers and dropped them to the floor. Of course today had to be a mismatched-socks day. Not that I cared what he thought of them.

“I would very much like, Flick darling, to know how your power works. Whatever you did to me in the hospital was just short of a miracle, and now that I have you, I don’t plan on giving you up.”

I expected as much. “So you’ll, what? Suck me dry of my power and be the happiest guy to aim for world domination? I can only give you the feeling – I can’t make the world see you in a particular way, or boost you up the social ladder.”

“World domination? Imaginative, darling, but a bit off-target. Is it so wrong for a guy to want a bit of excitement added to the daily grind?”

“It is when the ‘guy’ in question is
you
. Besides, you won’t get much out of me at the moment. Once I’m dried up, I can guess how useful I’ll be to you.” There was another, much bigger reason I was never going to give Achilles a larger dose of sunshine, but that story was buried in the deepest, darkest corner of my mind.

Setting my feet back on the bed, he crawled up to me, sending me scrambling back against the wall. When his face was a good five inches away from mine, he said, in a deadly tone, “Then I suppose it’s imperative that you find it in your heart to help me out. For both our sakes, I hope you don’t dry out too soon.
I think it would be of great benefit to everyone if you kept me happy.
” He stared at me for a long moment, then, with another sinister smile, bounced off the bed and out the door, locking it behind him.

A while later, after I’d covered the pool of blood with my torn shirt and taken to simply wearing my sweater as the only top layer, a flap on the cell door creaked open and a paper bag was tossed in. With slightly shaky fingers, I opened it, fully expecting to find a dismembered head or a bomb – something to cement my suspicion that Achilles was certifiably insane – but instead found a tube of alcoholic wipes, another bottle of water, protein bars, and a bowl of steaming rice.

What the…?

He’s buttering you up
, I reminded myself as I wolfed down the rice. I was past the point of caring if it was poisoned – I doubted it, seeing as Achilles had had a thousand opportunities to kill me and he hadn’t.
He just wants your power. You don’t matter to him.

Well, he had another thing coming. The sunshine I could provide didn’t appear in my system out of thin air. It had to have a source – I needed to fuel myself with happiness first, and only then could I transfer it to others.

So, unless Achilles magically found a source of happiness for me, I wouldn’t be of much use to him within a week’s time. My sunshine would fade, and I would be left with an empty well. I hadn’t experienced that in years, and I hoped I wouldn’t have to again. It wasn’t pretty when a person ran out of all good feelings.

I thought about Lucia, enjoying a blissful weekend with her
boyfriend
. About Mrs. Corbet, alone in the hospital, without me there to ensure she kept going. About Finn Cole, who, for all I knew, was being hunted down like a dog by Achilles at that very moment. About my parents, all the way back in Florida, with no idea where I was or what I was doing.

The strangest thing was, I didn’t miss any of them. Not yet, anyway. I suspected I would, once Achilles grew tired of me and decided torturing me was the only way to ensure cooperation. And he
would
grow tired of me. I was the shiny new toy now, but my stubborn streak would become irritating eventually, and greed for my power would supersede care for my condition.

I buried myself under the blankets of the cot, far away from the eyes I knew watched me from the cell door. Clutching my jacket together with one hand and the empty bowl in the other, in case I should need a weapon of some sort, I squeezed my eyes shut, and waited for morning to come.

Four days passed. Three times a day, every day, Achilles would enter my cell, ask me to tell him how my power worked, and leave when I politely – but firmly – declined. Three times a day, I would get the same meal – bottle of water, bowl of rice, protein bar.

There were no more visits from guards, no more threats or violence. And the boredom was almost as bad as the uncertainty of my future. Fear stopped me from asking Achilles what he planned to do with me, just as pride stopped me from asking him to let me go.

I had used most of the wipes to mop up the blood from the first day, and flushed them down the toilet, so I had to use the remainder sparingly. Translation: I stank. I also suspected I was going a little insane, judging by the way I found myself talking to the hatch in the door one day.

On the afternoon of the fourth night, the door opened, and I waited for Achilles’s skeletal face to appear. Sometimes he stayed to talk to me – probably waiting for me to slip up with information about my power; other times he simply asked for the information and left straight away when I rejected him.

But tonight, a different man stepped into the cell. Achilles was sinister because of his face, and, if I was honest, his voice. He wore sinister as a costume, a cover for something unidentifiable below the surface.

But this man was different. He
carried
sinister. It was woven into the fine threads of his expensive-looking suit; it bled from his manicured fingers and perfectly groomed facial features.
He had that familiar, eerie glow to him – the superhuman glow.

This man was a whole different ball game than my captor.

“Hello, Felicity,” he said, his voice far too smooth to be human.

“Where’s Achilles?” I asked casually. Behind my back, I gripped the rice bowl from lunch, ready to throw it at his head if need be.

It had been so long since I’d looked at a normal person, I’d almost forgotten what eyes looked like without consuming black contact lenses and face-paint. This man’s brown eyes flared with something just as menacing as his aura, and I got the distinct impression he knew everything about me from just one glance.

“I’m afraid he couldn’t make it this afternoon, so he asked me to pay you a visit. And charming as your little cell is,” he said, in a low voice, “I think we’d best move this to a more private location.”

What the hell did that mean? Was I leaving the cell permanently?

I didn’t get time to think about it, though, before yet another thug appeared before me with a pair of ropes and a blindfold.

“I’m not moving,” I snarled, counting down the seconds before I made a run for it. Achilles never gave me an inch of room to escape, but this guy had – so I was planning on taking a whole mile.

Tutting, the suited man came to stand beside the thug, so the pair of them towered over me. “After what Achilles said of you, I expected a little more cooperation, Miss Eastwood.”

Right as the thug reached for me, I smashed the bowl into his face. He staggered backwards, giving me enough space to kick out at the suit man and make a lunge for the door. To my credit, I got out into the corridor before yet another thug – where did they keep coming from? – tackled me into the wall. My head, still tender from the attack days ago, swam with the force of the contact.

“That’s more like it. I do like fighters,” commented the smooth voice from behind me.

Taking advantage of my momentary dizziness, the thug pounced, roping my wrists together tight enough to rub my skin raw, then did the same with my ankles, tying the binds into shackles. I tried to shoulder the thug with the blindfold away from me, but instead ended up careening into the wall once more. The suited man’s laughter made my blood boil.

“Leave the blindfold off,” he told his henchmen, smirking at me. “But gag her anyway. I have a feeling this one’s a screamer.”

Oh God. The sickness that should have hit me with Achilles’s appearance four … no,
five
days ago struck me with those words. I’d known torture was on the cards with Achilles; he made no secret of his violent streak. But this man – a man who, in the real world, could have easily passed as a politician or lawyer – scared me much more than the man dressed as Death himself.

I tried very hard not to panic as they tied the blindfold over my mouth and led me down the corridor, to another door at its end.

The smell of blood and fear hit me head-on as we entered the last room. Like my cell, it was made entirely from cement and stone, but it was much bigger, with a mirror on the far wall that was obviously an observation window. In the middle sat a table stained with dark red splotches, a lamp, and two chairs.

“Put her there,” said the suited man, gesturing to one of the chairs. I was all but thrown into it. “No one is to disturb us, understand? Not even Achilles. Don’t want him finding out I’ve stolen his little pet, after all.”

Double crap. Achilles had no idea I was with this guy, then. Why did that fact in itself fill me with dread?

The door scraped closed with a heavy
bang
, and then we were alone. My heart broke into a sprint as he took up the seat across the table from me.

I was in trouble.
Big
trouble.

“How rude, I haven’t even introduced myself,” he said with a charming smile. My stomach flip-flopped, and not in a good way. “My name is Patrick Molten. I work for Achilles as his … well, his right-hand man, I suppose you might say.”

That struck me as a little odd. Achilles didn’t seem the type to require a right-hand man; he killed his own people at the drop of a hat, after all.
What about this man inspired such trust?
, I wondered.

“Well, on to business. Business, business.” He rubbed his hands together and gave me another winning smile. “Achilles wants your secrets, and what Achilles wants, I do, too. Personally, I think our efforts could be redirected into more practical past-times – ridding this city of Finn Cole and his band of misfits, for example. But something about you has Achilles on the pursuit of happiness, so to speak. Between you and me, I think he sees some of himself in you.”

I wanted to snort in disbelief, but I was too busy trying to keep my breathing level. Molten’s hands crept towards me over the
tabletop
, and my insides slowly turned to lead.

“Broken,” he said in a quiet voice. “Alone. Nothing to lose. Sound familiar?”

Quick as a blink, his hand shot to his pocket and produced a
switchblade
. A moment later, he’d cut the ties around my wrists. The first thing I did was untie my gag and the ropes around my ankles, despite the rage coursing through my veins, demanding I slam Molten’s head into the desktop.

“I know that look,” he chuckled when I glanced back at him. “It’s the look most people give me right before they attack. And I’m used to being attacked, Felicity. I think it’s time you learned you aren’t the only one around here with a powerful ability.”

Without a second’s warning, he slapped his hand down on mine, and said, “
Attack yourself the way you wanted to attack me
.”