A Vault of Sins (13 page)

Maliyah picks up a blade from the bunch.

“The nanotechnology has yet to be programmed to succumb to the flesh of those with active chips.”

I take off my glove and Maliyah hands me the knife. When I press the tip of my finger against it, I feel the top layer of my skin slicing apart.

“Oww.”

“Okay, one moment . . . try now,” Wes orders.

I press my finger into the blade again, and this time it dissolves, the tip giving in to form a crescent in the metal.

“Piper, reset the knife,” says Wes.

“Righto.” Piper taps her tablet a few times, and the knife reforms right in front of my eyes.

Maliyah picks up another knife, pivots and throws the blade so it spirals in the air right past me. I cower in shock, listening as it sinks into something sturdy. I turn to find it sticking out of a near trunk.

Casey gapes at her. “Who
are
you?”

Maliyah smirks. “Mountain girl, born and raised.”

“What I want you to try and do, Evalyn, is see if you can communicate with the nanotechnology since I’ve reprogrammed your chip,” says Wes.

“How?”

“Like I told you last night, it’s all about reimagining. The reason why creative people are capable of grasping this is because this technology is . . . well . . . almost intuitive. People like me just want to input a formula to control the Compass Room, but it’s not as one dimensional as that. The Compass Room is linked to our immediate thoughts this way. Engineers can act upon quick decisions.”

I blink. “So what you’re telling me is that I have to
feel
the reimagining.”

“Yes, essentially.”

“What a load of crap.”

Wes sighs. “Just try.”

So I try.

Over and over again, Maliyah throws the blade into the tree. I’m supposed to somehow—with my mind—dull the end of the blade so it can’t stick. I find myself trying to control the technology the same way that I control the illusions.

I am the one throwing the blade instead of Maliyah
.

No.

I am the blade, my tip breaking off
.

Nope.

I am the tree and I don’t want to be fucking stabbed.

I gasp in shock when the knife doesn’t stick into the tree, but that’s only because Maliyah gave a wonky throw and it struck the bark at the wrong end. I groan and step back, tripping over my snowshoes and falling onto my ass. Casey gives me an apologetic grimace and helps me back up.

Each time, I fail just as hard as the last. Finally, when I can’t feel my nose and my legs are sore as all hell from trying to balance on the shoes, I cry, “I give up! I’m cold and hungry and just want a goddamn glass of wine. Can we please go back?”

Casey frowns. Wes takes off his gloves and rubs at his eyes. “Maybe we should let Casey try.”

“One more time,” says Maliyah.

“But—”

“Just one. Casey, come here for a sec.”

Setting her tablet down on her bag, Casey looks intrigued by Maliyah’s sudden interest in him. That is, until he realizes why he’s being summoned.

“Go stand by the tree.”

Casey gapes, horrified, but I can’t help but scoff at the joke. “Alright, alright. Come on, let’s go back.”

“I’m serious, Evalyn.”

“You can’t be
serious
. You wouldn’t risk his life just to try and make me concentrate.”

Flatly, she says, “You have five seconds.”

Holy shit, she’s serious.

“Evalyn,” Casey warns lowly.

“Five, four, three . . .”

“Evalyn!” Piper cries behind me.

I shut my eyes.

“Two, one . . .”

Maliyah throws the knife. Piper screams.

I feel it in the back of my mind, a ribbon wrapping around the top of my spine. I’m connected, like the particles are inside of me, shattering into a million tiny fragments, and then slipping like a tongue back into the mouth of the hilt.

The blade smacks into the trunk above Casey’s right shoulder.

“I was never going to hit him.” Maliyah turns to me. “Trust me when I say I know what I’m doing.”

Casey picks up the knife from the ground. Except it isn’t a knife. He raises it into the air.

Nothing but a hilt.

***

Four hours in the snow and I’m colder and stiffer than an ice carving. Sore too—usually the soreness after physical exertion comes the next day, but I feel like I’ve been repeatedly hit by a truck.

It took Casey a couple of hours to learn to control the nanotechnology in the blade. Whether that really has to do with me being more creative, I’m not sure, but all that matters is that we’ve both successfully taken the first step.

Casey’s made chicken and mushrooms and melt-in-your mouth potatoes. I kind of wish he made dessert so he could force me to wear it for him.

My mind is clear from the cold and the exercise. Everyone seems to be in a good mood since the success with the knife. The plan to retrieve Valerie is no longer fogged over by a dismal sense of doubt. We may actually be able to do this.

For the first time since I’ve been here I’m not craving a drink. I’m craving a beating heart.

I hop in the shower after dinner. It’s more painful than comforting. My feet are still numb and the hot water scalds my toes so much that I have to continuously cling to the shower walls to stay upright. I need someone to help me stand up straight.

I’ll think that part through next time.

When I’m finished, I wrap myself in a fluffy towel, comb through my hair, and dig through my stockpile of clothes that I keep in the bathroom linen closet. The sexiest thing I brought was a black push-up bra and a pair of lacelined panties. But Casey’s seen me covered in blood and sweat. He’s smelled me after weeks of not showering. He slept with me on the cusp of our mortal danger, when we were both exhausted and ragged. Compared to that, lace panties are so fucking meaningless.

I put them on anyway. And the bra. I put on the bra too.

Whipping my hair over my shoulder, I exit the bathroom, towel drying it off.

He’s sitting in the window seat watching the snow when I enter the bedroom, and has the audacity to frown when he sees me. “Why did you put clothes on?”

I stall, looking down at my body. “Clothes? These are
clothes
to you?”

“Yeah, those things. You’ve never needed them before. I mean, it was either you in a sweaty T-shirt and jeans or nothing at all.” He waves his hand in the air like an old man. “None of this frilly bullshit.”

I scoff and shake out my towel, hanging it on the doorknob. “Sometimes, frilly bullshit is necessary. You know, to make my boobs look great while I seduce you.”

He looks like he’s about to laugh. “Seduce me? Is that the game we’re playing tonight?”

“It isn’t a game.” I fall serious, walking to the bed and crawling on top of it. “I want to forget about all of this—everything we’ve found ourselves in again.”

His shoulders sag. “We wouldn’t have to think about the CR if . . .”

“Casey . . .”

“I know. I know you love her. I love her too. The best thing that could happen is that everything goes according to plan. The worst is that I lose both of you.”

I kneel and shake my head, my damp hair falling loose all around my shoulders. “I won’t let that happen.”

“You can’t promise anything.”

“Stop.” I sigh. “Please stop and come here. I’m getting cold.”

He doesn’t come. He crosses his arms and leans back against the window. “You think Wes was serious when he said he could figure out what we liked to get off to?”

I roll my eyes. “Absolutely not. Please don’t tell me you believed him for one second.”

The corners of his mouth perk up. “Well, if I can’t ask Wes, I guess you’ll just have to tell me.”

I look him squarely in the eyes. “You want me to tell you what I touch myself to? How about you—”

“Asked you first.”

After a brief stare down, I begin to study him. I could use easily use this situation to my advantage. I’ve imagined sex with Casey, desired scenarios with him. They were ones I couldn’t experience with Liam. Liam was slender and all lips and tongue and touching—all gentle, all romantic.

Casey is romantic, but more of an aggressive romantic. The kind that would bite the inside of your thigh when you pissed him off so much that you actually turned him on. He fought to love, not loved to love.

He’s like me.

The first time I had sex with him, we were dirty and weak and afraid.

We’re still afraid, but I’m asking him not to be.

What is unapologetic, uninhibited sex with Casey Hargrove like?

“Earth to Evalyn?” He cocks his eyebrow. “I’m waiting.”

“My sharp tongue turns you on, doesn’t it?”

“What does that have to do with any—”

“But shutting me up turns you on even more.”

“I . . . wouldn’t say it turned me on
more
.” His eyes shift to deviance. “But I love the noise you make when you become incoherent.”

“Then . . . umm . . .” How is this so hard? Why am I becoming tongue-tied? I’m never tongued-tied. “Make me incoherent. Hard.”

He presses his lips together in a fine line. He’s trying hard not to laugh . . . I can tell. “Are you asking me to dominate you?”

“No—yes?” Dominate me . . . does it have to be that word? Can’t I just formulate my desires by asking him to use all that muscle mass to throw me around?

“You know, Ev, if you want me to take you in a way that makes you shut up, all you have to do is ask.”

I bite my lower lip. “Yeah. That.”

Now he does laugh.

“Don’t do that.”

“Do what?”

“Laugh at me!”

“I’m only laughing because I’m finding you adorable, and I don’t really ever find you adorable.”

“You don’t find me adorable
?”

“I find you tough, mouthy, and insanely hot, but not adorable.” He pushes himself away from the window and tugs off his shirt. I could stare at his body for hours and never become immune to it. It’s the kind of body that terrifies girls when the wrong type of guy is equipped with it. A body that could move mountains, a body scarred by domestic warfare. He could be straight out of a horror movie.
Could.
He’s a god to me.

I kneel at the edge of the bed. He steps right up to me, dropping his head so the tips of our noses brush. “You trust me?”

I capture my bottom lip with his, dragging my teeth slowly across it, reveling in his intake of breath. Breaking from him, I whisper, “Until I die.”

A second later I’m thrown onto my stomach, my arms pinned behind my back. “How about now?”

“Especially now.”

When he fumbles with the clasp of my bra, he says. “Okay, okay. I think this moment proves that I really have no idea what I’m doing.”

It’s my turn to laugh.

He finally wins, and I pull my bra up to my wrists, keeping it tangled around my hands as I grip the edge of the mattress. He presses a kiss to the small of my back—hot lips and tongue and a moment of teeth.

“Jesus, Ev, relax. Your knuckles are white.”

“Screw me already and I will.”

I shouldn’t have said that. Damn, I shouldn’t have said that. I swear it takes him a whole five minutes to drag my underwear down and over my ass. “I’m going to die before you finish this. I’ll be eighty-seven.”

“Torturing you is a part of dominating you.”

“I take it back. God, please, I take it back.”

His chuckle is deep and sends vibrations through my entire body. His fingers trace the back of my thighs, quickly grasping and holding down my hips when I try to raise them for him.

I’m about to scream in frustration, but I remember—I did ask for this.

“Birth control,” he says. At least he plans on eventually getting to the sex.

“Pill,” I nearly yell. The last thing I want to give him is another reason to stall.

Sweet relief floods me when I hear the noise of his zipper. I roll over when he’s busy undressing. When he’s finished, he pulls me to him.

Somehow this way, with him inside of me and my cheek pressed against a pillow, with eyes shut as I submit to every one of his movements—
somehow
, we’re both animal and machine. I moan, the repetition of his movement never ceases to fail me, a slow build, a rev, until he says, “I can’t . . . not like this. I need you facing me.”

He flips me over. When he sinks into me again, I clench my thighs, holding him in place.

He rests his forehead against mine.

“I never stopped loving you. I tried, but I couldn’t.” I wrap my arms around his neck. He’s still inside of me. I’m killing him.

He tries to hold himself together. “What are you trying to tell me?”

“I have something to live for again, and it scares the shit out of me.”

In between a series of heavy breaths, he says, “Take your own advice. Stop thinking about it,” gripping my hips and forcing me to move.

I do what he says. I stop thinking.

***

It’s been a long time since I’ve consciously forced myself to think about Compass Room C. Since I’ve made my decision to return I need to engage myself with those memories—remember my fight to survive. I need to remind myself why I’m doing this.

I sit in front of the tablet projection and direct myself to the Reprise launch site for the feed of our CR. I watch the deaths. No particular order, but I watch all of them. I’m well aware that people are walking through the living room. I’m well aware of Casey giving me the
look
when he sees me. But I don’t stop.

This machine, capable of malfunction, the demise of people I cared about—is only the beginning.

Blaise . . . his death was the one I never saw.

I punch in the settings for slow motion, watching closely as Blaise races through the woods after the lodge lit on fire. The orange glow from the burning wood faintly illuminates the screen. Out of nowhere, a man—maybe in his mid-twenties—appears, aims, and shoots him in the head.

And that’s it.

His death was so fast. So unexplainable.

Wait.

“What are you doing?” Casey sits down next to me.

I hold up a finger. “One sec.” I rewind the feed.

I go back further, until I’m following Blaise through the woods. The man appeared earlier when Blaise was running through the forest. After he found his trigger object. All this time I never knew what it was, but I see it now. A set of speakers. I’d researched his crime after escaping the CR. He’d drunkenly turned down the music before his killing spree at the party.