Evernight (The Night Watchmen Series Book 2) (14 page)

The feeling… it’s so overwhelming, so intense and intoxicating, that I don’t even realize I’ve already drained the dog to the point that it’s laying on its side, panting heavily, eyes rolled back in its head.

Not until it yelps loudly.

Liquid ice pours through my veins, freezing my heart on the spot. Disgust crushes my lungs, squeezing the breath right out of me. I shut my eyes and find myself standing in front of my biggest fear, in front of a mirror that reflects myself, only I’m not myself. I’m a murderer. One who enjoys taking from others.

I want to run to the animal and cradle him in my arms, but I can’t move in his direction. Not a single inch.

“No… no… no,” I mutter over and over until I’m tucked into the furthest corner with my arms wrapped around my legs, and the dog laying feet away from me. I can’t catch my breath. Tremors wrack my entire body. I want to look away. I
should
look away, but I can’t unglue my eyes from the whimpering animal.

I can’t deny just how dangerous I truly am. Not anymore.

“Get up,” Clara says sharply. “You’re making a fool of yourself.”

“The dog… he’s hurt,” I say, horrified I did that. But not just that I did, but that it felt
good
when I pulled from him.

I want to cut out the ability within me. I want to break apart every single strand of DNA inside my body until I’m a Defect. Until I’m nothing. Until I don’t exist anymore, because I don’t want to be that. I don’t want to become what I think I could become. I don’t want to be anyone’s weapon… what Clara intends me to be.

“I-I didn’t… I didn’t mean to. No. I di-didn’t want to do that. He di-didn’t deserve that. I’m-I’m a monster.” The words—they won’t stop chattering from behind my teeth. They harbor every fear, every weakness inside of me, and I’m so exposed. So alone.

So deadly.

“Good, then it’s working. Now, finish. Harness the energy,” she commands. Her patience is wearing thin. Her understanding is one word from turning into mercilessness.

I bite back my lip, holding it all in. “No,” I say, shaking my head repeatedly. I don’t want to do this anymore. I can’t.

Clara enters the room. Stops right in front of me. “Excuse me?” Her shock is evident, so close to turning into a rage that even I haven’t seen before.

“I can’t, Clara. No.” I’m surprised by the coolness of my tone. By the way the words so easily slip out like fluid.

She strikes me hard across the face. Slicing pain splits my lip as blood reaches the tip of my tongue.

I glare up at her.

She strikes me again, only this time, I feel the skin along my cheek split. “I will not ask you again, Faye Middleton. This is your last chance.” Fire burns within her words.

The dog slowly rises to his feet as the last of his energy is given back to him. Tears fall down my cheeks. “I won’t do it,” I say before breaking off in a small cry.

I know I’m sentencing my friends to a fate I’m unsure of, but I can’t, and I have to believe they wouldn’t want me to either. I have to believe I’m not the monster I feel scratching beneath my skin for a chance to break free.

“Fine.”

The door opens and the Elite walks in, clips the dog back on a leash, and escorts him out.

“We will take a short recess. Enough for you to get your head back in the game. That there, what you just did, that was progress.”

“I can’t do it again, Clara,” I say firmly, even though my insides feel like a sloshing bucket of sorrow.

She eyes me down. Her silence speaks loud and clear.

“Be back in this room in two hours. Prepare to be here all night. We will stay as long as it takes for you to give in. Understand?”

“Do I have a choice?”

S
OMEHOW, I LEAVE CLARA WITHOU
T
killing her.

I know I could, so easily, but I don’t. Maybe out of fear. Maybe because if I do, then that will be the end of my future, because maybe I still have a small bit of hope tucked away in the farthest corners of my soul that I’ll find a way out of this.

Maybe because fighting violence with violence isn’t always the answer.

I don’t waste any time putting distance between myself and that room of torture Clara calls “the training room.”

Inch by inch, my feet gradually pick up pace, until I’m bolting down the hallway, shoving past blurred faces, heading for the nearest exit. I’m sure the world has finally fallen off its axis, because I can’t see straight. I can’t think. All I can do is keep running. To get as far away from this prison as I can.

To outrun the monster I left back in that room.

Spotting two Elites in training waiting for the elevator, I run past them and head for the stairwell. I don’t want anyone to see me. Not like this. My composure is slipping out of the back door of my mind. My hands are shaking as I run, and my heart’s pounding harder than it ever has. I feel my own fear nipping at my heels, waiting for the moment I stop running so it can swallow me whole. Feed off what little bit of strength and dignity I have left.

I can’t let that happen.

Shoving through the door, I take the stairs two at a time, and it still doesn’t feel fast enough. I keep seeing that dog, Clara’s face, and my parents and Katie and Jaxen…

The images won’t stop. The emotions won’t go away. I try to shut them off, but the switch won’t work. It’s broken, like me, like every part of my life, and I swear I’m going to explode.

When I’m almost to the last floor, I hear the door above me burst open with heavy footsteps moving to the railing. The mark on my arm begins to heat.

“Faye!”

It’s Jaxen. He’s leaning over the railing, searching for me, panic and worry parachuting off his words toward me.

I can’t see him now. Not like this. Not when my eyes have decided to let every bit of disappointment and fear stream out. Not when I’ve only just realized how much of a monster I truly am.

I wish his curse would just take me. That I could just die right now, before I do something I’ll really regret, before I see the realization of what I am in his green eyes. Because if I did die now, then at least it would be because he loves me and not because of something I did.

I don’t want to wait for the day when his love stops. When he tells me he can’t love a monster.

“Faye! Wait up!” he shouts, now only feet behind me.

I make it to the first floor and push through the door. Sunlight slaps me across the face, and I have to shield my eyes with forearm and look away. My chest rises and falls so fast… too fast, and I can’t seem to catch my breath. I can’t seem to slow my rapidly beating heart. Running has never been an issue for me. Controlling my breathing has never been this hard.

I keep turning and turning and turning. Walls are closing in on me. There are no more corners for me to take. Nowhere left for me to hide. My knees are beginning to shake, and my feet are losing feeling. I’m sure I’m going to pass out. I’m going to drop right here with all these Elites and citizens of Ethryeal City watching from afar, trying to figure out what’s wrong with me.

But then I feel his heat and smell his intoxicating scent so close to me, and I have to squeeze my eyes shut to keep from completely breaking. I spin in circles, trying to pull myself together. Trying to keep from falling apart. I can only imagine what I must look like to him. How much of a train wreck he’s witnessing.

His hands wrap around my arms, gently turning me to him. “Faye?”

He’s using a calm voice, trying to hide his worry for me, but I can hear it as clearly as if he were screaming in my face about how much of a mess I am. How I need to quit the display that’s causing the people around us to stop and stare.

How the loose cannon has finally burst.

My forearm’s still shielding my face, my eyes, though now it’s not because of the sun. “I’m fine,” I struggle to say, but the tone of my voice doesn’t mix the way I intended it to with the statement.

“Bullshit,” he says, not out of anger, but out of concern. “I haven’t seen you in days. You’re avoiding me, and I don’t know why.” He tries to pull my arm away from my face. I resist at first, but he’s stronger than I am. In more ways than one. “I need to know what’s going on. Why you’re avoiding me, because I know you have been and it’s really starting to piss… What the—?”

I know he sees now why I’ve been avoiding him.

I try to look away, but his hands cup my face, holding me firmly, but gently in place. His thumb barely grazes over my split lip. He turns my face to the side, and I can only imagine the handprint he sees left from Clara’s disappointment, because it still stings as if it just happened. I feel every inch of the flesh she used to hit me with, like it’s embedded in my skin.

“Tell me what the hell is going on, Faye,” he says, voice dangerously low. “Right now.” His hands begin to shake against my skin, as if it’s taking all of his control to stay in front of me and not march back up those stairs and take out any and every one who has hurt me.

The image of his neck snapping inside of swirling smoke nearly gags me on the spot. My stomach twists into an unredeemable knot. “It’s nothing,” I force out, looking away from him.

Just tell him,
a little voice in the back of my head says. But I can’t, I really can’t, because I know him. I know him as well as I know myself and, if the roles were reversed, I would have someone’s head. He won’t take the truth lightly. He won’t be able to refrain from using force against Clara, and I don’t want the images in the smoke to come true.

He exhales forcefully, and then pulls me against his chest, holding the back of my head as if he’s scared to let me go. Like if he does, then he knows I’ll fall apart into a million pieces right here on the sidewalk, and he’ll have no way to put me back together again because life isn’t a fairytale with happy endings. It’s real, it’s cruel, and it’s a bitch to get through.

If anyone knows that, it’s him.

“There’s no way in hell that’s training, Faye,” he says with too much suspicion in his voice. “I know you. You’re too quick on your feet… too smart to let hits like that happen. What has Clara done?”

I feel like my tongue is stuck in quicksand. As if my mind can’t come up with the lies I need quickly enough. An uncomfortable warmth trickles down my entire body, beneath my skin, making me shiver against my will.

Keep it together,
I tell myself.

“I-uh, I’m having an off day.” My voice cracks in the middle of the sentence, and I tuck myself further in his arms, praying he doesn’t try to look me in the eyes. I’ve never been good at lying.

He holds me tighter. “Faye,” he says softly, “it’s just me. You can tell me.”

He’s being so sweet, so kind, and I swear my heart’s ripping in two. I feel like a thousand knives, coated in every lie I’ve ever told, are stabbing right through me, again and again and again. And I want to bleed them out. I want to rid my body of every awful truth I’ve held within me.

But then I hear it… the horrific sound of Jaxen’s fate. Snap!

“Really,” I force out a little too quickly… a little too desperately. “That’s all there is to it.” I hope he can’t feel my heart racing or hear my crowded thoughts. I pull myself away from him, needing to put distance between us before I break. Smoothing back my hair, I straighten out my jacket. “I-uh-I have to get back though,” I say, inching toward the door. “Clara was just giving me a break to re-coup. You should get back to your class.”

He laces his fingers through mine, and I know I’m going to melt. My knees are going to disintegrate.

“The class is a joke, Faye. Supernatural Communications,” he says with a ridiculing laugh. “I already know how to communicate.” Sliding his hand over the hilt of his wooden flux, he smirks. A moment slips between us, and then his face darkens. His eyes turn serious. “But what I don’t know is what you’re hiding. That’s more important right now.” He standing firm and tall, and I know he isn’t going to back down. He’s not going to let me go until I tell him what he wants to hear.

“Jaxen, really, I’ve already told you,” I say, feeling my internal temperature rising, spreading to my cheeks, giving me away.

“You really haven’t,” he says, this time with his eyes locked on mine. He drags a tired hand down his face. We’re dancing around an awkwardness we really haven’t had between us before, and it’s killing me.