Heroes 'Til Curfew (Talent Chronicles #2) (4 page)

I barely felt the satisfaction of that
before something struck my shoulder and upper arm so hard that I
actually cried out. It knocked me to my back again and I looked up
to see Nathan standing over me with a thick, jagged stick of old
lumber. Before I could do anything, something covered my face. My
heavy breathing sucked fabric into my mouth and I could smell that
stench of cigarettes and BO again.

“Help me pin her down!” Corey shouted.

I reached out, dug my fingers into the laces
of Nathan’s sneaker and yanked as hard as I could. I pulled my hand
away as I felt him fall back on his ass, taken by surprise, and
grappled with Corey.

Corey Danvers, member of the Fairview High
Varsity Wrestling Team.

He had thrown himself over my upper body,
holding the jacket down tight over my face with the hands that
pinned my shoulders to the floor. His chest hovered over my head,
his head over my chest, his lower body positioned away from me, so
there was no way I could touch him. But he was still yelling for
the other guys to get up and help him out.

I shut everything out, focused, tried to
visualize Nathan’s stick where it had fallen. I felt Jeff’s weight
land across my lower body, heard him shout for Nathan to find
something to tie me with, heard Nathan scrambling up off the floor,
and even the soft scrape of the stick in the dirt when my mind
found it and wrapped that invisible line around it. In my mind I
saw it flying up from ground and swinging back down in an arc
toward my chest.

Corey grunted and fell on top of me as the
stick changed directions and swung blindly outward toward my legs.
I felt the resistance as Jeff caught it, but it didn’t matter
because I had my hands free for the moment to shove Corey away from
me and get my vision back. Jeff rose to his knees and I had to use
my hands and my mind to stop the club from coming down and
splitting my face apart. I drove a knee up into his unprotected
groin, caught his chest before it could fall on me, and rolled him
away, grabbing the stick from his hand as I skittered away from
him.

On my feet again, I spun to try to take in
the scene but was only able to note that Bella was nowhere to be
found before seeing Nathan square off with me. I raised the stick
only have it crumble to dust in my hands. I jumped back, totally
freaked out, and Nathan put his head down and rushed me. We fell
back onto the couch, which turned over with the impact. This time
the back of my head did crack against the cement, but I was almost
too pissed off to notice. Nathan was about my size and not much of
a fighter. I yanked him off to the side and rolled away from him,
gaining my feet again, breathing hard.

Corey and Jeff both scrambled up off the
floor. The couch was between us, so I sent it sailing back into
them. Corey faded to nothing and the couch passed right through
where he had been standing before he faded back into view again.
But it struck Jeff and sent him stumbling back, falling against the
wall. I followed through, using the couch to pin him there, but my
diverted attention allowed Corey to get to me.

As I tried to break Corey’s hold, I looked
around for anything I could use against him. I knocked over one of
the steel drums that had flanked the couch. Burning trash spilled
out onto the floor, throwing sparks across the concrete as the drum
started to roll toward our legs.

It burst into dust before it could reach
us.

Already occupied with keeping Jeff pinned
behind the couch, I reached out with my mind, picked up one of the
heavy, battery-operated lanterns the guys had brought over for
their “photo shoot” and flung it at Nathan’s head. It, too, turned
to dust before it reached him. He smirked at me as he stood back
and watched Corey try to wrestle me into submission.

Corey was at my back and had both my arms
pinned painfully between us. He shoved me up against the wall,
causing my face to smack painfully. I came away choking on plaster
dust. He laughed and did it again, using more of his weight to
shove my whole upper body into the wall. In my mind I felt myself
losing my hold on the couch that kept Jeff from joining him. Corey
pulled us back for a third shove, even farther this time. When we
hit it exposed the broken, wooden lattice behind the plaster. I let
myself whimper, hoping to encourage him to do it again, and when he
pulled us back, I punched my shoulders back against his chest,
levered my knees up and planted my feet against what was left of
the wall. I kicked out hard, sending us sailing backward, bouncing
off Corey as he landed and his arms fell away.

I got to my feet in time to see Jeff rushing
in to tackle me again and looked around frantically to find
something to stop him. My mind knocked over the second drum, sparks
flying as his foot stomped down on some of the blackened trash. I
expected to see the drum burst into dust as I lifted it to hurl at
Jeff’s head.

In that moment of slowed time, something,
somehow, caught my attention. I looked up to see a network of
exposed, iron pipes jerking and shifting as the supports that bound
them to the ceiling popped and disappeared. I understood it
instantly and flung the drum weakly at Nathan as I leapt to get out
of the way.

Jeff was hurtling toward me, or to the place
where I had been. The heavy, empty pipes came down, one end before
the other, swinging through space, catching him hard in the spine.
As he tried to turn, he tripped over his own feet and fell. The
back of his head bounced once when it hit the cement, the pipes
landed on his twisted legs, and he was still.

Above, the ceiling groaned and continued to
rain dust and debris. Corey was struggling to his feet yelling,
“What did you do?!” at Nathan. Sirens wailed and I realized I’d
been hearing their approach for the last few minutes. There was the
sound of an engine, a single car or truck, close by and approaching
fast.

Nathan started to run, and I should have let
him, but I swung the couch around to pin him against a wall. “Is
that Marco?” he shouted at Corey, panicked and hopeful.

Corey glared at me and faded to a shimmer of
air that disappeared through the nearest wall. Before I could
decide what was next, that groaning sound came from the ceiling
again and I reached out for it with my mind instinctively. I
pressed up against the damaged area and could feel the weaknesses,
the weight of something huge and monstrously heavy pressing,
cracking, trying to come through the battered structure. I backed
up, away from the danger, getting all of the damaged area in my
range of vision. But that also took me away from the doorway,

Outside, the car screeched to a halt, a door
slammed, the car peeled away again. There was yelling followed by
the sounds of fighting.

“What’s going on?” Nathan yelled, shoving at
the couch.

I couldn’t hold the couch with him
struggling to get free as well as keep the ceiling up. As I stood
there, the damage was increasing, spreading outward, making my job
more complex. Harder.

No answer for Nathan from outside, just
muffled, angry voices and the thudding of fists. “Nathan!” I
snapped, just before I lost my hold on the couch. “This ceiling’s
about to give out and there’s something heavy up there. You need to
pull Jeff out from under those pipes.”

The sirens were getting louder and Nathan’s
wide eyes darted to the ceiling, to Jeff, to me. “No way. No way
I’m letting you drop that on me.”

“I’m not going to drop it on you, you moron,
but I don’t know how long I can keep this from falling and
obliterating your friend there, so hurry your ass up and drag him
out.”

Nathan took about two seconds to consider.
He wriggled out and climbed over the couch. “He’s not that good a
friend,” he told me. Then he covered his face with one arm, blew a
hole in the wall nearest him, further weakening the structure, and
bolted through it.

Dylan came in at a run, focused on the
direction of the explosion. He stopped cold when I called out to
him, his name coming out all strangled and choked-sounding. For
some reason, seeing him come through that door, seeing him standing
there staring at me, I just wanted to break down in a crying heap
of girl at his feet. Which was just so completely unacceptable. But
he was just staring at me with a red welt on his cheek and this
really intense look on his face and it was sucking all the oxygen
out of the room.

Above us, the ceiling groaned. He looked
up.

“Turn around and get out of here,” I told
him. “I’m fine, but the ceiling’s about to come down.”

“Well come on, then!” He started toward me
with his hand out.

“I can’t. I’m holding up the ceiling.
There’s something heavy up there, and I can’t see it to try to move
it. If I leave, I won’t be able to hold everything in place, and
it’ll come down on Jeff.”

He looked around and spotted Jeff under the
tangle of pipes. I realized he hadn’t looked around when he came
in, and thought that all he saw was me. It made my stomach
flip.

I was an idiot.

Dylan changed directions and hurried over to
where Jeff lay, unconscious. Outside, the blaring sirens came to a
stop. Car doors opened. He got his arms under Jeff’s and started to
pull, but didn’t get very far.

“Can you lift those pipes at all?”

I tried to split my attention and focus some
of it on the pipes. I really wanted to ask how he’d even gotten
here, how he’d known I was in trouble. And then I wanted to know
why’d he’d come after me. A thick piece of lumber came down. Dylan
flinched away, still holding onto Jeff, and he grunted in pain as
it bounced off his shoulder.

“Get out of there right now. I can’t hold
the ceiling and move the pipes.”

“Let me see if I can…” He was putting Jeff
down, too gently, and moving around to try to pull at the network
of iron. “I could use another set of hands here. Seen anything I
could use for leverage?”

“No, and it’s too dangerous anyway. I don’t
know how long I can hold this up and you need to get going.” I
could hear them outside, identifying themselves as police and
demanding that anyone inside respond and come out. “I’ll stay and
hold this as long as I can, play the concerned girlfriend if I have
to—”

“Like hell you will!”

“Seriously?
That’s
the part of the
plan you don’t like.”

“No, I think your plan sucks as a
whole.”

“We don’t have time to argue about this,” I
snapped, ready to call out to the cops whether Dylan was gone or
not. The last thing we needed was for them to come in with guns
drawn and be surprised by us. If I got Dylan shot by a nervous cop,
I was pretty much never going to get over that.

“Agreed. So shut up and keep still.” He
rushed over to me, backed me up, into the shadows, against the wall
opposite Jeff.

“What are you doing?” I tried to stare
harder at the structure of the ceiling to maintain focus, not to
look up at him, check out the injury on his face, or look at his
blue eyes. My concentration wavered and bits of plaster rained down
on Jeff.

“Easy now. Pay attention to what you’re
doing,” he said, in that low, honey-smooth way he had that was
supposed to be calming but was totally not helping me concentrate
on the ceiling. “And Joss, don’t freak out, okay?”

“Freak out about—?”

Dylan disappeared.

Chapter 3

Joss

He had been standing in front of me, so that
I had both him and the ceiling in my field of vision. And then he
was just gone.

Except he was still there. I could
feel
him standing there in front of me. Feel the heat coming
off him.

He was freakin’ invisible.

“Concentrate, Joss. They’re coming. I know
it seems like you’re looking right through me, but you’re not. I’m
not clear, I just…blend in. As long as I’m between you and them,
they won’t see you.”

He moved a bit, leaning one shoulder against
the wall so that he formed a wall between me and the door. He
leaned in to shield as much of me as possible with his body, his
hand coming to rest on my shoulder, pulling me in tight. I found
that my own hands had come up, maybe in defense of the personal
space invasion at first, but I had two invisible leather lapels
clutched in my fists.

“Can you see okay?” he asked, his voice
barely a breath in my ear.

My eyes almost rolled back in my head, but I
answered, “Yeah, I got it.”
Just barely.
I was dizzy, too
warm, overwhelmed by the scents of leather and Dylan.
Get a
grip. This isn’t a come-on, this is Dylan saving your ass so you
can save Jeff’s. So try to stay focused here, and not let the whole
building fall down.

But that was really hard just at the
moment.

Dylan’s a Talent.

Why didn’t I know that?

Why wouldn’t he tell me?

The cops were pouring in through the door
now. Those that glanced our way never gave us a second look. They
immediately assessed Jeff’s situation and brought in the paramedics
who must have been on standby. And those guys were taking their
time.

My head felt like it was about to explode.
Holding up a ceiling, the structure of it, the floor above it—it
was way complex. That alone would have been a strain, but the
stress of the whole night, the fight, the shock of Dylan’s
revelation, and, let’s face it, mostly the distraction of being
wrapped up in him, were splintering my attention and making it
harder. Drastic measures were called for.

I purposely let some boards fall on the
cops, and let one narrowly miss Jeff’s head. That seemed to give
everyone a greater sense of urgency. There was a lot of unnecessary
yelling that cut into my brain like a saw, but at least they gave
up their on-site assessment and four of them lifted the pipes
aside. They worked quickly to get Jeff all braced and locked down,
and then got him out of there.