Page 54 of Sin

A memory flitted through my mind, and the me in the mirror smiled even wider. Then I spoke the two words which had my suit dissolving right before my eyes, leaving me defenseless.

Terror burned my throat like the spill of alcohol, and I let my fear consume me as I screamed, “Get out of my head!”

My power flared so hot it scalded even me. Lucas yelped, staggering away from me, and I sucked in a sharp breath, unable to focus enough to attack him again with my power. So I did the only thing my frazzled brain could think of. I punched him hard in the face.

Lucas’s face whipped to the side, and he glared as he regained his footing. My hit didn’t do much to deter him, and he stormed back toward me.

With my suit gone, Lucas’s gaze raked over me before stilling as something caught his attention. In a flash, he had my right wrist in his grasp.

With trembling fingers, he touched the skin beneath my cuffs.

“You’re like me,” he said, bringing my arm to his face and… Sniffing it. Then, almost aggressively, he shoved my dampening cuff up my forearm until it cut into my skin. Lucas stared down at my scarred, raw wrist in awe before giving my other wrist the same treatment. Tears lined his lashes when his gaze sought mine once more. “You’re just like me,” he said again, almost reverently.

His head cocked as he regarded me, more intensely now and with far more interest than I liked.

I heard the door to the house of mirrors creak open and shut, and I took the momentary distraction it caused Lucas to build, build, build…

“Sin?” London’s worried voice rang through the house of mirrors, making me tense. I needed to rally my strength quickly.

“Put on the cuffs,” I ordered Lucas, and he shook as my power forced him to reach down toward where the cuffs had apparently fallen. But before he even touched them, he jerked back his hand as though burned.

He looked shaken, his eyes wide and frantic as he pressed his back against a wall, trying to keep away from the cuffs.

“Sin, where are you?” London called.

“Get out of here!” I shouted back at London, hearing him stumbling around inside.

I advanced on Lucas, where he now stood covering his eyes and shaking his head back and forth. But I didn’t care how unwell he was. I was furious at his invasion into my mind. At tricking London into coming inside this place.

“No, no, no,” he said, sounding so lost and confused. “I’m sorry. Please, I’m so sorry. I haven’t done anything wrong. I never did anything wrong. But they made my head hurt. It hurts, hurts, hurts. I just want it to stop hurting. Where did it all go? Why can’t I remember?” He started smacking at the sides of his head, making a high-pitched keening sound. “I just want it to stop. They did this. They hurt me. I just want to remember! I just want the pain to stop. Make it stop. He can make it stop!”

He continued his babbling, his rambling turning less and less coherent by the second. I focused in on him, knowing he was unwell, but he needed some serious help that only someone qualified could give.

“Listen to me,” I said soothingly, hoping a subtler use of my gift would work and that it would also calm the unstable man before me. “Put these on. They’ll help.”

When his gaze landed on the cuffs, his eyes watered. His movements became more erratic and agitated as he fought against my influence.

“Now, Lucas,” I said with more force, and he took an unwilling step toward me.

Lucas clutched his head with his hands and let out a glass-shattering scream. Blood trickled from the grooves he dug into his skin as he thrashed, and thrashed, and thrashed. The lights flickered wildly, several even shattering, and screams and shouts sounded from outside the house of mirrors. The ground shook, as if something heavy had dropped somewhere nearby, and the noise from beyond these walls only increased.

And that’s when it all went wrong. Because one moment, he was thrashing against my influence, then the next, he was trying to batter his way into my head.

My vision went in and out of focus, and I fell to the ground. My fingers scrambled blindly along the ground as Lucas zeroed in on me, closing the distance.

He was almost to me. But my fingers grazed metal, and then I had the cuffs ready to snap on him.

“Put them on!” I yelled, my exhaustion making my power less effective. I didn’t have the energy to keep using my power much longer, and that terrified me. Because I worried this wouldn’t be enough to detain him. That I wouldn’t be enough.

Still, his hands lifted against his will. Then his frenzied gaze snapped over my shoulder, and he smiled, confusing the hell out of me.

In one of the reflections in front of me though, I spotted where Lucas’s attention had landed.

London had come, despite me warning him away. Now, he stood frozen at the end of the hallway facing us with an unfocused and unseeing gaze. He took several stiff steps toward us, and my heart jumped up to my throat.

Joder.

Lucas must have gotten better control of London’s body then, because one moment, London’s steps were unsteady and slow, and then the next, he moved so fast I almost didn’t dodge a swipe he aimed at me.

---