Page 75 of Breaking Danger
“I’m a healer,” she answered and he frowned.
“You’re a what?”
“A healer. I didn’t tell you because—because I don’t tell people. It’s complicated and I can’t use it to clear up colds but I can heal people who are really sick.”
He opened his mouth, then closed it.
She gently closed her good hand around his and led him to the foot of a huge pine tree. “Sit.” And just like that, he sat. Nervous energy was humming in him, he knew he had to find a way to kill himself fast, but somehow Sophie was overriding his system. He sat and she sat next to him, close enough for him to feel the warmth radiating off her.
She lifted the sleeve of the arm that had been bitten, pulling it up over his elbows, and put both hands on his hand, right above the bite. One hand was already becoming purple and swollen from the broken wrist but she paid no attention to that at all. Where she curled her hands around his forearm there was an enormous sensation of heat. Painless, enveloping.
“I’ve healed you already.” She absorbed the jolt his hand made.
“What?”
Sophie nodded. “Do you remember feeling heat when you landed on me? You’d just made a run for your life and you’d seen the horrors on the street and you were heartsick. And when—when you told me about your parents. It was like a grievous wound, I could tell. I don’t know exactly how it works—it’s actually scary to me—but you felt better afterward, didn’t you?”
Jon kept his stone face on, though he mind was whirling.
Sophie shook his arm. “Answer me, damn it! You felt better afterward, didn’t you?”
He felt like his lips were made of stone. He had trouble formulating the words. “Everyone feels better after talking about something painful. Psychology 101.”
She looked him in the eyes. “I am absolutely convinced I can cure this, Jon. I wouldn’t be playing with my safety like this if I weren’t. I can do this and I will. I am not going to go back to Haven with your dead body. We are going to go back together, we are going to work hard with the others to heal the world, and we are going to get married and have wonderful children who will be brought up to be smart, loving and kind. That is not a wish, that is the truth. Do you believe me?”
No, of course not. The words were there, on his lips, but somehow they wouldn’t come out.
She looked smart and strong and very capable. Not crazy at all. The farthest thing from crazy, as a matter of fact.
And—he’d seen this before. Catherine and Elle. Both scientists, both women of reason, with unusual gifts. Catherine could feel emotions—and lately thoughts—through touch. And Elle—Elle could project herself out of her body thousands and thousands of miles away.
He’d have scoffed at even the hint of any of this before last year, but he’d seen it with his own eyes. Catherine had found them in their secret lair, where the entire US military had failed to find them, simply because she’d touched Lucius Ward.
She’d touchedhimand uncovered secrets he’d never told another human being. And Elle—Elle’s body had been back at Haven but she’d been with him and Nick when they broke into Arka’s headquarters in San Francisco. There was no doubt about that.
So…maybe…
Sophie’s good hand clutched his arm more tightly and the heat was like a painless fire. She leaned forward toward him, toward a man who could be becoming a monster right now. “Give me a chance, Jon. Giveusa chance. Please. I don’t want to live without you.”
It was nuts. It went against every single instinct he had.
Jon reached to his boot, pulled out his combat knife, placed it in her lap. One good thing—if he turned, he wouldn’t know what it was for.
“At the first sign, and I mean the very first sign, that I am turning, you slash me across the throat with that, Sophie, and jump away. If we’re going to try this, I need your promise.”
“I promise,” she said, her voice low, gaze unwavering.
Nail it down.“Promise what? Say it out loud.”
“I promise that if I can’t heal you, if you show signs of turning, that I will take the knife, slash you across the throat, and run.”
He nodded. “They’re coming for you from Haven. They’ll find you. And they’ll protect you. If I go, I want to know you’ll live.”
She swallowed heavily. “I know.”
Jon couldn’t believe he was doing this, but he was. “Ok. What do we do?”
“I touch you. And I heal you.”
