Page 13 of Vicious
The ghost stopped. Now the iron’s magnetic pull drew energy from other things, un-magnetizing me from ghosts, making me invisible, at least to it. I’d just traded one enemy’s visual awareness foranother’s.
“Get up and turn around,” Parker ordered behind me. “Slowly.”
The back of my neck prickled under the weight of his gaze. I ticked my gaze to the corner of the bar where the albino alien and Mase should’ve been. I didn’t see them. A good thing. Lightning still buzzed across the doorway to block Mase’s exit. I willed them to stay put, though I had no plans on how to get out of thismyself.
With my back teeth clenched tight against the pain, I pushed to my feet on shaky legs. My sweatshirt hood had come off somewhere between the wall and here, so my hair and chains were bared. The real me for all tosee.
For the first time since I’d accepted who and what I was, I turned away from the ghost, confident that the iron repelled it but unsettled that it hadn’t come in after I’d invited it. Its arctic cold presence beat against my back as I faced Parker and hiscrew.
Four guns aimed at my head. Parker held a long sword that hung at his side, gripped so he could easily lop off any body part he could see through his eerie, crackedgaze.
Slowly, the Saelis ghost retreated, its footsteps thunderous as it left the building, though the men in front of me didn’t react. Some sensed ghosts, somedidn’t.
I rolled the iron cube into the pocket of my cheek, racking my brain for a way out of this but coming up empty. After a slow, rickety breath, I said, “Throw down your weapons,” because it didn’t hurt totry.
Parker’s bald alabaster head tilted to the side, studying me like prey, and the effect was as unsettling as his eyes. “Where did you come from so suddenly?” He spit the words out like ground upbones.
A shudder ripped up my back, and I tried not to wince at the ache in my shoulder. “Not suddenly. I’ve been here for awhile.”
“You know where Masonis.”
“I don’t knowwhoMason is,” I said withouthesitation.
“Liar.” He stepped closer and sniffed the air around me, his pointed gaze anaccusation.
I planted my feet firmly, though every instinct screamed to backaway.
“Are you hiswhore?”
“I’m no one’s whore,” I bitout.
“Wrong. All girls are someone’s whore. Eventually. Sometimes with a little…persuasion.” He lifted the blade of his sword and touched it to my cheek, the cool metal like a soft caress rather than his implied threat. Though if I bled the parasites out of my veins, the ghost would likely come back, along with any Saelis/human hybrids that might be lurking around. It drove the male Saelis and hybrids insane with hunger, and while that might be a good distraction, it could also get me killed. Along with almost every other Feozva-damned thing that had gone wrongtoday.
Something shifted behind me near the door, barely audible, seemingly undetectable to everyone but me since I knew Mase’s location. I hoped that wasn’t Mase getting any funny ideas about defending my honor or other suchnonsense.
“I bet your mother appreciates those misogynistic viewpoints of yours,” I blurted to redirect Parker in case he’d heard. “How proud she mustbe.”
His cracked gaze searched my face, his black hole pupils shifting behind the broken white flecks that reminded me of dying suns. “My mother isdead.”
“I’m sorry for your loss.” I hiked a thumb over my shoulder, past ready to move away from him. “That’s a cool lightning trick by the door. What isit?”
He dropped his sword to his side. “She.”
“She?”
“A drug. A highly addictive one.” He stepped back and gestured forward with his sword. “Go. Get up next to it and see what youthink.”
I turned and limped toward it, snaking my hand in my sweatshirt pocket for my ice pick and hoping it could help carve us a way out. The last thing I needed was another drug, but I crept toward it anyway, searching for an opportunity. A hiss like a low warning sounded from the wall where Mase and the albino alien hid. We needed some sort of distraction to get us out of here, though, and so far this was the only thing allowing me closer to thedoor.
Footsteps came up behind me as the lightning pulsed a vibrant white that reflected back in the chains flowing over my shoulders. It strobed across the doorway for a reason—to keep Mase in. Maybe he couldn’t jump over it, but I could. Still, did I want to take that risk? Leave him here with his own version of a ghost from his past until I found another way out? It almost seemed like a living, breathing creature, and I had no idea what it might do if I tried to escape. Plus, I couldn’t take any chances, not where Mase wasconcerned.
Better to stay and fight. With an ice pick against a sword and four guns. My best plans came to me after smacking my head on an unconscious man’selbow.
I knelt a safe distance away from the lightning. With Parker and his men at my back, I gripped my ice pick and darted my gaze to the right wall. Hopefully either Mase or the albino alien could read my intent. Hopefully they were stillthere.
Footsteps came closer, almost right behind me. “Grab her and make heryours.”
I reached out a tentative hand while my other gripped the ice pick tighter. Something shifted to the right, a blur of messy blond hair, fury inside mismatched eyes, and then vanished once again. Mase, likely struggling to break free and stop me. Or to take ithimself.
