Binds (9 page)

I’m relieved when the doors open and I can put some space between us. I look around at the garage full of luxury cars, a couple Hummers, and some plain black sedans, wondering which car we will be using for our little field trip today. Spencer stuns me by passing all of them up and walking straight to the only car in the garage that is beat up with peeling paint and ugly brown interior. It’s an old PT Cruiser, the kind with the fake wood paneling and all-around ugly design. I give him a curious look as he goes for the handle of the passenger door, opening it for me.

“Not the Bentley that you’re used to, is she, Princess?” Spencer smirks at me like the reaction is exactly what he would have expected from me, and he’s right. I am a bit taken aback but not because I have to ride in an ugly car, I’m more surprised that he would drive such a beast.

I recover my expression rapidly and fire back with, “Hey, the car suits its owner.” I stare directly at the hole that’s beginning to form over the left knee of his jeans. He throws his head back and laughs a deep throaty laugh that helps to thaw out some of the iciness I’ve layered over my heart towards him. A man that can laugh at himself— maybe he isn’t as bad as I originally thought.

He composes himself and puts both his hands out, pointing in both directions. “I wonder how well you think my other cars suit me.”

My mouth hangs open for a second when I realize what he is saying. All of the cars in the garage belong to him as well. There are about fifty of them here, all together worth at least a couple million dollars. “You own all of these?” I can’t help the awe that comes out of my voice with the question.

“Yep, and the building. Well, most of them,” he states, matter-of-factly with a shrug. “A couple of them are Jinx’s and one belongs to Cass.”

“And Reece?” I crane my neck around trying to guess which one could belong to him.

“He has a bike,” Spencer replies, and all of the humor has vanished from his voice. “Are you going to get in sometime today? I told you, we have somewhere to be.”

I roll my eyes—Cass must be rubbing off on me—and slide into the seat. Spencer closes my door, hurries around to the driver’s side and before I know it, we are pulling out of the underground garage and emerging onto the street level.

We drive at a leisurely pace and I start to realize where we are. We’re downtown, right in the heart of the business district. Something is bugging me. How does someone like Spencer run this operation without anyone finding out about it? The building isn’t exactly hidden.

“I don’t get how you’ve managed to keep your organization a secret. I mean, you’re running things from a building in the middle of downtown. Donovan should know exactly where you are…he always knows everything.”

“You give him too much credit,” Spencer replies. “First off, thanks to Jinx, I don’t technically exist. He erased any and every trail that could lead back to me. As far as the building, you need to start thinking like a Mage. The whole thing is completely covered in Binds. Anyone who is not meant to find it will see a securities and investment business on the ground floor with luxury condos on the top. Anyone who decides to venture too close will be compelled to turn away because they will have forgotten whatever business it is they think they may have there.”

“But, the whole building, the cars, everything… how do you pay for it?” I wonder aloud.

“I have a trust, from my parents,” he answers sarcastically.

I give him my best look of incredulity.

“A big trust?” he says it as a question and I let it go. It’s obvious that he won’t be offering that information anytime soon. The more we talk, the more human he is starting to seem to me. I don’t like it. I can’t forget that he was digging around in my mind just yesterday. We are not friends. We don’t talk for the remainder of the drive, with only the music playing from the car’s stereo to keep the silence at bay. It is an hour and a half drive. He keeps the same CD playing on repeat. It’s Willie Nelson. I officially hate Spencer.

We come up to a hill and he brings the car to a stop. Below, I can see a huge construction site. There are men milling about, doing numerous construction things. The building looks to be about halfway finished, and I can see some men through one of the windows putting up drywall and laughing at something one of them says.

“Oh good, right on time,” Spencer says as he checks his watch. ”Come on, let’s see if we can get a little closer for the show.”

He exits the car in one fluid motion and doesn’t wait for me to get out of my seat before striding down the hill. I hurry to follow, but the pathway he has chosen is steep and I can’t seem to manage the efficient strides he takes while descending to the bottom. He comes to the base of the hill and progresses past a heaping pile of pallets stacked with enormous bags of cement between them. He turns to watch me hustling after him with an expression of impatient disapproval. I give him back a look of my own but throw in a bit of aloof disregard with a condescending smile. It seems to work because he turns back around to face the job site without another look or word.

We stand staring at the men milling about. I can hear one of them shouting orders, clearly the foreman on the job, and watch as the men are quick to comply with whatever instructions he lays out. Just as I’m beginning to wonder what we're doing here, the foreman notices us and starts our way, calling out to us while shaking his head.

“Hey folks, this is a closed construction zone, hard hats are required to be anywhere near these premises. You’re going to need to…”

His words are cut off as Spencer turns to me with a glint of a smile and says, “I’d cover my ears if I were you.”

Confused by his undecipherable statement, I keep my hands at my sides and look again to the man heading our way. He’s about two dozen feet away from us when Spencer starts counting down, each number in sync with each step he takes.

“In five, four, three, two, shield.”

It starts with a minuscule ticking noise and is followed by a blast that steals all breath from my lungs. The sound is deafening. My arms come up instinctually to cover my head from the blast, but it’s like we are in a protective bubble and as I watch in stunned shock, burning bits of bric-a-brac fly by, launching themselves into the ground surrounding our position and scatter hither and thither everywhere.

There is another roaring boom as something inside the burning structure ignites, drawing my attention away from the smoldering wreckage near our feet. As I look up to scan the scene, I notice the body of the foreman lying unmoving and covered by a heaping pile of flaming debris. It’s clear the he is no longer of this earth by the gaping hole that was once his skull.

The resonances of work and men conversing have completely ceased. Not even a call for help can be heard. All that remains of the bustling scene are the sounds of sizzling flames and creaking beams before the fires completely engulf them followed by the crashing echoes of collapse.

All the while, I feel as if none of it is real. Even as I feel the burn of the fire warm against my cheeks, I fail to believe in the validity of the situation. It’s like the protective bubble that we are in, shielding us from the damage has extended to shield my mind, as well.

It’s impossible to describe the utter agony of bearing witness to the last seconds of an unsuspecting person’s life. It’s almost so foreign a concept that I would wager that most people’s minds wouldn’t be able to immediately comprehend what happened. At least, I hope that is true, because if not, there must be something horribly wrong with me. All I know is that the shock from the blast is nothing compared to the concept that men stood meters away from me in one second, laughing and joking, maybe thinking about what their wives were making for supper that evening, or looking forward to their kid’s little league game over the weekend. Planning the perfect way to propose to their girlfriend or maybe even something more benign like thinking about the indigestion that their McBreakfast gave them earlier in the morning. And then, in a flash, all of it was gone. All those thoughts, all those dreams … wiped away, like crumbs on a kitchen counter, one swipe of the rag into nonexistence.

I turn to Spencer with a look of complete shock and disgust.

“Ahhh, I love the smell of brimstone in the morning,” he states with an unaffected smile and a joviality that continues to muddle my mind, not meshing with the situation at hand.

I’m aghast as he steers me away from the scene and the befuddlement continues as we traverse the hill to his PT Cruiser, and he helps to guide me back to the passenger seat. It’s the sound of the driver’s side door closing and the ignition catching as he starts the engine that stirs me from my shock.

The smoke from the blaze is still pouring from the scene below and I am out of my seat again, slamming the car door shut behind me, and running. It’s kind of hard to maneuver around all of the debris that was blasted up the hill from the explosion, but I have to get away from this maniac. I’m absolutely horrified of this man who just killed dozens of people with a smile on his face.

My feet are moving as fast as I can get them, but I can hear his heavy footfalls behind me and he isn’t too far back.

“Wait, let me explain!” Spencer calls out.

Like hell I will. I leap over a couple of singed two-by-fours heading towards the road we drove in on. If I can just make it to that road, I tell myself, I can flag someone down for help and get away.

Before I can even crest the berm where I would finally meet the pavement, I feel the tug. Spencer has a firm hold of the back of my jacket. I twist my shoulders and shrug out of it, only for him to lunge at me, successfully knocking me down with a cloud of dust. We both roll back down the hill and come to a halt with me on top of him. I go to jump up and get away, but he grabs ahold of my forearms and I am now straddling him, both of us covered in dirt with cuts and scrapes covering our faces and my arms.

“
Stop
.” He grunts and I can tell right away that he has used a Bind on me because I feel as if I have been frozen into place. I can’t even open my mouth to scream.

“I am going to take the Bind off of you in a moment,” he says through clenched teeth. The anger he showed while arguing with Reece yesterday was nothing compared to the rage I now see displayed across his face. It looks like, at any second, he might burst a vessel in one of his eyes with the way he is glaring at me. “You are not going to run. You are not going to scream. Hell, I don’t even want you to fucking breathe. You hear me?”

I gaze into his sapphire eyes trying to express as best as I can with mine what a dumbass he is for expecting a response while I am unable to give one, but he doesn’t seem to read the iris language, he just continues with his instructions.

“When I remove the Bind, I want you to get the hell off of me and sit down Indian style right here.” He nods to the spot next to where we are currently positioned. “Keep in mind that I could force you to stay in place the whole time, just like I am right now, but I won’t… if you cooperate.”

He takes a few seconds to catch his breath before uttering, “
Move
.”

And I can once more. I shake my head to try and get some of the dust off of my face and hair, sending it directly down onto him. I give him a smug smile. It’s childish, yeah, but if I’m to believe his threat, it’s the only retaliation I can give him for stealing my free will. I hastily remove myself from him and sit down as he instructed with my arms folded across my chest. If I am going to be forced to stay in the same vicinity as this murderer, I’m going to show as much displeasure at my predicament as possible.

He stands up and dusts himself off with his hands and then starts pacing in front of me. “Hmm, how to explain?” he questions himself. I can feel his eyes on me but I am staring out at the horizon. I’m not going to give him the satisfaction of active listening.

Before he can even come up with his explanation, I have broken my vow of silence. “You just murdered innocent people.” I point back towards the site. My statement is obvious, but I am still in shock and it’s about the most coherent speech I can come up with in the instant.

“Yes, they are all dead,” he agrees. “But, I didn’t do it alone. We did it, the resistors. If you will allow me to show you why we did it, you might not think those men so innocent.”

“Don’t throw around the royal ‘we’ with me. I heard you plan it with Jinx. He said to be at the spot at ten for the show. I also heard you use a Bind right before the place exploded. It’s your fault that this happened!”