The Glass Man (7 page)

I covered my eyes and fell.

8

“Where am I?” I blinked awake.

Two small blue lamps pitched wedges of light up to the ceiling in the otherwise dark room. I rolled over and found Liam sitting on the edge of the bed facing the door with his elbows on his knees. He wore dark dress pants and a light blue collared shirt. Without turning, he held out a sports drink. His stash of groceries in the basement must have been bigger than he’d let on. I grabbed it and gulped it down.

Memories of his touch flooded my thoughts. An echo of pleasure drew a sigh to my lips. I sat up. “Why are you wearing that?” My brow crinkled up as I thought of the light and voices.
Did I imagine that? A dream, maybe?

“You need to get dressed.” He stared at the door, his posture rigid. “There isn’t much time.”

A black sickness filled my stomach. I bolted out of bed, dragging the quilt with me. “What’s going on? Where are my clothes?” I looked out the window. Darkness had fallen. Alarms went off in my head. “What time is it?”

“You’ve been asleep for a day and a half.” He pointed to the white dresser. “Your clothes are there.”

Liam stood and went to the door.

“Wait—what happened to your accent?” It came out as a whisper.

He didn’t answer.

The room swayed as the realization hit home. “You tell me what’s going on, Liam Conner, or I swear I will bring this house down around you!”

“No you won’t … Lila.”

I gasped. He knew it all along.

Liam turned to look at me with eyes like mine—sapphire blue, with yellow swirling around the pupil. “I’ve blocked your energy. Now put on the dress, or I’ll put it on you.”

“No!” I stumbled back until I slammed into the wall. “The whole time—you’ve been trying to keep me here.” I turned and kicked the wall so hard the drywall crumpled. Pain surged through my bare foot. How could I have been so stupid? So many signs. The energy. His ability to sneak up on me so easily. The creeps in the shed. They had to be in on it, too. I overlooked it all, but why?
I don’t have time for this!

I closed my eyes and searched for that well of energy I’d found not long after I hit puberty. It was there, but an invisible barrier kept me from reaching it. The more I pushed against it, the more resistance I met, like leaning against a coiled spring.

“What did you do to me?” I searched the room for another way out but only found the window. I didn’t have time to heal a broken leg from a two-story drop. “Tell me you aren’t working for the Glass Man.”

Liam closed his eyes, and a veil lifted between my mind and the earth. Sound and sensation overwhelmed my senses, staggering me. The crickets screamed in the distance, and wolves howled outside the window. My body seized up when the Glass Man’s presence squeezed my mind, covered my thoughts in shadow.

“I’m sorry,” Liam said.

Numbness swept through me. I scrambled across the bed to the dresser and yanked a few drawers open but found them all empty. The closet too. I pulled on the racy red panties and a matching bra he’d laid out, then pulled the low cut blue dress over my head. When I bent forward, I noticed my hair had gone back to blonde. Without my energy, I couldn’t change my appearance.

With my fists curled, I stopped in front of Liam, panting through the rage. “You lousy, lying shit! God! Who are you?”

“I had no choice.” He wouldn’t look at me.

“There’s always a choice.”

“You can’t tell him what we did, or about the voices and the light. If you do—he’ll kill us all tonight.”

So that did happen.
“What did we do? I felt your mind from the inside.”

He shook his head, grimacing as if he’d swallowed something sharp.

“And that whole charade with Clancy in the shed, and then outside. You let him shoot you on purpose?”

“I wanted you to feel safe so we wouldn’t have to hurt you. My master told me what you’re like. That’s why Garret’s here, because I knew you’d want to protect him. If the men were afraid of you …” He turned away. “And yeah, I just let him shoot me.”

“How did you know I could heal?” I grabbed the light from the night stand and hurled it into the wall beside his head. He ducked as it shattered and fell in a jagged mess around him. “I should have let you die.”

“We were supposed to find out how powerful you were. I could have healed it anyway. The bullets were gold.”

What do gold bullets have to do with anything?
“What are you? What does the Glass Man want with me?”

“Don’t you understand?” Liam threw a fist into the doorframe, splintering the wood. Blood trickled down his knuckles. “I don’t know what he wants. Even if I did, I couldn’t tell you. If I tell you anything … he’ll kill them.” His face twisted with anger, or maybe grief—I didn’t look closely enough to find out.

“No, it’s you who doesn’t understand. Whoever they are, he’ll kill them anyway because that’s what he does. He’ll kill them, and he’ll dance in their blood just to see the look on your face.”

His eyes grew wide.

“Reality’s a bitch. Get used to it.” I bolted past him and took the stairs three at a time in my bare feet. No footsteps followed behind me. If Liam wasn’t following me—
shit.
The Glass Man must have been closer than I thought. My heart pounded, and the colors in the stairway grew pale. I’d been so careful, and in one moment, a single good looking man undid everything I’d accomplished over the years. On top of it all, I’d lost the music box.

I would not let him win. I was the last of the Grays, the last of my family, and I would not let that bastard get what he wanted.

When I arrived in the kitchen, I slid to a stop. Four men lined up in front of the door, hands clasped in front, shiny shoe-clad feet in wide stances. They wore identical black suits and white button-down shirts.

“Good evening,” pudgy faced Clancy said with a smile. Instead of his poof of curly hair, it fell straight in a blunt cut around his shoulders. Deep ocean blue replaced the mousy brown. “Lovely evening, don’t you think?”

“Fucking bastards.” I shook my head, my energy swelling beneath the barrier. “You’re really good; I’ll give you that. Especially you, Clancy, if that’s even your name. What kind of psycho piece of work are you?”

The other three looked to Sebastian. He roared with laughter and the rest followed, all but Garret who frowned at the floor. The boy gathered his arms close to his chest. If he made himself any smaller, he’d disappear from sight. I’d found the leader of the goon squad. I’d also found the chink in the armor. Maybe if I could turn them against one another, it would give me a window to get out.

“Get out of my way, Sebastian.” I scanned the room for my pack and black sneakers but found neither.
Great.
I found a few other objects that might be of some use. I edged toward the nearest kitchen chair.

“Or what?” Sebastian fingered a silver handgun in a shoulder holster under his jacket. “You’ll talk us to death? Without your power, you’re just a harmless princess.” Long hair replaced his brush cut, and instead of grey, it was the red of fresh blood. All the wrinkles on his face had smoothed into younger skin.

Rourke and Clancy shared an amused look.

“Garret doesn’t seem too happy about what’s going on here,” I said.

The other three stared at the young blond, who hunched further in on himself.

“Was anything you said true?” I asked the kid. “All that talk about losing your mother, was that just another load of horse shit?”

Garret stood a little straighter and opened his mouth.

“Shut your goddamn hole,” Sebastian snapped.

“What’s the matter Sebastian?” I put out my best mocking sneer. “Afraid he’s going to spoil the Glass Man’s little surprise party?” I looked at Garret, prancing where he stood, his eyes wide. “After all, he is just a kid. He probably doesn’t know any better.”

“It wasn’t horse shit!” Garret blurted.

Sebastian back-handed him across the face while the other two snickered. Garret stumbled, but he didn’t go down. My respect for him grew a little. “Get outside before I give you a few extra holes to breathe out of.”

Garret turned his eyes up to Sebastian like a dog expecting to be beaten for peeing on the carpet. Sebastian yanked the door open and pushed the younger man through.

When footsteps thumped behind me, taking everyone’s attention, I grabbed a chair and heaved it through the kitchen window over the sink. An explosion of tinkling glass fueled the adrenaline pumping through my body. I leapt up on the counter and dove out, slicing my thighs on jagged bits in the sill. I tumbled into the roses, clutching at my wounds, wincing. Blood poured out, but I had nothing to wrap myself with.

Shouting erupted within the house. A gun fired, flaring into the darkness over my head. The sound careened around the valley into the night and drowned out the screeching insects. I threw myself to the ground again, cutting up my forearms on the fallen shards and cursing.

“Goddamn it, Sebastian,” Liam shouted. “Put the fucking gun away. If you so much as nick her, he will kill you, and then me.”

Scratched and bleeding, I stood and groaned as more shards pierced my bare feet. No time to pull them out. Holding my breath, I closed my eyes so I could determine where the magnetic push came from. The north.

With my pulse racing, I sprinted south toward the woods, imagining what I’d do to Sebastian when I found a way to release my energy. Liam would be next.

9

Pain screamed up my legs as I ran from the farm house and through the reaching arms of the trees. Shards of glass crept deeper into my soles. The cuts on my thighs dripped hot ribbons down my legs, soaking into the blue dress.

No amount of pain or blood would make me stop—not with the screaming of the insects growing louder. The silhouettes of trees whipped past me like scenery from a dark dream. I stumbled over a fallen log and crashed down, shredding my forearms. My body grew into a giant burning ache.

A deep base growl rose up from the shadows in front of me. My pulse galloped.
Respect the wild things, and they’ll repay you in kind.
I stumbled, picking bits of bark out of my wounds, and limped on. The glass in my left foot met with bone, and they weren’t having a nice visit.

A growl came closer. I stopped and stilled my body as I scanned the darkness. Deep in the woods, the moonlight didn’t penetrate the canopy, only dappled the forest floor.

Amber eyes appeared in front of me. A scruffy black wolf emerged. He barked and flattened his ears as he stalked toward me, his lips curled up over shining white teeth. Animals had never bothered me before. I did my best to breathe normally, holding my hands out as I sidestepped around him. My gaze never left the wolf, but I avoided his eyes. I’d learned never to stare a wild beast in the eye unless I wanted a fight—another rule I’d made.

A whine and a few yips came from my right before a second wolf stepped out to block the new path I’d chosen. When the third ruddy wolf appeared, I realized they were herding me.
Hell’s bells.
The Glass Man had made some new friends since I’d last seen him.

My mind spun as I looked around for a weapon. Nothing. Not even a dead branch or a rock. I tested the barriers around my energy again, poking and prodding at it, but the harder I pushed, the more impenetrable it became.

A fourth wolf, a white one, showed up, and the four of them stood in a u-shape in front of me. One way to go: the one direction I wouldn’t turn. I could climb a tree, but that would leave me trapped, so not much better.

“You are a hearty thing,” the Glass Man said in that amused tone he always used. He sauntered out from behind a tree, wearing a dark grey suit. A grey silk tie painted a shining line down a matching shirt. His wavy hair had been pulled back and secured with a black ribbon. I’d never seen him dressed up. In another life—one where he wasn’t a murderous sociopath—I might have thought him beautiful, but at that moment, he looked like cancer wearing an Armani. He stood in a little circle of moonlight a few feet away.

My upper lip curled in a snarl. “Where’s my music box?”

He straightened his tie, his gaze lowering from my face. “I chose well with that dress. Matches your eyes to perfection.” His eyes swept lower down my body. “Tsk, tsk. Look what you’ve done to it. Lucky for you, I brought extras.” He smiled as if I’d done something to impress him. “Bleeding like a stuck pig, and you still ran nearly four miles from the house before I caught up with you. I can think of better uses for stamina like that.” He gave a pathetic double-raise of his eyebrows.

“Yeah, I just bet you can. The only reason you caught me is because you called in your dogs. What’s the matter, not man enough to get me on your own?”

“I am no man!” He ripped the ribbon from his black hair, and it flew up around his face, dancing with the grace of fire. His skin glowed with veins of blue as if someone had switched on a light within.

I swallowed past the cotton lump in my throat. “You keep saying that, and I keep suggesting a psychiatrist. Maybe it’s time you took my advice.” I glanced at the four-pack of wolves to my right. “And since when do the beasts listen to you?”

His eyes brightened as he smoothed a hand down his suit. “Do you like it?”

“If you’re fishing for a compliment, you’re casting to the wrong girl.” I’d learned question evasion from him. Unfortunately, he continued to better me at it.

He sighed. “Oh, Lila, you do like to make things difficult, don’t you? If you’d stop being so stubborn, this could be such a joyous, erotic occasion.”

I didn’t want to know what he meant by that. “Well, you could leave me alone like I’ve been telling you, and you wouldn’t have to deal with me anymore. Looking at it that way, I think it’s you who’s making things difficult, not me.”

“Most females beg for my attention.”

Not too arrogant.
My eyes rolled. “I’m not most females. I have standards.”

He dismissed me with a flick of his fingers. “Clearly you’re angry with me. Let’s go back to the house so I can get you cleaned up. I can’t take you to the Black City looking like a murder victim, now can I?”

I swallowed hard. “What’s the Black City?”

“Why, your new home, of course.”

Decade-old rage swelled in my belly. “I have no home. You took it from me. And I’m not going anywhere with you.”

The Glass Man laughed, a crackling sound like a lit fuse. “You still think you can escape me, don’t you? It’s pathetic, really.”

A smile bloomed on my lips, the one that always accompanied the answer to whatever puzzle I was trying to solve. “You always assume too much about me.” I turned and sprinted toward the wolves. He would have counted on me fearing their bite enough to avoid them, but he didn’t know me as well as he thought he did. I gambled that the wolves wouldn’t be allowed to hurt me.

The ruddy wolf whined, but the black one braced itself and snarled. When it moved to block me, I dove over top and rolled, landing on my throbbing feet. I made it a few yards when the patter of paws closed in behind me. Teeth tore at my calf, then locked jaws around my ankle. My scream rattled through the trees.
Fuck! What a time to be wrong.

“Release her!” The Glass Man roared.

I rolled and kicked at the mutt with my other foot.

The Glass Man dug fingers into his hair as he strode toward us. An eerie glow flared from his eyes, an otherworldly god empty of all but the potential for bloody violence.

I cried out when the black wolf shook my leg before releasing me. Little pained groans came unbidden while I clutched my wound to stanch the gush of blood.

The wolf squealed as it fell into the leaves beside me. Dark liquid flowed from its ears and mouth. The eyes rolled back. Its body collapsed with the sudden evacuation of liquid from every orifice.

The other wolves paced and whined before abasing themselves in front of my hunter. He glared down at them.

I clawed at the ground, pulled myself toward the underbrush, but my vision went fuzzy and dark.
Fading. Too much blood.

“Rourke.” The Glass Man’s voice sounded hollow and distant. “Has Liam returned?”

“No, my King.” Rourke’s pleased-with-himself tone grated on my last nerve.

King? King of what?

“He’s hiding something from me. I want to know the moment he returns.” Footsteps disturbed the brush nearby. “Take her back to the house and clean her up. Share enough energy with her so she can heal her wounds. I have preparations to make before we can leave.”

“As you wish, my King.”

I blinked out for a moment, sank into that black place where minds go to die, but by sheer force of will, I fought back to consciousness. Leaves crunched under footsteps. Everything blurred into vague, dark shapes. A roaring silence dominated my head.

A man crouched beside me, Rourke I assumed. Definitely a man’s cologne I smelled. Something expensive.

“I’m going to tie you up now,” Rourke said in a singsong tone that raised my hackles. “But you probably like that sort of thing, don’t you?”

I found no energy to speak, but I gave him what I hoped to be a nasty look.

He laughed. A deep, barking chuckle, the sort a lion might give if they could laugh.

White waves of nausea rippled through me as Rourke wound rope around my ankles and hands. He looped my bound wrists around his neck, picked me up and cradled me to his chest.

The thought of landing back in that house unconscious with the Glass Man’s four cronies made my blood run cold.

I shivered as the pain ebbed. My essence slipped down into the abyss again, and I didn’t fight it. Nothing mattered but sleep. Darkness would take away the pain, and the Glass Man, and the men who weren’t men. I had a moment to think it might be better if I never woke up again before the blackness sucked me under.

• • •

“Wake up, Lilabear.”
Mother’s anxious voice filled the darkness around me.
“Come on, my love, fight back to the light!”

My body lurched with a nauseating sway. A headache raged at the back of my skull as if it had met with a sledge hammer. I groaned and forced my eyes open, confused when I still couldn’t see.

Shit, am I blind?

Am I dead?

Did I just hear my—no, I am not going crazy.
Numbness deadened my arms, but my wrists burned. In my disoriented state, it took me a minute to figure out that I hung from them. A silky scarf or handkerchief had been tied around my eyes.

I thrashed, clanking chains, but forced myself still. Shoving the panic aside, I calmed my heaving lungs. Everything hurt, and I was too weak to do much of anything.

Ok, Lila, think this through.
Dead was dead, but anything else I could deal with.

The room was cold and damp.
The cellar of the farmhouse, maybe?
I had no clothes on, only a bra and panties by the few brushes of satin against my skin. Rhythmic, raspy sounds came from somewhere behind me—steady, but heavy.
Breathing.
Not the Glass Man, though—nothing crowded my mind.

“Does he train you all to be creepy sociopaths, or is that a prerequisite before he hires you?” I asked.

Snickering turned into that barking laughter I’d heard in the woods. “I’m beginning to see Parthalan’s fascination with you.” Rourke’s shoes tapped against the floor. “I saw nothing but a head-strong bitch when you first came, but watching you force your will into that gun and drawing power from the Goddess herself—now that is a power to behold.”

Goddess?

“Parthalan? What kind of name is that, anyway?” I didn’t want him to know he had my mental cogs whirring into a tizzy.

“Old Gaelic, actually. Irish.”

“I know what Gaelic is, you little shit. Unschooled doesn’t mean dumb.”

That laugh again. “So it doesn’t.”

Rourke ripped the blindfold from my eyes. I blinked against the sudden brightness of the lantern light. Everything still looked blurry, but at least I could see the room: a cellar with cement walls, shelf after shelf of mason jars filled with fruit and enough canned food to feed a whole city for years, and a dirty chest freezer along one wall. Crooked wooden steps went up from the far corner.

“Better?” Rourke stood a few feet away.

“Better would be unchained and you getting your narrow ass out of my way.”

When my vision decided to focus, I wished it hadn’t. Fury pulsed behind Rourke’s ice blue eyes, and his lips peeled back over his teeth. His dark hair had been neatly styled—the greasy, slicked back look had gone—and he wore only black dress pants with a silver buckle on the belt. Shadow spread out from him as he strutted the rest of the way to me. He tickled his fingers along my stomach, stroking a soft line just above my navel.

I jerked back as far as I could make my chains swing. “Get your filthy hands off me.”

“The only thing saving you from me now is an order from my King.” A look came over him that forced a tremble through me—a devious grin and bright eyes as if he’d just thought of something terrible. Maybe I’d been wrong about the leader of the goon squad. Rourke seemed the more likely candidate. “But Parthalan’s attention span with women is terribly short, you see. He rarely goes spelunking in the same cave twice.”

I swallowed so hard my dry throat burned.

“And once you’ve used up his patience—which, judging by that gigantic attitude of yours, won’t be very long—he’ll give you to me as my plaything.” He slid his hand along the side of my jaw and into my hair as though he would kiss me. I grunted when he grabbed a handful and twisted instead. “I hope you enjoy pain.” He shrugged, snickered. “Not that it matters to me, really. Mmm, we will have some fun, you and I.”

“Dream on, you little freak.”

“Tell me, my pet, has it occurred to you that the human world began to crumble shortly after Parthalan killed your mother?”

My brows crowded together, and I couldn’t keep the shock out of my voice. “What are you saying?”

He shrugged again.

“Are you telling me that Parthalan destroyed all those countries?”
Shit.
It couldn’t be true. Even if he did, what did that have to do with my mother?

My fear gave way to anger, the hot kind that boils in from the top of the head and floods every corner of the body with a slow, deep burn. For one, I hated confinement of any sort. For two, I hated men treating me like a lesser person just because I happened to have tits. For three, I had no use for people who took pleasure in other people’s pain.

“You might be able to send some girls screaming and crying with that ‘I’m a happy little sadist’ act, but I’m not some girl, Rourke. I hope your king finds you with your hands all over me. I hope he pulls that fee-fi-fo-fum trick of his and melts your bones, too.”

He shoved. My head snapped back. He stepped away in a huff.

I rolled my eyes when he flexed his pecs. “Go put a damn shirt on. You’re not impressing anyone here.”

“You ruined my only one.” He leaned both hands down on top of the chest freezer, glaring at me through strands of his dark hair.

“Am I supposed to apologize for bleeding?” I gave a disgusted grunt. “What the hell is Parthalan, anyway?”

With Rourke somewhat distracted, I tipped my head back to see what held me. The shackles had been fixed to opposite ends of a metal bar. Chains went up from either end to the cross beams in the ceiling. The shackles were the kind that closed with pins.
Good.
I had nothing to pick a lock with, so I had to figure out a way to shimmy those pins out.