Vicki Pettersson - Cheat the Grave

We had losses in common? Doubtful. But it’d been a long time since anyone wasn’t patronizing me. “I’m sorry.”

“I understand your wish for less weight on your life,” he said, inclining his head. “But what you should really be wishing for is more strength to bear it.”

“Wishes don’t mean shit.”

“True.” He closed the distance between us again, his nails clicking like children’s jacks against the scuffed wood floor. “You must take action. Which is why I sewed my eyes shut as soon as I began to See. I knew the narrowing of my sight would make me stronger than the distractions’ full vision would allow.”

“You…did that to yourself?” I shuddered at his nod. Tekla had nothing on this guy’s madness. “Let me rephrase my earlier statement. It’s not that I don’t want to give any more. I don’t want to lose anything more.”

Including my eyesight. I turned quickly and headed for the door.

“Better to know what you do want than what you don’t.” Caine clacked over to the window, and I wondered if he’d counted out feet from one side of the room to the next. Without touching the wall, he pointed between one of the boarded-up holes like the view was a good one. “Like him.”

My hand slipped from the doorknob. “Who-”

The homicidal whine started up then, a long, loud throat-burn that made me wonder how he, it, breathed.

“Mackie.”

Caine stepped aside as I ran to the window, hunching to peer through one of the fist-width slits. Caine remained still, head tilted, the nails of his right hand clacking lightly against the wall, like mice fleeing up its sides. Meanwhile, Mackie tore into the Bentley. Face hidden beneath his inky bowler hat, he hunched on the shining hood, knife plundering sheet metal like scissors slicing rice paper. Ripping strips of the hood back with one hand, he then dropped inside, his guttural whine pitched high as he went to work on the oiled leather seats.

Shit. How’d he get there so fast? I’d never even driven the Bentley before. From the way Mackie was shredding it, I wouldn’t do so again. “He wants to kill me.”

“More than anything.”

Caine’s nails snapped louder, and I glanced down to see the black bone tattooed on his forearm flex with his fingers. I didn’t think he was doing it consciously, but the motion proved mesmerizing. In the dim room I could almost be lieve the bone moved, inky against the skin, defined and liquid all at the same time. Looking up, I saw his nostrils widen, opening and closing like fish gills, seeking to discover exactly what sort of monster Mackie was. He was also sensing Mackie’s destructive rage in a different way than I ever had.

One, I thought, looking back down, I’d never even conceived of before.

The bones on Caine’s body continued a sinewy, almost sexual dance that traveled up and then back down the length of his body. Yet all the energy was derived from and concentrated in his fingertips. They vibrated finely, black nails banging into each other like wooden wind chimes. He almost appeared elegant, feeling out the world not through sight like everyone else, but through little implosions of movement on the air. I tested the theory by waving my hand at my waist, as if motioning him away. His pinky darted in my direction, taking on an unnatural angle before twitching and falling back into the reading rhythm of his other fingers.

His head was still upturned, but if he had eyes, they’d have been closed. A moment later he finished this vibrational reading and dropped his arms to his sides. “Oh. He’s new .”

Why’d he have to sound so damned impressed?

“No, he’s old,” I said on a long sigh. Mackie’s head shot up, his long neck craning from the destroyed car like the tourists in their moon roof limos. His feral grimace went wide and he snarled into the air. Rabid wolves might make that sound. People didn’t.

Caine raised his brows. “You may want to call the police. Tell them vandals have your car.”

Shaking my head, I pulled out my single-use cell. “He’ll mow down the mortals.”

Warren could very well take care of this. I’d saved his ass enough times, and besides, he’d told me to let him know of any other rogues. “I’m calling the Light.”

“Wait!” Caine reached out, no longer elegant as he scrambled to grab at my wrist. I still didn’t understand the purpose of the nails. They seemed more of a hindrance than help. “The attention from the mortal population will be enough to scare him off. He’ll want to remain under the radar as long as he can. Besides, other than Tekla, your former allies have never been mine.”

Other than Tekla? I drew back, distracted that this man would know the powerful Seer. It made sense, I suppose, as they had the same gift. But how did he know her? “Aren’t you Shadow?”

“Born free, here in this valley. Same as you.”

Not exactly an answer, thus all the answer I needed. I stepped back. Despite his blindness, he smiled. At least I now knew what we had in common. “A rogue,” I said harshly.

“I prefer the term ‘independent.’”

“So do I,” I said, and turned away. I had what I’d come for. I’d exit the wooden house, guns blazing, punch holes in Sleepy Mac while he was gnawing on the steering wheel, then run like crazy. If he caught me? Well, maybe it was a blessing. Maybe a girl wasn’t supposed to spend her lifetime on the run.

“Please,” Caine said as my hand hit the door. “Remember why you’re here.”

Protection. Armor. Help.

I looked down and considered the phone, still clutched in my other hand. I’d asked those same things of Warren and he’d turned his back. “The mortal police are no match for Mackie.”

“That’s why I’m here. Destiny has provided me with this choice. Our choices bring us relevance.”

I laughed bitterly, and Mackie heard all the way outside. A homicidal cry spiraled into the air. “I’ll settle for surviving the night.”

“I can give you that wish.”

Wishes don’t mean shit.

True. You must take action.

I put the phone away and squinted across the room, the meager light colorless against all the room’s shadows. I didn’t know what Caine sought from his destiny, but he waited, a motionless monster, for my answer. Just waiting. Letting me have a choice, when choices had been a diminishing commodity in my life, was almost too much responsibility to bear.

But Caine did see me. Despite his blindness, or because of it, he was offering his power to me now, when Warren and everyone else refused to give even an inch of respect or acknowledgment. How could they not know, when this man clearly did, that it was all anyone really wanted out of life?

“Fine. I’ll allow you, a rogue , to be my protection.” Then I pulled out the saber and pumped its attached firearm. “But I’m going to do it armed.”

Of course Caine was a Shadow. He said independent, yet everybody came from somewhere and had an individual lineage as clearly drawn as the lines on their palm. But when up against something as destructive as Mackie’s blade, those things ceased to matter. Race riots were quelled when it was the entire human race thrown into the fray.

A Shadow helping me. I shook my head as I backed into the center of the room, giving Caine access to the door. It was an awkward thought, like someone poking me in the brain.

“So don’t think about it,” I muttered to myself as Mackie’s war cry ricocheted up the staircase. Just aim.

But the building shook under Mackie’s ascent, and when his blade pierced the wooden door, I wished I’d run. Then I thought of Luna, eyes moving within a ruined body, and widened my stance. The scent of my defiance made Mackie squeal louder.