Vicki Pettersson - The Taken

“Ah, that’s right.” She grinned so widely that wood grain punctured the plastic. “I’ll take those.”

And she plucked his wings from his body-his flesh -then pushed him so hard that decades rushed by, along with burning stars and rioting universes that roiled around him like debris as he fell… fell… then landed with a jarring thud.

Rockwell’s corpse bounced as he landed on his back, on the bed. Unmistakably, on the Surface . It shocked Grif into losing the breath he didn’t even know he possessed. Then the pounding began in earnest, starting at his shoulder blades, where his wings should have been. It spread like lava through his core and into his limbs, nothing like the lapping low tide of the pulse he’d shared with Rockwell. This was a red monsoon. His veins throbbed and surged as they… what?

What?

“Fill with blood.”

Grif turned his head and found Nicole Rockwell’s eyes fixed on him, though her pupils were overtaken by surging flame as Anas stared from the dead girl’s body. His heart leaped again, and his veins pulsed and rushed and, yes…

Filled with blood.

And the yearning ache he’d felt while inhabiting Rockwell’s body crested in his chest. Rearing against the pain, Grif felt new flesh stretching over bone. A scream lodged against his unused vocal cords, and he fell still, closing his eyes, trying to hold it all back.

“Breathe,” Anas instructed through Rockwell’s corpse.

Grif gasped and shivered. This was the animation of skin coupled with life force. This wasn’t just the innate desire to live. This was rebirth. This was life .

Clamminess lunged to seize the new oxygen in his lungs. It was only the experience of having been alive for thirty-three years once before that kept the confining flesh from being revolting. Maybe when it warmed, Grif thought, he wouldn’t feel such a need to run from himself.

But blood still clotted most of the virgin veins, and his heart had to struggle to move it. Its amplified thump hammered like the lead bass in a marching band.

“Breathe.”

The word banged like a pot off Grif’s competing thoughts. Worse were the spasms ripping through his chest. Fear, insecurity, guilt, and sorrow all huddled in newly exposed corners, naked, cowering things, frightened children trying to pull the covers of the Everlast up to their chins.

But the protective coating was slipping away. He knew it, and it was why-even without a true heartbeat or thawed blood or a sense of self and place in the universe-he began to shake in his new flesh. “No…”

“Breathe,” Anas hissed again.

“It hurts,” he managed, squinting into her fiery gaze.

“Being clothed in sin does, yes.”

“I can’t…” The shake of his head, side to side, set the pots to clanging again. He had no idea how he heard Anas’s voice above them, only knew that she said, “It will hurt more when you die again.”

And a knock sounded at the door.

He stilled, looking at Anas.

“You must flee,” she said, eyes still burning, breath still scalding. Still merciless.

“Why-”

She cut him off. “There’s a window in the bathroom. Go while you can.”

“But I-”

“But you’re lying next to a murdered woman. And you, Griffin Shaw, are alive .”

He couldn’t comprehend it, but the burning skin, the pulsing blood, the breath in his chest… “It’s too much.”

It was all too much.

Another knock at the door, louder, accompanied by annoyed voices on the other side.

Anas was right; the time for privacy was over.

“Just enough then,” Anas said impatiently when he still didn’t move. She pursed Rockwell’s blue lips. Everlast washed over him in a cooling balm and he could sit, and then stand.

“It won’t last.” And the burning eyes dulled, then snuffed out completely, leaving behind Rockwell’s black, sightless pupils.

Yet the small hint of Everlast had cleared his mind and Grif could see what Anas had, and what anyone else would when they entered this room: a man standing over a woman’s blood-splattered body.

Whirling, he darted into the bathroom, and wedged open the small, single-paned window. He heard the door to the room open just as he clambered through, and reached the rusting ladder right before screams sounded behind him. Half-falling, half-jumping, Grif hit the ground seconds later, and ran from the voices and the building. He ran blindly. He ran until the sliver of Everlast wore off.

He ran until he could run no more.

Kit had never been to the station house on a Saturday night and found it even noisier and more crowded than during working hours. The irony was that if she had stuck to those hours-if they had-she wouldn’t be here now. Waiting to be interviewed by a cop. Shivering in a dress meant for cheerful occasions, not sober ones. Mourning the death of her best and oldest friend.

“Kit!”

She looked up, relief washing over her at the voice, strain immediately returning as she spied the tight look marring her ex-husband’s always handsome face. He might be able to hide his emotions from an entire courtroom, she thought as he wound his way through the noisy room, but she’d known him too long not to see the irritation bristling from him. The hard-pressed man was one of his best looks, and Kit knew then that he’d only come in case she needed council. The go-to attorney. Another favorite.

Kit chided herself, feeling stupid as Paul neared. But they’d once shared a life and a bed, and Kit needed someone around her who’d known both her and Nic well. Yet as soon as Paul perched on the plastic chair next to her, her loneliness doubled.

And it made her wonder. If he’d been the one she’d never see again after tonight, would there be anything left behind to miss?

The shame accompanying that silent question settled next to the guilt already at home in her gut.

Nic was dead.

“What the hell happened, Katherine?”

“Don’t interrogate me, Paul.”

“Hey, I left a Caleb Chambers fund-raiser for this,” he said, which explained his tuxedo, the over-styled hair, and the hint of scotch lacing his breath. No, Kit thought, catching two underage girls whispering from behind cupped palms as they stared at Paul. She wouldn’t have missed him at all.

“At three thirty in the morning?”

“VIPs and generous donors to his various charities are often invited to his house for a private party after the gala.”

Of course they were. And Kit didn’t have to ask which group Paul belonged to. He was always trying to buy his way into something. “Well, while you were brown-nosing the don of the social scene, someone murdered Nic. She’s dead, Paul.” She blinked. “ I could be dead.”

His brows knit, and he reached for her hand after a brief hesitation. He really was a handsome man, Kit thought, automatically pulling away. His golden hair glinted even under the station’s harsh fluorescent bulbs, and his eyes were the color of spring moss. But they were unable to hold a gaze, which meant unable to hold a promise. The girls across from them didn’t seem to notice. Nothing but experience could teach them that anyway.

“Let me guess,” Paul said, oblivious to the teens, to Kit’s fractured heart, to everything but being right. “You came up with some harebrained idea and Nicole ran with it.”

Kit looked away, jaw clenched. Paul knew them, that was for sure. Nic had run with it like she always did-blindly, blithely, madly. Like the idea was chasing her instead of the other way around. But this time it’d chased her into the grave.

Kit covered her mouth with a fist to hold back a cry.