Chapter Twenty-Nine

Dillan

Field Trip Pines and Needles

Dillan glanced back just in time to see Selena dart off the trail into the forest. His heart dropped. Shit. He grabbed at Kyle’s shoulder too hard.

“What the hell, Sloan!” Kyle yanked back, adjusting his shirt.

“Selena just went off the trail.”

“What?”

He pointed in the direction Selena disappeared from. The invisible line that connected him to her tugged, becoming tauter every second that passed. Soon the mind-numbing electric wave would come. His instincts told him so. “I don’t see Penny anywhere…”

Kyle didn’t wait for him to finish. He bolted toward where they’d last seen the girls. Dillan chased after him. Panic rushed through his body like a nasty case of chills. Just before Kyle left the trail, he grabbed his arm.

“Let me go, Sloan!”

He ignored the murder in the other guy’s eyes. “I’ll go after her. You stay here.”

“And do what?”

“If we’re not back in ten minutes, get Rainer. Don’t blow your cover now by going after her. She already knows what I am and what I can do.”

Kyle let out a slow breath then nodded once.

Not waiting for verbal confirmation, he darted into the forest, his sword already manifested. Whatever forced Selena off the trail couldn’t be good. The air around him sizzled with energy. He cursed leaving Sebastian in Newcastle. He’d insisted the hellhound continue searching for the Maestro’s lair.

Fifty yards from the trail, he spotted Selena and raced to her. She tripped on a rock sticking out of the ground and stumbled forward. He caught her before she face-planted.

“Where’s Penny?”

“Dillan!” She gulped in a lungful of air and said, “I don’t know. We were on the path and then she ran off and left me.”

He scanned the area, using his energy to feel everything out. Like a rubber band, it snapped back into his body. He cursed his limitations. They might as well be sitting ducks in these woods.

She panted and continued, “I called out to her, but she started running. Then I lost her.”

“You’re never walking behind me again.” He rubbed her arms, using some of his warmth to ease her trembling.

“We have to find…” She stopped, her gaze darting from one spot to the next. “Something’s here!”

Something whooshed past them. They ducked instinctively. A needle the length of a barbeque stick, three times as thick, stuck out of a tree directly above his shoulder. It reminded him of a porcupine quill.

Three more came after it.

Not willing to become a pincushion, he grabbed Selena’s hand, winced at the shock then shouted, “Run!”

They ran side by side. Dillan used his body to block any of the needles that they might not dodge. He set a bruising pace, zigzagging between pines. Selena gripped his hand, keeping up with him.

“Where are they coming from?” she shouted over the blood roaring in his ears.

“I’m not sure,” he answered through the noise. “Just keep running.”

Something sped past him. He stumbled, hitting the ground hard. The barrage of needles suddenly stopped. A burst of pain emanated from his side. He clutched at the wound. Selena slid to a stop then scrambled back to where he landed. Like a trained soldier, she yanked him behind a large pine. Then she crouched at his side and squeezed his arm. He grunted from the electricity that came with the contact as he leaned heavily against a tree. He couldn’t feel his legs anymore when she pushed aside his hands.

Her eyes widened a fraction. “You’ve been hit.”

“It’s just a scratch.” Sweat drenched his face.

“Let me see.” She bent down. He looked down with her. An angry cut bled out just above his hip. A purple haze surrounded the wound, spreading across his skin fast. His already rapidly beating heart sped up even more.

“It burns,” he said. “Son of a bitch, it really burns!” He breathed through his teeth. “The needles must be poisoned.”

Selena grabbed his sword and cut across the wound until blood gushed out. He bit down on another scream as pain spasmed through his body. Flaming pin pricks spread all over his torso. His blood felt like acid eating away at his insides.

As she began to bend over the wound, he stopped her. “What are you doing?”

“I need to suck out the poison.”

He shook his head. “We don’t know if it’ll poison you, too, if you do that.”

“It’s spreading fast. If I don’t get it out, who knows what will happen to you.”

Ignoring his continued protests, she bent over him and sucked at the wound she’d created. Embarrassing heat flooded his face at the touch of her lips on his skin. He hardly felt the succeeding electric shock upon contact. His body shook so hard his teeth chattered. She spit out a mouthful of blood and returned to the wound a second time. Seconds later, his eyelids drooped, but he couldn’t stop staring at Selena. She embodied some wild creature then, saving his life without concern for her own. By the third time she bent over him, the pain subsided.

“It hurts less,” he wheezed out. “How are you feeling?”

She turned aside and spat before speaking. “Nothing. Maybe the poison only works when it’s in the bloodstream.” She studied the wound. The purple haze was smaller now. She bent over it two more times.

About to pass out, he upended his sword so the moonstone at its pommel hovered over the cut. He’d be really weak afterward, but if he didn’t close the wound, he won’t be able to stop the bleeding. “Where’d you learn to do that?”

“Gramps taught me basic First Aid. I figured a snake bite would be almost the same as being poisoned by a needle. What are you doing?”

A soft crackle followed by a small shock entered his body through the gash as he siphoned his energy and sent it back into his body. He channeled as much of the surrounding life force as he dared without sucking any from Selena. Tiny sparks flew out of the moonstone into his skin. She gaped. Her eyes darted from his face to the wound. The blood clotted and the cut closed. Energy zinged through him from his hip to his shoulder blades. When only a welt remained, he pulled his sword away.

“H-how…” She blinked several times.

Dillan’s world spun. He closed his eyes and breathed through his mouth to avoid the coming nausea the power drain brought.

“How’d you know the needles were coming,” he rasped out. His mouth had gone dry.

“I…I’m not sure.” He heard the shrug in her voice. “I just felt like someone was watching me.”

“Like at the festival.”

“Yeah.”

Not wanting to get caught helpless, he forced himself to open his eyes. The world spun a bit, but he managed to blink it away. He returned his sword back to a charm, refusing to show any more signs of weakness in front of the girl who just saved his life. She pulled his sweater down and jumped to her feet.

“I think it’s over. Can you stand?”

“Yeah.” He used the tree for leverage, pushing himself up. The simple move cost him dearly. Besides breathing heavily, the sweat on his face turned cold. “Give me a sec.”

“Do you have a spare pair of jeans?”

“Do I look like the type who brings around spare jeans?”

She pointed at his legs. “That’s a lot of blood.”

“Just get me to a bathroom and I’ll wash it off before it dries.” Not dwelling on how bad the trek back to the amphitheater would be, he pulled out his bandana and handed it to Selena. She looked at him then at the bandana.

“Use that to yank out one of the needles,” he said, still leaning against the tree. “And be careful.”

“Yeah, yeah, it’s poisonous.” She pulled out one of the needles and wrapped it in the bandana then handed it back to him. He shoved it into his back pocket.

“What are you going to do with that?”

“I have to show this to Rainer.”

“Now? We’re in the middle of a field trip.”

Still feeling the effects of the blood loss and the drain from healing himself, he didn’t answer. The tree he leaned against was his friend. He swiped at the sweat rolling down the side of his face.

“We have to find Penny. If whatever those needles came from is still out there, we have to make sure she’s safe. What if she got hit like you did?”

“Let’s get back to safety, and then we’ll put together a search party to find her.” He didn’t have the patience to argue. Selena was his priority. Pushing away from the tree, he hooked an arm over her shoulders and guided her back to the trail.

…

Fifteen minutes later, he stood in a bathroom in only his boxers washing off the blood from his jeans and drying it under the hand dryer. The aftereffects of the energy drain had waned, a small miracle considering he’d closed a wound. He studied the welt for a second. Maybe not all his original powers were gone. He didn’t dare to hope. To keep Kyle’s cover when he and Selena stumbled out of the forest, Dillan explained that he’d cut himself and needed to clean up before they went to the nurse. Selena and Kyle went with it for, what he suspected, were totally different reasons. This hiding shit thing was getting harder by the second.

Now the two friends stood watch outside while Dillan cleaned up. He still couldn’t believe Selena had thrown caution in the wind and sucked out the poison from his body. She’d saved him. He couldn’t decide whether it was sexy or reckless. The latter aimed at himself since he—the once rising star in the Illumenari—had fallen so far from grace that he’d let a girl save him.

Once the wet spot on his jeans was gone, he slipped his pants on and walked out of the bathroom. Kyle stood beside the door.

“Where’s Selena?”

He pointed at the opposite door with a stick figure in a skirt. “What the hell happened out there?”

Not knowing how much time they had before Selena came back, he filled her best friend in with the least amount of explanation it took.

“You let her suck out the poison?” he hissed.

“I had no choice. She was already on the wound before I could push her away.” He raised his hand to stop the coming tirade. “Look, I get it. I screwed up. But you’re missing the point here. Selena ran into the woods after Penny, and we were attacked.”

“How is that possible when I just saw Penny meet up with Tina and Constance?” Kyle tilted his head toward the group of girls. “I thought they’d gotten separated when you ran after Selena.”

“This doesn’t feel right.”

Selena picked that time to walk out of the bathroom. She waved her wet hands and said, “Their dryer is busted.”

The girls Penny stood with giggled, catching Selena’s attention. She hurried to them. Dillan shared a look with Kyle before they trailed after her.

“Penny! Where’ve you been?” Selena grabbed the other girl’s shoulders.

Dillan and Kyle flanked her. He eyed Penny closely. The look of shock on her face seemed genuine.

“I was with Constance and Tina most of the day,” Penny answered. Her confusion sounded real to his ears. He needed his fingers on her pulse to determine if she was telling the truth, but based on the natural cadence of her voice, he didn’t doubt her response. Unease writhed inside his gut.

“What’s with the panic? Did something happen?” Penny continued, more subdued than usual. Her eyes looked glassy.

Selena’s hands dropped to her sides. “Don’t you remember being on the Presidential Trail with us?”

“She’s been with us most of the day,” Constance said. The other girl—Tina—nodded in agreement. Something wasn’t right here. And judging from the tension surrounding Kyle, he felt the same. Penny was with them. Unless she magically had a twin sister, this whole situation reeked of a Supernatural manipulation. Damn. The Maestro. He’d read the conjurer could control humans, too. How could he miss this? He should have anticipated the escalation. If it couldn’t get corpses to nab Selena then the humans closest to her seemed the next viable choice. He and Kyle were safe since their Illumenari blood negated mind control via conjuring.

Thinking fast, he took out his phone and typed into the screen MAESTRO then PENNY and discretely showed it to Kyle. He flicked his gaze at the screen. Dillan erased the unsent message as Kyle’s lips disappeared into a tight line.

“How…” Selena took a step back.

“Selena,” Penny’s voice softened, “is something wrong? You’re really pale.”

Dillan grabbed Selena by the arms from behind and said, “I think Selena got things mixed up.” To Selena he said, “Maybe you’re just tired. Right, Kyle?”

“Yeah, even I feel turned around,” he said.

Penny tilted her head. “Are you sure?”

Selena nodded. Dillan supported her weight as she leaned against him, moving one of his hands to her hip.

“Everyone!” Rainer announced from the entrance. “Please start filing into the amphitheater. The program is about to start.”

Students shuffled past their group. Dillan exchanged a glance with Kyle. He nodded at him once. An awkward silence passed before Constance and Tina said they’d save Penny a seat. The two girls headed for the theater, whispering to each other.

“Do you want to sit together?” Penny offered.

“I think,” Selena cleared her throat, “I think I’ll sit with Dillan and Kyle.”

“You sure?”

She gave her a smile. “I’ll text you later.”

Penny shrugged and walked away.

“That’s not Penny.” Selena spoke to the floor.

“How can you be so sure?” Kyle asked.

“In the years we’ve known Penny, when did she ever act less than peppy?”