I pulled all my traveler’s checks out and counted them. There was at least two hundred thousand dollars there—more than enough to start a new life. I grabbed whatever I could and pushed it into bags. I opened up my computer, hoping to have enough time to send my resignation to Gideon, severing any claim he had on me. It was taking too long to connect, so I started packing again.
As I gathered up all of my belongings, I noticed the switchblade Savannah had left on the floor from the night before. Maybe she’d want it back; maybe she’d never want to see it again. I picked it up and shoved it into my back pocket so I could offer it to her later. If she still didn’t trust me, maybe she’d want it as protection.
I went speedily to the bathroom and was gathering up whatever I had left in there when I heard the doorknob to my room turn. I rushed back into the room.
The face that I saw waiting for me was not Savannah’s. It was the absolute antithesis. Standing in the doorway was Emani, flanked by two armed men.
“There you are.” She waved her hand, and the two men lunged forward, slamming me into the wall with the force of a wrecking ball. The drywall cracked behind my skull.
Emani had fresh tattoos on her bare midriff, chest, and neck, the skin still red from the ink. Her dyed black hair was pulled back severely, accentuating the snake-like sneer on her face. She slinked across the room, taking my face in her hands.
“I told you that you couldn’t run forever. There’s nowhere you could go that I wouldn’t follow.” I tried to shake her off. She slapped me.
“What the hell is wrong with you? Why are you here?” I fought uselessly against her men.
“I came to claim you,” she said innocently. “And since Gideon considers you something of a flight risk, I brought help. I wanted to make sure you didn’t escape me again. Do you like my new marks?”
I looked more carefully at her new tattoos and found my name in white ink etched into the skin covering her exposed sternum, just under her collarbones.
“What would possess you to do something like that?”
“You made a very deep mark on me, Ryen. Do you remember those days? The chemical reaction between us?” She stared up at me, her face twisted in maniacal longing.
I did remember those days. Vividly. We were like gasoline and an open flame—combustible, explosive. But, like gasoline and fire, as soon as the initial reaction was over, the fire died, leaving nothing but ash behind.
Beneath her indescribable beauty lay a sad, schizophrenic, lost little girl. And though I had tried, I couldn’t save her from her own self-destruction. “You have my undivided attention, Emani.” I glared at the guards. “What do you want from me?”
“My sisters have been watching you. They intercepted the resignation you sent to Claire. Gideon insisted that I come immediately before you made such a stupid mistake,” she snapped. “You don’t belong here, Ryen. We are better than this!”
Her breathing spiked as she ran her fingers down my face, my name rising and falling fast on her chest.
I’d forgotten how beautiful you are,” she whispered quietly, almost to herself. “Gideon has a favor to ask of you, and I think you will find it hard to say no.”
“He knows where my loyalties lie. He has nothing that will tempt me.”
“I didn’t say he was offering you anything. I’ve been trying to contact you for weeks, but you ignored me again and again. You deserve this. This is your fault,” she said angrily. She looked toward the door and shouted, “Come!”
Two more men entered, dragging a body. Savannah’s eyes were bruised, her nose and mouth were dripping blood, and she had two distinct burn marks on her neck. Her backpack was slung on her back.
She had been beaten and shocked, but she was breathing. She was still alive. One of the men that dragged her had noticeably broken fingers. The other’s face was swelling on one side. Both had bite marks on their arms. She’d put up a fight.
The sight of her broken and in the arms of enemies sent me over the edge. I let out an inhuman growl and lurched against the men, but they threw me back into the wall. This time, pieces of the ceiling rained down from above. I had to calm down. I couldn’t help Savannah if the guards killed me.
“Was that necessary, Emani? It looks a little like jealousy got the best of you.”
Emani’s cheeks heated to crimson. “You know me so well,” she breathed. “I thought if I made her a little less pretty, you would be able to think more clearly and do the right thing.” She stepped lightly on Savannah’s neck with the toe of her knee-high leather boot. Savannah’s chest stopped rising and her body jerked from the lack of oxygen.
“No!” I roared. With a fresh surge of adrenaline, I managed to throw one of the men off balance. I lunged toward Savannah, but Emani crouched on her like a tiger over her kill. She pulled a short, dull-looking dagger out of the holster on her hip and clicked a silver button on the blade’s hilt. The blade turned from flinty gray to a glowing, pulsating white, a concentrated beam of energy focused at the top of it. She hovered the blade inches over Savannah’s chest.
“Stop, Ryen!” she screamed. The glowing dagger pulsed with so much heat that even though it touched no part of her, the skin on Savannah’s chest started to split and melt away. I stopped instantly, letting the men pull me away.
Emani looked down at Savannah’s body in horror. “Look what you made me do! This is your fault!” she screamed, turning off the blade and throwing it to the ground. She tried to sop up the blood gush from Savannah’s chest with a bed sheet.
“You’ve forced my hand!” Frantic tears welled up in her black eyes. Looking at her crying and covered in Savannah’s blood, I almost pitied her. She took out a canister of sealing salve in her pocket and worked furiously to seal Savannah’s burns shut. Finally finished with the repair, she stared at me, reading my agony as I watched Savannah fight to keep breathing.
“What has happened to you?” she asked wretchedly, standing up again. “How can you care more for this human than you do for me?”
“Because she is nothing like you, you sadistic little—” Emani silenced me with a perfectly placed kick to my stomach. My head bowed low as air tore from my lungs.
“You need to start thinking about your future, love. There is nothing here for you, especially if I kill the girl. Come back with me. Gideon will forgive you. Just give him what he wants, and we can be together again! I promise, I’ll be better this time. I’ll be whatever you want me to be!”
“You can’t change! Look around, Emani. Do you see what you are capable of? Do you see the destruction you cause?” I raged.
She slapped me hard again and then gasped, looking at her hand as if it had acted on its own accord. “I’m so sorry! Please, please forgive me, love,” she whispered, her countenance swinging wildly from ferocity to fear. She pushed her lips against mine violently, but I clenched my jaw against her kiss. Realizing my rejection, she took my bottom lip between her teeth and bit down hard until the blood started to flow. She pulled away, wiping my blood from her mouth.
“I’d rather kill you myself than watch you love another woman.” When she brought herself close to me again, I spit the blood that was filling my mouth at her. She screeched bitterly, and one of the guards punched me hard. My ribs snapped under the force.
“You are lucky Gideon wants you back in one piece. I’ll ask you one more time. Will you come back to Zhimeya with us with no further outbursts?”
“Yes,” I said in defeat. I had no choice. “Just please leave Savannah alone.”
“I wish I could, Ryen. Gideon wants her.”
“Why?” I pleaded, but she ignored me.
“You will come to your senses soon enough,” she muttered as she turned toward a white case one of the men carried. She produced three large, black pills and a syringe full of thick, deep blue liquid with the word “Jhayne” printed on the side. “As they say in English, pick your poison, Ryen.” She held out the pills and syringe for me to choose between.
I was going to have to take the drug that she was offering. It would slow my metabolism, heart rate, and brain waves to almost nothing so that I could survive the flight back home.
“How do you want your Jhayne? Are you going to take it of your own free will, or do I have to jam this needle in your neck?”
“I’ll take the pills,” I said acidly.
She slipped them into my mouth, and I swallowed hard. Immediately, my lungs started to feel heavier.
“That wasn’t very chivalrous of you. I only had one course of pills left. Looks like the girl gets the stick.” She turned toward Savannah and drove the thick needle deep into her throat.
“God will make you pay for your actions!” I yelled.
Her arrogant mask shattered. Real, raw horror stained her features. She didn’t even try to cover it up. Guilt, fear, and indecision were written plainly across her face.
“Don’t you think I know that?” she whispered, her raven black eyes drenched with terror.
Savannah was dragged to the first of two darkened limousines parked outside the inn. I had no strength to fight anymore. It was a herculean effort to even make my lungs expand and retract.
Claire, Mateo, and Chase were already in the back of the limo I was shoved into. The car doors shut behind me, and the four of us were left alone. They were all sucking uselessly at the air, Jhayne swimming thick in their blood. Their swollen veins stood out like blue-black spider webs through their skin, colored from the drug that would put them into temporary comas. They had just minutes until the drug took full effect.
“I’m so sorry … all of you. I never meant for this …” I sucked in another labored breath. “Oshun and Ecko have been following us. They intercepted my resignation. Gideon sent Emani to make sure I came back. She’ll kill Savannah if I don’t do what he wants. If I hadn’t tried to resign …”
“Your resignation … just sped up the process,” Chase panted. “There’s something much worse going on … than we anticipated … Gideon is planning something, and we’re in the middle of it.”
“Savy … okay?” Claire gasped.
“They stunned her, which means she fought pretty hard,” I whispered.
“I knew … I liked her,” Mateo wheezed, managing a weak smile.
“When we get home, do whatever you can to get out of his way and back to your families. Blame me for everything,” I pleaded.
“Hell no! You mess with one of us … you mess with all of us,” Mateo said through shallow breaths.
“No! Promise you won’t do anything heroic.”
Thick, inky black tears colored with Jhayne fell from Claire’s eyes. She gave my hand a gentle squeeze and then laid her head on Chase’s chest.
“Please …” I pleaded uselessly.
The boys slumped in their seats, succumbing quietly to oblivion.
I can’t lose any of you,” I whispered, but they were too far gone to hear.
The large fallow pasture full of yellow weeds was just long enough to allow for transport landing and takeoff. The bullet-shaped aircrafts stood in a perfect line, facing west. Their mirrored surfaces gleamed cerulean blue, the exact same color as the noon sky, camouflaging them almost completely. The flight crews were the most conspicuous thing, waiting in formation outside of the transports. As the limos pulled up, the landing gear on each transport retracted in synchronization, the bodies of each vehicle resting in the tall grass.
Two female attendants opened the door to my car. I was the only one able to climb out on my own. The men that had held me captive just an hour ago pushed me out of the way to drag my friends’ seemingly lifeless bodies toward their transport.
I squinted in the sun’s bright light and waited agonizingly to see whether they would drag Savannah’s body from the car in front of mine.
I stared down at my useless hands, black lines crisscrossing over every inch of skin. I had brought Savannah into the crosshairs of certain death. I had done this. Emani was right. This was my fault.
Savannah finally struggled out of the back of her car. Her skin bore the marks of Jhayne just as mine did. The blood from her meeting with Emani’s guard had dried in thick crimson rivulets along her face. Dark fluid spilled from the burns in her neck—blood mixed with the lecherous drug. But she bravely refused the attendant’s help. I had never seen her look more beautiful.
Her head swiveled around until she found me. She nodded quickly, answering all of my silent questions. She was all right. For now.
Emani, holding Savannah’s backpack and her own white case, was loaded onto the first, much larger transport with Chase, Claire, and Mateo. Savannah was loaded into the second, smaller one. An attendant took my hand and led me forward.
A jolt of recognition registered in my almost sleeping brain as I passed the pilot lined up outside with the rest of the flight crew. Nik. A friend. My friend.
“Load the human first,” Nik told the attendants, who nodded and leaned me onto the side of the transport. He walked to my side and stood shoulder to shoulder with me.
“ Nik” I whispered. “You came … help us?”
“I came because it’s my job! What is going on? What happened to you?” he whispered in utter shock.
“I can’t—” I choked. The world was blurring into black and white. I couldn’t talk anymore.
“I know, the Jhayne. Just answer my questions then.”
I nodded.
“I overheard Emani saying that you were going to resign. True?”
I nodded.
“Because of the human?”
I nodded again.
“The human is not safe. Emani has been talking about Gideon’s plans for her.”
I shook my head furiously.
“Nothing will happen to her while I’m in charge. I’ll make sure you all get safely home. That’s all I can promise, though.”
I nodded a thank you.
“You must have something Gideon really wants to make him go to these lengths to keep you. When we get home, I’ll alert as many as I can to what I have seen here.”
I nodded weakly. Gideon would know better than to let anyone escape who had seen this. Nik was in grave danger now too, just like the rest of us. The attendants were on their way out of the transport to retrieve me, but before they did, Nik whispered urgently, “You’re not alone. Gideon is gaining power, but if he wants to go through with his plans, he’s going to have to fight all those who still stand with Aurik first.”
And there it was—a flicker of hope. A light in the unrelenting darkness.
The attendant laid me on a cold metal table and strapped me down tightly. The machines above my head sent out criss-crossing beams of white light every few seconds, scanning my vital signs. Satisfied, the attendant pushed the glass cover closed over me like a transparent coffin.
Through the haze in my head, I searched for Savannah across the aisle. She was lying in an identical glass case. Our eyes met, and my dying heartbeats quickened. I heard it register on the monitors. If I could only comfort her for just a minute, to explain what was happening, to tell her how sorry I was, to tell her I loved her one more time.
The powerful thrum of the motors filled the quiet air. Savannah moved suddenly, straining her neck toward the glass. She took a difficult gasp and blew warm air on its surface, fogging it. She then took her pinky finger and traced the outline of a heart in the mist.
Could she really love me? After all this?
A dark blue tear fell from her eye and into her gold hair, staining it. It was the last thing I saw before the Jhayne dragged me into the black.