Chapter 14
I glanced at Quinn. He was struggling to get to his hands and knees, knocked for a loop. Darcy must have come back while we were in the bedroom, and then waited until Quinn undid the bolts to kick in the door. I turned my attention back to her.
Darcy looked terrible. Her once-perfect hair hung in greasy clumps around her face, and her mad, darting eyes reminded me of one of the animals my cousin Jake had brought me, a cat so feral it eventually had to be put down. She was wearing the same black leather jacket I’d seen at the Flatiron Depot and jeans that had once been very expensive. Now the jacket and jeans were splattered with dark stains, and even in the low light I could tell it was blood, probably from when I’d fought with her at John’s house. Had she come back for a change of clothes before she blew town? With an effort, I swallowed my fear and straightened my shoulders, slowly tugging the wooden stake—Quinn’s shredder—from my belt loops. “Hey, Darcy. How’s the nose?”
Her gleeful expression hardened, and she started moving toward Quinn. “I’ll kill you in a second,” she tossed at me, like I was next in line at the DMV. She reached Quinn, who was struggling to his feet with the stake clutched in one hand. He looked a little wobbly, and I started toward the two of them without making a conscious decision to do it.
But before I could take more than two steps, Darcy bent down and put one hand under his chin, yanking it up before he could bat her away. Quinn’s head snapped back with a crunch that made my stomach roll, and he plummeted to the floor when Darcy released her hold on him.
I stared at Quinn’s limp body, stunned. “You killed him,” I said stupidly.
Darcy snorted. “Not yet.” She picked up the stake that had rolled out of Quinn’s hand when he went down and flipped it around in her hand like an Old West gunslinger with a pistol. She straddled Quinn’s limp form, and I realized that she was about to stake him.
I couldn’t let that happen. I flew forward and tackled her, knocking Darcy off the unconscious vampire.
I drove into her as hard as I could with my shoulder, but Darcy rolled with the impact, gracefully letting my momentum propel her on top of me. When we stopped moving, she laughed at me and splayed herself across my upper body, casually leaning her forearm against my throat to cut off my air supply.
“Stupid bitch,” she chortled. My left hand was pinned, so I scrabbled at her with my right, but it was like pushing against a parked semi. I reached for the stake, which had landed a few inches away from my hand, but Darcy just flicked the stake away from my hand, sending it skittering across the floor, looking amused by my efforts. After a moment of watching me struggle, she eased up on my throat by deliberately palming my face, smearing blood-sticky fingers on me as she pushed herself up. When she was sitting on my chest, she reached out and sent a lazy slap across my face.
Stars exploded on the backs of my eyelids, and my stomach’s contents threatened to make themselves known. “You are so fucked,” she sneered, which more or less echoed my thoughts. “You don’t have the baby to protect you anymore. Which means”—she leaned forward, her cool empty breath on my face—“that in a few minutes she won’t have you to protect her.”
Think, Lex. Charlie’s life depends on it. Okay, Darcy had inhuman strength and speed, and I couldn’t compete with that. But when I’d put out Victor’s eyes it had blinded him, at least temporarily. If I could blind her, too . . .
“Here’s what we’re gonna do,” Darcy continued. “Killing you would be fun, but I think it’d be even more fun to press you into killing yourself. Victor would have liked that.” She leaned back and pursed her lips, looking around the apartment. “Let’s see. What’s a really horrible way to die? Screwdriver through the eye? Setting yourself on fire? Maybe a nice solid self-disembowelment; I like that. Kind of a Shakespearean thing.”
I wasn’t sure about poking her eyes out with just my fingers, but I had car keys in my pocket. My left hand was pinned next to my thigh, so I started working the key ring out of the pocket. To keep her from noticing, I said, “You can’t press me, asshole. Victor couldn’t do it, and you’re . . . what? Maybe half as strong?” I made my voice skeptical.
Darcy’s eyes returned to me, narrowing with hate. “Stop wiggling. And don’t think you can taunt me into killing you quick. You don’t deserve it.”
“Oh, I know you can kill me,” I said flatly. “I’m just a human. But there’s no way you have the juice to press me.”
Gritting her teeth, Darcy leaned forward and stared into my eyes. Maybe because I was expecting it, I felt that slight pressure again, though it wasn’t nearly as strong as when Quinn had done it to me. This didn’t even make my head hurt. “Stop wiggling,” Darcy said again through clenched teeth.
I played along, relaxing my body as though she’d succeeded. Then something happened that I couldn’t explain. I wasn’t trying to do it, mostly because I hadn’t imagined it was possible, but one moment I was concentrating on Darcy’s gaze, trying to gauge if I had any real impulse to do what she asked (I didn’t), and the next moment something shifted aside, just for a second, and what had been a one-way street suddenly opened up for two-way traffic. “Get off me,” I hissed, and Darcy immediately rose from my chest, standing up and stepping aside.
Then she blinked, and a confused, annoyed expression crossed her face. I scrambled to my feet, but whatever I’d done—a spell, maybe? Could you do those without knowing it?—was over.