Love, Immortal (Alchemy Book 2) Read online

  Drekker screamed. Davey jumped away, sparing a quick and anxious glance toward the window. Where the hell was Ethan? Looking at the door again awarded her some good news. At least all of the kids had made it out. Except for her and Drekker, the classroom was now empty. There was nothing else to do except run. Dark red blood gushed from Drekker’s neck, escaping from between fingers that desperately grasped his wound. His volcanic expression—a blend of anger, pain, and disbelief—was the last thing Davey saw before she turned and sprinted toward the door.

  “BITCH.”

  Drekker’s hoarse whisper, the explosive sound of two gunshots, and the sound of shattered glass were the last things she heard as an incredible, unbelievable pain plowed through her back, knocking her from her feet. She landed wildly, felt more pain as her face smacked the floor, and briefly, dizzily wondered if that sudden sulfuric taste in her mouth was blood. And then Davey was overtaken by darkness.

  ∞∞∞

  Davey wasn’t sure what she became aware of first—the blinding light that sneaked into her cozy cave of peaceful quiet or the muted voice calling her name in a gentle but urgent tone.

  “Get back. Give her some air,” the same voice commanded a moment later.

  Someone’s hands were touching her—no, the hands were holding her. Tugging at her clothes?

  “Goddammit, I said wait,” the same voice said tersely. “No. She was wearing a vest.” The edge faded as he spoke again, this time closer to her ear. “Davey, wake up.”

  “Ethan?”

  “Yeah.”

  Behind the light, a sea of blurry shapes slowly came into focus. Davey could barely make out two splotches of grey that could have been Ethan’s eyes. She tried to sit up but was met with instant regret as a wave of agony stripped the air from her lungs. Nausea rolled her stomach, followed by a hammering pain that pounded at her skull. Davey gasped.

  “Take your time,” Ethan insisted, helping her upright but then lightly restraining any further movement she might have attempted.

  Collapsing against his chest, she tried to take a deep breath but her body wouldn’t cooperate. The dull ache in her back and right side only intensified. Davey licked her lips. At least that didn’t hurt. Hazy thoughts gradually clearing, she tried to think past the pain.

  “I’m not dead,” she whispered and heard a soft rumble in Ethan’s chest as he chuckled. But the hard set of his jaw and worry in his eyes exposed the laugh as one of relief and not actual amusement.

  “No, but you do have a concussion and a few bruised or broken ribs.” Ethan shifted and leaned closer. His cool fingers touched her face, and his dark gaze—filled with angst—locked with hers. “This is my fault, Davey,” he whispered. “Sorry for being late.”

  “What happened?” she asked. Searching his expression, Davey was having trouble filling her lungs, and it had nothing to do with broken ribs. She had dared to hope.

  “I remembered you.”

  She clutched his shirt as all the air expelled from her lungs in one whoosh. Emotions poured through her, overwhelming her already scattered thoughts. Fingers trembling, Davey couldn’t speak. She simply clenched and unclenched the fabric near his collar, no more able to halt the repetitive motion than she was able to stop her body from trembling.

  Tears spilled onto her cheeks. He was back. After five years, Ethan had finally, truly returned to her.

  “Ethan,” she whispered.

  “I know,” he said and kissed her hair. “Let’s get you and Hogan home. Then we’ll talk about it.”

  She nodded with a sniffle. “Okay.” Davey took a deep breath and hissed because it felt like a knife was stabbing through her ribs.

  As Ethan lifted her from the floor and set her onto a waiting stretcher, Davey glimpsed what must have been Drekker’s body, lying not far from where she had fallen. Curiously misshaped and covered by a white sheet, a huge blood stain encompassed where the body’s head should have been.

  “Don’t look at it,” Ethan said softly and moved so that his broad torso blocked the gruesome sight.

  Grimacing, Davey eased backward to lie flat on her back as Ethan supported her with the care of a new mother. Looking toward the door, he nodded, and two men in paramedic uniforms rushed to her side, poking and prodding as they assessed her vitals and the extent of her injuries. At some point, one of them shined a pen light into her eyes and asked her to follow it. Doing so was surprisingly difficult and made her headache worse, but Davey did her best to comply.

  After a few minutes, the lead medic turned to Ethan. “She has a grade two concussion and several broken ribs. She needs to be in a hospital.”

  Ethan shook his head. “Do what you can for her here, and then release her into my custody.”

  The paramedic exchanged an uncertain look with his partner. “No offense, sir, but that badge doesn’t give you jurisdiction over her medical care.”

  Ethan simply stared at the two men without speaking, long enough that they began to squirm under his unflinching gaze.

  Scratching his head, the lead medic began to backpedal. “I mean, unless she’s under arrest or something…then she’s all yours, man.”

  Giving the medic one final hard look, Ethan leaned closed to Davey and took her hand. A buzz of electricity hummed between them, faintly sparking everywhere their skin touched. “Davey, do you trust me?”

  She answered without hesitation. “More than you know.”

  “Tell these men that you do not want to go to a hospital. Tell them you would like for me to take you home.”

  Davey was in a lot of pain. More importantly, she knew that a severe enough head injury could kill her without the proper treatment. But this was Ethan. He always had her best interests at heart and would take care of her. Looking as resolute as possible, she turned to the paramedics. “I don’t want to go to the hospital,” she said. “Ethan is going to take me home.”

  If either of them had a problem with her request, they covered it well, working quickly with no further questions. In less than ten minutes, Davey’s torso was wrapped in bandages, two neat stitches closed a tiny cut over her eyebrow, and 1500 milligrams of acetaminophen coursed through her veins.

  With the pain in her aching ribs sufficiently dulled, Davey only had to contend with the effects of having a concussion. Ethan’s borrowed aviators combined with the government tint on the sedan’s windows helped with the light sensitivity she was experiencing, and if Davey kept her eyes closed, the blurred vision was easy to ignore. But she couldn’t concentrate worth shit, and her stomach wouldn’t stop doing flip flops. All she wanted was to lay her head back and take a long nap, but the medics had warned her not to fall asleep.

  Unable to hang on to a single thought long enough to process it, all the questions she had for Ethan would have to wait until later. Hogan, on the other hand, had seemingly recovered from the initial shock of recent events and had no qualms about asking questions. And the kid had a thousand questions. Ethan did a fine job of fielding most of them. There were still so many things the sage fifteen-year-old had yet to learn about Ethan. Either part of Ethan’s recovered memories had included the knowledge that Davey had purposefully withheld his true origins, or he just intuitively knew to keep the subject of soul-harvesting alchemy off the table. Despite her groggy state, Davey did her best to tune into their conversation, hoping the distraction might help keep her awake.

  “Are you really undercover?” Hogan asked.

  “I’m always undercover,” Ethan replied easily. “It is the nature of my existence.”

  “I was just a kid when you left before, but I remember how you looked, and it was totally different. At first, I thought you were someone else.” Hogan paused thoughtfully. “Did you have surgery or something? Are you wearing contacts?”

  “How old are you now, Hogan?”

  “I’ll be sixteen in five months. Davey is going to give me her car.”

  Ethan laughed. “She’ll have to get it fixed first.”

&nbs
p; “What?” Hogan’s voice leapt two octaves with concern.

  Davey groaned. “Ethan, my body is not so damaged that I won’t hit you.”

  “What happened to the car?” Hogan repeated.

  Davey watched her brother in the sun visor’s mirror. He was literally sitting on the edge of his seat, eyes inflated to the size of dinner plates. “Relax,” she said. “The car is fine. Just a scratch. Don’t let Ethan distract you with material things when you’re doing such an awesome job interrogating him.”

  “Hey,” Ethan exclaimed, feigning indignance. “He brought up the car.”

  Hogan narrowed his eyes. “So, are those contacts?”

  “No.”

  “Then how did your eye color change?”

  “I’ve only gone back to looking the way I did when you and your sister first met me.” When Hogan raised a skeptical eyebrow, Ethan gently clarified. “That was before your parents died.”

  “Oh.” The mention of their parents left Hogan subdued, and he quietly stared out the window for the next few miles, only speaking to give Ethan directions to their little townhome, so Davey wouldn’t have to. But soon, Hogan had shaken off his solemn mood and fired off a very keen observation. “Back at school, you didn’t seem like yourself at first. Actually, you kinda sounded like Arnold Schwarzenegger when he played that terminator guy…without the accent though. Now you sound normal—well almost normal. You still talk funny sometimes.”

  It didn’t matter how close Hogan had come to the truth, Davey laughed anyway.

  Unoffended, Ethan shrugged. “Even at the academy, I struggled with affability. I guess I’m still working on it.”

  Nodding, her brother quickly moved on. “It must have taken a lot of surgeries to change your face like that. Did it hurt?”

  “Not really.” Amusement crinkled the corners of Ethan’s eyes. “I have superpowers, Hogan. One of them is when something hurts too bad, I can shut the pain off.”

  “I think Davey has that superpower too,” Hogan offered, watching Ethan with a serious expression.

  Davey pursed her lips but felt too tired and ill to protest.

  “I don’t know,” Ethan mused aloud as he drove through the quiet neighborhood where Davey and Hogan had lived for the past two years. “I think bravery might be your sister’s superpower. She just saved a lot of lives back there, even when I wasn’t in my right head to do so.”

  “She has two superpowers, then,” Hogan conceded.

  Ethan smiled. “Agreed.”

  Hogan asked one final question as they were pulling into the driveway. “Why did you leave five years ago? My sister really liked you. She still thinks about you all the time, you know.”

  Davey wriggled in her seat. Ethan’s huge aviators hid most of her face, but did nothing to disguise the blush that crept to her cheeks. She wanted to bail out of the car but had major reservations on whether she could walk five feet before puking and then collapsing into a pool of her own vomit, so Davey sat still and silently prayed that Hogan would have the good sense not to mention Travis next and totally fuck up her life. She held her breath. Ethan needed to know about her boyfriend, but she needed to be the one to tell him.

  Risking a glance at Ethan, Davey was surprised that he appeared to be equally, if not more, uncomfortable. Both hands were on the steering wheel, gripping it a bit too tightly, while the rest of his body had gone rigid. Expression twisted with torment, he silently stared straight ahead. Eventually, he exhaled deeply and shook free of whatever memory held him, but the guilt in his stormy gaze was unmistakable when he answered Hogan’s question.

  “Five years ago,” he said, speaking directly to Davey, “I was recalled to a new assignment. The people I work for did not allow me say no.”

  Hogan was skeptical. “It’s hard to imagine that anyone could make someone like you do something he didn’t want to.”

  Ethan continued to look at Davey. “Everyone has their limits,” he said softly.

  Summoning every ounce of her will, Davey had to break his hold so she could breathe again. “Okay, monkey,” she said, trying to keep her tone light and unaffected. “I really need to go and lie down, so how about we give the cross-examination a rest?”

  “Sorry, Davey.”

  “No worries,” she said and reached for the door, but Ethan had already opened it. Kneeling down, he lifted her into his arms before she could object.

  “Hogan, stay close,” he called over his shoulder before briskly carrying Davey up the walkway and to the front stoop.

  “Why?” Hogan asked, but scrambled to catch up and open the door. “The bad guy is dead, so danger over. Right?”

  “I will explain later. Deadbolt the door behind us,” he said and stepped inside. “I need to treat your sister’s injuries and help her feel better. Stay inside and away from the windows. Do not open that door for anyone unless I tell you to.”

  Hogan looked quizzically at his sister.

  “Do what he says, Hogan.”

  “Okay, well, can I watch television, or is that off limits too?”

  Davey smiled tightly. “Do your homework first.”

  When Hogan rolled his eyes, she retaliated by sticking her tongue out. They both giggled while Ethan turned and began climbing the stairs with Davey still in his arms.

  “You don’t have to keep carrying me,” she protested with a delirious grin. Laughing with Hogan really hadn’t helped her pain. “I’m okay to walk,” she lied.

  “You are strong, Davey,” Ethan said and kissed her hair. “But you do not have to be right now.”

  Reaching the master suite, he set her down on the queen-sized bed, making sure she was comfortable before moving away to draw the curtains and close the bedroom door. Then he came and perched at the side of the mattress. Davey warily eyed the tiny syringe that was pinched between his fingers. Still woozy, her vision blurred as she tried to read the label but even through the haze, the logo seemed familiar.

  “Does that thing say Global Cures?”

  “It does.”

  The pain in her head now felt like a knife in the eye, but still she edged away from him. “You’re not sticking me with that.”

  “Davey, trust me.”

  “I do trust you, Ethan. But the last time a concoction made by Global Cures was injected into my bloodstream, I ended up killing a super soldier by simply pushing him too hard.”

  “Those effects were only short term. You returned to your normal, weakling self within a few days.”

  “Hey!” Davey exclaimed. Scowling playfully, she crossed her arms. “You just said that I was strong. And you called me brave like ten minutes ago.”

  Ethan laughed. “I’m only teasing you.”

  Davey wanted to laugh too, but the pain in her head and side was too great. She figured it might be just as fun to give him a hard time instead. “Well, you shouldn’t tease sick people,” she said, sticking her bottom lip out in mock annoyance. “I could very well fall asleep and die, you know.”

  His expression saddened at the mention of her dying. “I won’t let that happen.”

  Maintaining her frown for a few moments longer, Davey laughed and nudged Ethan with her foot. “I’m screwing with you.”

  “Of course,” he said, but his mood didn’t lighten. “You really must take this.” He held up the syringe again. “The formula is several generations removed from the one you experienced eleven years ago. There will be no lasting side effects. I promise.”

  “Fine.” Relenting, she rolled up her sleeve. Davey watched the pointed tip draw closer and bit her lip, trying not to flinch when the sharp point pierced her skin.

  “This will initially be unpleasant,” Ethan warned just as the needle slid deeper.

  A kind of cool stinging sensation was infused deep into her muscle. The feeling intensified, until it was as if her shoulder was burning—like someone held an open flame to her skin. “Ouch,” Davey said and rubbed her arm. Surprisingly, the pain went away. “Okay, that wasn’t
so bad.”

  Ethan kept silent, a statue of concern as he studied her.

  Davey took his hand. “Stop looking so worried. I’m fi—”

  Her attempt to reassure him ended as pure, unparalleled agony took hold of her body. She collapsed sideways onto the bed, muscles locked in spasm. Gasping, Davey couldn’t cry out, much less scream. Unable to move, she watched with horror as her arms and legs took on a life of their own, wildly flailing about. The agony continued, refusing to let up. Davey feared it might last forever.

  Things went from bad to worse as her jaw clamped shut. Her lungs stopped expanding, and suddenly she could no longer breathe. Silently screaming with panic, Davey stared at the ceiling because despite her commands, her eyes wouldn’t look anywhere else.

  What the fuck? What the fuck? What the fuck?

  Ethan’s face appeared above hers, and for a split second, Davey wondered if it was Ethan at all. Maybe it was Mason Drekker pretending to be Ethan all over again. After she died, he would kidnap her brother and enact his evil plans, or turn Hogan over to Global Cures where he would become a pawn, lab rat, or worse.

  Ethan squeezed Davey’s hand hard enough to make her feel him over the agony. “I’m with you,” he whispered.

  After what seemed like a lifetime, the pain gradually stopped. A wave of darkness moved over Davey’s vision but passed quickly, and then she could move again. Rolling to her side, Davey jumped to her feet as if the bed were on fire, frantically examining her body to be sure all the parts where still there.

  Fear morphed into fury as she turned to Ethan. “What the fuck was that?”

  Looking guilty as hell, he met her ire head on. “I would have preferred to tell you exactly what would happen, but then there may have been further delay in administering the serum. Your injuries were too extensive to wait any longer, Davey. Your brain was hemorrhaging.”

  Her anger promptly dissipated. “Oh,” she said. “Well, when you put it that way…” Blushing, Davey covered her face and fell silent. She couldn’t believe she had doubted Ethan, even for a second.