Falling by J Bennett Read Free Book Online Page B

changed my own diaper this morning.”
    “She’s infected Gabe. You’re too blind to recognize what she
is. Dear little sis could have latched onto you and killed you. She’s in the
cuffs until we figure this thing out.”
    “Her wrists are all torn up. She was in pain.”
    “I don’t give a damn about her wrists.”
    “I didn’t hurt him,” I say.
    Tarren looks at me. His eyes have turned gunmetal gray just
like mine do when I’m furious.
    “Not yet,” he says quietly, “but you can’t help what you
are.”
    Gabe’s aura rears up. “For fuck’s sake!” he yells. “In case
you’ve been too busy worrying about every known thing in the universe, the
girl’s just had her entire life destroyed. How about we stop waving guns in her
face and treating her like…well, she’s not an angel. She’s not!”
    The hunger is flooding my mind, and I strain to hold onto my
senses. Hot hands. I keep the skin down over my palms, but I can feel those
bulbs pushing against the seams. My nails dig into my wrists, and the pain
keeps me anchored. Blood drips between my fingers.
    “We need to think about this.” Tarren’s voice is careful.
“You can’t let your emotions…”
    “I’m so sick of…” Gabe bites back his next words. “Forget
it.”
    Somehow this is funny. My mind is little jagged puzzle
pieces all falling apart. The pull of energy makes words hard to string
together. Tarren is mad and Gabe is mad, and monster Maya is mad, mad, mad and
hungry too. She thinks the sun is playing a trick on her and a swan dive might
be fun and maybe Ryan is somewhere waiting in a place with no songs, no sounds.
    The boys glower at each other. Their jaws are set almost
identically. Tarren is half a head taller, packed with wiry muscle. His face is
all sharp bones, strong chin and cruel smiling scar. Gabe’s cheeks are flushed,
and his blunt dashes of eyebrows tilt toward each other sharing secrets.
    “Gloves,” I say.
    They both turn to me.
    “I’ll wear gloves. That way you’ll have some warning if I
decide to kill you both.”
    Silence, then Gabe’s eyebrows part ways.
    “Ah!” he cries, “she’s got a sense of humor. Thank god! I
need all the fucking help I can get.”
    He smiles at me, and I smile back. Tarren’s frown furrows
deeper into the corners of his mouth. This is the moment I decide that I will
run away. Tonight. No matter what.
     

Chapter 12
    Gabe tells me that we’re going home. Home is Farewell,
Colorado, just outside of Pueblo. We sit in Tarren’s silver Murano and wait for
him to finish wiping down the motel room.
    Gabe is in the passenger seat, scrolling through police
blotters on his laptop. In the backseat, I tug against my handcuffs and enjoy
the sparks of pain that alight as the plastic presses against the open wounds.
In an unspoken compromise, Tarren cuffed my hands in front of me. I bring my
knees to my chest, loop my arms over them. I like this position, feeling that I
am as small and unobtrusive as I can be.
    My mind is starting to go crazy again. I see Ryan fall, hear
the last pained hiccups dry on his lips. Chapped lips. Warm lips filled with
electricity.
    “You didn’t finish your story,” I say to Gabe.
    He looks up, clicks off his window. His computer wallpaper
features Keira Knightley dressed in a strange leather halter top and leggings
with a sword strapped to her thin waist.
    “I want to hear the rest,” I say.
    He sighs, closes the lid of his computer. “Yeah. Sure. Where
was I?”
    “The super evil club,” I say and then effortlessly pluck his
exact words from my memory. “Rich as hell and bored of buying all the shit they
could ever want. They decided to search for a way to become even more powerful.
What they found was Dr. Cook. He was the key.”
    The smile drops off of Gabe’s face. There’s some sort of
conflict going on in his mind. I see it in the shifting ribbons of color in his
aura.
    “Good memory,” he says at last and reaches forward to switch
the