Bad Blood (Book 4 of The Warden series) (19 page)

She was actually mad that she had jumped this time. She finally had a chance to see if she could save Belus and now she still didn’t know. How was a damsel to save the day, when she couldn’t even stick around long enough to find out who she was supposed to be fighting?

She couldn’t hear Efrat’s footsteps, his damned expensive leather shoes, were too quiet to hear. She did, however, feel the air move on his approach. He pushed his foot into her side, but she remained still. She could hear his knees crack as he crouched down to her.

He stayed there a short moment, examining her. She heard him scoff. She assumed that he just recognized her, and found the satire in this situation. He pressed his fingers to her throat and she hoped that the slight race in her heart was justifiable after being electrocuted.

“I’ll be damned,” he mumbled. “Energizer fucking bunny.” With another creak in his joints, he stood and the air wisped as he walked away. Cori opened her eyes and slowly moved to see where he was.

He stood below the guard station examining the guard Chuck, from below. Cori didn’t bother waiting since he would likely be turning to head into the time bubble soon. She was glad her joints weren’t as vocal as his. She was also glad that the boots she had traded her sneakers in for were very flexible and quiet.

It was only a few feet to stalk before she reached him, but she ducked low, and took long soft intentional steps to him. He was not her friend, and according to him never would be, but at this particular point in his timeline, they weren’t even tenuous allies.

She jammed the gun into his back and prepared her monologue of haughty dribble that would ultimately prove to be what started this machinated day. She expected to get the drop on him as Efrat suggested. She hadn’t expected to get an elbow swinging back in her face.

As she recovered, she could see the shock in his eyes. She had surprised him, but he was apparently the type that hit first and asked questions later. She raised her gun, but he dropkicked it out of her hand like a black belt, or at least a kick boxing enthusiast.

The gun skidded across the room, and she mentally cursed herself for not keeping a hold of it. She lunged at him. It was a last-ditch effort, but she needed to try. He easily maneuvered around her and kidney punched her as she lurched past him.

She was barely able to catch her breath from the spasm of pain overtaking her lower back, when he grabbed her from behind. His hands slipped under her arms and behind her neck in a full nelson. She couldn’t even feel a tingle in her neck from his contact. She wondered why he hadn’t used his power on her instead of teasing her in this cat and mouse game, especially, when he was clearly the cat.

Or was that his purpose to begin with.

She kicked back his knee and he grunted from the pain. She let her body weight drop down to the ground, and her arms slipped from his slackened grip. She slammed her fist into his crotch, and pulled on the bend in his knees.

He fell back. She had hoped for his head to hit the floor and knock him out, but no such luck. His back smacked firmly and she dove on him. She wasn’t sure why she thought her body weight would be enough force to hold him down, but it wasn’t.

He thrust her off as if she was a child, playing airplane on daddy’s legs. It wasn’t without effort as it might have been for Ethan, but she was still no challenge to him.

When she landed she expected to stand and begin again, but his body weight pressed down on her before she even opened her eyes from her hissing cringe. His wiry legs wrapped around her thighs like some hubris high school wrestling champion. His hands pinched her wrists and pressed them against her chest, as he had done before when she attacked him over Belus.

She didn’t like the constraint, but she refused to let the dominant position keep her doing what needed to be done. “You’re good.” She panted as she stared up at those baby blues. It was probably the strangest thing to say in this particular moment, but she was on a roll for disarming men with blatant honesty. Not to mention he could kill her with one misplaced power surge. If there was a time for kissing ass, it was now.

His eyes narrowed trying to figure her out. He looked down at his hands touching her and she could see the gears grinding. She could feel him increase his energy output, but it only gave her prickling pain. “Yeah, I can feel that. Not like you want me too, though.”

His eyes narrowed further as if she had baited him into a challenge. She felt sudden spike in pain, but it was short lived when a loud snap forced him to pull his hands away. He released his leg lock, but remained on top of her while he rubbed his wrists. “Efrat, I need your help.”

“How did you do that?”

“I didn’t, you did. I’ve got enough static electricity from you over the past few hours to light a Christmas tree. Just stop trying to kill me for a second so I can explain what’s going on.” He didn’t move, nor did he contest her request. “I know you’ve been getting out of upper level without the military knowing. I know that if they find out, General Douche is going to outright shoot you.”

“That’s why they need to not find out.” Efrat wrapped his hands around her throat and pressed his fingers into her windpipe.

“No!” She screamed, but it sounded like more of a whimper. She gripped his hands, but there was not enough strength in her to get him off. She wondered what went wrong. What had she done different to get the drop on him? As her eyes watered and blurred she thought how wrong she was to even begin to trust this man with Belus’s life.

Even as she started to black out, she could sense the shift in lighting and location.

35

Cori felt the gun in her hand again and the weight released from her body. She was still on the floor. Efrat was standing on her left. She aimed her gun at him. “You son of a bitch! You tried to strangle me!”

A strong hand reached down and ripped the gun from her hand. Her trigger finger stuck and she felt the pain of a sprain as it was yanked along with the gun. She looked back and saw Danato staring at her in horrified shock. “What is wrong with you? How could you do that?” He wasn’t so much angry as appalled.

Cori shook her head and looked around the room, remembering where and when she was. It was getting harder and harder to stay caught up with her movements. She was already frayed, but now a fresh headache was setting in, and a feeling of déjà vu was making concentration near impossible.

She was in the part-time level. The guards were surrounding her. Efrat to her left. Danato to her right. Belus…dead on the floor.

“No!” She sat up fully. “What the hell happened?” She looked around for the offending shooter, but no one looked guilty. They all looked the same, fearful and baffled. She looked back at Danato as he slowly backed away from her. With each step, he raised her gun against her.

She looked down at her hand. Her trigger finger looked off; it was dislocated. It was starting to swell. Behind that pain, she could feel the dull ache of impact on her palm. The feeling one gets after the buck from a discharged weapon.

She looked to Efrat. She couldn’t quite place his emotion, but he looked like a new boyfriend enduring the discomfort of his girlfriend’s family reunion. Only at this family reunion, his girlfriend decided to shoot her uncle.

She shook her head. “Me?”

He nodded. “Yeah, kitten, you did it.” He seemed for once, earnestly sympathetic. Somewhere in those beautiful blues, was a man who she could trust with the duty of saving her friend’s life. It was such a shame that he wanted to kill her so bad.

It was all gone. Just as quickly as it came, but at least she knew who she had to stop.

36

Cori wasn’t sure who decided where she would leap to and when, but she was thankful that she hadn’t returned to Efrat strangling her. She was all for a fair fight, but she was beginning to understand that Efrat was not purely an elemental. He was trained in fighting.

She regretted not working harder on her fighting skills with Belus. She regretted not doing a lot of things for Belus now. She was fairly good at self-defense when she needed to survive, but there was no hope against an enemy that actually listened to his trainer.

She felt the pain in her fingers and back. The cold glossy white floor that made the prison seemed sterile was just the welcome she wanted. She kept her eyes shut and waited for Efrat to do his bemused assessment of her before he moved on. Just like her 8:05 morning starts, it happened the same way. Of course, this time it wasn’t going to end the same way.

She crept behind him as she did before since that wasn’t where she screwed up. She didn’t jam the gun into his back. This time she tapped him. He swung around to elbow her, but she ducked and jumped back. She raised the gun, but once again, he kicked it away with surprising agility.

It skidded away and she made a mental note of how far it had gone. She didn’t attack him, but she did take a defensive stance. His face flickered amusement and he charged. She barely wheeled out of his grasp and slammed her elbow into his kidney.

He tripped her on the way by. She landed in a roll and jumped back up just in time for his return charge. Since she was already barely balanced, she ducked just as he reached her for the tackle. The quick drop kneecapped him, and her forceful rise just after, flipped him over.

She would have celebrated her victory if he hadn’t tripped her on her escape. She landed within reach of the gun and grabbed it. She whipped back just as he sat up grabbing for her. They sat on the floor with her gun jammed in his throat and his hand clenched on her throat dangerously tingling on the verge of electrocution.

This time he mirrored her panting. At least she had made him work for it this time. She couldn’t help smiling at the stalemate. It wasn’t checkmate, but at least she could breathe.

His eyes narrowed, observing a number of things about her he didn’t like, no doubt including the fact that she was still breathing. “Where did you learn to fight like that?” she asked distracting him from yet another conversation about his damned hands.

“Special ops,” he answered ingloriously. “Where did
you
learn to fight like that?”

Her smile grew bigger than she probably should have let it, considering he was still likely to kill her if she pissed him off. “From you, five minutes ago.” His eyes narrowed and she could see him formulating a smart quip to lead up to his attack. “You aren’t going to kill me, Efrat. I already know how this day ends. I on the other hand, could empty this whole clip into your skull and save myself the pain of the next three hours, but I’m not going to do that either.”

“Why is that?” She could see his eyes transfixed on her throat. His fingers were loosening, but only so they could feel the delicate skin there. She didn’t care as long as he didn’t choke her.

“Because unlike you, my heart hasn’t been devoured by my black soul,” she seethed. His eyes locked on hers with a glare that was more annoyance, than anger. “Besides that, I’ve already seen you die once today, and I don’t want to relive it.” She held his gaze making sure she had his full attention. “And watching you bleed kind of makes me queasy.”

She drew the gun away from his chin just enough to offer peace, but not enough to leave room for stupidity. “I know General Dumbass will kill you if he finds out you’ve been getting out of your cage. He doesn’t have to find out.”

“Why doesn’t he?”

“Because I’m trying to save lives today. So far, I’ve gotten me shot once, you shot twice, and Belus shot once, which makes for a shit ass job of heroism if you ask me.” Cori wondered if she could just let him go and toss her gun to make this all end.
Was it as simple as all that?

“I’m not sure what my blast did to your brain, but it seems to me that the best way to save me from the General is to remove the witness of my escape.”

Never simple.

Cori sighed and shook her head. It would be easier to put Efrat back upstairs, ditch her gun, and hide out until she knew she was safe to be around, but clearly, he was intending to kill her either way. The only way to protect herself from Efrat, was with Danato’s support. He had to find out about this. That meant she still had to protect Efrat from Danato until she could convince him not to rat him out. That also meant she couldn’t ditch her gun…yet.

“Something you did with that bolt has sent me spiraling through my own timeline. This is the first time you’ve seen me this morning, but I’ve been hanging out with you all day. Let me tell you, it hasn’t been that fun, but I’ve suffered through it to save your life and Belus’s.”

“Belus?”

“Yeah, I…have to save him.” She wasn’t sure how much he should know. In order to keep control of the timeline, she thought it best if only she made changes, lest another variable be added to the mix. “You are going to help me.”

“Why would I do that?”

“Because of this gun.”

“I’m not exactly unarmed.” He ran his finger down her throat.

“Oh, what, these?” She grabbed his hand with her free hand and shook it. “If you haven’t noticed, I’m kind of getting immune to them. You might be able to pull that crap on my earlier self, but right now, you’re a fish on dry land, and I’m a fisherman…
with a gun
.” She poked the barrel into his chest and threw his hand away.