Campbell sighed and swiped the swab over my bicep. With steady hands from a lifetime of being a doctor, he punctured my skin, pressed the plunger, and shot the golden contents into my bloodstream.
The second the needle had emptied, he tossed it into a biohazard bin and raked both hands through his hair. “I don’t know what the hell I’m doing here anymore.”
“Go back and keep Jess alive.” Using the crutch, I hopped across his surgery to the phone resting on the wall. A landline. Archaic in this day and age but technology I was grateful for.
Dialling a number I knew by heart, I waited until it connected with my hangar in Jakarta. The second Ametung answered, I growled, “Hire twenty mercenaries who aren’t afraid of getting their hands dirty. Use Quietus—their details are still on file.”
Pika tried to bite the cord, dangling upside down with his usual antics. I needed to console him. To offer some sort of commiseration that I was still his, even if every part of me was cloaked in rage.
But if I let empathy enter my soul in my current predicament...it wouldn’t just be my broken bones destroying me.
Eleanor...
“Anything else?” Ametung asked.
“Prepare the jet. Get the crew ready. I’m on my way.”
“Consider it done.”
I hung up.
I marched outside even as Cal’s voice followed me from his bed in the recovery ward. “Hey, sir. Sully!”
I didn’t stop.
“Go to Skittles, Pika. You can’t follow me where I’m going.”
I once again leapt from my body.
I let fury be my master.
The bird studied me, cursed me, lost me. He squeaked, then gave up on me, flying away from a demon.
I inhaled hard.
Tritec iced through my veins, numbing me, freeing me.
Free to bathe in blood and turn into a nightmare.
I took my place above such mundane activities of men.
I played chess from my place of watching, cursing my physical weakness as I hobbled with a crutch, walking on a broken leg, fractured ankle, and foot, slowly standing taller as Tritec-87 kicked in.
Heartbeat by heartbeat, breath by breath, the pain receded, the panic deleted, and fury welcomed me back.
My pawn had become a knight.
I was ready for the final checkmate.
I’m coming, Eleanor.
I’m coming...
Chapter Three
THE HUMAN PSYCHE HAD always intrigued me.
From the dynamics in the school playground to the ethics within work environments, human nature was a fickle beast.
I’d seen the same theme while travelling.
Some people could accept rules with no complaint while others boycotted the mere whisper of boundaries. Those who were used to travel had the inherent ability to adapt to a new situation while those who’d never stepped out of their comfort zone panicked at the slightest unforeseen change.
I liked to think I was skilled at adaptation. I hadn’t always been that way—I’d started off naïve and passive, my life unopen to challenge and change.
But now...I had no such qualms.
I gave up trying to predict or control.
There was no predicting or controlling when you were someone’s prisoner.
Either by a man who bought your life and ended up stealing your heart, or by his brother who threatened your existence and wielded sadism as a personal skill.
I had no say in how I would be treated, no way to stop men from thinking they could own me, and even if I did, Drake wasn’t predictable because he operated outside the usual parameters of human psyche. He had no switch inside to prevent him from doing terrible things, no empathy to stop him from hurting others, and no rationale to reason with.
He was just evil.
Simple and stupidly evil.
I stayed silent as he flew me away from Sully’s archipelago and into the heart of Jakarta. He returned me to a city that’d done its best at blocking me from Sully. He dragged me from one winged machine to another one, stuffing me onboard a private plane where another two mercenaries waited on the tarmac to greet us.
The helicopter pilots didn’t say goodbye, both their faces relieved to no longer be employed by a madman.
The boxes of elixir were stowed in the back of the plane, the engines kicked into life, the new captain and first officer prepared to fly us to who knew where, and Drake sat heavily in the luxurious cream seat across the aisle from me.
His outburst on Monyet and his success at stealing Sully’s elixir had drained him of his reserves, and the moment the plane switched from taxiing to soaring into the star-dusted sky, he pressed a button on his chair, reclined to horizontal, draped a blanket over his body, and growled at his three mercenaries, “She moves, you shoot her.”
The click of three safeties being flicked off echoed even louder than a Boeing engine.
I stiffened in my seat, my heart chugging, my mind skipping between past, present, and future, and Drake completely discounted me.
He fell asleep with a smug grin on his face, revealing yet another side to his nature.
This asshole needed to get his way in all things. He was a vindictive, nasty boy who’d never been disciplined, yet he could let down his guard and sleep beside a girl who couldn’t stop plotting ways to kill him.
Of stabbing him with a fork.
Of strangling him with my seatbelt.
Of kicking him in the balls so hard they ruptured and bled out.
I needed him to die.
It was a visceral longing.
Something I chewed and choked on.
His every breath stole one from Sully. Two brothers genetically linked and bound—a symbolic bind that said one couldn’t survive while the other existed. It was either Drake or Sully.
Yin and yang.
Light and dark.
And if I can just kill this bastard, Sully will be okay.
I still couldn’t sense if Sully was alive or not.
And the farther I travelled from him, the more that panic grew.
Why can’t I feel him?
Had I ever been able to sense him, or had I been romanticizing that in Jakarta when Sully had sent me away?
Sully...you better be okay.
I’m begging you.
My eyelids drooped as time ticked onward, and the monotonous sound of flying deadened the
