Twenty-four
I leaned against the wall, trying to catch my breath as thoughts whirled in my head. The creak of a floorboard focused me. I saw a foot appear at the top of the steps and tried to stand, then collapsed when I saw whose foot it was.
Reed tiptoed down the stairs and froze when he caught sight of Wolfe, then charged down the last few steps after he saw me, dropping to his knees at my side. “Sienna!”
“Yes?” I looked back at him, still wobbly.
“Thank God you’re alive, you look…” He frowned in concern and his hand patted my forehead. “Uh…you…uh…”
“I think Wolfe did a number on me before I killed him,” I replied through bloody lips.
He nodded agreement, looking somewhat gray in the face. He shifted from me and eased over to Wolfe on his knees and felt the monster’s cheek. He looked back to me with an expression of fear and amazement. “He’s dead.”
“I just said that,” I replied with an eye roll that left me feeling like my entire brain had done a backflip.
Reed shifted back to me. “I didn’t believe you.” His hands went to my neck and I felt the pressure of his touch for a few minutes; then he raised them in front of my eyes, covered in blood. “To answer your earlier question, yes, he did a number on you.”
“Not the first time,” I replied with a grunt. “But it’s the last.” I laughed, a light, airy laugh that turned into a hacking cough. Ouch.
He placed a hand on my forehead. “You’re burning up.” He tossed a look at Wolfe’s body, then back to me. “How did you kill him?”
“I don’t know…I just grabbed him around the throat and held on.”
“So you strangled him?” His hand was resting on my forehead, as though he was trying to take my temperature.
“No…” I thought back to my hands around his throat, about him talking to me, pleading for his life. “He was still talking, so I couldn’t have choked him to death.”
Without warning, Reed yanked his hand away from me and toppled backward to the floor. He shook for a moment and stretched out as though he were convulsing. Crawling on my hands and knees, I moved toward him. “Are you all right?” I asked as he bucked once more and pulled himself to a sitting position. I reached out a hand and he batted it away, hard. I looked at him and his brown eyes came up at me laden with suspicion, a haggard look etched on his face, which was suddenly worn.
“Don’t…touch me.” His voice was violent, edgy.
I reached out again and he slid away in a hurry, hitting his back against the wall and sliding to his feet, looking down on me, his chest heaving as though he were fighting for a breath. “I said DON’T TOUCH ME!”
“What…is it?” I looked up at him from the floor, stunned at his sudden change in persona.
“Don’t you get it?” He slid against the wall, moving toward the stairwell, still leaning against it for support. “You killed Wolfe…with your touch.”
“What?” I asked, horrified. I looked at my hands and back to Reed, who had a look of revulsion on his face. “What…what am I?” A concern grew in me as I tried to wrap my still reeling mind around what had happened.
There was a sound upstairs, the noise of a door exploding open. Reed looked up and back to me, then took two steps toward a basement window and broke through it, springing with amazing agility through the hole and leaving a pile of broken, white-covered glass on the floor behind him.
The door to the basement flew open and heavy footfalls came down the stairs. I struggled to my feet once more, looking at my hands, wondering if what Reed said was true and if I would have to use them again on whoever was coming after me.
I breathed a sigh of relief when Old Man Winter appeared at the top of the steps. He took a quick look at Wolfe, then called up the stairs, “Sienna is all right and…Wolfe is dead.” He hurried down the last few steps to me, followed by a half dozen agents, all of whom goggled at the body of Wolfe, laying supine on the cold concrete floor next to the overturned box.
I braced myself against the wall as the agents formed a semi-circle around Wolfe and Old Man Winter stooped next to him. Ariadne came down last, followed by two more figures; Dr. Perugini and Dr. Sessions. Ariadne made her way over to me, following Dr. Perugini. Sessions made his way to Wolfe’s corpse.
“No pulse, but no sign of trauma…” I heard Dr. Sessions rattle off as he leaned over Wolfe. “Are we sure he’s dead?”
Sessions cast a look at Old Man Winter, who nodded. “He would not lie down like this. He is dead.”
“I need you to sit down, sweetie.” Dr. Perugini’s thickly accented words washed over me and she and Ariadne eased closer, each going to one of my elbows.
“DON’T TOUCH ME!” I screamed at them, the thought of Reed’s words still hanging in my mind. They both jumped back a step when I exploded, and I held my hands out to put them at arm’s length.
“I don’t get it; I see no cause of death.” Dr. Sessions’ words felt like an indictment of me.
“I killed him,” I said into the silence that filled the room. “I killed him with my touch…”
Ariadne and Dr. Perugini exchanged a look. “If you say so,” Dr. Perugini said with an air of patronization. She reached for me again, Ariadne a step behind her. “I need you to sit down and relax…”
Old Man Winter took two long strides from where he stood at the side of Wolfe’s body and landed a long arm on the shoulders of Dr. Perugini and Ariadne. “Don’t…” he mumbled in quiet warning, “…touch her.”
They both looked at him in surprise, but Perugini’s turned to annoyance. “She’s injured. I need to get her back to the Directorate and treat her wounds.”
Old Man Winter did not budge. “She’ll be fine. Do not touch her without heavy gloves.” His gaze fell over me again, and he turned back to where the agents stood around the body of Wolfe.
“Or what?” Perugini spat at him. “She’s hurt, she’s delusional, Erich! She’s just been through a ridiculous level of trauma – you can’t possibly think she killed this maniac by touching him.” She looked after him, and he hesitated, and the chill of the cold air from the window filled the room, swirling around him as though it were embracing a very old friend. “Erich?” she asked again, note of disbelief filling her voice. “You don’t actually believe her?”
He stared down at Wolfe for a long moment before he answered. “Certainly I believe her,” he replied. His cold blue eyes swept back to Dr. Perugini, then to Ariadne, finally coming to rest on me. “It is as she said. She touched him, and he likely screamed and begged for his life, and she killed him with her hands. With her touch.”
I felt a chill unrelated to the broken window as my eyes followed Old Man Winter’s down to the corpse of Wolfe, the scariest maniac I’d ever heard of, dead, helpless, on the floor – the way I’d made him. I looked back up and the biting fear ate at me, doubts, horror, still swirling in my brain, which was rocketing at a mile a second. “What…am…I?” I croaked out at him.
“What am I?” I asked again, stronger this time. He did not answer me, instead turning away after gesturing at Wolfe’s body as he swept up the stairs. Dr. Perugini reached for my elbow and I brushed her off, knocking her aside.
“WHAT AM I?” I howled at him as he retreated.
A voice, deathly familiar, prickled at the back of my mind, instilling a sense of calm that came from deep inside, an answer to a question that was asked and answered somewhere in the depths of me.
Soul eater, it said in a raspy, whispering voice.
Succubus.