The elevator jerks again, and my stomach pops up into my throat before I get a chance to answer her. Then BAM! The lights and the siren and all the power goes out.Scheiße!We’re shrouded in darkness. I wasn’tpanicking before, but I’m panicking now. The silence is pronounced now that the siren is dead, and I fucking hate the dark.
When I was on assignment in the DRC, covering the governmental takeover of Goma by rebel militants, the DRC army convoy I’d been traveling with was overtaken, and I survived along with two other soldiers by first running for our lives and then hiding out in a large concrete drainpipe in the ground for two days.
That was my last assignment in active combat zones. After that, I started working for an American newspaper covering mostly riots, protests, and the occasional political event. That’s also how I was reconnected with South Korean Ambassador Min-hyuck. A close personal friend of my mother’s, the two women worked together when the ambassador was stationed in Germany almost two decades ago.
The moment I decided to leave combat zones behind me, much to my parents’ collective relief, my mom contacted Ambassador Min-hyuck, who started hiring me exclusively for all her major events—an agreement we still have, though now I only accept when her events don’t interfere with my work at the COE.
“Scheiße,” I whisper, and the memory of that smell in that tunnel of our collective stink drags me back to another place, another time. I hear gunfire, the explosion of the IED that took out our truck in the first place. I flinch. My bones all lock. My heart slams against my sternum. I feel the pressure start to close in and can hear Vanessa speaking, but only at a distance.
“Are you okay?”
I nod, but my fucking throat is clogged. My mind is clear. Rational. Knows that I’m not where my body feels that I am, but when the elevator next lurches and Vanessa screams, I can feel that sinister drag,like the drag of a mutilated body through sand, still unfortunately breathing—click click, I take his picture, and with his remaining energy he looks at me like I’m a viper.Sweat breaks out on my forehead, and I drop the phone. It dangles from the coiled black cord uselesslylike a corpse hanging from a telephone pole in Gaza. The body is Palestinian, hung there by Israeli troopsafter a broken ceasefire. I don’t know much behind the politics. I just stand beneath the swinging sandaled feet, looking up through my lens, and shoot.
“Let me see if I have service and try to call—” Vanessa starts, but before she can finish her sentence, and before I lose myself entirely to the mist, the massive elevator doors start to crunch ... crunch ... crunch open.
Light.
I blink against it. Yellow mingling with an even brighter blue. I look toward it like it’s salvation.
We’re halfway between floors and, like a good millennial, all I can think about isFinal Destination 2,until the blue light fades and I can actually see our savior. Then I can’t think of anything at all. My brain is stolen right out of my skull, all the juicy bits and thinking parts gone.
Crouched there on the floor above, head ducked so he can look in at us, isnotthe fire-breathing-almost-Mr.-Vanessa-Theriot-superbeing I expected to have found us. Instead, my heart is arrested and my budding panic attack is crushed by the most beautiful face I’ve ever seen in real life.
Since the Forty-Eight Hour Festival shoot, I’ve seen him only one time, and in passing in the lobby of his apartment building—and mine. We damn near collided with one another, but he elegantly sidestepped me, while I lost my balance and crashed into our doorperson, Taylor’s, desk. Even though he’d seen me just a week before, there was no recognition in his eyes at all.
But he sees me now. And it’s rearranging my insides.
His vivid purple eyes stare straight into my soul, picking it apart, finding and rooting out all the loose strands holding it together and pulling. Hard. I’m so glad I’m already on my knees, hanging on to the wall for dear life, because when he winks at me and says, “Hey, beautiful, you need saving?” my soul simply dissolves.
“What?” I say, reduced to my mushy parts.
“Taranis,” Vanessa spits, sounding decidedly less enthusiastic than I feel.
“What?” I repeat, this time to her, even though I’m utterly incapable of breaking Taranis’s gaze. It’s fixed on me, so soft and sweet it feels depraved.
“Taranis is the one trying to steal your contract.”
“What?” I say for the third time. I turn to see her moving up into a standing position, but as soon as she’s upright, the entire elevator car lurches again. She stumbles, knocking the back of her head against the wall.
“Sorry about that,” Taranis says.
“Ssi-bal.” I glance at her feet. Crap on a stick, she’s not even wearing heels. I tsk. “Roland is gonna freak out when he sees your face. Stop hurting yourself.”
“The fuck?” a gravelly voice roars, lacking all the smooth, silky edges of Taranis’s voice. A pink shadow appears behind Taranis. “You hurt Vanessa?”
Claws appear on Taranis’s shoulder, the charcoal gray clashing with the subdued colors of his clothing. Taranis rolls his eyes. “I did no such thing. You’ve been with me the entire time.”
The elevator lurches down another inch. Vanessa falls again. “Stop messing with the elevator!” she groans, rubbing her back where she slammed into the rail.
“Taranis is helping us, Roland, calm down! Without him, we’d still be stuck, slowly going insane.” In my case, rather quickly.
With a few final grumbles, the Wyvern backs off, claws slowly uncurling from Taranis’s shoulder. In the meantime, I amble to my own feet, trying to be graceful because I can still feel his eyes on me.
“Thank you, Ms. Neumann.” Ms. Neumann. He knows my name. Holy shit. “Andstealingis a harsh word, Ms. Theriot. I’m only requesting we share her.” There’s something so deeply salacious in the way he says the wordshare,it leaves my stomach cramping. I should just lie down.
Vanessa doesn’t seem to have the same reaction. She scoffs, impervious. “You don’t share. Not according to any of the contracts you have with the COE.”
“I’m willing to learn new things.”
