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He rolled his eyes and held out the device in front of him. “Click. They can hear me now. Click.” He demonstrated as he spoke. Asshole. “Now they can’t.”
Good. I was pretty sure he wouldn’t see me coming now. And I had to figure out how to save that device. I had no idea if anyone back in the town was alive, and I had no expectation they’d be looking for me, since they had to be horribly hurt. Despite that, when I got Raine out of there, I wanted our heartbeats very evident. Click.
He can kiss my clickin’ ass.
I smiled internally at my joke.
“Can you boil the water in there for me?” I pointed at the cauldron. “Please?”
He nodded. “Sure.”
With lightning dancing across his fingers, he set fire to the wood he’d brought then placed the cauldron on top of the rocks he’d stacked to support it. I twisted my hands together nervously. “Why did you try to poison that little girl?”
“To see if you could save her.” He shook his head. “I heard you say you were a healer sometimes. I needed to see what you could do, so I’d know you were the one who could save Raine.”
I opened and closed my mouth. “Then why shoot lightning out of the sky at me?”
“Well, then I wanted to see if you could save him, the man you were with. I knew he’d save you, but could you save him?”
“So this whole thing, this whole lunatic plan, was to see what I could do? Why didn’t you just ask me?”
He shook his head. “People lie.”
“And if I’d failed, people would also have died.” Did he not see the problem? The absurdity of testing me by risking lives?
He shrugged. “Most humans are expendable.”
I took a deep breath. Arguing with him wasn’t going to get me anywhere. Instead, I waited for the water to boil. It always seemed to take such a long time when I wanted it quickly, and this wasn’t different. Beneath the pot, the fire raged. He’d taken no care to see that it stayed small, and I appreciated it.
Finally, after what seemed like a year, the water boiled.
“Can you carry that in for me?” I was about to scald the crap out of my hands, and I might be permanently damaged going forward. Some things are worth the pain.
9
BURN MARKS
I couldn’t successfully shove a Super Soldier, not with him at full power, and I wasn’t going to pretend that I could. Instead, I launched myself at the bottom of the very hot pot. With a burst of motion, I pushed it over. He was surprised, which was the only reason it worked. In his abundance of ego, he actually thought I would just wait for him to kill me while I took care of Raine.
Knowing it would hurt and experiencing it were two different things, though. The pain wasn’t delayed, and the agony hit, sudden and intense, but I didn’t hesitate. I pushed the water right onto his body. The boiling water scalded him, immediately scorching his skin pink. He cried out, and my lips curled in sick pleasure. Super Soldiers could burn, too.
Now, to get him into the flames themselves. I have to…
I never got the chance to try. One second, I was alone, and the next, I absolutely wasn’t. Crew appeared, a blur of light and motion my eyes couldn’t entirely track. He grabbed onto Lightning Man and shoved him into the fire, face first. He wasn’t alone, as another Super Soldier helped to pin Lightning Man in the flames. The two of them—the stranger and Crew—held him down as he fought to free himself.
Backing up to give them room, I couldn’t get over how quiet the area around us seemed to be as they burned him to death. He didn’t cry out, and at some point, he even stopped fighting them. He went limp, and they dropped him on the ground. That was when the man I didn’t know lifted what looked like some kind of sword and took off Lightning’s head. It rolled to the side, fully burning in the fire.
They both panted, and so did I. Shock, I thought, noticing my whole body trembled.
Crew swung around to regard me. He looked incredibly disheveled, covered in dirt, and smudged with mud. The man with him did, too.
I don’t know what he saw on my face, but he was next to me in a second, cupping my cheeks. “Did he hurt you?”
I shook my head, clutching at his hands with my own just for something to hold. “Not me. No. He needed me to deliver his baby. There is a woman in that cabin. She’s been his prisoner—he hurt her, raped her, and she’s just had his baby.”
“That fucker,” the stranger said in a low voice just as Raine rushed outside, the baby in her arms.
“Raven,” she threw an arm around me. “You’re okay. I saw what you did. That was so brave. I wasn’t brave, not once. What you did…”
