First World(69)

Lucy might have joked that we were ninjas, but Brace actually was. He’d picked up a long, broad sword from somewhere and was moving between the two men with the grace and skill of a trained assassin. They didn’t stand a chance. I must have blacked out for a small second. My lashes fluttered as reality came back. I could see that Brace had dispatched one; he was down in a pool of blood, and the other followed swiftly. Dropping the blood-drenched sword, Brace dived toward me.

Reaching down, he pitched the now semi-conscious man that was still resting on my legs into a pile of boxes.

He dropped down beside me. I continued to gasp, my hand on the knife. Sounds seemed both loud and soft, and I couldn’t concentrate on his words.

“Red ... Red. You are going to be okay. Do you hear me? Just ... don’t you leave me.”

“I don’t want to leave ... Brace, it hurts,” I whimpered to him.

He leaned closer, his lips grazing my cheek. My tears fell unchecked.

“I know it hurts.” His voice caressed me, soothing as it always did. “I will fix this, I promise, Abbs.”

Faces appeared behind him. Lucy dropped to my other side.

“Abbs, no ... no. This can’t be happening.” Tears poured from her wide blue eyes. She clutched my hand tightly. Her distraught expression pleaded with me. “Don’t you dare die, Abigail.” She spluttered through her tears.

“Help her,” Brace, on my other side, roared at Josian. “Do something.”

Lallielle’s face was white as death beside him.

Power crackled around Brace. I thought I could see lightning arcing in the space. His velvety eyes, normally a deep rich brown, were black. This must be the hallucination before death. Brace leaned in, pulling my hand from the knife handle. I gasped once before my screams echoed through the warehouse.





Chapter 13





The days that followed were both annoying and restful.

Lallielle and Josian were yet to let me far from their sight. Apparently that little incident was too close for comfort, even for a Walker. I have little recollection of my trip back and thankfully I was completely out for the knife removal.

With some help from Josian’s energy, my recovery was progressing. The puckered pink scar on my chest ached on and off, but I was alive.



I awoke from my afternoon nap to find Lucy perched on the side of my bed.

“You know, Abbs, I could live in your wardrobe.” She lay back, sighing wistfully. “And the blue stone is back again.”

Rubbing my eyes, I sat up, working through the stiff pain that shot through my chest. Lucy was dressed in an ankle-length, floaty white dress. It was perfect for the balmy weather of First World. She’d already been making up for all our years without a massive walk-in wardrobe and had taken to wearing at least two different sets of clothes a day. The dress, generally thigh-high, looked gorgeous on her blond beauty.

Glancing to my left I could see the laluna nestled in the pillow next to mine. The blue pulsed, and I could feel the warmth it created. No matter how many times Josian took it away, it just kept reappearing. The little Walker world had claimed me.

Shifting it to my side table, I looked around the room. “Where has everyone disappeared to?”

I hadn’t seen anyone all day. Odd for my overprotective parents.

Lucy laughed. “I have no idea. Sam took off with your parents earlier, something about having to meet an old acquaintance.” She shrugged.

“How are things going with Samuel?” I asked her.

Since my revival from the dead, I hadn’t spent any quality time with my brother. He appeared to be avoiding me and, not wanting the emotional drama, I hadn’t bothered to care. I’d had enough of my own emotional breakdowns.

At least the last few nights I hadn’t being dragged awake by my own screams. I continued to dream of my own grisly death, sometimes I was stabbed again and others it was a broken neck, and Olden was always the murderer. Thankfully, the image of the dead guard, my knife in his throat, was fading. Though, my last confrontation with Chrissie never seemed to disappear. Lucy thought all of the girls from the compound had scattered from the warehouse. By the time they got me into a doorway to First World, none had been around.

Lucy again distracted me from my dark thoughts, her lovely smile spreading across her face. It’d been absent too long. I missed my usual snarky friend, but she was getting her groove back.

“Honestly, he’s wonderful ... awesome ... and too sexy for his own good. I would never have made it through my kidnapping without him.”

The scars crisscrossing Lucy’s back had not faded at all; she wouldn’t talk about it much, but I knew she’d been tortured for information, on more than one occasion.