Dangerous Exile by K.J. Jackson
{ Chapter 29 }
His father on the floor.
His mother dropping in front of him, her bloody head half on the brick hearth.
Their bodies in front of him. Cold. Lifeless. But so fresh into death, the smallest hope remained.
Until it didn’t.
Their bodies shells. Their spirits gone to ghosts.
Ghosts.
Ness.
Ness.
Ness spitting out something brown all over the table.
Ness wasn’t a ghost. She was gagging and tied up.
And Lady Washburn wasn’t a ghost. A bastard demon—blood and skin the only thing making her fit to walk the earth. A demon holding a pistol.
Every muscle in his body burst alive. But he held still, not letting the evil woman see.
“What the hell are you doing, Dowager?” His words came cold, calculating, as he kept his focus on Lady Washburn. On the cocked pistol in her hand aimed at his chest. He only needed three steps forward. Three running steps and he could yank the gun from her hand.
An eerie chuckle bubbled up from the dowager’s throat. “I am keeping Mrs. Docherty here for her father. He can collect the rubbish of this whore. She will do you no good, Conner.”
“My name is not Conner.”
“You’re right. You’re right.” Another high-pitched chuckle escaped her, her words manic. “What was I thinking? To save lives? Mercy? What was I thinking? I need to just take care of you both. My boy doesn’t have the stomach for it. Doesn’t even know how much I’ve done for him.”
Her right hand holding the pistol lifted, her forefinger twitching, then pulling the trigger at the exact moment a teacup flew through the air, hitting her hand.
An explosion of sound and instant pain sent Talen flying backward.
He slammed into the back of the door.
A full second—a lifetime—passed before he realized the pain was only in his upper arm. Not his chest.
Shit.
Ness was flying through the air—her hands and feet tied—diving head first at the dowager. She hit her at the waist, ramming the dowager into the brick side of the fireplace. And then Ness fell, her feet tangled and of no help.
Flat onto the floor.
The dowager’s arms flew wide for balance against the fireplace and her right hand clanked onto the fire poker.
Before Talen could blink, the dowager grabbed the fire poker, swinging it high into the air.
He froze.
The same fire poker he’d watched swing down at his mother, sending her to screams.
To pain.
To death.
His mother’s bloody temple. The life leaving her. He couldn’t move. Couldn’t save her.
The dowager swung down, the curved spike at the end of the poker aimed at Ness’s temple. Just before iron met flesh, Ness rolled, dodging the spike. But it forced her body up against the bench, cornered.
A screech from the bowels of Hades ripped from the dowager’s mouth and she pitched the poker upward, poised for another blow.
Ness on the floor. Just like his mother. Death looming above her. Death coming down swiftly at her head.
Frozen.
But no. His limbs were moving. Moving on their own. Not frozen. Lunging across the room, his arms flailing out, hitting iron in mid-swing, tackling the wretched woman.
Another scream pierced his ear and he had the dowager on the floor, holding her down by her neck as he grabbed her wrist and slammed it hard onto the floor, the bones in her wrist snapping as the iron poker flew from her grip.
Such a weak woman.
Yet such destruction she’d caused.
He grabbed the top of her scalp, his fingers curling into her tightly pulled back grey hair, and he lifted her head, then cracked it down onto the stone floor.
Not enough to kill her. More than enough to send her to tormented unconsciousness.
How he didn’t kill her, he wasn’t sure.
Scrambling off her inert body, he crawled to Ness, his fingers furious as he tried to calm them enough to untie the knots at her feet and then her wrists.
She was free. Free and looking up at him, wonder in her eyes.
His hands slid under her, crushing her body into his.
He needed to feel her breath. Feel her heartbeat. Feel her hands moving along his back, his torso, his arms.
“You didn’t freeze.” The choked words vibrated, muffled into his chest. She wedged her head free from his hold, looking up at him. “You didn’t freeze. You saved me.”
His right hand lifted, capturing the side of her face, needing her skin, her eyes on him. “No, Ness, you saved me. A thousand times over.”
This. This one second in his life—a new defining moment.
He didn’t freeze. Didn’t fail. Not when his whole life, when his whole world, his whole future, needed him most.
He couldn’t save his mother, but he saved Ness.
And Ness was everything.
Seconds count.