The Witch's Fantasy, page 18
Khan chuckled. “How could ya know? We’ve never talked about my ex-lovers. Ya’ve met one, actually.”
I spun in my seat to face him, my eyes wide and my face hot. How could he not have mentioned something before I met an ex of his?
“Yeah, Raphael Orozco. It was a long time ago, and we were more friends than anythin’ else. Then I helped him get his restaurant up and runnin’, and he didn’t have any more time for being anythin’ other than friends.”
“Why didn’t you tell me beforehand?”
“Because fuckin’ him is part of my past,” he said, placing his hand on top of mine. “Bein’ with ya, bein’ more than fuck-buddies, that’s my future. You’re my future, Adelyn Howard.”
The tight muscles of my shoulders loosened at his words. I was glad he said it first, because it seemed that I felt the same way.
I interlocked our fingers. Lifting his hand to my lips, I pressed a kiss to his knuckles. He still looked at the dangerous mountain road in front of us, but his muscles flexed as if he couldn’t wait to do more than kiss me in return.
“You’re my future too, Khan Drogo,” I whispered. “Let’s forget about everything else, even the desire to rip Damian apart, and enjoy this time to ourselves.”
“Sounds like a plan,” he said with a smile.
We rounded the tight corner where we had first met the night of the wreck and were met with the blinding headlights of another large vehicle. That happened to be in our lane, heading straight for us.
I gasped as Khan tore his hand from mine to grasp the steering wheel with both hands, yanking it to one side to swerve away in time.
Only, it wasn’t in time.
Instead of hitting our vehicle straight on, it hit my side of the car, the impact hitting the backseat door.
The screeching of metal on metal and the shattering of glass overwhelmed my other senses as the other vehicle flipped us down the road, rolling us once, then twice.
We came sliding to a stop upside down.
All the blood rushed to my head as I threw my hands against the ceiling to ease the pressure of the seatbelt against my chest.
The world was silent now, except for my fast, shallow breathing. Oh, and a groan from beside me.
It hurt to turn my head, and all my knowledge from med school told me that I should stay as still as possible until help could get there, but I had to see where the groan was coming from.
Or who it was coming from, rather.
Fuck. It was Khan.
He hung limply from his seat. A large laceration on his forehead dripped blood onto the shattered glass that littered the crumpled roof of the SUV.
I tried to reach him, but I couldn’t seem to move my limbs. My vision was going fuzzy around the edges too.
Fuck. The initial shock was wearing off, and I could feel everything that hurt, which was, in fact, everything.
Stay awake. I had to stay awake, alert, until help came.
I had to stay—
33
KHAN
Everything hurt, even trying to open my eyes, I realized, when I finally came to. I forced my eyes open but struggled to keep them so. The only thing keeping me conscious was the question running through my mind: Is Addy alive? Is she okay?
Glancing around me, the first thing I noticed was the bloody, shattered glass above me, or was it below me? Fuck, the SUV had flipped in the accident.
I turned my head, which took a great deal of effort and pain, so I could see had happened to Addy.
Finally, my vision focused on her limp body, still strapped into the passenger seat. Sparkling flecks of glass freckled her skin, trails of blood rolling down her arms that she had propped against the ceiling.
Smart girl.
And she was breathing, though her breaths were short and shallow. All I cared about was that her chest was still rising and falling with each breath. The rest of her injuries could be taken care of later.
She had small cuts all over her arms and legs, and she had a couple of burns as well. She hadn’t regained consciousness yet though, and I wondered how much of the impact she’d absorbed.
I tried to move my arms as my thoughts raced.
We would be in a world of hurt as we healed, but it could have been a lot worse, everything considered. Which made me wonder about the motives behind the trap, because there was no doubt about that in my mind—someone had known we were leaving town and sat in waiting for us.
But they didn’t want us quite dead, just severely injured.
I pushed my hands against the roof, ignoring the glass stinging my skin, trying to find a way out. My car was beyond repair, but I didn’t care about that since I knew Addy was alive, for now at least.
The sound of sirens broke through my panicked thoughts, and I nearly sagged out of my seatbelt in relief. But I wouldn’t be able to catch my breath until they had gotten there to give Addy the help she needed. That might also be due to the fact I’d bruised, if not broken, a rib or two.
Supporting myself with one arm, I reached over to touch Addy’s face, brushing a stray hair away from it. The cut and bruises on her face were enough to make a grown man cry.
I would find whoever was responsible and make them pay dearly.
Though that would have to wait, since the ambulance arrived shortly after I reached for her. I looked up as several paramedics leapt from the ambulance, a gurney in tow. It was strange to watch them moving upside down.
“Hey, over here,” I said, my voice raspy. “Hurry.”
They rushed over, one of them rushing to Addy to inspect her injuries and the other to inspect mine. Their boots crunched on the glass that covered the asphalt. I barely glanced at them again, instead studying Addy and her steady, though weak, breathing.
They worked together to cut the seatbelt and then ease her onto her back so they could pull her from the wreckage. The paramedics helping me did the same, but I kept my eyes locked onto Addy’s prone body.
Once the paramedic had gotten me out and onto the gurney, he tried to get me to turn towards him so he could inspect my eyes for some kind of brain damage, but I waved him off. He tried again, and I practically shoved him away from me. When he went to try a third time, I snapped, turning towards him.
“Hey, I don’t care if my brain is damaged,” I said, glaring at the man. “I only care about the girl and if she’s okay.”
The man smirked at me. “The both of you will be fine, but only if you listen very closely to what I have to say.” The man’s voice was oddly familiar, and alarm bells were screaming in my head. I squinted at the man, trying to place why his face was so familiar.
“Oh, I’m hurt,” the man said, pressing a hand to his chest. “The great Blood Dragon doesn’t recognize the lackey that betrayed him.”
My eyes widened, not just at the name I hadn’t heard since Dahlia’s dad had died, but also at the recognition that hit me harder than the car had. I lurched to push myself up, but Matt was faster—pushing me down with one hand and drawing a gun I didn’t know he had with the other.
“Now, don’t go trying anything stupid,” Matt said. A crazy look sparked in his eyes as he waved the gun around in my face. “My orders are not to kill you, but anything else was fair game if you didn’t cooperate, including your girlfriend over there.”
My heart stopped in my chest, but I hardened my glare.
The fucker had the audacity to laugh in my face.
“You can glare at me all you want, but I know for a fact that you love that girl, though God know why.”
“What do you want from me?” I asked through gritted teeth.
“We’re gonna go for a little drive to meet up with some old friends,” Matt said, his smile widening as he stood up. “Get the witch into the ambulance. Shoot her if Khan gives us any trouble.”
“Don’t you fucking touch her, or I’ll rip you limb from fucking limb.”
Matt held up his hands in feigned innocence. “I promise that we won’t touch her, except to get her to the hospital where she can be checked out or if you give us any trouble. Then all bets are off. Now get your ass off the street and into the ambulance. We’ve got places to be, things to do, people to see.”
Sooner or later, Addy would be safe from these assholes, and I would kill them slow enough that they would see themselves drained of all their blood with their entrails in hand.
But she was in their hands, so I played their fucking game. I pushed myself off the ground, holding back groans as the pain intensified with each movement, and walked myself to the ambulance with Matt holding a gun to my back the entire time.
The ambulance started moving deeper into the city. Though I stayed quiet on the ride, I glared at Matt and imagined new, torturous ways that I would separate his body from his soul.
34
ADELYN
I had thought I died the night I had been driving down the mountain, when Khan and whoever he was chasing ran me off the road.
The pain I felt from that crash was nothing compared to this. Then, my head hurt, and the seatbelt had left a slight bruise. But this…everything ached, and I knew I wasn’t dead. If I were, it wouldn’t hurt quite this badly.
A sharp pain broke through the dull, throbbing all over my body. It was enough to startle me into full consciousness and tear my heavy eyelids open.
I would recognize a hospital anywhere—I was raised in them—but I had no idea how I got there, or why it was so dark in the room, or why I was chained to the hospital bed still fully dressed rather than in a hospital gown.
Wiggling my hand, the chain clinked against the metal of the bed. A man cleared his throat, interrupting my fuzzy thoughts and making me jump out of my skin.
I looked up and saw a man who looked like the stereotype of the henchmen of one of the powerful families that ruled Kell City. His face was sharp and scarred, much like his body, though he was toned with wiry muscle. He wore nice dress pants with a button down tucked in, with the sleeves rolled up to reveal a tattoo sleeve that traveled from his wrist up under his shirt sleeve.
He smirked at me as I took my time trying to get a grip on my surroundings. I wondered if he had anything to do with my being there in the hospital.
“How lovely of you to join us, sweetheart,” he said, reaching forward to grab my cheek, which still stung. “I got tired of waiting for the doctor to bring you around, so I thought a little slap would help do the trick.”
I tore my face from his grip, but that only made him laugh.
“I can see why you like this one,” he said to someone over his shoulder, though his eyes never left mine.
Shivers crawled up my spine every second that his eyes bore into me.
“If you put another fucking hand on her again, I swear to you that you’ll lose it,” Khan said from behind the man.
I didn’t know that he was in the room with me and this creep. I looked around the mobster to find Khan bloodied and bruised, but still in one piece.
He was tied to the hospital chair with his hands behind his back. He wasn’t struggling against his restraints, but the look in his eyes said he would rip through them in a second if I needed him.
I tried to put all the puzzle pieces together. None of this made sense. The last thing I remembered doing was driving out of town to a getaway with Khan, but…then everything goes black.
“Oh God, she’s adorable,” the mobster said with another cruel laugh. “You can actually see the wheels turning in her head as she’s trying to figure everything out. Would you like to tell her, Khan, or should I?” He finally looked away from me to give Khan a victorious smirk.
Khan looked like he was going to rip this man apart, and I wondered why he didn’t. “Addy, this is Matt, the double-crossing low life who infiltrated the family a few months ago to try to find the weakness in Dahlia’s family. The one I was telling you about,” he said through gritted teeth.
“I do have some very powerful friends,” Matt said, turning his attention back to me. “Don’t worry, you’ll meet them soon enough. We just wanted to make sure that you’re healthy enough for my boss to truly enjoy torturing you. He likes them pretty and healthy before he gets his teeth into them.”
“Motherfucker,” Khan said in a dangerously low voice before he struggled against his restraints.
It didn’t take him long to break through the ropes that were holding him, but Matt was faster drawing his gun and pointing it in my face.
“Take one more step and I swear to you that you’ll be scrubbing that pretty nose of hers off the walls.”
Khan froze mid-step, his eyes flickering between me and Matt. His shoulders tensed, but then he relaxed, letting Matt’s lackey grab his arms and tie them behind his back again.
“Would you kindly put that away?” a voice hissed as the door cracked open. “I promised you I would help but blowing someone’s face off is where I draw the line, even if it’s my sister’s face.”
I looked up towards the door to find a young woman in a lab coat that had a face almost identical to mine.
“Thalia,” I said plainly, anger building up in my chest. “What the actual fuck?”
“How could you have something to do with this?” I asked her, yanking against the handcuffs keeping me to the bed. “I know we’re not on good terms, but this is too fucking far.”
My sister simply shrugged. “He paid well, and he promised I wouldn’t have to worry about you ever again,” she said, her face a perfectly cold mask like our mother’s. “I figured that was worth some illegality.”
“Un-fucking-believable,” Khan growled, pulling against the rope. “Who the fuck does this to their own sister?”
Even though Khan was being restrained, Thalia took a minute step away from him and turned her attention to me. She swallowed nervously as she watched Matt tuck the gun in the back band of his pants.
“Now, let’s get this over with please,” Thalia said, her mask slipping ever so slightly.
Matt took a step back and waved my sister forward.
Thalia looked down at the paper chart on the clipboard in her hand. I was sure that chart wouldn’t be going into the system.
“Her labs came back clear of internal bleeding, though I have no idea how she managed that kind of crash,” Thalia said, slipping into doctor mode. “She does have a bruised rib and a bunch of cuts, the nastiest one on her face and arms where she hit the shattered glass.”
“What can you do, right now, to make all of those disappear?” Matt asked, crossing his arms over his chest like a petulant child who wasn’t getting his way.
My sister’s eyes flickered over to mine before returning to Matt. She swallowed nervously again before he spoke. “My family does have healing powers, which we often combine with modern medicine for the best results.”
“Could you heal her with your magic right this second?”
Thalia glanced at me again before nodding.
“Well, get to it,” Matt said, waving him closer. “The longer this takes, the less I’m going to pay you.”
Thalia dropped the clipboard onto the table beside the bed before stepping up to me.
“She is going to be weak after this, especially since I’m going to borrow some of her magic,” Thalia warned.
“Makes no difference to me,” Matt said with a shrug. “If we need to carry her out, so be it.”
My sister nodded and stepped closer to the bed. I tried to move as far away from her as I could but with no luck. The handcuffs held me tight to the bed.
Thalia put her fingertips together in front of her chest and closed her eyes, taking deep, steady breaths. She reached out and touched on my chest lightly, right where my collarbones met my breast plate.
I inhaled sharply as she pulled the magic out of me. It was as painful as getting your teeth removed without anesthesia, but much, much deeper in the soul.
She didn’t take much—just enough to make the healing spell more powerful—but I was already seeing black spots across my vision as I stared up at the ceiling.
Better than looking at my traitorous sister. When my family had cut me off, I didn’t expect her to side with me, but I never would have imagined she hated me so much.
“What is she doing to Adelyn?” I heard Khan ask from the other side of the room, but no one answered him. Instead, the silence grew louder by the second.
I saw the deep purple glow from the corner of my eyes. Her magic looked so much like mine, like our parents’ and other siblings’ magic too, which only drove the knife deeper in my back.
I had gotten so lost in my thoughts that I didn’t notice when Thalia approached me with the healing spell in hand. A tear slipped down one of my cheeks as I kept my gaze firmly on the ceiling.
Matt laughed again. “Oh look, the pretty young thing is crying. I wonder what she’s crying about—her sister’s betrayal, your inability to save her, or the mere fact that she wouldn’t have been in this situation if it wasn’t for you?”
I didn’t get to hear Khan’s response before my sister took the spell and shoved it into my chest. Gasping sharply, all of the air was knocked out of me from the pain.
Putting so much healing into one spell was torture for the patient. Thalia knew that.
I writhed, my vision going dark, but before I lost consciousness again, I looked at my sister. She had tears in her eyes, and I didn’t know if they were for her or for me.
I found I didn’t care as I let myself go into the dark so I wouldn’t have to feel anything anymore.
35
KHAN
My heart wanted to break free from its cage when I saw Adelyn’s unconscious body in the arms of Matt’s lackey.
My fists wanted to pummel someone until their life bled from their eyes.
It was a frustrating place to be, but all I could do was follow Adelyn with Matt at my back, poking a gun into me so hard I was sure it would bruise.
Adelyn’s sister led us down an almost abandoned hallway of the hospital so that no one would see us leaving. We looked suspicious enough that we would draw too much attention if we walked out the main entrance.
