Chimera

Fifteen Dead Man’s Hand

The emergency alert tumbled me out of bed and into my uniform before I really understood what was going on. It was the Alpha leaders alert, which meant it wasn’t going to everyone’s room. I blinked bleary eyes at the clock on the wall—not quite six in the morning.

Way to start off the day.

In the hallway, I crashed into Thatcher, who grabbed my elbow before I could fall over onto my ass. “I can see you’re not a morning person,” he said with way too much energy for this hour.

“Never claimed I was,” I snapped. Guess he got the alert, too.

A few doors down, Ethan and Aaron came out of their room. Sebastian appeared across the hall, rubbing at his own eyes. We made our way to the stairs, no one really talking. I spared a glance at Aaron, who didn’t seem overly stressed. So he still didn’t know about Double Trouble. Annoyance bubbled up inside me, as well as anger on his behalf. He deserved to know, but I’d promised Teresa to keep my mouth shut.

Teresa, Gage, and Marco were already at the conference table. The only person missing was Lacey, but she was probably still in Annapolis with her team. As we took seats around the table, another person entered who made me do a double-take. Bethany glanced around until she spotted me and Thatcher. She came over and plopped down next to him, exhaustion pressing down on her like an invisible weight.

If she was here . . .

“Fifteen minutes ago we received an anonymous email,” Teresa said, her booming voice getting everyone’s attention. She stood by the two main monitors. Marco was already at work at the computer, getting something ready for her. “The subject line read Lesson One. The only content to the email was an attached video file.” She swallowed. “After we were positive it wasn’t a virus or a worm, we watched it.”

“What is it?” Ethan asked.

Gage, who was sitting in the chair nearest Teresa, looked like he was going to be sick. “A message.”

“To who?”

“All of us.” He glanced down the table. “But especially to Bethany and Landon.”

Bethany jerked in her chair. “Me? Trying to kill us on the highway yesterday wasn’t enough?”

“Not for these people,” Teresa said with a fierce edge to her voice. She nodded to Marco.

The main screen flashed to life with the paused image of two blurry figures against a dark background. The scene jerked into motion, and the two figures came into focus. A teenage boy and girl, chained up by their wrists, somewhere dark—a large basement, a warehouse, an auditorium. Their feet didn’t touch the floor, and both wore a collar similar to Ethan’s. They were alive, not gagged or otherwise bound, but they weren’t moving much, either.

Probably drugged.

“Say your names, for the record, please,” a distorted, off-camera voice said. It sounded male, but could easily be a filtered female voice.

“Louis Becker,” the boy said.

The girl said, “Summer Jones.”

“Why are you both here today?”

The camera moved closer to the pair, giving us a clearer view of their faces. They were definitely young, and both of them were crying. Summer had glowing purple eyes, and Louis’s hair was the color of my skin.

“We’re here to send a message to the traitors,” Summer said in a voice choked with tears. Louis finished with, “We’re here to die.”

Several chairs squeaked. People murmured. I wasn’t the only one who wanted to somehow reach through the screen and save those two kids. But this wasn’t live. Whatever happened to them had happened already. Beneath the table, Thatcher’s hand found mine and squeezed hard.

“Tell them,” the filtered voice said.

Summer looked right at the camera, anger mixing with her grief. “You betrayed Uncle and everything we’ve worked for. We’ll all be punished now, because of you. It’s all your fault.”

Bethany made a soft, choked sound. Thatcher leaned closer and put his arm around her shoulders, without ever letting go of my hand. My chest ached and my eyes stung. We were watching a nightmare unfold, and my only small consolation was that Landon didn’t have to see this.

In the foreground of the screen, a hand came into view. A hand holding a familiar black box—the collar trigger.

I closed my eyes. Tears spilled down my cheeks, and I covered my eyes with my free hand. I couldn’t watch it. But I heard it. The buzz of electricity, the short screams that turned into gurgles. The clank of chains. Then silence from the screen, while gasps and soft sounds of disbelief and anger erupted around the conference table. Bethany dissolved into hysterical sobs. Thatcher let go of my hand as she threw herself at him, and he held her while she cried. I glanced up at the screen, at the pair of swinging bodies, and I swallowed hard against the sudden urge to vomit.

“They were just fucking kids,” Ethan said.

“I’ll make this easy for you,” the filtered voice on-screen said. “The bodies are closer than you think. You may even hear the lion’s roar.”

The screen went blank, but the images of those two dead kids were burned into my brain. I glanced around the table, catching the same horror and rage on everyone’s face. The need to find these other kids before Uncle executed them, too.

“ ‘You may even hear the lion’s roar,’ ” Aaron said. “What does that mean? A zoo? A place with a lion statue?”

“Perhaps,” Marco replied. “I am already searching for potential matches within a two-hundred-mile radius.”

“He wants us to find the bodies,” Teresa said, as furious as I’d seen her in a long time. Her eyes flashed bright with tears, but her jaw was tight, her shoulders back. “Which means we could very well walk into a trap.”

“He’d have to know we’re expecting that, though,” Aaron said. “No one’s going to walk in blindly.”

“No. We’ll be ready for anything.”

“That floor looked like wood,” Ethan said. “Marco, can you zoom in on just the floor?”

“Of course,” Marco replied.

He did, and Ethan was right. The floor was old, unpolished, and badly in need of repair, but it was definitely wood of some kind. It kind of reminded me of a gymnasium floor.

Ethan slapped his palm against the table, which made most of us jump. “Lions,” he said. “I know where they are.”

The mascot for Lincoln High School in Jersey City was the Lions. Granted, the school hadn’t functioned as anything except a place for transients to roost for the last ten years or so, but Ethan’s prediction turned out to be correct. We found the bodies of Summer Jones and Louis Becker hanging from the rafters of the old gymnasium, near the three-point line. Gage and Panther-Marco sniffed the room for clues while Ethan, Sebastian, and I cut the bodies down. Teresa watched everything with a frozen horror that worried me.

The bodies weren’t stiff, so they hadn’t been dead long. Calling the police felt wrong, somehow, and yet taking them back to HQ with us seemed even worse. We were waiting for Teresa to make the decision. Involving the police now meant explaining the video, which could be a problem for Bethany and Landon’s current anonymity.

“Huh,” Ethan said after a few minutes.

“Huh, what?” I asked.

“Nothing has exploded, shifted, or otherwise attacked us since we’ve been here.”

“Doesn’t mean it still isn’t a trap.”

“If it’s a trap, it’s taking its sweet time to spring.”

Fifty feet across the gym, Gage and Marco were sniffing around in a shadowed area, probably trying to pick up any clues left behind by the Overseer—or whoever the executioner had been. Panther-Marco lifted his head and growled, a low sound that carried across the distance. Teresa’s head snapped toward them. Gage froze, listening.

Oh, Windy, I think your trap’s about to—

“Get down!” Gage shouted.

The gymnasium roof exploded, raining noise, glass, and wood debris on top of us. We scattered. The gym had no actual cover besides a single section of open bleachers on the opposite side. Sunlight streamed down from the bus-sized hole in the roof, creating a giant dust moat illuminating the debris-covered bodies. A quick glance around told me everyone was on their feet.

Teresa’s hands glowed purple as she brought her power to the forefront. I reached for my holstered Coltson, glad I’d thought to grab it before we left. Sebastian’s cheeks hollowed as he pursed his lips and did whatever he did while preparing to spit acid at a target.

Two things happened simultaneously. The gym doors closest to Gage and Marco swung open, spilling in more exterior light and illuminating the shapes of four people. Two more shapes appeared in the roof’s giant hole, one of them flapping a pair of big, feathery wings and holding the second person in his arms.

“Hold,” Teresa said, before any of us could make a move. They’d attacked the roof, not us.

The flying pair (both boys) descended in a great gust of wind, stirring up enough dust to make me want to cough. The quartet (two boys and two girls) walked carefully around Marco and Gage, making a wide circle away from us to join their pals near the wreckage they’d created. No one spoke. Even in the dimness, I could tell the six newcomers were young, period. Teens or early twenties, and they all looked equal parts terrified and angry. The boy with the yellow-feathered wings was the only one who outwardly appeared Meta, but I knew better than to assume any of them were powerless.

A girl stepped away from the sextet. She wore black jeans and a black T-shirt—a uniform shared by the other five teens. Her black hair was shorn short, accentuating her stunning cheekbones and coffee-colored skin. As she moved into the light cast from the hole in the ceiling, her eyes sparkled like they were coated in white glitter. She crouched next to Louis’s body and touched his cheek with her knuckles.

One of the boys behind her made a grief-stricken sound. They all seemed caught somewhere between wanting to burst into tears and needing to punch something. I could definitely sympathize, having been there myself way too many times.

Our own group had reassembled on the other side of the bodies, gathered in a U-shape behind Teresa. We were evenly matched, six to six, but with no idea of their powers . . . well, this little standoff could go down a lot of ways, and I knew Teresa was hoping for peacefully.

“I’m so sorry,” Teresa said.

Sparkle Eyes stood up. She was taller than Teresa, and she had a lot more anger behind her right now. “You didn’t do this, Trance,” she replied. “Our fight isn’t with you.” Her voice had a Southern lilt to it.

“Your fight is with the man who ordered these children executed.”

“Our fight is with the traitors who made this happen. We’ve all been abandoned by Uncle now, thanks to them.”

“We can protect you.”

She laughed, a sound that turned into a sneer as she pointed at former Bane Sebastian. “You made your own choices by taking in our enemies, so no, thank you.”

“The enemy of my enemy is my friend,” Sebastian said. He came a few steps closer, hands by his side in a gesture of peace. “Anyone who would kill a child so coldly is the enemy of us all.”

Sparkle Eyes glared at him.

A boy with brown hair and a long scar across his left cheek stepped up next to Sparkle Eyes. “Let’s go, Sasha,” he said with a similar accent. “In case this is some kind of trap.”

“I have a feeling the trap was all of us meeting in anger,” Teresa said, “and this turning into a massacre.”

He flexed his right hand, which made an odd, crackling noise. “There’s still time, lady.”

“Stop it, Tate,” Sasha/Sparkle Eyes said.

Sasha and Tate. We’d found two of the kids that Mai Lynn told us about. Tate, the son of Peter Keene; and Sasha, daughter of Dana Parks. Andrew McTaggert’s half-sister. I glanced at Ethan, who was watching Sasha intently. They weren’t blood-related, but they shared a half-brother, and I knew Ethan well enough to know that meant something to him.

“I know you don’t want to hear this,” Teresa said, “but Uncle isn’t the savior you want to believe he is. He’s lied to you your entire lives.”

“He saved us,” Tate said.

“One of the boys we rescued from Uncle? Landon? The people Uncle works for murdered his mother and stole him. They fed Landon lies about his father. About all of the Metas imprisoned in Manhattan. And they made his father believe his son was dead.”

“Landon turned against Uncle,” Sasha said. “So did Bethany. They’re traitors. It’s their fault Uncle exiled us. We’ll be his enemies if we side with you.”

“Maybe Uncle will forgive us if we kill the people protecting the traitors,” Tate said, giving our group a significant look. “We should have killed them when we got here.”

The odds of that being Uncle’s intention were pretty high. Six powerful, pissed-off teenagers hell-bent on revenge, not only for the deaths of two of their own, but also for losing the protection of the man who’d raised them? We could have been in serious pain right now if Sasha had been a little less in control. If she’d been as volatile as Bethany.

Sasha looked at Tate, then at us, like she was actually considering his suggestion.

Bring it on, sister.

“Do you really want to be our enemies?” Ethan asked. “To go off on your own, the six of you? When you have family out there who will help you? When we want to help you?”

Sasha snorted. “What family? The Banes who murdered children? Who murdered your friends and parents?”

At least they knew their War history. Sort of.

“Your mother, Sasha?” Ethan said. “She had another son. You have a half-brother.”

She stared at him, then narrowed her eyes. “You’re lying.”

“I’m not. And I think he’d like to meet you one day.”

“You’re not buying any of this, are you?” asked the boy with the yellow wings. His longish hair matched the feather color, and even the shape of his face was somewhat birdlike. “We decided as a group we wouldn’t go against Uncle. That we’d find a way to fix this.”

“Of course I don’t buy it,” Sasha snapped back.

Big fat liar.

“Please consider my offer,” Teresa said. “We’ll do our best to protect you. Some of you do still have living family who would love to see you.”

“No.” Sasha stepped back, closing ranks with her group. “Don’t ask again.”

“So what now?” Tate asked. “We can’t just walk out of here. What if Uncle thinks we’ve made a truce with these people? He might think we’re working with them, or that we talked.” His hands crackled again. Kid was spoiling for a fight.

“We’ll deal if that happens.”

“Sash—”

“No, Tate. Let’s go.”

The gymnasium doors burst open, startling everyone in the room. We turned as a group, and the air sparked with energy as instinct brought our powers to the forefront. Two uniformed police officers walked in, firearms drawn, balanced across their flashlights. They stared at us openmouthed, probably trying to understand exactly what they were seeing.

“Nobody move,” Cop One said.

“Officer—” Teresa started to speak, to move forward, and she froze when Cop Two aimed right at her.

“Nobody move, he said,” Cop Two said. “We got an anonymous report about two dead bodies at this location.” He looked down and his eyes widened.

Uncle. Uncle had to be the one who made the anonymous call. He’d set us all up.

Cop One tucked his flashlight under his arm, then reached for his radio.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” said the tall boy who’d flown down with Wings. His hands sparkled with blue light.

Cop One paused, then squeezed the radio control. “Central, this is—”

The boy flung his right hand at Cop One. A haze of blue energy, like a baby firework, zoomed across the gym and slammed into Cop One’s radio with amazing precision. Cop One squawked in surprise and squeezed the trigger. Safety off.

My left forearm burned. Something forced me down onto my knees.

Chaos erupted around me. The kids went for the cops. We swooped in to protect the human officers. Guess what happened next.

The fight we were trying so hard to avoid.

Wings swooshed up toward the ceiling, and a big purple orb from Teresa dropped him fast. He hit the floor with a thud that made his friends shout. The cops got off two more shots before a spinning whirlwind knocked them both around like human bowling pins. The whirlwind stopped briefly, revealing Sasha as the source.

Someone grabbed me from behind and pulled me closer to the pile of wreckage from the roof. Took me a second to figure out it was Gage. He ripped off part of his shirt and tied it around my forearm.

“Fuck!” I yelped as white fire raced down my arm. Then I looked at my arm and saw the blood. “I got shot?”

“Yeah, you did,” Gage replied. “Stay put.”

Panther-Marco growled from the other side of the wreckage covering us from the fight. Something exploded. An unfamiliar male voice screamed in pain and anger.

“Try not to hurt them!” Teresa shouted.

Yeah, good luck with that.

I didn’t hear Sasha issuing similar orders.

Speaking of whom, Sasha’s whirlwind spun high into the air above us, swirling the dust and debris. Three of Teresa’s orbs missed, smashing chunks out of the gym walls. More air turned, and then Ethan sailed through the air. He slammed bodily into the whirlwind. Ethan and Sasha both hit the far gym wall, then tumbled to the ground. A blue firework hit him in the back, and Ethan screamed.

I tried to watch the fight, but pain kept blurring my vision. Nowhere near as horrific as those burns had been, but bad. I’d lost my Coltson, too, on the floor about ten feet away. Gage moved off to join the fight, and I felt, as usual, useless to my team. Deadweight.

Ignoring Gage’s order to stay put, I scooted toward my gun.

Something streaked across my line of sight that shocked me into stopping. One of the kids had shrunk down to a perfectly proportioned twelve-inch-tall version of himself, and he ran like a very large rat through the fray, unnoticed. He raced between Teresa’s legs, then suddenly grew into a massive, twelve-foot-tall version of himself. The size shift knocked Teresa backward onto her ass. She blasted him with an orb that hit right in his gut—where her head had been a moment ago—and he crashed backward with a thud that shook the floor.

The other girl from their group was down, too far away for me to see where she was hurt, but her stomach was definitely bleeding. Had she been shot by one of those stray bullets? Tate crouched near her, protective. Guarding.

Teresa was trying to tell everyone to stop, even while coordinating us in a defensive way. I admired her determination, but it was a losing battle. The kids were on the offense in a major way.

Firework Boy sent a couple of his blue babies right at Teresa, who threw up a haze of orb energy that worked as a force field. They bounced off and one hit the Incredible Growing Boy. The other firework slammed into Sebastian, which knocked him into Gage, and the pair went tumbling against a pile of debris.

My hand closed around the grip of my Coltson.

Wings was back on his feet, creeping toward Teresa from her blind side. She was concentrating on Firework Boy, who was doing an excellent job of distracting her by tossing twist after twist of blue at her shield. Panther-Marco leapt from the pile of debris and crashed into Wings with a snarl.

Gage climbed out of the debris without Sebastian, only to be knocked down again by Sasha as she whirled past him.

I couldn’t use my left arm to steady my aim so I did my best. Sasha moved fast, almost too fast to track her, and she was erratic as hell. But she was hurting my friends, and she seemed to be in charge of the Junior Meta Squad, so taking her out felt like a good plan. Ethan hit the air again, and then he and Sasha created a blast of wind that knocked Teresa and Firework Boy flat.

The Incredible Growing Boy had shrunk again, and I couldn’t see him. Marco seemed to have Wings well in paw, holding him by the neck with his powerful cat jaws.

Ethan swooped low to the floor. The Incredible Growing Boy shot up in size fast enough to grab Ethan by the throat. I aimed at IGB’s arm and squeezed the trigger. Blood spouted from his wrist. He screamed and dropped Ethan.

The shot caught everyone’s attention, including Sasha’s. Her whirlwind spun at me. I changed my aim. Sasha yelped and hit the gym floor in a heap. Behind her, Teresa was on her knees, hands out in our direction.

Nice shot, T.

“Retreat, now!” Teresa shouted.

Ethan and Gage dragged Sebastian out of the pile of rubble. Teresa helped me up, and we ran together, with Marco by our side. Retreating felt wrong, and we ducked a few more blue fireworks on the way out. The Junior Meta Squad didn’t chase us, though, once we were through the gym doors and heading for the outside of the building.

The police car was still parked next to our two Sports, but the cops were nowhere to be seen. I hadn’t seen them inside during or at the end of the fight, either. Probably hiding in the janitor’s closet, the wimps.

The thought made me giggle, which earned me a concerned look from Teresa. She stuffed me into the backseat of one of the Sports, next to Sebastian. He had a wide cut on his collarbone and a large knot on his temple. My arm was bleeding all over the place—another ruined uniform.

Marco shifted back to a man and drove our Sport, putting Teresa, Gage and Ethan in the other vehicle. None of us talked on the race back to Governors Island. We were under orders to report directly to the infirmary. I wasn’t about to argue. Every movement sent stabbing pains up and down my arm, and I was having a hard time not bursting into tears from the agony. I’d been stretched, burned, and beaten, but this was my first bullet wound.

God, my life sucks sometimes.

It felt like half the people at HQ were waiting when the puddle-jumper landed, including Dr. Kinsey and Jessica Lam. They hustled me and Sebastian off to the infirmary, while Teresa and Gage tried to explain to Aaron, Alexia, and a dozen others what was going on without really telling them anything.

The bullet had gone clean through my arm without hitting bone, which meant I got stitches, antibiotics, and a nice, thick bandage. And another scar for my personal collection. Not that this one would be very visible through the preexisting burn scars. After Dr. Kinsey left my cubicle, I stared at my arm while I waited for the painkillers to kick in. The best part of my long-sleeved uniform was that it hid those scars, but Kinsey had cut off the entire left sleeve before stitching me up. I couldn’t hide the scars from myself or anyone else.

The curtain around my cubicle parted and Thatcher appeared. He stared at me with wide, concerned eyes, his mouth open in shock. “I was with Landon, I just heard,” he said, a little breathless.

I blinked at him, curious why he was fuzzy around the edges. “You should be with him.”

“Jessica said you were shot.” He sounded like saying the words physically pained him. It was . . . sweet.

“I was shot.” I pointed at my bandage with my good arm. “See?”

He came inside the curtain and stopped in front of the table I sat on. He wasn’t as fuzzy close up.

“I’m fuzzy?” he asked.

“Did I say that out loud?”

“You did.”

“I got the good drugs.”

“Ah. Are you in a lot of pain?”

“Not like before. Everything’s a little floaty right now.”

“I’m sorry you were hurt, Renee.”

“Isn’t your fault. The Junior Meta Squad got feisty when the cops showed up.”

“Junior Meta Squad?”

“Long story. Those kids have pretty cool powers, by the way. One of them got shot, too. Fucking cops.”

“A police officer shot you?” His expression went dark, fierce, and protective in a way that made my heart flutter.

“By accident. I think.” The details were getting hard to recall. “How’s Sebastian?”

“I overheard Dr. Kinsey mention a concussion.”

“Bummer.”

He cupped my chin in the palm of his hand, a sweet gesture that sent warmth flooding through my insides. He looked at me with such tenderness that I nearly kissed him right then and there, just to see what it was like. “I wish I’d been there to protect you,” he said softly.

“You probably couldn’t have. It was a wild shot.”

“Not from the bullet.” He sighed. “Well, yes, from the bullet, but from all of it. The entire fight. It sounds ridiculous, I know, when we aren’t even friends.”

“We’re friends.” He’d brought me a sandwich, twice. We had pleasant conversations. How could he not think we were friends?

“I thought I was just a Bane you had to babysit until the job was done.”

He was really challenging me on this when my brain was mushy with painkillers?

“Sorry,” he said.

“I said that out loud, didn’t I?”

“Yes, you did.” He shifted a little closer, until he seemed to consume my entire world with his size and sheer presence. “You’ve gotten under my skin, Renee. I don’t even know how that happened.”

“I’m sorry.” I didn’t even know what I was apologizing for, only that he looked so sad that it felt like the right thing to say.

“Don’t be sorry. It’s been so long since I’ve felt anything for a woman that I’m being selfish.”

He feels something for me. Oh, shit.

As much as I wanted to be scared, I couldn’t get there. All I felt through the funny fog of drugs was happy. Happy that someone saw me again.

The curtain jangled, and Thatcher pulled back. The loss of his warm touch made me flinch. Teresa stepped inside the cubicle. She gave Thatcher a curious look, then fixed her purple gaze on me.

“How do you feel?” she asked.

“Floaty,” I replied. “How’d we do?”

“Sebastian has a slight concussion, bruised ribs, and needs some stitches on his chest. Everyone else has bumps and bruises.”

“How about you?”

She shrugged. “Like I said, bumps and bruises.”

“Bullshit, they pointed a gun at you.”

Her eyes narrowed briefly. “I’m fine.” She didn’t react well to guns, not since she was shot back in June. And she was getting really good at hiding her emotions from the rest of us. She didn’t want us to see her upset.

“You’re not fine.”

“I’m fine for now, okay? I have to deal with the Jersey police before I can deal with myself.”

“Have they already called?” Thatcher asked.

“Several times.” Teresa pinched the bridge of her nose. “Explaining this without throwing Landon and Bethany under the bus won’t be easy, but we’ll manage. I don’t want to turn those other kids against us any more than they already are.”

“Angry teenagers with grudges are scary,” I said.

Hey, it sounded profound in my head.

“And they’re unpredictable,” Teresa said. “If Uncle hadn’t called the police in and forced a fight, we might have been able to reason with them, maybe even bring them in with us.” Some of her veneer cracked, and her genuine anguish at failing to get those kids on our side flashed through.

“What can I do, T?” I asked automatically.

She smoothed my hair back from my forehead in a motherly gesture. “Go upstairs and rest. Please?”

“Okay.”

“Make sure she does?” she said to Thatcher.

He nodded. “Certainly.”

Teresa left the cubicle. Thatcher cleared my leaving with Dr. Kinsey, then led me out of the infirmary. The world wasn’t quite solid or on an even keel, so I ended up leaning pretty heavily on Thatcher as we went upstairs.

It didn’t really occur to me that he was in my room until he was helping me unzip my bloody uniform. The gentle attention felt nice. He got the sleeve off my right arm, then slipped out of the room with a promise to be right back. I yanked the skintight material off and left it in a heap on the floor. The tank top and shorts I usually slept in did shit to hide the worst of my scars, but I didn’t care. My arm was throbbing by the time I sat back down on the bed.

Thatcher returned with two damp washcloths, which he used to wipe my face and neck free of dirt and blood. I let him, unable to fight or protest that I could do it myself, because I couldn’t. I didn’t mind letting him help me. I watched his eyes as he cleaned me up, curious. Not once did I see shock or disgust—only concern. And something else, something I couldn’t define.

Something that, if I did define it, would scare the shit out of me.

He tucked me into bed. It felt amazing to lie down and relax, even though my arm was alive with a heavy, persistent throb. Thatcher knelt by the bed, his head so close to mine I could smell his soap.

“Thank you,” I said.

“You’re very welcome. Get some rest, Renee.”

“M’kay.”

I closed my eyes and let the drugs carry me off. But I didn’t go far enough to miss the light brush of lips against my forehead, or the softly whispered, “I don’t want to hurt you.”