Free In the Dark by Melody Taylor Page A

you.”
    “Yeah,
well, I’m questioning that,” I snapped, pointing.
“You don’t just go around scaring the daylights out of
people or forcing them to sit in the rain or making them feed you!”
    “Why not?”
    My mouth
flapped. I sputtered a few incoherent starts at a sentence, then
stopped. He waited patiently for me to answer. I didn’t have
one. Or rather, I didn’t have words for what was obvious to me.
    “You just
don’t!” I finally came up with.
    He smiled, a
nasty, skin-deep fake smile. It seemed angry. “ You just
don’t. I will do as I please.”
    “Does
being a monster please you?” I snapped out before I could edit.
    It hit him. I
could see it. His eyes turned light, sky blue, then dark and
dangerous, suddenly, like he’d been rocked back on his heels.
He stared me down, eyes boring into mine, wordless.
    I stared back,
wondering what he would do to me. Because I knew. Something was
terribly, terribly wrong with him. Inside. And he knew it – he
was in pain. I suddenly felt sorry for him. And here I stood, pushing
his buttons. I might as well have asked him to lop my stupid head off
for me.
    But he won’t.
    He stared at me,
eyes hard. “Get in the car.”
    I started
shaking again, scared – afraid of him, afraid of what he must
feel to make him glare at me like that.
    He didn’t
move. Staring me into submission. I swallowed once, then turned and
went to the passenger side and got in. He followed suit, not looking
at me now that he had me cowed. Dead silent, he pulled into traffic
and headed for his apartment. He wasn’t going to hurt me, just
stare me into obedience. I felt kind of bad for snapping, so I
supposed a little submission on my part was a fair trade.
    Halfway there, I
reached out and touched his arm. When he glanced my way, I met his
eyes. “I’m sorry.”
    His eyes stayed
flat while he looked at me. Then he lowered his eyes to my hand and
brought them back up to my face. I ducked my head and took my hand
back. He didn’t say anything, just went back to driving. I
didn’t press.

P ENTHOUSE
    T he
drive home was . . . tense. Sebastian refused to look at Ian again,
using his temporary deafness. He did not want to know what she had to
say. He pulled into the parking garage, left the Vector and strode
for the elevator. Part of him hoped he could leave her behind. He had
taken her in only from boredom and curiosity, and she had pushed the
limits of what he wanted to endure from her. She stayed with him,
though she fidgeted in the elevator car.
    When the doors
opened, he left her in the living room. She did not try to follow
him. He went down the hall to the practice room and locked the door
behind himself. Coat off, sword hung on its rack, he threw himself at
the uneven bars, hauling himself up in one hard movement. Arms stiff,
he held himself upright, then swung down and around to catch the
higher of the two.
    He couldn’t
hear if Ian moved in the apartment. The thunder had seen to that. If
he had been paying attention, not caught up in the hunt, he would
never have strained his ears. Of course the thunder would deafen him
if he did, he knew that. He berated himself for carelessness.
    Monster, Ian had
called him. Asked him, why do you do that?
    He swung around
and held himself upright on the higher bar, then slowly lowered his
body and raised it again, to keep from punching something. What was
the use? He’d been gone for decades, hoping his absence might
in some mystical way clear his mind and show him where he belonged.
All he had to show for his time were some vague feelings of sympathy
for a strange girl and a handful of used up memories of a long-ago
mortal life.
    His eyes
clenched shut.
    His mortal life.
    It pained him to
think of that time, though he no longer knew why.
    Slowly, and
almost unnoticed over the decades and centuries, he had forgotten.
He’d had a life. Family. Friends. He’d been taken from
them violently, against his will. But these were cold facts that