Guilty Pleasures - Laurell K. Hamilton [33]
The wind stopped like someone had turned a switch. The silence was deafening. My breath was coming in short gasps. I had no pulse. I couldn’t feel my heartbeat. All I could hear was my breathing, too loud, too shallow. I finally knew what they meant by breathless with fear.
Zachary’s voice was hoarse and too loud in the silence. I think he was whispering, but it came out like a shout. “Your eyes, they glowed blue!”
I whispered, “Hush, shhh.” I didn’t understand why, but someone must not hear what he had just said, must not know what had happened. My life depended on it. There was no more whispering in my head, but the last bit of advice had been good. Run. Running sounded very good.
The silence was dangerous. It meant the fight was over, and the winner could turn its attention to other things. I did not want to be one of those things.
I stood and offered a hand to Zachary. He looked puzzled but took it, standing. I pulled him up the steps and started running. I had to get away, had to, or I would die in this place, tonight, now. I knew that with a surety that left no room for questions, no time for hesitation. I was running for my life. I would die, if Nikolaos saw me now. I would die.
And I would never know why.
Either Zachary felt the panic too, or he thought I knew something he didn’t, because he ran with me. When one of us stumbled, the other pulled him, or her, to their feet, and we ran. We ran until acid burned the muscles in my legs, and my chest squeezed into a hard ache for lack of air.
This was why I jogged, so I could run like hell when something was chasing me. Thinner thighs was not incentive enough. But this was, running when you had to, running for your life. The silence was heavy, almost touchable. It seemed to flow up the stairs, as if searching for something. The silence chased us as surely as the wind had.
The trouble with running up stairs, if you’ve ever had a knee injury, is that you can’t do it forever. Give me a flat surface, and I can run for hours. Put me on an incline, and my knees give me fits. It started as an ache, but it didn’t take long to become a sharp, grinding pain. Each step began to scream up my leg, until the entire leg pulsed with it.
The knee began to pop as it moved, an audible sound. That was a bad sign. The knee was threatening to go out on me. If it popped out of joint, I’d be crippled here on the stairs with the silence breathing around me. Nikolaos would find me and kill me. Why was I so sure of that? No answer, but I knew it, knew it with every pull of air. I didn’t argue with the feeling.
I slowed and rested on the steps, stretching out the muscles in my legs. Refusing to gasp as the muscles on my bad leg twitched. I would stretch it out and feel better. The pain wouldn’t go away, I’d abused it too much for that, but I would be able to walk without the knee betraying me.
Zachary collapsed on the stairs, obviously not a jogger. His muscles would tighten up if he didn’t keep moving. Maybe he knew that. Maybe he didn’t care.
I stretched my arms against the wall until my shoulders stretched out. Just something familiar to do while I waited for the knee to calm down. Something to do, while I listened for—what? Something heavy and sliding, something ancient, long dead.
Sounds from above, higher up the stairs. I froze pressed against the wall, palms flat against the cool stone. What now? What more? Surely, to God, it would be dawn soon.
Zachary stood and turned to face up the stairs. I stood with my back to the wall, so I could see up as well as down. I didn’t want something sneaking up on me from below while I was looking upstairs. I wanted my gun. It was locked in my trunk, where it was doing me a hell of a lot of good.
We were standing just below a landing, a turn in the stairs. There have been times when I wished I could see around corners. This was