Shadowed Ground Read Online Free

someone really, really wants to hurt you.” She was acutely aware of the jeans-clad legs tangled with her own. “Did you get a second chance when that creature burned you? Did your boyfriend give you one?”
    “He was not,” she hissed, moving her arms to hold him while she kneed him in a very painful place, “my boyfriend.”
    But he was already gone. “Excellent,” he told her, grinning, pulling her up beside him so fast the room was a blurry tunnel with him at the end. She wanted to ask if he meant excellent that Griffin wasn’t her boyfriend, or that she had tried to make a eunuch of him. She decided she didn’t care, and that she would make a eunuch of him anyway.
    Next, he made her stand, poised on the balls of her feet, watching her. He moved so close they were almost touching; he, too, stood on the balls of his feet, but he had a tense, coiled readiness she lacked.
    “Look at my eyes,” he said.
    “Mmm-hmm,” she agreed, narrowing her own. “I doubt I’m going to be attacked by deranged hypnotists.”
    He ignored her sarcasm. “An attacker’s eyes always change before they strike. They’ll move their eyes the second they decide which way they’re going. Watch closely.” He tapped her, lightly but fast, with his needle. “Did you see it?”
    “No.”
    “Seriously. Watch my eyes for the change.” He poked her again and again, lightly this time, while he stared intently at her. After a few moments and countless stabs, she began to see it. There was an almost imperceptible flick of his eyes towards his target before he moved.
    “Ok, I see it now. I’ve got this. You don’t need to stick me anymore.” She tried to keep the pleading sound out of her voice. She had a feeling it would only earn her more torture.
    That’s when her muscles decided to remind her they existed. She started shaking. Just a little, at first; then her calves seized up from standing on the balls of her feet for so long. Her arms, worn out from blocking, soon followed. Every strike he’d made against her swelled into a single, huge throb of pain. The muscles in her arms and legs spasmed and there was not enough oxygen in the room.
    “Chloe?” he asked, his breathing already steady, his voice completely calm and reasonable. His left arm joined his right one at her waist, holding her lightly. “Are you ok?”
    His stupid, casual, comfortable question enraged her. Her rage was so blinding and instantaneous it burned cold deep within her. She felt frozen inside, and inside the frozenness, she found a calm place that pulsed with power. She didn’t even have to reach for it; it wrapped itself around her and turned off her brain. Her body temperature dropped a few degrees. She felt distant waves pounding against her skin exactly as if she was made of sand, and not a person in a living room at all.
    “No,” she heard herself say flatly. “I am very much not ok.”
    Eliot’s eyes widened and his entire body tensed as he felt her building fury. “Chloe, don’t,” he half snarled, half warned as he pulled her flat against him and dropped, burying her face in the crook of his neck. His arms scissored up, covering their heads as all the windows in the room exploded inward. Glass and wet sandy wind smacked against walls and furniture, sweeping objects off tables and knocking pictures from walls. His hold on her convulsed and tightened as another gust of water-soaked wind swept through the shattered windows. It sent broken glass skittering and soaked them both. Eliot jerked; she felt, then, that he’d been hit, and she struggled to get out from underneath him.
    “Not yet,” he cautioned. He waited before easing off her and onto his knees. He pulled a chunk of glass out of his bicep with a wince. For the first time, she noticed he was bleeding. She looked at the mess around her. In her blind rage, she had completely and totally trashed the house. Everything was covered with glass and sand. Pools of water dotted the floor.