If she could get Sophia free, maybe they could take this bastard together. There had to be something left of the woman who’d raised her buried under the fiend she’d become.
Can I do it again? Move things without touching them?The thoughts tumbled around in her brain before she made a decision, because there was only one way to find out. She widened her awareness, letting her senses spill out. Every person was wrapped in imperceptible threads—thick, rope-like vibrations she usually only felt at the edge of perception. Among Sophia’s tangled aura, the restraints shone lightly in a different way, like dormant nerves.
Audrey focused on those faint currents, prodding at them. The rope’s weave yielded, just a fraction, to her will. Slowly, carefully, she started to worry the knot apart, coaxing fibers, twisting the tension. Pressure built behind her eyes again, but she kept her eyes on Mihail, masking the effort with a sneer.
Those black diamond eyes narrowed at her mother, perceiving something invisible to humans. The motion was so predatory, soother, a chill slid along Audrey’s spine.
She bared her teeth in a smile meant to provoke. “If you’re going to shoot me, do it.”
It was a risk, but he didn’t want to kill her—not yet. He wanted to see what else she could do.
“You have a lot of potential,” he said.
Behind him, Sophia’s shoulders rolled as one of the main knots gave, the ropes sliding looser around her arms.
The gun dropped neatly into Mihail’s waiting hand. He stepped in and cracked the butt against Audrey’s cheek. Pain detonated along Audrey’s jaw. The blow snapped her head sideways and dropped her hard to one knee, copper flooding her mouth as blood streamed warm down her face. The alley narrowed, the brick wall and burning alley lights smearing together.
Her hand came away red.
By the time she looked up, Mihail had already leveled the barrel at her head. He stood beside her like some statue carved for conquest, calm and towering and utterly certain of himself.
“Show me a peek,” he coaxed. “Come on. Where is she? The other Audrey. Prove I’m not wrong about you.”
His eyes burned. She could feel his pleasure in the havoc inside her, his aura thrummingmore, more, morelike a throb. For someone who preached control, he looked half-feral with excitement. This wasn’t about threats. He was leaning on the brink of her mind, waiting for something buried to lunge.
The trilling noise came from her throat again, low and alien, as she stared up at him.
He only smiled.
Movement flashed at the fringe of her vision. Sophia’s rope loosened further. Her mother’s voice thundered through the electric air, ragged and furious. “You bastard,” Sophia spat. “She doesn’t know how dangerous she is, or how dangerous you are, for that matter. Audrey, fight him off. Get away before you kill everyone on this block.”
Sophia pulled at Mihail’s attention, if only by a thread. Audrey used it. She let her awareness widen, ragged breath scraping in and out of her lungs.
Every surface in the alley suddenly felt too alive, too present—the gun in Mihail’s hand, the heat in his skin, the metal shiver in the battered trash cans, the shifting rope around Sophia’swrists. The whole lot seemed to beat around her as though it had slipped one step closer to some hidden frequency, and her body had finally learned how to hear it.
Something instinctive and old surged inside her, rearing up in defense of the woman who had ruined her life and still somehow needed protecting.
The scream that tore out of her was inhuman. Seizure-bright sparks burst in front of her eyes. Heat poured through her veins, molten and intoxicating, while pressure built behind her breastbone as though some sealed chamber inside her had split wide open.
For one crystalline moment, she knew without doubt that she could kill Mihail.
Right. Wrong. Hero. Monster. It didn’t matter. At that moment, she felt no guilt at the thought of burning someone alive. Mihail deserved it, and the sick relief she felt was justice. And yet...was this what power always demanded? To silence the parts of herself that still cared? Her insides clenched, knowing the rightness of her rebellion was already tainted by the fear of what she was becoming.
Fire continued to burn under her skin. The taste of victory was threaded with a regret she tried to swallow. Scenes flashed—Mihail sprawled on the pavement, the raw shock on his face, Sophia watching her like a stranger. Was this who she was now? Audrey looked at her hands, errantly wishing that she could go back before she’d learned how easy it was to stop caring. The thought burrowed into her brain.
What a childish notion, though. She could never go back.
Audrey pushed again.
Fire roared out of her, invisible until it hit him. It crashed into Mihail hard enough to hurl him backward.
Devilish delight flashed across his face as the blast hit. Then he was on his back, skidding across the broken pavement, jarring the gun out of his grip.
A harsh, incredulous sound rose out of her as she watched him sit there, briefly stunned. The mighty Mihail flattened. The man who had called her lesser, reckless, out of control—on his ass because of her. She bared her teeth at him. He deserved every second of it, but whatever had just come out of her did not feel like something she could put back.
Mihail’s expression changed. Not with fear, but the grim realization of a man who had just determined the scale of what stood in front of him. His shadow extended across the pavement, long and misshapen in the alley light, and Audrey knew, with a sick certainty, that nothing in her life would ever fit back into human proportions after this.
“There she is,” he said hoarsely. “The monster.”
