“I’m here,” she said sharply, forgetting for a moment that he probably couldn’t hear her. She should swing her arm out to catch him and lead him back. She didn’t. It didn’t matter what he was doing. Her mother was gone.
He came back to her. His reaching hand found her bare stomach. His fingers slid up to her face. She shivered, and then shrank away in shame. Reyes dropped something over her head, pulled it down to her shoulders. Fabric. Clothing?
“What are you doing?” And why? The bastard had done this to her. She shook her head. Nothing made sense.
“You’re naked. You can’t get away like this.” He took up each of her numb arms and slid fabric onto them then pulled it down over her torso, letting the leftover cloth pool around her hips on the floor. It smelled of sweat and fear and a familiar soft musk. Before she could identify it, he slid his hands back up to her head and pulled her close. The warmth of his breath tickled her ear.
“That thing you did?” His voice was a bare whisper of sound in her ear. “It weakened the ceiling and the walls. The exterior wall is cinder block. It’s ready to go. Do it one more time, and the wall will fall. Behind it is—”
“Do it again? I can’t do it again. I don’t know what I did the first time.”
“Be quiet. Listen. You will do it again. Behind the wall is a side street that leads to the rear of the building. Stay away from there. Follow the side street up behind the next building over. Block and a half up, turn right. Across the street is Citizen’s Park. Get across it. Keep moving. It empties into Market Square. Do not stop. Get to Ace. Tell him to hide you until I come. I will come.” He pulled away as a particularly violent thump against the door caused debris to rain down. He pulled her up then, dragging her by the hand across the room. “Do you understand?”
“I understand. I understand. But I can’t. Reyes, I don’t know what I did—”
He stopped. He must have found the wall again. He yanked her around him, pushed her in front of himself, and pulled her arms up to stretch out and make contact with the wall. He spread her palms flat against the wall, his own hands pressed against the tops of hers, holding her down.
The pressure of his hands above hers hurt. Her fingers ground into the wall. The pain caught her attention, lit a fluttering something inside of her. It was too close to that feeling of being restrained, the helplessness and rage she’d just escaped. She tried to pull away. He held her fast, pressing his hands and his body hard against hers. She scooted forward to escape him, but he followed her until her arms bent and her body pressed against the wall. He held her there.
Her breath came in small, panicked puffs. Why had she trusted him? Why had she listened?
He spoke then, his lips pressed against her skin. His hot breath puffed her hair away from her ear, his quiet, hoarse voice laced with menace. Her heart stuttered.
“Councilor Three killed your mother, Lena.”
She stopped struggling. Cold wrapped around her. The heat of rage chased it away.
“We hauled her in, sick and weak. Put electrodes on her head and charged her until her body couldn’t handle it, and she bled out.”
He crushed her in tighter. The dusty grit coating the wall bit into her forehead and chin. The pebbled surface beneath the paint pressed her breasts and belly and thighs. Her breath sawed in and out of her raw throat. She tried to fight, pushing back against him. Dust swirled across her skin in agitated reflection of her anger and confusion.
“Lucas liked it,” Reyes growled into her ear. “He liked seeing you naked and helpless on that table. He liked watching you jump and fight when they shocked you. And he really liked hurting your mother. Councilor Three let him do it. He gave Lucas permission to charge you both until your mother’s brain exploded.”
She shoved away from the wall, managed to gain several inches. He slammed her back. Her forehead cracked against the cinder block. A scream of rage erupted from her. Bright clawing branches of electricity spread across the wall before her then sheeted back behind her, flinging Reyes away from her a moment before the enormous boom of sound and light and pressure erupted from her chest.
The wall disintegrated, and she fell forward through it, stumbling across the broken blocks and skidding across the debris-coated street outside. She hunched over painful hands and knees that had taken the brunt of her fall and curled away from the noise of her discharge. Unlike before, when the boom had been loud and then gone, this one went on rumbling loud in her ears.
But it wasn’t the echo of her thunderstrike. The building collapsed behind her. She turned her head to look back. The wall slid down into the street. The ceiling had collapsed. Rubble filled the opening.
Her mother was buried within.
Lena’s heart squeezed. She swallowed the pain back down. At least she’d also buried the bastards who’d killed her mother.