River tosses Tiffany at him. “Do me a solid. Tie her down and lock her up. Put a guard at her door.”
Gavin doesn’t catch her, but then, he doesn’t really try. “Oops.” He picks her up none too gently. “Consider her restrained,” he says, relish in his tone.
I take the stairs two at a time and rush around the corner. Ali and Cole are standing in front of Milla’s door, arguing about what to do.
“—need to put another tranq in her,” Cole says. “She shouldn’t have recovered so quickly from the first one.”
“I’m telling you, she didn’t hurt us on purpose. Trust me on this. We all just need to sit down and talk about what happened. Okay? While we do, Reeve and Weber can run some tests.”
“Talking isn’t going to solve this, Ali-gator. And how many tests has Reeve already run? And how the hell do you know Camilla didn’t hurt you on purpose? For all we know, she and Tiffany are working together.”
“But why would she allow her throat to be slit?”
“Because she knew we would use dynamis on her, sharing our abilities with her. Because she plans to wipe us out by using our strengths against us.”
“She can hear you,” Milla screams through the door. “FYI, she thinks you’re an idiot!”
My hands fist. “You are an idiot,” I say to Cole. “She couldn’t have known we’d reach her in time to save her. And there were better, far less painful ways to hurt herself and gain our sympathy.”
“And,” Ali says, “none of us knew how she’d react to our fire and our abilities.”
“How did she react?” River demands. “Is that the problem?”
“She hurt slayers rather than zombies. Me, Gavin and Bronx.” Ali chews on her bottom lip. “She somehow tossed us in the air and held us there while squeezing us as if we were inside a trash compactor. I’ve never experienced anything like it.”
And now, knowing Milla, she fears she’ll hurt others and become an outcast all over again.
“Milla...we have to know. When you worked for Anima,” Ali calls, “did they do anything to you? Experiment on you?”
“No. Never.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes! That’s something I’d remember. This is Tiffany’s fault. Her toxin somehow screwed me up and now I can’t be fixed. If I could, your fire would have done it already.”
River knocks on the door. “Let me in.”
“No. Stay out. Stay the hell out. Don’t you dare come into this room. You do, and I will shove my dagger so far down your throat you’ll be shitting metal for days.”
Creative.
He hesitates and I push him out of the way. “I’m coming in, Milla. Just remember you’re supposed to save me, not kill me.”
“No! Don’t you dare come in.” She’s even more frantic now. “Stay out, Frosty. I mean it. Stay away from me.”
I pick the lock and twist the dooknob.
I’m cramming my weapons into a black duffel bag when Frosty enters the room. “You’re brave, I’ll give you that much,” I snap. I don’t turn to look at him. The thought of harming him or my brother—or anyone!—scares the pee out of me. Staying in the mansion is no longer an option.
“Well, you are a coward,” he says. “You had a bad experience with your new abilities—your first time, no less—and you’re throwing in the towel?”
“Yes! You weren’t there. You didn’t see the damage I did to your friends.” Humiliating tears leak from my eyes.
He’s in front of me a second later, cupping my face in his big, rough hands. His thumbs tenderly brush the tears away. “You’re crying,” he says, and he sounds amazed. Something changes in his expression, a lingering hardness finally going soft. “You care about us.”
“Of course I do.” I wrench free of him, his kindness more than I can bear. “You guys are great.”
Gently, so gently, he says, “You’ll practice. You’ll get better. I’ll help you.”
“You don’t get it. If I practice, I hurt people.” There’s a minicrossbow in the pile I’ve created, but it’s not mine. It’s something Cole favors, which means it’s most likely his. Whatever. I pack it anyway. I’m going to be on my own. I’ll need all the help I can get.
“What about Ali’s vision?” Frosty asks.
Argh! Why isn’t he yelling at me for harming his friends? Why isn’t he grabbing my arm and dragging me to the front entrance, giving my ass a kick for good measure before slamming the door in my face?
“Maybe Ali got things wrong. I mean, I’ve been with you for a month and nothing’s happened. Maybe the vision is merely symbolic. Maybe I save you by not being near you.”
“Symbolic? Really?”
“What? I’m dangerous now.”
“You’ve always been dangerous.”
“To zombies, yes, but not to other slayers.”
He barks out a laugh.