Boundary Crossed (Boundary Magic #1)(32)
I drove into her as hard as I could with my shoulder, but Darcy rolled with the impact, gracefully letting my momentum propel her on top of me. When we stopped moving, she laughed at me and splayed herself across my upper body, casually leaning her forearm against my throat to cut off my air supply.
“Stupid bitch,” she chortled. My left hand was pinned, so I scrabbled at her with my right, but it was like pushing against a parked semi. I reached for the stake, which had landed a few inches away from my hand, but Darcy just flicked the stake away from my hand, sending it skittering across the floor, looking amused by my efforts. After a moment of watching me struggle, she eased up on my throat by deliberately palming my face, smearing blood-sticky fingers on me as she pushed herself up. When she was sitting on my chest, she reached out and sent a lazy slap across my face.
Stars exploded on the backs of my eyelids, and my stomach’s contents threatened to make themselves known. “You are so f*cked,” she sneered, which more or less echoed my thoughts. “You don’t have the baby to protect you anymore. Which means”—she leaned forward, her cool empty breath on my face—“that in a few minutes she won’t have you to protect her.”
Think, Lex. Charlie’s life depends on it. Okay, Darcy had inhuman strength and speed, and I couldn’t compete with that. But when I’d put out Victor’s eyes it had blinded him, at least temporarily. If I could blind her, too . . .
“Here’s what we’re gonna do,” Darcy continued. “Killing you would be fun, but I think it’d be even more fun to press you into killing yourself. Victor would have liked that.” She leaned back and pursed her lips, looking around the apartment. “Let’s see. What’s a really horrible way to die? Screwdriver through the eye? Setting yourself on fire? Maybe a nice solid self-disembowelment; I like that. Kind of a Shakespearean thing.”
I wasn’t sure about poking her eyes out with just my fingers, but I had car keys in my pocket. My left hand was pinned next to my thigh, so I started working the key ring out of the pocket. To keep her from noticing, I said, “You can’t press me, *. Victor couldn’t do it, and you’re . . . what? Maybe half as strong?” I made my voice skeptical.
Darcy’s eyes returned to me, narrowing with hate. “Stop wiggling. And don’t think you can taunt me into killing you quick. You don’t deserve it.”
“Oh, I know you can kill me,” I said flatly. “I’m just a human. But there’s no way you have the juice to press me.”
Gritting her teeth, Darcy leaned forward and stared into my eyes. Maybe because I was expecting it, I felt that slight pressure again, though it wasn’t nearly as strong as when Quinn had done it to me. This didn’t even make my head hurt. “Stop wiggling,” Darcy said again through clenched teeth.
I played along, relaxing my body as though she’d succeeded. Then something happened that I couldn’t explain. I wasn’t trying to do it, mostly because I hadn’t imagined it was possible, but one moment I was concentrating on Darcy’s gaze, trying to gauge if I had any real impulse to do what she asked (I didn’t), and the next moment something shifted aside, just for a second, and what had been a one-way street suddenly opened up for two-way traffic. “Get off me,” I hissed, and Darcy immediately rose from my chest, standing up and stepping aside.
Then she blinked, and a confused, annoyed expression crossed her face. I scrambled to my feet, but whatever I’d done—a spell, maybe? Could you do those without knowing it?—was over.
“Argh!” Darcy screeched in frustration, shoving me backward. I toppled over a chair, landing hard on my back. “Maybe fun is overrated. You die first.” She bared her teeth at me, and I realized she was tensing to leap.
“By the way, Darcy,” I said hurriedly, and she paused instinctively. I don’t care how many years you’ve spent killing people—human beings have an innate reflex to let each other have a last word before death. Killing someone in the middle of the sentence leaves a disturbing lack of closure. I know this from experience. “You know he’s setting you up to be the patsy, right?”
It was a shot in the dark, but Darcy’s resolve flickered, the coiled tension in her body momentarily loosening. “What the hell are you talking about?” she demanded. “You don’t know anything about him.”
Him. I snorted derisively, pushing the bluff. “Maven does.”
She stepped closer, glaring. “What? What does Maven know?”
We were maybe two feet apart at this point, with Quinn’s motionless body behind her. I had to try to do whatever I’d done before that got her off me. I stared into her eyes again, but nothing happened. Before, Darcy had been the one to open the connection between us; I had no idea how to do it myself.
A memory flashed through my mind. Sam and I were about six, playing with a long cardboard tube left over from a roll of Christmas wrapping paper. We stood at either end of the tube, each with an eye raised to it like it was a spyglass, giggling as we “spied” each other. I remembered the way Sam’s eye had looked through that tube; like there was nothing else in the world, just Sam centered in a small circle of light at the end of a long tunnel of darkness.
I pictured two cardboard tubes, put them against my eyes, and looked straight into Darcy’s. Something stirred along the sides of my vision.