Lightning Strike-5
861 Words
I let go of him and headed towards the bathroom.
“How could you tell?” I yelled back at him.
“The kills were very fresh,” he called out.
“Yeah, well, I’d been toying with the idea, but decided against it. As usual, things didn’t work out as planned. I think they’re trying to goad me,” I called out over my shoulder.
Danny followed me into the bathroom.
“What makes you think that?”
“One of the vamps said Drake was interested in me even more now, and that he wanted me to swap sides.”
I slipped out of my dirty clothes and stepped into the bath.
“He seems to think that Drake has someone that would be of interest me. I can’t for the life of me think who it would be … unless you’re a double agent.”
Danny snorted. “Not likely.”
He rolled up his sleeves and knelt down next to the bath. Picking up the cake of soap, he gently nudged my shoulder — an indication I should lean forwards so he could lather my back.
“Anything else?” he asked.
“Before I was jumped — the last time I was at the apartment — Drake was smiling at me, like he knew something.” I was still itching to know what it was. Damn curiosity! “I hesitated, and that’s when I got jumped.”
Danny gently massaged my back.
“It was probably a diversionary tactic,” he said, dismissing it as anything more than that. “They can be quite cunning.”
His hands relaxed the muscles on either side of my spine. I shivered.
“I’ll say!” I grumbled. Shae must have told them that my curiosity was always getting me into trouble. That had to be it.
Danny sponged off the remaining soapsuds and I leaned back, more relaxed. He splashed his hand in the water, making little whirlpools.
“Hey, guess what!” I said.
“What?”
“That last one broke my wrist —”
“That’s something to get excited about?”
“No, let me finish. He broke my wrist, but it was healed by the time I’d finished with him. Sure, I felt a twinge of pain. Nothing major though. Nothing I couldn’t deal with.”
I leaned over and rested my chin on the side of the bath.
“I know I’m different to them, but you know how everything works for them, don’t you?” Danny looked puzzled. “I mean the healing thing.”
He nodded his head.
“So do smaller breaks heal faster or does the body adapt and with each break it learns how to heal itself faster and faster?”
“For them the number of breaks doesn’t matter. It’s the severity of the break that does. If the bone has been pulverised it can take anywhere up to six hours. Clean breaks heal within minutes.”
“I swear it only took around thirty seconds for my wrist to heal, once the vamp had stopped trying to crush it.”
Danny’s hand trailed in the water and he flicked water in my face from his wet fingers, grinning like a naughty little boy.
“I don’t doubt it,” he replied.
I blinked the water away from my eyes and retaliated by splashing handfuls of water over the side of the bath until he was thoroughly soaked. As I was laughing at him, water dripping from his hair down his face, his clothes and hair dried, like he’d never been wet.
“No fair!” I complained, still laughing.
His fingers splashed gently about in the water again
“So how did you like your first bliss-creek?” he asked.
“My what?”
He flicked more water at me.
“Your bliss-creek. You remember — roughly translated it means something like thunderbolt, or lightning strike.”
I stepped out of the bath and tackled Danny to the ground, pinning down his arms and shaking my head so droplets of water rained down on him. The water on my body trickled down to soak through his clothes where I straddled his abdomen.
“You mean blitzkrieg. It was fun. You should have seen the looks on their faces.”
I giggled as I remembered the comical looks of surprise. Only Drake had appeared cool and calm, that knowing smile touching his lips.
“I appeared in a different part of the apartment each time. It confused the s**t out of them. I think I’m going to enjoy doing this.”
Danny slipped his wrists out from under my hands and rolled me over onto my back, our positions reversed. I didn’t even put up a playful fight. I was too engrossed in the fact that all of my fingers had made contact with his skin and nothing had happened. My mind went back to other times, when my hands had caressed his body or we’d held hands to journey through the lights. I realised, then, that on a subconscious level I must be able to control it.
“Helena, are you with me or have you drifted off?” Danny whispered in my ear, his hot breath distracting me from my thoughts.
“I was wondering about my hands.” I wiggled my fingers, stained red from another day of hunting, in front of my face. “My fingers hold any vamp they come in contact with in a death grip. I don’t need my entire hand to make contact, only my fingers. Anyway it’s a death sentence. Yet I can touch you and hold you and nothing happens. Why is that do you think?”
Danny creased his brow, thinking of a reasonable explanation. “Psychological perhaps. Maybe you don’t want to hurt me. Or maybe you can’t use your death grip on those that aren’t evil? Or maybe,” his voice hinting at something more, “you just like touching me.”
I smiled at him slyly, narrowing my eyes. “Oh, you’re evil all right, Danny, just not the kind of evil you’re talking about.”
- Writer
