Page 106 of Ravage
He lifts a knife and whips it at me.
I’m shocked for half a second before self-preservation kicks in, and I duck and cover. It sails behind me.
“Jack, what—” I start after he misses, then look up in time to see three more knives shooting my way. I drop to the ground and then jump when I hear a thud behind me.
The knives are frozen in the air about a foot off the ground. The air shimmers, and a man lies there. Each knife is buried deep in fatal locations.
Was he the one following me all of this time?
I bend over to get a better look at the guy, but he’s not familiar. Then I swing back up and around to chew Jackson out for the knives and my nose brushes against cotton. I startle backward, my foot tripping over the guy, but Jack grabs my arms and pulls me back upright.
“Excuse me, little one.” He straightens me out and shifts me to the side. He then waves his hand and the body lifts a foot off the ground. Jackson turns and walks down a tiny alley between two shops with the body floating after him.
I follow too. Because I’m owed an explanation, damn it.
Jack drops the guy to the ground and squats to start rummaging through his pockets. The stench of death punches me in the nose and I cover my mouth before I choke on it. It’s only after he’s down that I see the other bodies already here. Four, including the previously invisible guy. But it looks like the others aren’t so fresh.
“Do you mind explaining what’s going on here?”
He slides his knives out of the body and wipes them on the guy’s clothes, then tucks them away wherever they go beneath his hoodie. He walks back to me, then nudges me to keep walking with him out of the alley. “Come on. It’s best not to hang around dead bodies during the day.”
“Well, no shit. Are you just going to leave them here?” I argue, but my body does exactly as he directed anyway.
“For now. I’ll come back for them later if someone else doesn’t find them first.”
“Wouldn’t that be a problem if someone does exactly that?”
He shrugs. “Not really. There’s nothing to lead cops back to us.”
We’re back on the shopping street and Jackson angles us back to my bags. He uses his gift to lift the bags and holds his hand over his shoulder until they gently fall into it.
“What about GE? They’ll know it was us.”
“They know we’re here now. No point hiding anymore.”
I cross my arms and study him. I feel like there’s something else I’m missing that he’s holding back on. His piercing blue eyes are twinkling back at me through the shadow of his hood, and the angle’s just right in the sun that I can see his smiling face. “Okay, well, throwing the knives at me like that was not appreciated.”
His smile stretches as he chuckles. “I was testing your trust in me.” He turns and starts walking away. With my bags. “It still needs a lot of work, by the way,” he calls over his shoulder.
“Hey! Where are you taking my stuff?” I call and hurry after him.
“To your apartment. Isn’t that where you were headed with them?”
“You’re coming back with me?”
His head tilts to the side as he looks over at me. “Do you not want me to?”
“No, it’s not that. It’s just…usually, you pop in and out. Or you’re apparently there and I have no idea,” I add with a look.
Jackson laughs softly.
“About that…I appreciate you looking out for me and saving me three times now.”
The time at the docks, when Gordon appeared, and now today.
There’s a tiny smirk at the corner of his lips and now I’m wondering if it hasn’t been more than three times. I haven’t been attacked since the docks other than today. Have there been more I don’t know about?
Shit. I hope not. Here I was thinking how well I was doing even after they discovered I’m here and now I’m doubting everything I thought I knew.
