The older man who’d stood aside and watched us fight heaved a sigh.

“Carlos...” he said.

My feet slid back a few more steps.  Carlos’ eyes drifted to the hand at my side.  Though I knew better, I glanced down at it, too.  The slap had caused it to start bleeding in earnest, and a drop fell from the tip of my middle finger to the ground.

“Isabelle, stop,” one of the women said from behind me.

I rolled my shoulders.  I couldn’t take them all in a fight.  If they were regular people, maybe.  And I couldn’t drain them, not with Ethan already weak and within range.  What did that leave me?

“Isabelle, I promise, we’re not here to hurt you,” the same voice said.

“The world is full of promises waiting to be broken,” I said.

I’d learned the truth of that at a young age.  Even the promises made with the best intentions could crumble because of circumstance.  I thought of the note and of Ethan as I took a deep breath, ready to pull everything in.

“The more you pull, the tighter you feel on the inside.”

The words stopped me.  I finally turned and eyed the speaker.  She was the one who’d knocked on the door.  She looked young and had vivid blue eyes that contrasted with her dark hair.  She was also the one who leaked desperation and fear.  Were they using her too?  I thought not.  The russet-haired man beside her hovered protectively close.

“Fighting helps.”  She stepped closer.  “But if you pull too much in, your nose starts to bleed.”

She was right.  I’d learned that when I was still young, before I’d met Ethan.  I couldn’t remember now what had made me angry with my parents, but I could remember what I had done to them and how my nose had bled afterward as I’d bent over their slumped bodies on the floor.

They know what you can do.

The phrase repeated in my head.  I would not be used to hurt people like that.  Adrenaline pumped through my veins.

“No.”  The word echoed off the houses.

I gave Ethan an apologetic look, and he immediately closed himself off.  I hoped it would save him.

I pulled harder than I ever had before.  First, the four by Ethan collapsed to the ground.  Then, the older man went to his knees, his surprised gaze on me.

The man before me remained unaffected while Ethan slowly started walking toward the car.  My friend’s steps were measured and unsure.  Yet, to save us both, I’d need to take more.

The man stepped toward me and lifted his hand.  I pulled again as he reached forward.

“Stop...Isabelle...you’ll hurt...”  The dark-haired girl’s head hit the dead grass, and her eyes rolled back.

My skin tingled as if all of me had fallen asleep and was just starting to come to.  But he didn’t stop.  Curling my hands into fists, I wondered if I finally had enough to down him.

His fingers touched my cheek, then gently wiped my upper lip.  I jerked back from his touch and saw the blood.  My blood.  I sniffled, realizing my nose was bleeding.  That wasn’t good.

His eyes bore into mine for a moment, then he stepped aside.  Stunned, I watched him lift one of the girls from the ground then straighten with her in his arms.  He walked toward the backyard, carrying her.

Ethan’s car roared to life, pulling me from my shock.  The big guy wasn’t going to fight me.

I ran for the car and got in.  Ethan didn’t wait for me to close the door.  We peeled away from the yard as the man stepped around the corner empty-handed.  My last look was of him bending to pick up the other girl.

*    *    *    *

“Hands up, now,” Ethan said.  He paced the small space of our room, moving what he could out of the way.

My head hurt, and my eyes didn’t want to focus.

“Now, Z!”  He swung at me.  I automatically blocked.

“Stop.  Wait,” I said.  “I can’t...”

He swung again and connected with my arm.  My already tight skin throbbed.

“Stop being a girl and get those hands up.”

I jabbed at him, but he dodged my pathetically slow move.

“Again,” he said.  His hits were more like nudges.  He was trying to piss me off, and it was working.

I shifted my weight with my next swing and hit his arm.  Long ago, I’d stopped aiming for his head or vital spots when we sparred.  I didn’t want to hurt him, not in a permanently damaging way, anyway.

“Come on, twinkle-toes.  Dance.  Move.  Do something more than swing those little toothpicks you call arms.”

Scratch that.  He was going to lose some teeth.  I swung harder, aiming for his mouth.  He laughed.  Jerk.  He continued to block each pathetic blow.  My swings were too loose.

Focus.  I shook my head and stepped back to roll my shoulders.

“That’s my girl.”  His soft voice and sad eyes told me just how worried he was.  He’d kept his emotions tightly blocked the whole drive, but now they were starting to slip.

We fought quietly in the motel room for thirty minutes before my nose stopped bleeding and another thirty before my skin stopped throbbing.  It still ached, but I called a stop regardless.

“We can’t stay here,” I said, moving to the bathroom.  I grabbed a hand towel for each of us, tossed one to him, and used mine to wipe the sweat and blood from my face.

“I don’t know what they are, but I think we need to listen to that letter.”  The towel muffled my words.

“All right.”  He snatched the keys up from the table.  “I’ll get what we need and be back in four hours.”

I laid a hand on his arm as he passed, stopping him.  His gaze met mine.  I had no words for how much his simple agreement and willingness to help meant to me.

“Just come back.”

He nodded and left.

Still in my running clothes from that morning, I went to the hotel’s meager exercise room and hogged the treadmill for the next hour.

Three

“The car’s loaded,” Ethan said with a nudge to my shoulder.

I lifted my head from my arm and wiped the drool from my face as I blinked at the clock.

“Good nap, princess?”  He chuckled as he moved away.

“It was.”

The hotel was pretty dead, given the time of day, which meant no neighbors, which meant no emotions to pull.  Having drained most of the excess with sparring and running, I’d crashed as soon as I had returned to the room.

I sat up and caught the bag he threw my way. It wasn’t the bag I’d packed for his house.

“Clean clothes,” he said.

“You went back to my place?”

He nodded as he walked into the bathroom and turned on the water.

“Why?  What if they’d been there waiting?”  I stood and paced to the bathroom.  He moved out and gestured for me to get in.

“Hurry up.  I want to be on the road again in thirty minutes.  It’ll be the road trip we should have taken after you graduated,” he said with a grin.

“Gah.”  I threw my hands up in the air and stomped off to close myself into the bathroom.  There, I discovered he’d packed a lot of what I’d left behind.  Half of my wardrobe consisted of exercise clothes.  The other half, office clothes.  Seeing it all crammed together in a bag looked weird.

I plucked out clean underthings, yoga pants, and a fitted tank before stripping.  The shower felt great, and I lingered a bit too long.  Threads of annoyance, twisted in with amusement, touched me as Ethan rapped sharply on the door.  I turned off the water and towel dried before I quickly dressed.  Steam billowed out the door as I stepped out.

What I saw stopped me.  A man held Ethan by the throat.  The sight of my friend dangling in the air wasn’t as scary as the sight of the furred arm that held him there.  The nails of the man’s hand were long, black, sharp, and inhuman.