“What…what are you…doing…?” Wolfe’s words were choked, his eyes wide. I felt his grip slacken on my neck. I didn’t dare loosen mine, and the lightheadedness I had experienced was growing into something more. The light in the room seemed to be brightening, amplifying.
“It…it BURNS!” He let out a howl of pain and batted at my hands. His claws dug into my wrists, scratching at them, drawing more blood that trickled down his fingers. I looked down to see it pooling in little drips on the concrete and then looked back to his face, awash in agony, and felt his weight start to drag me down. My hands were clutching his throat; my skin was hot and my head was throbbing, rushing with blood. I felt a heightened sense of…everything.
I suddenly realized the room reeked of blood and fear, and I drew in another sharp breath. Faint thumping noises upstairs were audible to me for the first time, and I could hear noises in the pipes and sirens blocks away, and all this over the whimpering and screaming of Wolfe. My skin was on fire with the heat of his throat in my hands, and I could feel the veins in Wolfe’s neck pumping blood past my fingers.
“PLEASE!!” His voice shrieked, begging, pleading, filling the air in the basement. It was at that moment that I realized that if he could speak, I wasn’t choking him – at least not effectively. “It hurts…SO…MUCH!” His words came out in a whimpering shriek. “Wolfe is sorry, little doll, please let him go, pleasepleaseplease…”
A few more wails of agony, one last whimper, and a death rattle filled the air. I held Wolfe by the neck and there was a bitter taste in my mouth as he went slack; his black eyes rolled back in his head, now truly lifeless. The lightheaded sensation filled me and I felt like I was floating, then flying, but not like I had when I went unconscious…instead it was like I was flying at a hundred miles an hour, even though I was still there in the basement, looking at Wolfe’s dead eyes.
Though he weighed several hundred pounds, I held him up by the neck for several minutes, afraid to let go and empowered by the rush of whatever it was that was causing my head to spin. I finally let him slip from my grasp, and his body fell back, knocking over the box, which landed on the ground with a horrendous crash. Wolfe’s body rolled off the side of it and slid to the floor, unmoving.
I took two steps back and slumped against the wall. My head felt like it was about to explode. My mind was so jumbled I couldn’t control it; leaping in every direction, thoughts I could not have conceived of just a few minutes earlier were dashing through my head so quickly I couldn’t even track them all.
I looked back at the two objects of my greatest fear and a heady feeling settled over me. I kicked Wolfe’s shin with an outstretched leg. He didn’t budge, didn’t blink. He was dead.
And I was free.
Twenty-four
I leaned against the wall, trying to catch my breath as thoughts whirled in my head. The creak of a floorboard focused me. I saw a foot appear at the top of the steps and tried to stand, then collapsed when I saw whose foot it was.
Reed tiptoed down the stairs and froze when he caught sight of Wolfe, then charged down the last few steps after he saw me, dropping to his knees at my side. “Sienna!”
“Yes?” I looked back at him, still wobbly.
“Thank God you’re alive, you look…” He frowned in concern and his hand patted my forehead. “Uh…you…uh…”
“I think Wolfe did a number on me before I killed him,” I replied through bloody lips.
He nodded agreement, looking somewhat gray in the face. He shifted from me and eased over to Wolfe on his knees and felt the monster’s cheek. He looked back to me with an expression of fear and amazement. “He’s dead.”
“I just said that,” I replied with an eye roll that left me feeling like my entire brain had done a backflip.
Reed shifted back to me. “I didn’t believe you.” His hands went to my neck and I felt the pressure of his touch for a few minutes; then he raised them in front of my eyes, covered in blood. “To answer your earlier question, yes, he did a number on you.”
“Not the first time,” I replied with a grunt. “But it’s the last.” I laughed, a light, airy laugh that turned into a hacking cough. Ouch.
He placed a hand on my forehead. “You’re burning up.” He tossed a look at Wolfe’s body, then back to me. “How did you kill him?”
“I don’t know…I just grabbed him around the throat and held on.”
“So you strangled him?” His hand was resting on my forehead, as though he was trying to take my temperature.
“No…” I thought back to my hands around his throat, about him talking to me, pleading for his life. “He was still talking, so I couldn’t have choked him to death.”
Without warning, Reed yanked his hand away from me and toppled backward to the floor. He shook for a moment and stretched out as though he were convulsing. Crawling on my hands and knees, I moved toward him. “Are you all right?” I asked as he bucked once more and pulled himself to a sitting position. I reached out a hand and he batted it away, hard. I looked at him and his brown eyes came up at me laden with suspicion, a haggard look etched on his face, which was suddenly worn.
“Don’t…touch me.” His voice was violent, edgy.
I reached out again and he slid away in a hurry, hitting his back against the wall and sliding to his feet, looking down on me, his chest heaving as though he were fighting for a breath. “I said DON’T TOUCH ME!”
“What…is it?” I looked up at him from the floor, stunned at his sudden change in persona.
“Don’t you get it?” He slid against the wall, moving toward the stairwell, still leaning against it for support. “You killed Wolfe…with your touch.”
“What?” I asked, horrified. I looked at my hands and back to Reed, who had a look of revulsion on his face. “What…what am I?” A concern grew in me as I tried to wrap my still reeling mind around what had happened.
There was a sound upstairs, the noise of a door exploding open. Reed looked up and back to me, then took two steps toward a basement window and broke through it, springing with amazing agility through the hole and leaving a pile of broken, white-covered glass on the floor behind him.
The door to the basement flew open and heavy footfalls came down the stairs. I struggled to my feet once more, looking at my hands, wondering if what Reed said was true and if I would have to use them again on whoever was coming after me.
I breathed a sigh of relief when Old Man Winter appeared at the top of the steps. He took a quick look at Wolfe, then called up the stairs, “Sienna is all right and…Wolfe is dead.” He hurried down the last few steps to me, followed by a half dozen agents, all of whom goggled at the body of Wolfe, laying supine on the cold concrete floor next to the overturned box.
I braced myself against the wall as the agents formed a semi-circle around Wolfe and Old Man Winter stooped next to him. Ariadne came down last, followed by two more figures; Dr. Perugini and Dr. Sessions. Ariadne made her way over to me, following Dr. Perugini. Sessions made his way to Wolfe’s corpse.
“No pulse, but no sign of trauma…” I heard Dr. Sessions rattle off as he leaned over Wolfe. “Are we sure he’s dead?”
Sessions cast a look at Old Man Winter, who nodded. “He would not lie down like this. He is dead.”
“I need you to sit down, sweetie.” Dr. Perugini’s thickly accented words washed over me and she and Ariadne eased closer, each going to one of my elbows.