Pushed by Corrine Jackson

Author:Corrine Jackson [Jackson, Corrine]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kensington Publishing Corp.
Published: 2013-10-03T16:00:00+00:00

An eon of pain had passed while they’d held me prisoner. I thought it had been two days, but I couldn’t be sure.

The man named Mark slapped me awake for the umpteenth time. As soon as my eyes opened, he pressed a knife to my bare arm. At some point, they’d taken my coat and left me in just my tank top and jeans. The more skin they could reach, the better. The black-haired man—Xavier, I’d learned—had left while I’d been unconscious. I’d heard him talking to someone on the phone, but he never slipped up and said their name during these check-ins.

Mark leaned down until I could see my reflection in his irises. “I really need you to pay attention, darlin’.” The jerk berated me in a charming voice. “I know you’re groggy, but we don’t have time for these games.”

The ceiling beyond him had twenty-two panels. When the pain had threatened to crush me, I’d spent long minutes counting them. Every movement made my head pound, and I saw spots if I turned it too sharply. Suffocation could do that to you. That had been the last experiment they’d conducted in their ongoing campaign to break me.

Mark didn’t like my continued silence. While they’d tortured me, they’d asked me a litany of questions. Did I know Asher was a Protector? How was I different? What could I do? Did I know others like me? Did I know other Protectors? I’d clamped my jaw shut, refusing to answer them, and they carried on tormenting me.

Now, the pressure of the knife increased until the blade sliced through my skin. It amazed me how cold the metal could feel and then how hot the pain burned in comparison. This was what they had done to that other Healer, Yvette. These Protectors thought the cuts and the suffocation and all the rest would weaken me until they could steal everything from me. Like Dean had, they thought they could control me with pain. Stupid men.

Losing Asher had scraped everything out of me, except for the all-consuming need to wipe these men off the face of the earth. So far, an opportunity hadn’t presented itself, but the moment would come. I just had to wait long enough to gather my powers again, a difficult thing to do when they kept at me so relentlessly. Why wouldn’t they just kill me already?

I imagined I heard Asher’s voice. Easy, Remy. Be smart. You can get out of this. He might only live in my imagination, but I listened. I would never give in to these bastards. I would rather die fighting.

Mark cut me again, and I flinched, but my walls held strong. Amateur, my inner voice mocked. Dean had done far worse damage. I could withstand this, but it was wearing me out. Time to change tactics, even if it meant using up my energy stores temporarily.

I smiled. As Mark sliced into my thigh, I healed the cuts on my arms. His head jerked up when he noticed the wounds disappearing.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.