“Don’t touch that.” Nicky pointed at me without taking his eyes away from the knot he was tying.
Enough of this crap. I scrambled across the roof on my knees, the pipe in my line of sight. Nicky shot toward me, his knife tucked close to his side. We both landed on the pipe at the same time. I reached for it, but Nicky knocked it further away and grabbed my wrists.
“Stop struggling,” he grunted.
There was no way I’d go down without a fight. Nicky should’ve known better. We’d had our scrambles when we were young, and I always held my own.
I tore away my right hand and felt my talons protract. With a swift slash across the space between us, I left three thin trails of blood across Nicky’s face. He grimaced, but didn’t show any other signs of pain.
Instead, he grabbed my wrists again, and threw me up against the second heating unit, crushing me with his body weight and pinning my arms down. We were so close I could smell a combination of engine grease and sweet cologne coming off of him.
“I don’t want to hurt you.” Nicky pressed the knife against my side until I gasped. “But if you move again, I’ll be forced to end this little tiff. I’ve got work to do.”
I turned my head away. The angry tears were back. My own brother would dispose of me, just like that, without a second thought. He wasn’t the brother I remembered. But then again, maybe I never really knew him.
“What happened to you?” My voice sounded bitter, even to my ears. “Why are you doing this?”
Nicky blinked at me, his mouth stretching into an insincere smile. “Nothing happened. I just had my eyes opened, that’s all.”
“Opened? To what? To murder?”
He was talking like a born-again cult member, drinking the Kool-Aid and joining the commune.
“No, little sister, to the evils of our kind.” He pulled back the knife from my side. “The supernatural creatures of our world can’t just go around taking lives without consequence. There are rules. And morals. We’re all subjects of law.”
Nicky had always been a big thinker. He’d been fascinated with the moralists of the past. He’d gone through a Gandhi phase, a Socrates phase, and e
ven a John Locke phase. But those had been people from different times. They certainly didn’t go hunting creatures down the way Nicky was doing.
“We have the SI to do that,” I said. “Just let me give your info to the SI and you can walk away from this.”
“Oh come on, you grew up in the same family I did.” Nicky chuckled and shook his head. “Since when have harpies believed in a governmental form of justice? The government just gets in the way. They take ages to prosecute. Years to dole out punishment. This is better.”
Nicky must’ve thought that he was his own carbon copy of the HQ’s justice system. If they could get away with it, so could he. There was no reasoning with his insanity. Someone would get hurt if we delayed this much longer.
I sighed and met his gaze. If I didn’t know better, I’d think those blue eyes were sincere. An almost pleading look washed over his face. He couldn’t go after this monster without my help. I just wanted to get it over with.
“Okay, I’ll get you the dagger.”
In response to my surrender, Nicky’s crushing weight eased a little bit. I squirmed against the grate, freeing my back from its painful position.
“But, you have to promise me something.”
Nicky didn’t even hesitate. “Anything.” He smiled, warmth filling his eyes.
I looked away. He couldn’t fool me with his false smiles and charming lies anymore.
“Once this is over with, you will leave Arcana forever.”
It felt like the air dropped a degree. I looked back at Nicky in time to see the smile slide off his face.
“You’ll leave Arcana and never contact me. I don’t ever want to speak to you again.”
The words stung the very deepest parts of my heart. Pain of a similar sort filled Nicky’s eyes. He pulled away from me, freeing me from the heating unit. I rubbed my sore wrists. He’d left dark red rings on my skin which would surely turn into bruises by the morning.
Nicky walked back to Johnny. He sliced through the rope between Johnny’s hands and shoved him forward. “You might think I’m delusional, Little Bird, but I know things. Secrets about our world and the people in it. I’m just trying to protect you.”
A disgusted sigh tore from my throat. “You’re not protecting anyone. Least of all me. Do you know what happened after you left? How my life was ruined?”