Vanished by James Delargy (free novel 24 TXT) 📕

of tin against brick, twisting and bending as it fell, reaching a thunderous crescendo. Then silence. Only now did she dare open her eyes. The first thing she saw was dust, fluttering absently towards the moonlight. Then the building she’d just been inside – the front wall caved in, the tin roof broken and bent across the rotten wooden beams that had supported it for so long, resting at a low angle against the back wall. If she were still inside, she’d be dead. Crushed. She had no doubt about that.

‘Are you okay?’

A breathy voice came from behind her, startling her. Heart still racing, she scrabbled away, back towards the collapsed building. A single thought arose; the house might have killed her, but whatever had saved her might be worse. At what she hoped was a safe distance, she turned to look back, arms reflexively held in front of her, to ward off attack.

The moonlight revealed a tall, bearded figure, not an ounce of fat on him, nothing left to waste, his angled jawbone set tight. Whereas she was petrified, he looked assured. As if this was his typical nightly gig. Saving unknown women from collapsed buildings. In the middle of nowhere. What was he doing here? In Kallayee. At night. Her thoughts, still adjusting to surviving the near-death experience, were scrambled. Was he someone from Hurton? One of Nikos’s or Chester’s buddies searching for her and Lorcan? Maybe someone who wanted to go off-radar like they were. Or someone on the run. He could be anyone.

He could be dangerous.

She needed to go back to the house, lock herself inside and wait for Lorcan to come home. Though she had lowered her hands, they were still shaking. Her legs too, as if the collapse of the building had generated some sort of mini-earthquake inside her. She made to stand up but although her heart was pumping furiously the oxygenated blood failed to reach the necessary muscles.

‘Are you okay?’ the stranger asked again, his voice soft, concerned.

He inched closer, as if approaching a wary animal. She finally caught sight of his full face: handsome, all angles as if cut from stone, his eyes blue but wondrously pale in the moonlight. She was drawn to something powerful in them. In him. Powerful enough to drag her from a collapsing building. A shiver ran through her as if by looking into them she had become caught in his trap, frozen into inaction.

‘I’m okay,’ she replied, though she felt far from it.

‘You need to watch out in these buildings.’

That she agreed with. But the questions remained. Who was he and why he was here? Questions she wanted to voice but couldn’t. As if some inner sense of survival was preventing her. The intractable fear that warned her that, if she asked, she would learn the horrible truth. That she hadn’t escaped the building at all. That he was in fact Death, come to lead her away. The Grim Reaper in jeans and a shirt stained with dust.

He held his hand out to her. ‘Can you stand?’

She looked at his hand, the tendons pronounced, crawling in the moonlight. She wanted to but felt unable to refuse.

She held out her own. After what seemed like for ever, their hands touched, sparking another wave of fear coursing through her that eventually settled deep in her stomach, hollowing her out.

The hand was not cold. It was warm and calloused. Very human.

Then suddenly she was on her feet, hoisted as if an expert puppeteer had brought a marionette to life. Though now upright, her legs felt wooden, the knees unable to lock, on the verge of collapse.

‘I think we need to get you home. See to that cut shoulder,’ said the stranger, wrapping his arm around her, practically holding her up now. Naiyana did nothing to prevent it. The fear that had invaded her stomach had suddenly turned to warmth. She suddenly felt safe. In a way she hadn’t felt since they’d come to Kallayee.

And if she was honest, for a long time before that.

‘Thank you for…’ Naiyana felt her legs turn to jelly again, his arm bearing her weight. She couldn’t finish the sentence. What she had been saved from suddenly hit her hard.

‘It’s okay. You’re just lucky I was there.’

‘But why were you there?’

With her concentration focused on staying upright and brainpower dealing with the near miss, the question slipped out.

The night turned silent again as if the whole world was awaiting the answer.

None came. He looked away, back towards the crossroads for a brief moment, the moonlight accenting his high cheekbones, before his powerful gaze returned to her, trapping her in its beam once more. Again her heart began to pound, fear taking over, the fear of knowing and not wanting to know, his arm tightly clasped to her side, his entire body seeming to envelop hers and arousing the warmth in the pit of her stomach that she now recognized as having been alien to her for years. Igniting a desire that she had considered a lost teenage memory. His scent, a fusion of sweat and a hint of bitter oil tingled her nostrils. It was earthy and raw, imbued with a danger and desire that bound itself to every atom of her being.

Still he stared at her, his answer conveyed by the clarity in his eyes rather than words. She wondered if it was mutual. She found herself hoping that he was experiencing the same rush, the same spark, she was. A spark that now raged within her, reawakening the memory of what it was like to be out of control, reawakening the yearning to rip up the rulebook and do what she wanted. Her mind cautioned her that maybe it was simply a high from having cheated death, basking in his protective hold, his urgent scent or the continued pounding of her heart, but she felt an inexorable pull towards him, complete and unmistakable and undeniable.

Once again she let herself get drawn into