Lifebound Read online

  Back outside with Rob and Alicia, Adriana explained the concept as best as she could, then they each began to toss out ideas about the best way to accomplish their goal.

  “So, the major hindrance in getting lifebound is being able to touch long enough to synchronize without Josh falling over dead in the process,” Rob said.

  Adriana felt sick at the description but nodded. “My mom said that she nearly lifebound with a musician because he was high on amphetamines. Apparently back in the day, they experimented with being able to touch longer while on different drugs.”

  “Well, I absolutely forbid you two to start experimenting with amphetamines. I’ve called one ambulance for this nut already when he nearly killed himself skating that damned loop. I don’t want to call them again because Josh is dying of some kind of heart arrhythmia,” Alicia said. “You are going to have to find another way to either energize Josh or de-energize Adriana.”

  “Can you be de-energized?” Josh asked her.

  Adriana considered her last flight down to Jacksonville. “When I fly, I can’t feel the earth’s energies quite as strongly. But I’ve never done any experimenting to know just how much an effect it might have.”

  “How long do you think it would take you guys to synchronize?” Alicia asked.

  “The longest we’ve been able to touch so far was about three minutes, and Josh nearly died. But I was beginning to feel really strange just about the time Cyrus pulled us apart.”

  “You could jump together,” Rob said. “Lots of adrenaline flowing, and you’d have about six minutes in the air to finish the deed before Adriana was back on the ground.”

  “Jump? What do you mean jump?” Adriana looked back and forth between the two guys.

  Josh nodded and grinned.

  The next morning dawned bright and beautiful as they drove to Josh’s favorite dropzone—Gulf Coast Skydiving.

  “I can’t believe I’m doing this,” Adriana repeated over and over.

  “We don’t have to,” Josh said each time.

  But she assured him she wanted to go through with it.

  They parked in the small lot beside the hangar just as Josh’s cellphone rang. He answered without even looking at the caller ID, guessing it was Rob or one of the other guys he’d asked to meet them there.

  “Josh? This is Preston Mitchell. Sorry to bother you, but is Adriana Velen with you by any chance?”

  “Why, yes, Preston, she is.”

  “May I speak with her?”

  “Not until I know how you got this number.”

  “I tried to call her directly, but the calls go straight to her voicemail,” Preston said. “Please put her on the phone.”

  “And just how did you get her number?” Josh’s suspicions began to work overtime. “Did Wiccan Haus give it to you? Because Cemil wouldn’t give it to me, and if that son of a bitch gave it to you, I’m going to kick the shit out of him at the first opportunity I get.”

  “Josh, please. I have my own resources which I assure you are just as far reaching as anything they have at Wiccan Haus.”

  Josh scoffed at that, considering just how resourceful Sarka and Cyrus in particular seemed to be.

  “Since you are being stubborn,” Preston said, “I’ll just tell you instead. The Lamia Council has declared Adriana to be missing, possibly abducted, and has sent a pair of operatives to find her and bring her back.”

  “No freaking way.”

  “Yes, they are in fact on their way. I have no idea what Miss Velen believes she is doing, but the Council means business. Be very careful.”

  Josh thanked him and hung up the phone.

  “What was that about?” Adriana asked.

  “I think we need to get off the ground about ten minutes ago,” Josh said. “Your Council has sent a couple of cops after you.”

  Adriana turned so pale that Josh only barely restrained himself from grabbing her in a tight embrace. As it was, he took a handful of her hair in his hand. “Are you okay? What do you want me to do?”

  She shivered a moment then looked up at him with her stormy gray eyes full of tears. “Get this plane off the ground ten minutes ago.”

  Less than half an hour later, the little Cessna taxied down the runway. Josh sat geared up to jump tandem with Adriana in front of him, both straddling a long bench. Across from them, Tim and Snowball checked each other’s parachute containers one last time, then Tim leaned over to check Josh’s.

  “Now tell me again why you already own all this stuff.” Adriana gestured at the heavy harness she wore as she spoke over the roar of the engine.

  “Rob can’t jump by himself. He tried it a time or two, but only ended up breaking his ankle. So we switched to tandem jumps with him clipped to me. That way he could keep jumping and I could get him safely landed.”

  “I thought skydivers wore suits.” Her mouth began to go dry with nerves. The four of them wore shorts and T-shirts, and there wasn’t a helmet to be seen, only goggles for each.

  “Sometimes. But this is just a straight jump, no acrobatics. And I’ve got to be able to touch you all the way down.

  “When we bail out, you lean your head against my shoulder and arch your back. Hang onto the straps of your harness until I tell you to spread out your arms like this.” He held out his hands bent at the elbows. “I’m going to put my legs outside yours and keep contact with you that way. If something should happen and I lose consciousness, the AAD will pull the reserve chute for you before we get too low.”

  Adriana nodded and tried to take it all in. They had both gone insane. They were going to die.

  The plane throttled up hard and began to lift off. Josh pointed out the window as they rose above the hangar where an understated gray sedan had just pulled up and a couple of unremarkably dressed men stepped out. The sight gave her chills. The operatives.

  She regrouped her courage as Josh opened a small beverage and began to drink.

  “What is that?” she asked. “If it’s liquid courage, give me some.”

  “Energy shot.” He took a swallow and grimaced. “They taste pretty nasty but pack a mean punch of caffeine. I thought we could use a little extra insurance.”

  He downed the can, then another and another.

  “How many of those are you supposed to drink?” she asked.

  “A third of one can. This is my sixth. I hope these have time to hit my system before we jump.”

  Adriana wrapped her arms around herself as the air grew cooler in the little plane. Out the window the ground grew farther and farther away. She’d never had any desire to go skydiving. She could not envision why a person would want to jump out of a perfectly functional airplane.

  But Tim and Snowball grinned like they had won the lottery. Even Josh’s eyes sparkled when she looked back at him.

  “Aren’t you scared?” she asked as the plane gave a little lurch that caused her breakfast to nearly come back on her.

  “Every time. Scared out of my mind. Especially today,” Josh said. “But when you meet that fear at the door and take that step, putting all your faith in yourself and a piece of nylon, you get this moment of clarity that tells you who you really are and what you really want.”

  She swiveled on the bench to face him. “Josh, I want this to work. I want you forever. Whatever happens next, I love you.”

  “I know. I’m counting on that.”

  Seconds later, the pilot called out a ready. The plane had reached altitude. Behind her, Josh slid closer and clipped her tightly to him with the four heavy metal clips that linked his harness to hers. They stood together, and he gave her harness another good tug.

  Tim pulled open the door of the plane and the noise, which had been loud before, went to deafening. Together, she and Josh walked to the opening, and she
looked down at the distant earth below. Its energy pull had definitely lessened, but she had no idea whether the increased distance would be enough to stop her from draining all the life out of Josh on the way down.

  But she trusted him. He pressed his hand against her forehead, pushing her back against his shoulder, and she held onto the straps of her harness tightly.

  “On three,” he called into her ear. “One, two—” and on three she met her fear at the door. She’d wanted choices; now she had them.

  “Three!” Adriana put her faith in a few square yards of nylon—and in Josh. Then she jumped.

  From the instant his skin touched hers at the doorway of the tiny Cessna, Josh felt the tendrils of Adriana’s power at him. His heart pounded in terror.

  Every jump challenged him to confront the rational fear of leaping out into the vacant sky to hurtle toward certain death. The adrenaline rush both energized and comforted him each time he went up, stripping his life to its bare essentials and reminding him of his mortality and his priorities.

  However, this jump terrorized him to the core. This time he didn’t just risk his life. He also risked hers.

  If he passed out on the way down, she’d be helpless. The winds could carry them anywhere, into any danger. If she somehow managed to bind her energies to his and he still died, she’d die too.

  When he’d given her that little speech about knowing who you are at the door of the airplane, he was unconsciously inviting her to think twice about doing this, to think twice about choosing him at all.

  But when she said the words, when she told him she loved him for the first time, he knew he had no intention of turning back. He belonged with her—he belonged to her. He wanted to be bound to her side for the rest of his life.

  And if it took jumping out of an airplane with her, so be it.

  So he jumped.

  As the wind roared past his ears like a crazed animal, he concentrated on two things—the altimeter on his wrist and the pounding of his heart.

  Terror for her life gripped him, and he counted on that terror to give him the strength he’d need to overcome the hold her powers had on him. He patted her hands to signal her to hold out her arms. On any other jump, he’d use those exquisite moments of freefall to do flips and swoops—to show her how it felt to fly.

  Instead, he steeled himself against the way his very nature began to ebb and flow, passing back and forth between them through the brush of his skin against hers. He tried to relax his body to keep their fall stable, but the feel of her against him took over his focus. He pressed his legs closer to hers, eager to get even closer to her as they fell.

  A part of him tried to remain detached, to explore the sensation of having his life drawn away from him, but the rest fell into a sort of hypnosis as he grew weak and dizzy.

  Meanwhile, the ground rushed up for them like an oncoming train, the greens and browns of the landscape running together like paint as his vision began to blur.

  He blinked and tried to read the altimeter, but dizziness had given way to complete vertigo and he began to feel like he was spinning end over end, cartwheeling them to the ground.

  Adriana grabbed his hands and held them out like he’d taught her. She’d begun to glow with that unearthly illumination like she had at Wiccan Haus the night he kissed her for the first time.

  Her hair snapped and sparkled, freeing itself from its barrette to fly around him, into his eyes and across his face. He tried once more to shake free of her spell and read the altimeter. They had to be getting close.

  Falling beside them, Tim and Snowball threw their drogue chutes and the logical, detached part of him encouraged him to do the same. The ensnared part of him simply wanted to fade away into the incredible glowing life force in his arms, to let her take him completely into her.

  A sudden beeping in his ear warned him that the drogue had to be thrown. For her sake. He needed to make sure she got on the ground safely. He had to pull the chute.

  He somehow reached up behind him and pulled the little drogue chute out of its pouch where it caught the air and pulled the pin that released the main chute from its container. The straps of his harness pulled tight against him as the nylon fabric billowed open in a rainbow above him, slowing their descent from one hundred twenty miles an hour down to thirty in a matter of seconds.

  But if he believed the worst part was over, he quickly found himself mistaken.

  The parachute bloomed over her head and Josh’s arms tightened around her as if to hold her to him by force if necessary. The terrifying yet oddly exhilarating fall slowed to a float.

  She felt so alive. She’d never felt more alive than in that moment. Josh’s life coursed through her, and the push and pull of the earth’s vital energies suddenly channeled into something overwhelmingly orderly and forceful.

  His strength poured into her and she returned it with all the power she could muster. At first, the adrenaline that fueled him made him invincible to her. During that entire heart-stopping plummet, she’d drawn on him much more than she intended through sheer terror, but his bottomless vitality had buoyed her up and carried her over and beyond where she’d ever been.

  Life sizzled in her veins and down her nerves. She’d never felt stronger or more completely whole.

  However, as they began to float toward the ground, she began to sense a limit to Josh’s life.

  “Let go of me,” she begged him. “It’s not going to work!”

  But he held her tighter and pressed his cheek against her forehead. “Keep going,” he said. “We can do it.”

  “We’ll do something else.” She tried to pull her hands free of his while she still could.

  “Just breathe with me.” His voice in her ear was confident and soothing. “Close your eyes and feel me with you.”

  They rocked in the gentle motion of the falling parachute like leaves falling from a tree in autumn. His arms held her tightly, his hands so warm around her. His life rippled back and forth through her like the tide, always going out a little bit further each time.

  But instead of fighting the pull, she began to work with it. She drew on him more heavily, more purposefully than before.

  With each surge out of him, his grip loosened a little and he leaned into her. But on the return push, a larger store of energy went back to him.

  “Take the steering toggles,” Josh said, his voice rough, as if he’d been running a marathon. “When we get nearly to the ground, pull down on them as hard as you can to break your fall.”

  “Why?”

  Fear added its own surge to her life force. She reached to take the handles on either side, and he wrapped his fingers over hers.

  “I’ll try to help,” he said, his voice rough and tired, “but I’m not sure I’ll be much use when we hit the ground.”

  “No! Josh, stay with me! We’re almost there!”

  Sure enough the ground grew closer every second, but even more important, the cycle that ran between them had almost caught a rhythm of its own like an engine beginning to thrum into life.

  “Whatever happens, it was worth it.” His voice grew so soft she could barely make out the words. “I can’t do without you.”

  Then the green grass loomed right in her face and she pulled down as hard as she could on the toggles as Josh’s fingers fell away from hers.

  Somehow she staggered to the ground as the parachute billowed down softly, breaking their fall.

  They lay in a tangle of nylon.

  “We made it!” she called to him. “We did it!”

  But to her horror, Josh didn’t answer.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Tim and Snowball dashed across the field toward them, and in the distance Alicia also ran to intercept.

  Snowball grabbed the open chute and released it from Josh’s har
ness as Tim worked to unclip her.

  “Hey, Josh!” Tim called over her shoulder. “You okay?”

  Together they rolled the unconscious Josh onto his back, and Tim slapped him lightly on the face. “Man, he’s out cold. I’ve seen tandem jumpers pass out but never the instructor.”

  Ice settled over Adriana. “Josh, wake up, please!” She stroked his hand and his face, willing him back to her.

  Alicia dropped to her knees on the other side. “Did it work? Is he okay?”

  “I don’t know.” Tears poured down Adriana’s face.

  At that moment, the two strange men arrived beside them.

  “Ma’am, excuse me,” one said, gently but firmly pushing Alicia aside. He quickly checked Josh’s pulse and leaned his cheek over Josh’s face to ensure he was breathing.

  “CPR?” the other asked as he knelt beside Adriana.

  “Let me get a couple of breaths in him first.”

  But before the man could start rescue breathing, Josh took in a deep gasp of air on his own.

  “I don’t think he wants you to, Kaleb.” The second man laughed.

  “Fine by me.”

  The two men leaned back to allow Josh room to stir.

  “Are you okay?” Adriana asked him when those beautiful cerulean blue eyes opened to look for her. “Josh, baby, please tell me you’re okay.” She cupped his face in her hands until his focus rested on her.

  “I’m good, I think. Did it work?”

  Adriana stopped in mid-caress. “I can touch you,” she whispered. “I still feel you, but I don’t have to draw on you.”

  She grabbed Alicia’s hand. “I don’t feel you at all, Alicia.”

  Next, the nearest operative became her target—Kaleb, his buddy had called him. “You either. I don’t feel your energy at all.”

  “Serena will be glad to hear that,” Kaleb said.

  Adriana took both her hands and placed them squarely back on Josh where they belonged. “It worked!”