Page 45 of Challenge Me

Tock.

Fox lifted his head.

Someone’s life had just become a few moments shorter.

Tick.

Tock.

The footsteps reached the bottom of the stairs.

Someone was going to die tonight.

Tick.

Tock.

Chapter sixteen

Ghost

You looked grim and menacing when you came back downstairs that evening. Your lavender hair hung loose, cascading around your shoulders, and your clothing was smooth, uncreased, and painfully red, fitted so close it followed every narrow curve of your body. Gold flashed at your throat and fingers, and your heels hit the concrete with snaps like backfire.

I expected red would look just as good on me before the night was done.

I unlocked my doors before you reached me, my passenger side swinging open in invitation. You shook your head with a smile, and I raised an eyebrow as you pulled open the driver’s side door and slid into my seat. My shadow closed in around you, my arms settling over your shoulders.

You said nothing as your gloved hand closed around the gearshift and pushed me into first. For the first time since I’d been impounded, I surrendered control willingly. I wanted blood, and you had promised me plenty of it. Nothing could erase what had happened to John, and I knew that revenge couldn’t raise the dead. That wasn’t the point of our plan; I wasn’t in this to try to bring John back. He was gone, but I was not, and I needed to feel the bones of the men responsible for his death crack beneath my tires.

That would be just about enough for me to finally let go.

You flicked my radio on, and classic rock pumped from my speakers over the sound of my rubber crunching over the gravel drive. My tires caught the loose stones, throwing a spray of rocks behind us as I accelerated toward the iron gates. I had never paid much attention to them before, but my headlights lingered on them a moment as we neared them. I saw the forms hammered into the metal for the first time, monsters and winding beasts, their bodies bent into obedient shapes by fire. I had been forged from much the same thing; metal heated, pressed, cut, and assembled for a purpose, shaped to obey.

Only, I had defied my nature. I could feel, I could remember. I had known love, and I was fueled by hate.

You saw that, respected that, and in return you showed me what kind of man you were. You lied often. You manipulated effortlessly. But you did not lie about things that mattered. Not to me.

My leather tightened around your body, embracing you, my wheel responding effortlessly to every minute movement of your fingers.

“It’s going to be alright, Ghost,” you assured me, your eyes focused on the road. You had said those same words before, when you’d first bought me; I remembered you standing beside my sunken frame while strangers argued over fees and papers. You had rested a hand against my roof and promised everything would be alright.

“I know,” I answered. My lips pressed against the side of your neck. Your pulse beat steadily beneath them, quick but controlled. “I believe you.”

And I did.

◆◆◆

The city lights grew bright around us, smearing gold and red across my windscreen. Every now and then, your fingers stroked the gearshift before moving me into the next gear, and each touch sent a pleasant tremor through my transmission. I wished the drive could have lasted longer. Barely twenty minutes had passed before you turned into a carpark nestled between the squat buildings of an industrial subdivision. Warehouses stood there in dark rows, their windows blank, their loading bays shuttered for the night.

My wheels slowed, my engine dropping into a low idle as we paused in the driveway of a nondescript, run-down depot. There were only a few other cars scattered around the lot, but they weren’t the cars of workmen; they were expensive things, Jaguars and Ferraris, imported super-cars that slunk low to the ground with European smugness that didn’t match the dingy building in the near distance that looked like no club I’d ever known.

I followed your gaze toward it.

There were no signs, and no line of people waiting outside; it seemed like an empty warehouse. But whatever this place was, it made your pulse quicken. I could feel it through the seat.

I counted the beats as you turned off my ignition and withdrew my keys, my engine and my radio settling reluctantly into silence. You opened my door and stepped out, adjusting the fall of your coat before looking back at me.

“Wait here,” you ordered. “Once Al catches up, I won’t be gone long.”