Page 9 of In Death’s Hands (The Threads of Fate #1)

The silence is deafening. Gone is the peaceful quiet. Skin-crawling awareness and tension have replaced it.

I guess claiming you died long ago will do that to a room. In my defence, I’m only speaking the truth. One I stopped telling a while back, so I may be a bit out of practice.

Nathan doesn’t say anything, only observing me with those intense eyes of his. Does he think I’m crazy? Is he regretting opening his home to me?

There is no turning back, however. It’s not like I can play it off as a joke and move on, so I ignore my nerves and power through.

“Something happened to me then.” Something I will not be mentioning anytime soon.

I may be willing to open up, but this is a limit I will not cross.

“I… survived.” Or rather was brought back to life, but don’t go saying that out loud unless you want to spend years talking to over-educated people about delusions and coping mechanisms.

“You survived… dying?” he asks with a strange expression on his face.

“Uhm…” I guess I’m not the best at explaining what happened in a rational way.

“Yes. What matters is: I’m not dead. Clearly.

” He frowns, but I move on, hoping he won’t point out the obvious holes in my story.

“What’s actually relevant is that I’ve been close to dying many times since.

I haven’t figured out if that’s because I’m just unlucky or because I killed kittens or ate babies in a past life or something.

That’s just what it is, and I’ll never get an answer. ”

“How much is ‘many times’?”

“Many times.” His eyes impossibly darken, the flames from the crackling fireplace reflecting in them. He stays quiet and waits for me to actually answer his question. “I don’t know for sure, okay?”

“Give an estimate.” The command makes my skin crawl, but when he looks at me, inflexible and infinitely patient, I deflate.

“About twenty—”

“Twenty?!”

“—maybe thirty times.”

He looks positively outraged. The air around us seems to pause.

Goose bumps rise along my arms at the sudden drop in temperature.

I frown at the fire that is still going strong and wonder if my exhaustion is playing tricks on me.

Nathan stands up and starts pacing in front of me, blocking the light from the fire with each of his laps.

When he stops and looks at me again, my breath stays blocked in my throat.

“You mean to tell me that since that accident, you’ve almost died thirty times? ”

I’m almost shocked at him knowing it was an accident but then rationalise that it makes sense for him to call it that. He can’t know that it was a car accident specifically. “Well…”

“Liv.”

I shiver slightly, and I’m sure it’s from the sudden cold rather than the velvet feeling of his voice in the dark.

“That’s about the amount of times I’ve ended up in hospitals over the years, yes.

Usually around the anniversary of the… accident.

My therapists and social worker used to think I attempted suicide every year and have tried to have me committed.

I don’t blame them per se, but if you could stop looking at me like I’m crazy I would appreciate it. ”

“You hate hospitals.”

“I do.” Why am I so pleased he remembers that?

“How many of these… ‘close calls’ have you had exactly?” I roll my eyes, ready to repeat myself, when he cuts me off. “When you didn’t go to the hospital.”

Ah. That sort of changes things.

“I honestly don’t know, I’m rather clumsy.” I attempt a smile, but his frown deepens. He doesn’t seem to think it’s funny.

“That’s not normal.” He shakes his head and starts pacing again, mumbling to himself.

“Well, it’s my normal.”

He ignores me. “And you say it’s more frequent around the anniversary of your parents’ death?”

I start nodding but freeze. “What did you say?”

“Are these close calls more frequent around the date of your—” He stops abruptly, as if realising his mistake. Eyes wide, he turns to me. “Liv.”

I’m already up off the couch, backing away. “Who are you? How did you know?”

“Please, let me explain.”

“How did you know? Have you been stalking me?”

He winces and I choke on my rising panic.

My palms are clammy and my heart is following an incoherent rhythm.

I should never have trusted him; maybe the concussion messed with my instincts, telling me I was safe with him.

I’m such an idiot for not considering it.

Without wasting another second, I rush through the front door and down the emergency stairwell.

My harsh breath drowns out his calls for me as I hurry down the stairs barefoot, careful not to trip.

Suddenly I’m in the street, people and cars rushing by in a cacophony of noises.

The drastic change from the cosy apartment gives me whiplash.

I start walking randomly, replaying the events that brought me here.

I have no shoes, no phone, no safe place to go back to.

There is one place, but I’m pretty sure stepping back into it would finish me off at this point.

I’m so focused on the spiral of emotions bringing me down, down, down that I don’t realise I’m fucked until it’s too late.

I’ve somehow walked into a darkened impasse, and the instincts that have thoroughly misled me regarding Nathan start yelling danger at me.

In front of me is a tall, shadowy figure fast approaching.

My heart skips a bit and starts up again with a vengeance, blood rushing through my ears.

I back away a few steps, getting ready to run, but my escape is interrupted by another body.

For a second I’m sure it’s Nathan and relief hits me despite everything.

But it’s not him. My friend-slash-stalker-slash-saviour is probably cursing my name right as we speak because I overreacted.

Because I didn’t let him explain how he knew what had happened to me.

To my wannabe parents. Maybe my colleagues told him.

Maybe he guessed. Hell, maybe I talked in my sleep.

I could be warm right now, enjoying the soothing presence of a kind man and the peaceful reassurance of a fire.

But no. No, I had to run out of there like the Reaper himself was chasing me, saying he had changed his mind.

I had to run and find myself in a death trap.

Three times in two days is definitely too much, even for me.

I try moving away from the second figure, but his arms engulf me too quickly.

Could they be the same guys from my apartment?

How did they find me? I foolishly thought they would never bother me again.

I don’t know what led me to believe I was safe, but in all my worries, I hadn’t thought of those men coming after me again.

A cry bubbles up my throat but is stopped from bursting to life by a giant hand slamming down on my mouth and forcing it shut.

This is it. Death is finally catching up to me. Is it normal to feel a lick a relief among the horror? I’m tired of running. If he truly is coming back for me then so be it.

At least, that’s what a tired piece of my mind seems to think, but my body doesn’t necessarily agree with that plan.

I find myself kicking and screaming through the hand, trying to bite it, but his hold is so tight I only succeed in biting my own flesh.

When I stomp my heel down on the man’s foot, Miss Congeniality style, I hear his groan of pain.

“Enough! This should not be that hard!” says the man in front of me, not close enough for me to see his face under his dark cloak. His voice, however, sends cold spikes through my body, heightening my fear instantly.

Behind me, the man finally takes his hand off my mouth, but before I can call for help, he wraps it around my throat and I have to fight the déjà vu. How am I here again?

As I was taught, I twist and bend backwards to force his hold to loosen, but he catches on quick and slams my back against his body, effectively blocking any chance of escape. I start kicking again while trying to get ahold of his thumbs to break them away, literally, but he is too strong.

I feel my arms weakening, my brain becoming sluggish, exacting its revenge for being denied air for too long.

“Liv!”

Nathan! I want to cry. I want to call after him but no sound comes out. Not even a whimper.

I hear a curse from the first man who spoke and the hold on my neck relaxes just enough to allow a trickle of air through. My eyes water but I still look ahead to assess the situation. The man shrouded in darkness is backing away from what looks like people made of shadows.

Maybe the lack of air did more damage than I thought.

The man holding me starts to shake and lets go of my neck to grab my arm and drag me with him.

A spark of fight I didn’t know still lived in me comes back with a bite.

Literally. I bite down, hard, on his hand.

A hiss comes soon after, but whatever curse may have come from the man’s mouth is somehow dampened.

He drops me and I stumble forward. The air is thick and freezing cold.

The hair on my arms rises and my heavy breaths become living clouds in the suddenly quiet alley.

I look around but only see writhing shadows.

They part long enough for me to glimpse the first man disappearing faster than it takes me to blink.

A roar comes out of my attacker. Anger and fear come to life. I scramble away from his reach so fast I lose my balance and fall on my ass. He keeps his eyes on me as he grabs something from the ground. A broken piece of wood with old, rusty nails sticking out of it.

Shit. Shit.

I move to get back on my feet but he kicks me down. Keeping my eyes on him, I stay down but crawl back, trying to put as much distance between us as I can.

His crazy eyes take in my rather pathetic move, and he seethes, “Why won’t you fucking die?”

I don’t have the emotional bandwidth to come to terms with his weird-ass question.

All I focus on is the sound of footsteps getting louder, closer.

I want to look at him, the man who has repeatedly saved me in the last two days even though a huge part of me recoils at needing to be saved, but I don’t move my eyes from the angry asshole in front of me, lest I alert him to his impending doom.

Before I can ask myself what I think will happen to him, what Nathan could possibly do to him, the cold feeling expands so much I feel my hands freeze on the ground. Shadows swirl in my peripheral vision and my head instinctively turns.

What I see does not register. Maybe after all that’s happened, I truly am losing it and everything those people said is true.

I invent ludicrous things as a coping mechanism.

I’ve believed a lot in my life, kept my certainties close to my heart, protecting them until not even respected therapists could convince me I was wrong.

But what I’m seeing is too much. That corner of my heart where I keep my unbelievable secret is too small to welcome something of that magnitude.

Nathan is there, looking like himself yet like something other. He is bathed in shadows that seem to move in sync with him. His eyes are the vortex of his anger, so cold they burn a strange white colour.

I feel a movement above me, and before I can tear my gaze from Nathan, I hear the whistle of a hard object rushing through the air, rushing towards my head.

I don’t have enough time to react, but Nathan’s hand comes up and hands made of shadows take hold of me and drag me away.

I’m trying to understand why I’m not afraid when a thud sounds next to me.

The piece of wood has fallen at my side, because the man holding it is gone.

Nothing but a shadow dispersed in the wind.

I gasp and try to get to my feet, my eyes returning to and getting stuck on Nathan.

He opens and closes his mouth a few times, the anger in his eyes seeping and giving way to something that looks a lot like anguish.

The black shades around him fade slowly until they’re completely gone.

Until his eyes are back to their eerie yet comforting black.

The sounds of the bustling capital reach me again, but all I am is stuck.

Halfway between a crouch and standing up, my legs are shaking beneath me.

He moves closer, holding up the hand he somehow commanded shadows with, and I recoil.

He notices and flinches, quickly backing away with both hands up, trying to show me he won’t hurt me.

The craziest thing is that I believe him. Worse, my body knows he won’t hurt me. It just hasn’t told my head why we trust him that much. I want to blame the concussion again, but even I need to admit that excuse has run its course.

Right now, all I know is that I don’t know a single fucking thing.