ADDICTED

48

LEAH

Something jolted me awake. I didn't know what it was, but I heard myself gasp and felt my back straighten. I blinked until the view came into focus.

A dashboard. Smoke.

It smelled like chemicals and blood.

I sucked in a deep breath and looked over myself. A seat belt held me against the backseat.

Wincing, I closed my eyes and cradled my head. It was banging loudly, incessantly.

Did we get in an accident? Who was driving? Whose car was I in?

My brain was still trying to compute when the door suddenly tore open. A large hand reached into the backseat and grabbed my arm.

"Stop," I protested, my voice gruff and low. My body felt sluggish.

The hand gripped me harder, nails digging into my skin.

I was dragged out of the seatbelt and the car.

My head whacked the door on the way down and I cried out.

Then, I felt something cold against my throat.

I blinked and felt tears roll down my cheeks.

"Let us go!" shouted a male voice. His words sounded from all around me at once. Each syllable vibrated through my body.

"Put the knife down," ordered another male, this voice familiar.

I mustered the clarity to lift my head.

James stood, legs apart and hands held out to us as if pleading.

His eyes were wide with fright.

Something was wrong, obviously, but seeing James' face contorted that way made everything crystal clear.

The haze around my mind quickly dissipated.

The cells in my brain were finally firing their tiny chemical signals again.

I swallowed and grimaced at the hard, sharp object pressing into my trachea.

Knife, I realized. The thing against my throat is a knife.

Memories flashed through my waking consciousness.

I was back in my Mercedes. Jarrod was poking me with the tip of a knife. He was telling me to drive.

I jumped out of the visceral memory with a scream.

Pain bit at my neck and I knew I had just been cut.

Maybe it was the trauma. Maybe it was just because I was sick of getting pushed around.

I slammed my elbow back into a hard, fleshy body. Then I slammed my head back into the base of a throat.

Something cracked.

The knife fell away from my throat and my body leapt forward.

Hot red fury bled through me. Suddenly I turned back to face the person who had held the knife to me.

Timothy was pushing himself up, grabbing his throat with one hand and his knife in the other.

He lurched towards me.

Before I could kick him in the balls and pummel his face in, a flash of black speed cut between us.

James' cane slammed across Timothy's face.

Blood spurted from his nose and the man started screaming.

"Get back, Leah! Get back!" James ordered sternly. His voice was higher than normal. He sounded panicked and scared.