Eternal [HS]

Chapter Forty-Six

THEIR STARES MEET THROUGH THE chaos, and, for a split second, they are both frozen in place.

Adeline's feet are already breaking into a hurried pace again when she says, "I didn't think you'd be stupid enough to take the bait."

Not stupid, her mind corrects for her, just hopelessly in love. Sometimes, it's difficult to tell the differences between the two.

She rallies her body's strength in the half-second it takes for Adeline to charge at them and rips the second chain off of the wall, using the momentum of her body to turn it around to whip her attacker with it. The cement still fused to the end of the chain that was mounted to the wall crumbles upon impact with her abdomen, and she is sent onto her back, sliding along the floor like a rag doll.

Her head hits the ground with a cringe-inducing thwack that reminds Jo of the night she was attacked less than half a mile from where they stand. The man had his hand wrapped up in her hair to use as leverage when he based her face against the cobblestones over and over. The memory is troubling, but it fuels the fire inside of her to know that the person she just hurt is the one responsible for that, for all of the pain in her recent life.

She's back up again soon, though, and angrier than before. As much as it hurts, being whipped with a chain and small block of cement will never kill her for good, only the dagger at her side could...

The sound of her unsheathing the blade sings in the surrounding air.

Voice is tinged with icy rage, she shouts as she tries to maneuver around her to take a strike at Harry, "Don't touch him!"

She doesn't realize what she does until it's over, until a trickle of black blood is dripping down the length of Adeline's throat in a wound that would be fatal for a human, but nothing to sweat for any of them. The cut sets her back a step before she lunges forward again.

Jo will not allow her to move any closer. She knows what the point is. After what happened to Issac, not only does she hate them both, she wants to put them through what she endured. The reason she's spared Harry's life for the past few days isn't due to any mercy on her part, since she doesn't have a single merciful bone in her body, it was because she was saving his death for now.

In the commotion of her fighting off every attempt Adeline makes to hurt him that leads to her getting battered and bloodied in the process, she doesn't even notice the remaining guards following Niall and Mitch in here. The sight of her protecting their friend from where he is hardly standing up with most of his weight bearing on the wall behind him is the only thing they need to fight with more ferocity.

Those guards rush at them, but they do everything in their power to keep them away while she fights her own battle. Niall moves through the room like death itself, and the first person to get close enough to harm them does not meet a happy fate.

Adeline slices her own blade into her breast, barely missing her heart, in tandem with a well-timed kick to her knees to bring her falling to the ground.

But Jo isn't giving up, not yet, and she pushes through the ache caused by her body hitting the ground hard enough to knock the wind out of her to stop Harry from being killed.

Both of her hands shoot out in the direction of Adeline's body and wrap around each ankle to keep her from reaching him. Her enemy falls forward onto her face with her chin smacking the floor as she is stopped with her knife a centimeter away from touching Harry—one more second and it would've been too late to prevent it.

Behind them, the sound of Niall's stake clattering to the ground reverberates through the room, and she only sees Mitch saving him from one of the guards out of the corner of her eyes because she's too busy dragging her as far away from Harry as possible.