Chapter 2

What Have I Done?

Savvy hadn’t driven somewhere with a purpose in a long time. Before, there’d been well-baby visits and trips to the store for diapers, then socks, then school dresses. Now Tobias usually drove.

She was getting the sweats again. This sensation had come and gone periodically since the accident. Sometimes she thought it was growing progressively worse, but it was hard to tell. Either way, Savvy chalked it up to guilt. The accident report in the newspaper the day after her life was over had been simply worded. The dichotomy between the brief write up on the impact of Savvy’s life was staggering.

Police are looking for more information and witnesses regarding the van vs. truck accident. The incident resulted in the death of a father and daughter. Anyone with information about the substance found at the accident is asked to call the non-emergency number at the Police Station. The corrosive effects will cause a detour until the road can be repaired.

Tonight, when she stopped at a red light, her eyes seemed to haze over. She glanced in the rearview mirror, and her pupils looked like they were shaking. The lighting was awful. Maybe she was just fine. Maybe just sad. Were tears blurring her vision yet again? Sometimes she didn’t even realize when she was crying now. She wouldn’t be lucky enough to be sick. To be dying.

Whatever it was, this eye thing was new. She looked at herself in the side mirror as well. Now the shaking was subsiding, the night around her looked sharper, clearer again.

She would hide this from Tobias, if it even proved to be something more than a physical manifestation of her grief. He would take her right to the doctor, and she would have to take off her clothes. She was perfectly sure the fluorescent lights in the doctor’s office would highlight her moment of selfishness for all to see. The moment that had ended everything and everyone, and had made her world spin out of control.

The light turned green, and Savvy took off too fast. The car jerked under her hands. It’s probably scared too.

The bar she’d seen so often in the news as a crime scene was not nearly as spectacular as its infamous reputation. Even in the middle of the night, it was shabby looking. Its blue signs were all missing letters, making the words incoherent. Judging from the assholes in the parking lot, reading was the last thing on their minds anyway.

She felt revulsion, and, God help her, fear.

Well, fuck you! I bet your family was scared too. That didn’t stop you, did it? she asked herself silently, angrily.

The lines on the lot were faded, so Savvy just pulled out of the way and parked her car. She got out before the engine had even settled into full quiet. She left the keys on the seat and didn’t lock the door. It didn’t matter anymore.

Low whistles and vile comments launched at her as she went for the front door. Music poured from the place with a consistent, beating bass. She felt her resolve fall to her feet. Her hands started to shake again.

She felt like a coward.

She was a coward.

Savvy kept walking anyway. By the time she got to the blacked-out glass door, she remembered she had no wallet. No money. What the hell was she going to do while she waited for someone to kill her? It didn’t matter anymore.

The music grew ten times louder and waved over her as she opened the door. Her heartbeat immediately assimilated to the rhythm. The bouncer stepped in front of her. He was huge.

“ID?” His voice was so high and squeaky she almost made eye contact.

She shook her head, keeping her eyes on the floor. She didn’t have any ID. She was going to fucking fail again.

“That’s okay. Go ahead. We need more chicks in here.”

Savvy nodded her thanks and continued inside. When she glanced around the interior, she noted a suspicious lack of movement. The loud music had set up the pretense that there would be dancing. But most chairs had scruffy, scary-looking men in them. The women present were barely dressed and being pawed at half-heartedly. They were old news. Recycled goods.

But Savvy was new.

She saw an open stool at the bar and sat. The bartender slapped a drink down in front of her without asking her preference. The glass was dirty.

Savvy took her finger and followed the circle around the edge. Soon she could smell smoke wafting over her shoulder, and a low, slurring voice wanted her attention. She looked at her reflection in the mirror behind the bar. In the smudged glass she saw that her suitor had a long goatee and a beat-up leather jacket. His sweaty-man aroma finally made it through the smoke to invade her personal space.

“Hey, sexy. Can I get a dance outta you?”

Say yes. This is what you want, remember?

Savvy turned and looked the dirty man in the eyes. Around his body glowed a faint red aura. Savvy blinked. She could feel her pupils shaking again, like they had in the car, and the room grew foggy and soft-focused. Maybe the red stoplight is still affecting my eyesight?

No. This color around him, it was something more than a malfunction in her brain. The color around him pulled at the edges of her soul. She had to remind herself how to breathe. It was damn near sexual—not the man, but the sight of this color around him. This had never happened to her before. Maybe she was losing her mind. She glanced around the room, and sure enough, a few of the other guys had flickers of red outlining them. But not everyone. It was confusing, but a part of her understood it that didn’t speak common sense.

Shaken, she shook her head no and turned back to her drink.

“Fucking bitch.” He sauntered away.

She took a sip of the alcohol. Her nose wrinkled in distaste, and the bartender laughed at her reaction from the other end of the bar. She could hear everything so well. The music vibrated in her bones. A drug deal went down in the back corner. She turned to look in time to see the red around the seller turn up its hue. There was almost a faint hum to it. She could hear it.

What the hell is in this drink?

Her suitor was now hitting on another girl. She rejected him as well. Savvy could almost hear the girl’s eyes closing and opening, even with her back turned.

Maybe they slipped me Ecstasy?

“No, Bill, you hurt too much. I’m saying no.” The girl spoke firmly, not a hint of tease.

“Bring her another drink, Ryan. I’ll get in somebody’s pants tonight, even if it kills them.”

Bill’s guffaws actually made Savvy flinch. They felt like gravel being kicked at her back. She looked at him in the mirror again. His aura, still visible, had grown deeper, more red. It was as real as the drink in front of her, as the pain that never stopped coursing through her.

Hatred filled each of her pores. I have to hurt him. I have to.

Savvy didn’t have a chance to reflect on her normally passive nature. The red glow around his body called to her, demanded her. She walked straight up to him like she hadn’t rebuffed him minutes before. He gave her an angry onceover.

She smiled and grabbed a handful of his facial hair. “I changed my mind, asshole. Come with me out back, and I’ll suck you off so hard your balls will cry.”

She felt his beard move as he gave her a delighted smile, and her chest started to tingle. Something—she was feeling something. She had something to do, a job, a purpose, though she still wasn’t entirely sure what it was. Moving on him made her feel alive.

“Okay, frosty bitch. You like it rough? I can make it real rough.” He put his large hand around her arm.

Instead of fear, she felt joy, like a fisherman with a tug on his line after hours of waiting. As Bill’s red aura touched her arm, she felt her blood boil. Her skin was so incredibly sensitive. He pulled her through the crowd and out an exit door, snarling victorious insults at his buddies in the club.

The metal door sealed the music away from them when it closed. The night had a beautiful full moon, like an angel holding a flashlight above their heads. She could see everything as if it were day.

She turned and put her back to him, and they were very alone. Their romantic interlude would be held for a rapt audience of trashcans and broken wood pallets. His red aura was everywhere, almost eclipsing her, coloring the night. I want to feel him scream. I want to make everything inside him hurt. She turned to face him, smiling.

“Well, I’ll tell you what, I was going to tap Kaite again, but her baggy snatch feels like I’m fucking thin air,” Bill announced to Savvy’s breasts. “But you’ll do. I bet when I slap you the red mark will stay a while. You’re all pale and shit.” He rubbed himself with one hand and wiped his mouth with the other.

She couldn’t pull her attention from the red atmosphere that enveloped him, lighting him from all around. It throbbed for her, tempted her, seemed to offer her power. Something’s wrong with me. I need to be scared. I should be afraid.

Savvy soon realized the asshole liked pain; it was his foreplay. He backhanded her viciously. Her hair whirled around her as she absorbed the blow. He continued rubbing himself, harder now.

Something in Savvy’s mind snapped. She went primal, feral. All she could see was red, and her body was in motion. Every time she landed a crushing blow, the red around him got smaller, and she felt fantastic. The more he screamed, the more satisfied she became. She stepped on his femur and grabbed his ankle.

Effortlessly, she bent his leg until it gave a satisfying snap. She knew her strength wasn’t reasonable. And how did she know right where to step, how to plant her feet to throw punches? Bill had seemed more surprised than she was, which was saying a lot.

She laughed out loud with the euphoria as she proceeded to break each of his limbs. He screamed like an animal getting hit by a car, and she felt energy flow through her.

She finally stumbled back and closed her eyes. She stretched her arms and took a deep breath. The man couldn’t even cry, and his red aura was gone; it wasn’t glowing through her closed lids anymore.

In the next moment she heard a few things all at once, though her crazy enhanced senses seemed to be returning to normal. The club’s exit door swung open, and heavy, male footfalls came from around the corner. Her victim’s labored breaths came with a crackling sound of fluid accompanying them.

She opened her eyes, and in front of her was the second-most horrifying sight she had ever asked her eyes to behold. She had damn near torn the man apart.

He was still alive, but she bet he wished he wasn’t.

I did this. Oh my God. What did I do?

Savvy’s stomach turned, and she leaned over and emptied its contents. Her hands shook and, dear God, she was covered in his blood.

When she stood, the large bouncer pushed past the gawkers and put a hand on her shoulder. His voice was so high it should’ve been comical, but it wasn’t tonight.

“Where did they go?” he demanded. “Which way did they go?”

He wanted answers he wasn’t going to get, because Savvy wasn’t able to talk.

“There had to be, like, five guys who did this to him. Which way did they go?” He shook Savvy’s shoulders.

He doesn’t think I did this? Of course he doesn’t. Oh. My. God.

Savvy pointed into the distance, and the man sprinted in the direction she’d indicated.

A few more men shouted after the bouncer. “Hold up. We’re coming!”

The sirens in the distance sobered her. She could point in a vague direction for these evil men, but the cops would have questions. She ran past the rest of the crowd and jumped in her car. The fact that the car was still there, keys thrown on the front seat, was a miracle. Nor did she miss the irony that she was still alive and driving it.

Savvy drove as fast as she dared away from the violence she had just unleashed.