I did not want to get the party started, but this man apparently had other plans. He took the gag out of my mouth, convinced that no one would hear me scream from this room.
"What did you do to me?" I tried to make it bold and determined, but instead, it came out as groggy and hoarse. The boy simply leered at me, like he'd won a prize.
"Why am I here?" I was hoping that he'd accidentally tell me something that I could use to escape or take him out without the use of my drugged body.
"In all honesty," the boy began, "This hardly has anything to do with you."
"Get to the point," I sneered after the pause in the boy's deep voice.
"I didn't come here for you. But you, of all people, should be enough for now. With you out of the way, it will be easier."
"What do you mean by that?" I inquired, trying to keep him talking. He'd already told me why he was doing this to me, a stupid move on his part. Or maybe he was playing mind games with me. I couldn't tell yet.
"Don't play stupid with me, Tesla. It doesn't suit you. You know that I am already aware of what you are." A telekinetic or an assassin? Neither were good.
"And what you're capable of," the boy added in a lower voice. What exactly did he want from me?
I made sure not to move my eyes from his shadowy face, but out of my peripheral vision, I could see a chair in the corner. I might not be able to move it with my body, but my mind was a different story...
"So, without further ado-"
My kidnapper's statement was cut off by me slamming the chair from the corner into his body. He was knocked to the floor with a grunt, but quickly gained his composure and threw me to the floor by his feet. My vision doubled.
"Ah, Delphinium Tesla, so beautiful, yet so dangerous," the boy spat, and I got the feeling it wasn't meant as a compliment.
"You got that damn right," I croaked, my words beginning to slur together. And with that, I brought down a glass lamp to crash into his head, creating a slash on the left side of his face that began bleeding instantly.
I was met with a slap to my face. I felt the sharp pain later than normal through my drugged and hazy state.
"You bitch!" he exclaimed as he hit me, his hand going up to his freshly bleeding injury after the strike.
"Are you alright?" I queried hoarsely, openly mocking him, though my words were garbled. "That looks like it hurts." As he touched his face gently, I frantically surveyed the room for anything else to hurl at the boy through heavy-lidded eyes. However, anything else that might have been in the room wasn't lit by the patch of light from outside, so I couldn't see.
"You'll get what's coming to you, witch," the boy swore to me, displaying admirable stamina and getting shakily to his feet.
I was dully aware of pain exploding across my face. He'd hit me again. "Not so strong now, are you?" His voice sounded like it would if we were underwater. I could feel the hotness of his reeking breath as he taunted me.
I spit on his face and took the opportunity to scream, though it wasn't nearly as loud as I hoped. It was more like a muted yelp. When the boy slapped his hand over my mouth, I bit down on his fingers as hard as I could. I could hear him suppressing a scream as his blood trickled disgustingly down my chin.
This time, he didn't hit me. I'd almost prefer it if he had. After a moment of terrible silence, I first felt the pressure and then the pain of being stabbed through the stomach with my own knife.
That was when the hopelessness set in. No one was coming to save me. No one saved a monster.
So I would have to do it myself.
Fighting my grogginess, I tried to focus on the blanket on the bed. It blurred a few times before I could see it clearly. Willing it up with my mind, I caused it to wrap itself around the man's neck. It tightened like a python until he was starting to be strangled. With a muted gurgling, the man collapsed to the floor with blood leaking from his lips.
It took me a few tries to get out of the chair; my appendages were barely working. I lifted a hand to the wound in my abdomen and felt that my dress had become wet with my own blood.
For what seemed like days, I walked clumsily to the door and opened it. Leaning heavily on the walls, I propped myself up and forced myself to keep walking to the ballroom.
I stood in the threshold, looking into the massive room. I couldn't take another step, in fact, I didn't think I could even stand for much longer. I could feel my consciousness beginning to slip away. My injury was screaming with pain.
Then, by some miracle, Gigi locked eyes with me from across the room. I saw confusion and then horror expressed in her face as she realized the state I was in.
Pushing through the crowd, she made her way quickly over to me. As she neared, I struggled to not give in to unconsciousness.
Her cool palm was pressed against my feverish forehead. As soon as it happened, it was as if the drug was being pulled from my body. My strength slowly seeped back into my limbs. The searing pain in my abdomen dulled to an ache.
To my right, I saw Jake enter the ballroom again, having seemingly found nothing. He caught sight of Gigi and I as I held my still-aching side.
"Go to the third room on the left," I said to Jake between breaths, not offering any more information. I doubted that Gigi had ever seen a dead body before, but I had a feeling that he had.
When my strength had returned to its full extent, I told Gigi, "Go find the others. We need to leave."
As she scurried off in search of our teammates, I went back to the room where the man laid. When I pushed the door open, I saw Jake standing over the dead man. He stared at the man's round face intensely, clearly deep in thought.
I glanced down at the body and then back up at Jake. "Do you recognize him?"
"I don't." I had a nagging feeling that it was a lie, but I figured that we should deal with the problem at hand first.
Walking back into the ballroom, I was met with a crowd of people, all giving me worried and surprised looks. Between the blood on my face and the look of fire that was undoubtedly present in my eyes, they quickly cleared a pathway for me.
"Come on, we're leaving," Gigi announced in an uncharacteristically bold voice to Kane, Riley and Finn, who obviously had just arrived and hadn't been aware of what was happening. I had no idea where the others were.
"Delphinium, are you alright?" Finn caught one glance at me and his eyes went wide, confusion written all over his face.
"Why am I getting a feeling like I just skipped over the most dramatic episode in a TV show?" Riley questioned, her liquid-looking eyes darting from my face to Gigi's in suspicion.
"I'm fine," I stated flatly. "What we need to be worrying about is that this entire thing was most likely a lure to get us here."
I pushed past them, needing to get out of the mansion. The walls were seeming to close in on me before I stepped outside, reveling in the cool air and absence of people.
▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂
At the compound, everyone was quiet. The drive home had been nothing but awkward, the tension thick enough for me to slice through with one of my daggers.
No one had said it, but I could tell they were amazed by how unaffected I was by the whole event. I could see that they were curious about what happened, but too scared to ask.
Finn caught me right before I went into my room to retire for the night. "Are you sure you're okay, Delphinium?"
"I'll be fine."
But he persisted on. "If you need to talk about it, I'm here." I could tell what he was doing. He wanted me to open up to him, but as of now, I was as closed down as possible. The man's assault on me had shaken me more than I'd let on. I had been weak in the moment when I needed my strength the most.
I nodded to humor him. "Thank you."
Later, while I lay in bed, tossing and turning, I thought about what had happened to me. It was bad enough that it had happened today, but worse that it had happened to me in the past.
I had been beaten and tortured at that hellish place they'd kept me imprisoned in. Tonight was just a small taste of what I'd endured in my time as an active assassin. But the strange round-faced man brought back recollections that I wished I could forget.
It made me hate their memory even more, and I wished I could have watched them in their last moments. I wished I could have watched them all burn.