Untouched The Girl in the Box - By Robert J. Crane Page 0,44

Byerly kept pressing, and I could feel the warmth of his breath on my cheek, he was so close—too close. “Can you throw energy or maybe—”

“What I can do—” I started to scoot my chair away from him but he landed his hand on my arm, stopping me. “If you really want to see, just keep your hand where it is. If you don’t, move it.”

“Maybe I want to know.” His eyes were focused, boring in on me and I saw something else in them, an intensity.

“Scott, let her go—” Kat’s plea went ignored.

My glove was already off. Wolfe had moved my hand without me even knowing it and it was on Scott’s cheek. He started to recoil, but I anchored my thumb and forefinger, gripping him on the neck. Not hard enough to choke him, but enough to let him know I had a good hold on him. His eyes widened in surprise, then narrowed in anger, and he brought a hand around, maybe instinctively, to hit me. I knocked it aside and jerked him to his feet.

I saw the anger vanish, replaced with creases in his forehead from the first stirrings of pain. “Ouch,” he breathed, consternation knitting his brows together. “Ow...oh...” He sucked in a sharp breath and grunted. After another second he let out a squeal that drew even more attention from those around us and then he let out an earsplitting, agonized scream that started a scramble for the cafeteria door, people falling over each other to get the hell out of there.

“Put him down!” Kat was on her feet, shouting at me. I strained, trying to regain control of my hand, but Wolfe was in charge, holding the rest of me still. I lifted Scott Byerly off his feet and he shuddered in the air, convulsing, his eyes rolling back in his head. I looked on, horrified, unable to stop it.

I felt a blow land on the back of my head and I flew forward, releasing my grasp on Byerly. I plowed through three tables, heard some things break that sounded like it could have been me or the furniture, I wasn’t sure which. I came to rest twenty feet away from where I had started, a medley of other peoples’ lunches smeared on my clothes. Kat was already at Scott’s side and Clyde Clary stood not far away, his lips twisted in an amused smile. “Clyde,” I said, using my sleeve to mop some blood from the back of my head where he’d hit me.

“Girl, ain’t no one calls me Clyde,” his pudgy face went angry quickly.

“I think I just did.” I stood up. “But if you’d prefer, I could just call you fatass prick—”

He charged at me, broad shoulders flashing underneath his shirt, the skin around his neck rippling, turning into something different. It looked like metal in the brief glimpse I got before he put his shoulder down and stormed at me. He moved fast, especially for such a big guy.

I grabbed the nearest table, heavy and metal, and heaved it at him. It spun, hit him in the face and ricocheted off at high velocity, flying through one of the upper windows of the cafeteria. He moved off his course not even a millimeter, his head now the same dull metal that I had seen beneath his shirt. I dodged out of the way just in time as he shredded the tables behind me, shards of them flying through the air.

“You’re dangerous. I like it.” He smiled and grabbed a table of his own as I rolled to my feet and he chucked it at me. It skipped off the floor, a hubcap of spinning death that grazed my shoulder as I dropped below it and heard the shattering of glass behind me. He threw another, then another, and I dodged them, executing some gymnastic evasions I wouldn’t have been capable of even a month ago—before my powers manifested. I looked around for a weapon—any kind of weapon—that might be effective against a hulking slab of metal.

He stomped toward me, malice in his eyes. I met his attack, ducking his punch and grabbing his arm with my ungloved hand as he started to pull it back. I gripped onto the slick metal and held tight, waiting for a reaction; it was cool in my grasp. The big jackass looked at me, then down to my hand, then back at me and split into a broad grin. “Your succubus trick only