The Anchor [Brallon-ish]

16

Hayley is still gasping and gripping at her suit drenched in her own blood when Jake finally gathers himself together, grips her waist and holds her against him when he stands. He's shaking just as bad as she is if not worse, holding his hand between us like that would stop Dallon.

"I knew from the moment I fucking saw you," his voice breaks in two, "that you'd be trouble. I told Hayley, I told her to let me handle this alone. Then I said I should bring someone else, but she wouldn't take no for an answer, that we do it together or not at all."

Dallon plays shocked. He holds his hand to his chest and feigns fear. He's the opposite of scared, the sparkle in his eyes still glimmers bright when he sees the blood and destruction, but Jake is oblivious. "I'll heal her if you let me leave."

"Don't touch her. You've done enough damage already, ten kills under your belt in less than a minute. Can you bring the dead back or is the only thing you can do is take a life? Who the fuck are you to play god?"

"Who the fuck are you to call me a killer? What happened to giving me a chance to prove what I'm not?" I still can't bring myself to move away, I can't even speak. His hand has moved from my cheek to my shoulder, like a weight tying me down to the bottom of the ocean. My own hand feels like it's been smoking in a pan on high heat and was just drowned under cool water.

"You lost that chance a long time ago. We tried to make this easy for you. We should've known from the start that you could turn so quickly, but at least we do now." There's a fire in his eyes when his hand crackles to ice and he swings to clock Dallon over the side of his head without hesitation.

Dallon ducks, though, a cold hard fist hits me square in the jaw, and I go down. My head starts spinning like a carousel on cocaine almost immediately. My fingers graze my cheek and they draw back with blood. I can already feel warmth dripping down my neck.

Jake drops Hayley to the bed and rushes to my side immediately and yells something, but I can't hear him over the throbbing and the ringing in my ears. I might be dying. "I'm fine, I'm okay, you have to stop him. H-He's been lying to us."

I guess that was the wrong thing to say. Dallon, standing a few feet away, allows the facade to fall, gaze hardening to stone as he cracks his knuckles. "Oh my god, you're terrible at keeping a secret. That was just supposed to be between us."

Jake doesn't have the chance to process it completely, but he does take it like a champ when Dallon grabs his bicep and launches him like a rocket into the wall across the room. It cracks and groans behind him like a spiderweb with each hit he defuses until he's had enough. His body shifts into ice too late for Dallon to stop himself from shattering his knuckles against Jake's temple.

He doesn't have to wonder about what I said too much. It's pretty obvious after that.

Jake grabs him by the shoulders and hurls him into the nightstand beside me, which splinters and falls to pieces when he tumbles into it, clutching his wrist.

It doesn't take long for him to slow his breathing and hold his hand out of sight long enough to heal the bones like new. His fingers crackle with electricity as he stands slowly to Jake's absolute horror.

He turns his body back into ice just in time for Dallon to send a bolt of lightning from his palm through the floor to him, but he rematerializes into skin and bone without a spark. Someone took high school chemistry.

It catches Dallon a little off guard, but by this point he's fueled by anger and fear. He starts taking slow steps toward him and Hayley while using my hijacked telekinesis to pick up anything and everything around the room to fling at high speeds.