The first thing I was aware of when I woke up was the overwhelming smell of copper and gasoline.

As my eyes blinked open, I felt something acidic drip into my eye, causing me to blink sporadically as my eyes adjusted to the dim lighting.

I swallowed past a lump in my throat and became aware of an aching in my arms. I struggled to move them, but met an unexpected resistance that cut sharply into my wrist. I grimaced and looked down to see both of my wrists bound tightly with fraying rope to two wooden chair arms. The chair dug sharply into my lower back, and I struggled uncomfortably against the constraints. My ankles were also tied to the legs of the chair, leaving little lee-way for me to move against.

"Welcome back to the world, Sleeping Beauty," a voice purred through the dimness, sarcasm dripping from every syllable.

I took in a breath and discovered my mouth to be agonizingly dry. I cleared my throat, but when I spoke, my voice came out hoarse. "Please let me go."

"I'm the one who tied you up," the voice replied, and I found myself looking at a figure silhouetted in a large window—tall, lanky, lean. "That would defeat the purpose."

He stepped away from where he'd been leaning against the window frame and moved into a halo of golden light, and if I'd had any saliva in my mouth, I may have been able to manage a shocked gasp.

"Sam?" I asked.

He held out his arms. "Surprise. Like the digs?"

I looked around at the place he'd indicated. It had to be an abandoned warehouse or building of some kind. It was dingy, with mould growing on the brickwork and holes in the wooden slats letting in drafts of freezing air. It looked like it had seen better days and had been abandoned for quite a while.

"Warehouse?" I replied, my voice crackling weakly. "Kinda cliche, don't you think?"

"This is New York," Sam replied, grinning maliciously. "I couldn't exactly afford a five-star hotel for you, princess."

"Well, the service is horrible, anyway. I wouldn't expect a good Yelp! review," I informed him, struggling against the ropes. They refused to move even an inch.

"I never was good enough for you, was I?" he replied wryly. He did not seem the slightest hindered by this idea, though. "Trust me, Vi, this was not the way I wanted things to go. And, if you ask me, this really could've turned out much differently for you."

"Yeah?" I replied, stalling for time. Maybe if I discreetly continued pulling against the ropes, a kink would form and I'd be able to break free. Of course, once my arms were free, my legs were another story, but that was something to worry about later. For now, I had to struggle towards freedom for as long as I could. "How's that?"

"Well, originally, you were just a pretty girl to flirt with. Something to occupy my time until I found The Voiceless Stranger—or The Black Phoenix—or whatever the hell he wants to be called. But can you imagine my surprise when you published an article on the very guy I happened to be looking for? I mean, I could not believe my luck! So I had to step up my game. I had to win your trust—your friendship. Which, oddly enough, did not work. No accounting for taste, I guess."

"Maybe you're just not as charming as you think you are," I replied.

He chuckled. "Or maybe you just have a thing for freaks that can stop a bullet with their bare hands. No judging. I just happen to be after the same thing, too."

"Get in line," I replied.

"Don't have to, sweetheart, I've got you here. I think that may just give me priority."

"I hate to break it to you, Sam, but I am not the guy you're looking for. I don't have the powers. I'm just the girl who wrote an article about him. I don't even know the guy."

"That's cute," he replied. "I mean, do you really take me for an idiot? I've done my homework, Violet. The cameras, the surveillance, the bugs. I'm not an amateur. Not to mention Colton's stunt at the town meeting. Very risky. Surely he knew it would backfire. I'll just bet he didn't expect it to happen so quickly."

"Even if you do get the powers, I doubt you'll have it for long," I told him. "There are other people after the powers. And they're not twenty-year-old college boys. Are you even in college? Did you even graduate high school?"

"I'm going to take a wild guess and say you're talking about Nathaniel LeRuggia," Sam replied, and I felt my stomach flip. Every advantage I thought I might possibly have was slipping through my fingertips. "Who do you think sent me here? As if my father would be caught doing the hard work."

"Of course he had a kid," I groaned. "Because when does the super-villain ever not have a kid? That's just great."

"Bet you didn't find that in the research, huh?" Sam replied. "Speaking of which, I see you've been doing your homework, too. You and your pals weren't very thorough in your searches. Didn't even delete your browser history. That is a risky move."

"So you're the one who hacked into the computers and cameras to keep an eye on me. I'm flattered, but stalkers aren't really my type."

"I'd be disappointed if I didn't already have everything I needed," he told me. "I've got the girl, I've got what I need to harvest the powers. I'm just waiting on one factor."

"He's not coming," I told him. "He would have no idea I'm even here."

He sniffed suddenly, and tilted his head. "Smell that?"

I thought I might throw up as once again the stench of gasoline filled my nostrils. Our conversation had momentarily distracted me from it, but now I realized the stench was no coincidence. "Sam, no."

He pulled out a box of matches and began to pace lightly. "Just relax, Violet. It's not like I wanted to do this. You didn't even have to be involved in this whole thing. All you had to do was give me the information I needed and help me trap him and we would've been set. Now you have to be the trap. Am I really even to blame here? I'd be more pissed at your own stupidity if I were you."

"You're not going to kill me," I said nervously, staring at the box of matches in his hand and trying to keep my consciousness despite the overwhelming smell cloying the air around me and the fear pressing in at my temples. "That's a federal offence. You don't want to go to prison, do you?"

The look he gave me told me I was possibly the dullest girl he'd ever met in his life. "I'm trying to catch a freak who can cure bullet wounds in order to harvest his blood, okay? The feds are a little low on my priority list right now."

"Sam, please," I whispered. I felt pathetic for resorting to begging, but this guy could very easily kill me, so now seemed an appropriate time to do some grovelling. "I'll do whatever you want. Please don't kill me."

"This could've ended better for you, Vi," he replied, grabbing out a match and rubbing it against the side of the box. It sparked a little and went out, and I felt all of my insides shrink. "All you had to do was help me out. But you didn't. So here we are."

He lit the match, and I shrunk away from it. The stick was so small, and yet it could kill me. If this place burned to the ground, I doubted Colton could cure a pile of ashes.

"Sam, please," I said, struggling even harder against my binds now. My voice began to rise in hysteria. "Sam, don't. Please. Sam!"

"Enough!"

The whole warehouse seemed to go deathly silent, and I saw the edge of Sam's face twitch as he shook out the match and dropped it by his feet.

"Nice of you to join us, Colton."

I looked up to see him silhouetted in a large door frame that looked like it belonged on a barn. He wore his tight black outfit, but no mask. His dark hair was plastered to his forehead, and his eyes glittered dangerously. "I'm here. Let her go."

"Why on earth would I do that?" Sam replied, stepping closer to me. An involuntary shiver glided up my spine as his fingers brushed the crown of my head and stroked my hair. If not for its malicious intentions, it might have seemed like a fond gesture. "She's the thing you care about most in the world. Without her, I have no leverage."

Colton took a step forward, and suddenly I felt something cold and metal pressed to my temple. "Stay where you are, or I promise you right now I'll blow her brains out," Sam said. I heard the gun cock, and felt my whole throat close up. I couldn't move or talk or scream or anything. Fear chilled every muscle in my body. "I know you're fast, but not even The Black Phoenix is fast enough to stop this."

"You won't hurt her," Colton replied, but I could tell from his expression he wasn't very sure about that.

"I think you know that LeRuggia's don't break promises," Sam said. "Unlike your father. I mean, promising my father to create the formula and then when he did giving it to his son and disappearing? Dick move, brother."

"You want me, not her," Colton replied, but he had stopped dead in his place. Sam was right; the gun was pressed to my temple and Colton was not fast enough to stop it. All of his arguments seemed to be falling flat. "I'll give you whatever you want. Just let her go."

"I don't think so," Sam replied. "Instead, you're going to walk very slowly over to that chair, then you're going to sit down, and you're not going to move. Simple, right?"

Colton held his hands up in a surrendering motion and fluidly glided towards the chair. He took a seat, and I could see even from this distance that his jaw was clenched tightly. The gun stayed pressed to my temple.

"You can come in now, Dad," Sam called. His green eyes shifted over to Colton. "And if you so much as move towards him, I'll shoot her."

In a haze of musky cologne, a large man entered. He wore an expensively pressed suit, and looked pretty much like every super-villain ever—rich, over-fed, confident, and gluttonous. So, all-in-all, a swell guy by anyone's standards.

"Nathaniel," Colton said brusquely, and I realized I was staring at the man I'd been stalking the last few months. He looked different in real life—he was not as glossed as the pictures, and his eyes when they looked at me were not quite as alive and fervent as they were when they stared out at me from a magazine spread.

His graying hair was combed, his shoes polished, his pants pressed, and he even looked like an expensive biochemist on the search for a serum that gave superpowers.

"Well, you have the part of evil super-villain down," I found myself saying. I don't know why I said it—it was beyond stupid, and the kind of snarky line that would get me killed in a movie, but I did it anyway. Maybe sass was a coping mechanism for over-whelming fear. However, not the smartest move when a gun is pressed to your head.

"Am I the villain, though?" Nathaniel asked. "I mean, really. All I'm trying to do is get what I was owed. I commissioned your boyfriend's father to make me a serum. Paid him a large amount for it as well. He was the one who didn't hold up his end of the bargain. Tell me how I'm the bad guy."

"Kidnapping, larceny, stalking, illegal surveillance, attempted murder..." I listed. "Should I continue?"

"I'll make you a deal," Nathaniel said, though he looked like he had no interest in bargaining with an eighteen-year-old high school girl. "Convince Colton to give us his blood, and we'll never commit another crime."

"Why am I struggling to believe that?" I replied.

"I'm trying to make it easy on you now, Violet," Nathaniel said.

I felt Sam's free hand come down on my shoulder and squeeze hard enough that I knew if I made it through this, it was going to leave an impressive bruise. "Take the deal, Violet. Please."

"It almost sounds like you care," I replied through gritted teeth, trying to ignore the throbbing in my shoulder.

"Violet, please," Sam said.

"It's a no from me," I replied. I would not convince my boyfriend to be the downfall of humanity. I would not have that burden on my head, and certainly not for someone as pathetic as Sam.

"Your funeral," Sam whispered.

I felt a cold chill shudder through me at his ominous words. It very possibly could be.

Nathaniel stood up and walked towards me, pulling a small switchblade out of the pocket of his pressed suit. I stared at the shining weapon in his hand and gulped.

Colton went to leap out of his chair, and Sam pressed the gun closer to my temple, causing me to wince. "I will kill her. I don't think you can heal a brain when it's splattered across the walls."

Colton held on tightly to the edge of the seat, his knuckles cracking with the pressure.

"Her pain stops when you make it stop," Nathaniel told Colton, drifting the knife across my cheek. I gritted my teeth and tried to force back any tears that may push forward. I had to be strong.

"Don't you dare hurt her," Colton growled. I'd never heard him sound so dangerous—I was just glad I was not on the receiving end of that tone.

"I'm shaking," Nathaniel drawled.

Once again he left the knife caress my cheek. I felt myself whimper as he applied pressure, and blood dripped onto my neck. I felt my stomach flip at the sight of my own blood, and tried to ignore the burning of my cheek.

"I can't kill her," Nathaniel said. "If I do, we lose our leverage. You can kill us both and then heal her. So I know actually murdering her is out of the question. But I can make her wish she was dead."

Well, that was reassuring.

"Tell him to give us the blood," Sam said. He had put the safety back on the gun, but it was still pressed to my head. One wrong move and I was going to be nothing more than a splatter across the warehouse.

"No," I replied. I was not going to be threatened into world destruction. I'd die before that happened.

Of course, there is a large difference between saying that and actually putting up with the pain of torture. It is agonising beyond words.

Nathaniel pressed the knife to my neck and dragged across. I yelped in pain before I even knew what was happening. A flash of white-hot agony zinged across, and I felt more liquid drip down my throat. Colton stood up, and I made eye contact with him. Ever so slightly, I shook my head. Sam or Nathaniel may have thought I was brushing hair out of my face, or flinching from the pain. Colton knew better.

"Unless you're giving me your blood, you better sit the hell down," Nathaniel boomed. The noise echoed through the room - deep and commanding and absolutely terrifying. It didn't scare me, though.

What no one in the room knew of course, was that the bonds on my ankles were free, and I had just worked a kink into the thick rope around my wrists. I knew the defence course my father made me take when I was fourteen would come in handy someday.

Nathaniel stepped away from me, and I knew I had to time it just right. Do it wrong and it was a slit throat. Or a bullet to the head. Or both.

Do it right, though, and I had a chance.

A slim chance, but a chance all the same.

Nathaniel moved towards me with the knife again, and I knew it was time to put some nonexistent acting skills to use. "Wait! Wait!" I cried, my voice cracking. I inched away from the knife that was stained scarlet with fresh blood. "Stop it. I know how to get his blood. Just get that knife away from me."

Obligingly, Nathaniel stepped back, arms raised in the air. So the knife was out of the picture. Now I just had the gun to worry about.

I looked Colton in the eyes. Mine were filled with tears - tears I couldn't exactly attribute to any acting skills. I was terrified and in pain - my neck and head burned, I had welts on my ankles and wrists, and I had cramps.

Tonight was just not my night.

I shook my head. "Colton, I'm sorry."

For one moment, he seemed genuinely scared. And in that moment I knew. He did have a weakness. His own kryptonite. It was me.

"I'm sorry," I repeated. "I love you, but this is ridiculous. My hands and wrists are killing me, there's a gun pressed to my head, my neck just got cut, and I have blood rushing out of my nether-regions. I just can't do this."

Nathaniel frowned. What had seemed a deeply romantic apology had just taken a very peculiar turn. "That's not very ladylike."

I looked up at him. The knife was dangling limply in his hand. The gun was now about an inch from my head - the safety on. My ankles were free from their binds, and in one simple twist my wrists would be free.

Now or never.

"That's the thing, Mr LeRuggia," I replied, raising my eyes to look at him. "I'm no lady."

Shake of the ankles, twist of the wrists, and I was out of the chair before my words even registered with the biochemist. I immediately dove for his son, tackling him to the ground. He may have been lanky, but there was definitely some muscle underneath that sweater. Muscles that hurt like a brick wall when you hit them.

Colton immediately sprinted from his chair to help me. Nathaniel did not seem to be on his mind. He was by me in seconds. I didn't want his help—this was all me.

I straddled Sam and grabbed his wrist, attempting to shake the gun away. Instead his long fingers flicked the safety off. Okay, maybe I did need Colton after all.

That being said, I'm no weakling. I do pilates. I have a kickboxing podcast at home. I helped hang the washing out and hoisted heavy laundry baskets on my hips. And I had the added advantage of rage on my side.

So I punched Sam in the face.

The shock was enough for the gun to fall from Sam's hand. My knuckles burned from the impact—great, another injury to add to the never-ending list.

"You bitch!" he screamed, twisting underneath me. "The hell was that for?"

"That was for being a shitty friend," I replied. I socked him again—I was really getting into the theatrics of the stuff. "And that was for trying to kill my boyfriend."

Something changed in his face then. The jovial green eyes darkened—and his face twisted. With the blood streaming in rivulets from his nose, he looked like pure evil.

"I didn't wanna hurt you, Violet," he told me. "But now I'm not even sorry."

And then, it was like a flower blooming in my stomach. A white-hot, agonising flower. I felt myself gasp, and slowly looked down.

He had a knife.

All this time, he'd had a knife. I'd accounted for the gun, for Nathaniel's switchblade. A second weapon had never even occurred to me.

I can't really describe what happened in that exact moment—it's like everything just turned to Jell-O. Where I'd just been feeling so strong, suddenly my legs felt completely full of air, and I fell to the ground beside him. My eyes found the ceiling—and through a chink in the woodwork, I could see a cluster of stars.

"No!" Colton roared. He immediately reached for Sam and snapped his wrist. The nauseating sound of broken bone echoed through the air, followed by a pained scream from Sam. The knife clattered to the ground and landed beside me. It was covered to the hilt in blood. My blood.

And suddenly Sam was being lifted up and thrown across the room. It was as if he weighed the same amount as a soda can. He crashed against a temporary wall and went tumbling into the next room of the warehouse. Seconds later, I heard a groan.

"Enough!" Nathaniel cried. My head lulled towards the sound as if I were a baby. There was simply no motor control in me.

Standing before a long line of gasoline stood Nathaniel.

And he had a burning match in his hand.