WORD AS BOND
CHAPTER TWO

Harvey's eyes were locked onto the back of her head, worried that if he tore his gaze from her she'd vanish. The gashes on her legs and the blood seeping through her shirt did nothing to ease Harvey as he watched her closely like she was a child with a dangerous shard of glass or sharp knife. He didn't trust her, and with reason.

The girl, blonde hair and soft brown eyes, appeared small from a distance, lost and out of place as she threw up in a corner outside. Now, inside his garage, Harvey could see her closely. A monster, rather than a girl. Her eyes dark with hatred and her aura cold like death, stiffening him under her stare. She made the air thick with heat but made his blood cold with uncertainty.

Her back was to him as she walked around the room, her finger trailing over the dusty tables and bookshelves as she made herself familiar with the place. "Done staring?" Alecto's question made Harvey flinch ever so slightly. He gulped and watched her as she turned around to face him. Her footsteps were loud and heavy, boots thumping onto the wooden ground as she closed the space between them. "Pretty eyes," she said, a small smile creeping onto her face. She leaned forward to reach his seated position. Her nose was merely inches away from his, and her warm breath on his skin made him shiver under her stare. "I'd hate to have to gauge them out."

With his pulse thrumming loudly in his ears like the beat of a drum, Harvey's eyes widened and he scrambled away from her. He crawled out from under her hovering shadow and stood at a distance. With an arched eyebrow, Alecto let out a cold laugh to which Harvey puffed his chest out and rolled his shoulders back in an attempt to regain the masculinity he had just lost. "Look, I don't know what kind of stuff you did back in Hell, but here things are way different," he started, "first off, we don't threaten to gauge people's eyes out."

"Oh, but you make it so tempting, Kinkle."

Completely unbothered by Harvey having moved away from her the first time, she neared him once again. He watched her through eagle eyes as she flicked her tongue, one foot trailing behind the other as she walked. Her confidence was unsettling, making Harvey shift in his position the closer she got until her hot breath grazed his fair skin once more. She cupped his chin with her right hand, her long, black-painted fingernails stroking against his cheeks like threatening needles.

Alecto remained in her position, her chest bubbling with satisfaction and lips curled upward in amusement at his pure terror. He stood still under her stare, as though she could tear him apart with a single blink. Even when Sabrina reentered the garage with the loud whoosh of her teleportation spell, the pair didn't move an inch.

"What is going on here? Alecto, get off him!" Sabrina's voice echoed through the room, her loud footsteps following after as she buzzed toward the two. She flung her hands onto Alecto's shoulders to tear her away from the frozen boy. "Harvey, are you okay?"

"I'm fine." His voice sounded more high-pitched than intended. He cleared his throat and recomposed himself, straightening his posture and evening out his wrinkled shirt.

Alecto ambled toward the unfamiliar man that Sabrina had entered with. Once she got a closer look at him, a smirk grew on her face. "Wow, Spellman. You sure pick the hot ones; who's this?"

Sabrina grimaced as she walked toward the Fury and her cousin. "This is my cousin Ambrose. He's here to help us with a Word as Bond spell."

"Excuse me?" she questioned with raised eyebrows, her arms folded over her chest.

"A contract. To seal the terms of our pact." Sabrina declared simply, instinctively expecting Alecto to comply– the Fury didn't have a choice, after all. "I need to be sure that when I get you back into Hell as a Fury, you're going to keep your end of the deal."

"Someone's got trust issues."

"Are you saying I have reason to trust you?" Sabrina arched her brow. Her platinum blonde hair sat neatly on her shoulders and she crossed her arms, waiting expectantly for a response. When all she received from Alecto was an eye roll, she nodded with contempt. "I didn't think so. And another condition: you set aside your violent tendencies while on Earth– no killing, and no hurting my friends, including Harvey."

"Oh Sabrina," Alecto laughed coldly. "What do you take me for? I wouldn't harm a hair on that pretty little head of his, would I, Kinkle?" She turned her head toward the brunette. The left end of her lip pointed upward into a side smirk and she winked, to which Harvey pursed his lips and looked away.

Ambrose cleared his voice and took a step forward. "Intrigued as I am, I have someplace to be," he announced. He turned to the witch and raised his eyebrows as continued to speak, "so if you're sure about this, cousin, let's begin." He walked slowly toward the coffee table before placing down a sheet of paper. Alecto eyed it closely, her teeth gritted and eyebrows furrowed in curiosity. A sigil was drawn, one unlike the many she had seen in Hell. From pentagrams to Enochian sigils, Alecto had assumed she'd seen it all. This, however, was new. She bit her lip, uncertain as to whether this was truly a good idea.

"Having second thoughts?" Sabrina judged, her tone cold and unsurprised. "You need me."

"And you need me," Alecto spat back. "Don't forget."

"Alright..." Ambrose extended his arm in front of the two ladies. They both stared at the small dagger that sat on his palm. "You are each going to draw blood from your palms and then place it onto the sigil."

"Brina, are you sure about this?" Harvey's voice sounded. He walked toward his friend and stood beside her.

"It's just a contract, Harvey. Don't worry. Ambrose knows what he's doing." The boy sighed at her response and nodded begrudgingly.

Alecto didn't hesitate to pick the knife up from Ambrose's hand. Without a second thought, she sliced the skin of her palm. Crimson red oozed out and slowly began to form a small pool of blood. She let out a bitter laugh when Harvey winced and looked away, but she herself stood unbothered, only turning to Sabrina expectantly. The witch took the knife from Alecto's hand and inhaled deeply before drawing it to her own hand. Once it had formed an even cut across her sensitive skin, she let out a shudder and placed the knife down on the table.

"Now, to brand the spell onto yourselves..." Ambrose motioned toward the piece of paper.

The two girls looked at each other momentarily. Alecto, although unafraid, searched Sabrina's eyes. She needed something, anything, to confirm that this wasn't a waste of energy or time. That Alecto would in fact return to Hell and reunite with her sisters. Except, Sabrina's eyes were sunken, tired. They were drained from all she had been through– from the pain of losing Nick, and from the torment and struggle of getting him back. She and Alecto were the same in that way, but the very thought made Alecto want to scowl.

The Fury tore her stare away from Sabrina who followed. They turned to the piece of paper, and in sync, began to lower their bloody palms onto it. When her wet skin touched the cold paper, Alecto bit her lip to hold in a shudder. Pain surged through the cut she had made in her hand, but she closed her eyes to bottle in the grunts she was tempted to release.

After a moment, the two girls retracted their hands. Alecto, with uncertain, wide eyes, turned her hand over to look at the incision in her palm. It glossed with shimmering red, almost like a fire had grazed over the aching skin.

"It's done," Ambrose announced. "We better get going, cousin."

"Right, I'll see you two tomorrow, okay?" Sabrina said. She gave Harvey a gentle smile and Alecto a cold glare. "Don't touch him."

"Not sure I can help it," Alecto retorted, looking Harvey up and down with an exaggerated hungry stare. Sabrina scoffed and took a step back to stand beside her cousin.

"Lanuae magicae." A puff of red dust began to circle around the two cousins before it fully hid them. Within a second, they were gone.

Alecto rolled her eyes as she diverted them from where Sabrina and Ambrose were once standing to Harvey. She raised an eyebrow at him, almost as though she was expecting something from him when she knew really that he was too frightened to move even a step. To her surprise, he actually responded to her deep stare by taking a step toward her. His arms hung loosely by his sides and his shoulders slacked as though all the tension from before had suddenly evaporated.

"So, your sisters really dumped you like that, huh?" Alecto was taken aback by his blunt question. She looked at him through narrow eyes, both threateningly but also to figure out whether those risky words had truly come out of the mouth of a boy who almost cried under her stare just minutes ago. "I mean, it must really suck– losing your title and your family all in one day."

"You're going to want to watch your mouth, Kinkle."

"Do I?" His eyebrows knitted together as he looked up in wonder. "I'm pretty sure the contract you're bound to says that you can't use your magic to hurt me."

She could almost feel her blood sizzling with heat underneath her skin. The more he spoke, the more she looked at the smug grin on his face, the more it boiled and the more she grew desperate to tear him apart. "I mean it, Kinkle."

"I think I'm gonna call you Alec."

"My name is Alecto," she demanded through gritted teeth. He ignored her.

"Hmm, actually, what about Terminator? It suits you."

"When you end up in Hell and I'm the Fury taking care of you, you're really going to regret this," Alecto threatened, taking a big step toward him.

"Not anymore." Harvey shrugged.

"What?" She frowned in confusion.

He boldly decided to further push his luck. "You're not a Fury anymore; your bark is louder than your bite."

"Oh, trust me, Kinkle, I bite," she sneered. She took another step closer until he was almost cornered.

Once again, he ignored her. The smirk on his face and his amusedly raised eyebrows showed he was having more fun than Alecto thought he deserved. "Your sisters must really hate you if it was so easy for them to-"

The words struck Alecto like daggers, beeping in her ears like sirens and filling her veins with rage. Her frustration towards him before was nothing compared to now as he said those words, and at that moment, everything around her froze and fell to pieces. Her red, hot fury was all that remained.

She clenched her fists so hard that her nails, pressed sharply against the palms of her hands, drew blood. She didn't even wait to process her emotions before she lunged forward with a growl. Harvey gasped as she pinned him to the wall behind him, her right arm placed across his neck and her left fist jammed roughly into the wall next to his head. "I meant it when I said you better watch your mouth," she jeered through a clenched jaw. Harvey's eyes were clipped open, fixed on Alecto's. He trembled under her rough hold, fearful that if he dared look away she would shatter him to pieces. "I may not be able to use my magic against you but there's an entire list of things I could do to you that you couldn't even possibly imagine."

"I didn't mean to..." Harvey said through pants but his voice died down while he struggled to find the right words. "I didn't realize you cared that much."

"I don't," she responded sharply, withdrawing from the shivering boy. Turning away from him, she listened closely when Harvey began to walk across the wooden floor. Alecto waited until his footsteps died out to close her eyes momentarily and take in a shaky breath.

Alecto brushed her damp hair out of her face before slowly walking toward the sofa. She dropped down onto the pile of blankets. Her body ached too much, too dried-out of energy to bother to cover herself with them. Yet despite her exhaustion, she struggled to close her tired, droopy eyelids. All she could think about was what Harvey Kinkle had said. His words raced through her mind like a horse on a racetrack. They went round and round in circles, refusing to let her drained mind go to rest.

Truthfully, she was unsure as to whether or not she did care. She knew for certain she wanted nothing more than to regain her title as a Goddess of Vengeance– that was her true deepest desire– and she did, more than anything, want for things to return to normal: to stand beside her sisters as one. To pursue their purposes as one. She assumed that was because she couldn't be a Fury without them; the Furies came in three– there was no such thing as just one Fury. She needed them.

But they didn't need her. Not anymore.

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