Captive (Tainted Elements, Book 4)

by Linwood, Alycia

  “I’ll be right back.” Noah immediately went for the door, and my insides started to quiver. I wanted to see my parents really badly, but I didn’t know how I could look them in the eye after all I’d done. But beating myself up over what had happened wouldn’t help anyone. I had to stop Blake, because if there was one thing I knew about him, it was that he wouldn’t give up. And I had to find a way to save Jaiden.

  My parents rushed into the room. My mom’s blue eyes were filled with tears as she pulled me into a tight hug. “Oh, honey.” She sobbed, running her hand through my hair.

  “Nice to have you back,” my dad said, barely managing to find some space next to my mom to reach me.

  “Are you okay? Do you remember everything?” my mom asked. I pulled away from them and leaned my head on the pillow.

  “Yeah.” I gave her my widest smile.

  “We’re going to talk to Lily. I won’t let anyone take you away from me,” my mom said determinedly. “Whatever decision the government makes, we’ll protect you and demand a fair trial. Just because you’re more powerful than most elementals doesn’t mean they can treat you however they want. The only person responsible for this mess is that man who ruined your life. We won’t let anyone punish you for that. You’re the victim here, and we’re going to prove it.” She squeezed my hand.

  “Mom, where’s Lily? I need to speak with her.” I knew that the government wouldn’t just forgive me for what I’d done for no reason. They wouldn’t believe any of my excuses. All they knew was that I’d participated in a group who’d almost exposed tainted elementals to the world and caused mayhem.

  Not to mention various people had been hurt. Hell, Lily should be the first one to be mad at me. I’d killed several of her men. Their families would never just forgive me and let me walk away if they knew I was responsible for the deaths of their loved ones. I deserved to pay for what I’d done, but if I were dead, I wouldn’t be able to stop Blake from ruining who knows how many lives.

  “Maybe you shouldn’t do that. We barely convinced Lily that you’re not a threat. After what you did...” My dad licked his lips.

  “Is she here?” If she wasn’t, then I’d have a problem. What I wanted to propose couldn’t be relayed over the phone.

  “Yeah,” my mom said. “But I think she’s been busy trying to find any clues about that guy who mind-controlled you. Noah mentioned his name was Blake.” My mom’s eyes hardened. “Did Blake hurt you while you were with him? I mean...”

  I knew what she meant. She wondered if Blake had done to me what my biological father had done to her, but I knew Blake and I had only kissed. “No, he just needed me for his stupid prophecy.”

  My mom closed her eyes and sighed in relief. “Lily will find Blake.”

  I suddenly had a pretty good idea what Lily was doing in here. She’d taken Raven and maybe some of the others from Blake’s group hostage, and she was probably questioning them to get information about Blake. “That’s exactly why I need to talk to her.”

  “Okay, I’ll go find her,” my dad said, and I nodded.

  Chapter 16

  Lily’s face was hard and cold like a stone, her arms crossed, her dark eyes piercing me. “I’ve been told you have some information for me,” she said.

  “I do.” I was sitting on the bed. My parents had gone out to give Lily and me some privacy. My strength was returning, and the doctor, who Lily had sent to check on me and ask me various questions before she arrived, had said I would be fine.

  “How can I trust you?” she asked. “After what you did to my team and me, am I just supposed to believe that you magically fixed your brain and won’t send my men straight into Blake’s trap?” She leaned on the wall, tilting her head at me. “It’s funny, though. My team can’t find anything about this Blake guy you’re talking about.”

  I looked down at my hands for a moment and then lifted my eyes to hers. “I’m sorry for what I did. I know nothing I can say will change anything, but if you don’t believe me, you can hook me up to that detector of yours. Or you can just ask me anything about the conversations we’d had before I was taken. I remember all of it now.”

  She chewed on her lip. “Look, I’m trying my best not to blame you for what happened. I know you didn’t have a choice, but still... All of that just proves to people how dangerous tainted elementals are. The government wants you all monitored at all times, and I’m afraid soon that won’t be enough. The president informed me himself that he wants your whole group dead, including you, but I’m afraid this will just make everything worse. Rumors are already spreading, and I don’t know what to do. The government is actually considering the possibility of officially confirming the existence of tainted elementals, just so we can control the way people find out about you. We wanted to wait until we could assure the world that tainted elementals are not a threat, but Blake could ruin everything.”

  “Did Raven and the others tell you anything useful about him?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “No. At this point, I’m not even sure if they know something or if he mind-controlled them to forget everything about him in case they got captured. But you’ve been with those people for months, so do you remember anything? Or had everything vanished the moment you remembered your real self?”

  “I can help you find Blake, but I have conditions,” I said. “Your team will never catch him on their own, and you know it.”

  She glared at me. “Let me guess. You want your boyfriend and yourself off the hook.”

  “Something like that.” Jaiden and I could stop Blake; I was sure of it. And no agents or anyone would have to get hurt.

  “The government will never agree to it.” She shook her head. “They barely allowed me to keep you here for a while to get information out of you.”

  “I’m sure you can be persuasive,” I said. “Jaiden and I are the only ones who can confront Blake. Or do you want more people to die? While we waste our time here talking, Blake is out there recruiting new tainted elementals to work for him. And he’ll want revenge because you stopped the ritual. Jaiden and I should be going after him, and you should be trying to come up with a nice way to explain to the world that elementals like us exist.”

  “So you two take out Blake and we’re all supposed to congratulate you and let you ride off into the sunset?” Lily pursed her lips.

  “I know Jaiden and I have made a lot of mistakes, but if you want to stop Blake, you know what to do.”

  “Mistakes, right,” she muttered. “Tell me, has your boyfriend been mind-controlled, too, or is he refusing to reveal his father’s location out of spite? And what about everything else he did? Should we forget that, too?”

  “You need us,” I said. She was still hurt and upset, and no matter what I said, she wouldn’t change her mind. I could understand that, but we needed to find Blake sooner rather than later. “And you know my terms.”

  She shot me an annoyed look and slammed the door on her way out. I just hoped she’d make the right decision.

  Chapter 17

  I was pacing up and down the room, waiting for someone to come. Lily’s agents had brought me here some fifteen minutes ago and told me to wait for Lily. The windowless room had dark metal walls and was filled with computers and a table with scientific equipment. There weren’t any agents or guards in sight, and the computers were turned off.

  The door suddenly opened, and Jaiden trudged inside, followed by Lily. I immediately rushed toward him, throwing myself into his embrace. His arms wrapped around me, and his lips crashed against mine. I slipped my hands through his hair, exploring his mouth with my tongue. Lily coughed, and I let go of Jaiden, savoring the taste of him on my lips.

  “You’re both lucky we haven’t been able to capture or kill Blake,” Lily said. “There’s only one way this will work. You two will be my agents and do this mission my way.”

  Jaiden and I looked at each other, and then I nodded.

  “We’ve been monitoring elemental energy
levels in the city, but there are too many spikes. If we at least knew in what area to look, it would be easier.” Lily sighed, sitting down in front of one of the computers and turning it on.

  “How did you track Blake and me to the meadow?” I asked.

  “We didn’t. We tracked down Jaiden,” Lily said, and I glanced at him.

  “I knew you were in trouble, so I created a spike of energy,” he said. “I knew I’d be detected.”

  A smile spread across my lips, and I took his hand in mine. He’d risked getting caught and killed to save me. “What about the Sacred Place? I’m sure Blake will try to go back there.” I still wasn’t sure if I actually believed in the prophecy. The Sacred Book seemed to have special power within its pages and it had led us to the Sacred Place, but I didn’t think anything could take away everyone’s elemental energy and give it to three people.

  “I have agents waiting there at all times,” Lily said. “We’ve found some kind of a secret door, but we haven’t been able to open it yet.” She turned in her chair to look at me. “We found the Sacred Book. How exactly did it reveal the location to you?” She raised an eyebrow at me.

  “Blake, Hayley, and I touched the book, and the energy flowed through us. The map just appeared on the blank page,” I said. “Is Hayley going to be okay?”

  “Yeah,” Lily said. “I’ve sent her back to her family. We just gathered some information about her in case we have to find her. She’s the only known elemental with four elements who doesn’t have magic disease. I imagine many people would want to get an opportunity to study her case, so I decided not to put that info into our files.” She frowned at me. “Ever since you broke into our system and took the list, we figured we need to have better security, but I still don’t want to risk anyone finding the girl.”

  “Good.” I was glad that at least Hayley was back with her family and away from danger.

  “My scientists also discovered something interesting about that book,” Lily said. “Its pages are completely covered in particles of some kind of a drug.”

  “What?” I gaped at her.

  “These particles have a special ability to tie themselves to a specific type of elemental energy,” she said.

  “What do you mean?” Jaiden asked, his brow wrinkling.

  “My scientists have a theory that someone produced pills for enhancing elemental energy, but these pills work only on elements that had already been enhanced by a similar drug.” She frowned and waved her hands. “You should ask an expert about this. Really. But apparently, when enhanced elements are near those pills or its particles, the elements react like a magnet for the drug and take it into itself. That way an elemental’s energy grows stronger as if they’d actually swallowed the pill. Since you say the map appeared when the three of you touched the page, I assume it was full of these particles that were covering the image like a thin layer of protection, and you just removed that protection by taking the particles into yourselves.”

  “Oh my God.” I slapped my hand over my mouth. “Blake told me... Well, he might have lied about it, but he told me he’d been held in a laboratory.”

  “Ah. That would explain why he’s so powerful.” Lily sighed.

  “Hayley’s mother was one of the experiments in some lab, and her element was probably enhanced,” I said. “My father also had an enhanced element, and Jaiden’s father tried to enhance my element, too.” Which would mean that by touching the book, I had been taking an element-enhancing drug into me.

  I sensed Jaiden was looking at me. His elements were practically created in a lab, so that would explain why the drug worked on him, too. That meant the whole thing about the Strong, the Hero, and the Murderer had been a product of our imagination. Well, Blake’s imagination.

  “Great, so we can confirm that the drug reacts only to elements that had been enhanced and not to elements of every tainted elemental. Now there’s another thing we need to figure out. Who wrote that book and why?” Lily asked.

  “Were your scientists able to tell how old the book really is?” Jaiden asked.

  “Not really. The material is strange because of the drug, but I’d say it can’t be that old. I doubt anyone had means to produce an element enhancing drug centuries ago,” Lily said.

  “Blake and I found weird notes in the trunks of some trees at the Sacred Place. The Murderer was supposed to kill the Strong, and the Hero was supposed to bring the Strong back to life. I didn’t think about it before, but the paper the note was written on was white. It couldn’t have been there for long,” I said, glad that Blake and I hadn’t been able to go through with something as stupid as that.

  Lily arched her eyebrows. “And what was supposed to happen after that?”

  I felt silly even saying it. “Everyone on the planet was supposed to lose their element, and the energy was supposed to flow into the three of us. Then we would be able to save the world and share the energy among our trusted friends.”

  “And that actually made sense to you?” The corners of Lily’s lips curved upward.

  “Yeah.” I shuffled my feet.

  “Right.” Lily scratched her head.

  “Someone was trying to lure out tainted elementals with enhanced elements to that place,” Jaiden said. “Do you know where Blake found that book?”

  I shook my head. “Blake put a fake memory in my mind about how we found it in the National Museum, but now I know that never happened.”

  “Why would he do that?” Lily asked.

  I shrugged. “Maybe because he wanted me to think how special that book was or because he simply needed me to have some memories that were plausible for me.” Or maybe he didn’t want to tell me how and where he’d gotten the book, but wouldn’t he know that the prophecy was fake then? Or did he believe in modern prophecies?

  “Still doesn’t help us, but it doesn’t matter. You two will go after Blake, and you better find him, because if you don’t, things will get ugly for everyone,” Lily said sternly, and looked at Jaiden. “Do you think your father knows anything about this? Care to tell us where we can find him?”

  Jaiden’s face was expressionless. “I have nothing to say about that. We should focus on finding Blake.”

  Lily smiled bitterly. “Yeah, let’s do that. Moira, will you now tell me where Blake could be hiding?”

  “Aren’t you forgetting something important?” I asked.

  “Forgetting what?” She gave me a blank look.

  “Oh, you know. About our deal.”

  “What about it? We agreed to our terms,” she said.

  “I want proof of that.” I crossed my arms. “I’m not giving you anything until we all sign the deal.”

  “Fine,” she said through her teeth. “We’ll sign it.”

  “Good.” I didn’t want her or anyone to change their mind after I told her everything I knew or after we found Blake.

  As Lily got to her feet, Jaiden leaned in, his lips brushing my ear. “Are you sure she won’t just rip it up?” he whispered, his voice filled with amusement.

  “My parents won’t let her,” I whispered back. “Trust me. We have better chances this way.”

  “If you say so.”

  I smiled at him. Maybe there was still hope for us.

  Chapter 18

  I glanced to my left as I made my way down the street. A dark-haired man in a black coat was leaning on the wall, apparently busy with his phone, but his eyes kept darting up. “To our left. Probably a regular elemental.” I sighed.

  Jaiden let out a low laugh. “I told you she’d never let us out of her sight.”

  “If she wants this mission to succeed, she’ll have to. Blake might be crazy, but he’s not that stupid.” I knew Lily didn’t trust Jaiden and me not to try anything, and it had been hard as hell for her to let us go, but sending her agents to follow us was a terrible idea, especially when they were so obvious.

  “We’ll lose them. Come on.” Jaiden took my hand and we hurried into an alley. I looked up at
the sky, trying to spot any shimmering. The chances that Blake would be at any of the hiding places he’d used when I was with him were low. He had to know I’d been taken and that I might have revealed that information to Lily, but still we had to check. Maybe we’d find a clue about where he could have gone.

  “Follow me.” Jaiden suddenly turned into air, and I did the same, flying close to the ground. We whizzed through a couple of streets, and when we were sure Lily’s agents wouldn’t be able to track us, we materialized again.

  “Blake liked to rest on rooftops, but I don’t think he’ll be that stupid now that he knows everyone’s looking just for him,” I said. Most of his group had been captured, and he could no longer send them to create a diversion.

  “Do you think he’ll still try to complete the ritual?” Jaiden asked. “If he comes searching for you, that could be a good way to lure him out and force him to come to us.”

  “I think he will, but I don’t think he’ll be stupid enough to come for me. He’ll try to find a replacement for me.” For someone who believed he was the Hero, Blake was really doing a terrible job. Hell, he’d rarely participated in any mission that could have put his own life at risk. But I supposed collecting tainted elementals and mind-controlling them to give them a purpose in life was his idea of being the Hero.

  “What about Hayley?” Jaiden asked. “Lily sent her someplace safe, but he could go after her if he finds out Lily’s not holding her prisoner.”

  “Shit.” My stomach did a nervous flip. “But even we don’t know where Hayley is.” I really hoped she’d moved to another city, far away from here.

  “So how exactly do you find these special people without the Druggie Book?” A smile touched his lips. “Or does Blake know the Sacred Book dealer?”

  “I don’t know.” I leaned on the wall, surveying the area. “We need to get to Blake’s house, but I don’t want any of the agents to follow us there.”