by C. M. Owens
“Araya!” Brazen screams while charging toward me, and I turn around too late to see a grenade that has fallen beside us.
I try to use my gift, but suddenly I’m struck by the excruciating waves of energy as a coil strikes my side. I scream out, unable to dislodge it, and I throw my body over Clay’s when I know there’s no other hope.
My eyes tighten as I wait for the explosion I don’t have time to escape. I hear the deafening boom shake my eardrums as I struggle to keep Clay covered with my body that isn’t invincible. I feel a few shards rip threw my skin, but the blast isn’t as bad as it should have been because I’m still alive.
I turn around to a wavering surface. The ground seems to be moving after my close proximity to the blast I never felt the full force of. The unrelenting bullets continue to fire at us, and Brazen launches three grenades simultaneously at the men showing us no mercy.
The ground explodes from its dormant place as I look around to see what deflected the grenade. Clay grips me as the last of his wounds close up, and he jerks my face back front.
“Look at me. Look only at me,” he demands.
“What?” I panic, and I rip free to see what he’s desperately trying to shield me from.
Brazen’s arms wrap around me as my eyes fall upon the sight that makes sends a chill so deep, a ghost’s breath would seem warm. Nicholas is lying motionless after taking the blast for me. He saved me.
“No!” I scream.
Tears ravage my eyes as I dive over to start pouring blood into his mouth. My sobs can be heard over Hale’s explosions fending off the monstrous herds pounding toward us. I can tell he has reached stage three when the whole hillside is leveled, but all I can focus on is the man I never got the chance to know while the blood does nothing to bring him back.
“Araya, he’s-”
“No. No he’s not,” I sob wildly, interrupting Brazen, and Clay kneels beside me as other United soldiers rush out to shield us and fire into the mass coming toward us. “My blood. Clay, my blood healed Hale. He was dead. It can save him. Make it work,” I plead.
“Araya, you know I can’t. He’s your father. Blood can’t heal blood. You know that.”
“Please. Use your gift. Manipulate my blood. Please save him,” I plead again.
He shakes his head, and then I feel my blood rolling free from the wounds I’ve suffered. Brazen’s mouth drops open as the blood swirls through the air, lighting up and coming to life, and then it surges into the mouth of my father.
Clay’s eyes shut as he concentrates, trying to manipulate the properties of my blood, but nothing is happening. Tears pour more from my eyes as Clay’s eyes open with nothing but remorse.
“I’m sorry, Araya… I can’t get it to work,” he numbly mumbles, and I sob louder as Brazen pulls me into his arms.
I feel the dull aching inside me before the burning takes over. Nicholas isn’t moving, breathing, or even trying to heal. I feel sick and furious at once, and I start trembling as I gingerly push Brazen away from me. I feel the purple burning through the blue, and I see the terror in Brazen’s face just before I see it in Clay’s.
“You might want to run now,” my eerie tone slithers out as I slowly stand to my feet.
Brazen stumbles backwards before yelling to everyone, “Get the fuck out, now!”
“You too,” I murmur while staring at Clay, and I feel my body heating up as I step out into the middle of the blazing bullets.
They rattle off me one by one as I continue to stalk out into the center, and suddenly everything freezes in the air with barely any exerted energy. The metal shreds into pieces with another flick of my wrist, and the men begin dropping to the ground when I force their bodies to fold inward.
They can’t even catch a breath long enough to scream as their bodies fold under my exuding pressure. I see Hale still fending off the masses, and I smirk as I hold my hand up to raise the tanks, men, and all their puny weapons into the air. More screams erupt as the floodgates of my power open and spiral out of control. I fist my hand and several of the tanks crunch as though they’re a wadded up pieces of paper.
Everything lifts into the air as the earth beneath our feet shakes, and the skies open like a phase five storm. The winds slap against me as the pathetic attackers beg for the mercy they couldn’t show my father, and the thudding of the heartbeats carrying their meaningless blood suddenly stops as I crush all the life out of them while spiraling their corpses through the air.
Hale stalks toward me, and a devious smirk emerges from me as he reaches me. I drop the dead to the ground, and the chaos my power has left is delicious as the few remaining try to retreat. They collapse almost immediately as I crack my neck to the side, and suddenly I feel his delectable lips against mine as he jerks me to his incredible body. My storm, my phase five suctioning piece of beauty opens up stronger, the red lightening crashing, and it picks up the remnants of the graveyard, leaving only the man who sacrificed his life for me.
Hale’s lips bring me away from the fight - away from reality. He’s my hybrid, my love. He’s all I need… no one else.
No words need to be spoken. No breaths need to be taken. It’s just us in our kingdom of destruction right now, and it feels so fucking good.
He devours me as the United flees, and I feel like chasing after the son of a bitch that started this all.
Ty.
That fucking coward. I’ll kill him. I’ll shred him, and I’ll leave him in shambles when I find him.
Chapter 8
Hale-storm
I taste the dirt mingling with my own dried blood in my mouth as the aftertaste of numerous blood fucks leave me a little stiff. My bare body is covered in the sands of the dry wasteland around us, and Hale’s bare body is draped around me.
Where the fuck are our clothes? What the hell happened?
I gasp when I see Cheyenne in front of me, and the tunnels that were once submerged and hidden underground are now cleared of all debris and open to all.
I did that. I opened the fucking grounds to Cheyenne’s dirty secrets.
The thick, impenetrable layers and layers of steel have been ripped apart and slung away from the tunnels to leave them vulnerable to access. The mess of warped steel is shredded and tossed like confetti to the ground.
“Holy shit,” Hale groans as he grips his head. “What happened?”
“I wish I knew,” I murmur as tears threaten my eyes.
“Baby, what’s wrong? Did I hurt anyone?”
“No. That much I know. The only ones we hurt are the ones who were hurting us. Nicholas… he’s…”
I can’t finish the sentence as my sobs threaten to surface, and he pulls me to his body to let my tears slide down his chest.
“It’s okay, baby. I’m here. I’ve got you,” he coos.
I curl into him as the full glow of the sun flickers and goes to hide behind the tinted sky. It’s late. What day is it? How long did it take us to come down?
“Hale, I went savage with you. I don’t even know what all we did,” I worry.
“We need to find some clothes, and then we need to find a way to contact Clay. Maybe there’s a radio or something in there,” he says while motioning to the abandoned tunnels I’ve revealed.
I’m still in shock, and now I know what just happened. A chill creeps up on me as a dark reality creeps into the light.
“I went phase three,” I gasp.
“Shit. How do you know?”
“Hale, I’ve been in one numerous times, and I’ve been in two enough to know I’m not capable of doing anything like this in either of those phases. I went three, and I went a hard three.”
“Yes you did,” Clay says as he walks up from absolutely nowhere.
I cover myself slightly as he tosses us a bag of clothes.
“What happened?” Hale muses. “How did you find us?”
“I knew where you would go. I knew Araya would be leading a hunt, and I knew she’d get us into Cheyenne with her phas
e three savage running the show,” he says with his back turned.
“And our clothes?”
“That I don’t know,” he almost jokes, and then his serious stance returns as I sniffle a little louder.
I pull on a tee-shirt and a pair of jeans before slipping on the desert boots. I wipe away my tears as Clay turns around to face our more modest selves.
“I’m sorry, Araya. I brought olophine if you need it.”
I shake my head while swallowing the oversized knot in my throat.
“I’m too depleted to go savage right now. How long did it take us to come down?” I ask while diverting the conversation.
“A week. We’ve been keeping a safe distance and tracking your destruction. You were one-track minded on a journey to get here,” Clay sighs while kneeling to the ground.
“Fuck,” Hale exasperates, and he pulls me to his body as I continue to let my tears slide.
“The army who faced us?” he continues.
“Araya obliterated everyone and everything you didn’t get to. It was the most surreal demonstration of power I’ve ever witnessed.”
I shiver as I think of the overwhelming mounds of power that had surged through me. I never felt like I even scraped the surface of my abilities either. There’s more in me I don’t really know how to use, and I’m glad my savage doesn’t know how to use it either. I can’t tell them that though. They’re scared enough.
“Have you been in Cheyenne yet?” Hale asks.
“We were waiting on you to come down before we got too close.”
“We?”
Several trucks begin driving toward us along with hummers and cars - all of them heavily armed and armored. Brazen steps toward us, and his eyes connect with mine without fear despite the chaos I personally unleashed.
“You okay now?” he asks with uncertainty.
“Let’s not discuss me right now,” I grumble while turning to face Cheyenne’s hidden chambers of misery. “Let’s just get this over with.”
Brazen and Clay take lead as Hale and I follow behind.
“Is Angelica okay?” Hale asks warily.
“Not really. She has been in and out of savage over the past few days. With the loss of her… well… let’s just say she’s hurting pretty badly right now. Grayson is doing an excellent job with her though,” Clay murmurs softly, and I see the turmoil growing in Brazen’s face as his jaw clenches.
He still doesn’t understand all of this. Of course, I don’t either. Us talking about Grayson and Angelica forces him to focus on Hale and me. Hale’s grip tightens on my hand as we near the steel tomb of painful memories, and I cringe the moment I see the crack I’ve apparently made during my savage episode - or perhaps it was Hale. Who knows at this point?
“It appears we have a better point of weakness now,” Clay asserts, and Brazen starts lacing the crack with his own concoction of explosions.
We all step back before the violent bursts ring out, and the chunks fly past us as they collapse to the ground with exhausted thuds. The dust rolls free from the debris left behind, and it hides the dark promise of the tainted secrets that have been sealed for centuries.
“You don’t have to go in,” Hale murmurs as I step through the broken wall.
This place is a maze. You’ll need help finding that room again,” I strain out as my body trembles beneath me.
I feel his concern for me seeping through his grip on my hand, and I cling to him as though I’m terrified of each corner we round. I am terrified.
The walls seem to whisper to me as they remind me of the days I spent in this hell. I shiver over and over to the point I can’t stop. Brazen’s breaths mimic Hale’s as they both watch my every tortured move. It’s dark, but I don’t need light to find my way.
I spent years blindfolded, gagged, and bound while being drug through these corridors. My destination was always the same. It would be harder to find it in the light since my eyes were rarely ever uncovered.
The whips are dangling like morbid decorations along the hallways - their uranium tips stained by the blood of so many of us. The scent of cigars is no longer there, but I can smell them as if they are. The walls bear the shadows of the expelled screams that painted the halls, and the stench of fear and death mingle with the absent cigars that burned the flesh on all of us.
I rub my face with my free hand as my mind flashes back to the numerous times I suffered those burns. My body would be scrubbed down with the uranium scrub that opened up my youthful, less resilient skin to their torture tactics. They would hover over me as the devil played in their pale eyes. The reveled in my screams, and I would fight to suppress them in order to deny them their sadistic pleasure.
The wall separates us from the room I haven’t stepped foot in since the day my gifts were revealed. I take a deep breath as Clay taps it three times. The familiar sound of the rock sliding on rock echoes in my ears to send the haunting chills all over me. The room almost screams at me to wash it free from its tortured memories. The stench of death rolls out to slap me in the face. Years of tortured memories flood back at once, and I almost feel the cuts, the stabs, the unfathomable pain as though it’s happening all over again.
My head starts spinning wildly out of control as the masked faces and pale eyes stare down at me, strapping me tighter to that damn table in front of my eyes. They open me up, take a look inside my body to see how I like surgery while conscious. I scream inside my own mind, praying for the vicious memories to cease. Their cold hands go inside my chest to grip my heart in their hand. They squeeze too tight, and it tries to explode under their grasp. They don’t want me dead though, they want me alive so I can scream. They want me to feel what terrible things their maliciously warped sadistic minds are concocting.
I feel myself growing sick as I double over in front of the room, my knees giving out completely as I expel all the contents of my stomach in the hallway.
“Shit, Araya. Let’s get out of here,” Hale urges as he scoops me up.
I just lean into him while nestling my head into his chest, and the gentle pale eyes show genuine worry as we pass by Brazen. The jaded air is almost suffocating me as the starchy room draws out my breath from behind.
Hale’s lips press against my forehead to bring me back from hell, and I snuggle into him as the marching feet pass us by to join them in the room of torture’s pride.
“I’m sorry, baby,” he utters so sweetly.
“I’m fine now. I wasn’t expecting it to be that rough,” I force out convincingly.
“We can go. Clay can fill us in later or something. I… I think it would be good if you spoke with Angelica,” he mutters hesitantly.
“I want to go, but there’s nothing to say to Angelica. I didn’t know him, and I can’t tell her he was a good man because he’s the man who put me here. Accident or not, I lived in this hell that is making everyone’s skin crawl.”
Tears start dripping again, and his soft, gentle lips brush over my forehead to soothe me.
“But she’s your sister, and she just lost the man who took care of her, raised her, and gave her love. You can’t hold his sins against her.”
Damn philosophical, wise Hale.
I just wrinkle my nose at his wise remark as he carries me to a car. His lips stroke my head as he pulls out his cell, and then he lowers me to the seat as Clay answers the ringing I can hear from out here.
“We’re going back to Seminole. Will you have enough vehicles to get you back?”
“More than enough. Take care of her,” he says softly.
“I plan on it,” he murmurs while kissing the back of my left hand that bears the black diamond still perfectly intact.
He hangs up while pulling me closer to his body, and I lean against him as the engine hums. I’m so tired, drained, and emotionally exhausted.
I pray they didn’t get my phase three blood.
That horrible thought is now plaguing my mind as I try to pull memories from the blacked out portions of my w
eek, but nothing comes into the light. It all stays locked away in the vault of my savage’s secrets. Nothing makes sense right now, and nothing ever seems to work the way I need it to when I need it to.
Angelica sniffles against me as I hold her in a comforting embrace I’m not fully sure I’m doing correctly. She’s destroyed right now, and I don’t know what to say to ease her burdens.
“I’m sorry,” I mumble when nothing else comes to mind.
“You tried to save him. You tried,” she whimpers. “Thank you so much for trying.”
Grayson looks miserably exhausted as he leans over on the couch arm. His eyes threaten to close as if he hasn’t had sleep in far too long. Hale kisses the top of my head as he moves into the kitchen, and he returns with a bottle of whiskey.
“Hybrids suck with loss, so you’ll have to excuse me if I’m doing this wrong, but this is all I know to do,” he says as he pours her a glass of the amber liquid.
She almost smiles as she takes it from him, and her nose turns up when she smells the strength hidden in the toxins.
“Consider it a magical elixir,” I lightly retort. “It won’t make it go away, but it’ll drown it out for a little while.”
Grayson gladly accepts the glass proffered to him as his eyes sleepily steady, and he moans as he pours it down his throat.
“Did Commander Jude find anything at Cheyenne?” he asks Hale.
“They’re taking samples of various soils tracked through the area to see if they left any key pieces of the puzzle behind. We’re hoping it’ll lead us to their new location.”
“Do you have anything to eat?” he yawns out.
“I don’t have much on hand, but I can order in.”
Hale walks away with his phone in his hand to make the call, and Angelica walks over to curl into the arms of her loving hybrid. I smile as he strokes her hair and his lips gingerly caresses her forehead.
“I love you,” he murmurs so sweetly to her, and my grin grows.
“I love you,” she utters in reply, and my eyes fall on the man who always brings me out of the darkness.