Second Chance: Paranormal, Tattoo, Supernatural, Coming of Age, Romance (The Chronicles of Kerrigan Sequel Book 3)

by W. J. May

  “I want to hear you say it,” Simon replied calmly, twisting Devon’s head to the side so he could see him. “I want to see in your eyes that she’s safe.”

  When those glassy, spellbound eyes did nothing but glare back at him, he twisted the arm higher still. Devon’s head bowed in heart-wrenching agony, and he gasped softly against the ground. “Do it,” he whispered.

  Simon paused, then listened intently. “What was that?”

  “Do it,” Devon cringed into the grass, squeezing his eyes shut as tight as they would go, “so I can’t hurt her anymore.” Rae’s heart broke and even Simon froze as tears slipped down Devon’s face. “Simon, please…”

  But whether Simon would have snapped off his arm or embraced him like a son, Rae would never know. Because it was at that moment that Rae realized she had bigger problems than her fiancée, or her father, or even the gaping wound in her chest.

  Her mother had just arrived.

  She saw the colors before she heard the screams. That was the way it always seemed to happen. An ironic warming of the sky before the devastation rained down from above.

  They were a particular shade of blue—the flames of her mother’s. Both terrifying and beautiful. The exact same shade as her eyes. A shade that Rae would never be able to forget for as long as she lived.

  A wave of people went diving out of the way as Beth moved forward.

  Sure enough, her entire body was engulfed in flames. An ice-blue storm cloud that streaked up behind her, like the wings of a devastating angel. Her chin jerked higher, and her eyes dilated almost black as they scanned the fleeing crowd. Searching. Planning.

  Rae flailed her hand to get her mother’s attention. Screaming with all her might to be heard above the crowd. But it was then that she saw something to make her blood run cold.

  Her mother’s eyes might have been blue.

  But there was nothing left of her mother inside.

  They were vacant. Just as vacant as Devon’s, and Angel’s, and Luke’s. And they weren’t scanning around for her daughter like she’d thought. They were focused on the people. All those hundreds of people, screaming as they raced for safety.

  “MOM! NO!”

  Simon followed her gaze in terror. Even Devon turned around as Beth slowly lifted her hands and pointed them in the direction of the crowd. A luminescent glow began building in the palms of her hands as Rae hitched herself up onto her shoulder with a soundless cry.

  It should have been the end. The end of a great many things.

  But fate, it seemed, had other plans.

  As Rae looked on in breathless horror, a shadow blurred in the air between them. A shadow so swift and sure it was like it came from hell itself. In hindsight, she wasn’t too far off the mark.

  It was her father.

  Simon released Devon and leapt forward, careening through the air towards Beth. In what felt like slow motion, he grabbed his estranged wife in his arms. Crushing her in an embrace so tight the flames themselves had no room to breathe. No room to expand and consume all those frozen, breathless people. To arch out over the sky and end their lives forever.

  As the iridescent glow faded and died Beth gazed up with wide, tear-filled eyes.

  “Simon?”

  He leaned back with a soft smile, tinted with that same nostalgia as before. “I told you years ago, my love,” he murmured softly, “I’d never let that beautiful fire of yours turn against you.”

  A sudden hush fell over the crowd, and the next thing Rae knew the strange collage of colors and abilities faded to a clear blue sky. As quickly as it had started, the spell had broken. The smoke began to drift away, but the crowd was rooted to the ground in shock.

  All of them staring at Simon Kerrigan through brand new eyes.

  For a full minute, nothing happened.

  Then a young man stepped forward, no different from anyone else, bleeding profusely from the ear. He took one look at Simon and a sudden surge of wonder lit his face. “He…saved us.”

  After a split second, the same was echoed from every corner of the blood-stained grass. Bouncing back in a hundred different voices, each as astonished as the rest.

  Rae lifted her eyes to her father, unable to believe what she’d just seen. “Daddy?” she whispered, then blacked out.

  Chapter 3

  Rae slowly woke to a world in transition.

  The smoke had yet to clear. People had yet to lift themselves off the ground. She was still lying in the same puddle of blood she’d passed out in, only now there were two sets of cool hands pressed over her chest.

  One belonged to Alicia—who was carefully mending the gaping wound that had been near her heart. The other belonged to Molly—who looked as if she would never dare let go.

  They were soon joined by a third, as Beth, who had extracted herself from Simon, was looking slightly confused, and fell to the ground beside her daughter, pulling Rae up into her lap. “Oh, honey,” she whispered and soothed, careful not to disturb Alicia’s work as she stroked her daughter’s blood-stained hair. “Honey, I’m so sorry. I tried to get to you. I tried.”

  Rae glanced around through half-closed eyes.

  Simon was still standing exactly where Beth had left him. He seemed uncertain as to whether he would be permitted to join in. The eyes of the crowd were still on him, and as people began to slowly come back to life he seemed to brace himself where he stood, prepared for one ending or another.

  Devon, on the other hand, was still in a complete daze. He slowly got to his feet, wincing in surprise, then cradling his shattered arm to his chest. His eyes widened as he stared at the grisly scene, but bit by bit he was beginning to put some things together.

  “Jules?” he gasped, spotting his best friend lying behind him.

  But Julian was already getting to his feet, albeit a little more broken than when he’d gone down. He was quickly aided by Mitch Ford, who seemed on the verge of madness that he’d actually raised a hand against him. He fussed and coddled—as much as a massive, militaristic man was capable—but Julian waved both him and Devon off, limping towards Angel.

  Undeterred, Devon rotated in slow motion and turned his eyes to his fiancée, still crumpled limply on the ground. “RAE!”

  She tried to smile at him. Tried to show him it was okay, but she wasn’t sure the smile made it to her lips.

  He was in front of her the next second, but didn’t seem to know what to do. It was like he didn’t know what had happened, or how they’d gotten there. His eyes flickered down to the red puddle seeping slowly into the ground with the look of a bewildered child, before slowly, painfully slowly, making the journey back to his own hands.

  His face lost all color, and for a moment it looked as though he’d been stabbed as well. “What have I done?”

  It was strange that Rae even heard the words—as quiet as they’d been spoken, as noisy as the bloodied campus had suddenly become. But they rang out loud and clear. She could even hear his sporadic, shattered breathing as he robotically started backing away.

  “Rae, I…I didn’t mean to…”

  He was quickly drowned out as a swarm of other people rushed forward, all of them in various states of disrepair. The second that Simon had caught Beth, whatever magic had been their undoing had suddenly been lifted. And while Rae’s situation might have been the worst, it was by no means the only tragedy that happened on the grass that day.

  Angel had rushed forward towards Julian, her eyes filled with tears, before suddenly remembering herself and doubling back to unfreeze Gabriel. Her brother had fallen forward, mid-run, and somersaulted back onto his feet just in time to see the new woman in his life save the old.

  Commander Fodder looked as ashen as Rae had ever seen him. Somehow, even more so than when he’d gone with her on a journey into her father’s deepest thoughts. A wide smear of blood was painted from his forehead to his chin, but at the moment his only thought was for his youngest son, who was still passed out cold at his feet.

/>   “Luke,” he murmured, dropping to his knees. “I’m so sorry, please…please come back to me. Luke—”

  “Alicia,” Rae muttered, shifting painfully higher into her mother’s arms, “I’m fine. You fixed enough of it. Go and help him, okay?”

  Alicia did a quick assessment before glancing behind her and taking off towards the men. It was clear that people would need to be triaged at this point. They would not be her only patients.

  “I have your tatù, Alicia. Go.” Rae swallowed, trying to appear more calm than she felt. Beside her, someone sniffed tragically.

  “Rae, I don’t know what happened.” Molly gazed down at her with wide, watery eyes. “I saw Devon walking towards you… I knew something wasn’t right. But when I tried to help, it was like I just couldn’t. Something was stopping me… This voice inside my head. It told me to run, and I…” She bowed her head guiltily as tears dripped down her cheeks.

  Rae reached up quickly and squeezed her hand. “Hey, it’s not your fault. It was some power; there was nothing you could have done. Otherwise, you would have stopped.” Her eyes flickered up to Devon without realizing it, willing herself to believe it to be true. “Otherwise, there would be no way you’d ever…” A hard-lump rose in the back of her throat and she fell silent, turning her face in to her mother’s jacket. It didn’t help. Even with her eyes closed, she couldn’t stop seeing it. No matter which way she turned, the same image kept creeping into her mind.

  Devon walking towards her. Devon gazing down with a smile. Devon sliding the knife between her bones like she was made of tissue-paper. Staring indifferently down at her.

  I have to kill you now.

  A violent shudder ripped through her body, and she pushed Beth aside to throw up.

  Devon was still standing exactly where she’d lost sight of him, a frozen statue in the middle of the crowd. He’d kept backing away from her until Simon had caught him by the shoulders and held him still. Devon didn’t notice. His eyes were fixed on Rae. The exact spot where she’d been before all these people got in their way.

  Staring as if he could still see her. Trembling as if he’d seen a ghost.

  A pair of tears slipped down his face, and he whirled around to run—only to be caught again by Simon. Rae watched the two of them side by side, their profiles both strong, both looking lost in the confusion of what might have been.

  Devon saw Simon this time, staring with wide-eyed disorientation as the man held him easily in place. Then, in a move that surprised them both Devon grabbed onto Simon’s shirt, still silently crying, although he didn’t seem to notice that either. “Please,” it was almost hard to understand him, he was shaking so hard, “please…don’t let me get near her. Don’t let me hurt her again. I couldn’t stop…I couldn’t—”

  Simon caught him in a sudden embrace. An embrace that was as much to restrain him as it was to calm him down. “It wasn’t you, do you hear me? This wasn’t your fault.”

  Devon just stood there in shock, bringing his hands up slowly behind Simon’s back to stare at the blood on them. “But it was…I remember…I remember every—”

  “That’s enough,” Simon said sternly, pulling back to look him up and down. “Rae needs you to be strong right now, do you understand? You need to be strong now, Devon.”

  Before he could answer, Simon pulled him back through the crowd, joining his estranged wife and daughter where they were huddled on the grass. The crowd was beginning to disperse now, like each one of them was prepared to drive away and never look back. At one point Louis Keene snatched up the microphone, assuring everyone that the Council would get to the bottom of this, that everything was going to be fine.

  But it didn’t sound like he believed it himself.

  By the time he joined the rest of them, the entire group was gathered in a shaken circle—Rae and Beth still kneeling in the center. None of them spoke. None of them dared to meet the others’ eyes. They simply stood.

  Bleeding quietly. Trying to catch their breath. At a total loss as to what came next.

  “We should all get back to the house in Kent,” Commander Fodder said quietly. “It’s so far off the grid that, until we know what we’re dealing with, it’s probably safer than the Abbey. It’s certainly much safer than…” He caught himself before he could say the rest.

  Than Guilder. Than the headquarters of the PC. Than this placed they’d called home.

  When nobody made any attempt to answer him he turned to Devon, who was usually his best bet in terms of taking charge and coordinating logistics. But Devon just sank into a crouch, cupping his hand over his mouth, staring at Rae like she was dead already.

  Already, huh? Quite the subliminal tag-on.

  But deep down, Rae didn’t see how it could not be true. Whatever had happened to them today wasn’t like anything that had ever happened before. This wasn’t like any enemy they had battled before. It didn’t strike them from the outside. It attacked from within. Negating all strength and power. Using their deepest emotions and ties of loyalty against them.

  How could they fight something like that? Something they couldn’t hear. Something they couldn’t touch or see. Something that divided, not united them.

  It had attacked from within.

  How were they going to battle this? Something they didn’t even know was coming?

  Chapter 4

  The next moves became all about recovery.

  The field was evacuated. Guilder was written off as a temporary bloodbath and emptied of all persons, students included, until further notification. The same was done with the tunnels underneath and the adjacent PC buildings connected to them. By the time the exodus was complete, not even the janitors remained.

  In an impromptu gesture of inter-governmental spirit, the Abbey opened its doors. There was no limit to who or how many were welcome. The invitation was open-ended and immediate in effect, but in the end proved to be fruitless, albeit kind.

  The reason was simple: no one felt safe.

  If this kind of attack could happen on PC soil, then there was no reason to think that the Abbey would be any different. And if it could render the leaders of both governments helpless, even the invincible Rae Kerrigan and her band of heroic friends…then who could possibly protect them?

  That being said, the super-gang wasn’t feeling so heroic at the moment. And the invincible Rae Kerrigan had certainly seen better days.

  “Stop moving around so much,” Gabriel commanded, shoving Rae down with one hand as his other yanked up her shirt. “It’s bad enough that I’m doing this in a moving car.”

  A searing pain shot through her body, landing somewhere in her teeth. While being vaguely aware that it was counterintuitive, she took a second to viciously slap at his hand. “Sorry,” she hissed, glaring up with bloodshot eyes. “This must be so difficult for you.”

  An hour ago, Gabriel would have grinned slyly—as caustic as it might be. What now felt like forever ago, but was maybe a little over the sixty-minute mark, he would have been able to see the dark humor in things. But now? There was not a trace of levity on his face as he deliberately pressed her back down upon the leather seats and slipped onto the floor so he could better see what he was doing.

  A cloud of warm breath tickled Rae’s bare ribs, but the pain that followed overwhelmed all her other senses. Blinding her to the point where she, too, had room for no other emotion. “Freakin’ A! Hurry up, Gabriel!”

  He gritted his teeth but did as he was asked, holding out his hand as she quickly conjured and handed him a suturing kit. As the car swerved and darted through traffic he carefully threaded the needle, holding it above her skin with a steady hand.

  It was the exact reason the two of them had ended up in this car together. Slipping away despite the horde of other people all tearing towards the parking lot, seeking refuge in other towns.

  Gabriel’s steady hands.

  “You know,” he glanced up for only a moment, “this would be a hell of a lot easier if y
ou had taken some damn morphine in first place, like I told you—”

  “No drugs,” Rae interrupted, bracing herself between the armrest and the door as she spoke through gritted teeth. “This day’s been warped enough without piling a heap of chemicals on top of it. Besides,” she bravely stretched out her torso, providing him the easiest possible canvas, “what if whatever it was that happened before, happens again? I’ll need to have my wits about me.”

  Gabriel’s hands paused, and his green eyes burned into hers.

  “If it happens again, I’ll be right here.” A bitter note of accusation leaked through the words, even as he strove to keep them neutral. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”

  Rae’s chest tightened, but she didn’t respond. The last hour had been so convoluted and confusing, with such heavy emotion and blame flying in all directions, she truly had no way of knowing which way was up or down. And all that was before the massive blood loss…

  “Okay,” Gabriel’s voice took on that practiced, reassuring tone it got whenever he slipped back into one of his Cromfield survival skills, “you ready?”

  Rae shook her head. “No. I’ve changed my mind.”

  That coaxed a bit of a smile from him. His thumb stroked comfortingly against her skin before he leaned forward with a sudden look of concentration and began to work.

  Pain beyond pain!

  Rae jerked up her chin, and kept her eyes fixed on the ceiling. Somewhere, just beyond her vision, a tiny needle was flying back and forth, sealing shut whatever ravaged skin Alicia had been unable to mend before her services were urgently required elsewhere.

  Under normal circumstances, Devon would be patching her up himself. At the very least he’d be sitting here beside her, holding her hand. Most likely shouting at Gabriel to work faster, or criticizing his technique. Making jokes or telling silly stories just to make her laugh. To distract her from the pain, and take her mind off whatever terrible thing had caused it in the first place.