The Shifting Storm (Book 4)

by Jeff Hale

  There was a knock at the door as I came out of the bathroom. I glanced over to Aerick, saw that he hadn’t shown any sign that he had noticed the sound, and went over and opened the door myself. I went to hop over the bloodstain, saw it was no longer there, didn’t know if someone had cleaned it while we slept or if the room had gotten rid of it on its own; Lucien’s guest rooms were far from ordinary.

  It was Lucien at the door. He motioned for me to come out into the hall.

  “How’s Val?” I asked as I shut the door behind me. “I saw what he… did.”

  “She’ll be fine. The poor girl’s had a rough time, but she’s had some… help… with the healing.” He glanced at the door. “And Aerick?”

  “Staring at the wall probably now,” I told him, sighing. “I hope anyway.” I looked down, saw that my bag was on the floor. “Oh, yeah, sorry about leaving that, my room wasn’t where I left it.” The comment sounded odd, but with Lucien’s guest rooms, it made sense.

  “Yes. Considering the circumstances, I took the liberty of moving your room to a more accessible location. I hope you don’t mind.” He took a few steps down the hall, indicating I should follow, and we stopped in front of the door next to Aerick’s room. The door gave a welcoming glow as I got near it.

  “That’s a neat trick, from downstairs to upstairs,” I laughed. “But yeah, this will be easier.”

  He nodded. “You’ll find that everything is as you left it, save one addition, a connecting door between your room and Aerick’s.”

  “But…” I hadn’t seen any such door in Aerick’s room.

  He seemed to have read my thoughts. “There’s one now.” He smiled.

  “So why the need for the connecting door? Can’t Aerick just walk the twenty feet?”

  His expression went somber as he gestured that I should open the door to my room. “Aerick needs to be isolated, kept to his room,” he said, following me in. “I can’t trust him to not seek Serena out yet.”

  Lucien had been wrong about my room. Oh, the furnishings were all the same, the stairs going down from the door to the bedroom were still there, but the once crimson carpet was now a warm sand, literally, comfortable under the feet, but without the undesirable sand in the shoes. The walls, once gold and silver, were now rolling summer waves, the water a warm greenish-blue, sun shining off of it. If I looked close, I could see the occasional dolphin jump through the surf.

  The living room with its huge entertainment center had the same new design, with the addition of a sunlit cave at the top of a cliff, large cats lolling in the rays. The bathroom with its hot tub and sandy marble fixtures brought back memories of happier times. Sure enough, on the far wall of my bedroom, there was a door that hadn’t been there before, presumably to Aerick’s room.

  I dropped into one of the two plush chairs that sat in my bedroom, saw that the stuffed lynx Aerick had given me was somehow out of the closet at my parents’ and now on the bed, the picture of Aerick and I, glass now in one piece, sitting on the nightstand.

  “So what the hell happened?” I asked Lucien, gesturing toward the connecting door.

  “No one has told you yet?” He seemed surprised.

  “No, all I know is that something bad happened, Serena was hurt, kidnapped, so was Aerick, and Aerick went apeshit. That’s about it.” I sighed.

  He leaned on the back of the other chair, his black suit bunching around his shoulders. “I will not go into too much detail. I would hope that you can get Aerick to share that with you, so that he may purge himself. You know that Aerick and Serena found each other again?”

  I nodded, swallowing the lump in my throat that had formed as a reminder.

  “Travis, the young human you and Alex brought in, was part of the Movement for Purity. He and his friends managed to capture Aerick. Oh, don’t look so surprised, Aerick is strong, but even Sentinels have their weaknesses. Apparently, Travis tortured and sexually abused Serena,” Lucien continued, “while Aerick was forced to watch on a monitor. This much we know because Val and Dave witnessed it.”

  I shuddered, my heart breaking for poor Serena. I glanced at the connecting door again.

  I failed her, Kat.

  No wonder Aerick was in such a state.

  “Katelyn.”

  My gaze went back to Lucien.

  “There’s something else. We aren’t sure, not like we are with Serena, but Val noticed another monitor in the room where Serena was, could see Aerick on it.”

  “Yeah, she mentioned something about a two way feed.” My body suddenly went very, very cold.

  Oh god no…

  Lucien nodded again. “We don’t know what they did to Aerick, or if they did nothing more than watch his reaction to Serena. Serena won’t say anything about it.”

  “Thanks, Lucien, I’ll keep that in mind.” I was trying not to cry now, forcing myself to stay put, to not run through that door and cradle Aerick in my arms. “So he’s got the run of his room and my room, but nowhere else, correct?”

  “Yes. In a few days he can have the occasional visitor, only people he knows well, will feel safe with.”

  I nodded absently.

  “Katelyn, do anything you feel necessary to help him, if you can. I’m not sure if he’s not already too broken to fix. I hope not.”

  I met Lucien’s dark eyes. “Anything?” I asked him, knowing he would get my meaning.

  “Do you still love him?” he asked me bluntly.

  “Always,” I said through tears.

  “Then yes, anything. Right now Aerick needs someone who is willing to sacrifice themselves for him.” He started up the steps to the door, stopped and turned back to me. “Just be careful, you saw what he did to Valencia.”

  I shook my head. “He won’t hurt me.”

  “Are you sure?”

  I wasn’t, but I said yes anyway, my eyes going back to that connecting door again as the one at the top of my stairs closed.

  Fucked up and broken.

  Of course I still loved him.

  THIRTY-TWO

  KATELYN

  Aerick’s rooms consisted of the bedroom, a large bathroom, another room off the bedroom that had been set up as a training dojo of sorts, with targeting dummies and mats, what in my room was the living room. Scrolls and medieval weaponry lined the walls and sat in various cases around the rooms. The remains of a nightstand lay near the door, and a dresser was knocked over, clothes spilling out of it.

  The connecting door opened right into his bedroom, defying the laws of physics that told me it should open into the dojo. He was still where I had left him, still staring straight ahead. I stood in front of him, looked into his eyes, but if Aerick was in there, he was buried so deep in his own psyche that I couldn’t reach him.

  So I straightened his room up, what I could of it. It didn’t take long, and afterwards I went downstairs to get some food. Once again, when I got back, Aerick hadn’t moved. I set a hamburger next to him within easy reach and found a place on the floor to set up camp with my own food and a book, making sure I was always within his line of sight.

  When I started to fall asleep with my nose in between the pages, I forcibly moved Aerick farther back on the bed and got him under the covers. Other than to originally move to the end of the bed, he hadn’t said a word or made a move the entire evening. I wasn’t even sure he knew I was there. Even the hamburger had remained untouched.

  “I’ll be right through that door,” I said to him, his eyes still blank. “If you need anything, just come get me okay?” I tucked the covers around him and kissed him on the forehead. It was almost four a.m. I went to my own room to crash.

  I woke several hours later to a scream cutting through the air. It was a familiar voice; Aerick.

  I rolled off the bed and ran for the connecting door. When I opened it, dim lighting came on and I could see Aerick. He was sitting up on the bed, his head clasped in his hands, blue eyes wild in horror as he stared at something I couldn’t see. I approached him sl
owly, reaching out with one hand to touch his shoulder softly.

  “Rick? It’s me, it’s Kat,” I whispered reassuringly. “You’re okay.”

  He didn’t respond for almost a minute, then his head turned towards me as he looked at me from under the edge of his hand. He stared at me as though he were unsure of who I was, who he was, or even where we were. Then he dropped his hand from the side of his face, put it on my arm, and yanked me down so that I was sitting next to him. His other hand went to my hair, rubbing blood-red strands between his fingers.

  “It’s you. I know it’s you,” he said roughly, his voice different, almost hollow. “But your hair… it’s the wrong color.”

  Wrong color?

  “Aerick? Are you all right?” I asked, brushing his tangled bangs away from his face.

  He blinked at me, as though he wasn’t sure of the name, then let out a deep, rattling breath. “Kat?”

  “Yeah, baby, it’s me.” I let out a sigh of relief that he seemed to know me again.

  “I want to see Serena,” he implored sadly.

  “I know you do. But you can’t, not yet. It’s just me and you for a while.” I patted him on the shoulder, then stood and went over to the dresser. I got out a clean pair of black jeans and a dark tank top for him. I wasn’t sure how long it had been since he had had a change of clothes, or even a shower.

  “So you’re my jailer then?” he finally asked, resentment strong in his voice.

  “Jailer? I wouldn’t use that term. Counselor maybe. I’m here for you, Aerick, anything you need.”

  “I need her,” he muttered angrily.

  I stood there, clothes in hand, and gave him a sympathetic look. “I know you do, but she needs space right now, time to heal, up here.” I tapped my head. “If you really love her, you’ll give her that.”

  He glared at me, tiny yellow-orange sparks in his eyes. “So why do you care?”

  I wasn’t even going to bother trying to pussyfoot around the subject; if I wanted Aerick to open up to me about what he was feeling, about what happened, then I needed to be honest with him myself.

  “Because I love you,” I said.

  “And you’re just going to be noble enough to patch me up so that I can be with Serena once she gets everything straight in her head?” he asked me derisively.

  “If that’s what will make you happy, if it’s what you want, then yes,” I said honestly. “If you really love someone, then you want them to be happy.”

  He was off the bed in an instant, hands on my shoulders as he slammed me into the wall, his face mere inches from mine. “Well maybe you’d be better off not loving me then,” he snarled. “People who love me tend to get hurt.”

  I didn’t say anything, didn’t move as he pinned me against the wall.

  He pulled away just enough to slam into me again. “What? You aren’t going to fight back? You aren’t going to shift, try to sink your claws into me?” he taunted softly. “You aren’t going to use that lust thing of yours to turn me into a mindless slave?”

  I shook my head.

  He pushed me into the wall again. “Fight back, dammit!” It was almost as though he were pleading with me.

  “No, Rick, I won’t,” I whispered. “I trust you enough that I promise I will not use any of my abilities against you, even the lust, unless you are trying to hurt someone else.”

  He stared at me, lips a tight line as fury played across his features, then with a cry of frustration, he let me go, turning to storm into the dojo where he began methodically destroying the training dummies one by one.

  I leaned against the wall and watched him tear the room apart, forced myself to stay put and let him get it out of his system. He screamed, he howled, he cried, and finally, suddenly, he collapsed to his knees, falling forward so his elbows and forehead were against the mat, fingers knotted in his hair, back heaving with every breath.

  I went to him then, knelt next to him and put a hand on his shoulder. “Let’s get you into the shower, you’re a mess.”

  He seemed to think my words were funny, laughing hysterically as I hauled him shakily to his feet and guided him to the bathroom. He was leaning on me heavily when I reached the big four man shower, and I had to lower him to the floor so he could lean on the shower door while I got the water turned on and the heat adjusted.

  “Here.” I began to try to pull his shirt off over his head and he shied away from me, almost falling over in his attempt to keep me from it. I caught him, finally managing to get the shirt off of him despite the fact that his whole body went rigid as though he were expecting something else as well.

  I sucked in a breath. Involuntarily, I reached out a finger and ran it over one of the scars that now marred his chest and upper arms. His skin jerked under my touch.

  He hadn’t had them when I’d seen him have sex with Nina, so I knew the wounds they represented had to have been caused since then. They were all irregular, very few of them the same, some like long cuts, other like stabs, still others as though the skin had been abraded. Most of them were still fairly fresh, the skin still pink.

  I checked his back. More fresh scars there, and as I looked closer, I saw mottled yellow-green bruising still, here and there, mostly over his ribs. I didn’t know what had made those scars, knew that Aerick had healing capabilities of his own. Just how badly had he been mistreated to still show that kind of damage?

  Since he made no move to do it himself, had in fact become mostly unresponsive, I reached for the button on his filthy jeans so I could get those off of him as well. He let me, but his skin had gone clammy. When I searched his face, a look passed across it, shame, guilt, I wasn’t sure. My other fears were realized when I saw that the scars continued down over his hips and thighs, some of them very close to sensitive areas. I had to keep my own expression calm as murderous anger went through me.

  They didn’t know if anything had happened to Aerick, hadn’t seen like they had with Serena, but I didn’t need to have any kind of other proof in front of me to know that Aerick had been severely abused, the scars and his reactions just now were more than enough.

  “My poor Rick,” I whispered sadly, brushing hair away from his eyes so he could see me. “I won’t let anyone else hurt you ever again. I promise you.” I placed a kiss on his forehead, bit back a cry as he flinched.

  “But, you are dirty and sweaty, and frankly, you stink a little.” I kept my tone light. “In you go.” I managed to get him into the shower stall, where he just sat and stared at me and let the water pour over him. I sighed. “Gonna be difficult, huh?”

  I hadn’t brought a swimsuit, hadn’t thought I would need it, but I didn’t want to get my pajamas wet. I stripped down to my bra and panties, glad that I was wearing one of my more practical sets. I had absolutely no sexual intentions towards Aerick right now, and that was the last thing he needed at this point anyway.

  I climbed into the shower stall, his eyes glued to me as though he were watching a venomous snake that was poised to strike. Water streamed down over his head, his face. He had his arms wrapped around his drawn up legs.

  He cringed again as I attacked his hair with shampoo, tensed up as I clinically scrubbed him down with soap, all the while silent, as though his outburst earlier had taken everything out of him. As I stood to put the shampoo and soap back on their shelves, I felt his hand tentatively touch my calf, felt him lean his head against my thigh.

  Still no words from him as I toweled him dry, got him into clean clothes, got myself back into dry undies and my pjs, and did my best to not skin him while I shaved his face. Always, his eyes followed me, but there was no emotion in them that I could discern.

  He fell asleep in the bed not long after, where I had set him. The twitching started up almost immediately, and after a wistful gaze at the door to my room, I crawled up against his back, whispered comforting words at him, and fell asleep myself.

  _________________________________________

  I woke to the sounds of th
ings being destroyed again.

  I stumbled my way to the other room, saw that the dojo had been restored overnight, and Aerick was in the process of rendering it into so much wreckage again.

  He glanced my way every once in a while as he mangled something. I laid down on my stomach on the carpet, just outside the room, waiting for him to get done, resting on my elbows, my knees bent and feet in the air as I tapped them together. At one point he stopped altogether and just glared at me.

  “Oh, go on,” I said, as though watching someone systematically demolish furnishings and other items with their bare hands was an everyday occurrence. “Finish it up, let it all out, I’ll just be right here when you’re done.”

  He gave me a scornful look and went back to what he was doing. Once he had exhausted himself, he staggered by me and dropped onto the bed, watching me as he fell asleep.

  I took the break to take a shower myself, run downstairs and get some food for the both of us, let Lucien know what was happening. I came back up with the food on a tray to find Aerick in my room, sitting on my bed staring at the stuffed lynx.

  “Where were you?” he demanded brusquely, looking up as I came down the stairs.

  I continued down, felt glass crunch under my feet and was glad I had put my sandals on. When I looked for the source, I saw that he had thrown the picture of me and him against the wall and broken it. I put the food down on the coffee table in the next room, ignoring him as I went back to retrieve the photo itself and tuck it in a drawer. I could always get another frame.

  “Hungry?” I asked him.

  I could see the anger and frustration, the underlying rage still playing across his features. He wanted to yell, to scream at me, but he didn’t. Instead he just got up and stalked into my living room and dropped onto the couch there.

  I had brought plenty of food, not sure what he might be in the mood for, plus knowing that I tended to eat quite a bit myself. He grabbed something randomly from the tray, barely chewed as he gulped it down; he hadn’t eaten in a couple days. I sat in a chair and picked through some French fries.