Summers' Shadow (Hunters Trilogy Book 2)

by Sara J. Bernhardt

  “Fourteen,” she answered, looking down at her hands.

  He was a child just as I thought.

  “You said three years ago,” I answered. “Wouldn’t that have made you fourteen?”

  She nodded. “My twin.”

  I sighed. Even worse and now I could see she was in agony.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “You ask the questions.”

  “I was just going to ask why you acted that way the first day of class. What did I do?”

  If she only knew. “It wasn’t that you did anything. I was just in one of my moods, and in some ways, I was upset with you for ignoring me, but everything is fine.” I smiled at her and noticed the blood rush to her cheeks. I was overwhelmed by the way I was able to make her blush. She had no idea how beautiful she was.

  “Also,” she continued, “those green eyes of yours—contacts, right?”

  I laughed quietly. I had gotten that before. “Now why would you think that?”

  “They seem…unnatural.”

  I leaned forward, begging my mind to stay sane so I wouldn’t find myself giving in to the urge to kiss her. I was completely lost in her eyes for a moment, and it seemed as if she were lost in mine. I stayed in position, wanting desperately to close my lips around hers.

  I leaned back, staring at my hands. I couldn’t look at her. I had very little self-control when she stared at me that way—so solidly with her face completely unreadable.

  “Wow,” she whispered.

  “They often absorb the colors around them. That’s why they may sometimes look dark or even violet on occasion as I have been told.” At least that was the truth.

  She nodded and smiled.

  “But your cuts,” she said, “when Rudy and Eric attacked you.”

  I didn’t want to answer. She was definitely noticing there was something not right about me. I hated it.

  “The rake didn’t cut past my shirt. I backed away. And Rudy really isn’t very strong. The reason I looked so dizzy and disoriented is because the smell of blood makes me sick.”

  “Uh huh.”

  I noticed she was staring down at her chipping nail polish again, and her eyes appeared almost…turbulent. I was burning with curiosity of what was going on inside her head.

  “Now what are you thinking?” I asked.

  “Why do you always want to know what I’m thinking?”

  “Well, what good are thoughts with nobody to share them with?”

  She mirrored my smile.

  “It’s just that you’re always so passive,” I continued. “It’s so hard to read you.”

  “Can’t be that hard.”

  “Oh, it is. You hide so much.” I felt guilty for saying that, considering how much I hid.

  She looked away from me again.

  “Like Becky for example,” I said. “She’s contemplating coming over here just to see what’s going on.” I had no idea if that was true, but it seemed like something Becky would be thinking.

  “How do you know that?” she said, not turning around to look at Becky. “Maybe she is just daydreaming about something completely out there.”

  “Well, that’s obviously possible, but I don’t think so.”

  “How do you know?”

  “She’s just one of those people who is easy to read. You have to admit yourself Becky isn’t really too hard to figure out.” I laughed.

  “But I am?”

  I nodded.

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I have a question.”

  Of course she did. “More questions?”

  “Well, just one—maybe two.”

  “Okay.”

  “What were you doing in the woods that night?”

  “I told you,” I said. “I walk. I don’t sleep well, so sometimes I just walk all night.”

  “How did you know how to find me? Um…two questions.”

  I bowed my head for a moment, unsure how to answer.

  “And at the party…and the bookstore.”

  “That’s more than two.”

  “Aidan…”

  It was still strange hearing her call me Aidan. I wanted to tell her the truth. I wanted more than anything to tell her every single thing about me. Since that wasn’t possible, I decided I could tell her about my bizarre gift. The worst that could happen was she would think I was insane.

  “All right. You want the truth?” I started.

  “Of course.”

  “I have this thing…where I can feel when danger is close. When there is a strong possibility that someone may be hurt. I don’t know how it happened. It was just…one day I woke up with this odd new feeling. And to think of you being hurt…” I broke off, shaking my head and lowering it again.

  “How does it work?” she asked after a brief moment of silence.

  She did believe me. I shook my head. “I don’t know. I usually can’t feel it unless it involves you.”

  “Me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “You obviously are, as I have said before, a walking accident,” I said, laughing.

  She didn’t seem amused. “Just a little clumsy.”

  “That’s an understatement.”

  She just glared at me. It wasn’t threatening at all. She was too pretty to look mean.

  I was torn back into my worries. I knew this was wrong. This whole conversation was wrong. Even looking at her was stupid.

  “You know, Jane…my knight in shining armor act shouldn’t have made you want to talk to me.”

  “It didn’t. You talked to me remember?”

  “I’m just saying that Rudy was right—well, about one thing. You really should avoid me.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m not a very good friend.” That seemed like the most logical reason I could give her without being forced to lie.

  “Aidan”—she paused—“you’re strange.”

  I smiled, finding her charming as usual. “I know. But you should, and that, to answer one of your first questions, is exactly why I acted that way in class.”

  “Maybe I will then!” she retorted curtly.

  I ignored her angry tone and nodded. “It’s probably better for you.”

  “Okay, so now it’s suddenly better for you to not talk to me?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t worry about it. At least you warned me this time, so don’t be mad when I don’t talk to you,” she snapped.

  “It’s not that I want you to avoid me—”

  “Make up your mind, Aidan.”

  “It’s just that it would be best,” I continued, still ignoring her anger and staying composed. “It’s just that…well, as a person, I like you…enough to be good friends, but I would let you down. It’s in my nature. So logically, you should avoid that. I don’t want to hurt you.” This sounded true enough. Of course, she wasn’t aware that I saw her as much more than a friend. Of course, she didn’t know that I was foolish and hopeless for her.

  “Maybe this time, I’ll do what I should,” she spat.

  “Be careful who you choose to rescue, Jane.”

  She glowered at me, but I bolted out of the room as soon as the lunch bell rang.

  I wasn’t expecting her to speak to me, but when she didn’t, it drove me near mad. I found myself missing her. I still stared at her obsessively and tried to make eye contact. She avoided it. The tension between Jane and me seemed to please Aaron more than I was keen on, and he usually took the seat at her other side. They talked quietly on occasion, usually about the English assignments from their other class. I wasn’t interested. I had told her to avoid me, hadn’t I? I didn’t realize how easy it was going to be for her to ignore me when I looked at her. She was so close that I could have reached out to touch her, and it took everything in me not to try.

  Days passed, and slowly my thoughts of Jane became more and more irrational. I still had this sick desperation to kill her at the same time I wanted to prote
ct her. I was terrified of what I would do to her if she were to trust me. It was much better this way.

  “I don’t know what you’re up to,” Mike started, “but if we lose track of the Callahans again, it will be your head.”

  I sighed. “Did you know Alex left Daniel in an alleyway?”

  Mike nodded. “Yes…and?”

  “And? And…that’s sick!” I yelled.

  “James, since when have you started caring?”

  I grumbled. “I would appreciate it if for just once you wouldn’t call me James.”

  He laughed. “Oh, and would Aidan suit you better?”

  “Better than James,” I murmured.

  His face fell. “Oh, James…are you…?”

  “Am I what?”

  “Oh my God. Father is going to kill you.”

  “Mike, please,” I pleaded. “Please don’t tell him.”

  “I’m not going to betray you. You know that, James, but if you don’t finish the job…I will have to tell him.”

  “I know. You are more loyal than I am.”

  He huffed. “James, you cannot disappear.”

  “I haven’t.”

  “Abraham doesn’t know where you are,” he retorted. “He didn’t find you at Luna’s. He thinks you are doing something creative with the Callahan girl.”

  I was, though nothing that had to do with loyalty to Abraham or his followers.

  “Finish the job!” he shouted and stormed out.

  Jane made me feel mortal again, made me feel that human feeling of what it was like to feel as though you would die without that person by your side. Because of her, I was finally alive again. I couldn’t betray her now. She had given me back my humanity, that thing that Abraham had stolen. Finishing the job was not an option.

  I missed the sound of her voice over the weeks she had been avoiding me, so I walked to her house one night. I contemplated throwing pebbles at her window, but I noticed Becky’s truck in the driveway. I sighed to myself, suddenly wondering what I was doing there in the first place. It almost hurt me to let her out of my sight for more than a few hours at a time. I worried constantly over the thoughts that The Sevren would find her and hurt her.

  I heard Becky at lunch the following days jabbering about a trip to California with Jane during winter break. She seemed thrilled about it. Again came the nagging urge to try and keep Jane within my sight. I guessed there was only one way to do that. When winter break came, I packed a small suitcase with a couple of shirts and a jacket, grabbed my money, and prepared myself for a very long drive to Southern California.

  Chapter Fourteen

  I followed closely behind, trying to ignore the rain and concentrate on not losing sight of Jane’s car for more than a few minutes at a time. I watched the road behind me, making sure I wasn’t being tracked by Abraham’s men. I was doing this simply to protect her. The drive was agonizing. I would occasionally move to the back roads when I thought she may have noticed my car. I’d hop back on the freeway when I was sure I wouldn’t be seen. I felt ridiculous for what I was doing. But it was the only way I could be sure she wasn’t being tailed by one of The Sevren’s assassins.

  When they arrived, I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do. I hadn’t planned that far ahead. I decided to head down to a cheap motel until she was leaving. I rented the room under the name Josh Alexander, and my ID said I was twenty-five, which was good enough. Missing Christmas didn’t matter to me, though Walter seemed a bit more disappointed than I expected, and Luna was furious with me for what I was doing.

  “You are being reckless,” she had said.

  True enough but it didn’t matter to me. I spent the days making sure Jane’s car stayed in the driveway of her mother’s. I checked every other hour since the day after Christmas to make sure I wouldn’t miss her leave. It was a maddening routine.

  It was three days after Christmas when I noticed her car wasn’t in the driveway any longer. I rushed down the road, driving much faster than the law allowed, and eventually found her car about twenty miles away at a gas station.

  I sighed in relief and followed a bit behind as she headed down the road. It was warmer outside than I expected. Santa Monica was much warmer than North Bend in the winter. I was enjoying the warmth and the lack of rain; I had been deprived of sunlight for far too long in my life.

  My heart started pounding, and waves of panic swept over me when my senses began electrocuting me with terrible feelings again. That’s when I saw a truck rushing toward Jane’s tiny Aveo, and without a second to think, they collided. The Aveo spun and hit the divider, flipping over on its hood.

  My mouth fell open, and for a moment, I was paralyzed with fear. I had to do something to help her. My head spun, and thoughts raced through my mind on what I could possibly do. The Aveo was a crumpled heap of metal, and I wasn’t even sure if Jane was alive. I couldn’t let myself believe otherwise.

  I pulled over to the side of the road. Just as my hand reached to open my door, I saw Jane dragging herself out of the thrashed car through the broken window. She pulled her tiny body over the sharp, uneven shards of glass. Again my body froze. The sound of a siren pulled me into a state of hope, and I watched from about thirty feet away as they hauled Jane and Becky into the ambulance.

  I followed to the hospital, still unsure if she was alive. I waited outside for about twenty minutes before walking in.

  “Callahan,” I said to the woman at the counter. She had brown hair and big brown eyes. She looked sour and unhappy.

  “Excuse me?” she said.

  “There were two girls brought in about twenty minutes ago,” I started. “They were in a car accident, and I was wondering their condition.”

  She picked up the phone and paged the nurse. A young man in blue scrubs came immediately up to the counter.

  “Can I help you?”

  “I was wondering about the condition of the girls in the car crash.”

  “Are you family?” he asked suspiciously.

  I had to lie, of course. I couldn’t find out a thing otherwise. “Yes. Jane is my sister.”

  “Miss Callahan has suffered a minor head injury but should be all right. Miss Marshall has some minor cuts and bruises but nothing to be too worried about. I will let you know when your sister is awake. You may have to wait to take her home though. She will probably have to stay overnight just to make sure she has no internal damage.”

  Awake? She must have lost consciousness after escaping the wreck of her car. The nurse walked away, and I left the hospital. I couldn’t take Jane home; I couldn’t be any more involved than I was already. I was sure Becky would call someone for help.

  I stopped by a small flower shop on the way home and ordered five dozen red roses, thinking I had to outdo Rudy and Aaron. I wrote a brief note and had the roses sent to the hospital, charging it to a false credit card.

  I drove home the rest of the way, sure that Jane hadn’t been tracked. She would be safe the rest of her way. Well…at least safe from The Sevren.

  The entire next week at school, she still never said a word to me. Never even a “Thanks for the roses, Aidan.” I found out Rudy had gone to rescue them, and Jane was now driving a dingy-looking ’95 Camry. In history class, I would still catch myself trying to make eye contact, but she would ignore it the best she could. Sometimes she would even wring her hands together. I didn’t know what she was thinking and why she had actually listened to me when I told her to avoid me.

  The next day, I stayed home again, trying to think of some way I could make things right. Luna and Walter both left me alone, probably assuming I was sick. I spent most of the day trying to sleep but kept being jolted awake from an assault of gruesome nightmares. I was continuously seeing messes of blood and bones every time I dozed off. If I couldn’t even rest, how on earth was I going to be able to think clearly? I had to tell Jane—I knew that. I just didn’t know how or when, but I knew she had to find out. It would be easier to protect her if she knew. That w
ay, she wouldn’t question me if I were to ask certain things of her.

  When I pulled into the parking lot, Jane’s eyes met mine, and she looked away, rushing across to the other side. I just suffered through my boring classes, waiting for history when I could speak to Jane. I had to somehow tell her something. Before I was able to even steal a glance at her, Mr. Cornally called on me for a question I couldn’t have cared less about.

  “Mr. Summers, who led the Reign of Terror?”

  “Maximilian Robespierre,” I answered.

  Mr. Cornally nodded and made some reply, but I wasn’t listening. I looked over and whispered her name.

  “Jane?”

  She turned halfway but stopped before making eye contact.

  “What are you thinking?” I whispered.

  She sighed heavily. “So you ignore me for weeks on end, and now you suddenly ask me what I’m thinking?”

  “I wasn’t ignoring you.”

  “What?”

  “In case you haven’t noticed, you’ve been the one avoiding me. Avoiding eye contact—conversation.”

  “Aidan, don’t talk to me,” she grumbled.

  I laughed.

  “I’m sorry,” she said sarcastically. “Was I making a joke?”

  I was amused again by her attempt at being mean. “Oh, come on, Jane. You’re the one who was mad when I said we shouldn’t talk, that it was better that you avoid me.”

  “No, Aidan. I am irritated by your inconsistency. If you want me to ignore you, then let me!”

  “I don’t want that. I just think it would be best for you. I’m not a very good friend and would hate to let you down.”

  “You’re stranger than me, Aidan,” she mumbled.

  “Maybe.” I laughed happily yet quietly, keeping an eye on Mr. Cornally’s back as he wrote on the board. “I wanted to know if you would like to go somewhere with me after school today. There’s something I want to show you.”

  She hesitated before responding and looked away from me, hiding her glorious face behind her dark hair.

  “Okay,” she said soberly.

  “Okay,” I repeated. I couldn’t hide my smile. “If you’re worried about being let down, I’m warning you now.”