He pounded on the door when no one shouted out he opened it and waited for Sage to walk in first.
“I’m not going in there.”
“Move your cute ass, I’m not leaving you in the hall.” He walked over to the sink while she looked around the bathroom looking for something to jump out the corners and scare her.
“It’s not as bad as I thought it would be in here.”
“What did you think it would be like?”
“I watch too much television. I guess I pictured words and dirty things on the walls with urine stains on the floor.”
“No wonder you didn’t want to come. Are all female bathrooms pristine?”
She shuddered, “I’m not going there. Better?” She watched as he dried his hands.
“Yes, whatever was on my hands is now gone.”
“Well, then.” She reached out and took his hand.
Chapter Eight
“What happened in there?” Xander was leaning against the Jeep with his legs crossed.
Sage took a minute to study him. He looked a lot like Caden but not as hot. She laughed, they could almost be identical, but they had certain facial differences.
“The two of you could almost be identical.”
“We know. We’ve pulled it off a few times before we came here when it was needed.”
She nodded; Caden was talking about before they landed on Earth. She still wasn’t ready to deal with that reality yet. He opened the door for her to get in when someone called her name.
She looked around to see a woman running across the street with a big smile on her face.
“Sage, I can’t believe it’s you.”
Did she know her? Her face didn’t look familiar, but it could have been someone she went to school with. She took a step back as the woman got closer. Her head turned to look at Caden. The woman wrapped her arms around her before she could get into the jeep.
“I got you bitch.” She whispered into her ear before Caden pulled her off.
She grinned and started running away.
“Let her go.”
Sage heard Fire’s voice from a distance. Her body was burning. She felt like there were nicks in her skin. She was being invaded by an evil drug that was working its way toward her brain, insistent that it must feed on her, kill her.
“Stay away from me.” She was sweating; it was pouring down her brow and collecting under her arms.
She stumbled backward knowing that she was looking at the enemy. They wanted to kill her. Her head swung around looking for a way of escape even as she tried to keep the others in sight.
“Please let me go. You don’t have to hurt me.” Her words were whispered as if she had no hope of them releasing her.
“Sage, we only want to help you.” Cait approached her slowly trying not to alarm her.
“No!” She screamed drawing attention to them.
“Leave me alone.” She tried to run backward and fell on her rear. She began to crab walk away from them. The officers were making their way toward them.
Caden could see Jim in the background waiting for Sage to break free.
“No, no.” Caden’s body began to shake before he fell to the ground close to where Sage was.
“Are you alright?”
“They’re coming after me. They want to kill me.” His voice was deep and strained, his eyes wild as he looked at the people surrounding him.
“I have to get away. Please, can you help me?”
“I don’t know. Do I know you?”
He nodded his head sharply. “You promised to take care of me. Now you’re letting them get me. They will torture me, kill me.”
She crawled over to him. “Hurry we have to get away. Can you run? My head is fuzzy; I'm having a hard time standing up.”
“I can run, but why don’t we take my Jeep?”
“You have a Jeep?”
“It’s purple and black, I told you about it.”
“I remember a little.”
He turned over until he was on his knees. “Let me help you like you helped me.”
“I really helped you?”
“You did.”
She looked at the people who had taken several steps back and were now standing still like statues.
“What about them?” she whispered.
“They won’t touch us. They wouldn’t dare.”
He stood and reached out to help her up. She wrapped her arms around herself.
“I’m so cold.” He reached into the back of the Jeep taking out a cover.
They walked around the Jeep, and he opened the front door and helped her up. Then he tucked the cover around her before closing the door. He passed by Xander, who placed the keys in his hand.
“There are other bad people over there.” She said to him in a low voice after he got into the jeep.
Jim and several people were standing where she was pointing.
“They are very bad people,” He whispered back before starting the Jeep and taking off.
“They will follow us.”
“No, they won’t.” She sighed and snuggled deeper into the cover.
“Sage tell me what’s happening.”
“I feel like little insects with sharp claws have entered my body, and they are clawing me up from the inside.”
“You sound more lucid.” He was changing lanes darting in, and out of traffic as he headed toward the edge of the city.
“You helped with that. I had to fight them off to figure out how to help you. I won’t be able to do it for long.”
“Hold on, we’ll figure this out. Do you know who I am?”
“Caden. How could I forget you? Did that woman poison me?”
“I think so. Whatever Jim’s hands were covered in was all over her hands and arms. Don’t you think it’s time to tell me about Jim?”
“I didn’t know this at first, but eventually he told me he found this website. It was called the purification war. That’s what made him so happy he was meeting with someone from the site. He started to become a happier version of himself. It was nice at first. Then he began to abuse me. It was minor nothing that seemed real.
“He complained about dinner or what I chose to wear. Soon he didn’t want me to go out with my friends. We got into fights about my going to school, after I graduated, he refused to allow me to work. I did anyway, and he got me fired from every job. Then he began to hit me. He would apologize then do it again.”
“Why didn’t you leave?”
“He threatened to kill my mother. She’s all I have left in the world. One day before he became evil, he asked me about her. I told him where she lived, and that I wanted her to meet him one day. So, I knew he could track her down if he wanted to.”
“You left him in the end.”
“I went to where she was living to save her life, but she was gone, vanished into thin air. I gave my number to her neighbor and asked she pass it on if she ever heard from my mom again. A week later, she called me, to tell me that she was with someone and was safe and would contact me when I was also safe. That was the last I heard from my mom, but I knew he wouldn’t find her.”
We should tell him the rest. Honesty was talking, she believed in laying all her cards on the table.
What if he’s playing with us? Suckering us in so he can kill us. Fear was shaking in her cute red heels. She was scared of everyone, and right now she was so frightened of Caden, she wanted to kill him.
I think everything will be okay. All we need to do is hold on. Optimism gave a speech and did a cheer afterward like she was a cheerleader.
“You’ve been really quiet.”
“I'm listening to the voices in my head.” They left the city behind now he was on the highway.
“What are they telling you?”
“Why aren't you freaked out by what I said?”
“I’ve heard it before. It's standard O.P.”
“Right about now I want to argue that. Instead, I’ll tell you more, for as long as
I remain lucid. I found books written in a language I’ve never seen before. I used google to try and translate them or even translate one word but it was stumped.” The books felt old. They were more like scrolls than books.
“I flipped through them until a drawing caught my attention. It was a circle with a Z inside of it and two lines drawn from the top of the circle to the bottom. All I needed to do was look at it to shiver. One day Jim sat down beside me. He was drunk; I was scared he would want sex.”
They were sitting in the living room on the couch, and she was wondering for the millionth time why she was still there. The apartment was uncomfortably hot, and it smelled from whatever he did in the spare bedroom.
“I remember him taking his hand and caressing the side of my face. He said he was almost ready for the ultimate sacrifice. Sacrifice? He nodded his head. As soon as the sacrifice was complete, he would be able to take his rightful place as one of the destroyers.”
She scanned the living room looking for the fantasy role play games he used to like to indulge in, but he got rid of all of them. Had he been doing L.A.R.P without her realizing?
“What game is this from, I asked him. His reply was that it wasn’t a game. This was the real deal. There was good and evil in the universe, and he had been asked to join the group that would win. I remember saying to him, so you decided to side with evil.”
She could still remember his laughter; it felt like it was shredding her back.
“I asked him what the sacrifice was. He turned to look at me and said you. That’s when he kissed me biting my lip until there was blood. I ran away that night.”
Caden was driving on a narrow road that needed serious upkeep before he stopped in front of a rundown shack.
“Where are we?”
“This is one of the safe houses we’ve set up around the area and through the city.”
“There is nothing safe about that shack. If I blow on it wrong, it will fall.”
“Let’s go inside and test your theory.” He left the Jeep and came to open the door for her.
“Thank you. Maybe you should go and leave me here alone.”
“Why?” He pulled her close to his body before directing her to the door.
“I can feel the drug getting closer to my brain. Soon I won’t be able to fight it off.”
“Then we’ll deal with it.” He opened the door, and they walked in. She felt a warmth press down on her body like she had just walked through a bowl of Jell-O.
She stopped inside the doorway. “Where are we?”
Where they were, wasn’t a shack. The door opened to a nice living room. It was small but more than enough room for two people. There was a couch and two chairs along with blue walls and a television mounted on the wall.
“Caden?”
“The point of a safe house is for it to fly under the radar. The shack acts as a doorway into the house. Anyone coming in without authorization will walk into the building you saw. If the building were demolished, it would not affect this house or us. We own the land we will simply rebuild.”
“You can do all of this because you’re not human.”
“I’m not evil.”
“No, that’s Jim’s gig, not yours.” She placed her back against the wall and slid to the floor. “I don’t think I can take anymore.”
She started beating her head against the wall as small whimpering sounds came out. Her fingers clawed ripping at her clothes and her skin. There was a battle being raged, and she was losing.
Chapter Nine
Caden picked her up and placed her on the sofa.
“You have to fight Sage.” His hands were on her shoulders holding her down before he picked her up and placed her on his lap. His arms were like a steel belt around her holding her in place.
“Why?” The word was guttural as if it was torn from her. She looked up with bloodshot eyes.
Why did she have to fight? The voices inside her head were silent while each tried to come up with a convincing argument.
That’s what I thought. She spoke to herself unable to muster the strength to talk to Caden. It was time to say goodbye. Wasn’t there a saying about having fought the good fight? How long had she been hanging on? Was it from the very first day that Jim had changed, started his process of becoming the monster he is today? She couldn’t remember all she knew was her death was a gateway for him. He’ll take it anyway it came.
It was the feeling of being lifted that made her focus on her surroundings. He was carrying her somewhere. She really didn’t care where but curiosity a voice she could never get rid of was watching.
He brought us to the bedroom.
She flung her head wildly, she didn’t want curiosity to talk to her. She was tired of the voices it was time to sleep now.
You said sleep.
Now the alien in her head was talking to her. Why wouldn’t they all shut up, so she could get some rest? She closed her eyes hoping to drift off when she felt it.
“What are you doing?” Opening her eyes was a challenge.
“I placed you in a stasis field it will keep you from hurting yourself or trying to hurt me.”
That seems reasonable. Her rational side was talking, but she wasn’t listening.
No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t move, all she could do was scream in her head because the use of her voice was beyond her. She opened her eyes just enough to get a look at his face. He looked devastated. Was this how he looked when he thought his brother was dead?
Rational thought fled, and she was in a world of fire. Every part of her hurt, and all she wanted was to be put out of her misery. Her cells fired up making an electrical charge the went from organ to organ. It hit her heart making her panic as she felt death coming her way. Why did she have to always be different from everyone else?
*~*~*~*
“What can you do for her?”
Xander, Cait, and Tristan were in the room. He wouldn’t let anyone else come and see her this way. You either had to be family or a physician.
“Nothing.” Cait was talking, but she wasn’t saying what he wanted to hear.
“What? I don’t understand. Will this stop on its own?”
“No, it will kill her.”
He roared his outrage and started to change. Xander had him flat on his back struggling to keep him still.
“Stop it, if you lose it who will help Sage?”
Sage, his beautiful mate. He had to keep it together for her. He could kill Cait first and then keep it together. No, that wouldn’t help his mate. He repeated ‘his mate’ until he finally calmed down enough to knock his brother off him.
“I wonder at times why the ancient ones created males. Maybe they were males and wanted to spread the plague.” She looked up to find two sets of eyes looking at her. With a sigh, she ignored them and went back to examining Sage.
“I can give her a drug that will help fight the effects for a while, but it won’t stop them. I could give her a blood transfusion that will allow her to live a few days longer.”
“Why won’t that stop the spread?”
“Her body will eventually assimilate the blood making it hers, and the infection will replicate and overcome the transfused blood,” Tristan told him. He was examining a sample of Sage's blood.
“That can’t be right?”
“Are you saying you know more than me?” Tristan was standing in his face breathing hard.
“Doc, you need to move back.” Caden could feel his body trying to change as he hung on knowing that Sage needed him.
“Make me.”
“Gladly.” Xander grabbed him by the back of his neck spun him around and punched him, dropping him at his feet.
“We might have a problem,” Caden said looking at Tristan.
“You mean other than your mate is dying, and you would have killed Tristan if I were a second slower?”
“Yes. Cait, how was Cole able to heal Mia?”
“He didn’t know what he was doing.”
“That doesn’t matter; she's still half Kur’ik.”
“Caden, I don’t have an easy answer for you. Mia is what she was always meant to be. Sage will be what she was always meant to be. That may mean she will die. I can’t change that, the same way I couldn’t change what happened to Mia.” She bent over and gave her a shot. “Stasis field on or off?”
“Off. Xander will you remove Tristan for me?”
“What are you going to do?”
“The only thing I can do, but I’m not sure what it is yet. Cait likes to talk in circles at times.”
“If you need me.”
“Always.”
Xander picked Tristan up and headed for the door.
“Caden whatever you decide to do, keep her away from water.”
He watched as they walked out the bedroom and then the front door closed behind them.
“She can be really helpful at times.” She gave him a twisted smile letting him know she heard that last comment.
“That’s Cait for you nothing is ever straight forward, but she means well.”
“I can talk, and I don’t feel the urge to rip my skin apart.”
“Wait for it, it’s coming back. The shot she gave you will only work for a while.”
“Did she leave any extra?”
He shook his head. “It doesn’t work that way.”
“So, this is a temporary reprieve from the death sentence I’m under?”
“Unless we can come up with another plan.”
“I’m going to have to downgrade her Christmas present to a card.” She reached out placing her hand on his.
He moved closer and took her into his arms. His hand stroked the side of her face. She inched over until she pressed against him.
“How long do I have?” She laid her head on his chest breathing in his comforting scent.
“I don’t know.”
“I’m glad you stayed with me. I don’t want to be alone.”
“Would you prefer someone else to be here?”
“I remember seeing you in the shadows. I know it wasn’t that long ago, but today it feels like it was a lifetime. You intrigued me. I thought I imagined things at first. Then you stepped out just enough so I could see you a little closer. It was that moment when I wished my life was different. I wish that I had seen you on the street, and you were going to come up to me with a cheesy line that would make me smile.”
Caden (The Wolves Den Book 4) Page 6