Crystal Fire

by Jordan Dane

When everyone fell silent, Lucas felt the gravity of any decision they would make. He didn’t envy Gabriel. He’d be the one who’d have to live with the consequences the most, if anything happened to Oliver or Rafael.

  “Maybe the girl can help us,” Gabe said.

  “What girl?” they all said in unison.

  Haven Hills Treatment Facility

  Ward 8

  Caila gasped. She yanked her hand back as if Oliver were on fire. “What happened?”

  Not even Dr. Fiona’s gruff and demanding voice could distract her from the rush of sensations Caila felt when she’d tried to retrieve Oliver’s memories.

  The doctor had removed his breathing tube. He’d stopped choking and the artificial inflation of his lungs made the room quieter. That helped her to connect with him. But even though she was inches from his face, she had the sense he was far away and slipping from her mental grasp.

  She’d never felt anything like it. Ever.

  “What did you see?”

  “Give me a second. This isn’t like getting email,” she snapped.

  The doctor had told her that Oliver had been tracking a boy after she’d given him a library book, something the kid had touched. That part of the doctor’s story felt true. Caila could picture Oliver doing that the way she’d seen him track Zack, when he used a can of Cheez Whiz. Once she got past the memories she’d planted in Oliver, the ones she shared with him, it was easy to read his new experiences—the ones from the dark alley. She’d never seen those memories before. They hadn’t come from her.

  Show me, Oliver. Please, she had begged him.

  She didn’t beg him for his memories because the doctor had ordered it. She felt Oliver’s urgent need to share them with her. He let her see flashes of what happened. She had to hide her reaction from the doctor. The searing evil off the woman would always be hard for her to ignore, but what Oliver let her see next shocked her.

  There wasn’t just one boy with Oliver. There were more Indigos and one had the blue aura of a very powerful Crystal child. She didn’t know how she knew this. Oliver had let her feel it, but as quickly as he had let her in, he shut down his mind until only his voice came to her.

  Give Dr. Fiona a message for me. I know she’s there.

  Caila shoved back from him with eyes wide in shock. She heard his voice as if he had whispered in her ear, but when she pulled from him, he still had his eyes closed. He was unconscious. Her skin rippled in goose bumps.

  “Oliver? Are you...?” She couldn’t say it, not in front of this doctor. She would sound crazy to believe that he wasn’t unconscious at all.

  “What happened?” the woman asked.

  “Nothing. I got a little confused.” Caila replayed what Oliver had said in her mind. What he told her now didn’t make sense, but she couldn’t stall any longer.

  “I don’t know what he means,” she said. She let the doctor hear her, because Oliver wanted her to do something for him.

  “Just say it. Now!” Dr. Fiona ordered.

  “Oliver wants me to give you a message,” she told the doctor. “He says you’ll understand.”

  Caila felt crushed. Oliver had taken the doctor’s side and shut her out. He was treating her like a stranger, one that he didn’t trust. The pathetic part was that she couldn’t argue with him.

  “Just tell me what he said. Exactly.”

  Caila stood back from his bed and wrapped her arms around her shoulders to ward off a sudden chill. She didn’t know if she’d be doing the right thing, but Oliver had been adamant.

  “He said...that he has the guy you want.” A tear slid down her cheek. “He says he’ll meet you where he did the first time...where he saw you in the mirror. No one knows about that place...except you, he says.”

  “Yes, I know the place. Go on.”

  Caila struggled with every word Oliver shared with her. She felt him blocking her. He kept his sentences short, so she wouldn’t have time to think, only repeat what he had meant for Dr. Fiona.

  “Oliver says that it’s the only place he didn’t let the boy know about...and that his name is Gabriel.” What Oliver said next made her feel as if they’d both betrayed their own kind.

  “He says that...he didn’t let me read his thoughts. That’s why he had to speak in riddles.” Caila felt heat rush to her face. Oliver had been talking about her as if she were the enemy now. “He asked if you’d keep your promise...since he kept up his end.”

  Dr. Fiona smiled. Her lips curled, but there was no humor in her eyes. “Oliver? If you can hear me, I understand. I’ll wait for you there,” the doctor said. “I’m a woman as good as my word.”

  The doctor walked to the door of the ICU hospital room and called out to her security guards. They came running.

  “Take this girl back to her cell. When I return, I’ll have a decision on what to do with her.” The woman took a step out the door but stopped and told one of the guards, “Put a call in to Mr. Boelens. Tell him I’ll have a pickup for him after visiting hours. He’ll know what I mean.”

  Dr. Fiona turned and smiled at her, but not in a good way. Caila didn’t need the gift of second sight to see she didn’t have a future in this woman’s eyes. She’d run out of time.

  14

  Outside L.A.

  Dusk

  Riding in the very backseat of Uncle Reginald’s Navigator, Rayne couldn’t get close enough to Gabriel. He held her in his arms as she sat on his lap at the start of the trip, but as they neared L.A., she had to hold him closer to her heart. She breathed in the smell of his skin and wrapped her fingers in his dark hair until she had to kiss him.

  She wanted to be with this boy—to feel his body on hers—to share the intimacy of making love for the first time, with Gabriel. No matter what happened between them, she would never regret loving him. He was so beautiful, inside and out. As she kissed him, and felt the urgency growing in them both, tears filled her eyes.

  Her body wanted more. She had to have more, but she stopped. Breathless, she pulled her lips from his. Without a word, he looked into her eyes and with a shy smile and blushing cheeks, she knew he understood why. They weren’t alone. He mouthed the words I love you and brushed a tear from her cheek.

  Loving Gabriel would always be special. She held his face in both hands and kissed him one last time. Every second of holding him felt precious. After the incident in the alley, where he was attacked by a strange Indigo boy, it felt as if she’d almost lost him. She still could. The fight with the Believers was real. She’d seen how strong he was—a powerful Crystal child—yet Oliver had shown all of them that if Gabe was vulnerable, they all were.

  They were nearly to L.A. The closer they got, the more she worried. She wasn’t sure why, but she didn’t have a good feeling about what they were about to do.

  “Are you all right? You look pale,” she whispered as she sat up and grabbed his hand, entwining her fingers in his. “How’s your headache?”

  “That headache has a name.” Gabe forced a halfhearted smile. “Oliver.”

  She knew that he wanted to lighten the mood, but the mention of Oliver’s name made Rayne’s stomach clench into a knot. Even though others were quiet, she felt the tension. Lucas had an iPod in his ears. Kendra stared out her window, not talking to anyone. The Effin brothers never said anything to anyone...ever. They all looked withdrawn into the same stillness as she felt. Even Uncle Reginald hadn’t spoken much since they’d left the Bristol Mountains.

  “What’s happening with...?” She spun a finger toward his chest and made a face. “...your evil twin. Does he get carsick?”

  “You better pray he doesn’t. You’d be in the splatter zone.” Gabe smiled, but quickly frowned. “Good Lord, so would I.”

  “Is he...chatty in there?” she asked. “Because that would weird me out.”


  “No. He feels stronger, but he’s been oddly quiet.”

  “What do you think that means?”

  Gabe’s eyes turned dark, and any humor on his face disappeared. “The guy could be on death’s door. Merely being apart from his body this long, he could be conserving what life he’s got left, but we could still be too late.”

  When Gabe saw the concern on her face, he kissed her cheek. “I feel this strange urgency to...help him. Now that we share the same body, it’s uncanny how his feelings become mine. I have no idea if that works in reverse, but I suppose if he develops a craving for Yorkshire pudding and afternoon tea with scones, I’ll have my answer.”

  “God,” she gasped with eyes wide. “We just kissed. Did he...feel that too? I don’t like this, Gabriel.”

  “If he felt it, he was a perfect gentleman. He didn’t give me pointers, if that’s what you’re thinking.” Gabe cocked his head and said, “Wait. Should I be jealous?”

  Rayne grinned and nudged him with an elbow, but something else bothered her. She looked down at her hand in his and asked the question that had weighed heavy on her mind ever since she heard Oliver’s voice coming from him in the serenity room.

  “Do you still feel that you can trust him?”

  Rayne had the same doubts as Kendra. Trusting Oliver meant all of them would risk losing everything, on his word. Even Rafael would have skin in the game. When she saw the look on Gabriel’s face, she knew he felt the same.

  “I hope we can trust him,” he said. “I surely hope so.”

  Rayne held Gabe and stared out the window of the moving SUV as it sped toward L.A. The dying rays of the sun torched the horizon as they approached the city. It wouldn’t be long now.

  Soon they would all know the truth about Oliver.

  West Hollywood

  Forty-five minutes later

  Fiona paced the floor of her living room, waiting. After the sun went down, her imagination took over and she needed a drink to settle her nerves. She tossed back the last dregs of her second glass of red wine and poured another. It was the only thing that took the edge off.

  She wouldn’t admit this to anyone else, but Oliver Blue frightened her. She’d created him, but knowing that he could simply appear—anywhere, anytime—unnerved her. The last time he’d popped in unannounced, she’d been naked, ready to take a shower. He’d come to her at the worst possible time. Had he done it on purpose...to scare her?

  “This is my show. I’m in control.”

  She repeated those words in her head as she gazed out the floor-to-ceiling windows onto the glittering skyline of West Hollywood. When the alcohol got the better of her judgment—and her nerves— she had gone through her house and flipped on every light. In the end, that looked ridiculous to her. It felt like an admission that she was a nervous and vulnerable woman, not the scientist that she was, on the verge of greatness.

  Fiona turned out the lights and waited. She’d set the mood as if she were expecting a date...or had planned a séance. Shadows stretched across her living room, avoiding the pockets where she had candles burning and her gas fireplace flickering.

  Darkness suited Oliver. The boy had a disturbing nature that she had seen from the first time she looked into his eyes. More than what she had turned him into, Fiona feared the boy he had always been—a fighter and a kid with an arrest record. It’s why she had found him, but she had no idea it would come to this.

  Oliver. Where are you?

  She dreaded seeing him, but she wanted this over. His condition had put him in a coma, yet what had it done to his mind? Would he be...sane? She had proven her hypothesis that if she sense-deprived the responsive Indigo mind, she could force their abilities to reach new heights—push them into new powers the way the brain compensates when it’s injured. She’d amassed a thick file on Oliver Blue.

  Fiona knew that she’d have to be careful who she told about Oliver now. The information would have to be managed and disseminated to a chosen few, so she could continue her work in the church’s name.

  That’s why she had files locked away in Ward 8. Her research was too important to be scrutinized by a prosaic mind. Her work was visionary. The magnitude of her discovery could benefit the advancement of mankind in a controllable way, not in the random chance of the fornicating masses. Many of these Indigo kids came from the streets, unwanted by their own parents because they couldn’t be controlled. Since few people understood the gifted mind, some of these children had criminal records like Oliver.

  Even imagining what she could do with someone of her intelligence. To enhance God-given gifts like hers, it staggered her with possibility. Under the right circumstances, the church could handpick the future evolution of man and she could play her part in that. Fiona never would have attained such knowledge with Alexander holding her back or people with wearisome moral principles.

  She gazed into the fire and let her mind wander, toward a future she’d always known would be hers. When she raised the wine to her lips, she caught an odd reflection in the wineglass.

  The glimmer of a face.

  Oliver.

  “Hello, Doctor.”

  His low voice gripped her heart. She recognized it and turned, but he wasn’t there. “Oliver? Is that you?”

  She’d heard his voice as if it came from inside her ear, as if he crowded her head. When she didn’t see him, her eyes peered into every shadow, searching for him. Fiona felt the weight of his presence. The hair on her neck prickled as if she were being watched.

  She drew a ragged breath and masked her raw nerves by going for a refill of wine. When she got to her liquor bar, she grabbed a shot of something stronger and tossed it back. The bourbon burned her throat and churned hot when it hit her stomach. Fiona glanced at her reflection in the mirror behind the bar. She finger-combed her hair and took another deep breath. The alcohol had given her liquid courage when she needed it and she had another.

  But when she looked up, Fiona saw Oliver’s dark eyes in the mirror.

  This time she screamed. When she turned, she knocked her wine decanter off the counter and cringed when it shattered. Shards of cut glass glistened across her tile floor and carpet.

  “Oliver?”

  Her voice quivered. She stared into the shadows and saw a dark shape.

  “Step into...the light...so I can s-see you.”

  She squinted into the darkness, waiting. When he stepped toward her, she staggered back. She had her bedroom door to her right and her front door wasn’t far. Her mind raced with what she would do, if she had to.

  Run.

  Lock a door.

  Call 911.

  But with Oliver, she’d have no place to hide. He could find her—anywhere.

  “Talk to me, Oliver. That’s what you came to do, right?” She cleared her throat and clutched her hands to keep them from trembling. “I’m...impressed. You can...talk now.”

  Oliver Blue came into the light from her fireplace. The blaze reflected off the gelatinous sheen of his body.

  She sucked in one long breath and couldn’t let it out. Her body shook, but she prayed he wouldn’t see her weakness. Unlike how she’d seen him in her bathroom, he didn’t have the black binding on, which she had used on his body to prevent bedsores. He stood before her—strong—as she had first seen him in Ward 8.

  He wore the same jeans and a black T-shirt with a bloody smiley face that she remembered when she cut it off him. His shirt had been cut into provocative strips across his chest. The slashes showed through to the skin of his muscled chest. She marveled at how the boy had become a hellish chameleon, but after she realized she’d thrown that shirt away, she felt the hairs on her arms slowly rise. How could he be wearing it now?

  Oliver drifted like a lifeless spirit. A horror conjured from a nightmare.

  “I learned how to
talk...” Oliver struggled to speak. “...but it’s hard.”

  Fiona fought back her fear by taking comfort in one thought—that it was too bad Oliver wouldn’t get a chance to improve. His brain would make an excellent addition to her life’s work.

  She would kill the monster she’d created.

  “You told that girl about the boy. You said his first name is Gabriel,” she said. “Do you have...a last name now?”

  “Yes, Gabriel Stewart. I know where he is.” Oliver spoke every word as if it took a great deal of effort. “You promised. I deliver him. You let me go.”

  “But...” She dared to step closer to him. “You haven’t delivered him yet.”

  When Oliver smiled, her heart froze. She could see the glittering skyline through his viscous skull. When the boy drifted toward her—until he stood inches from her face—she gasped. Oliver’s fierce stare hit her like a slap to the face.

  “Careful...what you wish for.”

  In that moment, the fire did nothing to stop the chills that skittered across her skin when Oliver shifted his gaze. He looked over her shoulder and she slowly turned to see a boy with long dark hair and striking eyes.

  “I’d say it’s lovely to meet you, but it would be rude to lie.”

  The boy’s British accent carried a chilling edge. When he raised his arms and clenched his fists, heat came off his body until he burst into blue flames. The fire didn’t burn him. Fiona felt the Crystal child’s loathing and saw it in his unnatural eyes.

  She couldn’t breathe...couldn’t move.

  The boy radiated a brutal heat, but Fiona still felt the icy grip of Oliver’s forceful presence until both boys vanished into a suffocating darkness—replaced by images of torture and cruelty that blistered her mind. She recognized them from Ward 8. Terrified kids she had seen before, yet barely recognized. This time she saw them. All of them. Their tortured expressions melted into oozing replicas of her face. She breathed in their fear and sensed every cut of the scalpel. Brains that she had extracted, she was forced to feel the pain as if it happened to her without anesthetic. Wave after wave of horror pummeled her until she collapsed and emptied her stomach.