Redemption (The Chosen #4)

by Swank, Denise Grover

  Chapter Ten

  Jake woke to light streaming in his window as Antonia parted the curtains. He was groggy from staying up so late playing with the shadows.

  “Get up, corazoncito,” Antonia said, moving to the side of his bed. “Señor Aiden says we are going on a trip.”

  The last time Jake went on a trip, he saw Mommy. But then Aiden made her go away. Jake’s excitement faded. “Where?”

  “He didn’t say, only that you must hurry and dress.”

  Jake didn’t want to leave. What if the shadows didn’t go with him? He looked down at the gauze wrapped around his arm.

  Antonia’s gaze followed his. “I will bandage your arm for you.”

  “No!” Jake shouted, then took a deep breath. “I mean it’s not that bad and it sticks so I like to take it off myself.”

  Antonia frowned. “I must look at it, corazoncito. Señor Aiden said it was a bad burn.”

  “It’s not really. I’ll let you look at it tomorrow.”

  She clicked her tongue as she handed him a pile of clothes and pushed him toward the bathroom. “I would like to see for myself. I’ll be careful not to hurt you.”

  Jake shut the door behind him and locked it.

  “Señor Jake!”

  “I’m already naked!” Jake shouted. “I’ll be out in a minute.”

  He heard her mumbling Spanish as she walked away, probably asking God to bless his soul like she did many times a day.

  Jake didn’t need her god to bless his soul. He’d already been blessed.

  When he was sure she had really left, he unwrapped the thick padding of gauze and studied the inside of his arm. The burn was really gone. If Aiden found out, he’d want to know how. And if Jake told him, Aiden would discover what the shadows had put on Jake’s chest.

  A symbol.

  Jake’s arm had been completely healed by the time he got back to the house after his meeting with the shadow figure. He knew Aiden had done something to stop Jake’s fast-healing ability, so that the burn would heal at a normal rate. Not wanting to defy Aiden’s expectations, Jake had pretended the burn was still there. It had been easy to find bandages and wrap his arm himself, but Antonia had caught an earful from Aiden the next day for not dressing Jake’s wound. Jake had almost jumped to her defense until he remembered what happened to his first nanny when he’d defended her. Now Jake watched in silence when Aiden disciplined the staff.

  Maybe that would change soon.

  The real surprise was under Jake’s shirt. His chest had been swollen and red the first day, but it had gone away to reveal the symbol from his dream—two circles, overlapping in the center and making a weird-looking, sideways eight.

  Mommy had marks on her back and Jake had given Will his mark of The Chosen One, but now Jake had a mark of his own and it made him happy.

  Except Aiden couldn’t know anything about it.

  Aiden would be furious if he found out Jake had talked to the shadows, let alone accepted their gift. The fact that Marcus had encouraged him to befriend the shadows was proof enough. He needed to keep his mark hidden as long as possible and although Antonia would never get him in trouble on purpose, if she knew about it, there was no way she could keep it from Aiden. Jake had been practicing hiding her thoughts when Aiden was around, but Jake couldn’t be sure it actually worked. He couldn’t take the chance.

  Jake liked Antonia. Since he couldn’t have Mommy, Antonia was the next best thing. Jake didn’t want anything to happen to her, a fact he kept buried deep in his mind so Aiden wouldn’t use it to punish him. He had to hide the mark on his chest from Antonia. Thankfully, he didn’t have much longer to hide it.

  Jake knew that time was running out. Raphael had come back last night. Jake had snuck down to hear them talking in the living room. Even though he couldn’t hear everything, he’d figured out that Raphael was frustrated because he couldn’t find Mommy and Will.

  Raphael had shouted at Aiden about having a little over a week until the end. Aiden mumbled something to make Raphael stop shouting, but Jake still felt Raphael’s anger rippling into the hall. Leaning against the door frame, Jake let a smile lift the corners of his mouth. He was glad Raphael was mad. Jake hated Raphael and someday he’d kill Raphael for what he’d done to Mommy. Sometimes when Jake practiced, he pretended he was fighting Raphael.

  The other times he pretended it was Will.

  Will was harder. Jake mostly liked him. Will had been nice to Jake, teaching him how to play the peg game and buying him a book. But most of all Will loved Mommy almost as much as Jake did. While that should have made Jake happy, the mark on his chest turned icy with jealousy instead. Part of Jake had changed since the shadow had given him his gift. Everything was darker and cold. So cold his insides sometimes burned, like the walk-in freezer in one of the restaurants Mommy had worked at once.

  “Señor Jake!” Antonia stood outside his door, pounding on the wood. “I have a key and I will open this door if you do not do it yourself.”

  “I’m naked!”

  “I have cared for other little boys. You have nothing I have not seen before.”

  Jake traced the circles on his chest before lowering his pajama shirt and wrapping his arm with clean gauze.

  The door opened and Antonia’s face peered in the crack. “I thought you said you were naked. You are still in your pajamas.”

  “I put them back on.”

  She scowled, then shook her head. “You are hiding something from me, probably what’s under that bandage. I would check right now, but your abuelo is in a hurry to leave.” Her hand reached into her pocket, her rosary beads clinking. “We do not want to make him angry.”

  If they were late, Aiden would blame it on her. “I’ll hurry, Antonia.”

  She kissed his head. “You are a good boy.” Her hand ruffled his hair then she turned to leave.

  Fear squeezed Jake’s lungs, making it difficult to breathe. Antonia didn’t know what was under his bandage, but she knew he was hiding something.

  It didn’t matter if she knew his secret or not. The fact she knew he kept a secret meant that Antonia wasn’t safe.

  ***

  It has become a daily ritual. After she and Will drove for hours, they checked into a motel and Emma searched the news channels. She wasn’t even sure what she was looking for. Signs that the world was in chaos? Signs that it wasn’t?

  Even though she was exhausted, she felt stronger. Her nausea had lessened and to her relief, Will rarely acknowledged the pregnancy, focusing on her training instead. He was relentless, pushing her harder than she’d ever been pushed before. She had made progress—but whether or not it was enough remained to be seen.

  They’d tried sparring, but their joining must have triggered a protective failsafe that kept them from harming one another. Whenever they tried, their power faded, which worried her. They still didn’t know what would happen if one of them died. Did the other die too?

  But what worried her most about their joining failsafe was that it meant they couldn’t kill one another in the final battle. If the final three were she, Will, and Jake, then Jake would have to kill one of them to end the game. Not an acceptable alternative.

  She had to trust Will to come up with something, but whenever she quizzed Will about his plan he refused to tell her, although he swore he was working on one.

  Alex Warren’s smiling face appeared on TV. “And now in political news, Senator Phillip Warren’s son is back on the campaign trail.”

  Will looked up from his laptop. “What the hell?”

  Turning up the sound, Emma scooted next to Will.

  “The younger Warren has several stops planned in the Midwest. Alex Warren will attend a function in Cincinnati tomorrow morning and then move to St. Louis for a fundraiser dinner tomorrow night.”

  Leaning over the keyboard, Will’s mouth pursed. “We’re going to St. Louis.”

  “What?”

  “Alex has the book and we need it.”


  “Will, there’s nothing in the book.”

  Will kept his eyes on the computer screen. “There wasn’t the last time we looked, but there might be today. That thing changes to reflect the most current rules and we need it.”

  “Will—”

  His head jerked up, his eyes hard. “You said you wanted a plan. Do you still want one?”

  She did, but his tone suggested otherwise. “Yes.”

  “The first part of our plan is to go to St. Louis, steal the book, and kill Alex.”

  The blood rushed to her feet, leaving her light headed. “Kill Alex?”

  “We should have done it the morning he found us in California. It would save us this aggravation.”

  “I don’t know if I can kill him.”

  “Then I’ll kill him, but we need the experience of fighting him. I still think he’s the weakest so he’ll be good practice.” He typed on the laptop keyboard. “It’s a fifteen-hour drive and the political dinner is at seven. It’s almost three o’clock now. We have plenty of time if we drive straight through and it’ll give us a chance to check out the hotel.”

  She stood up, lifting her hand to her forehead. “You’re serious?”

  His eyes were cold and calculated. “You really thought I wasn’t?”

  This Will scared her. She’d seen a glimpse of him in Colorado when the Cavallo had sent men to kill her while they hid in the cabin in the woods. But he did this for her and the baby and for Jake. That had to mean something, didn’t it? And in the end, Alex would try to kill them too.

  But wasn’t most evil birthed from justification?

  This was a game with only two winners and it was inevitable that Emma would bloody her hands. She’d never do it to save herself, and she wasn’t sure she’d even do it for the baby. Emma felt a mixture of horror and self-recrimination about that, but there were only two people who could compel her to throw herself into the mire of perversion. She knew less than a week ago that she’d lose her soul in the process of saving them. But it was one thing to know it was coming and another to actually do it.

  “So do you want to leave now?”

  “I need to do some research first.”

  She flipped channels hoping to find something to take her mind off the situation, but only came across soap operas and talk shows. Closing her eyes in frustration, she reached out to Jake, surprised that she actually felt something when she concentrated. He was worried and scared.

  “Okay, I think I have something.”

  Will jolted her back to the present.

  “When we get to St. Louis, we’ll canvass the area where he’s staying. His schedule shows that he’s spending the night at the Crescent Hotel, although from what I’ve gathered, schedule changes on the campaign trail aren’t that uncommon. That means we’ll have to keep a close eye on his itinerary. In a perfect world, we’d draw him away from the city, but I don’t see how that’s going to happen since he’s back in the public eye.”

  Emma sat down on the bed. He talked about this so matter-of-factly.

  Will looked up from his laptop, his face expressionless. “You might not like the next part, and neither do I, but I think it’s our best option.”

  While she didn’t like the sound of that, she nodded. “Okay.”

  “I want you to contact him and tell him that you’ve changed your mind about me and that you want to talk to him about what your options are.”

  “You’re asking me to lie to him?”

  His steely eyes held hers. “Yes.”

  She shook her head. “Not only no, but hell no.”

  “Emma, I know how you feel about lying and promises—”

  “Then how can you ask me to do this, Will?”

  His voice hardened. “Because we are at war, Emma. When you are at war, you use every trick in the book to win. Where do you think the term all’s fair in love and war came from?”

  “I’m sure Hitler saw it the exact same way when he built all those concentration camps.”

  Will released an exasperated sigh. “That is not even close to the same thing, Emma. Alex is a monster. He raped you. He kidnapped your son. He’s killed the previous version of you over and over again.” He ran a hand through his hair, closing his laptop. “Honestly, I’m scared to send you to him. For all I know he’ll try to kill you the moment he sees you.”

  “Then why do it?”

  “Because the odds are greater that he won’t. He didn’t kill you in California—he didn’t even try. If he thinks he has a snowball’s chance in hell at getting you to help him, he’ll give you the time to talk to him.”

  “So then what? Alex and I sit down for tea and you sneak in and slit his throat?” Her words were harsher than she meant.

  His eyes cold, he remained silent, watching her.

  “Oh, my God.”

  Will groaned. “Emma, we’re going to St. Louis to kill him. You know this.”

  “It doesn’t mean I have to like it,” she said through clenched teeth. Why was she getting angry with him? This wasn’t Will’s fault and although the logical part of her knew this was a good plan, the decent, humane side of her screamed in protest.

  “It doesn’t mean I like it either. I’ve already told you that. But it has to be done. And for the record, I’d do this even if I wasn’t the son of Water and had no stake in the outcome other than your and Jake’s survival.”

  “You’d kill him because of me?”

  “It’s not the first time I’ve killed for you and I guarantee it won’t be the last.”

  How did her life get so fucked up that she would let the man she loved pledge to kill for her? She reminded herself that none of this was her fault, but she also knew the nightmares Will lived with and the coming days would only add to them. If he was willing to do this, who was she to stand in judgment? “So, my job is to set him up. Your job is to kill him. Do you really think it will be that easy?”

  Relief flickered in his eyes before the hardness replaced it. “While I hope so, I doubt it. Look what you did to Raphael in that warehouse in Morgantown, and it didn’t stop him.”

  “That night in the woods after you had lost your memory, Raphael told me that we could be killed by Kramer’s men and if we died, we weren’t coming back. It might be harder to kill elementals since they can heal themselves, but they can obviously be killed. Maybe if they’re weakened, they won’t have the energy to repair their wounds.”

  He studied her, raising his eyebrows in surprise. “You’ve actually given this thought?”

  She shot him a glare. “Thinking about how to kill them? No. I’ve been thinking about how to help you if you’re injured and weak. I think I can use my power to help you.”

  “No, it took too much out of you when you healed James back in Morgantown. We can’t risk you being that weak in a fight.”

  “I’m stronger now. I can do it.”

  “Let’s hope it won’t come to that. We’ll get rid of him and he—”

  “He has a name. His name is Alex. If we’re going to kill him, at least say his name.”

  Will’s temper snapped. “Goddamnit, Emma. I’m not your enemy here. For fuck’s sake, stop treating me like I am. We have to work together on this and we won’t make any progress if you’re fighting me every step of the way. If you have another idea, I’m all ears. If not, then agree to help me.”

  She closed her eyes. “I know. I’m sorry.”

  “I’ll do anything I can to save you, even if it’s ugly. But know this: If I wasn’t sure we needed to do this, we wouldn’t. You know yourself that killing someone comes with a price you pay with your soul.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Jake stood next to Aiden on a busy street corner. The sun burned the top of his head and sweat dripped down his neck, making his t-shirt stick to his back. The skin under his bandage itched, but he resisted the urge to scratch.

  “This is an experiment,” Aiden said, a happy tone in his voic
e, a clue that something bad was about to happen. “It’s a test to see what we can do together.” He wore his grin that looked all wrong.

  Dread prickled the back of Jake’s neck. He and Aiden had only practiced dangerous things. With so many people around, someone would probably get hurt.

  Aiden lowered his gaze and smiled. It looked more real, but evil filled his eyes. “There’s no reason to be afraid, Jake. I assure you if you cooperate, you will be safe and sound. Perhaps you’ll even get to see your mother sooner.”

  Was Aiden tricking him? Jake kept the thought buried deep in his head and Aiden squinted in confusion.

  Aiden expected a reaction and Jake hadn’t given one. He quickly let himself think of seeing Mommy, the happiness at the possibility, the sadness he wasn’t with her.

  Aiden’s face brightened. “I knew that would make you happy.”

  They continued to wait on the corner as people brushed past, hurrying to where they needed to go. Although Jake was glad to put off causing destruction, he was confused about why Aiden was waiting.

  “Patience, young Jacob.”

  Ten minutes later, Raphael appeared around the corner, his black curls stuck to his forehead and irritation wrinkling his nose. “You couldn’t pick somewhere cooler? We have to go to the godforsaken South.” He swiped the sweat off his brow. “You know I hate it here.”

  “Then why do you have your estate in Tennessee?”

  Raphael’s jaw clenched. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “The sooner you let Emmanuella go, the happier you’ll be.”

  His mother’s name got Jake’s attention.

  Raphael’s eyes widened and filled with rage. He took a step closer, his hands clenched at his side. “She was your daughter, Aiden. How can you be so callous?”

  Aiden shrugged. “She was no longer needed. Everyone is replaceable.”

  Jake didn’t understand. Aiden had another daughter?