by Anna Rezes
“Gone.”
“Did you kill him? Is he dead?” He reaches out to help me up.
“I’m not a murderer, Patrick.” I breathe, struggling to stand. “I don’t kill people.”
“What?” Patrick is frantic, terrified. He pulls away. “Where is he?”
“He’s gone.”
“We have to go after him now while he’s weak. If we don’t, he will kill us. He’ll kill us all!” The relief I saw in his eyes a moment ago has vanished.
“No.” Exhaustion is making my explanation unclear.
“What do you mean, no?” He looks at me crazed with anger. “He raised me, Emily! I think I’d know. First, he’ll kill everyone you love, slowly, while you watch. Then he’ll take your power away, along with your life!”
I point across the room to the pile of dust. “Patrick, that’s all that’s left of Sky. He can’t hurt you anymore. He can’t hurt anyone.”
Sky’s black cane stands out against the stark white floor, and Patrick stares at the crumpled suit covered in dust. “How’s this possible? What happened?”
“He was feeding off the souls of those he killed. It gave him power and youth.” My unstable body sways and Patrick catches me. “After I took the souls from Sky’s mind, his body turned to dust.”
“You took the souls?” He stares into my eyes as if searching for proof.
“Yeah,” I breathe. “I have to find my dad.” I take an unsteady step and fall back into him.
“Are the souls inside you now?” he asks.
“Of course not. If I held onto them, I’d feel a hell of a lot better than this, but then I’d be no better than Sky.”
“How did you set them free?”
“He killed my mom. I wasn’t going to let her spend eternity with him.”
“That doesn’t answer my question. How did you let them go? The power—”
“Nearly consumed me,” I finish for him. “I don’t know how I did it. I just did. Now let’s go find my dad.”
Patrick wraps his arm around me and guides me to the door. “We need to get you both out of here. Your dad is in terrible shape, Emily.”
We move forward, but I’m barely able to make it out of the room, so Patrick sweeps me up into his arms and rushes us down the hall.
It looks like a tornado ripped through the building. Broken furniture and unidentifiable wreckage scatter the halls while bodies litter the floor and blood spatter stains the walls.
“Patrick, what exactly happened here?”
“I’ll explain when we have more time,” he says, as we reach the prison cells.
He sits me down as he gathers up my dad, and I ask, “Can you fix him?”
“No, Emily. If I tried, I could kill him. His injuries are too complex. I bought him extra time, but there’s too much internal damage. We must get him to a hospital, and we need to get you to a safe place.”
“Where are we, Patrick?”
“We’re at compound seventeen, just outside of Columbus, only twenty miles from home. We’ll drop him off at the trauma center on our way to my uncles. I’ll be right back for you,” he says, before rushing out of the room with Dad’s limp body in his arms.
I push forward on my hands and knees, crawling out into the hall to examine the three men lying on the floor. Only one of them is breathing so I move toward him. Somewhere in the recesses of my mind, I register the sting of broken glass under my hands, so I drop to my forearms. I continue moving forward army crawling across the littered floor until stars swirl dizzying circles around my head, forcing me to lie down.
The cold tile is a relief for my overheated body. I rest my forehead on the floor as a thundering eruption blasts through my skull. Wrestling with nausea and a throbbing in my head, I look up when I hear footsteps. Stabbing pain behind my eyes pushes me over the edge and I lose consciousness.
I wake up to a jostling movement and know by the sweet aroma, I’m in Patrick’s arms. I rest my head against his chest until he sits me on a cool leather seat. I hear the click of a seatbelt and my head bobs like a rag doll.
A car door slams, vibrating through my brain, launching shrapnel to the parts of me that didn’t ache before. My neck remembers its job, and I turn to focus on Patrick. He’s got blood and stains and . . . oh no . . . I put my hand to my chin. I feel nothing, but I taste the lingering acid in my throat. I threw up on him.
Patrick’s face is pale, and anxiety creases his forehead. “Hang on, Emily. We’re going to the hospital and then to my uncles.”
I don’t argue. I’m too exhausted. A moan from the backseat confirms my dad is still alive. Despite my anxiety, I can’t keep my eyes open. Sleep mixes with wakefulness, and I can’t tell where reality ends and the nightmare begins. At one moment I’m in a car riding through dark alleys with Patrick by my side. The next moment I’m trapped in an empty room. I look out the window and see I’m several stories up. I scramble toward the door, but smoke begins billowing through the cracks.
Sirens blare. I open my eyes to see the emergency entrance to the hospital. Patrick pulls my dad from the back seat. Cradling his debilitated body, he rushes into the building. I unbuckle my seatbelt and reach for the door handle wanting to stay with my dad.
“Emily, stay in the car!”Patrick’s intrusion in my mind causes me to crumple into myself. The pain is unbearable. I close my eyes and wait for the stabbing pain to cease, but instead, it burns. Fire licks at my skin as I lie crumpled on the floor of the burning room. I pick myself up and move to the window. I’m on the fourth floor and I hear the distant sound of sirens.
A door slams and I’m back in the car, hunched over and burning alive with the pain inside my head.
“I’m sorry, Emily. I needed to make sure you stayed in the car. If they saw you, they wouldn’t let you leave, and they can’t help you right now.”
“Just make it stop,” I whimper, holding my head in my hands, in too much pain to care how pathetic I sound.
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. Using our mental connection only seems to make it worse. I won’t do it again,” he whispers. His hand rests on mine, but the calm I usually feel from him feels like acid eating at my skin. I cringe away from his touch, shrieking in agony.
He snatches his arm back mumbling another apology as the car moves forward. “We’ll be there soon. Just hang on.”
I count to ten in my head over and over again until I get stuck on four.I’m on the fourth floor, wondering how I’m going to get out of this place alive. An explosion shakes the building, and the ceiling begins to cave in. I am distracted by the rumbling under my feet and the sound of gravel under . . . a car?
I look out the window and see the gravel driveway that leads to Morgan’s house. The sun is just beginning to light the sky. The car stops with a jolt, and my door is ripped open. I’m out of the vehicle without any effort of my own.
“Oh my God! She’s covered in blood!” Morgan shouts.
“Most of it isn’t hers,” I hear Patrick say. “Watch her arms. Be careful of the glass.”
“Whose is it?” Morgan gasps.
“What happened?” Ben’s chest rumbles as he talks. It’s then I realize I’m in Ben’s arms. That’s nice. Patrick brought me home.
“Patrick?” Tom’s tone encompasses so many questions.
“I don’t know what to do! Everything I try seems to hurt her more!”
“What about Sky?” Tom says.
“She killed him.”
I shake my head in dispute.
“He’s dead,” Patrick amends.
“But at what cost?” Tom questions.
“Emily? Can you hear me?” Morgan sounds so worried. “Patrick, why didn’t you take her to a hospital?”
“Let’s get her inside!” Tom’s tone is insistent.
“Is there something wrong with hospitals?” says Morgan.
“We dropped Mark off at the ER, but they can’t help Emily. I’m hoping Tom can.”
“Can you help her?” Ben asks.
“I’m not sure.”
“Somebody please tell me what’s going on!” Morgan demands as we enter the house.
“Patrick has healed her before,” Ben says to Tom. “Isn’t this the same kind of thing?”
“Patrick doesn’t have the skills to fix this, and I don’t know if I can help.”
“You’ll try, won’t you?” Patrick pleads. “You have to!”
“I don’t have to do anything!” Tom is seething. “You’re the one who did this to her! Don’t blame me!”
Morgan instructs, “Lay her here.”
“I was protecting her,” Patrick defends, as Ben places my aching body on the couch.
“How the hell did you think you were protecting her by leading her straight to Sky?” Tom shouts.
At the same time, Morgan asks, “How did she get all this glass in her arms?”
“Face it, Patrick, you hurt everyone you care about!” Tom fumes.
The pain is all too familiar as those words sink in like a shadow covering my heart. I feel Patrick’s agony as if it’s my own—because it is.
“Dad!” Morgan scolds.
“I’ll see what I can do,” Tom says. “Patrick, you should leave!”
“Please, just save her.” Patrick stands ready to leave. Using all my strength, I grab his hand pleading for him to stay.
“Emily, you’re like a daughter to me, and I’m going to do everything I can to help, but Patrick did this to you.”
I wish I could explain but pain explodes in my head and I black out with a scream. I awaken back to the blaze. Thick smoke rolls in quickly like dark clouds heavy with rain before a thunderstorm. The oppressive haze blocks my view, and I pull my shirt up over my nose to keep from choking. The smell of burning timber is pungent causing my eyes to water as another explosion shakes the building.
My body is jostled, and my leaden eyelids open just long enough to see Tom’s head bowed in concentration, as he places his hands over my temples. His touch generates a searing heat that sends me right back into the fire.
The flames are greedy, stealing oxygen as it consumes the building around me. Smoke engulfs the room. The effort it takes for me to breathe is like gasping through a pillow.
“Emily, grab my hand,” Tom says, his voice a faraway echo.
A crackling sound comes from the opposite side of the room where the flames consume the door, eagerly eating through it like a ravenous swarm of locusts. Through the door a female figure appears, strolling through the flames as if they are a part of her.
Tom shouts in the distance, “No Emily, don’t look there. Come this way!”
I look back to Tom’s figure and take a step toward him, away from the fire’s soft caress. Tom’s smoky image disappears, but I hear his voice, “Emily, you must wake up before it’s too late.”
“Stay,” the feminine voice entices. I pause, captured by the woman in the flames, relishing in the comforting warmth. Her hand reaches out to touch my face. Fire coils around me, licking up my legs and around my body like a lover’s kiss. I could get comfortable here.
“Emily, Wake Up!”
A loud thud startles me awake. A cold rag touches my forehead, and my eyes flutter open to see Morgan standing over me. Ben and Patrick pull a feeble looking Tom up from the floor.
“What happened?” I mumble unintelligibly, fighting the blanket of sleep from pulling me under again.
Her worried eyes soften, and she says something, but my eyes are too heavy and my mind too tired to make out her words. I mean to respond, but I’ve already drifted back into unconsciousness.
thirty-five
I lurk on the edge of sleep, hearing faint voices before my body fully awakens.
“Do you want me to stay with her for a while so you can get some sleep,” Morgan whispers close by.
“No, it’s okay. I want to be here when she wakes,” Ben says from right next to me.
“If you change your mind, let me know,” she offers.
“Will do.”
I open my eyes, waking to find Ben slouched in an armchair next to the bed.
“I thought for sure I’d wake up to you playing your guitar,” I rasp.
Ben bolts upright in surprise and then his face turns soft as he says, “I thought about it, but it’s at home, and I didn’t want to leave you.”
“How long have I been sleeping?”
“You were in and out for a while, but you’ve been sleeping steadily for the last sixteen hours.” He hands me a glass of water from the nightstand, and I drink greedily, clearing the cobwebs from my throat.
“You’ve been here this whole time?” I’m horrified at what he must have seen.
“Except when Morgan kicked me out so she could change your clothes.”
“Is Tom okay?”
“He’s fine. He’ll be happy to know you’re awake.”
“He didn’t want Morgan involved in this.”
“I think he’s relieved he doesn’t have to keep it a secret anymore.”
“And how do you feel?” I wonder what he thinks of me now that he knows who I really am.
“Emily?” I hear Morgan before she enters the room. “Is she awake?” She walks through the door, and her face lights up. “How are you feeling?”
“Umm, I’m okay.”
“You’re a dirty liar, but if that’s how you want to play it, that’s fine. Can I get you anything?” she asks. “More water, medicine, food? Never-mind, I’ll get you all three.” She comes closer and holds my hand. “I’m really glad you’re back. You gave us a hell of a scare.”
“I’m sorry for all of this.”
“None of it was your fault,” Ben says.
“The not asking for help part was your fault,” Morgan argues. “But I’m happy you’re safe now.”
“There’s nothing anyone could’ve done. Sky would’ve killed you all just to hurt me.”
“Patrick is pissed about you ditching him to face Sky alone,” Morgan warns. “Also, I just spoke with Samantha. Your dad just got out of surgery. He’s in critical condition, but he made it through the worst of it. They expect another surgery in a few days, once his condition stabilizes.”
“Stop overloading her with information,” Ben says.
“That’s good news,” Morgan prompts, squeezing my hand. “She needs good news.”
“How’s Sam?” I ask.
Morgan’s face scrunches, giving me the answer before her words can.
“She’ll be fine,” Ben answers. “Morgan’s going to the hospital in a little while to check on her. She’s just worried about you. We didn’t tell her you were here. In a few days, things will get straightened out. Right now, you just need to rest.”
“Speaking of,” Morgan pulls away, “I’ll be right back with some food and medicine.”
“Thank you.”
“Of course.” Morgan nods, walking out the door.
“Emily Burk, who knew you’d have me beat when it came to dysfunctional families?” Ben jokes.
“What? Like you didn’t believe that when you thought my mom was only crazy?”
His warm smile and consoling brown eyes give me the comfort I couldn’t find anywhere else.
I confess, “I missed you.”
“Ditto,” he says, holding my hand. “Em, I hope you know, discovering this whole other side to you doesn’t change how I feel about you. I know you’re kind of a big deal now, but to be honest, I always knew you were.”
“Ben, you’ve gotta stop putting your life on hold because of me.” The words fall out of my mouth and I continue without holding back. “You need to go to one of those Ivy League schools, or become a musician, or I don’t know . . . a Kung fu master, anything. You have too much talent to waste, and I won’t be responsible for holding you back. Just make sure you get away from your dad, and I’m not just saying that because my biological father ended up being a mass murderer. I love you, and whatever happens, we’ll figure it out, but don’t deny yourself the life you
deserve because of me. Look what I’ve already put you through. My life is unpredictable and messy. Ben, I still want you in it, but not if it’s hurting you or clipping your wings.”
“You love me?” he asks, and I realize I’ve never actually said it to him before.
“Well, yeah.” I shift uncomfortably.
“Emily, I’m not sure what I want to do with my life or how I’m gonna get there. What I am sure about is you. All the other stuff will eventually come.”
“It’s not that easy. I don’t know what my life is going to be like.”
“We’ll figure it out together.”
“But, Ben—”
“You need to rest. We can talk about this later.” Ben leans forward to place a sweet kiss on my lips. “I was so scared, Em. I know I’m probably not supposed to admit that, but damn . . . we thought you died. When the car pulled into the driveway, my first thought was just to get to you. When I opened the car door . . .” He falls silent, his eyes glistening with unshed tears. He shakes his head. “Your dress was ripped, and you were covered in blood. It was matted in your hair, and your arms were filled with shards of glass. You kept whimpering. I could tell you were conscious enough to feel the pain, but you couldn’t focus. I was so afraid I’d lose you. I know you weren’t really mine to lose, but I thought I’d lost you.”
“I’ll always be yours,” I whisper. “I’m sorry you had to see me like that. I was careless. I should’ve listened to Patrick and waited for him to help me to the car. I wouldn’t have looked so much like Carrie.”
He’s about to say something when my dog bounds into the room with her tail-nub wagging.
“Maggie!” I reach out for her and let out an oomph as her heavy body lands on mine. I ignore the discomfort as I relish in her affection.
Patrick trails behind Maggie and hangs back by the door. His averted gaze gives me the impression he’s suffering. “I picked Maggie up from Chris. They were more than happy to part ways,” he says, leaning against the doorframe with a bowl in one hand and a cup in the other.
Tension radiates from Ben the moment he sees Patrick. His aversion has only grown with recent events.