Focus your mind. Visualize it.
Kylie’s terrorized gaze meets mine, her eyes flooded with tears, and I need no further incentive. I zone in on the rock resting at the base of the strip of trees, imagining it lifting, airborne, and soaring through the sky.
The rock smashes into the back of the freak’s head, startling him. He goes down, taking Kylie with him. I zip across the road, pulling her away. A booming, rumbling sound emerges from his mouth when he lifts his chin, his eyes blazing like live fireballs as he climbs to his feet. He throws something at me. Caught off guard, I don’t move away in time. A stinging pain shoots through me as the weapon grazes my shoulder before landing on the ground with a clanging sound.
I’m instantly woozy, staggering on my feet.
Oh crap.
“Run!” I hiss, pushing Kylie. “Run away as far as you can.”
Crying, she takes off running in the opposite direction.
The freak stands up, tilting his head from side to side as a menacing growl rips from his throat. A stream of words flows out of his mouth, all in a foreign language. My head clouds over, my vision blurs, and I sway on my feet. My legs buckle, and I drop to my knees, dazed and confused. My thoughts are screaming at me, but I can’t decipher them in time. I’m on my hands and knees, crawling away from him at a snail’s pace. My shoulder is throbbing, and it takes enormous effort to move. The freak continues to spew gibberish as he walks toward me. He locks his arm around my neck, hauling me to my feet. My eyes shutter, my body slackens, and he drags me away from the road, out into the nearest field.
Thoughts are jumbled in my head, but one repeats successively, finally breaking through the fog. Mustering what little strength I have left, I grab onto his arm, channeling the heat in my fingertips as I cling to his flesh. He stops the litany of foreign words, and, instantly, the mist in my brain lifts, that one thought screaming louder and louder.
I know what I need to do.
And I feel zero remorse about it.
I grip his arm even tighter despite his best efforts to shove me off. He’s yelling now in his foreign dialect, trying to extract his arm, while heat flows through my body, seeping from me to him. The veins on his arm are transparent, glowing brightly, the weird green lines transforming to red as the strange energy moves from me to him. His body shudders behind me, but I don’t lose focus, closing my eyes, my concentration returning as I continue holding his arm, directing the inexplicable force until it’s consumed him. I will him to be dead, somehow understanding it’s my life or his.
The convulsing stops. The yelling stops. The fire in my fingers recedes, and my body temp returns to normal. The feel of his skin under mine is gone, and I snap my eyes open. All is quiet and dark.
The tension in the air is gone.
Along with the freak.
Frantically, I whip my head from side to side, searching for him, purposely ignoring the throbbing pain in my shoulder. Movement out of the corner of my eye has me on high alert, and I spin around, assuming a fighting stance.
“It’s only me,” Kylie hollers, walking out from behind a tree, and I relax. She walks toward me, and I turn around, scanning our surroundings again for the freak.
Kylie stops beside me, gesturing with her head toward the ground. My eyes drop, and I gasp. A pile of gray ash lies in a heap at my feet. Without needing affirmation, I know it’s him. My breath wheezes out in panicked spurts as I stare at the mound, unable to comprehend what I’m seeing. Now that the threat has passed, the noise in my head has quieted, and the fire in my hands has disappeared, I’m struggling to understand what just happened. “Is that …” I croak.
Kylie looks me straight in the eye. “Yes. That’s what’s left of him.” She stares at me, and I spot the myriad conflicting emotions washing over her face. I look away, grappling to come to terms with the last couple hours of my life.
What on earth is happening to me?
What did I do, and how the hell did I do it? More to the point, how the hell did I even know how to do it? Quiet, confident Tori has retreated, leaving a terrified, paler version in her place. That other version of me isn’t me. It can’t be. That’s not who I am.
Kylie bends down, inspecting the smoldering, charred pile. When her fingers move to touch the ash, I pull her back up. “Don’t touch it. It could be toxic or …” I clamp a hand over my mouth, willing the nausea to stay down. My heart is racing behind my ribcage, and blood is thrumming in my ears. I start walking toward the road, needing to put as much distance between me and whatever that was as possible. The soft tread of footsteps behind me tells me Kylie is following suit.
When we’re back out on the road, I slump to the ground on my butt, crossing my legs and burying my face in my lap. I’m shivering, but it’s not related to the freezing cold temp. Kylie sinks down beside me, and I jerk my head up when her arm snakes around my back. “Don’t touch me!” I shriek, scooting away from her. “I don’t want to hurt you. I don’t want to do that to you.”
She peers into my eyes. “You won’t hurt me. I know you won’t.”
I gulp over the massive lump in my throat. “How can you say that?” I whisper, horrified to find tears rolling down my face.
“I’ve known you basically my whole life. I know you could never hurt me, and you only hurt that … that thing, because he threatened me. You saved me. Saved us.” She scoots closer to me, peering into my eyes.
“Why aren’t you afraid of me?” I whisper.
“You’re my best friend. Nothing about today changes that. I’m not going to lie and say I’m not completely freaked out, because I am, but not for the reasons you assume. I’m not afraid of you, Tori. I’m afraid for you.”
“Well, I’m afraid of me,” I admit in a low voice. “I’ve no idea how I was able to do that. Who am I, Kylie?” Moisture pools in my eyes as I plead with my friend. “What am I?”
Chapter 4
“I wish I had answers,” Kylie says quietly. “But we’ll figure this out. You’re not in this alone.”
“Where are Zara and Kenzie?”
“I got them out of the car. They’re both okay. Unconscious, but they’ll live.”
“So, they didn’t see?”
She shakes her head. “No one knows. Only me.”
“You can’t tell anyone.”
She looks me straight in the eye. “I know, and I won’t breathe a word. I promise. This has got to be our secret. You can’t even tell Jensen.”
I gulp at the thought of keeping secrets from my boyfriend, but Kylie’s right. It’s a miracle she’s reacted so well, and I can’t take the risk that others might not accept it so rationally. I don’t think it would change Jensen’s opinion of me, but, with his inquisitive inventor’s mind, he wouldn’t be able to stop himself from treating me like one of his science experiments.
The thought sparks awareness inside me. “He wasn’t human, was he?” I say.
“No. Not unless the government has found a way to grow thugs with supernatural abilities.”
“What do you think it was?”
“Vamp. Wizard. Warlock. Alien. Demon.” She throws the words out flippantly. “Take your pick.”
I bite my lip as I mull it over. “They’re just fictional creatures. Stuff writers, publishers, and movie producers with overactive imaginations dream up as a way to get the public to part with their hard-earned dollars.”
She shrugs again. “Maybe, maybe not.” Her forehead crinkles as she ponders it some more. “You know, I hate to say this, because it’s like validating my brother and his crazy conspiracy theories”—my eyes widen, and she grins—“but maybe he’s on to something. Daniel’s obsessed with Area 51, and he strongly believes in extraterrestrial life, and maybe he’s right. Although it’s completely possible I’ve been subconsciously brainwashed, it seems to me, out of that bunch, an alien is the most likely choice.”
Calling Kylie’s brother Daniel obsessed is a bit of an understatement, and while the logical part of my br
ain rejects any notion of aliens, I can’t disagree with Kylie’s rationale either.
We both saw that freak in action, and he definitely wasn’t human. He has to be something, and I’d rather think of him as an alien than a living, breathing Voldemort or a blood-sucking Laurent.
Purposely ignoring the logical extension of my line of thought—because I’m so not ready to face up to what it might mean for me—I throw out a suggestion. “Maybe we should talk to Daniel?”
“No. Not yet. Not until we try and make sense of what happened.” She climbs to her feet at the sound of approaching vehicles. “But I can dig through his notes and see if there’s anything in there that might help explain what’s going on.”
I jump up. “I’m scared,” I whisper. “Why is this happening to me?”
She hugs me without hesitation. “I would be too, but I’m here for you. We’ll figure it out together.” She glances over her shoulder.
“What are we going to tell the cops?”
“Nothing.”
“What?”
“I didn’t call the cops.” She walks out into the middle of the road, right in front of the incoming headlights, jumping up and down and waving her hands in the air. “I called Jensen and told him to bring Hunter too,” she says, returning to my side. My mouth gapes open, and she grins. “The minute you touched the manager back at the restaurant and convinced him to change his mind, I knew something was up. Call it sixth sense. And then you were so cool and self-assured when we were all losing it, and that convinced me. Maybe my brother and his conspiracy theories have rubbed off on me, but I knew calling the cops would be a bad idea.”
“You’re frigging amazing, you know that, right?”
She puffs out her chest, smiling. “I have my moments.”
I grab her into a body-crushing hug, momentarily abandoning my newly formed fear of touching. “You don’t know how much this means to me.”
“I know you’d do the same for me.”
“I would,” I say, letting her go. “What do we tell Jensen?”
“I told him some lunatic ran us off the road and then took off. We didn’t get a look at the car or the license plate.”
I shake my head. “That won’t stack up. Zara and Kenzie saw him. They know he’s not human.”
She grips my shoulders. “They were both also injured in the crash. We’ll stick to our story and convince them they imagined it.”
I tuck my hair behind my ears, chewing on the corner of my mouth. “I don’t like lying to them or Jensen.”
“You don’t have a choice.” She pins me with a grave look.
“They won’t buy it.” Zara is stubborn as fuck, and a naturally suspicious person, and Kenzie saw the freak drop out of the sky.
“Then you’ll have to make them believe it.”
My jaw hangs open again. “What?”
“You did it with the manager and the old dude in the truck. Touched them and got them to do what you wanted. You’ll have to do the same with them.”
Before I can protest or question whether something weird is going down with my best friend too—because she’s way too blasé about all this—a familiar rusty truck pulls up. Jensen jumps out of the vehicle, leaving the headlights on and the door open, as Hunter draws up behind him in his mom’s station wagon.
“Oh my God, Tori!” Jensen races toward me, panic etched all over his face. He pulls me into his arms, hugging me to death. “Are you hurt? Where are you hurt?” He leans back to examine me, his beautiful blue-gray eyes skimming over my face. He probes my skin with gentle fingers, lingering on my forehead. “You’re bruised.”
“Must have happened when we hit the tree.”
His eyes flick to my torn sweater, and alarm floods his eyes. Very gently, he tugs at the top of my sweater. “What the hell is that?” He points at my shoulder, reminding me of the dull ache that is spreading down my arm. I smother my gasp as I look at the place where the freak’s weapon hit me. I remember feeling a pinch, but I didn’t realize it had cut me. The skin on my shoulder is discolored, but it doesn’t look like a normal bruise. It’s a mix of golds, blues, and greens, and there’s a congealed purple-red gel-like substance oozing out of the open wound.
Shuddering all over, I pull my sweater up, covering the wound. Jensen is looking to me for an explanation, and my mouth opens and closes like a fish out of water.
Kylie jumps to the rescue. “We all have cuts and bruises from the crash, and some of the paint off the interior of the car must have rubbed against Tori. That’s why it looks so weird.” She says this so nonchalantly as to be believable. I shoot her a look of gratitude out of the corner of my eye.
“Are you hurt anywhere else?” he asks, as Hunter appears in my line of sight.
“No. I’m fine, apart from some bug or infection I seem to have picked up. That’s why we were coming home early.”
His brows climb to his hairline. “You’re sick?”
I force out a laugh. “I know, right?!”
“You never get sick,” Hunter supplies, his dirty-blond hair brushing his shoulders as he bends over to inspect Kylie. “Are you okay?”
“I’m good. A few cuts and bruises like Tori but nothing to worry about. Speaking of, we need to check on Zara and Kenzie. Come on.”
We follow her across the road, passing by Kenzie’s destroyed SUV, which is still emitting spirals of smoke. “Holy shit,” Hunter exclaims, his eyes popping wide. “You’re lucky to be alive.”
He doesn’t know the half of it.
“That’s it,” Jensen says, releasing my hand to extract his cell from his jeans pocket. “I’m calling an ambulance and the cops. You need to report this.”
I put my hand over his, stalling him. “I agree we need to get Zara and Kenzie checked out, and I suggest Hunter drives them to the hospital, but there’s no need to call the cops.”
“The hell there isn’t! The asshole ran you off the road and then took off! He could’ve killed you!” My boyfriend pins me with an incredulous look, dragging a hand through his wavy brown hair. He’s been letting it grow out, and now it curls around his ears and his neck, and I love running my fingers through it.
I step toward him, planting my hands on his chest, regarding him through hooded lashes. “He’s gone, and we didn’t even see the type of car he was driving. There’s no point involving the authorities.”
“Eh, Tori.” Hunter scratches the top of his head, looking at me with a frown. “Jensen’s got a point. The douche can’t be allowed to get away with shit like this.”
“Please, baby,” I whimper, leaning into Jensen and ignoring Hunter. “I’m sick and I just need my bed.”
“You need to go to the hospital, Tori. You all need to be checked out. I’m not taking no for an answer.”
I turn wide eyes on Kylie, beseeching her for help. She gestures to where my hands are resting on Jensen’s chest and the meaning is clear. Thing is, even if she’s right, and I don’t know one hundred percent that she is, I have no idea how I made the manager and the old dude in the truck do as I wanted.
But I’ve got to try. Jensen is punching numbers into his cell, and there’s no time to waste. I cup his face, distracting him. When he looks at me, I stare into his eyes, projecting my intent as if I’m planting it directly into his head. “You’re not going to call the cops or the paramedics. You’re going to drive me home right now.”
A hazy film coats his eyes, and he stops pressing buttons on his phone. He stares at me as if he’s looking straight through me. His Adam’s apple jumps in his throat, but he continues staring ahead while I take his cell, slipping it back in the pocket of his jeans. “Go start the engine,” I instruct. Very slowly, clearly reluctantly, he nods, turning toward his truck.
“What the actual fuck, Tori?” Hunter is gawking at me with a slack jaw. “I know I joke that he’s under your spell, but what the hell did you just do to him?”
I walk up to Jensen’s best friend and touch his arm. I peer deep into his e
yes, applying the same approach. I’m unbelievably calm as I speak in a hushed tone. “I didn’t do anything to Jensen. You are going to drive Zara and Kenzie to the hospital and forget about calling the cops. Kylie will go with you.” My eyes flick to my best friend, and she nods her acquiescence. “This was an accident, and we are not going to report it to the police. Do you understand?”
He gulps, nodding as he fixes his dazed expression on me. “Loud and clear,” he says in a monotone voice.
Holy fuck. This feels so very wrong.
Hunter lifts Zara and Kenzie into the back seat of the station wagon. Both girls are still out for the count, but I hold their arms and whisper the fake truth in their ears, hoping it’s enough.
Kylie hugs me. “Go. I’ll keep an eye on things at the hospital, and I’ll call you later.”
Jensen is unusually quiet the entire ride home, and I’m terrified I’ve done something permanent to him. That I’ve somehow irreversibly altered his mind or his thought process. Guilt is doing a complete number on me, but at least it’s keeping the fear and paranoia at bay.
For now.
He clears his throat when we enter Eaton Lake, our small town in Lake County, Indiana, speaking to me for the first time in twenty minutes. “Thank God, we didn’t lose power. I heard there was some massive electrical surge that shorted all the power in Hobart through Chicago and beyond.”
I gulp over the sudden lump in my throat. I think I could be responsible for that. “That’s a pain,” I croak.
He nods, peering at me quizzically, and I can almost see his mind churning. “Tori, are you sure about this?” He glances over at me. “I’d feel better if you let a professional check you out.”
I sigh in grateful relief. There’s my overprotective guy. He fussed over me in the same way last month when someone broke into our house and trashed my bedroom. I reach over, patting his knee. “Babe, honestly, I’ve just got a bug, and I need to crawl into bed and sleep it off. That’s all. If it was anything serious, I’d go to the hospital.”
The Lost Savior Page 3