Alex remains silent for a while, deeply breathing in and out. Finally, the silence becomes maddening and I peer out from under my arm. His gaze penetrates me; my filthy clothes, the warm blood on my hands, along with the purplish blue bruises and deep red scratches covering my body. “Gemma, I’m not sure what you’re talking about. I mean I can tell by the way that you look that you obvious went through something really bad, but…” He struggles, leaning in over me and sweeping my hair out of my face. “But you’ve only been gone for a few hours.”
I swiftly shake my head. “No… no there’s no way. I was gone for days. I know it.”
His eyebrows furrow as I wince from a sore area on the center of my forehead. “Gemma, I promise you that’s not true. I can even get Laylen in here to back me up.”
My head pounds as I rack my mind for what the hell could be happening. “But it felt like days. There’s no way it could have been only a few hours.”
He draws a line back and forth below each of my violet eyes. “Maybe he was messing with you... maybe he was making it seem like days had gone by. He could easily do that, Gemma.”
I sigh, thinking of how my sanity bolt had unscrewed. “Maybe…”I shake my head and sit up as he slants back to give me room. “I hate him. I really do.”
Alex slides up on the couch and turns to face me. His fingers find my hips and he carefully lifts me onto his lap so I’m straddling him. “Tell me what he did to you.” He scans over my clothes, my wounds, stealing my breath away the longer he stays focused on me. Electricity within me stirs and arouses, along with my emotions that I turned off.
I take a deep breath and tell him what happened, minus the making out details because I’d vomit if I had to say them aloud. There are some things that are better left unsaid and forgotten. The person I became is someone I want to forget.
It takes Alex about a minute before he speaks again. “I’d like to say that I’m surprised,” he says, slouching back in the sofa with his hands still on my hips. “But I’m not.”
“So you’ve heard of this Malefiscus?”
He wavers and then hesitantly nods. “When I was little, my father would tell me stories of him.”
“So you knew?” Stunned, I slide back to leave his lap, but his fingers press downward, securing me in place.
“Just stories,” he insists. “He didn’t tell me he was a descendant, only the story of who Malefiscus was and what became of him.”
“But you knew about the mark?”
He shakes his head, his pupils like black marbles as he begins to panic. “No, I really didn’t. I just knew who he was and what he did… my father started telling me stories of him right after my mother left and they kind of became like bedtime stories.”
“He told you of evil as a way to get you to go to sleep.” I’m stunned. Shocked. And kind of disgusted. All this time I’d felt pity for myself for everything I’d went through when I was younger, but I haven’t really thought about what it must have been like to grow up with a murderous traitor. “Alex, that’s horrible.”
He shrugs it off, staring over my shoulder. “That’s minor compared to some of the other shit he’s done to me.” His eyebrows dip together as he zones out on some distant memory.
I place my hand on his stubbly cheek and he flinches. “What did he do to you?”
His gaze slides to me as his fingers travel up my side, along each bump of my aching ribcage, finally resting on my shoulder. “You don’t need to worry about that. It’s in the past.”
“But I want to know,” I say. “I-I want to understand you more.”
He smiles sadly. “No, you don’t. No normal person wants to hear about the bad things that were done to someone by their father. They’d rather stay in the dark.”
“Well, I’m not normal,” I say as his hand covers my hand that’s on his cheek. He traces the folds of my fingers and I shiver from his affectionate touch, experiencing a fleeting moment where I feel like myself again, whoever she was. “Tell me,” I plead.
“That’s another story for another time,” he says gloomily. “Right now we need to work on getting you hidden better, especially if my father can brand people. Jesus, there could be a ton of people out there who have the mark. I mean, who knows how many people he branded.”
“So you think it’s true?” I say, sounding strangled, recollecting all the visions I had about the mark appearing on me. I casually glance over at the spot on my arm where it always appears to make sure I’m still good inside.
“I don’t know… maybe…” He shuts his eyes and his nostrils flare as he inhales sharply. “If it’s true, then my childhood would make much more sense.”
For a split second, I wonder if Stephan marked Alex, but I’ve seen him naked and he doesn’t have the mark anywhere or a severe scar where one might have been cut off.
“I don’t have one if that’s what you’re thinking,” he says, sensing my thoughts. He doesn’t sound angry, merely hurt and lost.
“I’m sorry,” I mutter, tipping my chin down and staring at my lap while using my hair to veil my face. “I don’t know why I thought it.”
“Because of everything I’ve done to you,” he says straightforwardly. “You don’t trust me or anyone really.”
I shake my head and lift my gaze to his eyes. “No, I didn’t trust anyone, but I’m starting to.”
His eyes flare lustrously as he grabs the back of my neck and pulls me toward him, his tongue slipping out to wet his lips. I think he’s going to kiss me, however all he does is shake his head.
“Did he do this to you? Nicholas.” His fingers gently outline a pattern down the bruises dotting on my arm and then his fingers circle my torn up wrist.
I nod, the feel of his touch soothing me. “He did.”
He clenches his jaw, anger storming through him, and his muscles constrict. “I’m going to kill him for it,” he growls.
I nuzzle my cheek against his. “He already paid for it… I beat him up really badly.”
He pushes me back by the shoulders a little and then lifts my wrist to his lips and kisses my injury. “That’s kind of hard to believe,” he says between kisses.
“It’s true.” I shrug, shivering from his kisses. “I beat him with a rain stick.”
He seals his lips tightly to refrain from laughing. “I’ll take your word for it then, but if I do cross paths with him again, I’ll beat him unconscious.”
I want to say too late, though all I do is nod because I’m too tired to do or say anything else. Tired of fighting. Of running. Of simply existing. All I want to do at the moment is shut my eyes and go to sleep.
“What are we going to do now?” I ask, my eyelids fluttering shut as I yawn. “I’m guessing we have to leave.”
“Now we’re going to get you out of here,” he replies. “Go somewhere safe—somewhere hidden. Nicholas knows where this is and now that we know he’s helping my father, we can’t stay here.”
I nod and bury my face into his chest while he smoothes his hand up and down my back. “Let me go get Aislin and Laylen to see if we can come up with a plan.”
“Okay.”
He stands up and secures me to the front of him, carrying me with him as he leaves the room. My energy fizzles with each step he takes as I cling onto him. I keep seeing little images of objects and the color red. I see the mark. I see Death Walkers. I see the end of the world. The images are pulling at me to join them and I keep thinking what if I did? Join them? Join the easy side, the one that chases instead of runs.
“I think something’s… wrong with me,” I tell him drearily.
He says something about everything being okay and that he’ll protect me. I keep nodding, but eventually I have to admit to myself the truth.
That in the end this might not work out. That he can try to protect me, but it doesn’t mean that things will always end up in my favor. Once I admit that, I sink into a deep state of sleep.
Chapter 23
Through all of thi
s, I end up losing myself for a moment. I zone out; not asleep, but not really awake, either. I see a thousand images, dream a thousand horrific daydreams. It feels like I die and come back to life again, over and over. I swear I break and then heal… break and then heal.
“Gemma.”
The sound of Alex’s voice forces me out of my own head and back to reality. I jolt upright as I realize I’m lying in a bathtub, submerged in warm water with my head resting against the porcelain. The faucet is on and a light steam rises around me.
Alex is kneeling down on the tile floor, his arm resting on the side of the bathtub. “Are you feeling better?”
I rub my hand over my face as I sit up and the water beads down my skin. “Where are we?” I have bruises and open scratches on my skin, along with traces of dirt.
“At a friend of Adessa’s beach house,” he says. “In Maryland.”
I hunch over, drawing my knees up to my chest. “Did Aislin transport us here?”
He nods, rubbing his hand down my back. “She did—you passed out before she even got started.” Water drips from his hand onto my skin as he rubs the dirt off me. “Or more like zoned out. Your eyes were open, but you… but you were gone.” His hand wanders to my arms where he begins washing off the dirt off there, too. “I think you might need to take it easy for a while.”
I rest my head on my knees. “I need to save my mom and then maybe I can get this stupid star’s energy out of me and be normal for once.”
His hand slides over my cheek and I stare at him as he combs my damp locks out of my face. “You need to rest. You’re doing too much.”
“After I save her.”
“Gemma—”
“Alex, please,” I beg. “I can’t stop thinking about her… I dream about her all the time and she needs my help… she needs me. She could help us, too. She could know something about the mark and your father—she could know a way to stop the vision I saw from happening.”
“But what if she doesn’t?” He shuts the faucet off. “It’s such a long shot.”
I raise my head and turn sideways in the bathtub, grasping onto the sides. “I’ve dreamt about her and I’m not even sure if it was a dream. It could have been real. She said she could help me—that she knew things. Just like she told your father before he forced her into the lake.”
He wipes away some of the water dripping from my eyelashes with his thumb. “But they might just be dreams.”
“But they might not,” I whisper. “Nicholas said I was powerful and could do amazing things with my power if I was taught right, like travel and see visions without a crystal. What if I can communicate through them to? What is she’s communicating with me?”
His finger slides down the brim of my nose and to my bottom lip. “All right, but I’m going with you.”
I nod. “I know. Since you were in the vision with me when we were bargaining with the Queen, I’m assuming you need to be there.”
He reaches for a washcloth on a small shelf tucked in the corner near the sink. “And I’m making you rest for a day.”
“Alex, I don’t—”
He places a finger over my lips, the washcloth balled in his hand. “Rest, or no deal.”
I narrow my eyes, but on the inside I’m less irritated, understanding that he’s worried about me. “Okay, one day,” I say against his lips.
He nods and then dips the washcloth into the bathtub of water. “Now, lean back.”
I glance at the soaked washcloth in his hand. “Why?”
“Because,” he leans in and brushes his lips across mine. “I’m going to wash off all those cuts that damn Faerie put all over you,” he says in a low voice.
I do what he says and lean back, resting my head against the back of the tub, the water flowing over my body. I’m completely naked except for my locket and my muscles feel like I’ve just ran a marathon. Yet, with each touch of his hand, I start to feel better as he moves the washcloth over my body, wiping away the dried blood and mud as he cleans off the cuts. I swear it feels like he’s washing away the icky feelings I’ve been experiencing and the memories of what I did to Nicholas. I feel cleaner, more relaxed, more in tune with him. He’s touching me everywhere, even when he’s not, the magnetic bond syncing our bodies together.
I shut my eyes as he works the cloth over my neck, down my chest, over my breasts. I groan, curving upward, but I don’t open my eyes, even when his hand moves to the inside of my thighs. Just when I think I can’t take it anymore, his hand and the cloth leave my body. Seconds later, he combs his fingers through my hair and begins washing it as he tenderly tugs at the roots.
When he finishes I open my eyes and look up at him.
“Feel better?” he asks, tossing the cloth aside.
I nod, unable to look away from the longing in his eyes. “I do. Thank you.”
He stands to his feet and reaches for a towel on the hook near the door, and then he takes my hands to help me to my feet. Like he did back at Adessa’s house, he helps me out of the tub and then dries me off. After he secures the towel around me, he carries me to a bed in a room with floral walls and French doors that open out to a deck. The view from the deck is breathtaking; golden sand, amazingly blue ocean and the glistening sunshine. Although I barely get to appreciate it because, as soon as he lays me down on the bed and my head hits the pillow, exhaustion overcomes me and I fall into a deep, dreamless sleep for the first time in a very, very long time.
Chapter 24
Maryland is very humid. The air is so heavy and dense that it feels like being in a sauna. The little blue house is secluded near a rocky beach where the ocean constantly roars against the shore. It’s my first time seeing it and, while I enjoy it, I know that there are many other things to worry about at the moment. Like saving my mom.
Aislin puts up countless charms all over the house, so many that I even set off a few by accident when I simply walked into the wrong areas of the house. One of them turned my skin purple and, when I asked her what the point was, she said it was a distraction. I still didn’t get it, though. We also put praesidium all over the house and yard and even close areas of the beach; so there won’t be any surprise visits from Foreseers.
I’ve been working my ass off to get the Ira to work, but I can’t channel enough energy. It frustrates me to no end and forces me to push past my limits. I’ve passed out a few times from using too much energy and Alex is getting more and more reluctant to help me.
“You’re going to hurt yourself,” he said one day after I’d passed out while clutching onto the Ira. “It’s not healthy.”
“It’s not healthy being the star, either,” I replied, turning the teal crystal ball in my hand. “I need to be normal.”
“I don’t think you’ll ever be normal,” he said begrudgingly. “None of us will.”
“Well, then I want to be weird without the star in me,” I told him.
That got him to smile, something I’ve started noticing he doesn’t do very often and, whenever I manage to get him to crack one, it seems to lighten his mood.
On top of the Ira problems, Laylen’s been getting mood swings a lot, having violent outburst. He even threw a cup across the room because he couldn’t find the coffeemaker. It’s been happening ever since he almost died and my blood brought him back. I’m beginning to worry that between death and all the blood drinking, his caring, laid-back personality has been altered.
I tried to talk to him about it once, when we crossed paths inside the kitchen. He’s been avoiding me; he even went so far as to try to turn around when I walked up to him while he was searching for a plate, but I stepped into his path.
“Are you okay?” I asked, reaching for a mug on the counter. I wasn’t really thirsty. In fact, I’d kind of planned it out so he’d have to talk to me. “You’ve seemed a little distant the last few days.”
He shrugged, stuffing his hands into the pockets of his black jeans. “As good as I always am.”
I rotated the mug
in my hand and leaned in. “Laylen, what happened in the forest. That was no one’s fault. It had to be done to save you.”
He stared at me for a moment and, at first, his expression was unreadable, but then he cut me with a harsh look. “What would have saved me, Gemma, is if you’d have simply let me die,” he says. “That’s how I want to be saved.” He walked around me, bumping his shoulder into mine and leaving me stunned.
I haven’t been able to stop thinking about him. It’s been over a day and the pain in his eyes when he said those God-awful words remains imprinted into my mind. Not want to be saved? Did he want to die? Does he hate himself that much? The thought hurts at my heart. I can’t even imagine what would happen if I told him what I’d overheard Nicholas saying about Stephan creating him. It would break him and luckily Alex seems to agree with me because he’s kept his mouth shut. The biggest question I have is why, though? Why would he create a Vampire when there are ton of them wandering around?
It’s late, the full moon an orb against the charcoaled sky and the darkened ocean water. I’m sitting out on the deck that extends out from my bedroom, the French doors swinging in the light breeze while Alex sleeps soundly in the bed just inside the room. The stars are glimmering with it and I can’t help thinking that this is where it all started. This entire mess. One single star fell from the sky, or a piece of it anyway, and all hell has broken loose. Lives were shattered. Souls detached.
I have a hoodie and boxer shorts on as I sit in one of the chairs, sipping a soda. I’m lost in my thoughts when a tall figure emerges on the beach. It’s strange because the beach becomes vacant usually after sunset and I wonder if maybe it’s a homeless person looking for a place to stay. Then the light of the moon hits the person’s blond hair and highlights his figure even more.
I feel a slight pull toward him and I set my soda down, jumping to my feet. “Laylen!”
He stops, turns to look at me, and then he takes off running down the beach. When he reaches a cluster of cliffy rocks, he makes a sharp veer to the left and heads toward the street that curves beside the ocean and leads to the city limits.
Shattered Promises 02 - Fractured Souls Page 18