B00AO57VOY EBOK (36 page)

With one last shove, I was
finally able to tear free from his hold.  I took a few steps back, putting some
much needed space between us, and crossed my arms over my chest.  He looked
like he wanted to reach for me, but something in my face stopped him cold.

“Ember, I don’t need you to
protect me, baby,” he said sadly, running his fingers through his hair.  “I
need you to…”

“Run and hide like a
weakling,” I finished for him.  “Something that is never going to happen.  So,
are you going to help me or not, Nathan?  Because I really don’t have time for
this shit right now.” 

For a long, silent moment he
just looked at me.  I felt something inside me wither when he tilted his head
to the side and gave me a disdainful look that made me feel even smaller than I
had felt before. 

“You don’t need me,” he said
coldly.  “You’re Ember Blaylock, the one woman show.  So go ahead and do what
you feel you’ve got to do.  But, if you die, don’t expect me to be waiting for
you on your next trip.  I’ve had about all the heartache I can stand.”

With that, he gave me
another cold look and stalked out of the gym.  I watched him go, feeling my
heart break as I tried to figure out how things had gotten so messed up between
us so fast.  I honestly didn’t know what hurt more, the fact that he didn’t
believe in me…

Or the fact that he didn’t
look back.

The hour we spent waiting
for the game to end was the longest hour of my life.  Though Bastian was
pretending to have been tortured, he had chosen to attend the game anyway,
probably just to torment me as I waited to die.  I spent the time trying to get
my emotions under some semblance of control.  Every time Nathan’s face flashed
across my mind, I wanted to throw something.  Every time his final words
decided they needed to replay themselves for me, just in case I forgot, I
wanted to curl up somewhere and bawl my head off.

Kim, Blake, and Tyler kept
their distance, letting me have the time I needed to pull myself together. 
They had witnessed our fight and Nathan’s abrupt departure, but they hadn’t
asked me any questions.  Instead, they just stood off to the side and gave me
pitying looks every few minutes. 

I was sitting in the farthest,
darkest, corner of the gym, wishing the game would just
end
already,
when I suddenly felt this terrible, gut-clenching, sensation in the pit of my
stomach.  Less than a second later, I was doubled over, gasping for air and
holding my arms over my chest.  It felt like something was trying to rip out my
heart and show it to me.

No!
Nathan’s voice
suddenly roared in my mind.

Fighting off waves of
dizziness and that god-awful pain in my chest, I closed my eyes and tried to
reach out to him, to follow that agonized voice in my mind.  And, believe it or
not, it worked.  The second I found him, I took off at a sprint, not even
caring if the others followed me.  The only thing that mattered was Nathan.

I nearly tore the door of
the west wing off in my haste to get to the center of my universe.  I didn’t
have to wonder where I was supposed to be.  I had seen the image of the room
from my nightmare very clearly in my mind.  I skidded to a stop in the doorway
and then froze in horror.  Once again, I was tied to a stake, burning brightly
in the darkness of the west wing.  She was a perfect replica of me, right down
to the gown she was wearing that Kim had designed especially for me.  The fire
hadn’t reached my hair or face yet and I—well, the other me—was screaming as my
gown caught and the skin on my arms started to turn black and crack open.

It only took a second for
everything to fall into place.  Bastian had used my blood to create a duplicate
of me that was so lifelike that even my own soul mate couldn’t tell the
difference.  The real victim of my stabbing hadn’t been me at all.

It had been Nathan the whole
time.

I snapped out of my
terrified daze just in time to keep Nathan from committing vampire suicide. 
Without thinking, I ran at him and hit him hard in the stomach with my shoulder
just as he made to jump into the flames to save the me that wasn’t me.

 “Nathan!  Stop!” I shouted
as he kept going, my weight not enough to keep him back.  It was as if he
hadn’t even heard me.  Even when Blake and Tyler ran into the room and added
their strength to mine, he continued to fight us. 

When he pushed me aside and
started fighting Tyler and Blake’s hold like he was possessed or something, I
totally freaked.  When he finally managed to free himself, I threw up a shield between
him and the girl burning at the stake with barely a second to spare.  He
slammed into it with enough force to send him flying across the room.  His eyes
were wild and I could see blood tears staining his too-pale cheeks.  But it was
the animalistic sounds coming from deep in his chest that scared the hell out
of me. 

 “I didn’t mean it,” he
roared, still running at the barrier it was taking my whole focus to hold in
place.  It was only when the me in the fire stopped screaming that he sank to
his knees.  The dead look on his face as he stared at her was enough to make my
blood run cold.  When he spoke again it was in a whisper so agonized that I
felt my heart break.  “I didn’t mean it, baby.  Please come back.  Please,
Ember.”

“We have to do something,”
Kim said, coming up beside me and looking at Nathan with eyes shining with
tears.  When nobody moved, she turned to Tyler and Blake and screamed, “Do
something, damn it!  You can’t leave him like that!”

“They can’t help him,” I
told her, choking on the sobs threatening to strangle me.  “They can’t, but I
can.”

I heard Kim protest, but I kept
moving toward Nathan, anyway.  His love for me had reduced him to the shattered
man before me, and my love for him could bring him back.  I just had to get him
to look at me.

“Nathan?” I said on a sob. 
“Baby, it’s not real.  Please, just look at me.”

When he didn’t even turn his
head, just winced and kept rocking, I felt the beginnings of real, true panic. 
I didn’t dare touch him, but his grief was tearing me apart.  Taking another
step toward him, I tried again.

“Nathan, it’s okay.  I’m
right here.  Look at me.  Please.”  This time, I got a response from him.  He
looked up at me with eyes so shattered that I felt like he was stabbing me in
the heart. 

“You’re not real,” he
whispered, more tears falling down his cheeks, as he turned back to the burning
remains tied to the stake.  “You’re gone.”

“No, I’m right here,” I told
him, my voice breaking.  “Nathan, listen to me.  I’m fine.”

“You always said that,” he
said, talking to my dead dummy again.  “You always said that and you never
were.”

Knowing the only way I was
going to reach him was to touch him, I took a deep, shuddering breath and
reached my hand out to lay it on his shoulder.  Just before my fingers brushed
the material of his shirt, Tyler’s long fingers wrapped around my wrist and
stopped me.  I looked up to see him staring at the dead version of me burning
in the center of the room with a sick look.

“Don’t touch him,” he
whispered.  “He’s dangerous right now, beautiful.  Let me talk to him.”

Nodding, I stepped back and
watched as he knelt down in front of Nathan.  Kim ran over and wrapped her arms
around me.  She studiously avoided looking at the thing that looked like me
that had become a
very
crispy critter and put every ounce of her being
into comforting the real me instead.  Really, though, I think she just couldn’t
stand the idea of seeing me that way, whether it was real or not.

“Nate, I want you to listen
to me,” Tyler said, his voice so soothing that even I reacted to it.  “That is
not Ember.”

“She’s gone,” Nathan said in
another broken whisper, his eyes glazing over with agony.

“No, she isn’t gone,” Tyler
said, flinching as he saw the same shattered eyes I had seen when Nathan
dragged his gaze from my dead face to look at him.  Pointing toward me, he
said, “Look, Nate.  She’s right there.”

“You can see her, too?”
Nathan asked hoarsely.  “She’s haunting me, isn’t she?  I broke my promise.   I
left her.  I told her I wouldn’t wait for her.  I didn’t mean it, though.  I
swear, I didn’t mean it.”

“She knows that,” Tyler
murmured soothingly.  “Look at her, Nate.  Let her tell you she knows you
didn’t mean it.”

Nathan shook his head and
turned back to watching my dummy burn instead.  I could almost see the thoughts
going through his head.  If we didn’t do something, and quick, he was going to
find a way to hurt himself.  Tyler must have seen the same thing in his eyes I
was seeing because, with a sigh of defeat, he looked at me and nodded.

“Slowly, Em,” he whispered. 
“Blake and Kim, get on either side of her.  If he snaps, get her out of here.”

Swallowing hard, I slowly
stepped toward my broken mate, tears streaming unchecked down my cheeks.  The
second my fingers touched him, he turned on me like a wounded animal.  Before
my protectors could stop him, we were across the room and his fingers were
wrapped around my throat like a manacle.  There was no sign of recognition in
his eyes, only fury and a grief so deep that I felt it surround me like a
living thing.

When Tyler, Blake and Kim
came running toward me, I used every bit of power I had to throw up another
shield to keep them back.  Then I turned back to Nathan.  Though I should have
been terrified, I wasn’t.  This was Nathan.  Nathan wouldn’t hurt me.  I just
had to make him see me.

Preferably before he
strangled me to death.

“Nathan, please,” I gasped
out, wrapping my fingers around his wrist.  “Baby, it’s me.  Look…at me!”

“No!” he growled, his fangs flashing
in the light of the still-crackling fire.  “You’re a trick.  He’s tormenting
me.  You’re not real.”

“Yes…I…am,” I choked out. 

Still refusing to panic, I
laid my hand on his chest, directly over his heart.  Then, closing my eyes, I
let my thoughts show him how much I loved him in the form of the memories we
had shared.

The first time I had seen
him and the way my heart had skipped more than one beat.  The way I had felt my
world change the night he kissed me in Grams’ garden.  The love I had
discovered as he whispered to me in the dark about his life and forced me to
share mine. 

My memories ended with the
afternoon we had spent together, the passionate embraces and the love that had
flowed between the two of us.  Love.  Every memory was saturated with that one
emotion, every thought, every action.  And it was love that was going to bring
him back from the darkness he was trapped in and give him back to me.

“I love you, Nathan,” I
gasped out, saying the words out loud for the first time even as my vision
started to blur from lack of oxygen.  “I love you.”

That declaration of love
finally snapped him out of it.  He sucked in another deep breath and his hand
left my throat like I had burned him—something my dying body had been trying to
do for the last minute and a half out of sheer self-preservation.

“Ember?” he whispered in
horror as I coughed and gagged.  “Oh, God!  Baby!  What have I done?”

“I’m…fine…” I choked out,
trying to smile up at him.  My throat felt like I had been swallowing shattered
glass and every breath was agony.  “Is…okay…”

  Faster than I could blink,
his arms came around me in a hold so tight that I actually gasped in pain,
fearing for my ribs and the vulnerable organs behind them.  He immediately
eased up his grip but didn’t let go.  Instead, he stood there and stared at me,
his eyes tracing my face like he was still trying to make himself believe I was
really there.

“I thought you were gone,”
he whispered, a shadow of that broken creature I had seen before flashing
across his eyes again.  “I felt it, Ember.”

I felt a chill slip down my
spine at those words.  How had Bastian done that?  How had he made Nathan feel
the pain of the loss of a soul mate when I was right there, alive and well? 

Then again, I thought maybe
I might already know.

“Nathan, listen to me,” I
wheezed out, feeling proud of myself.  Though I still felt like I was sucking
air through a straw, at least I could talk.  Holding his face between my hands,
I looked deep into his eyes.  “You have to believe in me, Nathan.  If you
believed in me, he never would have been able to make you think I was dead.  I
demand that you trust me, damn it, starting right now.  If you don’t believe in
me, I can’t do this.”

“I do, Em,” he whispered,
crushing me to him and burying his face against my neck.  “I do believe in you,
baby.  I do.”

“Then let me do what I have
to do.”  I wrapped my arms around his waist and laid my head against his
chest.  “Trust me to come back to you, Nathan, and let me finish this.”