Blood of Half Gods (17 page)

I look up at Kallen with wide eyes.  “You can hear that, right?”

He nods his dumbfounded head.  “Yes, I can.”

“Xandra, are you out there daydreaming about that boy again?  Honey, the doctor said that’s not good for you.  You need to push him out of your thoughts so you can get better.”

“It seems to be coming from that direction,” I say, pointing towards a clump of low brush.  I start walking towards it.

Kallen grabs my arm.  “What are you doing?”

I thought it was obvious.  “I’m going to try to figure out what’s going on.”

“We do not know this area and from what Quinn said, the Daityas roam these areas looking for trouble.”

I shrug.  “So.  And I don’t think it’s a Giant who keeps calling me and trying to make me think I’m crazy.” 

He shakes his head.  “This is a bad idea.”

I purse my lips for a second.  “Yeah, probably.”  I start walking anyway.

As I near the small clump of brush, ready to stomp on whatever annoying little creature is trying to mess with my sanity, I hear Mom’s voice again.  “Xandra, the doctors says if you don’t snap out of it, he’s going to have to sedate you.  You don’t want that, do you?”

Well, no, as a matter of fact I don’t.  I do want to know why the voice suddenly sounds like it’s coming from another clump of brush, though.  Is whatever this is so tiny that I can’t see it move?  Maybe it’s invisible.  Changing direction, I power walk to the next clump of brush, determined to figure this out.  What I should probably have been doing is watching where I step.  Because suddenly, I’m falling through a hole in the ground that wasn’t there before.  I’m so panicked, I don’t know what to do.  The word mattress comes to mind a fraction of a second too late.  I hit a solid dirt floor with a thump and a snap.  The thump wasn’t nearly as bad as the snap, since I’m pretty sure I just broke my right femur.  My head hurts, too.  I put a hand to it and there’s a huge lump on the back of my head already.  Looking back up, trying to avoid the falling sand from getting into my eyes, I look for Kallen.  I can’t see him.  I don’t even see the hole anymore.  What’s going on?

A wave of intense nausea hits me, and I roll to my left side, sure I’m going to throw up.  The sudden movement made my eyes blurry, and pain explodes in my brain.  I’m pretty sure I have a concussion.  I lay my forehead on the cool earth and try to will the strength to heal myself.  Unfortunately, my mind decides losing consciousness is a better plan.  I’m so screwed.

Chapter 14

“Jim, I think she’s waking up,” Mom says in a stage whisper.  Why does she have to be so loud?  Doesn’t she know my head is killing me?

I feel my bed sag a little and then I feel Dad’s hand on my forehead.  “She still has a fever, but she feels a lot cooler than she did earlier.  Xandra, can you hear me?”

I want to answer him, but my mouth is so dry, I can barely make a sound.  “Water,” I whisper, not sure if they can hear me or not.

“Of course,” Mom says, and then I feel her hand under my head, tilting it up so she can give me a sip of water.  It feels so good on my lips and tongue.  I feel like the Saraha moved to the inside of my body.  If someone poked a hole in me right now, I’m pretty sure only sand would come out, no blood. 

“Xandra, I want to take a look at the bump on your head, okay?” Dad says gently, replacing Mom’s hand with his at the back of my neck.  I hiss when he touches a certain spot.  “I don’t like the looks of this, Julienne.  There’s an awful lot of pressure here.  As soon as the storm clears, I’m going to take her into Denver for an MRI.  I’m not waiting for the plows.”

“Jim, that’s too dangerous.”  I can hear the worry in Mom’s voice.

Denver?  That seems so far away.  Especially in a moving car which will make me even more nauseated than I already am.  “I don’t want to go,” I rasp.  Going would also mean getting out of this bed, and right now, moving is very, very bad.  My head feels like a pinball table that some is trying to use with bowling balls instead of those little silver ones. 

“I know, sweetheart,” Mom says, stroking my forehead.  That doesn’t feel too bad.  Shifting to get more comfortable, a sharp pain in my leg makes me cry out.  “Xandra, you have to lie still,” Mom admonishes.  “You have a broken leg and Dad doesn’t have casting material.  Your leg is wrapped securely, but it’s important you stay still.”

“You have a compound fracture.  Like your mom said, it’s wrapped, but we’re in the middle of one of the worst blizzards we’ve ever had.  There’s no way to get you down the mountain until the storm moves on.  You have an IV in your arm, and I’m pumping you full of antibiotics, but your body is having trouble fighting off an infection.  The more you move your leg around, the more damage you cause, and the damaged tissue gets infected easier than healthy tissue.  You have to stay still.”

I feel like I’m in one of Dad’s anatomy lessons and he’s teaching me about broken bones.  Unfortunately, instead of the big anatomical charts he usually uses to teach me, he can use the damage to my body to get his point across.  “What happened?” I ask.

Mom is smoothing the hair back from my forehead.  “You got caught in the storm.  We looked for you, but…” her voice trails off.  I opened my eyes and see that she has tears in hers. 

“Mom?”

“There were hikers in the woods.  You got into a scuffle with them, and one of them pushed you into a tree.  You tried to run from them, and you weren’t watching where you were going.  You fell into the gorge.  They left you there.” 

I sort of remember that.  I remember hitting the tree.  Someone threw me into it.  Someone I was running from.  “Why was I out in the storm?”  My throat is so sore, each word feels like rough grade sandpaper.

Dad chuckles, but I don’t hear any humor in it.  “Your grandparents have a way of setting you off.”

“Jim,” Mom admonishes without much enthusiasm.

“Julienne, you know it’s true.  Your father goes out of his way to antagonize her.  He picks at every little thing she does.  You don’t hear him talking to Zac like that.  And your mother is no better, what with her head in the clouds, not paying attention to anything around her except those stupid stories she’s always trying to fill the kids’ heads with – witches, fairies, giants.  All that nonsense.  If she spent a little time in the real world, maybe she would stand up to him once in a while.”

“Jim, do we have to do this now?  Can’t we just focus on Xandra right now?”

Dad doesn’t say anything for a minute.  Then, he sits down on the bed.  “I’m sorry, honey.  It just scared me to death when you wouldn’t come back inside.  Your mother called and called for you.  I was worried…I was worried you were with that boy again.”

I frown but it hurts my head, so I stop.  “What boy, Dad.”

His turn to frown.  “Xandra, we’ve had this discussion too many times for you to play the amnesiac.”

I wish my brain agreed.  We live out in the middle of nowhere, so many miles above sea level that some people can’t get enough oxygen up here.  There are no boys for too many miles to count.  But maybe my brain is just a little fuzzy right now.  I’m pretty sure I have a concussion to go with my compound fracture.  At least I can make Dad feel better.  “No, Dad, I wasn’t with him.”  Whoever he is.  “I just got caught in the storm.”

Dad expels a long breath and puts his hand on my arm.  “I’m sorry to be so hard on you about him; he just isn’t good for you.”

I lift my hand out from under the covers and put it on his.  “I know.”  He smiles, so I guess that was the right thing to say.

He stands up and grimaces at Mom.  “Sorry, I got carried away.”  Mom nods curtly.  She has her arms tight across her chest.  What did I miss?  I’ve never seen them this tense around each other before.

“Is everything okay?” I ask.

Mom smiles down at me.  “Of course, everything’s fine now that you’re home.”

“We should let her get some rest,” Dad says. 

Mom nods and smooths my hair from my forehead again.  “Go back to sleep, Xandra.  You really do need your rest.”

I nod and close my eyes.  I think it’s going to be hard to go back to sleep, considering how painful my whole body is, but it’s not.  The next time I open my eyes, the sun is streaming through my bedroom window.  I’m careful not to move my leg, but I do feel the back of my head.  That’s still quite a lump I have.  I really want to sit up, but I don’t think I should.  Since I don’t have a television in my room, and I can’t reach my computer, I’m stuck staring at the walls of the bedroom I’ve had since I was born.  Boring.

Look, there’s the lamp that Mom got me for my twelfth birthday.  And there’s the ugly faux Faberge egg Grandma sent me for Christmas last year.  I don’t know why, I hate gaudy things like that.  As I look at it, I feel my brain hiccup.  Yes, hiccup.  Well, maybe burp.  Because something came out of the hiccup/burp.  The word no.  Actually, it was more like NO.  I close my eyes, open them and look at the egg again.  It truly is hideous.  NO.  I put my hand to my head.  It was louder that time, and now my head is hurting even worse.  I wish Mom would float in here so I can ask for some ibuprofen.

Mom.  Float.  That’s ringing some loud bells in my ears.  And my head.  I close my eyes tightly, trying to clear the muck.  I open them back up.  That’s strange.  The color of the walls is off.  They’re more like a teal than the warm blue I picked out last year.  And my comforter.  It’s not the right shade of dark blue.  Ignoring my hurt leg, I push myself up against the headboard so I can get a better look around.  It’s the little things that are off.  It’s almost an exact replica, though.  Whoever did this is good.  Scary good.

How did they know what my room in my realm looks like?  It’s like they took the image from my mind, but they couldn’t quite match the colors or the tiny details.  Like the carpeting, it’s too flat.  The computer is the wrong size. 

Okay, I’m convinced.  This isn’t my room.  So, where am I?  I shift a little again and pain shoots up my leg.  It takes a lot not to cry out, but I don’t want to alert whoever those people are pretending to be my parents that I’m awake.  I feel my head and there’s definitely a bump there.  I guess my injuries are real.  Yeah, how fun.  I’m stuck in some weird, scary place with a broken leg and a head injury.  What do I do now?

Figure out how I got here, I guess.  I put my head gently back against the headboard, careful not to touch the bump against it, and close my eyes.  It sure would be a lot easier if I didn’t have these injuries.

My brain does that hiccup/burp thing again.  Healing.  I can do that.  And with a whoosh, images and thoughts flood into my mind as if someone’s holding a funnel and pouring them into my brain.  I can heal because I have magic. I have a broken leg and a head injury because I fell into a big hole.  The images keep coming, but I have to focus and prioritize.  First things first, I need fix myself.  Then I can worry about the rest.

Concentrating on my leg first, I start to imagine it healing.  The bone molding back together.  The ligaments, tendons and muscle sewing back together.  My fake dad was right, there is an infection.  My magic can taste it as it searches my veins, looking for the bacteria cells.  After several long, painful minutes, the skin is closed and my leg is healed.  Now, I have to do the same thing with my head.  The way it’s pounding right now, I probably should have done it first.  As soon as the pressure from the goose egg goes away, the pounding stops.  I feel like myself again.

Looking around the room, I see what I missed earlier.  The colors aren’t off because whoever did this got them wrong.  They’re off because I am looking at them through a haze of the magic the being used to hold this imagery in place.  Most people, even magical ones, can’t see that.  Concentrating on it, I pull my magic, feeling it dissolve the illusion around me.

“Finally!” I hear Nixie scream.  She’s dancing on the wall in front of me like a flashlight.  I put my hand to my lips to shush her.  “Sorry,” she whispers.  “I was starting to worry you weren’t ever going to wake up.  You’ve been out of it for two days.  I’ve been calling out and trying to break through the enchantment, but I couldn’t.”

Two days?  No freaking way.  “What happened?” I ask her, as I look around.  She does make a good flashlight.

Okay, no wonder my leg was getting infected.  I’m pretty sure I’m in a mining shaft.  A very old, poorly built mining shaft.  I’m leaning against the wall and sitting on the disgusting floor, which is covered with what I’m going to call confetti, because I don’t want to know what it really is or what animal made it.  Huh, I’m not as happy as I thought I’d be to see reality.

I think I came out of the illusion just in time, though, because it looks like reality is literally going to cave in any minute now.  My guess, fake Mom and Dad know I’m awake and aware.  So now, they’ve jumped from holding me hostage to trying to kill me.  I sure wish I could understand the fascination with that.  Personally, I like me.  I’m nice and friendly and I’m far from stupid.  I think I’m pretty witty sometimes, too, when I’m not being sarcastic.  So, I have no idea why ‘kill Xandra’ jumps to the minds of so many people, or things, that I meet.  Maybe I need to do a little more soul searching, try to see me as others do.

The creaking of a wooden beam reminds me that this is definitely
not
the time for soul searching.  Dirt is starting to rain down on me as the walls of the mine shaft start to shake.  Nixie is dancing around frantically.