Creators (19 page)

I woke up when a hand clamped over my mouth.

I grabbed my assailant’s wrist, pulling with all of my might. It was too dark to see who was in my room with me. My heart screamed for someone to hear its pounding as I dug my nails into the skin of the person who held me down. Suddenly, the room was lit up.

James. A wild thought broke through my sleep-muddled mind—had he come into my room to kill me? He had lured me into the medical station in an attempt to get me to spy on his creator’s son. It hadn’t been about dressing my wound. But he had felt emotion when he touched me, and I wondered if he would do something to ensure he never allowed that weakness in again.

He brought a finger to his lips and nodded toward my bedroom door. I managed to lift my head and look over to the bed where Regan slept, but she was nowhere to be found. A sick thought slithered into my head: had James done something to her?

I lay my head back down on the pillow and stared up at him. James slowly lifted his hand from my mouth. He leaned over me and pressed his lips against my ear, and I tried to suppress the shudder that ran through me. It was as if my body didn’t know this man before me was no longer my James, but, then again, my mind wasn’t entirely sure either.

“I need you to come with me. Can you do that without screaming?”

I nodded, and James held out his hand to help me off the bed. I took it and a rush of warmth ran up my arm. The minute I was standing, he let go. My hand had never felt emptier.

I spun around when he turned away from me and grabbed the map from under my pillow, sticking it inside my nightgown. I didn’t trust that Terrance or George wouldn’t come looking for it. Not that I felt entirely safe having it on me walking with James either.

James led me out of the Harper family’s living quarters and down a long maze of halls and corridors. He neither spoke to me nor looked at me during the entire journey. His shoulders were stiff, and he kept his hands clutched into fists by his side. He stopped in front of a door, looking right and left down the hallway to make sure no one could see us.

It reminded me of the past. Another time we snuck around. Those times where he would take his hand in mine, and we both thought the world couldn’t get any better.

James ushered me inside of the room without any pretense of hospitality. Once in, he set the candle he was carrying down on a table and bolted the door locked behind him. And then he stood staring at me. Taking in every single ounce of me.

Seeing something he disliked, or even worse for him, liked, he pushed me roughly against the door. He placed both of his hands on either side of my head. Trapping me in his glare. His forehead almost touched mine. “How do I know you?” he whispered.

My chest tightened. I shook from head to toe. He could kill me. I knew how to fight, and if it came to it, I would, but James wanted to kill me.

“Did I know you from my time at Templeton?” he begged. I nodded as the tears streamed down my face. “What the hell did you do to me?”

“I saved you. We saved each other,” I said, reaching forward a hand and placing it against his heart.

He jumped from my touch as if it burned his very skin. And considering what the council had done to him, maybe it had. I pushed myself off the door and walked closer to him. I refused to let them take him from me. Not now that he was so close. I couldn’t let it end with death—that wasn’t the story we deserved. The council had already ripped from me too many people I loved. Good people who deserved to live long and happy lives.

James and I deserved to be happy, too.

“We loved each other.”

“Loved? How could one of my kind ever love something like you?”

“You’re only saying that because they want you to feel that way. They made you feel that way using mind control and manipulation. But it’s not how you really feel. We were together. We made each other,” I argued, finding it harder and harder to keep my voice quiet. The more I talked about what the council did to us, the angrier I got. The less I cared if I woke the whole lot of them up.

I had to make James see. I just had to. And I knew I was running out of time. There was no denying it any longer—the end was coming. I didn’t know what that meant for the people I cared about, but I knew we couldn’t run from it any longer.

“I can prove it to you. If you just listen to me, I can prove everything,” I begged, reaching my hands up to his face. Once I touched his skin, his eyes widened with a split second of recognition. It was different than the way we’d touched in the small medical room. This touch wasn’t born out of hidden motives; it was born out of love. James fell to the floor, his hands clutching the sides of his head.

“It hurts. It hurts,” he groaned out.

I crumpled to my knees in front of him, reaching for him but avoiding actually touching him. My hand dangled in the air, yearning for contact. “It’s all in your mind. This is what the council did to you. They conditioned you to feel pain and anguish any time you thought of me. That’s why you’re feeling it now. Because part of you knows I’m telling the truth.”

“You’re lying,” he said. “That’s what your kind does.”

“Why did you come to me tonight? If I’m not important to you then why did you feel compelled to come for me?”

James groaned, his face turning a dark shade of red. “I came because I dreamed of you. This dream…” His voice trailed off in a series of grunts and curses as he fell back, scratching at his skin, attempting to rip it straight off his bones. His eyes rolled slightly to the back of his head.

“What about the dream? What happened? Maybe if you can tell me, we can stop this. You’re stronger than what they did to you,” I urged.

“In the dream…the dream…Terrance…attacked.” James’s fist flew up to his mouth as he bit it in an attempt to keep the pain that burst through him quiet.

I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know how to help him. There was a part of me that wondered if I should have left. He would stop hurting once I was gone. I could pretend that I was just some girl and he just some boy. He could go through life without ever knowing the pain I brought him.

But what kind of life would that have been? Our love had never been easy. Never. And those difficulties made us stronger. I put myself in his shoes. If someone had forced him from me, and I knew there was a way I could get him back, I would do anything. I would walk through hell itself.

It was only then I noticed the map peeking out from the inside of his coat pocket. Despite the way he writhed and trembled on the floor, I reached in and took it. It was the map I had found in Terrance’s room; the map it pained me to part with. He had kept it. He hadn’t turned it in to Harper. “Why did you keep this?”

“Please just leave,” he begged.

“No. The fact that you kept this proves that what I’m telling you, everything I’m telling you, is true. You don’t want this life. You want the places on this map that are untouched by war, places where you could be free. That’s why they wanted you to forget me and tried to kill me. We would always choose a life together, a life filled with the unknown, rather than the life the council gave us.”

Suddenly, I flew across the room and landed painfully against the wall. James held me in place, a constricting hand around my neck. “I need you to stop,” he said.

“The first time I kissed you…” I squeaked. James’s hand tightened slightly, but he would have to kill me before I stopped fighting for him. “I asked you if you wanted to. You were so nervous. We both were. But when your lips touched mine, I thought that everything was changed. Everything I knew. Everything I would become.”

James loosened his grip on my neck. He staggered away from me, his whole body trembling. “Please, Tess, stop. I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Tess?” Hope flared inside me. “That’s the first time you’ve said my name tonight.” I rushed to him and pressed my lips against his. He stilled, but I didn’t pull away. I knew what his touch did to me, lit me up like the stars in the night sky.

James fell to the floor and began to convulse. I fell to my knees next to him, reaching for him, attempting to keep him from hurting himself. If his reaction to the kiss was this violent, I knew he felt something, too. If I just pushed a little harder, maybe I could get him to break through the walls the council made him put up. It was a gamble, but I knew, had our roles been reversed, I would want him to bet it all, too. I bent over him and began to share with him every beautiful moment we’d shared together.

The piano room.

Reading
Jane Eyre
.

Playing in the snow.

Reuniting in the small, cramped jail cell.

Losing ourselves within each other in the woods.

James’s eyes closed and he didn’t move. I pressed my ear over his chest to make sure he was still alive. My heart was pounding so hard against my ears, I couldn’t hear his. Or at least that was why I hoped I couldn’t hear his. It could very well be my heart was pounding for his quiet one, too.

Slowly, James reached a hand up and tucked a piece of hair behind my ear. A sigh shook my entire body. His eyes fluttered open. “Tess?” he asked weakly.

I nodded, blinking back tears. “You’re back?”

James reached up and pulled me into his embrace, wrapping his arms around me. “Only because of you,” he whispered into my ear. “I’m so—”

I turned my head and pressed my lips against his. This time he pressed back. I shifted my body so I was straddling him. “I don’t want to waste any time with pointless apologies. The council doesn’t get to steal any more from us.”

James sat up so I was in his lap. I wrapped my legs around his waist, my nightgown riding up in the process. “I have missed you,” he said, pressing his forehead against my chest, his fingers trailing up and down my exposed legs.

He tilted his head and began to kiss up and down my neck, and I thought my heart would be the one to give out. “I missed you too,” I half moaned.

James took my face into his hands, gently rubbing my cheek with his thumb. “What are you doing here?”

“We’ll talk about it all later. Right now, I just want us. I want you,” I mumbled, bringing his lips to mine. He turned us over so I was lying on my back. He pulled his shirt over his head and tossed it across the room. My back arched under his touch, and my shoulders pulled up off the floor. “I just want us forever,” I breathed.

We were the ocean McNair spoke of. We were gentle and wild. We rushed and remade. We had the power to protect and destroy. And as we moved together on the floor of his room, losing each other under the current, I didn’t need some far off land. I just needed him.

He was my anchor.

And I was his Viola.

…

Later, as we lay tangled in each other, James made me promise to never allow myself to be alone with Terrance. I assured him that his nightmare would remain that—a nightmare. I avoided alone time with the sleazy teen as much as I could. I also told James everything that had happened after he left. I told him of the people I lost and informed him about George’s new place in my life.

“You really think your father would align with him? Then why stop you from trying to meet him?”

I sighed, casually running my fingers up and down his back. “I don’t know. But he’s the only man who has approached me with any sort of plan or information. That was the whole reason my father sent us here.”

“Unless someone got to your father’s man first.”

I raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

“For some reason, George wants to take the council down, right? Well, he has the ability to read the secrets of any man he touches. Say he found your father’s man and discovered his plan. What would he do?”

“Kill him and take his plan for his own?”

James nodded. “Exactly. Then, he would convince you he’s on your side. You would pass along to your father whatever information he wanted you to know. Thus, setting off a series of chain reactions that would accomplish his own end game. Your father and George might have the same goal, but I doubt it’s for the same reasons.”

I furrowed my brow. “But that still doesn’t explain why he would get Louisa to lure me out of hiding. He wanted to bait me into coming here, and that was before my father even got the information he needed from Abrams.”

“You know what this means, right?” James asked.

“We’re going to have to talk to George,” I replied.

Together. Just as he wanted it. Just as he orchestrated it.

“Great,” I muttered.

“Oh, your father’s here?” George asked, looking wildly around him.

“You know he isn’t,” I gritted through my teeth.

“Then how would I be working with him?”

George, James, and I stood huddled together deep within one of the council’s maze-gardens. Everyone in the headquarters was so insanely busy that the entire garden was empty. Creators and chosen ones alike practically ran from one corner of the massive building to the other, mumbling about advancing armies and strategies.

“Then why the hell bring me here, George? Why do you need me?” I asked.

“I told you what I wanted you to do. I gave you the code. I reunited you with your boyfriend. What else do you want from me?” he responded, casually plucking flowers from the vines that seeped through the hedges and chucking them to the ground.

“How about some answers?” James said.

“I really don’t understand why you two are so angry. You’re together. Isn’t that the most important thing in your pathetic little worlds?” George sighed.

“Why do you want me to kill the incubating chosen ones?” I asked again, my voice rising. James put a hand onto my arm in an attempt to calm me, but I could tell by the clench of his jaw, he was just as fed up with George’s antics as I was.

I tapped my foot. “Taking out the group of chosen ones down in the basement would only deprive the council of
that
army. It wouldn’t get rid of their power. They’ll still have all of the chosen ones walking around in there.”

“Yes, dear,” he clipped, “but it would be one less thing standing between the council and the East.”

“And why would we want the eastern sector to win? Why trade one round of power-hungry dictators for another?” James asked.

“If there is one thing I can promise you, James, it’s that you won’t see the eastern sector come to power.” George clapped his hands as if he was signaling the class to quiet down. “Now, if you want the council gone, taking out that army is the first step,” he replied. He was losing his patience with us.

The feeling was mutual.

“I can’t kill an entire army of chosen ones. Deformed or not, they’re still human,” I snapped, reaching over and taking James’s hand into mine.

“It’s their greatest source of power,” he said, sounding exasperated by my morality. “Tell her. You have to know that I’m right, James. Keeping her safe is the most important thing in the world to you, right? Well, as long as that army sits down there sleeping, she won’t be. The creators designed our kind to do their bidding. What will the council demand that damn army down there do?”

James stared at me long and hard. “Don’t let him get inside your head,” I said, cutting James off before he could agree with George. The man was smart enough to use our love against James, and I wouldn’t let him be a pawn in his game.

“Why do you want the council destroyed anyways?” I asked.

“It’s better for you if you don’t know all the details. In fact, you’re safer if you don’t,” George replied.

My father’s words. Those were the exact words my father had said to me back in the community. I pulled my hand from James’s grasp and shoved George with as much force as I could muster. He barely moved an inch, but his eyes narrowed slightly. I couldn’t read the emotion that brewed beneath them. It was only there a second, quickly replaced with a fake mirth. His go-to charade. “What the hell were you trying to do there?” He laughed.

“I want to know everything,” I yelled.

George clamped a hand over my mouth, but before he could reprimand me James smacked it away. “I’m here because apparently you have information we need, but if you touch her again, I’ll rip your head off,” he promised.

“I want to know how you are working with him,” I demanded.

“The girl who stabbed you,” he replied dully.

“Go on,” I said.

“On my way to meet you, I found her. I used my gift and discovered that your father had kidnapped Abrams. Oh, Abrams. I am sorry your friend killed him. Actually, I mean her. Wasn’t that a fun surprise when I pulled you from that closet.”

“You discovered my father’s plan?” I repeated, hoping to hurry him along. I didn’t have time to listen to his own creator-mommy issues.

“He needed you in the community, so he would have a base to hide and question Abrams. He didn’t want to take the community by force. If we have learned anything from living under the council’s thumb, it’s that power works much better when you get the weaklings to just give it to you. Your father’s a smart man. I knew he would discover what I have shaking the hands of all of Abrams’s advisors.”

“And what would that be?” James asked.

“That she never gave a fuck about us. Not chosen ones. And certainly not naturals. She wanted to create the perfect world. She wanted to be God. And when things didn’t go her way, she wanted someone to end it for her.”

“So, how did you end up working for him?” I asked. I was nearly rocking out of my skin. If my father had truly aligned himself with the man who lied and seduced his daughter, I didn’t know what I would do.

What wouldn’t he sacrifice for his great cause?

James ran a comforting hand up and down my back.

“Once I discovered your father had Abrams, I simply melded his plan into mine. I had always known I would see you again. I used your sister to lure you out of hiding, so I could get James here back. Knowing that without him, I wouldn’t ever make it to the inner circle, and I had so many wonderful secrets I wanted to discover,” George said with a grin, his eyes lighting up like a child who was reaching for candy.

“My rendezvous with you and your people really had nothing to do with you when I conceived the plan. I just needed James, but when I discovered it was your father who had Abrams, everything changed. The great thing about reading people’s secrets is there are so many people who have so much to protect. Things they are willing to do anything, and I mean anything, to keep hidden. I sent messages to your father. Told him I wanted a meeting.”

I thought back to the last month in the community. There would have been multiple days I would go without seeing my father. It was entirely plausible that he could have held a meeting with George without my knowing.

“One handshake and I knew what he discovered from Abrams. And
her
disdain for
her
people, her glee at watching it all burn away only fueled me. When I informed your father that I knew what Abrams had told him, he had no choice but to let me in. So, we agreed that he would send you to the headquarters.”

“But you just said it was never really about Tess. You had gotten to her father. What did you need her here for?” James asked.

“I needed her to get to you,” he replied.

I didn’t have a good feeling about any of it. I fumbled for James’s hand again. He took mine in his and brought it to his lips. “Why would you need me to get to him? What’s his role in this? What the hell are you and my father planning?”

“When your father and his men come, I’ll need as many chosen ones on my side as I can get to help them in, so he can do what he has agreed to do. I’ll need your help, James. If I don’t have it, we have zero chance of succeeding. Me. You. And the chosen one, Robert. We are the three that give the naturals hope of doing what they’ll come here for.”

I gulped. “And what exactly is that?”

“We’re going to enact the fail-safe.”

“Fail-safe?” James asked.

“I won’t give you any more details on that now. So, don’t waste either of our time asking. I’ve already told you too much. If this doesn’t work, the less you can confess the better. We both know you don’t handle pain too well.”

I gave James’s hand a squeeze, silently pleading with him to ignore George’s not so subtle dig. “I understand the importance of taking out the incubating chosen ones, but why do you need me to do what you can do yourself?”

“You know what? Like I said before, do it or don’t. I don’t care. Either way, soon enough you’ll all have to make some choices. You won’t be able to just talk your way through them. War’s an ugly thing. You should have realized that before you signed up,” he hissed at me.

“I suggest you walk away,” James warned.

George scowled and turned to head down the pathway that led back to the headquarters. “You’re welcome for the reunion, by the way,” he called over his shoulder.

“Oh, shit,” I muttered.

“What is it?” James asked, lifting my chin up.

“Bringing you into this isn’t the only reason he needed me here. He must have known from my father that Abrams whispered the fail-safe code to me. He would have gotten that when he pulled me from the closet. But just now, back when I pushed him, he would have seen that I have the map he needs. Or rather that you have it.”

I had given the map to James on the night of our reunion. “It’s locked in my safe back in my room.”

“A safe you need to go change the code on right now,” I replied.

“Are you sure we don’t want him to have the map? What if he’s really trying to bring down the council? No tricks. Wouldn’t that mean we would be free?” he asked, pressing a kiss on my forehead.

I sighed. Could my father and George’s plan make that dream a reality?

“You know he has us exactly where he wants us, right?” I asked James. I no longer knew who was working for whom and what the endgame was. It seemed impossible that George could be on our side.

“I know,” James said quietly.

I was petrified of what he had planned for us next.

…

The next couple of days went by without incident. I hadn’t seen George since our meeting in the garden, and James’s duty as bodyguard for the elder Harper kept us from each other. He had told me that Harper didn’t trust him entirely yet, so his access to information and daily routines was limited at best. Mostly, he stood watch outside doors. Neither of us wanted to risk getting caught, so we didn’t attempt to see each other. We both knew George had been playing us, and we didn’t want to do anything else that might put us further in danger.

At least not yet. Not till we had to. Every morning, as the sun broke through my sleep, a rush of gratitude filled my soul. I was eternally grateful for another day where the world didn’t fall down around us. Another day of knowing James was still out there. Another day of knowing that he knew I was still out there, too.

So, for the time being, we had to be content within our memories.

I busied myself with fulfilling the meaningless and insulting demands of Terrance and Richard. I followed after them, building an iron shield around myself to keep their petty and unkind words from eliciting any anger. After the incident with the piano, I was sure that Terrance was more miffed than pleased that George was able to produce results where he could not. Terrance had not bothered me about the map again. James had recreated a fake one to take its place, and for the time being Terrance’s father couldn’t tell the difference.

Late one night, when I had finally finished cleaning the pots and pans of the four different dishes the boys demanded I make for dinner, I sluggishly walked toward my room. I was thankful for the exhaustion that claimed my body. It would make sleeping a bit easier. But as I got closer to the room I shared with Regan, I had to make one stop.

The piano.

It was the one luxury I allowed myself. I slowly creaked open the door and stepped into the study. I was never crazy enough to play; I simply touched the keys. I needed to know they still existed as well. The piano was my connection to the past, rooting me in the knowledge that some things would never be lost.

I was making a mental list of all the times I had played when a hand came down over my mouth. I grinned under the hand, remembering how James has snuck me from my room. Smiling over how we had found each other again. We had always been able to find each other. He was the only one who would think to find me there. Perhaps he felt like I did, that it was, while crazy, worth the risk.

I leaned back into his body and went still. I knew James’s frame as I knew my own, and he wasn’t the man standing behind me.

I reached up to try and pry the hand off, but the culprit was too strong. I screamed but it only came out muffled. The man’s other arm wrapped around my waist, squeezing so tight that I found it difficult to breathe. He began to pull me backward. I tried to drag my feet, but it barely stopped him. I kicked. I let my body go limp, forcing him to carry dead weight. Nothing worked.

He pulled me further into the darkness of the room. As soon as he lifted his hand from my mouth, I screamed again as loud as I could. I didn’t care if the whole chosen one army came running because that would bring James, too.

Shocked by the noise that issued from me, the man dropped me to the ground. I scrambled across the floor, praying the darkness would be my ally. I pulled the velvet drape over me and scrunched against the wall as much as I could.

A hand grabbed my ankle and yanked me across the floor from my hiding place. The man walloped me in the side of the head as a reward for my screams. Spots appeared in front of my eyes, and soon the darkness I was always running from was back.

When I came to, I was on my back. The moon reached down for me through the window like it wanted to cover me, protect me like a shield from whomever it was that wanted to hurt me.

I gingerly reached a hand to the side of my head. My fingers came back wet and bloody. With a groan, I sat up. It was only a matter of seconds before I threw up everything I had in my stomach. I wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon.