Dead Awakenings (6 page)

The water steamed, and she stepped under the spray. The drops hit her like a thousand tiny lava rocks. Goose bumps stood at attention on her arms and legs.

She reveled in the feeling running over her skin and washing away the days, the months, the years. Relaxing, her mind drifted. Her name was… She had been born in… Born on… Her mother was… She went to school at… Nothing. She was nobody anymore.

She washed her hair three times, put conditioner in it, and crumpled on the floor to let the water rain down her body. She wasn’t sure how long she sat there. But when her hips began to ache from the cement she stood, stretched, and rinsed out her hair.

In the dresser she located the only clothes even remotely close to her size. A large black T-shirt and a pair of black sweats, several sizes too long. A drawer of women’s underthings held nice and lacy, but modest, items. She liked that. She didn’t want to think that the men in this place would buy things too racy and expect her to wear them.

She stood behind the screen and put them on. She had to roll down the sweats at the waist, and the shirt, well it just was what it was. Not fashionable in any way, but she didn’t care. Back in the bathroom she found a brush along with some leave-in conditioner. She rubbed a palm-size amount through her hair and then carefully began to untangle her rats’ nest of a head. Thirty minutes later, satisfied with the condition of her hair, her arms ached from being held up.

She lay on the mattress. Her body hummed with electricity and strength, but her mind reeled from the overload. The questions she had put off now loomed over her. What was going to happen to her? Would they let her go? What would she eat?
She couldn’t—she didn’t want to think about that thing that she knew she could never, ever do again.

The questions whirled and swirled inside her head until she could no longer think. She grabbed a pillow, curled into a ball and drifted off to sleep.

* * *

“I don’t know.” Evaine laughed. “I’m a sophomore; I hadn’t thought that far ahead.”

She walked down the sidewalk with an ice cream cone dripping down one hand and someone else’s hand in the other. He drilled her about her college submissions and her plans for the future.

“What about you? You have any definite plans?” She licked her cone.

“I got accepted to Stanford, Harvard, and Yale. I’m pretty sure I want to go somewhere back east for school, to get away.”

“Wow. Must be nice. What does your dad do?”

“Oh, my parents died a few years ago, but my dad was a surgeon and my mom a pharmaceutical rep.”

She stopped walking. “Tristan, I’m sorry. I had no idea.”

“They weren’t around much after I turned about nine. Don’t get me wrong, I loved them, but they just got kind of…preoccupied I guess.”

“What happened when you were nine?”

“My baby sister was born. There were a lot of complications and a bunch of medical problems. She died when she was little. After she died my parents threw themselves into their work. About three years ago they were coming back from a charity event in Colorado and their plane went down. Their bodies were never recovered.” Tristan had stopped walking and looked off at the bright lights of the strip.

After a while she finally spoke. “So, who do you live with now?”

“My grandparents. They are really great. My granddaddy used to own a logging company in Idaho. He and Gammy sold it and moved here to sunny Las Vegas. He has a few other companies around the United States that he either owns or is on the board of.” Tristan laughed. “Sorry, I know that was a lot. What about you?”

She looked at her feet. She didn’t like talking about her home life. Home life—that was a joke. Home is where your heart is, they say. Well her heart was anywhere but back in the trailer park with Phyllis.

A chill ran through her. Tristan shrugged off this letterman’s jacket and put it over her shoulders.

“Oh, you don’t need to do that I’m fine.” She smiled up at him.

“Nah, it looks good on you. I want you to wear it. I want you to meet my grandparents too.”

Evaine felt her smile slip. She was pretty sure they wouldn’t want their grandson going out with a girl born out of wedlock to an alcoholic mother who didn’t even know who the father was. A girl taken into foster care at the age of seven only to be bounced around for years till she finally found a family who cared enough to want to try and help her. Until Phyllis showed back up clean and sober and whisked her away to Vegas to be with her “new daddy.” Yeah, New Daddy took one look at Evaine and decided he wanted her more than Phyllis. So out walked Daddy and out went Phyllis’s sobriety.

She was pretty sure his grandparents would just love her.

Chapter Six

“You need to wake up.”
A male voice spoke in her head.

The picture of Tristan smiling and talking slipped away. Her mind went blank. The gray fog of sleep settled in, and then she heard it again. Someone calling to her.

“You’ve been asleep too long. You need to wake up now.”

Cool fingers touched her skin. She opened her eyes to see Aron’s white face. She sat up so suddenly that the movement made him jump. The memory of what had happened hit her as the smell of clean sheets filled her nostrils. She groaned audibly. Only a minute ago she had felt so safe, so warm, and home. She pressed her hands into her temples, trying to remember her dream, willing the memories to stay. She needed them. But they slipped away further. She let out a cry of frustration.

“Easy. Remember where you are. We aren’t here to hurt you.”
The soothing voice flowed through her head. She opened her eyes again. She was in a cell in an underground house. And she was dead.

“She needs some liquids, but I think she’s fine. Just exhausted.” Aron spoke over his shoulder to someone before turning back to her. “You’ve been asleep for a day. How do you feel?”

She shrugged. Her body didn’t buzz as it had before. Her head ached, but she thought maybe it was going away and not coming on.

Aron nodded and got up to leave. “I’ll get her some Isis.”

A man she hadn’t met before sat at the little table. Luca stood behind him, leaning casually against the wall, watching her carefully.

She scratched her head and combed at her hair with her fingers trying to flatten it.

“This is Nate. He’s the head of the Family.” Luca’s voice was calm and soothing, as if talking to a child.

She could feel him again. Concern, frustration, need. She wished he would stop that. She didn’t want to know what he felt. She wondered if she could read his mind as well as send him messages.
“Knock it off,”
she thought.
“I don’t want to feel what you feel.”
He looked at her quizzically, but if he heard what she said, he didn’t let on.

“You sure she came back?” Nate’s neat, short, white hair looked like a businessman’s haircut. He wore jeans and a blue button-down shirt. If his skin hadn’t been so pale and his hair so white she would have thought him just another young Wall-Streeter. He appeared so normal. Except that he was dead of course. Just as, somehow, she was dead.

“She’s in there. She’s just scared.” Luca still stared at her.

How did he know that? She didn’t usually show her emotions. She had learned to mask her feelings at a young age. Another memory that made little sense. She looked at both men, adopting the natural blank stare she’d taught herself to do so long ago. Her face obeyed instinctively.

“Well, we need to talk to her, and we need to have her talk back.”

“I can speak for myself.”

“I am Nate Lake, and as Luca said before, you’re safe.”

“Who from?”

“We aren’t sure yet. We are trying to find out. But they’re the same people who did this to all of us.”

“Who is
us
?”

“We are the Family.”

“You’re a family?”

“In a way, yes. We’ve all been reborn by the same group of people. And we all have some DNA strands that are similar. DNA that shouldn’t be there. But that’s more information than you need right now.”

“And what are we exactly?”

“I thought that Luca and Aron explained this to you before.” He looked at Luca, who shrugged. “We’re undead.”

“Yes, they told me that, but what does it mean?”

“Let’s get to that later.” Nate held a hand up. “I think she came all the way back,” he said under his breath to Luca. “OK, let me ask you a few questions, if you don’t mind.”

She leaned into the large down pillows on her bed and crossed her arms. Her face twitched. Too many people were staring at her.

“Do you remember your name?”

“Evaine Michaels.” She remembered saying it to someone in her dreams.

“Well, that was quick.” Nate raised his brows.

“I wish everything would come back. I’m getting really tired of not remembering anything. And no offense, but I’m still not sure I should be trusting any of you.” She swallowed down the anger rising in her voice.

“Take it easy.”
Luca’s voice had an annoyed edge.

She shot him a glare. She couldn’t stand the way he looked at her, continually talking into her mind, making his feelings overly obvious.

“Stop that!” she snapped. “I’m not a baby, and I’m tired of you constantly pushing your thoughts and feelings on me.” Luca had called to her in her head, awakening her from her dream.

He popped his eyes wide and opened his mouth to speak, but shut it again, turning his gaze away.

“No one here is going to hurt you, Evaine. All we want is to help you. But if you can remember anything that might help us—”

“Remember? I don’t remember anything. I don’t remember who I am, where I’m from, and what the hell I was doing strapped to a table in a boarded-up hospital.” The memory of the men in white lab coats flooded into view like a movie in her head. Her eyesight sharpened, and her hearing became more acute.

The camera on the wall buzzed and moved. A camera? They were watching her. Had they watched when she’d taken a shower? When she’d gotten dressed?
Her rage rose at a rapid rate, flooding her mind in huge waves, crashing into her, and making her lose all sense of reason. Her stomach growled, and her skin itched as though she were covered in poison ivy.

Luca stiffened where he leaned against the wall. Nate hadn’t stopped talking. She could hear the hum of his voice, but the words were drowned out by a ringing in her ears. Luca moved slowly, infinitesimal even. His muscles flexed as he unfolded his arms and let them hang by his sides. The fact that he was trying to hide his movements made her even angrier.

“Nate, give her a minute.” Luca never let his eyes leave her face. He stepped to the side of Nate’s chair.

Her head throbbed, and her muscles twitched. They were watching her. Probably all standing around the camera, watching when she was in the shower. Like her mom had caught Mark doing before she kicked him out. Shame, betrayal, and anger rushed through her. The fact she’d recovered another memory didn’t even register in her furious state.

“Evaine, calm it down. Whatever is setting you off, let it go. You’ve been poisoned with chemicals that are fighting within your body, causing your brain synapses to fire too rapidly. That’s why you are getting the extreme cravings and rages. You can stop it though, calm it down.”

Talk, talk, talk. She wanted it all to stop, and she wanted to get out of here. She had to get out. The rage took over, and she screamed. Nate had his phone out, trying to call someone
.
This was his fault. This was his house. He could let her out of here.

She jumped off the bed and leaped at Nate. Luca pushed Nate out of the way and caught her midair. He pinned her to the wall. She thrashed, but he had her, holding her a foot off the floor by her wrists. She wrapped her legs around his waist and squeezed with her thighs. Howling again she gnashed her teeth at him. His eyes were fiery slits. A trickle of sweat ran down his neck. His muscles trembled as he held her at bay. Concern and hunger rolled off of him and hit her with force. She strained her thighs, barely able to lock her ankles around his large torso.

“Stop!”
He yelled. Her head throbbed from the sound.
“You need to realize we’re here to help you. You can either let us try to help and get through this, or you can end up in the cells. It’s your choice.”
This time he was not soft or soothing. He commanded.

He was so close to her. A shiver skittered down her spine at his nearness. No matter what he said, she felt what his body wanted. The emotion she’d been feeling from him earlier finally registered. Lust.

The scents of his body invaded her. His cologne, soap, shampoo. Her wrists tingled where he touched her. Her thighs burned with need, wrapped around his waist. His soft, full lips moved in slow motion when he spoke. She wanted to touch them.

Suddenly, as if he could tell what she was thinking, his eyes began to change. He still watched her, not as an enemy watches an opponent in battle, but as if she were a drink of crystal clear water and he was in the desert. She was sure no one had ever looked at her like that before. Warmth pooled in her belly and spread through her. Her body tingled with anticipation. She wanted him. He slacked his grip on her arms. She extricated her legs from around his waist, and he placed her on the floor. They stood for several minutes locked in an ocular battle.

A cool wetness rolled down her cheeks. The tears flowed down, rage and lust giving way to shock and fear. She couldn’t stop them. Everything they’d told her and all that had happened to her in the last days was more than she could hold in anymore. How could any of it be real? She believed in God and paradise and hell. Was this hell? It sure felt like it. Except for him. The man holding her with his scarred, strong hands. He reached up and brushed the tears from her cheeks.

“I want to go home.” Evaine’s voice came out in a whisper.

Luca let out a long sigh and touched her face again. “You are home.”

“I think that’s enough for today.” Nate stood, his chair scraping back from the table. “We have definitely settled the debate as to whether or not she has come back all the way or not.”