Indestructible (18 page)

The fire came closer and I could already picture its warm caress on my face. My hand collided with something, and a smile curled my lips as my fingers closed around an object in the shape of my phone. I fumbled with it until the screen came to life, illuminating the cave with a bright white light.

Careful to shield the light so it didn’t fall on Adrian’s face, I made my way toward the entrance. I held my breath as I set Adrian’s trap and bells aside. How stupid he was to think that something like this could stop me? I was a magic disease carrier, not a mindless animal. Still, I couldn’t be mad at him for trying, and I didn’t understand why. He was only an obstacle that prevented me from getting what I wanted and needed the most; elements.

Alarms went off at the back of my mind. A tiny voice was yelling at me and telling me to go back, to wake up Adrian and tell him what was going on, that what I was doing wasn’t me. But the voice was being silly, wasn’t it? How could I be anyone else other than me?

As soon as I was out of the cave, the fire intensified, but I couldn’t see the person who was in the possession of it. My phone wasn’t bright enough to illuminate the whole clearing and I didn’t want to startle my target, so I put the phone in my pocket. The light coming from the moon was enough for me to find my way toward the element. I could feel the fire’s pull and followed its trail. The fire wanted me to find it. It wanted me to take it and possess it.

Treading carefully through the branches and bushes, I tried to come up with a way to capture the fire. I didn’t have any weapons and I didn’t know how much resistance my target would offer. My gaze fell on a nearby rock and I picked it up. Maybe I could hit the target from afar and then snatch the element. There was no need to engage in unnecessary fights. I needed my strength if I wanted to escape from Adrian and get all those elements that waited for me. What a stupid idea it had been to come here! Big cities had much more prey and if one element escaped me, I wouldn’t have trouble finding another.

My foot got caught in something and I fell face first onto the ground. Damn it. Picking up my rock, I dragged myself to my feet, but the fire intensified.

“Is someone there?” a male voice not far from me yelled. I was close, but he had heard me, which meant he’d be on alert when I approached. What was I supposed to do now? Sneaking up on him seemed pointless.

“Hello?” I yelled, slumping against a tree. Hiding the rock behind my back, I pulled my knee up and wrapped my free hand around my ankle. “Please! I need help!”

“Where are you?” he said, his element approaching.

“Over here.” I could tell he was going in the right direction. All I had to do was be patient and not let my desire for the element ruin my chance of obtaining it. If I jumped out at the man too soon, he could escape me.

“Are you alright?” The man came rushing toward me. He was younger than I’d expected him to be, maybe in his late twenties. His hair was short and dark, but I couldn’t see much more because the branches obscured the moonlight even more. None of it mattered, though. His element was young, strong and healthy. That was all I needed.

“I don’t know. I tripped and… my ankle hurts so much.” I was proud of my whiny voice.

“I’ll call an ambulance.” The man reached into the pocket of his pants and got his phone out. I fought the urge to roll my eyes. He was standing close to me, but not close enough. Why didn’t he come to see what had happened before calling the stupid ambulance? I didn’t need an ambulance. They’d send too many people and I couldn’t possibly take all of their elements. It would be such a waste to kill them for nothing.

“Are you sure they can find us here?” I said. “I don’t think I broke anything. Just sprained my ankle. If you have something cold I could put on it…”

The man ended the call and looked at me. “Who are you? What are you doing here in the middle of the night?”

He was asking way too many questions. “And who are you? How can I know you’re not planning to attack me? I’m helpless like this.”

“Hey, I didn’t even know you’re here. I’m not trying to hurt you, I promise. I’m totally harmless.” He raised his hands up. Yeah, and he was also an idiot who had no clue what to do with a damsel in distress. His element spiked up and I knew he didn’t trust me. I couldn’t get up like nothing had happened and go after him. That would either send him running or he’d draw a weapon. I couldn’t even see if he had a knife or a gun somewhere on him.

“My boyfriend is nearby,” I said shyly. “We came here to… you know, have some privacy.”

The guy stared at me for a moment. “Oh.”

“So do you have something cold? Is your element water or ice? Because that would be awesome.” I dug my nails into my skin to stop myself from shivering. It was a surprise I hadn’t snapped already and just gone for the element. Even my disease knew this had to be carefully planned if I wanted to get the element.

“No, nothing like that.” He shifted his weight from foot to foot as if he were impatient. Maybe he wanted to get away from me, but I had no idea what he was doing here in the first place. Why would a guy be alone in the middle of the woods at night? Unless he wasn’t alone. I couldn’t feel any other element, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t have come here with a carrier. Maybe that was why he didn’t want to tell me anything and was anxious to go back to his girlfriend or boyfriend. Hell, maybe he didn’t know the person with him was a carrier. Maybe I was trying to kill someone else’s prey. That would be fun.

“You should go then,” I said, supporting myself on the tree and pushing myself up. “The pain has subsided a little, so I’m just going to try to get back to my boyfriend.” I made a couple of steps and plummeted to the ground. If that wasn’t enough for the jerk to help me, then I didn’t know what was.

“Hey, are you okay?” He finally approached me, putting his hand on my shoulder. I twisted around, tackling him to the ground. He clearly hadn’t expected that, because his back hit the ground and he gasped. My fingers wrapped around his throat, but he managed to knee me in the stomach. I yelped, but the taste of his fire was so close and it blocked any pain or sensation that I might have felt otherwise.

An image of a fireplace appeared in my mind. I went closer to it, reaching out to the fire. I had never seen a more beautiful element. All I had to do was push my hand into that bright orange and yellowish light.

Pain erupted in my head, chasing away the image of fire. Something had hit me on the back of the head and I was slipping into the darkness, away from the warmth and light.

Chapter 27

My head throbbed as I cracked my eyes open. A familiar face was poised above me, his lips pressed together into a straight line.

“How are you feeling?” Adrian asked, his gray-blue eyes unusually cold.

“What happened?” I choked out, just as the images from the last night flashed through my mind. Oh, shit. I’d tried to kill someone. Sitting up faster than I should, I looked at Adrian, black spots dancing in front of my eyes. “Tell me. Did I…?”

“No, you didn’t. The guy is fine. I got there in time.”

“Thank God.” I ran my hand over my face. “I can’t believe it. It was like I was perfectly aware of everything that I was doing, but my actions and thoughts weren’t mine.”

“The disease messes up with your mind if you can’t control it.” He squeezed my shoulder. “I didn’t know you’d react in this way. You usually weren’t in control of yourself enough to leave or plan a murder. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have fallen asleep. I should have watched over you.”

“Adrian…” I placed my hand on his cheek. “We couldn’t have known someone would come here, especially not a person with an element. I don’t even know what he was doing here. Did you ask him anything?”

Adrian licked his lips. “Not exactly. I knocked him out after I knocked you out. It seemed easier than explaining anything.”

“Great. Now the news will speak of a psycho couple in the woods.” I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. At least the guy should be fine. Maybe no one would believe him if he told them. They’d think he’d simply hit his head on something and hallucinated the whole thing.

“I wanted to ask you something,” he said, his voice serious.

“Umm, okay.”

“Did you know the girl who died at the lab?” Adrian’s question slammed into me with more force than any element could have done. “I don’t want to upset you, but I find it strange that you knew her.”

“Sara,” I said quietly. “Her name was Sara.”

“Did they bring her to you? Because they usually don’t do that at labs. They keep their subjects separate all the time, unless they have something special in mind, like Sebastian had when he brought you to me.”

I almost wanted to let go of Adrian and let the disease block any pain and guilt that I felt over Sara’s death. “She came to me while I was unconscious.”

His eyebrows shot upward. “That’s impossible.”

“Apparently, it’s not. Whatever they did to her, she could somehow reach into the consciousness of people whose mind was in a weak enough state to accept her intrusion. I saw her in front of me like I can see you now.” I licked my lips. “The last time I spoke to her, I wanted her to get into the mind of one of the doctors and find the code for the door.”

“Did she do it?” Adrian’s face looked both alarmed and curious.

I shook my head. “I don’t think she had time to do it. Or maybe it wasn’t possible. I don’t know. All I know is that she said she was reaching out for me with her element and I guess with the disease too. She was an element preserver.”

“I thought we could only reach out with our elements, not with the disease itself.” A frown line popped up on his forehead. “How would someone do that? Would it work only on carriers or on normal elementals too? Imagine what could happen if carriers could transmit the disease just by reaching out with it.”

I rubbed the painful lump at the back of my head. Did I even want to ask Adrian with what he’d hit me? “Well, elements reach out for each other if they’re very close and there are a lot of strong emotions involved. That’s how healthy people can contract the disease during sex, because either the disease or the diseased element touches their healthy element. What Sara could do isn’t so different, I guess. I don’t know what she had to do to reach me, but she could do it.”

“But she wasn’t anywhere near you and you weren’t reaching out to her. Don’t you get it how dangerous this would be if someone else could do it? It’s one thing when elements reach out for each other, but what if some carriers could infect random people on the street with the disease?”

I hadn’t thought about that, but when he put it like that, it sounded pretty worrying. People would freak out even more and then the world wouldn’t see the extermination of carriers as a bad thing. “I’m glad the lab is gone. Who knows what else they’d been researching there?”

“If their subjects were so dangerous, it was no wonder they decided to kill them off at the first signs of trouble, even if it took them months to get new ones.” A shadow crossed Adrian’s face. “I hope no one does similar experiments in one of the government’s labs.”

“Yeah. Private labs are different. They don’t share information with anyone.” Or at least that was what I hoped. “We need to find out whether someone else was working with the lab or whether some of the scientists survived. If they didn’t come to work that day, they could continue their work somewhere else.”

Adrian grabbed his phone and started typing something. “I’ll tell Lily about this. She needs to know and monitor any suspicious action.”

“You do that.” I kept my hand on his leg. “Why did you ask me about Sara anyway?”

“You didn’t talk much about what happened to you at the lab. I thought they did some experiment on you and Sara that made your disease worse.”

“No, they didn’t. I don’t know if what Sara was doing was part of the experiment, but I don’t think she could have done something to me.”

Adrian set down his phone and handed me a bottle of water. “Are you sure? You didn’t have all the symptoms of the disease when she got into your mind.”

I took the bottle, my eyes widening. “I’m not sure if that means Sara could reach anyone, even people like me who seem to have no disease and no elements, or if my disease has never been gone. Sara couldn’t have touched
nothing
. There has to be something inside of me. I couldn’t feel any elements or their presence, but that doesn’t mean my disease wasn’t there. I knew it wouldn’t be gone. We just didn’t know how to verify that.”

“But you didn’t feel any elements,” Adrian pointed out.

“I guess my disease was too weak to show. You know, like a weak element. People still have it, but can’t use it. Besides, my case is completely different from any other case. I don’t remember any regular carriers mentioning they felt empty inside when their element disappeared. It could as well be possible that every carrier has an element, but that it’s too weak and small, so carriers crave other people’s elements and don’t even know the remains of an element are in there somewhere.” And I’d thought my disease couldn’t get any more confusing.

“If someone could feel what elements a carrier has, then we might know. All the tests that can be done don’t work on very weak elements. The scientists only discovered weak elements when carriers pointed out that they could feel them.”

“I know. I wasn’t fully aware of my element either until I lost it.” I put my hand on Adrian’s shoulder and slowly got to my feet, grateful that the world wasn’t spinning around me. “I’ve always carried the gene for the disease in me. Just because the symptoms didn’t show all the time doesn’t mean the disease was gone.”

“Can we go for a walk?” I asked, wishing I could go closer to the stream and wash my face.

“Sure.” Adrian got up and we made our way toward the stream. “Now I’m curious about something.”

“About what?” I crouched in front of the stream and Adrian did the same.

“You can’t feel elements when I touch you and we’ve exchanged elements and maybe the disease.” He held onto me as I bent forward.