Indigo Awakening (The Hunted (Teen)) (14 page)

A red-and-white sign posted over secured double doors made him flinch. Ward 8. He felt his arms and legs tied down to a cold gurney. Stern men dressed in white ignored his pleas for help. They took him to a cold room with bright lights. His heart pounded loudly enough for him to feel a punishing throb in his brain. He knew what would come. The dream never wavered. A faceless woman dressed in white always brought pain. Even her voice made him cringe, yet it came muffled as if she spoke underwater.

“No!” he cried, but no one ever rescued him.

Lucas didn’t know what he saw. It could have been stirred by a memory struggling to surface, or someone else’s panicked vision or a dose of paranoia over his uncertain future. In the throes of the dream, that didn’t matter now.

He would have to endure it as if it happened to him.

Chapter 11

Outside L.A.
10:30 p.m.

Rayne filled up her Harley with gas, and with Gabriel directing her where to go, they left L.A. behind. When wide highways turned into two-lane roads, he got quiet and slumped against her back with his arms around her. She knew he had to be exhausted and needed to sleep. He still hadn’t told her where they were going, but simply being alone with Gabriel felt like enough.

Before they’d left the museum parking lot, he’d asked her again if she still wanted to come with him. Her answer hadn’t changed, but she’d had plenty of time to think. Miles of night road, with flashes of Gabriel convulsing in blue flames, had their way of niggling at her insides. Rayne felt good that he still wanted to help her, but she knew that his demons had caught up to him.

Nothing about their situation felt right or good. Whatever Gabe’s problems, they’d collided with her search for Lucas. She understood why Gabe needed answers. He didn’t want to make things worse, but she couldn’t help be worried for Lucas, too. She prayed she’d made the right decision to stick with Gabe. Not knowing how bad things were for Luke made it easy for her to picture terrible things.

Darkness made a perfect canvas to imagine her worst fears.

City lights and concrete gave way to a canopy of moonlight and stars over her head, and the wind buffeted her body. Her headlight swept past tall grasses that whipped by her in a blur alongside miles of fence posts. Painted center stripes dotted a never-ending ribbon of asphalt that led farther away from towns and people. She had no idea where he would take her, but the drone of her engine lulled her into thinking they were safe for now, even though she had a bad feeling it would only be the calm before the coming storm.

Something had happened to Gabriel and they couldn’t leave that behind or deny it or ignore it. He was right about needing help, and if he had a place to go where he could get answers, he needed to do it. They’d both brought their troubles with them, and it would only be a matter of time before they had to go back and face them.

Near Ludlow and the Bristol Mountains, she felt a distinct chill in the air as the elevation changed. Gabriel had her turn off onto a narrow road. She didn’t catch the name of it, only that signs marked with the name Devil’s Playground made her feel uneasy. She knew the Mojave Desert wasn’t far, but in the dark she’d gotten turned around. When they drove up to a dirt road and a gate with a lock on it, Gabriel had her stop and he got off the bike. Without hesitating, he entered a code that opened the gate. For a moment, he looked surprised that it worked.

“What is this place?” she asked.

“If things don’t check out, we may not stay,” he said. Before she asked anything else, he said, “I lived here for a while when I was a kid.”

That was all Gabe said before he climbed onto the Harley and waited for her to hit the gas. But when a cloud drifted over the moon, it blocked out the stars and cast them deeper into darkness. Even under her helmet, Rayne heard the haunting wail of a coyote in the distance and she knew exactly how the animal felt to be isolated and alone.

The private dirt road had no-trespassing signs posted as they first rode in, and her headlight caught the glint off the eyes of animals in the pitch-black. She never got a clear look at what they were before they bolted, but she felt them watching. When the road took a turn up a hill, she felt the strain on her Harley and had to lean into the climb. Gabriel did, too, and he tightened his hold on her.

Enormous trees lined the side of the road, and boulders had been split to cut the pathway up the mountain. In daylight, she had a feeling the view would be breathtaking. But at night, her headlight captured the sheer drop-offs hidden in shadows, and that made the ride more ominous.

As the dirt road flattened out, they rounded a curve and she got a glimpse of lights on the horizon. When they got closer, she slowed down for a better look. A massive stone wall surrounded the biggest estate she had ever seen. Gabriel had taken her to a mansion in the middle of nowhere—a compound that looked more like a menacing fortress. She gripped the handlebars tighter. When she’d first met Gabriel, she got the impression he came from money. Real money. If he had any history with this place, she had guessed right about him, but that didn’t make her feel any better.

Gabriel yanked off his helmet as she slowed to a stop at the crest of a hill, and she did the same. Rayne breathed in the night air and felt a soft breeze through her hair. She stared at the stone front filled with dark windows that looked like eyes and eerie spires that reminded her of only one place.

“Hogwarts. You’ve brought me to Potterville.”

“I thought you trusted me, Rayne.”

When she heard the smile in his voice, she took a deep breath and glanced over her shoulder. The moon had painted Gabriel in its bluish haze and made his eyes more haunting.

“Yeah, I do. Especially now that I know you and Harry are BFFs.”

Being a smart-ass helped her deal with the wad of fear knotting in her belly.

“Follow my lead and no questions. Remember?” He put his hands on her hips. “I may not be welcome here.”

Not asking questions had suddenly turned into the impossible, but she kept her mouth shut and handed him her helmet. She wanted to feel the wind on her face as she rode toward the impressive front entrance with its wooden doors made for a giant.

She trusted Gabe, but whoever lived in a place like this, they’d be another story.

Downtown L.A.

Having Lucas in her bed when he was injured and sick had been necessary. Kendra wanted him with her, for many reasons. He’d been delirious and plagued by nightmares. He needed her. In his more lucid moments, he didn’t remember the dreams, or perhaps he didn’t want to talk about the hallucinations that had tortured him. She certainly understood that.

But after the fever broke and he was getting better, she felt the flash of heat to her face whenever she touched his bare skin to dress his wounds. The way he watched her, comfortable in their silence, Lucas stared at her with eyes that seemed older than his fifteen years. He was physically beautiful, and from what she sensed of his gentle nature, he had a soul to match. After he connected with her—when their bond went both ways—she felt an addictive rush that she never wanted to end.

But on the night of his fever, all that changed.
Everything changed.

The reality of her past closed in on her. At first she felt shock at his ability to get past her mental barriers. Her anger over his lack of respect came next, but her final spiral into misery had been a self-inflicted wound. Being reminded of her darkest secret by Lucas had been a harsh slap that she’d never be able to hide anything from him.

And, even worse, she’d never be worthy of the future she wanted for all of them.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

He reached for her hand, a gesture she would have wanted before he’d probed her darkest memory. Now she only pulled away, struggling with what to say.

“You can see the past,” she said. “You read secrets in anyone’s memory. I’ve never known anyone who did that. It’s...frightening.” She sighed, letting her pain show. “How long have you been able to do that?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

When she clenched her jaw, he must have sensed her frustration.

“What happened? What did I do?” When he sat up and winced, she saw he still hurt.

“You don’t remember?”

Flashes of her past rushed back to her, things she wanted to forget but never could—things she felt certain that Lucas had seen. She hid those memories from him now, but knowing he could delve into her mind even with a raging fever, she didn’t know if her usual blocking tactics would work with someone like Lucas.

The not knowing was killing her.

“No.” He shook his head. “Did I do something wrong?”

When his eyes locked on hers, he looked innocent. She still felt violated and betrayed, yet whenever she looked at this boy, she wanted to believe that he had no reason to lie to her. She hadn’t imagined what he’d done, but perhaps under the influence of such a high fever, he really didn’t remember.

“You have no idea how strong you are or what you can become,” she said. “You asked me to be your teacher, but it’s me who should be learning from you.”

She reached for his hand and felt him connect to her mind, too. Feeling him, inside and out, made her feel stronger. Better.

“There is so much potential in you, but you frighten me, Lucas. Connecting with you has affected me in a way I never could’ve imagined. I’m not sure I’m strong enough, but I feel a sense of duty toward you, even if it scares me.”

“Are you saying that
I
scare you?”

She didn’t know how to answer him. She wanted to reassure him that her idea of their future frightened her more, but that would be a lie. Right now, being with someone as powerful as Lucas, a boy who could slice through any mind blocks she could muster, scared her far more than the bleakest future she could imagine.

She touched his cheek.

“We must embrace who we are and who we’re becoming, even if it scares us. We owe it to our kind.”

“Our kind?” he asked.

“I read about us. Have you ever heard of Indigo kids or Crystal children? It’s what they’re calling us.”

When he only shook his head, she said, “We’re special, Lucas. We feel instead of think. We trust our instincts and use our minds the way they were intended. We see and feel things they don’t—or can’t—because they only use a fraction of their brainpower. Animal species evolve and change in order to survive. It makes sense that we do, too. We’re the future, Lucas. Mankind 2.0.”

She smiled, but he didn’t.

“No one ever treated me special. Even my parents acted like something was wrong with me,” he said.

“That’s my point. Your family dosed you, teachers acted like you were in special ed and doctors treated you like a lab rat. They made you feel like you weren’t normal. They fear what they don’t understand, what they can’t control. The future lies with us, not them. We must fight for what is ours.”

Kendra knew how she must have sounded to him. No kid talked the way she did, not even Raphael, who was oldest. Her unique Indigo nature made her different. She felt the weight of duty on her shoulders, for a future she hoped that she’d live to see. She didn’t have time to be a kid in a world that needed change, even though there were times that she yearned for the childhood that had been taken from her. She’d never truly known what being a child was, not like Lucas had. She could see by his innocence—and his unquestioning trust in strangers like her—that Lucas had been loved by someone, despite the hospital and medications he had endured.

With every question he asked her, his inexperience showed.

“Why can’t we learn to exist
with
them?” he asked. “Fighting for dominance is their mistake. It shouldn’t be ours.”

“You’ve seen how ruthless the Believers are. They’re only the first. Think of how bad things could get once the word really gets out about us. Right now people chalk us up to the lunatic fringe, but don’t be naive that they’ll leave us alone when they finally believe we exist. I named that damned church and its fanatics the Believers for a reason.”

When she saw him flinch in pain again, she took a deep breath and calmed down.

“The way I figure it, you’re a Crystal child, Lucas. You’ve blown past being an Indigo like me. It’s natural that you’d want peace, but that’s exactly why you need someone like me. Indigo kids are fighters. We don’t settle for how things are. We get angry. We fight. Someone has to do it, but you...” She touched his cheek and said, “You’re our future.”

She had to get him to see how things were, not how he wanted them to be.

“Trust me when I say they understand fighting far better than you do,” she said. “They will not allow us to exist among them. They fear us now. What will they do when we get stronger and our numbers grow?”

“But you can’t know that will happen.” For the first time, he raised his voice, and it looked as if it hurt him.

Kendra sighed and ran a hand through his long hair. She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek.

“No more talk of fighting. First, you’ll eat. I’ve made you a vegetable broth.” She smiled to hide her worry. “I’ve washed your clothes. When you feel up to it, I’ll show you your new home.”

She hoped Lucas would choose to stay with them—with
her.
If they were meant to survive, they’d need him, but Kendra didn’t have the strength to resist what he could do.

If Lucas wanted to, he could know everything about her.

Bristol Mountains
11:10 p.m.

Dead leaves swirled at Gabe’s feet and whipped into the air, casting shadows as they moved under the dim light of a single lantern fixed to the stone wall outside the door. The littered front entrance, with its cobwebs and mounds of dust, told him things had changed from what he remembered of the grandeur of the estate. He felt the weight of isolation and an unshakable gloom.