Scorching Secrets (17 page)

“I’m not pushing her away. It’s just that every time I see her come back with another injury, I picture what she looked like after Thomas stabbed her. The image is ingrained in my mind.” I grab the back of my neck and look toward the ceiling. “It freaks me out that it could happen again. I won’t be able to do anything the next time.”

“You can’t think like that. She needs someone to help her. She needs that to be you.”

“She won’t let me.” My anger is slowly building. “I’ve tried to help her, but she won’t let me.”

“You’re not trying hard enough, Colton. You just get mad at her when she does something wrong. When she wakes up, you need to go talk to her.”

Liam walks out of the room, leaving me alone with my thoughts. How can I help Ryanne when she is always doing things on her own? How am I supposed to help her when she won’t accept any? The only thing I am good at is fighting. It’s what I’ve been trained to do my whole life. Tom worked with us every day when David and I were younger. As we got older, he stopped coming around as often, and David and I started training together.

I remember the day when David came into his power. We were training in the attic at Aunt Claire’s house, when we went to grab our swords. David’s came to him, while I had to walk over to get mine from the wall. David was so excited, and even though that was only two years ago, he started jumping around like a kid who got his favorite toy for Christmas. He’d just turned eighteen and was as giddy as a child. Eighteen is the age that most mages get their powers, but some don’t get theirs until their mid-twenties. That is the situation for Bragden, Emma, and me.

Bragden is the oldest one of us. Being twenty-two, he should be coming into his powers soon. With Emma, at nineteen, and me, at eighteen, we still have time. Granted, I am going to be nineteen in a week but still. Who knows when it is going to happen for either of us? It could be tomorrow. It could be in a few months. We could still have years to go.

I walk out of my room and cross the hall. Ryanne and Emma’s room is directly across from mine. Emma is sitting on her bed, flipping through a magazine while Ryanne is asleep in her bed with the white comforter pulled up to her chin. Her long curly hair is fanned across her pillow. I briefly wonder what it would look like against my green pillowcase. Shoot, Colton. Distance. Now, is not the time for
that
.

“Is she alright?” I ask Emma as I lean against the bed post at the end of Ryanne’s bed.

“For now. When she wakes up? I’m not sure. She’s been through a lot in the past couple of hours.” Emma’s also mad at me...not the loud anger she usually displays. I’ve never seen Emma like this before. Ryanne soundlessly rolls onto her side and places her hands under her cheek. She looks so serene. “Logan said she’d probably fall asleep from exhaustion.”

“Emma, I’m not trying to hurt her. I’m trying to protect her. It’s just sometimes the two correlate.”

“I know you’re not purposely trying to.” Emma turns and looks at Ryanne too. She sighs loudly and looks back at me. Her blue eyes are more open than I’ve seen before. “Ryanne’s not as strong as she wants everyone to believe. She’s tough, but she’s not indestructible. She does have limits, and she has been pushed toward them a lot lately. She’s straddling the line right now, and she needs us to help pull her back.”

I glance back over at her bed. Ryanne is on her side still with lips slightly apart, breathing quietly. Her hair is slowly sweeping forward, sliding across her shoulders. The covers have fallen, so I can see her t-shirt covered shoulder. She looks so peaceful now, but I know that when she wakes up, that countenance will change. She’ll be the strong, determined girl she feels she needs to be.

“Look, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but Ryanne’s changing. She used to wake up in the morning and come downstairs and join everyone, smiling, happy, and slightly overwhelmed. Now, she wakes up first, goes downstairs and does the dishes. The first thing she does in the morning is the dishes, Colton. Then, she finds her iPod. She listens to music and draws. Barely talking to anyone. She’s stopped watching movies with us. She trains, Colton. That’s the only time I see her act like she used to. Training makes her feel like she’s doing something right. Besides the wedding, I haven’t seen her actually smile in a while; the smile never reaches her eyes. She does what she has to to make sure that we don’t notice anything. Liam and I have noticed little changes in her. Nothing major yet, but it’s coming. She’s freaking out about what is going on with her, and everyone keeps getting upset with her over things she can’t control.”

Why am I the one that’s getting this speech all the time?

Running through the darkened forest, I try not to trip on the uneven ground. Small, low-lying branches of the trees move and try to grab me as I rush past them; their leaves sway in the wind creating eerie whispers that echo from all directions. My skin is scarred from tree limbs jagged ends, but I push forward. I can’t stop running. I can’t slow down. I can’t be caught.

Not again.

The footsteps behind me get louder as the man chasing me starts to close the distance between us. The darkness of the night mirrors the atmosphere of the forest. Everything in here is against me. I can’t think, breathe, or move without someone or something trying to kill me.

A root of a large tree in front of me rises, trying to trip me or at the very least slow my momentum. I jump over the raised root and make a sharp turn to the left. Not sticking in one direction may help me lose the man following me.

I glance over my shoulder and watch as he also makes a sharp turn. Ducking another moving branch, I cry out as its sharpened edge slices through my arm. Deep red bloods start flowing down my skin, but there’s nothing I can do right now. I have to keep moving.

“You can’t keep running from me,” Dravin’s voice echoes through the dark forest. I can’t tell where the voice is coming from, but my fear causes me to run faster. Jumping over another root, I turn to the right. I can hear water flowing in a nearby river ahead.

“I’ll always find you,” his voice rides the wind to my right. Suppressing my feared cry, I run in the opposite direction of the sound. The footsteps behind me are still following my every movement. My chances of losing him are slim to none. I know that the man chasing me isn’t Dravin, but he is near—watching everything play out like a sick game.

“No one is safe.” I feel his breath on the back of my neck. I scream and seeing the water in front of me, I run toward it. Maybe the man behind me can’t swim. It’s worth a shot. Trying to keep my momentum, I run into the river. The rapid water pushes against my side, trying to pull me under. Again, everything is against me.

A large hand wraps around my arm and jerks me backwards. I whip around and attempt to fight off whoever grabbed me. The sudden movement and the intensity of the water causes me to lose my footing. I scream as my feet are lifted up off of the rocky bottom and I fall into the cold, dark water. The stranger’s grip around my arm disappears; my body is pulled by the current down the river.

Gasping for air, I try to keep my head above the surface. The water is flowing too rapidly for me to swim to the other side. I should have noticed that before I ran into the river, but I was too focused on getting away. This seemed like my only chance of losing him, and I did lose him, but at what cost? Spotting a floating tree trunk off to the side, I stop struggling and let the water move me in that direction. If I could just grab onto it, I could use it to stay afloat.

I collect a breath of air before the current pulls me under. I can’t see anything through the darkness. I push my arms upward to try and reach the surface, but I don’t know which direction it is in. I can’t panic; that won’t help anything. The cold water sends chills through my body, slowing everything down. I can’t move my limps as quickly as I could mere seconds ago.

Out of sheer luck, I break the surface. Sputtering, I spit water out of my mouth and search around for that tree trunk again. Yes! It’s within an arm’s reach now. My muscles protest as I try to swim towards it. Hypothermia is already setting in. My arms wrapped around the wood, but its water logged surface snaps in half and I go under again. I don’t have time to catch my breath. With my lungs filling with water, I struggle to reach the surface. My arms and legs are moving in all direction, but I’m still pulled deeper into the freezing water.

Disoriented and growing weaker with every second, my need to fight wanes. My body can’t push anymore. Deep laughter echoes around me as I sink further into the darkness. The chilled water freezes my muscles in their current positions. The water pushes me from all directions: up, down, left, right. I can’t fight. My lungs protest for air, but I have no way to get any. I swallow more water.

Dravin’s won.

With that thought, I close my eyes and wait for Death to come to me. He’s near. I can feel his presence around me. It’s not harsh and domineering like Dravin’s. Death is…misunderstood. In this instance, I don’t fear it. At this moment, I welcome it. My lungs reach their limit and my body starts shutting down. I’m no longer in control. My eyes snap open as an unearthly gray light spirals through the water towards my frozen hand. Slender, ashen colored fingers extend from a closed fist and point at me. The hand, covered in tattered black cloth, grabs onto my wrist and pulls me down further. I can’t fight Death’s grip.

I gave it my all. There was nothing else I could do. Dravin was just stronger. It’s that simple.

A scorching pain spreads through my stomach and Death halts his momentum. Though underwater, everything around me becomes clear again. I open my mouth to scream as the pain shoots through my body. Death’s grip disappears and by some invisible force, I’m pulled upward. Small bubbles float around me as I fly to the surface.

Heat continues to spread through my body, and the second I break the surface, all the water from my lungs disappear, but the pain remains. My eyes close as I start coughing, trying to steady my furiously beating heart. Fighting the current, whoever has a grip on me, pulls me out of the water and onto the grass.

With my back on the dry ground, the grip around me leaves. Since I’m still weak, I can’t sit up. I roll over to thank whoever helped me, but find the area empty. Out of the corner of my eye, I see a woman running back into the forest—long blond hair falling down her back.

“Claire?” I whisper as another coughing fit seizes my body.

I wake up with a start. “Claire,” I call out, but quiet when I don’t see any trees around me. I’m back in my bedroom. That was just a dream, right? My heart is beating crazily in my chest, but I don’t feel like I just about drowned…A dream. That was definitely just a dream. Claire died in that explosion; there’s no way that she could have pulled me out of the water, right?

I glance around the room, toward the window. Not much sunlight is streaming in which lets me know that it’s early. Emma is still sleeping soundlessly in her bed. As quietly as I can, I walk towards the bathroom to take a shower.

While lathering the shampoo into my hair, I start to think about everything that has happened recently. Everything was great at the wedding. I had fun.
Real
fun for once. The music spoke to me in ways nothing has for a while. I forgot about the situation we are in and just danced with Liam. Then we came back, and everything has gone downhill from there. I wish I had Hermione’s Time-Turner for times like this.

I saw that horrible vision of Colton dying in front of me. He saw me die before, so shouldn’t he understand how hard it would be for me to witness that for real? He doesn’t seem to understand that I’ll do anything to make sure that vision never plays out. If we ever get captured by Dravin, I’ll tell him everything. I don’t care if he takes my powers. I don’t care if he has all my magic. I can’t let that vision play out.

Then yesterday, he kissed me. Colton. Kissed. Me. My first kiss. He acted weird afterwards, so he probably regrets doing that, but I can still feel him holding me. The taste of him against my lips; the way his hair felt as I ran my fingers through it. I can remember it all. That is a good thing because it will probably never happen again. It can’t happen again. I need to protect Colton, and if people find out about my feelings for him, they’ll use him against me just like that vision showed.

I turn the hot water off and step out of the shower. Today is an air-dry type of hair day. Curls all the way, I guess. Afterwards, I get dressed in a plain white v-neck t-shirt and a pair of jean shorts. I don’t feel like wearing any of my signature graphic tees. Yes…it’s one of those days.

As I head downstairs, I realize that I’m not the only one awake. Larkin is sitting on the couch staring at the black TV screen. He looks up at the stairs when he hears me coming down.

“How are you feeling?” he asks me.

Instead of going into the kitchen to do the dishes, I plop down on the couch beside him. I lean my head against his shoulder and think about the question. How am I feeling? I don’t have an answer. I am alive still, which I guess is a good thing. But am I really living? I don’t know. I feel like no matter what I do someone ends up upset or hurt. Mentally and emotionally, I’m not doing well. Physically? I’ve been better. “I don’t know,” I answer honestly.

“I’m sorry I didn’t come sooner yesterday,” Larkin whispers to me, patting me on my knee.

“You came at the right time, Larkin. Can you do something for me?”

I can see the hesitance in his eyes, but in the end his curiosity wins. “What?”

“Can you keep an eye on Jane and Ross? That’s twice that they’ve almost been attacked. I can’t protect them all the time from here, and I’m scared that something is going to happen to them.”

I don’t know what he expected me to say, but based on his reaction, that wasn’t it. Slowly, he nods. “I can watch them. But my main goal is keeping you safe right now. I can’t promise anything.” I know that that’s as good of an answer as I’m going to get. I sit back on the couch and lean into Larkin’s side. Yes, Larkin’s annoying sometimes, but I completely trust him. He’s done nothing but proved himself worthy of it.