Synergy (12 page)

“Charlie, I’m sure he’s fine. I would have heard something from someone.”

“Even if it just happened, like just a few hours or so ago?”

“Maybe not if it
just
happened, but you don’t understand, Landen’s family is the best. They’re warriors, but they’re also peacemakers. They have strong allies in every dimension, especially Esterious. What happened here?”

I took in a deep breath. “OK, here’s the short v
ersion. Turns out Draven is an E
scort. We stumbled onto a R
ealm that’s like a dream where evil is bred and fed. We can now appear anywhere we’ve been or seen in a memory. I’ve lived before; so has Draven. We now have three others, two boys and a girl, with us. I think their father is a devil.  There’
s a boy named Silas that kills E
scorts, that wants to kill Draven because he claims I loved him before. Madison and me are having dark dreams, but not as dark as Monroe, the girl that’s with us now. And I’m pretty sure that a demon has
Landen and that he also has a p
rince – a guy that’s tall, dark hair and eyes, rules a gray dimension.”

Austin’s mouth opened slightly as shock filled his eyes. He glanced at Draven, who was quietly playing a gentle tune.

“True story,” Draven said, glancing at Austin, then back to his guitar.

“So,” I said to get his attention, “basically we’re like magnets for all things evil. We aren’t even in your world, and we’re hurting people. If
you don’t
want us there, that’s fine -
-
but I think you need to take the girl, Monroe, and if you know anyone that knows anything about this, send them to us.”

Austin let the shock in his expression fade. “OK, listen. I told Landen about you, and you know what? His only fear was that he’d bring darkness to you, that a demon he’s been fighting would be led to you. He told me he wa
s going to work through the tria
l he was in the middle of, then he’d meet you. Sounds to me like you guys are fighting the same thing, and you don’t even know it. I’ll take that girl with me, but I’m going to do everything in my power to convince all of you to come. This has gone on for too long. You need help. I won’t be able to live with myself if
I
leave without you again.”

“It’s all of us or none of us,” I said, looking at Draven
.

Austin followed my stare. “I take it that this time around, you’re the one that doesn’t want to go?”

Draven didn’t answer him; instead, he played his guitar.
Typical.

Austin looked back at me. “What about the whispers, the shadows?”

“We’re helping them, but we’re outnumbered and a bit distracted,” I said, running my hands through my hair. I felt like a weight had been lifted from my body.

“Are these kids distracting you?” Austin asked.

“Not in a bad way,” I promised. “They need help.”

Draven stopped playing. “Austin, maybe you should just take Monroe. I’m a bit worried about her brother, Winston. He hasn’t decided what team he’s playing for yet, and if he picks the wrong team
...
it won’t be good for Chara.”

“He can’t hurt us, Draven. Neither can you. If anything, there will be people who can help him pick the right team.”

“Maybe,” Draven said, looking at him. “I’m pretty sure that it’s Landen that’s in trouble. I want to help him, but I don’t know that I can do that from there.”

I threw my hands in the air, showing my
frustration. “You
said if you saw his body, you could see from their perspective, find him faster. There are no coincidences; Austin is here today because we need to help him.”

“I really don’t think he’s in trouble, guys,” Austin said, sighing. “And you,” he said, looking at Draven, “stop making excuses. If yo
u don’t like it, I’ll bring you
right back – but you’re going to let me clear my conscience and take you out of here, like I should have done months ago.”

Draven’s eyes locked with mine. “Let’s just think about this. If we’re leaving, we have goodbyes to say.  Let’s sleep on it or something.”

Really Draven? Really?
“We don’t have time to sleep. There’s a freaking devil’s trap in my living room, and I don’t know if that vision was clear enough for you or not – but I have my doubts that something that dark will be stopped by a pentagram for very long. If you think I’m sleeping on anything in this house, then you’ve lost
your
freaking
mind.”

“Fine. S
leep in my bed,” Draven said, standing. “We’re going to eat dinner, and we’re going to sleep. When we wake up, if we want to go, we
go. If we want to hunt in T
he R
ealm, we hunt.”

Oh like we were going to get any sleep at all tonight.
“And while we’re sleeping, what happens to those boys?”

Draven sighed. “This involves more than us. We’ll talk it out as group.”

“OK,” I said as I let out a breath. I knew Aden and Madison would be on my side, and if Monroe was leaving, so was Grayson; in my mind, this had already been decided.

“I’m starving anyways,” Austin said as he stood.

I looked down at my running clothes, which I was still wearing. “I’m going to take a shower and pack a bag. We’ll be over in a bit -
-
at least Monroe and I will; Madison is eating dinner with her parents.”

Draven glanced at me. “I’ll wait on you.”

“I’m fine, Draven. Nothing is going to hurt me,” I said quietly.

His jaw tightened. “Right,” he said as he stood and put the guitar back on the stand, then walked over to me and kissed my forehead before he left the room.

Austin watched him leave, then looked back at me. “I walk in on a passionate kiss, and that was the kiss he gives you to say goodbye?”

I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding. “He can read me like a book.”

“And what did he just read?” Austin asked.

“I want to ask Silas to look after Landen until we can help him. I want to ask him if he knows anything about the dreams – if they’re a warning.”

“Is this guy dangerous? I think I should stay with you.”

“Not to me. But he knows stuff. He may even know how dangerous it is for us to go to Chara.”

“I don’t care what he says. You’re coming with me, all of you.”
Austin bit out showing a dominance I’d never seen before. Which told me he could handle Draven just fine.

“If you want to help, stay at his side. He has us all on edge.” 

“Why?” Austin asked as concern filled his eyes.

“His emotions, the dark ones, o
pen up that E
scort thing in him. Sometimes he’s pulled into memories of a past life when he was a bad person. He realizes that we’re on guard, and that makes him mad. He’s fighting to stay who he was, but what he doesn’t realize is that person is gone. He has to push through this, balance who he is now.”

“If there’s anyone that can help him do that, it’s you,” Austin said sympathetically.

“That’s why I’m not leaving without him.”

“I’ll talk to his dad,
and
Nana. They’ll convince him to go,” Austin promised.

“Maybe if I’m lucky, by the time I get to his house, we’ll be ready to leave.”

“Let’s hope,” Austin murmured. It was easy to see he wanted to tell me something but couldn’t find the will right now. When I focused on him, all I saw was Madison’s image; I took comfort in the fact that it was a happy image, even though I knew it wouldn’t be for long.

He sighed, then left the room without another word. I walked over to my bed and grabbed my phone. I found my mom’s number and texted: Tell me where you are. Austin is here. I don’t know when I’m leaving but I want to know where you are.

I scrolled to Kara’s name, but I couldn't bring myself to text her. I doubted she’d made it to the city yet, and I didn’t want to ruin her weekend, at least not yet.

I took my phone with me down to my old room. Monroe was quietly packing her things, and Madison was sitting on her bed, waiting for me.

“Well?” Madison asked.

“Draven doesn’t want to go. He wants us to take Monroe.”

I stared at Monroe, looking for some kind of response, but she didn’t bother to make one.

“That’s not going to happen,” Madison said firmly.

“Right. Austin is on our side with this, too. I’m going to take a shower, then go over there. Maybe you should go spend some time with your parents. After your dinner, we’ll talk this out; with any luck, maybe we can leave in the morning.”

“I’ll go after you get to Draven’s safely,” Madison said as she laid back on her bed and prepared to wait for me to take a shower.

“And who’s going to make sure you get to your mom’s safely? I’m n
ot the one that’s been ‘called,’
” I said, trying to find the words to tell her how bad this really was, how she was a bigger part of this, more than she could ever imagine. I tried to balance the anxiety that was building, but it was clear she felt it. She looked
down at the necklace that the w
itch had given her that was laced around her hand.

“I’m not afraid of it, Charlie...of any of it.”

I tried
to force the words, or at least open a door for her to see all that I knew, but I couldn't, and all that did was invoke the emotion of betrayal. I waited for her to feel that, to demand that I show her, for her to force me to let that wall down, but she refused to look me in the eye. That told me that she wasn’t ready to know.

“Pack,” I said as I went into the closet.

I grabbed one of my large bags and pushed a few outfits into it before I grabbed a change of clothes and went to the bathroom. In the shower, I just tried to breathe, tried to put everything in
perspective, to understand if
the one thing I’d been waiting on wasn’t Austin, my escape, but an elaborate trap laid out by the devil. I’d always been one that relied on my gut feelings, and my gut feeling was telling me that al
l hell was about to break loose. I
t was also telling me that I needed to help those boys, that if I
helped them they would help me. T
hat they were
the missing piece to the puzzle. H
olding the answers I needed to understand who I was.

I was putting away my blow dryer when my mother appeared out of nowhere beside me, still wearing one of her business suits.

“Did you just see your way here?” I asked breathlessly.

Her silence told me she did.

“You know, Mom, I still don’t get why you didn’t teach me what you know. Why you waited for me to stumble on it.”

“Charlie,” she said calmly, “we don’t have time to go over what I should or should not have done as I raised you.”

I looked down nervously. “I know. Are you upset?” I asked, looking up at her, noticing that she seemed more tense than usual.

“No,” she said as she tried to smile.

“Listen, if you come home this weekend, you may find some broken things in the house. I’m sorry about that. I’ll find a way to replace that stuff when I can.”

“Charlie, you fought a demon and survived, and you’re apologizing for a few broken material things?”

“You know about that?” I asked, sure that she did.

“I felt it,” she
answered
, looking over me.

“Dad was there,” I said, looking around for any sign of him. I couldn't even hear his guitar anymore.

She nodded once. “I want you to pack, take what you think you need, and I don’t want you to come back to this house until I tell you that it’s safe.”

“What do you mean?” I asked nervously. “Can that demon come back?”

“If he does, you won
’
t be here.”

“What about Kara? She’ll be back on Monday.”

My mom moved her head slowly from side to side.

“What are you not saying?” I asked as every part of me tensed.

“Kara isn’t meeting an old friend in the city; she’s meeting Robert. By midnight, she’ll be on a flight to Paris.”

“What? Why didn’t she tell me?”

“She doesn’t know. I called Robert; we planned this.”

Robert was Kara’s husband. He was a journalist that worked overseas more than he worked here. Kara kept no secrets from him. He knew about me, about all of us. None of it bothered him; in fact, he found us fascinating.

“Why?”

“Because for her, it will be easier to say goodbye if she’s the one leaving.”

“Did you know I was leaving today? Tomorrow? What else do you know? What has Dad told you? Mom, don’t hide anything from me
...
people could get hurt.”

“Charlie, I’ve felt this coming for a while, longer than I could explain to you right now. We just don’t have the time. You’re leaving here within hours; you’ll face your fate and see why the devil doesn’t want you to win.”