Awakened (2 page)

I paled. The bloody cloth that we’d used to dress Mia’s wound held my attention.

The sheriff’s eyes widened and Sheriff Making had to snap his fingers to get my attention
again. “Alex.” His voice took on a strange tone. “If you know what happened to that
girl, and—”

My dad jumped to his feet
.
“Sheriff, what the hell are you insinuating?” my father yelled. “I called him in
here because you said that you believed he might have seen something or knew something,
but that he may not know how important it is.” My dad moved to stand between me and
the sheriff. “It seems to me that you are accusing him of purposely hiding information
that could help get Ella back to us.”

The sheriff raised his hands in surrender. “Eric, this is all normal procedure.”

My dad scoffed and waved a hand of dismissal.

I watched my father defend me, the son that he trusted—the son who was lying his butt
off. It made me angry, but I felt helpless. I wanted to tell the truth, but if I did
and Ella was telling the truth, I’d be betraying her trust, and I couldn’t do that
again.

“I don’t care what it is, if you don’t lose that accusing tone, I am gonna end this
now!” my dad shouted, just as my mom entered the room.

Her face was pale, and her eyes were red-rimmed. She held Leah in her arms, which
was odd. Leah was too old and big to hold, but my mother held her close as if my eleven-year-old
sister were a baby that needed to be cradled. Leah looked around dazedly and rubbed
her eyes when she saw me. She smiled and tried to get down and run to me, but my mom
held her tighter.

“Alex,” Leah whispered, her voice still thick with sleep, and I melted all over again.

The hell that I was about to put my family through was about to get even more complicated,
and I wasn’t even sure that I could fully trust the two men I was blindly following.
The only thing stopping me from spilling the beans was that Ella trusted both Jace
and Kale wholeheartedly.

Sheriff Making grabbed the bags of evidence and made his way to the door. He looked
back at my father and tipped his hat. “Eric, I sure am sorry about what’s happened
here. We are gonna find her.” He glanced at me. “I will be in touch with you all soon.”

He turned to my mother. “Sarah, I’m gonna get more men from Elmwood City to come so
we can search the woods. I already have two of my men looking, and we need plenty
more than that.”

My mom petted Leah’s head again and moved aside to let the sheriff out the door. He
turned back to my mom and promised her that her home would be hers again as soon as
they finished looking for evidence, but that the deputies from Elmwood City would
be in touch with us soon.

I leaned back in the chair and closed my eyes, releasing the breath that I’d been
holding; it wasn’t so much a breath of relief but one that acknowledged that the first
step was over. But the small relief that came with that was short-lived as it dawned
on me what was to come next. We still had to search for Ella, there would be more
lying to my parents, and then there was Sheriff Making and his investigation. Searching
for Ella, dealing with Kale and Jace—who seemed to have a not-so-great past with each
other—and not to mention coping with what would happen if Ella didn’t make it home.
How would my parents deal with losing her, and how would I deal with knowing what
truly happened?

I dragged myself upstairs to Leah’s room, since my old room was now a crime scene
and Leah would be sleeping in my parents’ room. I pulled out my phone and stared at
the screen. We’d agreed that Mia and I wouldn’t speak to each other for a while, in
order to keep her from being drawn into the questioning, and at first I thought that
it would be easy, but now I needed someone to talk to, badly. My mom wouldn’t let
Leah out of her sight, so I didn’t have a chance to talk to her, and I didn’t know
what Leah had been told, but I was sure she wondered where Ella was.
I
wondered where Ella was.

I held to the agreement not to call Mia and threw my phone on Leah’s bright yellow
dresser. Before the conversation with my dad, when he explained his disapproval of
my decision to leave New York, the choice to come home was simple. Things weren’t
as complicated, and Ella needed me so I wanted to come home. Though the choice to
come back had been spurred by my need to be with Ella and to protect her, it had also
partly been because I missed my home. Not that I didn’t fit in at NYU—New York just
didn’t feel like home. The city that never slept had lost its appeal after the first
semester, and though I hadn’t been ready to come home at that point, I started to
wonder what made me decide that NYU was the school that I just had to attend. Ella
and I had planned to go to college together, but when I got the acceptance letter
from NYU, she completely understood. It was hard to get accepted into the Poole and
Schuler photography program, and that I had done it was the only thing that kept my
father off my back when I told him that I was going to be a photographer
in New York
, not an engineer like he’d hoped. That was also the first night that Ella and I seriously
discussed what we planned to do with the rest of our lives. I was more than happy
when she decided to go to ODU, in Virginia and visit me in New York during that summer,
but when classes piled up and I had to spend summer semester taking an extra class,
we just pushed back our vacation plans. Then there was the accident and then the breakdown
and after that, everything just fell apart. I wondered plenty of times what I could
do to help Ella, but there was nothing, and all I ended up doing was holding her at
the funeral.

I had saved her then, and now it was time to do it again. I just had to figure out
how. Against my better judgment, I picked up my phone and dialed Kale. I didn’t give
a damn if he wasn’t happy to hear from me; I wanted Ella back and in my arms smelling
like the sun and roses, just like she had before all hell broke loose.

Jace

Saying that the shit had hit the fan was the understatement of the century. Kale had
returned me to the place where he had left Ella, a cold place in the middle of the
woods, and all that was left were two Chorý, which he and I quickly disposed of. Ella
was gone, all because those Chorý had been decoys, while Laurent himself had actually
gone for Ella. That meant Laurent likely knew her powers had grown beyond the other
Arcs.

Ella would soon be able to control her powers and even use them against Laurent himself,
but he could be very persuasive. Laurent could also teach her to stop the memories
unless they were called upon, so he could gain her trust that way.

The Council would have my head for letting Ella linger in Cedar so long after she
was found. I wondered if Aleixandre, leader of the Council and one of the first Eternals,
would allow me to stay on the case or replace me with Tamsin and Servitto. As my surrogate
father, Aleixandre had a soft spot for me, but I had taken his favoritism too far.
I hadn’t followed any of the guidelines set forth long ago, nor had I requested help
from the Council when I realized that Kale had found the Arc.

Kale yammered on the phone, and I sped toward the airfield to the jet that carried
Tamsin and Servitto. They would be shocked to see me, of all people, walking side
by side with a Chorý, and it would take all that I could do to stop them from killing
him. Killing Kale would lose us Ella permanently, a disaster that wouldn’t end well
for the Council.

In Minsk, when the infection broke out, my father had been one of the first to succumb
to the Chorý blood disease, and as I watched as he drank my siblings dry, I swore
to end his life and the life of all the diseased. While I had failed to kill my father,
I still planned to keep that promise of ending the Chorý race, but right then I needed
to focus on Ella. Searching for Ella using the Council’s resources while working with
Kale was going to be problematic. I was already going to have to explain why I had
given Ella a choice in the matter of leaving Cedar, but I’d felt it necessary. She
would be fed so many lies by the Council and myself, I needed to counteract some of
the distrust that would soon have followed once she returned with me. Aleixandre had
no qualms with holding her against her will; I, on the other hand, wanted her stay
with the Council to be one of mutual agreement. We needed her on our side, because
she would be a very powerful enemy otherwise.

“Fine, we will meet, but not now. Your phone records will be pulled, as well as Ella’s,
and now you will both be connected to me. We’ll need to change the plan.”

Kale had to be talking to Alex. We’d told him not to call unless it was an emergency,
and I highly doubted that there was one big enough to warrant a call so soon after
we’d left him.

“I understand that they questioned you. Why would they not? You came home and found
Ella missing.”

I shifted in my seat. The fact that Ella had been taken added another choking layer
of uneasiness in the car.

“Just calm yourself. We will find her,” Kale finished and hung up the phone. He shoved
the phone in his pocket, nearly crushing it. He seemed to be dancing on the blade
of a knife, and understandably so. With Ella missing and the top Council members in
Cedar, he needed to be tense if not outright scared.

“Shit,” Kale whispered quietly. “Pull over here.” He pointed to the side of the road.

I didn’t comply—because I do not take commands from Chorý— and Kale cast me an irritated
glance.

His hand tightened on the door handle as he spoke. “Either pull the car over, or I
will assume that you are offering me a chance at your vein, Vesco.” His eyes shone
obsidian, dark and soulless, in the moon’s light. I had no doubt that his bloodlust
was clawing its way to the surface. I hadn’t been completely honest with Ella about
bloodlust, or “
la
Luxure
” as it was called in France when the disease ravaged Kale’s war-torn country. I couldn’t
have told her the truth and kept her trust; she wasn’t ready for it.

I slowed the car and asked, “Tell me, Chorý: How long have you been struggling with
la Luxure
?”

Kale’s eyes widened, and he quickly turned away. Perhaps he hadn’t expected me to
be so direct, or maybe he thought that he had hid it well enough that I wouldn’t suspect.

I would always suspect that he would fall. After watching my father murder his own
children, I knew that la Luxure was strong enough that it could break any man’s will.
Whether Kale believed so or not was not my concern at the moment.

He grabbed the door, yanking the handle so hard it groaned under his strength. I had
an answer—not to the question asked, but to the one I needed to know. La Luxure had
already started to claim him, but a more imperative question remained. “How long do
you think you can hold it off without the blood of your master?”

The concern in my voice surprised even me. The thought of my father had weakened me.
As much as that disgusted me, I needed Kale for Ella’s sake. She trusted him. Laurent
would tell Ella about her parents—not for the first few weeks that he had her, because
he was smart—but that truth would take her away from the Council forever.

Kale said nothing as he flung open the door, and he disappeared into the night.
I guess Tamsin and Servitto won’t have the pleasure of meeting Kale after all.

***

The jet bearing Tamsin and Servitto sat on the small private runway. Two guards stood
at the opening and greeted me with a nod as I climbed aboard. The recycled air smelled
stale, and the heat that radiated at an abnormally high degree slapped me in the face.

The jet seated seven passengers: two guards; three high Council members (including
me): one for our tech, Zed; and one empty. The empty seat glared at me, baying loudly
at my failure to protect Ella.

I headed to my seat to await the instruction from Aleixandre through Servitto. Tamsin,
dressed in her favorite emerald green and cream camo jumper set, sat with her legs
crossed and hands folded elegantly over her legs on the cushioned chair. Her pale,
ice blue eyes burned through me and traced a hot path over my skin. Tamsin had once
been the princess to some royal throne, and she’d never lost the grace and demureness
instilled in her. In battle, she was someone else completely—vicious and merciless,
with her skills an added bonus, and her attitude a negative overlooked by most. Her
smooth, freckled faced was spoiled with lines as she frowned at me, her disapproval
palpable.

As I sat in the chair facing her, her frown deepened. She tossed her silver-blond
hair over her too-pale shoulder and looked to Servitto, as if she needed him to grant
her permission to chew me out. Servitto, multi-tasking as usual, continued the one-sided
conversation on his Bluetooth headset, while Zed, our tech boy-wonder, stared at the
door as if Ella would climb aboard at any moment.

Tamsin raised one eyebrow. “I saved that seat for her.” She pointed at my seat, her
voice low and quiet as she crossed one slim leg over the other and leaned back in
her chair.

Zed finally moved his gaze from the door to look at me. “She really isn’t coming,
is she?” He closed the laptop and placed it on the empty chair beside me. Distraught,
the human member of the Council placed his hands over his face and leaned back, shaking
his head in disbelief.

“No, she’s not coming,” I answered, though I knew it was a rhetorical question. I
needed to say the words aloud. I needed to admit that I had screwed up and that I
had to pay for it, but I still didn’t want to be taken off of Ella’s case.

Tamsin reached over and patted Zed on the knee, causing him to blush, and a wide grin
spread across his face. Taught as a child that royalty was never to touch those below
her, she didn’t offer her touch often. Zed was the only one she cared enough about
to console, ever. I trusted her with my life in battle, but only in battle. That was
as far as the trust extended.