Second Nature (11 page)

I turned to Sariah try explaining again, but
before I could, birds began chirping as my cell phone rang. Knowing
it was Nate, I practically dove for it.

“Are you okay?” My anger seemed unimportant
in the wake of what was happening. There would be time to have
things out later. Right now survival took precedence.

“My head feels like it’s gonna explode.
Wait, you too?”

“Yeah. Sariah gave me something to make the
pain stop. That's when I felt this…” I floundered, looking for a
term to describe what it was.

“I feel it too. What
is
it?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think Sariah can feel
it.” I shrugged, even though he couldn’t see it.

“It feels like it’s luring me. Almost like a
siren’s call. It seems like the less I resist, the less it
hurts.”

“Nate, whatever you do, do not go anywhere
closer. In fact, you should come here. Sariah can nurse us both.
Get in your car now”

He grumbled, trying to tell me his head hurt
too much. But every nerve in my body was on high alert, and I
needed him to be here. His excuses held no weight, and frankly,
they annoyed me. “Just get over here, Nate! I don’t care how hard
it is, get in your car and get over here now!”

Nate grumbled some more, but I got him to
agree and disconnected. I turned to my sister. “There’s a great
disturbance in the Force.” Sariah rolled her eyes impatiently, and
I tried to put into words the strange expectant hum. “It feels like
a static charge that just keeps building. If I had to point
fingers, I’d say it has something to do with witches.”

Sariah rose and ran into the house, and I
was close on her heels. We both tried to tell Xander what happened
at the same time, resulting in a high pitch hullabaloo that made no
sense. We stopped and glanced at each other a moment before she
waved her hand for me to proceed.

“There’s this building of energy, and I
think it something bad. Nate says he feels it calling him, but I
told him to come here. Whatever it is, resisting it hurts him so
strongly it affects me through the bond.”

I searched for his familiar energy and found
him steadily approaching. I sighed in relief knowing Nate was
close. I should be hearing his car pull into the drive any moment.
I went out the door and peered to the street in the direction I
sensed him, but even as my eyes swept past the spot where he should
have been, his familiar presence disappeared from my mind.

I ran without a conscious thought. I flew
down the driveway, and the sound of feet behind me told me I wasn’t
alone. As I came to where our driveway and the street met, I saw
Nate’s car and stifled a sob. The front end was smashed to the
point that the front window was obscured. A pool of fluids spread
from underneath the car like blood.

I couldn’t move, couldn’t make myself look
to see his dead body—that was the only way he could have
disappeared. Not seeing anything through my tears, I just stood. My
mind was stuck, unable to process beyond the single image of the
demolished Pontiac. The crumpled lump of red metal blurred as tears
filled my eyes, but I blinked them back. There was too much to do
if I could only make my brain work.

I have no idea who moved first, but suddenly
Xander said something and Sariah walked around the car to the
passenger side. All I could hear was a strange whooshing sound,
which was my own heartbeat. My chest was tight and each breath
shorter than the last. I was hyperventilating. As the world
retreated to a tiny black dot, I heard a tiny voice in my mind.
So this is what a panic attack feels like
.

THE NEXT THING I was aware of was a stinging
slap to my cheek. And whoever it was, wasn’t holding back. The
world swam into focus, and I opened my eyes to a serene starry sky
before sitting up into chaos. Xander knelt over me, and he was the
only one close enough who could have slapped me. I rubbed my cheek
and glared at him before taking in the scene around me.

I must have been out for longer than it
seemed because there was all kinds of things happening. A flatbed
tow truck winched the mass of fiberglass and steel that had once
been a Pontiac onto the bed. A man in blue coveralls sprinkled
something from a plastic container into the puddle of fluids. A
second man used a push broom to sweep up the glass scattered across
the road. Sariah spoke to a policeman, pigeon toeing and batting
her eyelashes at him. How could he resist a Succubus at the height
of her game?

Despite everything there was to take in, the
one thing missing was an ambulance or hearse or any other vehicle
to carry away the dead body. I shoved myself off the sidewalk while
my head whipped around in search of him; my mind reached out, but I
felt nothing. Even when he had been far away, there was always an
awareness. Now there was just emptiness.

Horror washed over me—for being mad at him,
for letting him walk away from me. Maybe, if I’d held onto him a
little tighter, he wouldn’t have turned to someone else. Had I held
my temper in check, would he be here with me now?

The sensation of building energy was gone.
In fact, it had disappeared the moment Nate had. Had it been an
attempt to kill him? After what seemed to be forever, I mustered up
the courage to ask my brother the question, “Is he... Was he...”
But I couldn’t say it.

Thankfully, Xander knew what I wanted. He
gave me a sad smile, and placed a firm hand on my shoulder.

“He wasn’t in there. We haven’t figured out
what happened yet, but he’s gone. I don’t think he’s dead though,
because you’re fine. You scared us, Lia. We thought you were
dying.” He trailed off, and his blue eyes whirled with flame in a
way I’d never noticed before. This wasn’t anger, and if I had to
put a name to it, I would say it was pain.

“So how did we go from me dying to me
getting slapped?”

“You were talking, saying something in some
language we didn’t recognize. I figured it was worth a shot.” He
shrugged and gave me a devilish look.

I shook my head and slapped his shoulder,
but my heart wasn’t in it. “I can’t sense him at all, Xander. Even
when he wasn’t in North Carolina, I had an awareness of his general
direction, but now… It’s almost like the bond isn’t there.”

Xander frowned. I chewed my lower lip and
watched them secure the car as the other guys swept up the last of
the glass and absorbent powder from the road. Sariah waggled her
fingers at the cop as he left and gave him a cutesy smile. She
turned toward us, rolling her eyes.

“Glad you’re okay, Lia,” she said. Her flat
voice belied the emotions she struggled with. I wondered for about
the millionth time what it must be like to feel the emotions of
everyone around you. And I had complained about what happened when
I was with Nate! “I think we need to get back to the house and
figure out what the hell just happened.”

We trudged back to the house, quiet and
somewhat defeated. I sat on the sofa with my legs folded underneath
me and a pillow clutched to my chest. Sariah paced back and forth
across the mosaic tile, and Xander sprawled in an arm chair. We
argued through the events of the day countless times. As the sun
crept over the horizon, we were no closer to any answers. We still
had no idea how Nate’s car had been totaled around the corner from
our house without us hearing a thing. I still couldn’t sense
anything from him. All this time I’d been wishing for him to go
away, to leave me alone in my own head, now the missing bundle of
sensation in the back of my mind gave me the creeps. I let my eyes
drift closed in exhaustion.

They snapped open, however, at the sound of
the door closing. I turned to see Dylan smiling, those intriguing
grey-green eyes shining with a light that had nothing to do with
him being an angel. Butterflies took off in my stomach, and my
heart started palpitating, something was different. It took my
sluggish brain a moment to figure out something wasn’t right about
that.

“What are you doing here?” I asked, my eyes
darting to the clock. “It’s five in the morning.

“I could lie and say I just
had
to
see you,” he said with a smile and a cautious glance at my
siblings. “But the truth is your sister called for backup. I had to
see you were alright,” he said, sitting on the sofa at my feet.

“Of course I am. Why wouldn’t I be?”

“You have no idea, do you?” He bolted to his
feet and began to back away, his eyes bewildered.

“I would like to know,” I said, grabbing his
wrist before he could go too far. “Seriously, Dylan, what do you
know?”

“A darkness covered the city yesterday, like
nothing I’ve ever felt before. It centered itself on you and
Nathanial.” His lip curled in distaste at the name, but he seemed
unaware of it. “It got stronger the closer the two of you got, then
all of a sudden, it severed you.”

“Severed?” I asked, confused. “What do you
mean? How were we severed?”

“Your bond was severed.”

“Wait, you mean someone was able to—” I
searched for a word, “un-bond us?”

“Not exactly, you’re still tied together
physically. I can still feel him through you. He has some minor
injuries, but he seems to be okay.”

“How do you know?”

“I think it’s part of my healing abilities.
I can feel what’s wrong with someone, and a part of you stretches
off into the distance. If I follow it, I can get a vague sense
him.”

“Can you use it to tell where he is?” I
couldn’t keep the hope out of my tone. I didn’t miss the wince from
Dylan. No matter how angry Nate made me—and no one could spark my
temper like he could—I needed him to be safe.

Dylan shook his head, his eyes pinched. “No,
but you should be able to when he feels something, a physical
stimulation of some sort. I think he’s unconscious right now.
You’ll still feel everything that happens to his body, but your
minds have been freed from each other.”

My head reeled, and I wasn’t sure I could
take all this in. “Is that even possible? And how can someone
remove one without the other?”

“Imagine the life bond as a rope. Several
fibers are woven together to make one whole. Somehow, someone has
figured a way to unravel part of that rope. It’s still there, it’s
just much thinner.”

“How will it affect us? Will I still get
sick without him around?”

“I don’t know, Lia, this has never happened
before that I know of.”

“Is that why everyone is so worried about
me?” I glanced at my siblings. Sariah had abandoned her pacing to
perch on the bottom step with her chin in her hand. She looked far
too disinterested to be doing anything other than listening. Xander
was being far less subtle, eyeing Dylan with outright suspicion. I
could almost imagine him polishing a shotgun in some date
movie.

“We have no idea what’s going to happen
because of this. And frankly it scares us.” Dylan’s muted green
eyes surveyed mine with an intensity that made me blush. It
stripped me bare to my soul and left me breathless.

I didn’t know what to say, but I had a
sudden impulse to lay my hand on Dylan’s cheek. Before the thought
fully formed in my mind, his stubble bristled against my palm.
“Thank you.” My voice was quiet, little more than a whisper. He
smiled and placed his hand on top of mine for a moment, and then he
shifted back. I spoke a little louder, making sure everyone could
hear. “Thank you for worrying, but I’m fine.”

I was tired of everyone worrying about me. I
hated being the damsel in distress. It made me sad to be a constant
source of fear and worry for everyone. What good was it to be able
to do the amazing things if other people needed to rescue me all
the time?

Just like that, my siblings were hovering
and fussing over me. Sariah tried to cover me with a blanket while
Xander forced a cup of tea into my hands. I fended them off,
indignation pouring off me.

“I said I’m fine. As in nothing’s wrong. Can
we chill for just a minute?”

Sariah’s hands braced on her hips, and I
knew I was in for it. If you’ve never seen a Succubus in a snit,
consider yourself very lucky. It’s a scary thing, though still
disgustingly attractive. “Amelia Rylee! Do you have any idea what
you’ve put us through? The least you can do is let us take care of
you.”

Perhaps her words should have touched me or,
at the very least, overcome my objections. Instead, they made me
furious. “Is it my fault this happened? I didn’t do anything, and
there’s nothing wrong with me. The only thing different is I’m a
little freer. I don’t know what someone wanted to accomplish, but
they did me a favor.” The rage was replaced by tears as a complex
mixture of emotions overtook me. “Do you have any idea how good it
feels to not be ill without someone? How amazing it is to not feel
someone’s absence like a heavy weight upon my shoulders?” My voice
broke, and I opened my mouth to continue but Sariah held up a hand
cutting me off.