The P.J. Stone Gates Trilogy (#1-3) (63 page)

“She wanted me to be prepared for a change in you when you returned. She wanted me to give you some space,” he growled while he still struggled with the piece of jewelry. “I thought she meant—I don’t know—not that you would come back and suddenly not want me any longer.” He abruptly released me and turned away from me. “It’s welded on. We’re going to need a special tool to get it off,” he said with frustration oozing through his entire body as he stood perfectly still.

“What? What the hell?” How did it become—wait—it was my fire magic—I distinctly remembered the bracelet growing really, really hot back at the creepy Murder House. “I reached up and clutched at the dragon pendant Khol had gifted to me. It was perfectly fine. “Why didn’t the pendant—”

“It’s been charmed to be fire magic proof. It was made for our kind specifically,” Khol answered before I could finish my question.

“Oh.”

“Get dressed. We have more important things to worry about right now.” I didn’t know how to react. One minute Khol had been ready to force himself on me, and the next he’s acting like I was the one who was focusing on our little love triangle to the detriment of everything else. “I’ll be outside when you’re ready.” He stalked out of the room without so much as a backward glance at me.

“Okaaaay,” I mumbled to myself. Not that I wasn’t ecstatic for the reprieve from Khol, but I wasn’t sure exactly what had just happened. Had Khol accepted that I wanted Bryn and not him? I highly doubted it, and yet he had walked away . . . literally. Maybe he’d just realized we
did
have more important things to worry about at the moment and the rest could wait.

I harrumphed to myself as I located my discarded clothes and pulled them back on. I for one was ready to get back to dealing with the Rider inside of Cliff instead of focusing on my messed up love life. Because screwed wasn’t even a good enough word to describe my situation at all . . . not by a long shot.

Terrance blinked his human host’s eyes in complete disbelief as he settled back into the familiar body. When he was ripped from it, he had thought it would be the last time he would exist outside the red stone that imprisoned him. He knew many others that had been placed there by his master to never return. He looked up questioningly at his master and immediately averted his eyes in submission.

“They have my son,” his master growled with fury. “Consider this your last and second chance at this life.” There was a long pause before he spoke again and Terrance didn’t dare so much as to twitch a single muscle. “Get him back no matter the cost.”

Terrance rose and left the room without a single word. He didn’t need to say anything. His master knew that he understood what was truly at stake. And he had no intention of losing his freedom again.

I knew I needed to focus on the Rider inside of Cliff and getting any kind of information we could out of him. The opportunity we had was priceless, and yet all I really wanted to do was to go to Bryn. I needed to tell him how much had changed in the short time I’d been away. Well . . . at least from my perspective. I was still pregnant and didn’t know whether he or Khol was the father, but none of that seemed to matter in regards to wanting to be with Bryn anymore. But what could I say to him this time around that I hadn’t already said before? He’d told me that love wasn’t an issue, and that love, in fact, was what was motivating him to give me up . . . for my own protection. I just had to make him understand somehow . . . make him see that it wasn’t his job to protect me.

What I really needed was to talk to Jenna—the real Jenna anyways. I hadn’t allowed myself to think in much detail about her being possessed by a Rider while I was away. I had too many other things to deal with and it was just easier to pretend what had happened with her was all a really, really bad dream. Yep . . . I was not only the new dragon Queen but the Queen of Denial as well. I was suddenly overcome with the irresistible urge to visit her. I missed her more than I ever thought possible. Sure, she’s completely self-absorbed at times, sex obsessed, and utterly annoying but—she was Jenna and I loved her. I knew if I asked well—anyone—to take me to see her that they would disagree with that line of thought and prevent me from doing so. The only way I was going to get to see her, I knew, was if I found her on my own. Now . . . where would I stash her if I were Khol?

About fifteen minutes later, a very annoyed me still hadn’t figured out where Jenna was. Maybe if I could find Jeremy, I could force it out of him. I wondered if having a Rider in Jenna had dampened his newfound devotion to her? He had to know it wasn’t really her that had sent him to deliver her cookies of death to me. I heaved a huge sigh and was just about to give up when I spied Jeremy, speak of the devil, coming down the hallway. Isn’t that the way it always is . . . you only luck into something just when you’re ready to give up?

“Jeremy!” I called out, hurrying towards him with excitement.

He looked up at me, and a smile spread across his face slowly. “I’m so glad you’re back.” He came to me and wrapped me in a bear hug, swinging me around, causing me to giggle despite myself. Yep . . . I’d missed Jeremy too. Even though he had started out as just another guy trying to play tonsil hockey with me, since his feelings for Jenna had developed, we’d been able to relax into a real friendship, at least I felt that way. “Have you figured out a way to fix Jenna?” he asked with hope filling his caramel colored eyes as he set me back down on my feet.

All feelings of elation instantaneously drained out of me. “Not yet.” I paused to study the ground before gathering the courage to meet his eyes and the disappointment that shone out at me from them. “But I know I will. My birth mother said I could, and she’s never wrong apparently.”

He nodded, letting some hope settle into his tense features. “Okay. So what’s the plan then?”

“I wanna see her Jeremy. I know you’re probably gonna say it’s a bad idea but I just miss her so much, and I just—”

“Yeah. Okay,” Jeremy interjected, thoroughly shutting me up. I’d been prepared to argue with him to get him to tell me where she was. I was shocked at how easily he agreed. He must have read it on my face. “She can’t hurt you, and she knows she has a Rider inside of her. It’s almost like she has a split personality or something. Jenna—the real Jenna—there aren’t even words to explain how awful she feels about—”

“Trying to kill me,” I said dryly.

“Yeah,” Jeremy said softly, like he was partly to blame or something.

I reached up and touched his arm. “But she’s okay besides that? I mean no one is mistreating her, right? Khol promised he’d protect her.” And yet another instance of me turning to Khol for aid. But then again he was the Red Dragon Lord, and I was the dragon Queen. Technically, I could ask any dragon for assistance and expect them to give to me.

“She’s safe but . . .” Jeremy’s voice trailed off and his brow furrowed with concern. “She’s not doing well. The animals . . . well, they won’t talk to her and she’s just—”

I gasped, cutting him off. “Oh God, no. I never thought about that part—either way.” A Rider with the ability to talk to and in a minor manner control animals—we could have all been so screwed. “I’m sure once the Rider’s gone, they’ll talk to her again.”

“That’s what I keep telling her,” Jeremy mumbled while studying the floor. He then suddenly looked up at me, as if he forgot for a moment he wasn’t alone and gave me a weak smile. “Come on, we’ll go see her now before anyone else . . .” He raised his fist up to his mouth and forced a cough. “Khol,” he said with a smirk, and he turned and started walking back down the wall in the direction I had seen him coming from, “tries to stop you.”

I couldn’t help but laugh as I fell into step beside him. “He is a bit controlling, isn’t he?”

Jeremy stopped in his tracks and raised his eyebrows up to practically his hairline. “A bit?”

I rolled my eyes at him. “You know what I mean.”

Neither one of us said anything else for over the few hundred feet it took to travel until we paused in front of a huge wooden door. As Jeremy pulled it open, I only hesitated for a second before following him in. Inside, much to my surprise, looked like a bedroom with prison bars in front of it. Like someone had just installed bars as an afterthought. And I suppose, that’s probably exactly what happened. Talk about a whole new definition to being sent to your room.

I trailed along behind Jeremy and scanned the room for Jenna. Only when we were standing right up next to the bars, did I notice her sprawled out on the bed, staring up at the ceiling. She looked so tiny, lost, and forlorn, laying there with black messy hair and light brown roots. I was overcome by the urge to run to her and hug her, but of course, I couldn’t for obvious reasons.

“Jenna,” Jeremy said in a soft tone. “Someone’s here to see you.”

I heard Jenna heave a huge sigh. “I told you, I don’t want any visitors. Please just go away.” Her voice was so flat and utterly hopeless sounding, lacking all of the usual life that Jenna always seemed to have in her, it was if someone had sucked out her very essence. My stomach knotted immediately, and I felt bile rise up in my throat.

“Jenna,” I said. “I wanted to see you. Please won’t you talk to me?”

She sat up suddenly and came running towards the bars with a huge smile on her face, and she was still, in that moment, my best girlfriend I’d known forever. But as she got closer and the duel imagery of the Rider inside of her shined out from behind her pixie face, I involuntarily took a step back and let out a strangled scream. My reaction halted her dead in her tracks and her face went ashen. She blinked back tears that were gathering in her deep brown eyes as she looked at me.

“I’m sorry!” I blurted out wanting desperately a do over. “I knew what to expect, it’s just that . . .” What could I say? Seeing an alien living inside of you kind of freaked me out? Well of course—duh. “I—I’m sorry.” Maybe I shouldn’t have come to see her after all. I thought I could handle it, but maybe I was wrong.

Jenna’s eyes finally filled to the brim and the tears spilled out and rolled down her face, her lower lip trembling. “You know I would never try to kill you. I mean—
I
would never try to kill you. And the animals—they won’t talk to me anymore. I know it’s in there—I can feel it but I can’t see it! Can’t control it when it starts implanting things in my head!” She wailed the last part and dropped to her knees.

Tears of my own began to flow freely down my face and I desperately tried to think of something to say to comfort her. “I’m going to find a way to get it out of you—I promise.”

“What if you can’t? Or what if even when it’s gone it leaves some kind of—I don’t know—darkness behind?” Her whole body began to shake as she sobbed. “I tried to kill you. It made sense at the time. It convinced me that you were to blame for all of my problems . . . losing my family . . . being here . . . just everything.” More huge sobs wracked her body. “It made total sense—to kill you—my best friend.”

“Jenna—I . . .” I looked at her beseeching eyes and began to wonder if it was so easy to convince her I was to blame . . . because I was. I swallowed to try and combat the sudden dryness of my throat, the bile that had risen up had left a burning sensation in its wake. I then turned to Jeremy with wide eyes and shook my head in panic. “I’m sorry—I thought I could—but I can’t.” Those were the only words of explanation I managed to get out before I turned and ran from the room—ran from Jenna, my best female friend who had an alien inside of her.

Once outside of the room I continued to run, not really sure where I was going, letting my feet lead me blindly. Where could I go? Not to Khol. I knew I could find comfort in his arms, but that would be the easy fix, and short lived at that. Not to Bryn either. I wasn’t sure how he would receive me at the moment, and I didn’t think I could handle being turned away from him in the state I was in. So I continued to blindly run, my tears smearing the world into bright water colors before my eyes, until I found myself outside in one of the many gardens surrounding the compound and I collapsed under a huge tree.