Unhidden (The Gatekeeper Chronicles Book 1) (27 page)

It was hard to argue with that logic, so I fell back into silence. Minutes later, Zane cut off the motor and picked up the oars.

“We’re here,” he said, gracefully steering us to a ladder alongside an old peer that led up to street level. He tied off the boat and helped me onto the rungs.

At the top of the ladder, a massive warehouse loomed over us. Many of the old, leaded glass windows were broken or missing, with plywood nailed over them from the inside. Colorful graffiti decorated the entire surface of the building. Trash and detritus was strewn along the street and collected against the walls.

Zane led me to the warehouse’s steel doors. Although they were covered in spray paint, there was no sign of scratches, dents or rust. Clearly they were newer to the building and quite secure. Zane removed a small set of keys from his pants pocket and unlocked the door’s three deadbolts. Then he pushed the heavy metal slab open and flicked on a light inside.

The light came from a single bulb on a string in the second floor loft, illuminating only one corner of the warehouse dimly. I followed Zane up a set of steel steps into his makeshift home.

I had been expecting an unmade mattress on the floor, empty pizza boxes, and a big screen television. Wasn’t that how most bachelors lived? It certainly described Daniel’s apartment. Instead, Zane had created a comfortable, if modest, living space for himself.

Tucked into the far corner of the room was a queen-sized bed, adorned with clean, charcoal gray sheets as well as a white feather comforter and pillows. A small black table stood next to the bed with a single, silver lamp, and next to that was a chest of drawers. The walls were unadorned. There wasn’t a single painting, poster, or photograph anywhere in the room. The only object was a small, decorative box sitting on the bedside table, and I itched with curiosity to know what was inside.

Against the wall opposite the bed was a glass-topped desk covered in papers and a laptop computer connected to a large flat panel monitor. A door stood ajar next to the desk, leading to a modest bathroom with white subway tile walls and floors and a shower that was calling my name.

“Do you mind?” I asked, nodding toward the shower.

“No. Let me get you some clothes.” He pulled a pair of boxer shorts along with an oversized
I Love NY
T-shirt from a drawer and handed them to me.

I took them with a grateful smile and made my way to the bathroom.

Thirty minutes later, we were both showered and dressed in boxers and tees. Zane insisted I sleep on the bed while he took the recliner, but as tired as I had been, I lay in bed wide awake. I knew Zane was awake too, since I could hear him shifting uncomfortably every minute or so. His presence was disconcerting in so many ways.

How was I supposed to fall asleep in the presence of the man who had been trying to kill me up until tonight? Could I really trust him with my life? Of course the answer was no, but I also saw tonight as a temporary cease fire. I felt like I could trust that, for the next few hours, he wouldn’t try to harm me.

Then there was the matter of that … er, vivid … hallucination I’d had when under the influence of the serum. I couldn’t figure out whether they were real memories or hallucinations brought on by the drugs. Either way, they kept intruding on my thoughts every time I looked over and saw Zane sprawled out on the chair, within touching distance.

It felt warm in the room, so I kicked off the comforter, looking to cool off a bit.

“Can’t sleep either, huh?” came Zane’s husky voice from the darkness.

“No. I must be wired from all of the excitement tonight,” I lied.

I sat up against the pillows and turned on the bedside lamp. Zane also sat up, folding in his recliner and leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. When he ran his hands through that long, black hair, all I could think about was how much I wanted those to be my hands knotted in his hair.

“Why did you come for me tonight?” I asked instead.

“I told you, Alex asked me to.”

“The last time I checked, you and Alex were enemies. Why would you do something like that for him?”

He let out a long breath and leaned back in the chair. “It’s sort of a long story.” I raised my eyebrows expectantly, inviting him to continue. “Alex and I weren’t always enemies. In fact, there was a time when we were closer than brothers. We were raised together, apprentices to the same mage. We even joined the Council together.”

“So what happened?”

“You happened,” he responded softly. I flinched as if I had been struck. Was that why Alex hated me so much, because I had come between him and his best friend? “Well, that’s actually an overstatement. Marduk happened, but you were directly involved.”

“I’m listening.”

“Emma, there is something very important that I have to tell you, and I don’t know how you are going to take it.” He stood and walked over to the bed, taking a seat on the edge, careful not to get too close. However, my hormones thought he was plenty close. “It was me.”

I waited for a moment for clarification, but it didn’t come. “It was you who did what?”

“
I
took away your memories, or blocked them, to be more accurate.”

“What?” I breathed. I wasn’t sure I had understood him correctly. The room was spinning, and I felt lightheaded.

“I blocked your memories and sent you through a rift to Earth to protect you. We … you and I … were together once.” He looked at me from under his long lashes and our eyes met. “In love,” he clarified, in the event I hadn’t understood his meaning. “Marduk found out and saw our union as a threat. With our combined power, he was afraid we could have easily overthrown him. He tried to have me killed, and when you found out, you got … angry. You weren’t very well-trained at the time. I had been trying, and you had made progress, but you always let your emotions control you.”

It was hard to imagine that. “I’ve learned to control my emotions since then. I didn’t have much of a choice,” I responded, thinking back to my time in foster care.

“Well, back then, you weren’t quite so … disciplined. You lost control, did a lot of damage. It made you the target of a lot of races that suffered from what you had done. I knew the only way to save you was to get you out, so I did.”

“But didn’t that weaken you?” Understanding dawned on me in that moment as I followed through the consequences. “Marduk got to you, didn’t he? Because you were too weakened from saving me to defend yourself?” Zane nodded. “And that’s why Alex hates me, because you let yourself become a victim for my sake.” I didn’t need an answer to that one; I knew it was the truth.

“What did Marduk do to you? Why do you seem so sane now when before you were … not?” Zane swallowed hard, and I noticed his hands begin to shake. He looked at the floor and merely shook his head response. His reaction scared me. Whatever had been done to him had been bad. “It’s okay. You don’t need to tell me.”

Zane cleared his throat. “I’m not the same person I was when we were together. I can’t be trusted. Right now, I can have a conversation with you because of magic. It’s a spell that the Council developed years ago, hoping to find a way to fix me. It works … for a time. But, when it wears off, it takes even more of my mind, leaving me in a worse state. When they realized that, they stopped using it and left me to my fate. Alex needed me this time, though … you needed me. I agreed to the spell, even knowing the consequences. Emma, I have only a few hours left, but I want to try to fix what I’ve done.”

Zane’s eyes were bright with unshed tears. I could see the pain behind them. It made me think of that movie
Awakenings
, about the patients who had been temporarily cured of their vegetative states yet knew the cure wasn’t permanent. What must Zane be going through, knowing his sanity was only fleeting, and he would once again lose his best friend and the woman he once loved? Not only that, but he would become their sworn enemy and would either kill the people he loved, or they would end up killing him. It made me want to cry for him.

“How do you plan to fix this?” I asked.

“I can bring your memories back.”

I blinked in surprise. Would that fix everything? Did I want those memories back, knowing they contained a tragic love story and the destruction of good people at my hands? I wasn’t convinced I wanted to feel that kind of pain. Maybe it was a blessing that I didn’t remember those things. Then again, how could I fix this mess if I didn’t know what to do? How could I stay alive long enough to set things right when I didn’t know how to fight these creatures that had been set against me? Most of all, the question that kept repeating itself incessantly inside of my head, demanding to be heard, was what if I had the knowledge and power buried deep inside of me to fix Zane? He said himself that we were among the most powerful in Urusilim. If I could destroy, could I also heal?

“Do it,” I said. “I need to know.”

“It’s not that easy. I can’t bring them all back at once. That amount of information crashing into your mind all at once would destroy your brain permanently. The only safe way to do it is to create cracks in the wall I erected so it gradually crumbles over time, setting free memories bit by bit. That would give your mind time to adjust to the new information at a safer pace.”

“How long would it take to get all of my memories back that way?”

Zane shrugged. “It’s not like I have ever done this before. I suppose it could take weeks or months, maybe even years. It depends on the capability of your mind to assimilate your memories.”

I didn’t see that I had much choice in the matter. I certainly didn’t want to end up in a coma for the rest of my life. This was the only way to go, even if it didn’t immediately give me all the answers I needed.

“Okay,” I agreed. “How are you going to create these cracks in my mind?”

“The best way to do it is to reveal to you one memory. That should be enough to weaken the barrier.”

“So which memory is it going to be?” I asked. My mind was churning through the possibilities—the memory of how to use magic, how to fight these creatures, how to open one of those precious rifts.

The list of possibilities was endless, though Zane knocked me for me a loop when he said, “I am going to give you back the memory of us.”

“W
hy us? No offense, but aren’t there more important things I should know about?” If I was being honest with myself, I was petrified to have the memories of Zane back. I didn’t want the complications of feeling something more for him than I already did, knowing he was the enemy. I also didn’t want to deal with the baggage of feelings in general. Too much was happening right now, and I couldn’t afford to be distracted by useless emotions. I also had to consider the possibility that he was doing this on purpose to slow me down and make me weak. “No, I don’t want those memories. Give me back something else.”

His face fell, and he looked away for a moment to conceal his expression, but I did see his throat move in a hard swallow. If he was being sincere, and I put myself in his shoes, it must be hurtful that I didn’t want to remember our time together.

“I’m sorry. I just … I’m not sure … I just don’t think that information will be immediately helpful to me. I mean, I’d like to know, but now might not be the best time.”

Zane turned back to me, forcing a smile on his handsome face. “I understand, Emma, I really do. I wish I could give you information that was more immediately useful, but I can’t. The more useful information is also more dangerous. I don’t think you’re ready to handle it yet without the context of who you are … were. I need to start with us.”

I searched his face, looking for traces of a lie, but all I saw was sincerity. God help me, I didn’t have much of a choice other than to trust him. At this point, I was stuck. I didn’t have Sharur, didn’t know where it was, didn’t have access to my powers, had no way of stopping the war that was coming, and my allies were dwindling as they were captured, injured, or died. I needed all of my memories back as quickly as possible; as a result, I had to man up and take this first one.

“Fine, do it.”

“I just need to warn you that this won’t be easy. Tampering with a person’s mind is messy business, with some unpleasant side effects. The last time I did this to you, you ended up in a coma for almost a year.”

“What?” I asked. That couldn’t be right. I was told I had been semi-conscious for only a few weeks following my accident. Could I really have lost one year of my life? Why would everyone have lied to me about that?

“That shouldn’t happen this time, though,” he quickly explained. “Before, I didn’t have time to be subtle or careful. I threw up the strongest wall I could conjure in seconds, and it caused significant damage to your psyche. This time, I am only going to release a small amount of your memory. The rest will come along gradually as your mind is ready to handle it. So you won’t end up in a coma, but it still won’t feel pleasant.”

“As long as I can recover quick enough to fight this war, I’m good to go.”

“I have no way of knowing for sure, but we can only hope the effects won’t last very long,” Zane confirmed.