by J. N. Baker
The room went black.
My head was pounding and my body ached. I tried to shift on the hospital bed to push the nurse call button for more pain meds but found I couldn’t move. I struggled to move my arms again and froze. I was tied down. Why the hell would the hospital restrain me?
Panic rose within my chest.
My eyes shot open but everything was hazy. I could faintly make out metal rafters high above me. The room was dark, cold. One thing I knew for certain: this wasn’t a hospital.
“Where am I?” I choked out.
“You are finally awake,” a male voice said from somewhere to my right. I moved my head to look and the room spun.
“Who are you? What are you going to do to me?”
This had to be some sort of horrible nightmare. There was no way I’d been kidnapped after everything I’d already been through. No one had that shitty of luck. I pulled against my bonds and cried out as the pain shot through my body. Not again—this couldn’t be happening again.
“Calm yourself,” the man ordered, his voice echoing loudly as if we were in a giant metal box.He stepped beside me. I couldn’t make out his face behind the shadow of his hood, but he sounded young. And he was tall, towering over me like some sort of hulking Viking. “I am going to make everything better now. I am going to make you better.”
“Please. Just take me back to the hospital. I won’t tell anyone about you. Just take me back,” I pleaded, tears pooling in the corners of my eyes until they fell to whatever hard surface I was tied to.
“I am sorry, but I cannot do that,” he said, pulling his hood away. I fought hard against my drugged haze, trying to focus on his face.
Holy shit. He was a Viking.
His dirty blond hair was long, and hung around his young but stony face. He looked like he was in his early twenties and yet he seemed so much older. And those eyes—like bright blue sapphires in the darkness—I could have sworn they were glowing.
“W-what are you?” I whispered, shrinking away from him.
“Everything will make sense soon,” he whispered, pulling something small and white from behind his back.
By the time I realized it was a dagger, it was too late.
I woke to a blood-curdling scream.
My scream.
My skin burned as if I’d been set on fire. Maybe I had. Maybe that sick bastard took a match to me after he kidnapped me.
The bones in my broken arm shifted beneath my cast, pushing through torn muscle. The bruised skin on my face itched to the point of being painful and the shredded flesh where a knife had once torn me open felt like it was crawling. A rib within my chest popped, and then another. I was sure my body was being ripped apart and shoved back together again. Another scream escaped my lips.
“That is right. Savor the pain. Become one with it.”
The man appeared once more at my side. He stood as still as a statue while I flailed against my restraints. A large hand shot out and grabbed a fistful of my hair, holding my head still while his other hand forced my eyelids open.
He seemed satisfied with whatever it was he saw. He released his hold on my head and reached for my arm. I would’ve pulled away if I could have. His fingers dug underneath the edge of my cast and ripped it away as if it were nothing more than paper.
“What have you done to me?” I cried out, gasping for air that hurt to inhale. “What have you done?”
“I have made you who you were always meant to be,” he said, taking a step away from me.
The pain intensified until I could take no more.
As the darkness took me, I couldn’t help but wonder if this time, the pain would end forever.
“Wake up,” a voice commanded.
I groaned, twisting on a soft surface—softer than the metal table I’d be strapped to for the past three days, at least. I cracked my eyes open and waited for them to focus, which they did and rather quickly. Where there was once steel and cold, there was now wood and warmth.
The air was hot, almost unbearably so. A thin layer of sweat broke out on the surface of my skin, soaking into the scratchy sheet beneath me. Outside, birds were singing and crickets were chirping so loudly that I wanted to cover my ears. I could even hear the wind rustling through the trees—a lot of trees. The strong scent of a forest wafted up my nose. It was almost familiar. Almost.
“Where am I?” I groaned, surprised to find my voice wasn’t nearly as hoarse as I would have expected after several days of screaming.
“California.”
I shot up in what I now realized was a small cot in an even smaller cabin and cried out instinctively. Only, I found I had no more reason to cry because the pain was gone. All of it.
And then I screamed for another reason entirely. Where there was once a cast on my arm, there were now black tattoos. They wrapped around my arm—both of my arms. I kicked the scratchy sheet away to find more tattoos covering my legs. Panic rose within me and I tossed modesty out the cabin’s one tiny window, yanking down the front of my hospital gown. The black marks were everywhere. I was covered in them. I was torn between curling into myself and clawing off my own skin.
“What have you done to me?” I breathed, hugging a pair of legs that I no longer recognized into a chest that couldn’t possibly have been mine.
“As I told you before, I have made you what you were always destined to be—what God has destined you to be. The transformation is now complete.”
This man was clearly insane. One of those cult leaders probably. I shuddered to think what he had planned for me. Was I going to be some twisted sacrifice? His fifth wife? Did he think he was a prophet coming to save the people of Earth from aliens?
“You need to take me back,” I shouted. “Take me back to Washington!”
“I am sorry, but I cannot do that, Zoe.”
“H-how do you know my name?”
“I know everything about you.”
I swallowed hard. “Have you been…stalking me?”
“I have been watching you,” he corrected, as if that was much better.
“Look,” I said, rising from the cot much faster than I intended. The room didn’t spin as I would have expected and I found myself stepping toe-to-toe with my kidnapper. Even standing in front of him, he towered over me like the Viking of a man that he was. “You need to take me home,” I demanded. “I won’t even tell anyone what you did or who you are. Just let me go home. I have family that will be worried about me.”
Well, maybe not family. But I knew my friends would be worried sick. Josh’s and Cody’s faces flashed across my mind and a tightness gripped my chest and quickly dissipated.
He took a step toward me and I retreated a step, staying out of reach.
“Your old life is over,” he said with so much callousness that it made me fall back onto the cot. “You are one of the Chosen now, Zoe Marks.”
I paused for a second. “Marks? My name isn’t Marks—it’s Zoe Brooks.” A pathetic and desperate shred of hope bloomed within me. “You have the wrong girl!” I exclaimed.
“No, I do not. And no, it is not. Not anymore. You will never use the name Brooks again. Not if you want to live. Do you understand me? You are now Zoe Marks.”
“I understand that you’re insane,” I sneered. “And that you kidnapped me, tortured me, and then defaced my body. When I get out of here, I’m going to make sure you rot in prison. Maybe they’ll even give you the chair and you can rot in hell after rotting in a cell for a few years.”
The man surprised me by chuckling. I didn’t even know him and the sound still seemed foreign coming from his lips.
“What the hell is so funny?” I snapped.
“You just remind me of someone I knew a very long time ago. But she is long gone and you are here now.”
I felt the blood drain from my face. Did he kill some other poor girl and kidnap me to replace her? When he got sick of me, would he kill and replace me as well? I needed to get the hell away from this guy. And fast.
My eyes darted to the rickety front door.
“Now, let us get this over with.” He reached down and grabbed the hem of his hoodie and lifted it over his head.
No. I refused to be a victim again. Never again.
I made a break for it, flying past him at a speed that almost made me pause for thought. Almost. But my desire to escape was too great. I would have plenty of time after I got away to think about how my body was moving faster than any human ought to move. Adrenaline did funny things, right?
One second, my fingertips were grazing the door and the next I was flat on my back on the floor staring up at my shirtless kidnapper. He leaned down and wrapped a large hand around my neck, picking me up as if I weighed nothing.
“Let go of me!” I screamed.
“You are making this more difficult than it needs to be,” he scolded as if I were some sort of disobedient child. He kept his hand securely wrapped around my throat but didn’t squeeze, those glowing blue eyes boring into me. My eyes trailed down to see that his half-naked body was covered in the same black markings as my own and I gasped.
With an ease that was almost terrifying, he dragged me back to the cot and tossed me on it. He loomed over me with his arms crossed over his muscular chest.
“Are you about finished?”
My mind started racing, desperately searching the room for some type of weapon. And like some sort of sick and twisted answer to my prayers, all the ways in which I could kill him flashed through my mind. With explicit detail. I doubled over on the cot and vomited what little there was in my stomach onto the wooden floorboards.
“Yes, I suppose that takes some time to get used to,” he muttered.
I shot up, slamming my elbow into the lone window just above the cot, sending glass sailing around me. In less than a second, I’d snatched up the largest piece and shoved it up into his neck, slicing through his jugular with a strength I didn’t know I had.
My blood-splattered hand shook as I retracted it. He stumbled back, his hand coming up to grip the large shard of glass protruding from his flesh as if he didn’t believe it was real.
Without looking back, I bolted through the front door with such force it flew off its hinges.
Giant redwoods towered around me as I burst out of the cabin and into the bright light of day. I didn’t have time to think which way to go—I just ran—sprinting through the forest so fast that the world around me became one big blur. And yet, everything I looked at was crystal clear. I dodged hidden rocks and leapt over fallen trees with ease, slicing through the waist-high foliage that tried to hold me back. It was like my body knew exactly what it needed to do to survive—to get away.
I just needed to find someone to help me. Where were all the people?
And then the one person I never thought I’d find stepped in front of me. And he looked pissed.
I skidded to a stop in front of him and my jaw dropped. He should have been bleeding out on the floor of that filthy cabin. He should have been dead. And yet there he stood, very much alive, the only trace of his wound the dried blood on his neck. No glass. No gaping wound. Hell, not even a scratch.
I stumbled back a step. “H-how?”
“The same way your own body healed itself,” he said, his blue eyes cold.
I tripped over a log and scrambled away from him. “That’s impossible.”
“Is it?” He raised a brow at me, his eyes roving over my very healed body.
“What the hell are you?” What am I? I wanted to ask. I wasn’t sure I was ready for that answer yet. Would I ever be?
The man sighed. “Let us start over, shall we? My name is William and I am one of the Chosen. And, now, so are you.”
I climbed to my feet, making sure to keep distance between us. “Chosen?”
“Yes. We are God’s warriors. We are put on this Earth to protect it.”
I couldn’t stop the bubble of laughter that burst from my throat. “What? Like superheroes?”
“Not exactly.”
And then a terrifying thought hit me. Super speed, physical healing, enhanced senses, unnaturally bright eyes, body built like some sort of chiseled Greek god. I wrapped both hands around my neck instinctively, checking for bite marks. “A-are you a vampire?”
The man—William—scoffed at that. “Most certainly not. We are far superior to the vampires.”
“You’re crazy,” I breathed. “Nuts.”
William took a step toward me and then another until he had me backed against a tree. He looked down on me like a predator with its prey right where he wanted it. I resisted the urge to cover my neck once more. “Perhaps. Or perhaps the world is not as black and white as you thought.”
“But I’m human,” I said, stating the obvious. But as my eyes trailed down my body, covered in black markings and no longer broken and battered, I had a moment of uncertainty.
He stared at me, watching and waiting as my wheels spun out of control.
“I am human, right?”
“Why would you want to be?” he countered. “How hard is it to believe that your life was destined for greatness? To be something more than what you once were?”
His words bounced around in my brain at lightning speed until I almost believed them. Maybe I was crazy too. Maybe this was all some drug-induced dream. Maybe I had died.
“Why is everything so damn loud?” I finally shouted. My own echo slammed into my eardrums and I cringed.
William held his hand out. “Come. We have much to discuss. You are going to help us change the world.”
PRESENT DAY
I awoke in a dark room, oxygen forcing its way down my nasal passage. I gripped the plastic tubes and yanked them away from my face. Sitting up, I ran stiff fingers through my hair, still matted with dried blood. Even with the restraints bound tightly around my ankles, I knew exactly where I was. The sterile smell, the infuriating beeps, the white walls and curtains. It was a hospital. Shit.
I hadn’t set foot in a hospital since the attack my senior year. Cuts and bruises from head to toe, one hundred eighty-three stitches, five broken ribs, two skull fractures, one punctured lung, a broken arm, cracked cheekbone, two stab wounds, and a partridge in a pear tree. I’d suffered enough physical injuries to last me a lifetime. But it wasn’t what he’d done to me, but rather what he’d taken from me that hurt the most.
On more than one occasion, I’d wondered why they couldn’t have just let me die that night. It would’ve been so much easier that way. Then William never would’ve found me, and I never would’ve become one of the “Chosen.” I wouldn’t be the monster I was today.
I recalled the look on Josh’s face when he arrived in the ICU. That look would haunt me forever. Eighteen or not, he was only a kid then. I knew he blamed himself for not being there. When everyone left at night and he thought I was asleep, Josh would lie in the bed beside me and cry. He never asked me what that monster had done to me. He never needed to. He knew.
He heard the whole thing unfold from the moment I dialed his number to the cop finding my cell phone under the car. Josh had used his home phone to call 911 so he could stay on the line with me. I had him to blame for my survival. Of course, I’d never tell him that. How do you tell your best friend that you would have been better off dead?
Josh and Cody had visited me often. They’d become the only family I had. Neither of them mentioned the fact that I’d slaughtered a man, and for that, I was grateful. The only one who took things harder than Josh was Cody. To make matters worse, Josh wouldn’t even look at him. In his mind, Cody had failed me. He should have taken better care of me, should have protected me when Josh couldn’t. Things were never quite the same between the two men after that.
A week after what I’d come to call the “accident,” William walked into room 513 and turned my world upside down. He took me from the hospital, leaving nothing more than a note that read, “I’m sorry.” He stuck me in an abandoned building on the outskirts of the city for my transformation.
/> Healing for the first time with that many injuries was like reliving the attack all over again, only slower. Much slower. Three days and a lot of screaming later, William shipped me off to California where I’d spent the first year of my new life in complete isolation.
And here I was, back in a hospital bed, strapped to machines like a lab rat.
In the hall, two pairs of feet faltered outside my door. I sat up, listening as unfamiliar voices rose.
“There’s no medical reason for us to keep her here,” a raspy voice whispered. “Some of the nurses and doctors are starting to ask questions. They want to know why we are wasting a precious ICU bed on someone who isn’t even injured. There are others who need the bed more.”
“Then move her to another bed!” a deep male voice raged. “But she does not leave this hospital until the general gets here.”
“Keep your voice down,” the first man hissed. There was a pause as footsteps passed down the hallway. “We don’t need further suspicion on us.”
“What we need is to keep this bitch here until the general arrives. She’s one of them.”
“For your sake, I sure hope you’re right,” the raspy-voiced man muttered. “He’s not going to be pleased to hear the man got away.”
“He can’t hide forever,” the deep voice snarled. “We’ll find him. We’ll use her if we have to. Just keep her here. Do you understand? I don’t care what you have to do—move her to a different room, lock her in a closet—I don’t care. Don’t let her set foot outside of this hospital or it’ll be your head.”
Fluorescent lights flickered on as a short, elderly man wearing a long white lab coat walked into the room, my chart tucked under his right arm. “Ah, Miss Marks,” he said, his raspy voice scratching at my ears, “I see that you’re finally awake.”
Good for him, he’d found my ID. Too bad it wasn’t my real last name. William made sure to change it. It wasn’t just to protect me, but those who knew me. Well, the old me. Other than William, the only people who knew about my last name were Josh and Cody. I’d convinced them that I’d legally changed it when I moved to California for a fresh start.
