“Did they let everyone out?” I asked Isaac.
“They would have, but once the doors were open, more than half let themselves out.” He answered sourly.
“They cured her?” I asked, surprised by the animosity in my voice.
“Most of the genetically diverse are descendants of bloodlines that were altered by magic. The genes that carry those traits are constantly replenishing themselves. Edmund and Diana are the same way, even though their traits were bestowed experimentally. The Renly scientists have a way to suppress the production of those specific cells. They call it the cure.” Isaac explained. He looked worried by my lack of knowledge. From what Edmund and Diana had shared, I knew my father was a brilliant geneticist, and he probably taught me quite a lot that I now can’t recall.
“I’m sorry… I’m sure you taught me a lot that would be useful right now.” I admitted.
“What caused the memory slips?” Isaac asked carefully.
“Abigail had my memories erased. I thought four years younger than I am, and I didn’t even realize I’d forgotten my whole life.” I answered.
“No. She wouldn’t do that. Your mother spent a great number of years believing she was mentally ill. She would never condone mind-altering magic.” Isaac insisted. “Having you forget everything might have put you in even more danger.”
“What are you saying?” I asked. He hesitated.
“Who have you been with all this time if Edmund was locked away?” He continued.
“A woman named Connie. She had me predicting death and accidentally starting the zombie apocalypse. Oh, and sorting rancid candles.” I answered.
“And plastering her with cuts and burns.” David added sharply. I wasn’t sure why I was minimizing things with attempts at humor for Isaac’s sake.
“Edmund.” Isaac said through his teeth. Every exposed inch of his skin was now glowing vibrantly through what looked like countless veins beneath the surface. I felt my hands raise instinctively to calm Isaac.
“I melted that bitch into the floor of her shop.” David interjected.
“He did.” Edmund confirmed.
“Did she smell familiar?” Isaac asked David.
“I couldn’t place it.” David admitted.
With no explanation Isaac went into Edmund’s bedroom and threw my trunk of belongings into the living room. He grabbed a handful of my clothes and inhaled deeply. He obviously didn’t find what he was looking for.
“That’s creepy as shit, Isaac.” I muttered. Edmund and David were silent. Isaac looked at me sharply. Edmund’s body language seemed torn between blocking me and staying out of it entirely.
“I’m your father. I’ve killed for you. I’ve survived for you. I’ve spent years praying that you and your mother were alive. You don’t call me Isaac.” He said vehemently. His attitude was infuriating.
“Sorry.” I said pointedly. “I guess I FORGOT.” Isaac and Edmund sighed in unison. I gathered my now scattered possessions and went into Edmund’s room irately slamming the door behind me.
“I mean… did we expect her to be less of a shithead once the war played out?” David reasoned.
“And where the hell have you been?” Isaac snapped at him.
I didn’t hear David’s explanation. Partly because I was angry, and partly because he was mumbling like a scared little boy. I grabbed my backpack and made sure I had my essentials for another mini adventure. I for one was not afraid of Isaac’s alpha male arrogance. We got Diana back, and it was time for me to figure out how to hold up my end of the deal. With people being forcibly cured, the rest would surely go into hiding. There would be no army of grateful genetic abnormals as David suggested earlier.
Edmund’s bedroom window was much more difficult to pry open than Diana’s was. It seemed like the last several homeowners had painted right over the frame. I sliced around the edges with my knife and eventually got it only halfway lifted open. I threw my backpack out first and just barely squeezed my ass out after it. I fell head and arms first out of the window and landed in a pile of warm grass trimmings. I had several hours until Diana would wake up and be in pain again. The sun would be down in less than an hour, and as the shan evolved, they still seemed to avoid the direct daylight as much as possible.
I needed to figure out how I killed the warehouse full of shan and practice that without accidentally killing anyone else or causing myself to pass out again. The contents of my backpack clattered against my back as I ran across the yard. Headlights were coming from very far down the road, and I froze in the neighboring field.
There was nowhere to hide except back in the house, but the guard had no reason to arrest someone like me. My radio show was entirely anonymous. I kept telling myself those things to calm my nerves. As the car got closer, I could tell it was just Sherriff Matthew, and I let out a very shaky breath.
“Why in god’s name are you outside?” Matthew demanded through the loudspeaker of his patrol car. Just like that three pissy men came pouring out of the house behind me, and I rolled my eyes. Westly got out of the patrol car shaking his head at me. I couldn’t wait until Diana was feeling better. She could help offset this overabundance of cavemen.
“I need to go kill them off!” I yelled exasperated. “I want this to end.”
“Is Diana home yet?” Westly asked frantically. I pointed to the house, and he took off to see her.
“She needs to sleep!” I hollered after him.
“Who is that?” Isaac asked.
“Diana’s boyfriend.” David answered. Isaac nodded curiously, and Matthew and Edmund looked at him with astonishment distorting their usual stoic expressions.
“Okay, well bye-bye now.” I announced as I headed toward town. I was surprised by which one argued first.
“No. Not bye. You need to leave Raven’s Landing as quickly as possible.” Matthew corrected. “And I need you to take my son with you.” He sighed. I stopped mid-step with a feeling of dread pooling in my stomach.
“Why?” Isaac asked with an implicit challenge in his tone of voice.
“Because Nora and Westly were identified as the people on the radio announcement that may have kicked off World War Three.” Matthew snapped.
“This is Sheriff Matthew Roberts.” I said to Isaac. “And Matthew, this is my father Isaac Nelson.”
“You named her Nelsonora Nelson?” Matthew winced sympathetically.
“Hennessy.” Edmund highlighted.
“It’s a long story.” David explained more politely.
“We’ll take your boy and continue the fight from somewhere less conspicuous.” Isaac said extending his hand to Matthew who shook his hand with fervent gratitude. I appreciated that his tone had softened.
“Come with us.” I pleaded. I wasn’t expecting to feel so emotional about leaving Matthew behind, and my sadness wasn’t just on Westly’s behalf.
“I already discussed this with Westly. When things settle down, he can come back. Until then, I don’t even want to know where he is. It’s safest that way.” Matthew insisted. He went to his car and quickly sped away. It took me a minute to recognize the sound of my own frustrated cry. Westly hated routine changes and unfamiliar smells. His entire world was upside down because of me.
“David.” I said sharply. He was at my side in an instant. “Help me figure out how I took out the warehouse. We will need to recreate that on a much larger scale.” I informed him. I was lost in thought.
Isaac and Edmund exchanged looks of concerned dismay, but David nodded in agreement.
“Where are we going then, father?” I asked Isaac sourly as I understood my plans had gone to hell.
“Home, you little shit. We’re going home.”
I could tell Isaac and I were going to get along like cats and dogs. I’d never met anyone so irritating.
CHAPTER 20
Isaac and Edmund wasted absolutely no time with our relocation plans. Within an hour, Isaac and David packed and moved everything in the house into the
yard. They even got the sofa where Diana was unconscious and guarded by Westly. I froze for a moment as I recognized the look on his face as one that I often saw Edmund making when he thought I wasn’t looking. Westly was in love. I guess I just knew Westly better, because it was so clear when it was written across my best friend’s face.
I looked around for Edmund and realized I hadn’t seen him in at least a half hour. It seemed like a weird time to disappear. I looked around worried. “He’s fine. I sent him for supplies.” Isaac said, with a knowing look.
“I was just—” I began.
“Keeping tabs on Ed.” Isaac finished knowingly. “He always worries you.”
I didn’t reply, and thankfully Isaac didn’t expect me to. He went on organizing the small mountain of boxes right on the edge of the yard by the road. My cheeks felt hot with embarrassment. I was a little tired of everyone knowing me better than I knew myself.
A large guard transport truck rounded the corner at the farthest point of the road, and I felt my heart try to hammer its way through my chest, but Isaac and David seemed unimpressed.
“Umm—I—I should we?” Westly stammered standing in front of Diana who was gorgeous even as she drooled and snored into her fiery hair like nobody’s business.
I glared at the truck as it came closer and realized that the guard driving had a familiar mess of red hair. I let my breath out slowly and felt a little light-headed as I realized I had been holding it for a hot minute waiting for this truck to reach us.
As soon as Edmund parked the truck, he began helping Isaac and David load everything into the back. “Can you watch Sleeping Beauty for me?” Edmund asked with a very stern look at Westly.
“Yes.” Westly answered without hesitation. I noticed Westly’s sharp eye contact with Edmund and wondered if Edmund realized how far out of his usual comfort zone Westly was willing to go for Diana. I saw it. I wiped an unanticipated tear from my face and let Edmund lift me into the back of the truck. He wrinkled his nose playfully at my discreet emotional reaction, but he didn’t call me out on it.
There was food and water in one corner and a bucket that I really hoped wasn’t a bathroom. I had no idea how far we needed to go.
As I climbed further into the truck, I noticed four human feet showing from behind the pile of boxes. There were two dead guards in the truck. I stifled my gasp. One was stripped down to his underwear, and the other was still in uniform, but disarmed. I looked from them to Edmund who squared his jaw and didn’t look particularly ashamed as I drew the obvious conclusion. “I would do it again.” He admitted with a cold shrug.
I shouldn’t have felt grateful. I probably should be more surprised and upset, but the guards were exclusively shitty people who wanted us all dead. I ignored the bodies and sat down. Edmund and Isaac sat up front after Isaac stole the second guard’s clothes and grimaced at the sight of himself in the black uniform. He called shotgun and literally held one. He looked better in the uniform than the gray sweats. Not as sickly and thin. It hit me with no shortage of sadness, that the crappy clothes David always wore were the same kind they were given in the camps.
David climbed into the back of the truck with the rest of us and gave a thumbs up to all of us as Isaac shut and latched the roll-up cargo door. The markings on the inside of the truck made it clear that it was once a mover’s truck. There was no seating in the back, and they had installed a crude window for guards to monitor people and supplies that they shipped off to camps. I shuddered as I thought of the very different circumstances this ride could happen under. David would occasionally shake his head violently as if clearing out his own ugly thoughts. With a slow chill down my spine, I realized that maybe my recent years with Connie had been a blessing compared to what the rest of my family had been though. I wouldn’t know Westly otherwise.
Westly absent mindedly stroked Diana’s hair as he drifted off to sleep beside her. I was envious of the clarity of his emotions. He loved Diana at first sight. I remembered him telling me that car rides were always so soothing to him that he fell asleep every time his family drove around for longer than twenty minutes when he was a kid. David and I weren’t likely to sleep at all. He was breathing very slowly and deliberately… like a caged animal, I thought wryly.
“Isaac?” I called out gently.
“Yes, Ma’am.” He called back. His voice was muffled from the passenger’s seat.
“You already knew about Abigail.” I guessed. The window slid open, and I went to stand next to it bracing myself for the bumps in the cracked shabby pavement.
“I hoped for a long time, but the more time passed, the more I knew that she wasn’t able to get to me. Your mother would watch the world burn before she let anything keep her from us.” he explained. “Part of me hoped she had just found some reason to hate me and move on.” He admitted. “At least she’d be alive.”
“Her page in the family book was destroyed by natural causes. We couldn’t see any details…” I explained. “It’s kind of irritating.”
“How’s that?” Isaac wondered.
“I’m used to having all the details about death.” I answered. Edmund shook his head in distaste and winced as he realized what I meant.
“Your mother tried so hard to get us killed when we were your age.” Isaac laughed lightening the subject. “It’s a miracle we both got to see you grow up.”
“So, you don’t think she was the one to take all of those memories from me?” I asked.
“Not a chance.” Isaac said.
“My guess is that you knew something that needed to be forgotten.” Edmund said.
“Like what?” I demanded. My frustration was directed at no one in particular.
“We knew how the war would end.” David interrupted quietly.
“Excuse me?” Isaac snapped.
“Abigail caught us using premonition magic. I just wanted to prove to her that we would be married someday. It was dumb.” David admitted with a groan.
“How’d that work out for you?” Edmund quipped.
“And?” I persisted.
“And we couldn’t summon the vision. We saw nothing about your future marriage. Just that ours would never happen. Then I told you I would have to be dead for that to be true. You believed me. So, you wanted to see how I’d die. You never told me what happened, but it happens at the end of the war, and you saw so much about that… you wouldn’t talk to anyone for a week or two.”
“I remember that.” Isaac realized aloud. “Your mother told me you had menstrual cramps so I wouldn’t ask anything else.”
“She told me the same thing.” Edmund said. “You would only let Diana visit you and didn’t come out of your room for weeks. I even made you brownies.”
I didn’t point out the absurdity of cramps lasting for weeks on end. I was stuck on something else.
“So, I knew how to end the war?” I damn near yelled. They all nodded because it made sense and let their silence speak for itself.
“Someone wiped your brain for it.” David concluded. “And Connie exploited that.”
“And you will die?” I asked miserably.
“That too.” David agreed. “But for the love of god, don’t touch me to try to find out how. I don’t want to be a shape-shifting demon zombie.”
The rest of them laughed, but I grabbed a blanket and pretended to sleep.
I wasn’t okay with losing a friend. Even a friend that came with as much intertwined emotional baggage as David. Isaac shut the little window and silenced us as we approached the first guard checkpoint. Edmund had his counterfeit clearances in order. I held my breath and David snuck over to sit next to me.
“It’s okay, kid.” He teased. “I really couldn’t live too long without you.”
I felt my heart break a little as I cried quietly with my back to him.
CHAPTER 21
I think I cried myself to sleep. My dreams were filled with what could have been memories, but I wouldn’t ask David to verify the theory. Whe
n I woke up, the sun shone brightly through the tiny window to the front of the truck. The guys had taken turns driving. Aside from Westly who never learned because of the war. I hadn’t either. Not that that I knew of.
Edmund was now asleep in only his boxers, and David was up at the front with Isaac driving. I vaguely remembered being woken up to put Diana back to sleep after she had some food and water and we had taken turns peeing into our glamorous piss bucket.
Westly was reading with his headphones on and using a small reading light that I recognized from Edmund’s nightstand. I moved closer to the small window to ask how far we were traveling, but I heard the urgency in Isaac and David’s hushed conversation and couldn’t resist listening.
“I know how you feel, but his priority has always been to keep her alive and happy.” Isaac insisted.
“I respect that, I do. She loves him even if she can’t remember it yet. But her goal is to change the world for our kind, and there is no safe road to change. You know that.” David countered.
“She can do that without dying.” Isaac said with a menacing tone of finality.
“Maybe.” Isaac agreed. “But if not, Edmund would let the world burn to ashes before letting anything hurt her, and that would destroy her. Her safety is imperative, but it’s all for nothing if you smother who she meant to be.” Isaac sighed in response and David said no more on the matter.
“She’s married now, David.” Isaac warned.
“And I’m glad. I really am. He deserves her, but you can’t all treat her like glass. She’s a beast.” David said with his tone riled up again.
“She’s a master and maker. You’re a beast.” Isaac corrected.
“Yeah, sure… but she’s not just another daughter of alchemy. There’s something twisted in there.” David said gesturing to his head. Isaac chuckled. I realized the sound was familiar and images of a happy childhood fleeted through my mind so quickly that I couldn’t quite catch them without context. Isaac’s response interrupted my thoughts.
“How did you get control over your shifts without a mate?” Isaac asked with genuine curiosity.
The Curious Fate of Nelsonora (Fractured Universe Series Book 1) Page 10
