by SM Olivier
“Breathe, Blake,” Troy said. I could hear the worry in his voice. My breathing was coming out in a loud rasp now.
“You’re not with them, are you?” Greg asked in a heavy voice. “That man back there is full of poison, literally. He’s poisoned her.”
“We came to get Dr. Cornwall before Horatio found her,” Jace said in a hard voice. “I haven’t talked to Alison since she decided to leave my Dad for Horatio.”
“That’s no surprise. Their union always made me wonder about the validity of the connections. Alison was never good for Will. Not like Megan. Is Megan still around?” Greg asked dryly.
Jace whipped the SUV onto the access road and was out of the vehicle seconds after he threw it in park. “Can we wait for this discussion?” he asked in exasperation as he opened the rear door and pulled me out gently. Troy spread out an emergency blanket from the emergency bag equipped in each vehicle. Jace laid me down, and logically I knew the ground should be cold but I was burning up. I felt like my lungs were filling with water and I was drowning. My body was shaking with uncontrollable tremors. Everything was blurry.
I was trying to take in a deep gasping breath. Jace laid his head on my chest and looked up at Jaxson. “Where is he?” he barked out.
I saw several vehicles pull onto the abandoned access road and several feet advancing towards us. I couldn’t move. I was paralyzed. I couldn’t call my gifts. I hope they were friends and not foe.
In the distance I could hear Noah. “What happened?”
“She was pierced with poison darts,” Greg explained quickly.
“Why does she look like that?” I heard Jemmy cry out in fear. I was glad I couldn’t see how I looked; it probably would have freaked me out. My swelling hand was disturbing enough.
“It’s the poison,” Greg said with something akin to remorse. “A normal healer can’t do anything.”
“I’m not a normal damn healer,” I heard Noah yell out furiously. “Stay with me, Blake. I need you. We need you.” I heard the tremor in his voice as he held his hands over my skin and…nothing.
I didn’t feel the normal warmth. I didn’t feel his presence.
“Sierra! Gavin!” Noah cried out in fear and frustration as tears streamed down his face. “I need you! Now!”
Sierra and Gavin was by my side in moments. They kneeled next to Jemmy, Jace, Troy, Remy, Drake, and Jaxson. They held out their hands beside Noah and…nothing.
“We can’t do it,” Gavin’s eyes were filled with tears. “Come on, Ake. Don’t you do this to us. We need your help!”
“Don’t you dare leave me,” Drake bent down next to my ear. I felt his tears on my face and his gentle hands on my hair. “Do you hear me, Blake?”
I tried to nod, but I couldn’t. I was dying.
With my last breath I pushed my feelings out to all of them. “I love you and I am so thankful, even briefly, I knew you all!”
Chapter 26
I sat up with a gasp and saw Yaris kneeling over me, his hands hovering over me. Bright green vapors were rising from my body and into his extended hands.
“I think that’s all of it,” he spoke gruffly as he looked over at me. Mini Mr. Clean looked relieved as he looked at me.
I felt a tangle of arms embrace me. “Don’t ever do that to me again,” Jemmy said between sobs. “You can’t leave me. You can’t leave us.”
“Let her breathe,” I heard Remy bark out, then felt his arms engulf me as he hugged me close. He was squeezing me so tight I was afraid I would stop breathing again.
I patted his back with arms that felt like lead. He released some of the pressure. The poison had taken a toll on me. I knew I had died. I just didn’t know how Yaris was able to remove the poison from my body or how he knew to even do it. We still hadn’t figured out what he could do.
“We need to go. Pops is on the way to meet us,” Jace demanded. He threw the keys to Terrance. “Drive us to the extraction point. Then pack up everything and meet us back at the base.”
Terrance nodded. “Copy that,” he turned and looked at the rest of the people. “Let’s go.”
“I’m staying with Blake,” Kade quietly stepped forward.
“We’re staying with her, too,” Gavin stated as he pointed to Sierra and Jemmy. “You may still need us.”
“Let’s go,” Troy insisted as he hopped into the bed of the Tahoe. Kade, Gavin, and Jaxson climbed in next to him.
“What’s going on?” I asked groggily as Remy climbed in with me cradled in his lap.
“We’re going to go get Dr. Cornwall and Harry, your half brother” he responded quietly. It took me a moment to realize that Miranda and Greg were huddled up in the third-row seat. “Greg is a reader. He not only sees the gifted but he can determine their gift. He knew Yaris was capable of removing the poison from your body.
“The techs have been looking at satellite images. We know several vehicles are heading to the cloaked cabin that Dr. Cornwall and Harry are in. Pops and Micah are on their way with a chopper. We need to put as much distance between Dr. Cornwall and them.”
I nodded and laid my head against his chest. He traced my fingers that was braced next to my head. “I love you, Blake,” he murmured in my ear. “I wouldn’t have been able to continue living if you would have died.”
“I love you, too, Remington Murphy,” I murmured back. I stroked the back of his neck. “It’s a good thing you were the one to suggest Yaris came with us. It was you who saved me more than once.”
“You don’t know how much you have saved me,” Remy muttered against my ear. “In more ways than you’ll ever fathom.”
We pulled onto a road, and I heard Jace curse from the front seat. “Brace yourselves.” He looked into the side view mirror, before he turned in the seat. “There are three vehicles closing in fast.”
“Not today, bitches,” Jemmy unbuckled her seatbelt. “Terry.” Terrance shot her an annoyed look at the new nickname she had given him. “Open up the sunroof.”
“What are you doing?” Sierra asked nervously.
Jemmy gave her a saucy grin before she stood in her seat. She held her hands out like she was holding a ball, and I was shocked to see little lightening bolts dancing between her fingertips. From the gasp in the vehicle, I was assuming this was the first time she had done this in front of others. She took one of the lightning balls and hurled it at the vehicle that had just tapped our bumper. I was torn between watching the speedometer climb in numbers and watching Jemmy.
“Grab her,” Jace yelled out as we were jolted forward.
It wasn’t necessary since Drake and Sierra had already lunged at Jemmy’s legs. Jemmy cursed silently before she formed her lightening ball once more. She threw it again. “That’s for killing my best friend, Mother Suckers!” she screamed out as it hit the vehicle behind us.
A bright flash of light erupted under the hood of the vehicle before it grounded to a halt. I could hear the squealing of the tires and brakes of the truck behind it. It narrowly missed the lead vehicle. The last one, however, wasn’t so lucky. He clipped the tail end of the second vehicle, sending it into a tail spin.
“Um I’m still alive,” I croaked out with a laugh.
“Now, thanks to Yaris!” She rolled her eyes as she formed another ball. She threw it at the vehicle behind the lead vehicle. “That’s for making my brothers and I cry!” she screamed out, nearly hysterical.
“I wasn’t crying,” Jaxson half heartedly mumbled from the rear of the vehicle.
Jemmy sucked her teeth. “Lying bitch.”
Terrance snorted from the front seat. “I’m going to enforce a separation between Jemmy and Marcel. She’s more hood then he is.”
Jemmy laughed. “He’s my boy. You can’t separate us,” she said flippantly before she looked down at Drake and Sierra. “Sierra, a little help on this one.” Sierra closed her eyes. I could see her focusing all of her energy.
By now, we were a considerable distance away from the three vehicles
that had been chasing us. She held out her hands and her lighting ball grew nearly the size of a beach ball as she threw it with all her might. A distant light sparked. I assumed she had hit the third vehicle.
“Score,” Jemmy cackled. She came back into the vehicle, wiping her hands with loud claps. “That should keep them busy for a while. Too bad their systems are fried. Those vehicles aren’t going anywhere.”
“There’s a lot of power in this car,” Greg said ironically from the third seat.
Now that I knew what his gift was, I could only assume he knew there wasn’t any low level gifted people in our vehicle.
“And you haven’t even seen Blake in her true element,” Jemmy said smugly as she leaned over and lovingly patted my head.
I refrained from telling her I wasn’t a dog. I knew tonight had frightened her. We had become best friends and sisters. We had a bond that blood wasn’t necessary for.
“I don’t need to see her to know she’s off the charts. She’s the only one I couldn’t get a reading on as a child,” Greg said with patient assurance. He reminded me a lot of Will in that moment. Amused but unamused by Jemmy’s brashness. “I knew it was there but it would hop. She had eight gifts warring in her all the time. I knew then that she would have to be protected. That’s why I contacted her uncle and helped him get her out of there. She didn’t need Horatio destroying her when he found out she could be the cause of his destruction one day.
“Who do you think bought their new identities? Who do you think gave him the money to make sure he could continue moving around and keeping her safe? It wasn’t a coincidence that I died right after their escape. It was time for me to move on, too. Horatio would have never let me just walk away, and William was still partially blind to his childhood friend.”
“She only has seven gifts,” Jaxson said mystified from the back seat. “My Dad mourned your loss for years. He still visits your grave every year on the anniversary of your death,” Jaxson said as anger creeped in his voice. “So, what did you do? Disappear? Go hunting for Blake’s mother? Shacked up with her? Gave her yet another child?”
He then turned angry eyes on Miranda. “What kind of woman has five children and abandons them all? What kind of woman leaves a three-year-old with an abusive father? You’ve been shacking up with him for what, four or five years? Meanwhile, one of your sons was living in a box under an overpass. Digging through the trash for his next meal. Luckily, Kade was adopted into a great family. Unfortunately, since he was your son, his parents and sister were killed by Horatio.”
I imagined these were words he would love to fling at his mother. He still wanted answers from her. He was still wounded from her abandoning them. He may not ever have the opportunity to confront his mother, but he could confront mine.
“I’ve made a lot of mistakes,” Miranda said in a small voice as tears coursed down her cheeks.
Greg reached over and took her hand and squeezed it. “We’re not getting into this right now. Not in full details. But I will tell you this. I stumbled across Miranda four years ago. She was in a rehab facility. She will not make any excuses for her past decisions, but they have always haunted her. She is my connection, and I can’t have you continually tear her down. Last year when she came clean with me, we started to look for her children. We all know her Bridgette is a loss cause. We watched her first. There was no unpoisoning that well. I didn’t know Blake’s new name. I told her uncle to not tell me, just in case Horatio ever did find out about my deception. I had hoped that they were still living a life of obscurity, but now I can see I was wrong.
“We found Kade. There was no way we could ruin the life he had. His parents loved him. He was bright and heavily involved in athletics. Most of our life is in the shadows. When we went in search for Micah, we couldn’t find him. His dad’s in jail and his stepmother overdosed three years ago. Ever try finding a homeless child on the streets?
“Alex’s dad will tell everyone that Miranda left him, but the truth is, he kidnapped him. He found out the black market would pay heavily for a handsome little boy like him. The sale must have fell through. When Miranda went to the police about it, they couldn’t believe a woman that had the rap sheet with prostitution, possession of drugs, and possession of drugs with the intent to sell could be telling the truth. Alex’s father’s family were connected to high places. The police didn’t know he had been cut off, and he saw his son as the next meal ticket.
“After she had Alex, she was clean for four years. She didn’t start using again until the police wouldn’t help her. She didn’t have the resources to find you all until we got together.”
I barely stifled my snort. It just sounded like a story full of excuses, riddled with too many holes. I didn’t want to believe that she wanted us all back into her life. I couldn’t.
“What happened to Andy?” Miranda asked me hesitantly. “Where have you been?”
I chose to ignore her as I closed my eyes. I didn’t want to talk about my uncle, her brother right now. He was everything she wasn’t. He had made sacrifices to put my happiness above his own. My chest still felt tight, and I still felt like my body was swollen from the toxins.
“We’re here. We need to make it quick,” Terrance stated in a clipped tone.
“Uncloak the house and get Dr. Cornwall,” Jace said stoically.
We had just pulled up into what appeared to be a wide-open field surrounded by trees. It was eerily quiet. It was like a scene from a horror movie. The moon barely crept in between the trees and even then, it was heavily covered in storm clouds. I could smell the snow coming. Our headlights were the only thing cutting through the still night air.
“Pops is five minutes out,” Troy stated as he looked down at his phone.
“We have company,” Greg said in a worried tone. “A human shape shifter, a mind eraser, a blocker, a Firestarter, and an object shifter.”
“How ya feeling, Misty?” Troy asked as he opened up the door.
“Like crap,” I admitted. “I’m not sure if I can be of any help.”
“She isn’t in this fight,” Jace insisted.
“I can still feel her gifts. They’re weaker, but I can still tap into them,” Gavin said as he hopped out of the back.
“I’m fine,” I insisted as Remy put me down gently on the ground. “Get the doctor and the boy, and by then Pops will be here.”
“Let’s go,” Jace nodded in agreement as he stepped out of the truck. He patted the hood. “Get on out of here, Terrance. We’ll see you soon.”
Terrance looked hesitant but started to back up. Now that the poison left my system, mostly, I was freezing. As if Jace knew, he hastily removed his coat and placed it around me. He slid in beside me even though Remy didn’t need the help. I knew he just needed to be near me. I could still feel his anxiety and worry.
As we made our way to the invisible house, Miranda finally dropped the cloak. She hastily ran inside with us following closely behind her. “Mom,” she called out worriedly. “Did you pack like I asked you?”
“She tried,” A woman that looked exactly like Miranda stated with a malicious smile. Soon Miranda’s form transformed into a young male, barely older than me, with pink spiky hair, and baggy black clothing.
“It really isn’t nice of you to try and run when we just wanted a little help,” Bridgette walked around the corner with a thrashing toddler on her hip.
She looked like she was going to a garden party, with her long whimsical floral-print blue dress. Her make up was carefully done as usual and her long hair blond hair was pin straight.
The child was making a lot of nonsensical noses and high pitched whines. I noticed immediately that he was…special.
“Hi, Mama,” Bridgette said with a pleasant smile. “Long time no… oh wait, this is our first meeting. It’s kind of sad it took us nineteen years to finally meet.” Her eyes shifted over to me and then Kade. She smiled real wide and fanned her face as if she was stopping herself from crying. “It’s a f
amily reunion. How sweet!” She looked around with mock guilelessness. “Are we missing a few of my little siblings? We should invite them over.”
“You’re so disturbed.” Jemmy snorted. “Seriously, is Horatio’s insanity contagious? Was it something in your genes?” She looked at me and did the universal sign for crazy as she whistled. “She is cuckoo for cocoa puffs. I’m glad to see that gene completely skipped over you.”
“Shut your whore mouth, Jemmy. I’m glad this one’s stuck around, though,” Bridgette said with a malevolent smile as she looked at Gavin and Jemmy’s joined hands. “We know how hard it is for people to stick around you. After all, your Daddy couldn’t stand you, so much so that he put a gun in his mouth and ended it all.”
I heard the sharp inhale of breath from Drake, and I could see it written all over his face. I hated the look of pain that was plainly on his face. His father hadn’t just died—he had committed suicide. I looked around and could see all the Bell clan was privy to this information. But Gavin, Sierra, and I were just now finding out about this.
Bridgette started laughing. “Oh, this is rich. The boyfriend didn’t know and neither did the other little whore.” She turned her glare onto me. “You look horrible, sister dear. I don’t know how anyone sees anything in you. You can take the girl out of the trailer park but you will never take the trailer trash from the girl. It baffles me the amount of men that are drawn to you.
“You know I loved Collin and you just had to twist him against me. He died because of you. It wasn’t enough that you had a few of the Bell boys in your bed, but you had to take him too. You had to ruin him. So which one is it? Which one is your connection?” she demanded. “Daddy thinks it’s Jaxson and Noah, but I saw the way Mr. Jace looked at you.” Her eyes swung over to him. “Were the panties I left in your drawer not alluring enough? What did she do to seduce you? Did she give up all the goods as she’s so keen to do?”
