Fear Tomorrow (The Fear Chronicles Book 4)

by C. C. Bolick

  Noah looked at Pade. “She’s on board. Like me, she can see the future. She knows what it will take to end this disaster. I should add there’s also a chance we’ll fail and everyone on both planets will die.”

  Skip groaned. “Let’s stick with the idea that we save everyone.”

  “Tell them the rest,” Pade said.

  “Rena’s mother is still with us,” Noah said. “Her powers have grown exponentially since she died.”

  “She can help us stop the destruction,” Sylvia said.

  “But not alone,” Noah said. “Her power is not strong enough, but double that and we have a chance.”

  “Double that?” Angel’s eyes widened with shock. “Rena—”

  “Also has the power,” Noah said. “But it’s not enough.”

  “She went to the sun,” Angel said. “She stopped the solar flares.”

  “Which was a test,” Sylvia said. “Everything we’ve thrown at Rena since her arrival has been to stretch the limits of her powers. Noah funneled advanced nuclear weapons to Louis Castillo to help push these limits.”

  “That’s where he got the bombs.” Dawning spread across Skip’s face. “This is messed up.”

  “You have no idea, little brother,” Tyler said.

  “You knew what they were up to.” Skip glanced at him. “You’ve been helping them?”

  Tyler nodded. “I’ve done what I could to save our family and this team.”

  Sylvia’s voice filled with emotion. “Unfortunately, we’ve run out of time.”

  The chair at the end of the table turned slowly, until Agent Donald Mason could see all of their faces. Tears streamed down his cheeks. “I can’t do what you’re asking. I can’t stand by…” He put his head in his hands.

  Skip tightened his grip on Angel’s hand. “What are you asking?”

  Shadows flickered in Noah’s eyes. “The only way for Rena to get close enough to stop the sun from collapsing is if she’s in the same form as her mother.”

  Angel swallowed the lump in her throat. “You’re saying…”

  “She has to be dead.” Agent Mason stared at Noah as if he’d lost all hope. “You’re sure there’s no other way?”

  “I’ve tried everything to strengthen her powers,” Noah said. “If we can’t get her up to Rosanna’s level of power in the next thirty-six hours, everyone will die including your son.”

  “How can you tap into their powers if they’re dead?” Angel asked.

  “They’ll take on a new, more powerful form,” he said.

  “Is there any way to bring them back?” Skip asked.

  A long silence followed. “Travis will stop you,” Angel said as the realization of what they planned began to sink in. “He won’t let you harm Rena.” Understanding grew in her eyes. “Golvern’s queen asked Travis for forgiveness and he has no idea why. I’ve got to—”

  “You’ll do nothing,” Sylvia said. “I won’t let you blow our only chance at saving Earth. You might not be able to die, but everyone else in this room can.”

  “Please,” Noah said. “I’ve seen the future and it’s the only way.”

  A chill came over Angel, not the typical clammy skin she felt from someone scared. As a vampire, Angel’s skin was cold twenty-four seven. No, this was the kind of chill that made her realize there was no going back from this moment. “Why am I here?”

  “Because we need you,” Pade said.

  She turned and stared up at him. “I thought we might face heat for bringing you here. Instead it seems that you brought us.”

  He nodded. “I get what you’re feeling. This deal is total crap, but none of us have a choice.”

  “You didn’t answer my question,” she said.

  “Travis will drink the serum tonight and lose his powers. Tomorrow they will return. You’re the only one who can keep him from taking revenge.”

  She stood. “I think I’ve had enough of this meeting. If you want Travis contained, Sylvia has a protocol for that.”

  “Not contained,” Noah said. “We need Travis on our side for this mission. If he doesn’t agree to help us, we will fail. It’s one of the few things I’m sure of.”

  Angel looked around the room. “You want me to convince Travis to help you?” She laughed as everyone stared. “You’re crazier than I thought. Give me one good reason I shouldn’t go to his room right now.”

  “Rena has to die,” Noah said. “There’s not a person in this room who wants that to happen, but there’s also no one who can stop it. Let them have one last night together.”

  “I can’t do this to him,” she said. “I’m not that kind of agent.”

  “You’re a great agent,” Sylvia said. “One of the best I’ve ever known.”

  Angel walked to the door. “He’s the only family I have.”

  Noah stood. “Did Travis tell you about seeing your mother?”

  She paused with her hand on the door. Despite the fact she had the power to live forever, her fingers shook. “My mother died the day after I was born. I don’t believe your story about freezing her.”

  “You used your power on me and you know I’m telling the truth.” Noah walked to her and braced the door with his hand.

  “You don’t have the power to stop me,” she said.

  “But you have the power to bring her back. All you have to do is help save the world first.”

  “Back… to… life?” Angel stuttered. “You’re talking about killing Rena and you want to bring my dead mother back to life? How can you be sure I have the power?”

  Noah smiled. “Because I’ve seen you save her.”

  Despite the confidence in his voice, she remembered the texture of his fear. Like a bite of pineapple from the days when she relished eating food to survive instead of drinking blood.

  A taste that would haunt her.

  Chapter One

  Rena

  I didn’t know where the darkness ended and I began. It filled every breath, every pulse… That steady beating was the only sound.

  Until it stopped.

  One voice filled the darkness, carried through the night like a firework exploding with color, stopping just out of my reach. A burning smell tickled my nose and then disappeared. Maybe I’d only imagined the smell.

  Again, the voice sounded but whose voice? Someone I knew, for it said my name. Rena. The painful sound made me never want to hear my name again. I reached for the voice, for the colors, but only darkness greeted me.

  Fear rose within my chest. Where was I? Who was I? I ran forward, backward, in circles until I felt completely lost and dropped to my knees. Beneath me was a smooth surface.

  I heard the voice again and this time felt sorrow. Whoever called me was out of reach, like a helium balloon I got one year for my birthday. Yes, I remembered something. As I ran to the car, I tripped and fell. The string slipped from my hand and drifted toward the sky as tears trailed down my cheeks.

  With that one memory, I focused on who I was and where I’d been. In a room filled with people, a strong hand held mine. The hand belonged to the one person who made my heart swell and my pulse quicken. His hand left mine like the balloon had and I felt the loss of warmth. Someone held a gun—pointed it at me. A red light surrounded me.

  Pain followed, a burning sensation that ripped through me faster than I could scream. The last person I saw was Travis. With the look on his face, bile rose in my throat.

  Travis. Oh, crap.

  The red light was a laser.

  Which meant my body had been vaporized.

  From miles away came sounds like scratches on a wall. Words of anger, words of pain. His voice. I climbed to my feet and ran toward the sound like I did the day I fell from the sky and almost died. He’d been my lifeline. The sound of Travis’s voice led me back to reality and I woke on the med-level hours later.

  The sounds came again—not really sounds in my ears but flashes of light at the edge of my vision. A rainbow in the darkness to lead me home. But this tim
e there was nothing I could return to. No body, no mind.

  I ran through the darkness as I chased the rainbow of colors, which merged to form a dim circle of light. His voice faded with the light and my fear rose. If I felt fear, where was my power? I reached out to the neutrons, but the air was empty.

  My heart didn’t beat. I clawed at my throat in a desperate attempt to find a pulse even though I knew better. I wasn’t supposed to die, not like this. It wasn’t fair.

  I opened my mouth to scream those words, but no sound came from my lips, not even the wild cry of someone gripped by fear. If only I could tell him I was here in the darkness. Being alone in this place had been my worst fear. It helped me save lives. I looked down at my palms but even my night-light didn’t glow.

  If only I could reach Travis.

  A flood of cold tears slid down my face. One last flash of light and then the darkness closed around me, choking me until I couldn’t breathe.

  I fell to my knees and gripped my throat. If I was dead, why couldn’t I breathe? I heaved until I fell on my side and bucked like a fish out of water.

  It wasn’t fair.

  I’d never see Travis again. Choking didn’t seem so bad when faced with that truth. I stopped trying to breathe and accepted that my heart could no longer beat.

  The darkness released its hold and I felt oddly calm. Not breathing was liberating.

  Sparkles danced like fireflies before me and again faded; I grasped for the tiny lights. The comfort of freedom disappeared with the sparkles. A deep dread permeated the air and rose like a tide filling my soul, as if I sat on my knees surrounded by a room with people I couldn’t see or touch. I could only feel their sorrow as I faded away.

  My tears, his tears—who knew where one stopped and the other began? I’d never get my happily ever after.

  Only the darkness could comfort me now.

  * * * * *

  Travis

  Next to me, the queen knelt as she begged for my forgiveness. If she could see the future, she had to know there would be no forgiveness.

  People surrounded us; the room was filled with agents and the queen’s entourage. In the hands of every agent dressed in black was a gun. In the hands of every person wearing green was a laser. And every eye was on us.

  As if I cared who looked on or what they saw me do next.

  Dad stood behind me. He put a hand on my shoulder, but I shrugged it off. I glanced back and noticed the laser hanging at his side. Slowly, I drifted toward him as the queen spoke. More justification for killing Rena. Her death was the only way to save lives, the queen insisted. To stop a star—one of Golvern’s two suns—from destroying Earth along with her planet.

  A picture of Rena flashed in my head, of her smiling up at me as we walked into this meeting. Only moments ago, but it felt like a lifetime.

  Rena was gone.

  Something inside of me seized. I couldn’t let myself see her face. I had to focus on other thoughts or I’d go insane.

  The queen spoke again—another apology as she grabbed my arm. I jerked away. Who did she think she was talking to? I wasn’t one of her guards. I’d worked for this agency since I was sixteen; being an agent was the only thing I’d dreamed about until the last few months.

  Until Rena came into my life. But now she was gone, taken by the same person who’d asked for my forgiveness. Yes, Van pulled the trigger, but I had no doubt this queen gave the order.

  Van. I looked to my right where he’d slumped to his knees out of reach. I knew better than to make any sudden movements. Just a few more inches toward Dad’s laser…

  All that time I thought Van was planning to kill my dad. I’d been prepared to stand between Dad and a laser. As I glanced up at Dad, I saw the pain in his eyes. The resolution. He never moved to stop Van from firing the laser at Rena. Had he known ahead of time?

  Of course he knew. He could see the future.

  The pain no longer tightened my chest. I began to feel as if something loosened inside, replaced by the fear of losing my mind. If I did, then nothing else mattered. Not Dad’s laser, not the agency, not the future of Earth. My hands began to feel numb. People around me watched with pity in their eyes.

  What a riot. They worried about tomorrow when my world ended today.

  As the people around me faded into a haze of blood-red anger, I grabbed the laser from the holster at Dad’s side and pointed it at the queen. She froze, her words stopping as her mouth fell open. Fear shined in her eyes along with guilt. Pade dived to his knees and landed on the floor between us.

  The laser was now pointed at his chest. Pade Sanders, the same rebel from this foreign planet who’d told me of fighting Golvern’s government. His mother had once worked for the agency, forced to use her power of shooting with precision. A power he’d inherited.

  Pade held up his hands. He was protecting his queen, doing his sworn duty as a member of her guard—the queen’s own personal Secret Service. Dressed in the same dark green outfit as he’d worn on Golvern… No, he wasn’t dressed in green.

  I blinked. My stomach roiled as if I’d puke at any moment. The shock of watching Rena’s body disintegrate rippled through me. I’d seen people die, but I’d never felt as if I’d died instead. Even though my chest felt like Van had shot me with the laser, my mind had switched into overdrive.

  Small things began to jump out at me, like the fact no other shots had been fired. Somewhere in the crowd stood Sylvia Greene, director of Earth Under Fire. She should have all of the queen’s minions on the ground with a gun to their heads by now, especially Van. He just killed one of us. Killed. The word sent a shock through me, but I refused to let them see any tears.

  I considered the fact Pade wasn’t wearing green. He was dressed in a fancy suit I’d never wear, even for the formal dinners Sylvia insisted her agents attend. More than just a standard black suit and tie, this outfit looked to have been made to fit him. The color was a mixture of dark blues and black, but the shimmer effect of the fabric along with the formal silver belt that matched the queen’s crown made me grip the laser tighter.

  “Who are you?” I yelled.

  He tightened his jaw. “I never lied to you.”

  “Do you know what you took from me?”

  His eyes glimmered as he watched me; his hands were still raised. “More than you’ll ever realize.”

  “Why did you step between us? You could have shot me instead.”

  “I could have,” he said.

  I should have felt a mixture of anger, grief, and disbelief. Strangely, I no longer felt anything.

  Rena was gone and none of this mattered.

  Killing him would be easy. But he helped me get back to Rena. If not for him, she’d be dead without me here. A flash of pain in his eyes made me hesitate, only for a second, but long enough Dad was able to grab the laser and wrestle it from my hands.

  I whispered Rosanna’s name as I fought the sob rising in my throat, but Rena’s mom didn’t answer. People around me probably thought I had lost my mind trying to talk to a ghost. No, I couldn’t let them think I was nuts. They’d lock me up again. I had to be strong, to show them I would avenge Rena’s death.

  The world came apart around me. I called for Rena as the numbness extended from my head to my toes, claiming the rest of me.

  She was gone.

  Before Pade could react, I shoved him aside and reached for the queen with nothing but my bare hands. I didn’t have my power to burn a person’s skin, but I could still choke her.

  Something blunt slammed against my head and the world went cold.

  * * * * *

  Rena

  I heard my name before I saw the darkness. A voice was calling me, pleading for me to return. He said my name and then the memory slipped away.

  When I opened my eyes, I saw nothing. I waved a hand in front of my face but couldn’t see my fingers.

  Where was I?

  The floor beneath me felt smooth like wood. I tapped a foot but heard no so
und. I yelled but couldn’t hear my own voice. My body began to shake though the air wasn’t cold. The air wasn’t much of anything. The more I thought about it, the stranger it felt to breathe this air, so I stopped.

  Stopped breathing. Didn’t even try to hold my breath. I counted the seconds in my head as I once did while taking swimming lessons. Forty-five seconds had been the longest I could keep my head underwater.

  As I passed sixty seconds and then seventy, I realized this couldn’t be real. This had to be a dream. But where was I and how did I get here?

  I reached out but felt no walls around me. Awkwardly, I tried to crawl across the floor. If I didn’t need to breathe here, why did it feel as if I carried a hundred extra pounds?

  I stopped crawling and tried to remember my last thought. Someone had called my name… No, I was thinking about Mama. Why would I think about Mama when she was dead?

  The last thing I remembered was leaving school and driving Alfie home. I was afraid of someone hitting our truck and I hadn’t felt the ‘can’t breathe’ kind of fear since Mama died.

  Except this was a dream. It had to be since I no longer felt a burning desire to breathe. I called to Alfie and then to Dad. My brother was probably asleep and Dad out drinking for the night. No doubt Dad had forgotten his way home again. If that was the case, I should be safe on my bunk in the camper.

  But the way I felt inside made no sense. The emptiness, the sorrow…

  “Regina.”

  The word was a whisper, but I heard the gentle sound as if it were a caress to my senses. Maybe I could hear, though I wasn’t sure if I heard my name as much as I felt it.

  A feeling of sorrow followed the caress and rose like a wave to drown me.

  “Regina,” she said again but closer.

  The word echoed in my head. Who was calling my name? The familiar voice warmed my insides.

  “Regina, do you remember me?”

  “I…”

  “Regina, I want to help you, but first you’ve got to help yourself. Take my hand. Come back to me.”