Midheaven (Ascendant Trilogy Book 2)

by Rebecca Taylor

  Even though my smallest movements now sent shockwaves roaring up my spine, I clawed my way into a sitting position and crawled over to the keeper. I tried pushing him back against the chair but I could barely hold myself up and he was too heavy.

  I heard the front two legs of the gorilla’s chair slam down onto the ground. Sitting up, he removed his gun from his waist like it was an instinct. “What do we think we are doing?” he sneered and charged over, ready to attack.

  “He’s awake,” I said, hating how small my voice sounded. “I was trying to help him sit up.”

  When he reached us, he shoved me hard, forcing me back to the floor. He grabbed the keeper’s face in one hand, his fingers squeezing hard into the man’s already damaged flesh. “Awake?” he mocked. “Well, it must be Christmas!” He angled the keeper’s face at me. “See that, see her? She’s here now. So let’s open that mouth and tell her what I goddamn well need to know!” He dropped the keeper’s face, took a step back, and raised his gun. The short barrel pressed into the keeper’s temple. “Where is the next key?”

  The keeper’s eyes met mine, I could see he was trying, struggling against the limits of his beaten shell to tell the lie that would hopefully satisfy Emerick’s man. When the keeper swallowed again, the gorilla lost whatever shred of patience he was pretending to have.

  “Goddamn it!” he lifted his pistol into the air to hit the man again.

  “Stop!” I commanded. My voice boomed from someplace deep inside me and his arm froze high in the air. The sound of my word echoed throughout the cave until it died somewhere deep in the distance.

  The gorilla’s head swiveled and focused on me.

  “Stop hitting him,” I said again. “He’s trying to tell you.”

  The gorilla didn’t like me telling him what to do, “You want me to stop hitting him?” he now used the gun like a finger to point with. “You’re telling me to stop?” He nodded his head for a moment like he agreed, then his face exploded into the rage he really felt. All his fury was directed straight at me. “You don’t tell me to do anything!” he spat and stormed the few feet between us.

  He grabbed me by the neck and lifted me off the floor until my feet dangled inches off the ground. My fingers clawed at his hands, but he was too strong. He squeezed hard, choking off the air, and then put the gun to my head.

  My eyes bulged as I struggled for small gasps of breath and waited for the explosion of sound to erupt from the barrel.

  Suddenly, he dropped me and I fell to the ground. My hands rose to my neck and my lungs pulled and pulled at the air now able to rush into my body. When I looked up, I could see the gorilla had turned his attentions back to the keeper.

  “Say that again,” he barked.

  The keeper’s lips pursed, he swallowed, struggled to form the words, “Hamburg…Germany. Levi…Solomon has the key.”

  The gorilla turned his head and looked down at me, “Did you get all that princess?”

  I nodded my head.

  “Good,” he said. “So did I.”

  He raised his gun and shot the keeper in the head.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Expendable

  My ears exploded.

  Too late, I covered them and watched as the keeper’s body again fell forward. Blood poured from the dark hole in the center of his forehead. I didn’t move. Didn’t breathe. There was no sound beyond the high pitched buzzing in my head.

  Emerick’s man pulled something from his pocket, unfolded it with careful fingers—a pocketknife. He reached behind the keeper and slit the ties holding him to the chair.

  The body slid to the ground with a sickening finality, the blood from his head creating a thick pool in the dirt.

  Empty. The keeper was empty. A blank and barren shell.

  There was movement to my right, someone was running, it was one of the other men. Breathing heavy, he stopped at the scene, “What happened?”

  “What does it look like happened?”

  “You killed him?”

  “Yeah I killed him!”

  They continued to argue, their voices filling the cave, my arms buckled beneath me. I didn’t have the strength to hold myself up any longer. On my side, I stared into the still open eyes of the keeper. In the astral plane he had so much light, so much energy. He glowed. Now, it was like looking deep into a well, a bottomless cavern that went on and on forever without end, without life, without existence.

  I couldn’t move my body, but I didn’t want to look into that fathomless space anymore. I closed my eyes.

  Something pushed me. When I opened my eyes, I could see both men standing over me. The one who had shot the keeper was on his phone and testing my body with his boot.

  “Yeah, we got it. The box, the keys, and the name and location for the next one,” he said into the phone. “She’s lost a lot of blood,” he shook his head and listened. “Just about dead already.” He listened a few second more, “Got it,” he said and hung up.

  Barely breathing, I watched as he picked up the broken zip ties and the two chairs.

  “What did he say?” the other man asked.

  “Bring the stuff and head back.”

  “And the girl?”

  The gorilla shrugged, “He said to bring her.”

  The other man stared down at me, seemed to hesitate. “What if she doesn’t make it?”

  “Doesn’t matter. If she’s dead, he said he has another that will be easier to work with.”

  Grace.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Another Bloody Failure

  It was dark.

  The cold metal floor pressed against my cheek.

  In the back of a closed truck, a package to be delivered, every bump and turn jostled my limp body that slid and rolled from one end of the truck to the other.

  Somewhere behind us, shrouded by the cave’s black night, the Buddhist key keeper’s body drained into the Earth.

  Mine was doing the same.

  My limbs would not respond.

  My lungs barely kept pulling and pushing air.

  My mind kept slipping towards dreams.

  A young girl stood alone in a deep wood. Surrounded by enormous trees that hid dark things inside their shadows. She held a small scrap, a tiny clue, but she could not find the rest. Could not solve her puzzle. And so she would never escape the darkness. She clutched her clue and crouched into a ball, and the darkness spread, moved out of the shadows, reached for the hem of her dress.

  It’s a memory, not a dream.

  In Eve’s shop, her visions that she’d painted into her scrap book. A small girl lost in a giant wood. She is searching but is not able to see she is surrounded by the answers she seeks.

  I realized my mind was shutting down, having a hard time hanging onto what was real and the pull into a senseless deep.

  Was that death? Am I dying?

  I had lost everything.

  Failed everyone.

  Emerick’s men had taken everything, the bag with the puzzle and the three keys.

  Aaron. Aaron was probably already dead. Dead for trying to save me.

  Caleb and Sophie. Caleb and Sophie hated me now.

  And my mother. My mother had needed me. To find her. To save her. To protect her from Emerick and Lilith. What would happen to her now? After I died. Alone. In the back of a truck in a country I didn’t know. What would these men do with my body once my life left it? How long until Aaron and the keeper were stumbled upon?

  Would our bodies ever be found?

  Would my father ever know what happened to me? He wouldn’t—how could he? Not the truth. If they ever did find us, a story would be made up in order to keep the truth hidden. I could only hope that my father knew I loved him. Wish that mother knew I tried. Beg Caleb to forgive me, forgive me for what I was, who I was, and the parts of me that belonged irrevocably to Hayden.

  Hayden.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  I Need You

  I tried to focus, keep
my mind sharp. But it was a slippery fish swimming towards images and memories. If I could get into the astral plane, maybe…

  Maybe I would be helping death along. What would happen if I left my body now? Without this small energy, this flickering will to live, would it give out on me completely. If I left, would it die without me? Leave me locked out?

  I didn’t know how death worked, but I didn’t think the astral plane was what came after death. At least I hoped that wasn’t all there was. So would I be trapped there if my body died while I was gone?

  Not that I had any other options.

  I had to let that all go, the worry, the not knowing, I focused on my breath. The sound. The sensation until, finally, I had done it. For the second time today, I stood looking down at myself—and I looked much, much worse.

  I was dying. Suddenly I knew that my body wouldn’t make it. My body was very close to giving out. In India, with Mohan that first time in the astral plane, he had helped me to heal the burns on my legs from the hotel fire. Mohan was a master, a practiced healer, and even though he had shown me, guided me, I didn’t believe I could do what he did.

  Before me, a rattled breath pushed past my blue lips.

  I had to try. If I could at least stop the bleeding, that might give me enough time to find Hayden. These men didn’t care if I lived or died.

  But Hayden did.

  If I could call to him, here in the astral plane and let him know he was about to lose me forever, he might be able to convince his father to save me. Order his men to not just let me die.

  And what if Hayden wasn’t in the astral plane? What if he wouldn’t come?

  I couldn’t think about that.

  I knelt beside my body, placed my hands around the wound on my leg and closed my eyes. The key, Mohan had said, is to visualize the entity healthy, whole, perfect. Just the way God intended it. Just the way he created it. There is no sickness in God’s kingdom, no illness, no death…only his perfect creations. See this, believe this, bring all the light around you to illuminate that thought here in the astral plane and it will be so on the physical.

  I imagined my leg healed, the smooth skin with the healthy muscle and bone beneath—working, walking, running. I imagined my force, now in the plane, drawing light to myself and directing it to the wound, like a laser, I focused the energy from all around me and aimed it at where the bullet had punctured my leg. I saw, in my mind, the inside of my leg healing, the skin growing over, the blood pumping in, instead of pouring out.

  My hands felt hot, like they were being held over a fire. When I lowered them to the wound, I thought maybe I felt something, like electricity, flowing through my forearms and out my hands. Was I doing it? Was I actually healing my own body?

  I peeked with one eye, and then opened them both. When I moved my hands away, my leg still looked swollen and painful. Because of the jeans, it was difficult to tell if I had managed anything, if the bleeding had even slowed. I wished I could rip the material back and check but my astral hands were useless as far as that was concerned.

  I thought about reentering my body, seeing if it felt any different, maybe I would be able to move, just enough to check the wound.

  How long would that take? I would have to trust that something, however small, had healed just enough to buy me a little more time. Time that couldn’t be wasted second guessing.

  I needed to find Hayden. I needed to find him now.

  Hayden, I need you.

  It didn’t take long.

  Like before, he was waiting for me in the astral plane. Waiting for some sign, some sense of me to draw him near. The last clue he had seen was the giant golden Buddha, so he had been hovering nearby. As soon as I thought his name, and the desire for him to come to me, it was easy for him to find me.

  When I looked up, I saw him standing at the back of the truck. He came to me almost immediately, knew exactly how to find me as soon as I reached out to him, felt my presence just as clearly as I felt his. I closed my eyes, tried to gather my emotions, resist the urge to get up and run to him, be swept away in the pure emotion of being near him.

  The desire to touch him.

  “Why do you fight it?” he asked.

  I inhaled sharply, he looked worse than the first time I had seen him. Drained, exhausted, sick. “What’s wrong?” I asked still not daring to move any closer to him.

  “What’s wrong?” his voice rose. “What’s wrong she asks. Why don’t you tell me what’s wrong. You lied to me, gave me a fake box…you promised me you’d come back!”

  I could feel his anger stretch across the space between us, like waves of heat that wanted to burn everything in their path. I didn’t know what to say to him. What would make this better? What would get him to help me? “I’m sorry Hayden, I wanted to get the key first.”

  “Bullshit Charlotte. You had no intention of ever coming with me.”

  He was right, even though every fiber of my being cried out to run to him, I would not and the lie I needed to make him believe otherwise would not come.

  He took a step closer, and then another.

  “Please Hayden,” I begged. “Please don’t.”

  “Why,” he asked and walked faster. “Why not Charlotte? Why not me when it is exactly what is right, exactly how we were designed to be?”

  When he was only a few feet away I closed my eyes and tried to guard myself against the very thing I longed to come closer. When he stood only inches from me he stopped, waited, resisted. I forced myself to be still, to not reach for him, to not move.

  “I know why,” he whispered.

  I shook my head slowly.

  “Yes, I do know,” his voice was like acid. “I’ll kill him.”

  My eyes flew open and Hayden swept me into his arms, his mouth pressed hard against mine like he was trying to force Caleb from my mind. But the astral plane was not like the physical, here I was just as strong as he was—maybe more. I shoved him off of me. “Listen to me,” I pointed to nearly dead body at my feet. “This is me, my body is dying. When you told your father what I had done, giving you a fake box and not showing up, he sent men after me. They shot me in the leg when I was trying to get away and right now I’m probably not going to last another hour.”

  He was staring at me, confused, trying to figure out what I was saying. He shook his head, “I didn’t call my father.”

  “What?”

  “I never called him. I was going to try and find you myself, and I saw the image in your mind of that tourist attraction and so I went there.”

  “Then how did they know how to find me?”

  “I don’t know but it wasn’t me.”

  There were only four other people who knew where I was heading today. Aaron was dead or dying back in the cave. Mohan, like the Buddhist key keeper, never would have revealed the truth, no matter what anyone did to him.

  That left two other people—Caleb and Sophie. And as much as I knew they both hated me right now, I didn’t think either of them would have given up my plan to Emerick or his men.

  Not unless they absolutely had to.

  A sick fear and dread pulled at my core. Had something happened to them? Suddenly, I felt certain that they were in danger and the thought was almost more than I could bear. Emerick would easily get me to comply with his wishes by using them against me—and he would know this.

  He had them, I knew it. And they wouldn’t have told him anything, not unless he was hurting one to make the other talk.

  Oh God, no.

  My eyes slid back to Hayden. He would not want to help them—not even Sophie. Caleb and Sophie were only competition for him, distractors that, as far as he was concerned, kept me from being with him. I had to keep my suspicions to myself. “You have to help me. You have to help me because I am going to die here in the back of this truck. And if I die, right now, who knows when or where, or if, you might ever find me again.”

  “You have to promise—“

  “I promise that if you do
n’t go back to your body and convince your father to make his men help me, I will be dead and gone to you in less than an hour!”

  When Hayden left, promising to make his father keep me alive, I sat next to my body but did not enter it. I waited next to it, watched my breathing, kept working to draw healing energy to my leg, but I didn’t want to return to that prison of pain until I absolutely had to. Some color returned to my cheeks and I tried even harder to make my body well. I needed to get to Sophie and Caleb.

  Now that Emerick had used them to find out where I was, I didn’t think he was about to just let them go. And when he found out that the location for the next key his men got from the Buddhist key keeper was a lie—Emerick would make me pay for it with their lives.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  The Below

  Hayden must have persuaded his father because when the truck stopped and the door rolled open, the two men from the cave were standing there with a third I hadn’t seen before. When he climbed into the truck, he cut my jeans from the wound, washed it with some clear solution and wrapped my thigh in clean gauze. He was rough, and didn’t say a word, another thug working for Emerick but a thug with enough medical skill to roll up my sleeve and insert a needle attached to an IV drip bag.

  He slapped my face, “You’ll sleep soon,” was all he said then turned and left. “She’s ready, you can load her now.”

  The two men from the cave climbed in, put the IV bag on my stomach, and picked me up. “This would be easier if she’d just died,” the Gorilla said. “Should have shot her in the head.”