Splintered Energy (The Colors Book 1)

by Arlene Webb

  David guided him to the third level to park by the door marked Employees Only.

  Aaron took the cell from David. “If they tow the car, you know how to hotwire another?”

  “Sure. They taught that in preschool.” David grabbed the shawl. “Save the day and get the hell out. Should be interesting.”

  Aaron stretched, but there wasn’t time to work out cramps. Huge eyes were on him. He scooped Jade out of the car and set her on her feet. David draped the shawl around her shoulders and inched his fingers into hers. Aaron slowed his stride to match David’s and they moved, Jade tight between them, into the pediatric wing.

  They passed a polite couple and a hurried, white-coated intern. Jade began to shudder under Aaron’s arm.

  “What’s wrong?” David whispered to Jade. “We’re almost to her room.”

  “This-this—it’s too much. Pain and suffering is everywhere.” Jade gave a strangled sob. “Fear surrounds me. Trapped. Despair. I can’t—too heavy—Aaron, help me.”

  David gasped, and Aaron brought them to a dead halt. His sharp tug freed the kid. David massaged his hand, mouthed, “I’m okay,” in response to Aaron’s worry. Aaron turned from his son. Not good. So much prettier than Kermit, but soft green never the less. Jade seemed too overwhelmed to hide her color. She shivered, molded against Aaron like she wanted to disappear into him. He pulled the shawl tighter and picked her up.

  Almost running, David led toward room 308. They hadn’t gotten far, when a woman wearing ID stopped. “You guys okay?”

  David blurted, “My brother—you know. My mom’s sad, but we’re getting her some air.”

  Quick-witted and believable, what other lies came so easy to his one and only?

  “Sorry,” the nurse muttered and continued onward.

  Aaron stopped beside room 306. Two children, surely in need of their own miracle, slumbered in the room next to Narci’s victim. David ran ahead, peeked into 308, and returned.

  Jade cradled tight, Aaron bent to David’s whisper. “There’s a lady beside the bed. The girl looks asleep. The other bed’s empty. Should I get the mother to leave? Meet you at the front lobby?”

  “Yep. Good plan. Be careful.” Aaron stepped around the partially open door. Three minutes to brood, their healing star collapsed in a white-hole of terror in his arms, and Aaron heard his talented son on the verge of tears.

  “My brother, he’s sick, and my mom’s so worried. I didn’t mean to get lost…”

  Aaron peered around the door. A weary, sweet-faced woman held David’s hand. They hurried down the corridor.

  Aaron hastened into the next room. “Please, Jade. You can do this.” He put her down by the bed and abandoned her to fall or stand.

  The chart at the foot of the bed verified the unconscious child was Colleen Morrison. Her pale face looked pinched and haggard. The drugs didn’t control her pain. Her soft brown hair had been brushed to a glossy shine, testimony to a mother’s anguish.

  Good Lord, how could the creature he’d dressed and iced down have done this? He pulled the sheet free from thin, little-girl legs. Swaddled in white bandages, her feet were so small.

  Um, Jade? Do something? She trembled, silent, unstable as a cornered rabbit. Aaron put his arm around her, and hoped his, “Shh, sweetheart, just help her,” hid his own fear. If he didn’t get this angel to perform, a blue devil would go down with her. Alien-in-the-building alarms could go off any second.

  Aaron fought the temptation to pick her up and run. He removed her sunglasses and dropped them on the bed. Those radiant eyes flickered with a strange blankness. Luminosity there, then gone, leaving a seizured, dark emptiness.

  He held her weight, his shake gentle. “Jade?” Jesus. She’d join Morrison in the coma ward? Paralyzed from generalized anxiety and performance fear?

  Aaron shifted her into one arm, pulled out his cell, and hit speed dial with his thumb.

  “What?” Malcolm’s cool voice asked after one ring.

  “We’re here with the girl, but it’s like Jade’s catatonic.”

  “Don’t hesitate—slap her. Sorry, can’t talk now. Call back as needed but hit her. Hard. Repeat until she responds.” Aaron’s hope disconnected.

  Seriously? He’d never beat anyone before, let alone a woman that trusted him. Even the lamest knight knew of better ways to arouse a distressed damsel. Malcolm had said Jade could electrocute Evan, mouth to mouth, without an injury to focus her attention on. Clobbered by a punk human and then healed by an alien, David still seemed to have firing synapses.

  Aaron repocketed the cell and pulled out his pocketknife. He opened it, and chomped down—hard—on his lower lip. Sharp pain, salty tang of his blood, and his resolve solidified. The blood drip on his chin told him he’d bitten deep enough. He dropped the unneeded knife on the bed and shook Jade.

  Nothing.

  Since he first touched her on the beach a continent away, he’d fought lust. He couldn’t be the guy who did the sensible thing all the time, could he? He tilted her head and closed his eyes to block out her blank expression.

  His dreaded red blood smeared her face.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  No hesitant peck, Aaron’s kiss was alpha male at his best, and he never felt so alive in all his life. The air molecules surrounding his lips absorbed the charge, while his dick thrilled to the rush of blood pumped from a heart dancing an Irish jig. Oh God, what compared to the sensations bursting into his mouth? Key lime pie, mint ice cream, pistachio cake under a rainforest canopy, nothing could be as wholesome and sweet as the lips pressed against his. If only Jade would react, he’d finally absorb the light—or burnout trying.

  Tingling with prickly shocks, Aaron’s face flashed from flushed to scalding as he forced her lips to part. He held Jade molded to his chest, and deepened his kiss, his tongue dipping into…nirvana. Come on, please, oh please.

  Thank you. Wish granted, he devoured her gasp. A delicious flow of ecstasy sang down his throat and sizzled into every inch of him. Jade’s slender hands rose, clasped his face, and held him to her lips. Cells ignited and voltage surged beyond pleasure—almost painful. His lip felt healed, the metallic tang of blood dissolved, and Aaron moaned.

  Soon, he’d be oblivious to his surroundings. Playing with fire could be fatal, but he didn’t care. His desire had heightened into an intense craving. He sucked a flavor, addicted in an instant with no hope of savior by a twelve-step program.

  I demand—insist—oh yes. Jade returned his kiss. Current blasted into his chest.

  Oh no—sorry—stop. A sharp jolt, Aaron’s body seized—spontaneous combustion—his legs buckled, and he collapsed.

  His first time with knees that didn’t work. Aaron swallowed such electric despair as emotion stormed through him. Exhilarated with her purity, saturated with her scent, he fought the conflict. The battle between delicious light and intense hurt resolved in a millisecond. All trace of lust and confidence fried, burnt in a firestorm of desolation and anguish. Damn, blue man. I should have listened.

  Her lips locked to his, Jade held his face in an unbreakable grip. Panic peaked, and Aaron fluttered his fingers along the bed. He grasped the open pocketknife. Without doubt or care of consequence, he jabbed hard and the knife seared through flesh to the hilt.

  Claustrophobic despair blasted through Aaron, and he swallowed Jade’s gasp. A brutal stabbing and his charged mind demanded regret for his action when her lips and hands abandoned him. Light and hope gone, corrosive tears slid under his scorched eyelids. They blistered an interior path, clogging his throat.

  Now that he was free, Aaron wanted her lips back. He couldn’t feel the knife sticking out of his thigh, couldn’t remember how to breathe, and couldn’t care less.

  Jade allowed him to ease away from her, and he leaned against the edge of the bed. Why fight the layers of misery or the futility of opening his eyes?

  Help.

  Finally. Cool, sweet hands soothed his face, dissolved the charred obst
acles in his throat, and air rushed into his lungs while sound caressed his ears.

  What? A faint voice, frightened. Was he still crying? No…through the din of his depression Jade pleaded his name. With an overwhelming reluctance, Aaron forced his eyes open.

  “Please be okay. I’m so sorry I hurt you.” Her radiant light no longer flickered. Jade’s eyes overflowed with anguish and—love?

  His eyelids crashed closed. Love?

  Mental clarity destroyed, Aaron felt her hands on him again. This time in a disturbing dance down his chest, his stomach and further. Oh no. Oh yes. Oh don’t stop. A healer’s touch fluttered over his groin, stirring the throb in his thigh, to center—around a mere three-inch handle. Er…a little to your left?

  She wrenched the knife free, and dizziness slammed into him. Emerald spots danced on the screen of his eyelids. A trickle of blood ran down his leg. At least urine didn’t fill his shoes, but another problem had hardened off the scale. He couldn’t lift his limbs, and yet he rose, battering against his pants. Brain fried and good to know he didn’t need a blue pill…or did he? What the hell was happening to him?

  Malcolm? Help?

  Reality check. No one would rescue him, and someone with handcuffs could arrive at any moment. David. Foster care. Prison visits. What type of idiot father was he?

  A deep breath of depression collapsed Aaron’s erection. Another gulp… Hopeless. He couldn’t speak. What about just opening his eyes? Weight unbearable, but his eyelids cooperated.

  Unbelievable. Jade’s eyes glowed so beautiful, a depth of luminosity he’d never seen before. She seemed charged with high voltage energy, her worry and fear gone. Aaron had to throw off this oppression, and a stunning insight penetrated his gloom. She wanted him. Desire shone all over Jade’s face. And in his stupidity, what was he doing about it?

  Green flame blurred into memory of a mortal woman. Sarah had died a shell of what she used to be. Aaron could feel the fear and hopelessness that strangled this hospital too, and guilt stirred his turmoil. He was attracted beyond reason to a nonhuman creature that sparkled gloriously for him. And where were those delicious, lethal lips going?

  Jade turned from him, Aaron’s knife held tight as she bent over the child. She slashed white bandages away, and grasped a little foot in each hand. The pressure she exerted looked like it would have broken bones, if they hadn’t been pulverized already.

  Droplets of blood dripped through crushing green fingers, turning black. The girl remained unresponsive despite the brutal manipulation. Then Jade bent her lips to one foot, the other, and spat black fluid on the floor. Her grip lessened, and she released the feet back on the bed—perfect, beautiful, little feet.

  Jade’s attention, her eyes brimming with tears, jerked back on Aaron. No longer a healing angel, but a frightened sweetheart. She lost her green shade and reached for him. “We need to leave.”

  Function, you idiot. Yes, his head would move, and Aaron nodded. Difficult, but his legs—almost—accepted his weight. So pathetic, he had to lean?

  He twitched his fingers, tightened them, and pushed the sunglasses at her. Jade closed up his knife and slipped it into his pocket. The shiver of heat that jolted down his leg urged him to lift his foot. She supported him, and he stumbled forward. Eight feet to the door, two more gave them the corridor, and he halted.

  “What’s wrong?”

  He forced his chin up, mouthed, “David.”

  “He’ll find us.” Jade tugged his arm around her shoulders, guided him to the elevator and avoided eye contact with the few people they passed.

  Thank Christ, the elevator was empty. Jade hit the button to close the door, and pressed the green lobby button. Aaron’s fingers reached above and collapsed against the red stop button. “What’d…you do…to me?”

  “I don’t know. I’m sorry!” Panic swirled in emerald eyes, and Jade changed her skin to match.

  Should he be checking into this hospital, instead of hurrying to escape it? Two syllables croaked from his lips. “Mal…colm.”

  Jade held him up and slipped her hand into his pocket. His cell out, she caressed her other hand flat on his stomach.

  Malcolm’s, “What?” made her flinch. “Sweetheart, spit it out,” Malcolm said. “There’s an officer here. It’s fine, but he lurks.”

  “Aaron kissed me. I-I did something.”

  “Shh. I hear him. Hold the phone closer for him. Aaron?”

  “Ahh…hard to handle…feel too much.” Aaron’s eyes actually swam with tears. “Not sure why.”

  “I understand and sympathize. The misery in your voice is clear. Suicide dominated my thoughts after my lips touched hers, also. Unfortunately, I didn’t shove some common sense into her at the time. Reckless fools, the pair of you. She apparently tapped into your libido to steal your confidence and strength, while siphoning off that neurotic despair. It’s conclusive, swapping fluid with a green nightmare isn’t pleasant. Good news, her infection should wear off. Better news, I can pull 588 terahertz out of you if it doesn’t, without letting you absorb even a minute trace of intelligence. Sorry. You’re doomed to remain an idiot, but you’ll recover.”

  Aaron’s chest loosened up, as Malcolm’s cool voice continued. “Please pardon her. A hospital is no place for an empathic nut case. Block thoughts that’d increase despondency, like your lost wife or the dying around you. Concentrate on the reason you’re there. Did she heal the child?”

  Malcolm was right. Suck it up. Aaron drew in a deep breath, forced the tremble from his fingers, and took the cell from Jade. “Yes. Heading to ICU. I’ll manage.”

  “It’s simple. Continue to do what you just did. Breathe in and out, and draw from her energy, but increase the odds David won’t become an orphan by keeping your mouth off hers. Call back when you’re out of there. Utilize my earlier answer as needed, and don’t hold back.”

  “Yep. Thanks.” Aaron fumbled the mobile closed, shoved it into his pocket, and wrapped his arm around Jade. No way would that last bit of advice happen. Smacking females wasn’t his thing. Simplify sounded good. He held the most seductive creature now known to mortals, and he had no problem with the inhale part of Malcolm’s solution.

  Jade’s aroma competed with the purist of waters, the freshest of air with an invigorating undercurrent of power, and he bent to nuzzle into her neck. His lips tingled with the charged taste of her skin, but it was less voltage. Placing soft nibbles over her face, he avoided her lips and mumbled, “You can finish this? Help that father?”

  From beneath the shades, her light sparkled up at Aaron as she nodded. The desolation clogging his mind lessened, and a wonder burned through him. Aaron, the moth that survived, held a wildly sensual being, and her hands—oh yes—traveled south. Current saturated his groin, her fingers danced over his thin pants to caress the stab wound in his thigh.

  Electricity ran up and down his leg, another wave of misery receded, the rush intense. In an elevator of a crowded hospital and there he went again. He strained so hard against his zipper, he’d soon have bits of metal reading “I’m an exhibitionist” tattooed along each side.

  Jade noticed. How could she not? She seemed more confused than anything. Her blind trust in him helped. She wasn’t afraid, but he certainly was. Aaron concentrated on the swirls of fear haunting the corners of his mind. Every muscle tense, his angled leg to hide the turmoil in his pants, was all it took for Jade’s anxiety to return, and her hands dropped from him.

  Aaron slowed his pulse with deep breaths. Control really was simple. Dying and dead wives hovered everywhere in hospitals. He pulled her back in his arms. “I’m sorry. Green nightmare? Malcolm’s insane.” He kissed the top of her head. “You’ve no idea how much I want to get—er—electrocuted.”

  Jade giggled. He moaned while she escaped his arms, pressed the lobby button, and snuggled back against him.

  The elevator door to reality opened. Light, color, and sound of the ground floor spilled in. One arm tight around his waist, J
ade kept her head pressed into his side. People stared. At him. Damn rude, so what if he looked like he’d escaped from shock therapy. Following the signs, Aaron made himself go faster, and Jade flowed in sync with his long legs.

  He pushed open the doors to ICU and entered like he belonged. They passed the nurse’s workstation, two open rooms, the beds with women in them, directly to the first man he spotted. The guy’s eyes were closed, his face ashen. Hooked to a respirator, tubes in his arm connected him to the monitoring machine regulating the drugs.

  Aaron released Jade and lifted one ten-ton foot after the other. He blinked away his blurred vision and read the chart at the foot of the bed. “It’s Morrison. Can you get this over with?”

  To his relief Jade didn’t answer but moved. She didn’t even respond to the white sheet while he staggered forward to disconnect the alarm system. Not too complicated for a man who’d spent many an hour examining anything but his wife’s wasted form.

  Jade leaned over Morrison, and Aaron shifted to block her from view. She lifted Morrison’s head and her lips, fresh from Aaron’s, lowered to the guy’s mouth—for what seemed like an eternity.

  A coma must absorb more voltage than a worthless lip gash. Otherwise, Aaron would smell Morrison toast by now. The lucky chump wasn’t even smoking, yet. Jade’s tantalizing touch on Aaron’s thigh still lingered. Her wondrous taste in his mouth competed with—goddamn it—nausea. “Get the hell out” time couldn’t come too soon.

  The man’s chest began to rise and fall faster. Brown eyes flared open, pupils blown, but Aaron read confusion not suicidal hopelessness. Seemed Aaron was the chosen one for such fun.

  Ah, Jade? Morrison’s hands jerked, and his body convulsed under her insubstantial weight. Between a yellow fist and green electrocution, this guy was having one bad weekend.

  Aaron grabbed Jade. He nodded with compassion into Morrison’s panic and lifted her off the man. His angel burrowed her face into his shirt, and Aaron swallowed hard.

  Morrison’s mouth hung open and drool escaped the corners. He gulped, and his tremors quieted as his raspy voice croaked, “I’m dreaming? She’s so beautiful. Tastes…like heaven. Green light? An angel. I’m dead—who-who are you?”