SONS of DON

by Brenda L. Harper

  “I don’t know.”

  “You guys want to take it down a notch?” she asked, her jaw aching with the movement of speech. “Little loud.”

  “Gwen.” She felt a hand on hers, warm fingers wrapping around her palm. “How are you feeling?”

  “Like I got hit by a tacky old Ford.”

  “You kind of did.”

  Gwen opened her eyes slowly, cautiously. It took a second for his face to come into focus. Rhein. He was staring down at her, his face so softened by concern that she wanted to reach up and touch that lower lip—the one that looked like a perpetual pout, especially when he was upset—but she kept her fingers to herself.

  “You were there,” she said.

  “Not until afterward.”

  “I heard you. I heard you yell at her.”

  Rhein glanced behind him before focusing on Gwen again. “You should get some rest. You’ve had quite a day.”

  Cei came into view over Rhein’s shoulder. “Hey, Gwen.”

  “Where am I?”

  “Covenant Hospital. You have a wound on your shoulder, so they admitted you.”

  Gwen started to reach for her shoulder, but Rhein caught her hand. “Don’t. It’s all bandaged. You don’t want to mess it up.”

  “When can I get out of here?”

  “Theresa’s talking to the doctors now,” Cei said.

  A thought flashed through Gwen’s mind, an image of a doctor with those funky cards from the Rorschach test held up in front of him. What if they realized she was delusional? Would they put her in the psych ward? Would they put her on meds, make her quit school?

  She couldn’t do that right now. She understood that she needed some sort of help, but not now. Not until she was able to get out of here and experience life on her own. Just for a little while. She could control it for a little while.

  “Gwen?”

  Rhein touched her cheek, wiped away a couple of tears she hadn’t realized had fallen. She turned her face away, pulled her hand away, and sat up a little straighter. Her head began to pound with the movement, but she didn’t want his concern. Not right now.

  “I want out of here.”

  “I told you, Theresa’s arranging that with the doctors right now.”

  She took a moment to study her surroundings. It was a small room, one wall dominated by a long window. The opposite sported a bathroom whose door stood partially open beside the main door to the room. She could see people outside the door through the small, square window that broke the monotony of the cheap, wooden façade. Theresa and two men, one of whom kept glancing into the room as though expecting the teens inside to do something disrespectful.

  There was an IV dripping saline into her arm, the line cold against her suddenly feverish skin. She thought that maybe they’d given her pain meds through it because the throbbing in her shoulder had lessened slightly over the last few minutes. Or maybe it was just the adrenaline running through her veins.

  “You’re safe here, Gwen,” Rhein said.

  She focused on him for a second. “Why are you here?”

  “What?”

  She looked back toward the door, toward the doctors. “Why are you here?”

  “I was worried about you.”

  “What were you guys arguing about before I woke?”

  She felt he glance they exchanged more than saw it. She was watching the doctors, the tension in their body language. They didn’t like whatever it was Theresa was saying to them.

  She needed to get out of here.

  “Nothing important,” Cei said.

  “You said something about others. About another one like me.” She focused on Cei, saw the anger flash through his eyes before he turned to see what lay outside the long, wide window. “Rhein said you’d lost another. What does that mean?”

  Rhein touched Gwen’s hand, but she pulled it away.

  “You’re a part of this, too, aren’t you? You know what’s been happening to me?”

  “Gwen, you were hit by a car. You hit your head—”

  “Stop.” She pulled herself up a little more, pain flaring in the back of her head for a moment. “I know something is going on. You know something about that woman who attacked me.”

  Rhein leaned close to her, his hands braced on the mattress on either side of her body. “You hit your head. You’re confused about what happened.”

  “I heard you. I heard what you said.”

  She had begun the conversation to distract them. To distract herself from the drama that was taking place out in the hallway. She thought…she wasn’t sure what she had thought. That she might slip into the bathroom and hide until the danger passed? What other option did she have? Her only escape route was blocked at the moment.

  But now…now she was a little befuddled by their denial. Why weren’t they answering her questions? Why did Rhein keep insisting she’d been hit by the car when she was pretty sure it had been his voice she heard in the second before the woman was pulled from her? He saved her. Why wouldn’t he admit it?

  What was going on?

  Rhein continued to study her face from such a close perspective that he could probably see the individual pores that dotted her flesh, the victims of her occasional breakouts. The vain side of her hoped that her nose was free of embarrassing mucus, that her mascara—the only makeup she occasionally indulged in—had not smeared in the heat of the moment. The stubborn part of her refused to look away, refused to give him even an iota of self-doubt despite the fact that it lived quite happily in the pit of her stomach.

  Her heart leapt into her throat when she heard the door open.

  Here it came.

  “Gwen.”

  Rhein pulled back, climbing off the bed as though he had just been caught about to kiss her by her father. Paul, his hair as wild as ever from his constant nervous habit of dragging his fingers through it, rushed to her bedside, his arms spread as though he was someone who cared enough to be panicked when he heard she was in the hospital.

  She pressed her face to the warm, pillowy soft material of his shirt, tears burning in the back of her eyes, but never actually surfacing. She heard the door swish as it closed again, but she didn’t look to see if those doctors had come in.

  Paul wouldn’t let them put her in psych ward. She trusted him enough to believe that.

  “What happened?” he asked, pulling back enough to take in the bandage on her shoulder, the tape holding another to her neck. “They said a car plowed into a bus stop?”

  “Yeah,” she said, deciding it was easier to go with the obvious lie than the truth—that some crazy lady was dead set on trying to kill her. “It was crazy. I was just sitting there, lost in my book, and the next thing I know there’s a huge car in my lap.”

  Paul shook his head as he turned to look at the IV line snaking along the pole beside her bed and into her arm. “It’s a miracle you weren’t more seriously injured.”

  “I’m fine.” She lifted her arm to show him that the movement in her shoulder was not impaired in any way. “In fact, I’d really like to get out of here.”

  “Theresa’s signing your discharge papers right now.”

  Relief sent a shiver through Gwen. Paul misunderstood it and lifted the thin sheet that covered her legs higher over her body.

  “You and Tony,” he said as he fussed with the top edge of the sheet, folding it more neatly over her chest. “Theresa said he fell in his office last week?”

  “Yeah, hit his head after he tripped on one of the many stacks of books on his office floor.”

  “You found him?”

  His eyes came up to hers. There was concern there, but something else, too. Something like pride. It seemed at odds with the conversation they were having. She didn’t understand.

  That seemed to be her mantra these days.

  “I went to his office to borrow some paper. He was lying on the floor.”

  “You didn’t panic when you saw him?”

  “No.” She reached u
p and touched a finger to the bandage on her throat. “I wanted to call 911, but he wouldn’t let me. Said he was fine.”

  “You did the right thing, keeping him calm until he felt better.” He touched her arm lightly. “You’ll make a fine doctor someday.”

  “I don’t know. I’m beginning to think I might be better off studying something like history or literature.”

  “Why?”

  “The sight of all that blood was…disturbing.”

  “Of course it was. Seeing anything the first time would be disturbing.”

  She shrugged, then regretted it for the pain in her shoulder. She touched that, curious what kind of wound was hidden underneath all that gauze. Would it look like something sustainable in a car crash, or would it have more of a rounded, rock-like shape?

  “I’m sorry you had to come all the way down here.”

  Paul sat hard in the chair beside the bed. “Where else would I be?”

  “I’m sure you have a lot of other things you could be doing today.”

  “Nothing that is more important than you.”

  “I bet you say that to all of your kids.”

  He dragged his fingers through his hair, disturbing the mess that already existed and turning it into a whole new kind of rat’s nest. “You were one of my first cases, kiddo. You know that earns you a special place in my heart.”

  She nodded. “You shouldn’t let us get under your skin. That’s how social workers get burned out.”

  He shrugged. “There would be no point in doing this job if I didn’t care a little.”

  The door opened again, and Theresa came striding in with a stack of papers in her hands. “Good news,” she announced, “you get to go home as soon as we can get a nurse in here to take that IV out of your arm.”

  “Thanks, Theresa,” she said, the gratitude genuine.

  Paul stood, leaning down over Gwen to press a kiss to the center of her forehead. “Try not to run into any more old Fords.”

  “I’ll try not to.”

  “Thanks for coming by, Paul,” Theresa said, shaking his hand politely.

  “Of course.” He glanced back at Gwen. “I’ll call you next week.”

  He was gone as quickly as he had come. Gwen never knew what to think about Paul. He was so kind, so concerned, each time she saw him. He seemed to understand her in a way no one else had ever bothered to try. Yet, he was rarely around, as though he took the whole out of sight, out of mind thing to heart. So it made her wonder if his affection was genuine, or an act brought on by the necessities of his job.

  “Nice guy,” Theresa said, coming over to take Paul’s place in the chair beside her. “Too bad he doesn’t have a family of his own. He’d be a great dad.”

  “He already is, in a twisted, part-time sort of way.”

  Theresa smiled as though that was the most interesting thing anyone had said to her all day. “You might be right about that.”

  The nurse came a minute later, slipped Gwen’s IV line from her hand, and gave the green light for them to go. It took Gwen a moment to get her clothes on over the bandages, but she dressed as quickly as she could, anxious to get out of there and away from the memory of this long, horrifying day.

  Theresa seemed just as anxious to end it. She took out of the parking lot like there was a witch on her tail, kind of like Melanie did every morning. Even Cei, calm, collected Cei, buried his nails in the upholstery as they left a cloud of dust behind them.

  Gwen laughed. It seemed like a fitting end to a difficult day.

  Chapter 22

  She was suffocating.

  Weight sat on her chest like a proverbial elephant. But it wasn’t an elephant. It was something else, the weight of a human being. She was pinned down by a woman’s body, her hands crushing Gwen’s biceps as she pressed them into the ground. Pain tore through her body, her shoulder especially. And the back of her head. She had a headache like nothing she had ever felt before, the pain pulsing like light synchronized to the pounding bass of a rap song.

  “Let me go!”

  “Not until you tell me where they are.”

  “Where who is?”

  “You know. You know exactly where they are. You’re the one who’s going to get them out, the one destined to save them.”

  “I don’t know who you’re talking about,” she said, twisting her arms in a futile attempt to free them. The pain in her shoulder flared again, the ache so bad it dulled her vision. “Please, I don’t know what’s going on.”

  “Ask your tree friend. I’m sure he knows more than anyone what this is all about.”

  “My tree friend?”

  “Don’t act stupid. Trees don’t protect just anyone. The fact that Derrybawn protected you proves that you are the one. You are the demigod destined to free the Sons of Don.”

  Gwen’s body flashed hot and cold as those words washed over her. She wanted to deny them, to pretend that they didn’t strike a chord with something deep in her soul. But they did. She knew it was true, knew it somewhere deep in her soul.

  The woman began to laugh. “I have forgotten what it is like to deal with a child. So naive, so unaware of the power inside of you. If only Cei would give me the opportunity I need…”

  “Who is Cei?”

  “You mean, what is he, don’t you?” Laughter again slipped from her perfectly sculpted lips. She shoved her hands hard against Gwen’s shoulders, causing pain to flare so intensely in her injured arm that she couldn’t breathe for a moment. She cried out, the reality of the moment fading at the edges.

  “He’s not who you think he is,” the woman whispered in her ear as the she twisted her palm against Gwen’s wound, causing her vision to darken completely.

  She cried out, the darkness becoming her bedroom. She was in her own bedroom, the moonlight reflecting off the windows. She sat up, pain in her shoulder flaring in perfect combination with the dizziness that shot through her head. Nausea joined the party. Thank goodness it was only nausea because she would never have made it to the bathroom in time to keep from soiling the lovely wood floors in the hallway.

  It was a dream. It had to have been a dream.

  But it seemed so real.

  The moment the dizziness began to recede, she climbed out of bed, a protective hand pressed to her shoulder. The pain was still intense, but receding into tolerant. Barely tolerant. She stumbled to the door and slipped through, relieved to see that Cei’s door was partially open. Maybe he’d known she would have a nightmare tonight after everything that had happened. Or maybe it was just a coincidence. She didn’t care. She wasn’t sure she could be alone tonight.

  It was a dream. And it might come back when she went to sleep again. She wasn’t sure she could take that tonight.

  She hesitated outside his door, trying to calm the erratic beat of her heart. She half hoped he would come, meet her at the door, like he did the last time. But there was complete silence on the other side of the door.

  She pushed it open and stepped inside, wondering if she could pull the trundle bed out without waking him. It wasn’t until she had stepped up to the side of the bed that she realized she couldn’t hear the slow, deep breaths of his gentle snore.

  “Gwen?”

  Words failed her, as they often did when she was alone with Cei. Like earlier in the day, she moved on instinct rather than waiting for her head to figure out what she should do. She crawled into his bed beside him, her nerve endings jumping at the feel of his warm skin against hers.

  Their bodies molded together as though they had done this a million times, her bare legs below her shorts sliding against his equally bare legs, her ribs pressing against his with only the thin material of her t-shirt separating their flesh. His arm slipped around her waist, his hand pressed against the small of her back as she settled into him, cradling her rather than pulling or holding her. She laid her cheek against his shoulder even as her own, injured shoulder pressed into his arm. The pain was excruciating, but a gentle rotation took m
uch of the pressure away.

  Most children know what it’s like to cuddle with another human being. They lie in their mother’s arms as infants, curl with them on the couch while watching television. It was normal for some kids, this feeling of flesh on flesh, the warmth of another human being’s body, the beating of someone else’s heart.

  It wasn’t normal for Gwen. She had never felt anything like this in her life, at least, not that she was aware of. Maybe her mother held her when she was an infant. She had no way of knowing that. But it felt new. It felt as foreign as it felt comforting.

  His hand on her back slipped slowly up, sliding between her shoulder blades. He pressed his face to the top of her head, took in a deep breath that she could feel as his chest pulled away from hers, and then returned. It was instinct again that made her press her lips to his chest. Instinct that caused her to pull back when his fingers buried themselves in her hair and tugged just so lightly.

  She’d been kissed before. She’d done many things with boys before. There was a certain amount of relief in the desires of another, even when those desires were based on something other than love or affection. But the taste of Cei’s lips on hers, the taste of his breath as it mingled with hers, was something altogether different.

  He rolled so that he was lying flat, her body half on top of his. It took even more pressure off of her shoulder, allowed her to forget about the pain for a moment. It allowed the pleasure of him to overwhelm everything.