Sacrifice

by Denise Grover Swank

“I love you, Will, and I won’t let you get hurt. I know you want to protect me, but your love for me is clouding your judgment. Before you lost your memory, you were the stronger of the two of us. Now, I am.”

  His jaw tensed.

  “It’s not a slam against you. In fact, if it weren’t for you I wouldn’t be this strong at all. Jake is counting on me to win this thing, and your life hinges on this too. Then let’s not forget the entire world. I know too little about way too many things and frankly, I’m tired of living in fear. I’m ready to take the offensive and develop a strategy to win this thing. But I need to know what I’m facing, on all fronts, to do this effectively. So like it or not, I’m going to Albuquerque tomorrow and I’m meeting with Alex Warren.”

  Will’s chest expanded as his pupils narrowed. Without a word, he grabbed the keys off the desk and walked out of the motel room, slamming the door behind him.

  Emma watched the metal door, stunned not only by Will’s actions, but her own. Still, when she replayed her decision in her head, she stood by it. It was the right thing to do.

  Hours later the sun began to set and Will hadn’t returned. She was hungry and tired but mostly worried about Will. He left the cell phone on the desk when he stormed out, so she couldn’t call him to make sure he was okay.

  She opened a bag of pretzels, nibbling as she looked up directions to the Fairmont Hotel. Albuquerque was over a three-hour drive, which meant that she’d have to leave early in the morning if she wanted to get there in time.

  What if Will hadn’t come back by then?

  Then again, maybe that was his plan to keep her from going. Could she leave him? It occurred to her that maybe she should.

  ***

  Will drove aimlessly for hours, too mad to go back to the motel room but not mad enough to drive away from the pain-in-the-ass woman he’d left behind.

  Will was not a man to take orders. He issued them. Yet, when he let himself cool down enough to think things through, he knew she was right.

  And it killed him.

  Will’s job before his memory loss was to protect Emma, and from what he’d heard, he’d done a piss-poor job of it. He’d failed her before. He didn’t want to fail her again. But how could he protect her if she went off alone? Still, Will realized that he was no match for Alex. Emma was better equipped to handle him. It wasn’t that his pride couldn’t handle that Emma was more skilled than he was for this situation. It was that he wasn’t the one to protect her.

  And the realization stung.

  He loved her. Worried about her. Even defended her. But the desire to protect her came deep from within. It wasn’t a want. It was like a physical need. Emma had told him that’s what it had been like before, when he bore the mark. His eyes darted down to his arm to see if a mysterious brand had appeared. Nothing.

  He knew she’d made the promise to meet Alex before she knew Will was alive, and he knew how important it was for her to keep her promises. But he’d bet his life that Alex wouldn’t think twice about breaking a promise. While Alex had set Will free, rescued Emma from Raphael, and ultimately put the two of them together, Will knew without a doubt that Alex only did it to serve a greater good. His.

  When the growling in Will’s stomach refused to be ignored any longer, he pulled into a truck stop and ordered dinner, watching the rolling banner across the bottom of the news channel. A devastating drought in Africa that was killing thousands every day. A war raging between India and Pakistan that had much of the world looking on with bated breath, both countries a hair-trigger away from nuking each other. Another massive earthquake, in South America this time.

  A nagging feeling in the back of his head told him that this wasn’t all just one big coincidence. This all came back to Aiden and his twisted scheme. Emma had said that Aiden’s power was weakening. Will knew enough about power to know that it didn’t weaken, it merely changed directions. It flowed from one pole to another.

  Aiden was losing control, and the world was suffering.

  He ate, barely stopping to taste the food, his mind whirling as it began to piece things together.

  Four shall fight, two will remain.

  Emma was stronger than she had been in the beginning. This afternoon was evidence of that. Still, he wasn’t sure she was strong enough to win. Perhaps she was right. Maybe taking the offensive, seeing where they stood and trying to get more information from Alex, was the best course of action. Lord knew that in Iraq it had chafed his ass to hole up and do nothing while known terrorists had lurked about. Wasn’t this the same? And if his deductions were correct, Emma’s survival depended on using anything and everything she could to arm herself.

  But when she won, because he refused to accept the alternative, who would rule with her? Would they find Water in time? None of the other three were trustworthy.

  When he left the restaurant the sun had set, making him realize how long he’d been gone. He reached into his jeans pocket to pull out his cell phone, then remembered that he’d left it behind at the motel. He felt an urgency to get back to Emma and make sure she was okay. He knew that she was probably worried about him too. He climbed into the car and started the engine, totally unprepared for the voice in his ear.

  “Hello, Will. Your time’s up.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Jake sat in the gardens, waiting for Aiden. His nanny had brought him outside ten minutes early. She’d made him change clothes twice, brushed his hair three times, and placed him on the bench, moving him inches to either side until she was satisfied with his position.

  Now she paced nervously behind him. He was used to it because everyone on the household staff were terrified of Aiden. Until his visit from Water, Jake had been terrified of Aiden too. He’d been practicing, hiding tiny little thoughts from Aiden, deep in his mind. So far it had worked, and it had opened the door to something he’d been missing for weeks. Hope.

  Aiden appeared on the path leading to the vineyard, the setting sun basking him in a glow. The nanny stopped, chanting in Spanish, the clinking of her cheap rosary beads giving away her terror.

  Aiden smiled as he approached. “Good evening, Jake.”

  “Good evening, Aiden,” Jake said as Antonia had instructed minutes ago. Not that Jake needed reminding.

  “Antonia, you may leave us now.” Aiden flicked his hand to the side path that led to the house and Jake expected Antonia to fall over dead. He never knew when Aiden would kill one of the staff as punishment for Jake, or just to prove that he could. Jake was surprised when she scurried away, hurrying without a backward glance.

  Jake waited for the berating that he knew was coming. Aiden had instructed him to create a thunderstorm the day before. After hours of concentration, he’d managed only a small shower that lasted five minutes.

  Aiden bent over a rose bush and inhaled. “There’s nothing like the smell of old-fashioned roses. Why do men think they have to tamper with genetics to create what they see as a perfect, yet odorless imposter?” He snapped a bright red bloom off the bush. “Don’t they realize that there is more to a rose than its beauty?”

  Jake remained still, unsure what answer Aiden was asking for.

  With a faraway look, Aiden peered over the hedge and into the rose garden. “Do you miss your mother?”

  His eyes widened in surprise. Aiden never showed concern for his feelings. How could he not miss her? She was an enormous hole in his heart.

  Twisting the rose between his thumb and index finger, Aiden inhaled. “It occurs to me that you and your mother need to be reminded what’s important.”

  Jake closed his eyes, his back tensing with fear.

  “You didn’t answer my question, Jacob. Do you miss your mother?”

  She was his everything. His world. Without her, he was empty and lonely and scared. Always scared. She was the one who kissed his head when he woke up with bad dreams. She was the one who held his hand and made the bad things go away.

  Jake reached out to her in the darknes
s, surprised to find a crack in the wall that separated him from her. He felt her presence, basked in her goodness. After weeks of living with the stench of evil, she was a breath of soothing air.

  Jake opened his tear-blurred eyes and nodded, overwhelmed with her love.

  Aiden slowly turned his head to Jake and smiled, crushing the rose in his fist. “And now you remember what you have to lose.”

  As Aiden’s fingers uncurled, the petals caught in the wind and blew onto the path. Aiden ground them into the pea gravel as he walked away.

  ***

  Emma woke with a start, lying sideways on the bed, the TV broadcasting a middle-of-the-night infomercial. She’d stayed up waiting for Will, but exhaustion had finally overcome her. Sitting up, she glanced around the room for any signs of him, on the off chance he’d snuck in without waking her.

  Nothing.

  Terror stabbed in the pit of her stomach as she bolted off the bed and ran to the cell phone on the desk.

  Nothing.

  She paced on shaking legs as she tried to reason with herself. There had to be a reason Will hadn’t come back, and several came instantly to mind. None of them were good.

  Nausea gripped her abdomen and she raced to the toilet, barely making it before her meager dinner made a reappearance. As she rinsed out her mouth, she stared into the mirror, questioning if her nausea was from nerves or her enemy.

  “Calm down. Freaking out isn’t helping anything.”

  She took several deep breaths through her mouth, the discomfort in her stomach easing. But was it from her fear or had her warning of approaching enemies come and gone?

  Will’s bag sat on the floor in front of the closet. Rummaging through the contents produced a shotgun and a handgun, along with enough bullets to get her through a major gunfight. She loaded both and moved to the window, peeking through the cracks.

  Vacant cars sat in the dimly lit parking lot, but one in particular caught her eye.

  The sedan they’d stolen in Morgantown.

  She stood with her back to the wall between the window and the door. She had to think this through, clearly and rationally. Will could have come back and still been so mad he might have decided to sleep inside the car rather than face her. Or someone could have abducted him on his way in. She shook her head, panic bubbling in her brain. No, don’t think like that.

  Yet she couldn’t deny the possibility.

  She peered outside again, looking for any signs of trouble, finding none. The car was parked a good twenty feet away, out of the glare of a streetlight. But once her eyes adjusted, enough light illuminated the driver’s side of the car to reveal someone sitting inside. The head slumped forward at an awkward angle.

  Will.

  Heart racing, she forced herself to count to ten before she did anything, only making it to three before she flung the door open and darted behind the front end of a nearby car.

  She paused long enough to confirm that no one was shooting at her before she ran to another car closer to the sedan. When she made it without drawing gunfire, she ran across the parking lot, ignoring the rough asphalt on her bare feet. She made it to the car, heart lodged in her throat, then jerked on the door handle. The door refused to budge. Locked.

  She bent down to look inside, gasping in horror. His head bent forward at an uncomfortable-looking angle so that she couldn’t see his face, but a large red stain saturated the front of Will’s T-shirt, the gray one with the rip in the hem.

  The one he was wearing when he left.

  Not again. Please, God. Not again.

  Emma beat on the window with the palm of her hand, hysterical. “Will! Open the door! WILL!”

  Her shrieks filled the parking lot, and motel unit doors flung open to investigate, not that she cared. Half of her soul sat bloodied in this car.

  “Will!” she sobbed, pounding on the window.

  Something deep inside niggled for attention. Use your power to open the door. Her anger had dissipated, leaving only fear and grief. Not enough to even create an ember of power in her chest. Instinctively, she reached out to the streetlight overhead, pulling the energy into herself. “Open!” she cried, pointing to the door. It flung into her hand and she dropped to her knees, in her heart knowing what she would find, but hoping that somehow she was wrong.

  “Will!”

  She reached for his arm, recoiling when her hand came into contact with unnaturally cold flesh. Sobs erupted as she noticed a note pinned to his shirt. With shaking hands, she pulled it free, her vision too blurry with tears to read the words. A man approached her from the side and she raised her shotgun, trying to steady her shaking hands. “Back the fuck off.”

  He was an older man, wearing only boxers and a tank T-shirt, and had obviously rushed out without thinking when he’d heard her cries.

  She instantly realized he was no threat.

  His eyes widened in surprise as he raised his hands in surrender, backing up. “It’s okay. I only want to help.”

  She lowered the gun, sobbing anew, and sucked deep breaths in an attempt to settle down. She had to get out of here before the police arrived.

  But she couldn’t leave Will.

  He’s already gone echoed through the dark recesses in her head, but as long as his body was here, he was still here too. “Will,” she moaned as she placed her hands on his cheeks and lifted his head.

  She gasped, staring into the face of a stranger.

  It wasn’t Will.

  She dropped his head in shock, the man’s chin bouncing off his chest, wondering how a man with Will’s shirt, build, and hair color came to be sitting in their car. She realized she’d dropped the note in her grief and crawled on hands and knees as a crowd formed around the car. The slip of paper had wedged between the asphalt and the tire of the car next to her.

  She held it up into the rays from the streetlight, drawing a shaky breath.

  Be at the Santa Maria Hotel in Albuquerque by noon. Go to the front desk and ask for Pedro.

  That goddamned fucking Raphael. If she didn’t have an incentive to kill him before, she had one now. He’d said he’d hurt Will to get back at her, and this had his name written all over it.

  The police would show up any minute, but she couldn’t leave their belongings in the motel room. She pushed past the bewildered bystanders, whose numbers had doubled, and went to the room. Closing the door behind her, she jammed belongings into the duffel bag. There wasn’t much. She and Will were always prepared for a quick escape, but by the time she was ready to exit the room, the parking lot was lit up with flashing red lights.

  The police had arrived.

  Taking the car was hopeless. It was parked in the back of the lot, surrounded by at least thirty gawkers from her glimpse out the window. Several people had gathered around the open door, some checking out the body in the front seat. Emma couldn’t stop to think about the unfortunate man who shared the same body type and hair color with Will. She couldn’t let herself take the blame, either.

  Yet.

  Instead, she needed to focus on getting away without being noticed by the police. An impossible task, since the front was the only way out.

  Emma slung the duffel bag over her shoulder, her knees bending with the weight. Taking a slow, deep breath, she pulled energy from the lights in the room.

  Grasping the doorknob with a shaky hand, she opened the door a crack. A bystander by the car was pointing to her door while talking to a police officer.

  She threw the door open and lifted her hand, releasing her energy toward a car across the lot, directly in front of her door.

  The explosion shook the building. In her nervousness she’d made it bigger than she intended, but it had the desired effect. The crowd scattered, their screams filling the night. She slipped out the door into the chaos of the frantic crowd, refusing to consider that she’d likely killed people in the process, and made her way to the street.

  Now she needed to find a car and make it to Albuquerque.

>   Emma pulled into a public parking lot three blocks from the Santa Maria hotel. No need announcing her arrival any more than necessary. Not that they knew what car she was driving now. She’d gone to a used car lot and stolen one using her power.

  Just one more sin to add to the ever-growing list.

  Over the past four hours, she’d forced any thoughts of Will to the side, refusing to acknowledge the possibility of what she might find. Instead she sorted through the list of suspects. It seemed too coincidental that whoever took Will knew she was coming to Albuquerque to meet Alex.

  The truth was, if the Vinco Potentia had Will, they already knew he was powerless. If it was the Cavallo, she had no idea what to expect. Raphael had the biggest motive, since he blamed Will for keeping Emma from him. But she couldn’t dismiss dear old Dad. Aiden. She almost hoped it was Aiden, even if her power wasn’t enough to fight him. At least she might get a chance to see Jake. And maybe she could get more answers.

  She was early, but only by an hour. She hated to think what would have happened if she’d been detained by the police, or had trouble getting a car. All the more reason to suspect a supernatural being was behind all of this. Humans might consider those things. Supernatural creatures would assume she’d use her power to get out of it.

  She planned to use the hour to her advantage.

  A coffee shop occupied the corner of the building across the street. Emma ducked inside and ordered a coffee before she sat at the counter looking out onto the street. Pulling the laptop out of a backpack Will had picked up the previous week, she set it on the counter and performed a search for Phillip Warren. The news media reported him being on the East Coast today. But Alex was still scheduled to speak at the luncheon at noon in the Fairmont, three blocks from the Santa Maria. The fact that she was expected to meet Will’s kidnapper at the other hotel at the same time Alex was supposed to speak didn’t necessarily rule him out, especially since he knew that his lackeys couldn’t contain her. Maybe it was a test since she was supposed to meet Alex at the same time. Was he testing her to see which she would choose?