by Ben Cass
“And that was a mistake. I never should have run from you.” Jen released his hand and stood, pacing back and forth. The recollections were stronger now, and she could remember more and more each minute. Walking along streams with Doyle, stealing kisses in the woods, even her personal bodyguard, Coll, with his barrel chest and growly voice, helping keep her relationship a secret.
She didn’t know why she had a personal bodyguard, though, or why their relationship was a secret. She remembered Doyle saying their families were from two different social circles, but he hadn’t elaborated.
“I remember being terrified by the thought you wanted to spend the rest of your life with me. I had begun sensing you felt that way and when you confirmed my suspicions...well, it horrified me.”
“And where does the part about me being wrong come in? So far, I’m not hearing anything to the contrary.” Doyle’s voice was very dry.
Jen continued pacing, ignoring him. Her hands gently pulled on her hair, mindlessly combing through it, straightening it, twirling it.
“Like I told you, girls that age have a lot going on. I couldn’t imagine, at that time, settling down with one person for the rest of my life, even though it seemed perfectly normal to you. The only option I could think of was to run away from you and hope you would forget about it so we could just go back to being the way we were.” She scuffed her toe against the wooden floor.
“I remember stumbling through the forest, hearing you calling my name. I ran faster and faster, not really looking where I was going. Next thing I knew, somebody shoved me from behind—at least, I think they did, though I might be misremembering—and then I was falling out of the forest and landing in a grassy field. I hit my head on a rock.”
Jen paused, her eyes losing focus as she tried to recall the details. “When I came to, I couldn’t remember anything except the name Jen and my age. I stumbled around and finally made my way into town. The sheriff found me and took me to the hospital. After they’d patched me up, I headed to a foster home while my picture was circulated around, hoping somebody would recognize me. Nobody did.”
“When did the Astons took you in?”
“A few days later. I was the only teenager in the foster home and I guess the Astons had been wanting to adopt a child, but didn’t want to take in a young one. Ellie was four at the time and she was a handful.” Jen smiled, adding, “She hasn’t changed much. They invited me to stay at their house for a few days, hoping some semblance of normalcy would jar my memory. Ellie and I hit it off immediately; to a four-year-old, a teenager is a real novelty. I ended up spending several weeks there, and when nobody came forward, the Astons officially adopted me.” Her pacing had brought her next to Theonus, who stirred and lazily lifted an eyelid. Jen scratched his ear and he fell asleep again.
“Ali, the one other thing I could remember, though very vaguely, was that I had deeply hurt somebody I cared about.” She grimaced slightly and sighed. “You’re right: everybody has secrets. I never even told Ellie. I was too ashamed at the thought. I couldn’t remember anything else...just that I had caused untold heartache to somebody.”
She came back to him hurriedly, taking his face in her hands. “I love you, Ali. I just didn’t know it at the time. I loved you then and I love you even more now. Why have you been holding back, though? You had me, right there in front of you, but you were so hesitant.”
Doyle sighed. “I was being selfish. I was falling for the new you, but I wanted my girl. I kept hoping she’d come back to me. I finally decided it didn’t matter, that I could be happy with whatever version of you there was.”
Jen ran her fingers along his stomach, tracing the muscles. He’d been built, she remembered, but nothing like this.
A brief flash of an image came to her: their skin pressed together, hands running over each other. It vanished just as quickly.
What the hell had that been? A memory of some kind? She wanted to ask him, but suspected he wouldn’t tell her. She let it go for now, figuring it would come back again.
“I’m glad you did,” Jen said. “I’m not sure I would have made the first move otherwise. When I realized I was falling in love with you, I told Kira it seemed strange to me. I also told her I felt as if I’d known her forever.” She smiled slightly, remembering how Kira had paused while opening the curtains. It made sense now, as did Kira’s look of satisfaction at Jen’s disagreeing with Doyle’s point of view. “Kira agreed you were taking too much guilt on yourself.”
Doyle seemed unconvinced. “I still think it was my fault. You said it yourself: I terrified you with the thought of staying with me. I drove you away in a state of panic.”
“Ali, we were six...TEEN...years...old!” She punctuated each syllable with a hard jab to his chest, the last one forceful enough to draw a slight grunt from him. “Get that through your thick head! While that might be a legal adult in Kiamada, that’s Ellie’s age, in case you’ve forgotten! Of course I was scared, but you can’t blame yourself. You did what you thought was right, which is what you always did.” She smiled softly, her eyes glistening. “It’s what you always do. If you ever blame yourself for my mistakes again, I will hit you. And it will hurt, no matter how tough you are. Understood?”
Doyle saluted her. “Yes, ma’am.” Jen leaned over and kissed him; for the first time, no images popped into her head. “This gets better each time,” Doyle said. Jen sat down again.
“So how about you, Ali?” She rested her head on his shoulder. “What have you been doing? Besides looking for me and training with the Tayamu, I mean.”
“Actually, not much else. I spent a year training with the Tayamu and then two rebuilding them and then left. I’ve been looking for you for nine years.”
“Rebuilding? Why?”
“Secrets,” he began, but Jen smacked his shoulder.
“Is this vitally important to keep from me?” she asked.
“I suppose not. You probably don’t remember the royal family, do you?” She shook her head in the negative. “A short time after our future queen vanished, the Tayamu were betrayed by the new ruler of Kiamada, Mathon, who’d named himself Lord Regent. He joined forces with Amielton, our...unsavory...neighbors to the north. The armies of Amielton were supported by the Chiami, mercenaries who had studied the black arts of destruction. We had no idea the Chiami had such numbers; they outnumbered us six to one, and while Tayamu are good, the disadvantage was simply too much to overcome. All thousand of us went in. Only I came out.”
Jen frowned, the word Chiami tickling at her memory. “Wait...when you first saved me from those muggers, you said something about them not being Chiami.” She looked over at him, her eyes wide. “Are the Chiami after me?”
Doyle sighed. “You heard that, then. I was hoping you hadn’t.”
“Ali...answer me. Are the Chiami after me?”
Doyle stood up and walked away from her, but Jen wasn’t having it. “Ali...please tell me. I know you think you need to keep some secrets from me, even if I disagree, but I think I have the right to know who’s been trying to kill me!”
He finally turned around, shrugging. “I don’t know for sure,” he admitted. “The muggers wore the sigil of the Chiami, but clearly weren’t. Nor was the driver of the car that nearly ran you over. The house fire, though, was started with firetaim, which the Chiami are known for using. It doesn’t exist anywhere on your Earth, as far as I know. I noticed the smoke alarms in your house didn’t go off. I suspect the Chiami were able to disarm them with their magic.”
“So they are after me,” Jen said, her heart pounding, but he shook his head.
“If the Chiami are involved, they are merely the paid help. It’s even possible they themselves hired somebody else to do their dirty work for them. The person who is after you hired them, but I don’t know who that is. Yet. I will keep you safe, and I will find out who’s behind everything. I promise you.”
Jen nodded and took his hand. “I trust you,” she said gently, pulling h
is head down and lightly kissing him. “I’ll try not to worry, but it’s not going to be easy.”
“I know,” he replied. “Just remember you have me, and you have Theonus, watching over you.”
Jen rubbed his hand with her fingers, thinking. Doyle raised an eyebrow. “You have more you want to ask, don’t you?”
“A few questions,” she replied. “I’m pretty sure they’re not vital secrets, either.”
“Shoot,” Doyle said. Jen reached up and fingered the nasty scar which ran down his face. She knew hadn’t been there when they were teenagers. “Oh. This thing?” he asked.
“Yes, this thing,” she said, still rubbing her fingertips along his cheek, feeling the roughened skin. It was the first time she’d actually touched his scar. “How did you get it?”
“In the battle I mentioned a few moments ago. One of the Chiami was able to get his blade onto my face. The blade was strengthened with dark magic, so Tayamu healing had its limits. I’m fortunate this was all I ended up with. It could have been so much worse.”
“Does it hurt?”
He shook his head. “Like I told Mrs. Arnold, it just itches from time to time. I can usually ignore it.” He grinned. “Apparently, you can’t, though.”
Jen jerked her hand away, grinning sheepishly. “Sorry. I’m trying to reconcile my restored memories with my recent ones. It’s...weird, that’s all. I’m used to the scar, but now my brain is trying to tell me I’m not used to it because it wasn’t there.” She went back to the stacked-up crates and sat down. “There’s this giant jumble in my mind now. I don’t even know how to begin processing everything. I feel like I’m running on pure instinct right now.” She ran her hand through her hair, pushing it back from her face. “I’m worried I’m about to have a nervous breakdown. All this unbelievable, life-changing knowledge, coming at me fast and furious, and I just shrug it off and accept it? That doesn’t make sense.”
Doyle sat down next to her. “My world—our world—is full of things you only read about in fantasy novels or see in movies or television. To a Kiamadan, what you have been taught to consider unbelievable is pretty much everyday life. Acceptance of things outside the ordinary seems to come naturally to us.”
“Hmm. I guess that makes as much sense as any other explanation,” Jen said quietly, her hand running up and down Doyle’s leg.
“You said a few questions,” Doyle reminded her. “The second?”
“When you came to pick me up for our first date, I saw you looking at the pictures on the fireplace mantel.” Jen locked her eyes onto his. “You recognized Ellie’s parents. That was clear. You looked as if you’d seen a ghost, in fact. You knew them, didn’t you?”
To her surprise, he shook his head. “Better to say I knew of them.”
She waited, but he didn’t volunteer anything else. “And?” she prompted.
Doyle raised an eyebrow. “And what?”
She rolled her eyes. “Who were they to you?”
Doyle lowered his face into his hands, elbows on knees, forehead resting on his palms, and took a deep breath before looking back up at Jen. “I can’t tell you that,” he said regretfully.
While she’d half-expected this, Jen felt a tiny stab of frustration in her chest. “Where did you know them from? Can you at least tell me that?” She was aware of the snap to her tone, and reminded herself to stay calm.
He considered this, and then nodded. “Seems fair. I did mention it to Elowyn earlier tonight, after all. Well, sort of. I held some things back.”
A sudden rush of anger shot through Jen’s veins, filling her with frustration she’d rarely felt before. “You told Ellie about this before telling me?” She was dimly aware of how cold her voice sounded. “Are you serious?”
“It came up in conversation a little while ago, when I was helping her process her feelings about the house fire. It seemed the right thing to do at the time.”
Jen crossed her arms, no longer feeling warm and fuzzy. He’d said secrets were a big part of his life, and she was starting to understand what he meant. “Tell me.”
He looked down as he spoke. “Elowyn’s parents were from Kiamada. She’s no more from this Earth than you are.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Ellie padded into the shower. She had taken one earlier, but she’d woken up soaked in sweat when she heard Jen yelling a little while ago. Still not sure how I did that. Do all Tayamu have super-hearing? And why is mine so sporadic? It doesn’t always work.
She liked this shower; she didn’t know if Doyle had installed it or if it had already been there, but either way, it was huge. She could have stuffed Jen, Maddie, and the twins into it with her and they would have still had room to spare. There were four huge sprayers in it, so you felt like a waterfall was hitting you
There was a small window set into the wall, but since this bathroom was on the second floor, there was no danger of somebody getting in through the opening, or even of looking in to steal a peek, as the window was well over her head. Theonus could probably look in with ease, but as he was a dog, she wasn’t too concerned with him seeing her. Ellie used the long-handled squeegee to push the window open a crack, letting in the cooler night air.
Ellie soaped up, losing herself in thought. Once she’d sat with Doyle and cried her eyes out, she realized she’d badly overreacted. Jen, after all, had only heard about everything a few hours earlier, and they hadn’t exactly had a chance to sit down and discuss it.
And, to be fair, she hadn’t told Jen what she’d learned about herself: she, too, was Kiamadan. And Tayamu to boot!
She didn’t even know how to bring that up in conversation! If she was lucky, Doyle would do it for her.
Of course, Jen might decide to murder him on the spot for keeping that secret from her.
As she rinsed the soap off her body, Ellie wondered again why she, and her sister too, for that matter, were reacting so calmly to the revelations somebody had tried to kill them—well, kill Jen, at least. Ellie thought she should be more upset, but after the initial shock, it had become more of a mystery than anything.
“What the hell is wrong with me?” she muttered aloud, raising her hands over her head to soak her hair, lifting it in layers, making sure it was wet. “I should be a quivering bowl of fearful jelly, not wondering at possible motives.”
She washed her hair, enjoying the aroma of the shampoo. Kira had bought the toiletries, she assumed, having a hard time imagining Doyle using lavender-scented shampoo and body wash.
Then again, she thought, he doesn’t seem the type of guy to really give a hot damn about stuff like that.
Rinsing her hair, she turned around, letting the water run all over her body. The hot water felt really good.
“Maybe my system is just overloaded with shock,” Ellie said to the mirror which hung on the shower wall, which must have been one of those no-fog mirrors, because she could clearly see herself. She ticked off points on her fingers.
“Let’s see...after breaking human boundaries while running a ridiculously impossible race, then meeting a talking dog who can look over the top of a bus, and finding out my coach is some kind of magical ninja from another dimension, whose long-lost girlfriend is my stepsister and both she and I happen to be from that dimension...oh, and I’m apparently a magical ninja too...after all that stuff, learning somebody wants to kill us is kind of par for the course, isn’t it?”
Yes, that must be it. After all the surprises of the past few days, her system couldn’t take anymore and so just accepted things, no matter how ridiculous they sounded. That made sense.
She spent a few more minutes luxuriating in the soothing heat. As she finally reached to turn off the water, another cramp seized her midsection. The last three attacks had been sudden and painful. This cramp was different.
This one was debilitating.
Ellie screamed and collapsed onto the shower floor, kneeling and holding her midsection. As she knelt there, the spasms started spreading up and
down her entire body. Her torso bent down against her will, leaving the top of her head against the floor. Water started running down her neck and over her face. The cramp locked up her abdominal muscles, and pretty much all the others, for that matter.
Her upper back was tightening, making it difficult to breathe. Even her legs were spasming; she could feel the thighs and calves locking. Piercing, ripping pain stabbed all throughout her body, like her skin was trying to leap off and her bones were trying to break. Ellie tried to call for help, but found her voice wouldn’t work.
Terror shot through her mind. The hot water flowed, pouring all over her body, but it didn’t help at all. The pain showed no sign of relenting, and she couldn’t force any part of her body to respond. Her skin and bones felt like they were literally tearing apart.
She heard a knocking on the door, and then Kira’s voice. “Elowyn? Are you all right? I heard a scream.” Ellie badly wanted to answer, but she couldn’t. She was barely able to stay conscious. The pain was like nothing she’d ever endured. “Elowyn! I am coming in, dove!”
The bathroom door opened, and Ellie heard a gasp. She couldn’t tell whether it was shock or horror. Perhaps both. It didn’t matter right now, though. Whatever this was, it was probably going to kill her if it went much longer. She couldn’t take much more.
The water turned off a second later, and she felt something warm and soft drape over her. Her nerves were on fire, and the fabric irritated her skin.
Kira’s voice echoed off the shower tiles, making Ellie’s ears ring. “Theonus! Elowyn needs my brother right now!” She felt Kira’s knees press against her side, and her hands lightly touched Ellie’s back.
Seconds later, she heard a retching sound, and then her sister’s voice. “What the hell just happened?” Another retching, followed by, “Oh, god. Ellie!” Fear laced Jen’s voice, making Ellie panic even more.
“Move, Kira!” The voice was authoritative, but calm.
Doyle!
