“Don’t make me knock you out.”
Without warning the window beside Amara’s face exploded in a hail of glass. The impact of the truck against their car threw Hannah into the door, yanking her handcuffed arms so brutally she felt the bone being pulled from the socket. Her vision had gone fuzzy from the pain, but she saw hands reach through Amara’s empty window frame. Caught off guard, Amara didn’t react quickly enough to stop them, and they locked around her neck and squeezed. Her eyes bulged like a cartoon frog until there was an audible snap. Then she was gone.
Hannah’s door opened and the bar her handcuffs were looped through was ripped from the roof. The hurt was just so bad, and things were growing hazier, but she tried to stay awake. It got harder when she starting bouncing so painfully. Letting her head fall, she watched the road roll by below her, a yellow line in the middle of the black. Then everything was black. It was black and it was night and she was flying. Flying, flying, through broken glass, and the wind was stinging, nipping at her skin, and she was being pushed through the sky, the stars passing by like blurs, one after the next.
“Come on, love. Hannah, come on.” Something gently patted her cheek, but it felt like fire and her eyes teared. When the liquid rolled down her cheek, that stung as well, and then the steady stream of tears was a trail of acid running down her face.
The stars kept flying by, but they changed and found their shape and she gradually realized they weren’t stars but street lights. They flew by where her head was leaning against an open car window, the speed stretching them into elongated blobs.
“Ow.” She closed her eyes against the passing lights that were making the inside of her skull ache.
A choked laugh rang out.
“Ow? I would say ow does not begin to cover it.” The stinging hand patted her face again. “Hold on, Hannah. Just hold on a little bit longer. Just stay with me until we can stop.”
She rolled her head in his direction, blinking her eyes to clear them enough to see.
“You’re naked.”
Waking up to unbearable pain seemed to have become a regular thing. She’d managed to live her entire life up until recently without it and would be happy to go back to a normal, pain-free existence as soon as possible. Unfortunately, it wasn’t going to be today.
But somehow she was alive, and if waking up feeling like this was the price, so be it. Hannah took a deep breath and as she carefully moved her limbs, she tried to accept every single twinge, each burn and hurt and embrace the pain. Embracing the pain did exactly jack toward easing it, and only some body parts responded, her right shoulder and left ankle useless. She remembered the crunch and the agony when Amara brought her boot down.
“Here, try to drink this.”
A hand behind her head gingerly lifted her forward, and a cool glass was placed against her lips. She choked a little on the water, sputtering it back up and feeling it run down her neck. Able to squint one eye open, she could see a cloudy Asher in front of her. Even though she knew his sister couldn’t permanently damage him, she was relieved to see him sitting there, whole, next to her on the bed. She laughed a little, and it hurt from head to toe.
“What is it?” His voice sounded concerned.
“Nothing.” She was remembering the last time she’d seen him. She was pretty sure she remembered sitting beside Asher in a car that had been traveling down the road during the night at breakneck speed. And that he had been naked. It might have been a hallucination. Then again, probably not if her recent life was any indication. “Where are we?”
“Somewhere safe. What hurts?” he asked.
She squeezed her eyes shut tightly and when she opened them again, her vision was clearer, though the eye that had been slammed against the window of the car was definitely not fully cooperating. Damn it, she hadn’t even been able to get rid of the last black eye.
“Everywhere.” She shifted to try to sit up a little, and he put an arm behind her to lean her forward, propping her up with fat, soft pillows.
She was dressed in a too-long white t-shirt—his, guessing from the size. Hannah was past being embarrassed at the fact that he must have had to undress her. It wasn’t even the first time. Below the hem, her legs were a boiled-looking lobster red except for a bizarre, charred pattern down the sides. The damn trashy jeans Gabe had picked out. She hoped he woke up in a briar patch and two hundred miles away from a woman.
There were bandages around her wrists and one arm was strapped to her side with gauze. Her left ankle was fat as a sausage, colored in shades of green and purple. Looking at it made her stomach turn, and she choked back the urge to vomit. She looked away from it and at him instead. Asher looked nearly as tortured as her ankle bones.
“I am so sorry, Hannah. I was able to put your dislocated shoulder back into place while you were unconscious, but I think your ankle may be broken. With everything that happened, the gunshot on your arm has opened back up as well, and the lump on your head is massive. And the burns . . .” He trailed off and looked at her, shaking his head. “Yet again you need medical help, but if I call the wrong person, it would lead them right back to us. She is finding us so fast, and if we have to run again, I am not sure . . .”
“No doctor,” she rasped, trying to shake her head and failing. “If we have to run, I won’t make it.” Hell, if she had to use the bathroom she wouldn’t make it. Thankfully she was too dry even for tears. “More water.”
“Here.” He tilted her up again. “Open your mouth.” She felt him push some chalky tablets past her lips. “They will not help that much, but it is the strongest thing I was able to find.”
She swallowed them gratefully. Then she remembered something.
“Amara, she said . . .” Hannah’s throat felt so hot and scratchy, she paused to swallow painfully, and tried to sit up.
“Don’t speak. You should rest,” he said, reaching forward to gently push her back against the pillows.
“No, wait,” Hannah said. “Amara said she was going to take me to see ‘dear old daddy.’”
Asher’s hand paused in midair.
“Your father?” he asked. “What do you know about him?”
“Nothing.” Hannah shrugged, wincing with the effort. The very little her uncle had known was the only information she had.
“I did not discover anything either,” Asher said. “I tried to look into your background after the fire, but there was nothing. Your birth record is not real.”
“What do you mean it isn’t real?” Hannah suddenly felt light and floaty.
“I mean your name is on it, but the other names on it, the location, all of it stops there. All of it is fabricated. None of the information goes deeper than the ink on the paper.”
She closed her eyes, clearing her foggy head and enjoying the lessening of the pain. “What do you think Amara meant?”
Asher took up her hand gently, and for a moment she watched him examine it, looking at every line, the bruises, the thin fingers with their cracked burned surface. He looked at everything but her face.
“I had hoped I was wrong, but if that is what my sister said, then it may be as I feared. I may know who he is. Do you remember what we were talking about, before the explosion?”
Hannah nodded.
“Michael is arguably the most well-known amongst our kind. He is an anomaly amongst the anomalous.” He stopped abruptly. “Hold on, I will be right back.”
The side of the bed popped up without his weight and she fought to stay awake, drowsing, the pain medication taking effect with merciful speed. She was enjoying feeling the burning pain float away when freezing cold on her leg jerked her back awake.
“For the swelling.” Asher settled a bag of ice wrapped in a towel over the distended skin on her ankle. “So, Michael.” Asher paused, gathering his thoughts. “He is different from the rest of us, than those like me. You recall us speaking about Leandra?” Hannah nodded. Cult leader type, somewhere in South America. “Leandra and Michael shar
e similar delusions of grandeur. Michael believes that because he is the only one of us that can reproduce, he is destined to create a world populated by his descendants.”
Hannah forced her eyes open. “Wait, the rest of you can’t . . .”
He shook his head, removing the ice pack from her ankle, poking at it gently, then replacing it.
“None of us. Not even in our first lives. When Michael discovered his death was not permanent, he proceeded to set himself up as the god he believes he is. Word of him eventually spread; imagine Leandra’s surprise when she heard of him and learned he had any number of children running around. She took this as a sign something was changing, that his offspring had to be more than human, and creatures like the two of them were in their ascendency.”
Asher looked at Hannah, his eyes serious. “If Leandra knew what he would come to be, I do not believe she would have encouraged him in that line of thinking, that his children would be…” He shook his head sadly. “Hannah, Michael slew every one of his children to see if they would come back. Every single child he murdered. Not a single one came back. They all proved to be perfectly human.”
“He killed all his children. Oh, Asher that’s—”
“It wasn’t enough,” he said, cutting her off, closing his eyes wearily. “It wasn’t enough that he killed his own children to see if they would come back. When they didn’t, Michael kept trying, and on an even more horrific scale. He amassed a whole group of women, convinced them he was a god by arranging for his death, disappearing and reappearing again to prove his divinity. He gathered these women, promising them children with an unlimited span of years, who would be gods among men.”
His voice was low and quiet, and Hannah fought to stay awake, not wanting to miss the rest.
“Michael waited until every woman there had a baby at her breast or clutching at her skirt, all of them awed by the prospect of their god-children. They were overjoyed to hold children who would never see death, who would grow to perfection and remain that way, as Michael did. They nursed sons who would grow into great soldiers, who when felled by the sword would ever rise up again. Their daughters would never perish in childbirth. They had born the future kings and queens of this world. Had they all not seen their husband die only to have him return to them, perfected, a living god?”
Asher said, voice mournful, “Again Michael was not patient enough to wait even until his children grew to adulthood. When they were old enough to stand without their mother’s hand to steady them, in a great ceremony he bade the women cut their children’s throats, offer up their blood, so they could watch their bodies melt away and be reborn to live again and again, eternally.
“None did. Not one. In a fit of rage, Michael killed the women while they wept, stunned over the bodies of the children they had slain with their own hand. He dispatched them one after another, berating them for being unfit to carry his seed, or whores, all of them, for would not his children be gone, reborn if he was their true father? When every mother and child was dead, he stepped over the bodies and disappeared to start again.”
Asher did not look up at Hannah but continued to sit perfectly still, the only sound the shifting of melting ice, until he continued.
“It is a story he has repeated throughout history, across the world. The bodies of a great many women and children, all killed, no explanations. Sometimes a string of children, spread across a country, missing, seemingly unrelated unless, if you look more closely, you find the father always seems to be a ghost.”
Hannah was aghast, horrified, and also confused.
“But why keep doing it, if they don’t come back?”
Asher shook his head. “Some like Leandra and Michael are always focused on a future time, when whatever ineffable plan that made them what they are comes to fruition. Why would they be so clearly set above the average human if not for some great reason? Maybe Michael thinks it just was not the right time, or maybe, like Leandra, he believes once he reaches the threshold, has died enough times and is utterly perfected, it will work. Maybe, like my sister, his soul is irrevocably damaged and he enjoys causing pain and death. Probably only he knows.”
Hannah reached for the glass. Asher picked it up before she could and held it to her lips. She didn’t bristle at the nursing, too beat up to be bothered by her own weakness.
“And you think he’s my father?” She shuddered at the thought. Why would he think that? In Hannah’s mind her biological father had always been a foggy picture of a possibly violent figure, but pathetically human, easily substandard compared to the man who had raised her. Not frightening to her.
“How badly does it hurt? I want to take a look at your arm. I will need to get something stronger for the pain and a real antibiotic.” Asher rose to cross to the other side of the bed, ignoring the question.
“Ash, why?”
He sat down on the other side, making her groan at the movement, and busied himself pulling up the sleeve of the t-shirt from where it hung down to her elbow, hitching it over the wad of bandages.
“I am not sure, not entirely. But Amara would not have had any thought you would manage to escape her, so for her to say anything as a method of diversion would have been pointless. And it is not her way,” he said. “However badly she hates me, the truth is, we know each other very well. Violence is her method, not dissimulation. She has never had the patience for the long game, has never needed it, and is too assured of her own success to spend time in subterfuge. Whoever your father may be, he has something that has made my sister willing to retrieve you for him. Amara would not do anything as a favor, so whatever she is getting in return is not going to be something of small value, of an importance confined to a single human lifetime. Since Michael is the only being like us who could even have offspring, it seems at least feasible.”
Hannah was distracted by the pull of gauze against her arm. So much for not sticking. Could modern medicine not come up with something that didn’t cement itself to dried blood? The arm was once again a mess. The fragile new skin and scab that had begun to form had been shredded, and around the gunshot was a new ring of dark purple and angry red. She remembered the feeling of Amara’s fingers digging into it and the wound twinged, as if it too recalled the brutal treatment.
“All of it is irrelevant, really,” he said. “That you are being hunted is the pressing matter. Why would be informative, but it would not change anything. No one will bother to wait to explain their motivations before they strike.” He rolled her sleeve neatly to her shoulder. “Leave it open for a while. Until I have something to put on it.”
She shivered.
“Are you cold?”
She shook her head. “Must be the ice pack.”
Reaching over, he started to pull up the sheet over her, but looking at the line of blistering burns running down each side of her red legs, he sighed and crossed the room, opening a pair of French doors to let a gloriously warm breeze roll into the room.
“Where are we?” Hannah reveled in the warmth, even though it felt like fire on her legs.
“Savannah.”
26
Hannah dragged herself down the uneven dirt path, struggling to stay on her feet with an ankle that buckled every time she took a step. Both sides of the path were lined with people standing shoulder to shoulder, rigidly upright with their backs turned to her.
“Help me. Help me please!” she cried out, but it was like they couldn’t hear her. No matter how loud she yelled, not a single head turned. Hobbling closer she reached out and grabbed a man by the arm. He spun around.
“Oh, thank god. Sheriff Morgan, thank god you’re alive.” Relieved beyond belief she tried to throw her arms around him, but he shoved her away, the face that had always been so stolid contorted with rage, his uniform shredded with bullet holes and dyed black with blood.
Backing away from him, Hannah collided with another of the still figures. They wheeled around, another familiar face, a woman wearing a coffee shop apron, thou
gh the logo on the chest had been replaced with two bloody holes. She threw Hannah to the ground and kicked her savagely in the ribs, then spat at her, a glob of blood landing on Hannah’s cheek.
Hannah tried to drag herself away, crawling through the gauntlet of figures, recognizing them as they turned one by one. There were firemen and deputies, EMTs, and police officers, Sheila and sweet old Betty from the Shur Shop, her uncle and Gabe and Asher. They were burned and shot and torn to pieces. And they were all angry—all angry at her. She tried but she couldn’t get away from them, couldn’t run or even stand. Hannah curled up and covered her head with her arms, giving up and trying to shut them all out. They wouldn’t stop. They hissed and spat and kicked.
“Hannah. Answer me, Hannah. Open your eyes.”
She was being shaken, roughly enough to make her head flop back and forth. Her eyes opened, and to her immense relief the hand closed around her arm was Asher’s, the real one, not the angry, hazy one from a moment ago.
He loosened his grip slightly. “What it is? Are you okay?”
She nodded. Her head felt like her brain was sloshing around inside her skull. “It was just a dream. A horrible dream.” She shuddered at the relief of reality.
Letting go of her arm, Asher stood his hair on end with his fingers, and exhaled with a whoosh. “I thought you were having a seizure.”
“Sorry I woke you up. I don’t know where that came from.” That wasn’t quite true. She’d been having all sorts of crazy dreams since she’d gotten here. The things that weighed heavy on her mind in the daylight tended to crawl into her head while she slept. It was a lot like after she’d hit him, but with an expanded cast of characters.
“You look like you have seen a ghost. I will be right back.”
He disappeared through the door. Hannah sank back into the mountain of pillows and waited for her heart to slowly return to its normal rhythm.
“Here, drink this.” Asher appeared at her elbow with a cup. She took it and drank it off in one motion, then sputtered and choked, eyes watering.
Echoes (Book 1): Echoes Page 21
