Bound by Secrets

by Angela M Hudson

“How do you know anything about my powers before?” I asked.

  She looked at Eric. “Um…”

  “I told her,” he said. “Since I knew you.”

  “Oh.” I nodded. “So what were my powers?”

  “Aside from the ability to bring dead things back to life, you were brilliant with electricity. You could heat your own bath, shock vampires, even touch lightning. We call your kind ‘The Rage’.”

  “Why?”

  “Because until you learn to control it, and even sometimes after, if your mood changes, the weather can too, including sudden storms raging in the sky.”

  I nodded. That made sense: The Rage. “That’s never happened to me before.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. I…” I looked at my powerless hands. “Maybe it died when I had my accident.”

  “That’s not possible,” Eric said. “It’s just dormant, maybe paralyzed or in shock.”

  I laughed. “My magic is in shock?”

  “Possibly,” Elora said. “Your body isn’t fully healed, is it—your brain, I mean?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well…”

  “I spoke to Falcon the other day,” Eric cut in. “He thinks your magic won’t return for some time. Not completely. You might get bursts of it here and there, but even for that, you need to exercise it.”

  “Yes, because when you originally become immortal, it takes time for your powers to show up,” Elora said. “And in that time, those fluctuations, especially in a Rage, can be deadly.”

  “How so?”

  “If you get mad,” Eric said, and then laughed. “Actually, you got mad once and sent Da… sent your… sent someone flying across the forest. Started his heart for a second—”

  “A vampire,” Elora added.

  “I started a vampire’s heart?”

  “You started plenty, but in this case, it was just for a second. But imagine if you did that to a human, say… David?” Elora suggested.

  “I could kill him.” Just the thought of that made me scared to go near him.

  “Yes.” She shuffled closer and took my hands, placing them down in the sand beside me. “So let’s get started.”

  Eric took a very deliberate step back and vanished. When I checked over my shoulder, he was standing on the dune pretty far away.

  “Hey, Lors,” I said.

  “Yeah.”

  “After this, can you teach me how to run like that?”

  She laughed. “Sure. But for now, I want you to pay attention to what you feel—”

  “I feel nothing.” I curled my fingers in the sand, reconsidering that. “Well, nothing but wet and cold and sandy.”

  “Right.” She laughed again. “But you’ll feel warm in a minute—maybe tingly.”

  I nodded, waiting patiently as she dug her fingertips into the sand. She didn’t do anything or say anything, but my heart suddenly skipped a beat and I felt excited.

  Elora’s very David-like green eyes fixed on mine, and a little smile moved her mouth that reminded me of someone; reminded me of pre-school—of paint and crayons—but I didn’t remember going to school at all, let alone when I was a small child.

  “What do you feel now?” she asked.

  I readjusted my butt in the sand with a little jostle right then left, and tried to concentrate, but my fingers hurt. They were cold and numb on the tips, and the sharp ache from that was making me want to stop. “I don’t feel anything,” I said.

  Elora glanced over her shoulder at the ocean, smiling as she looked back. “Nothing?”

  “No.”

  “Close your eyes,” she said.

  “I’m…” I huffed. All I felt now was angry. My body was sick of pain, and if this Cerulean Magic involved pain of any kind, I wanted no part of it. “It hurts. I want to stop.”

  “No. Now just shut up and do as you’re told,” she said playfully.

  I shut my eyes and bit my teeth together, wishing I’d taken Cal up on his offer to see a movie instead. Falcon was right not to show me this. I wanted a more human life right now. I didn’t care about any of this. I liked blood and the idea of living forever, but the rest of this world could evaporate into oblivion and I wouldn’t even bat an eyelid.

  I opened my mouth to protest again but she shushed me before one word even came out, making my blood boil. A hard breeze whipped in off the ocean then and pushed my hair back, my eyelids relaxing as a cloud passed the sun, making the mercury drop at least five degrees.

  “Ara, look!”

  I opened my eyes to Elora’s smile, her face tilted to a giant grey cloud above us, white and puffy on the rims but dark and menacing toward the middle.

  “Where did that come from?” I shouted over the wind, only realizing as I did that I could hear my own voice perfectly without shouting.

  “I grew up around this same strange weather,” she called back, raising her own voice a bit, the wind thrashing her hair over her face. “You’re a moody little thing, aren’t ya?”

  “Moody?” I drew my hands out of the cold sand and rubbed them together.

  “Yeah. You clearly got pissed off.” She laughed, standing up.

  As the cloud burst open and spilled water all along the beach and over the sea like a gardener pouring from a watering can, I jumped up too. “I did this?”

  Eric appeared with a big smile on his face and hugged me like we’d known each other for decades. “You’ve still got it!”

  Elora pushed her hair off her face, but it was so heavy with rainwater that it just tangled around her fingers. “Your power is still just as strong, Mo—er, um… Ara.”

  “You just need to tap into it—let your body recognize it again,” Eric said. “Use it more and you’ll be able to control this.”

  “What about shooting electricity?” I asked, wiping the rain from my lashes. “I don’t want to accidentally hurt anyone.”

  “Here.” Elora took my wet hand and placed hers in mine. “Your mind just needs to remember what it feels like.”

  “And how will it do that?” I asked, getting worried.

  “Easy. I’m going to zap you,” she said, and the lights went out.

  * * *

  The sound of horses racing across the ground outside brought my mind to the surface, enough that I could feel the glow of my pink walls closing me in safely and the softness of my quilt up to my chin. But as the horses halted suddenly and a shotgun rang out over what sounded like empty land for miles around, my eyes shot open. I took in my bedroom—the heavy rain pattering on the roof and falling in a sheet over the window outside—and as my mind realized it was a storm, not horses and guns, it also tried to figure out what day it was and what time I went to bed last night. I couldn’t even remember getting in my pajamas, but I was wearing them, so I must have at some point.

  “Oh my God.” Elora scrambled up from where she sat by my bed and peered right into my face. “I’m so sorry, Ara.”

  “What for?” I said groggily, lifting my arm to see my watch, but it was gone.

  “I thought you could handle it. You’re Cerulean; it shouldn’t have done that to you.”

  “Handle what?”

  She scooted back and stood up as Brett moved in, his arms folded. He did not look at all impressed. But he smiled when he looked at me, then sat down on the bed, making it dip with his weight. “How do you feel, kitten?”

  “My head hurts.”

  “It will for a while.” He glanced over his shoulder at Elora, who winced apologetically. “Elora thought it would be a good idea to give you a little shock.”

  “You passed out—”

  “Died, Elora!” Brett said angrily. “You damn-well killed her!”

  “Died!” I sat upright, regretting it instantly.

  “Your heart stopped for a few seconds,” Eric said.

  “I didn’t know she was that fragile—”

  “You should have asked me before you tried to teach her things she isn’t ready for,” Brett yelle
d. “You’re as bad as your mother was at your age, Elora, she never listened either.”

  “Don’t speak about her like she’s dead Falcon. She’s right—”

  “Do not finish that sentence, Elora Knight!” he demanded. “Do you want to ruin everything we—”

  “Maybe I do—”

  “Why?”

  “Because maybe I don’t trust your judgement anymore, Falcon!”

  “When have I given you any reason not to trust me? I have done nothing but care for her—”

  “And hold her back! And why?” Elora put her hands on her hips. “Is there a reason you fight so hard to keep her here as your little girl—”

  “Maybe your judgement is off, man,” Eric said. “Considering you’re under her c—”

  “I have never kept her from growing up.” He sounded really hurt, and I had absolutely no idea what any of them were on about. “You haven’t been here. You haven’t seen what I’ve seen, watched her suffer—”

  My sore, tired brain tuned out then as they continued—Eric coming to Elora’s defense; Brett standing up to get his point across—and I just listened to the storm. It was like I could feel it. I wasn’t sure what that meant, to feel a storm, but it seemed as if my body knew something my brain hadn’t yet caught on to. As if there was a story to be told in all that grumbling and raining and cracking. My fingers tingled slightly, and my skin felt kind of prickly, like the feeling I got around a vampire. I wondered if this was the energy Elora wanted me to feel.

  As the argument outside my head got louder, rising over the storm, I looked at my window. Even though it was closed, a strange kind of something trickled in through the glass, like heat from the sun but in more of a singular stream. It moved toward me, zeroing in on me—a predetermined destination—making my toes curl and my hair stand on end. But I didn’t feel afraid. My heart raced, and my skin felt warm and alive all over, my insides pulsing like they did when David used his mouth in the closet, but the only emotion I felt was vague familiarity.

  Until my hands flamed up and snaking flickers of static curled over my fingertips. It didn’t hurt at all, well, not in my hands, but my headache got more intense and the yelling really wasn’t helping.

  “Hey, guys?” I said softly.

  They kept on arguing, the noise, the thunder, the energy raging all around me and inside me until I felt like stripping naked and running out into the storm, immersing myself in its fury.

  “Guys!” I yelled, sitting up against the headboard.

  They all stopped shouting, and the energy in the room changed instantly, I could feel it. A second ago it was coarse and thick, and as they saw my hands the air felt thinner and cooler. I’d never felt that before—not in this life—but I recognized it like an old friend.

  “I can feel it. Energies!”

  Brett sat down beside me again and very carefully took hold of my wrists. “Can you stop it?”

  “I don’t know.” My voice sounded shaky.

  “Think of something calming,” Elora said, kneeling beside the bed.

  Calming… calming… I couldn’t think of anything. I’d never really needed to be calm before. What made me calm?

  “Here,” Eric said, drawing something from a packing box labeled ‘Loslilian’ beside him. I’d never looked in there, so I had no idea what the silver box in his hand was for until a high and haunting tune rang through my room.

  I felt an instant connection to it. My ears and heart and even my soul listened to it as though it could place the time and maybe even the person this feeling belonged to. My eyes subconsciously moved to the foot of my bed and the blue light in my hands flaked away, but I didn’t care. I sat taller, angling my ear into the tune.

  “I’ve lost something,” I said quietly.

  “What do you mean?” Brett let my hands go.

  “That tune.” I pinched the silvery band on my right hand—the melted one I found on my nightstand just after I first woke to this life—wishing I could break past the blockage in my head. They all said my memories were gone for good, but it felt like they were still there—in my bones maybe. Lying dormant, like my magic.

  “Shut it off,” Brett demanded, and the music died, taking my heart back down to earth with it.

  “Why did you do that?” Elora asked.

  “She’s not ready,” Brett said, snatching the box off Eric.

  “You don’t get to decide that, Falcon.” She followed him out of the room.

  “Then who does?”

  “Maybe all of us—”

  “You know what then?” he said gruffly. “Go ahead. Do what you want with her, go behind my back again and tell her things she shouldn’t know yet, see what happens.”

  “Unc… Falcon.” Elora sounded hurt. It made me wonder what their connection really was, because it had to be more than just acquaintances from the same circle. “Why are you so angry with me?”

  “You accused me of holding her back.” His voice quavered. “You don’t understand what we’ve been through, what I’ve witnessed her suffer all this time. I do nothing in my life that isn’t to better hers, and when I make a decision for her, it’s based on what I know is right, not my opinion.”

  I heard Elora sigh, and I didn’t see it, but I was sure she hugged him.

  “Don’t listen to that,” Eric said, picking up my ankles and moving them as he sat on the bed.

  “She knows him, doesn’t she?” I asked, switching my attention to Eric. “Like, as more than an acquaintance?”

  “She does. Did,” he corrected. “It’s a long story.”

  “Why would she pretend she doesn’t know him?”

  “It was for your sake.”

  “How so?”

  “They’ve created this illusion for you—a normal human life.” His brown eyes took in every angle of my face before he continued with a sigh, “The specialists that were caring for you in the beginning didn’t think you could handle the truth about your old life.”

  “Including the truth that Elora knows Brett?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it opens the door to another very long story that’s intricately woven with yours, and—”

  “I want to know.”

  “How about we give you some blood first?” he said, rolling up his sleeve. “You’re pale.”

  “No. Not until you tell me what their relationship is.”

  “If I do, it’ll mean telling you about your old life,” he warned. “Are you ready for that?”

  “Not yet, Eric,” Elora said, her tone flat, defeated.

  “Did you get the music box off him?” I asked.

  “No.” She looked at Eric. “We should go.”

  “No.” I pushed my covers back. “Tell me what the deal is between you and Brett.”

  “Drink some blood and then she’ll tell you, won’t you, Lors?” Eric said.

  Elora shook her head, walking over with her shoulders slightly rounded. She was such a confident girl. To see her suddenly look deflated made me sorry for pushing her. As she sat down beside me, her face held an expression that worried me.

  “I can’t say much, Ara. Fal… Brett’s right. You’re not ready.”

  “But you did know Brett, and me, in my past life?”

  She nodded sadly. “The immortal world is actually a pretty small place,” she said. “After a while, everyone knows everyone and almost everyone has… been with everyone.”

  “What?” I couldn’t help but to smile. “You’ve dated Brett?”

  I heard him outside my door then, his heart hammering in his chest, the energy radiating off him so tight and heavy I was certain Elora had bad news to deliver.

  “We didn’t date. But we did have sex,” she said sadly. “We were drugged, against our knowledge, by a witch…”

  “She put a very toxic potion in a bottle of whiskey and gave it to Elora to share with him,” Eric finished for her.

  “Oh my God!” My hand shot out and grabbed hers
. “Did you even have any feelings for him?”

  She seized up, her head moving to say no, as a fat tear pushed out past her closed lashes.

  Eric put his arm around her. “She loved him like family.”

  “Family?” I looked at Elora. “Like—”

  “A father,” Elora cut in.

  She loved him like I do, and as I really took in her face, searching for similarities between her and Brett, I noticed more between her and I—making me wonder if maybe we were related; if she pretended to be a friend so she could get close to me until I was ready to accept my old life. I knew that Brett was appointed as my guardian but that he had originally volunteered because he was a close friend beforehand. That means I had to have known Elora. Or maybe not. Maybe the incident with the potion happened a long time ago and they stopped being friends.

  “I’d known him all my life,” she explained, “so to have been forced to do that with him… it broke my heart and…”

  “And?” I said, my eyes flicking to the hallway as Brett passed, closing his bedroom door a second later.

  “He tried to take his own life,” Elora said.

  My entire heart expanded, breaking for both of them, jumping then as the thunder rumbled louder. I could feel my limbs heating, but I wasn’t sure what made me so angry. I guess Brett was like a father to me in a lot of ways, and Elora was like… I don’t know. I hadn’t known her very long, but she was like… a sister, maybe. We just connected so well that our friendship had evolved so quickly. I was comfortable with her and I felt like protecting her.

  “Do you know who drugged you?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Did you ever get revenge? Justice?”

  Elora laughed, wiping her face dry. Then she just leaned past Eric and hugged me, and as I hugged her back, all I felt was a strange sense of relief.

  “We got the witch that did it,” she said into my shoulder, making it wet with her tears. “But Falcon has never really been the same with me since, and it breaks my heart.”

  “I’m sorry.” I squeezed her tighter. “Maybe I can talk to him.”

  “I don’t think it’ll help.”

  “Then maybe I can zap some sense into him,” I offered, and she laughed, pulling back from the hug. But she stayed close, taking in my face.