Chosen Ones (The Lost Souls, #1)

by Tiffany Truitt

“What is it?”

  The way his eyes looked into mine caused my stomach to tighten and my breathing to quicken. God, this was going to hurt. But it didn’t have to happen now. No, not now.

  “I’ve just been worried about you,” I replied. Not a total lie.

  He stroked my face. “Oh, Tess, no need. I’m just fine. I have a slight headache, that’s all.”

  “I was so scared. It all happened so fast,” I whispered as the horrifying images replayed before my eyes.

  He chuckled. “Yeah, that was some kiss.”

  His attempt at humor didn’t distract me. “What happened?”

  James sighed. “Not sure, really. I think that when we kissed I just got overwhelmed.”

  “You had a vision?”

  He nodded, his face smooth, but his jaw was clearly clenched.

  “You’ve have had visions before, though. Why did you react like that?”

  James offered a small shrug, clearly trying to pass off the event like nothing of importance. “I have never had one while I was conscious before. I guess my body wasn’t completely ready for it.”

  I knew I was most afraid of the answer to the next question, but I had to ask. “What did you see?”

  James shook his head, instantly looking anywhere in the room but at my face.

  “You saw something about me?”

  “Isn’t it always about you?” he replied bitterly.

  “Tell me.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Yes, you can. Haven’t we learned about keeping secrets? I don’t do well with that!”

  “Please, just drop it.”

  “I most certainly will not,” I replied angrily. I could feel my face flushing. I would no longer allow myself to be kept in the dark about important things in my life.

  Now he was angry, too. “I can’t tell you, Tess! Don’t you think I would if I could? Do you think I like living alone with these things? I can’t tell anyone anymore. If I tell you what I saw, I risk something changing. If something changes, even the smallest thing, I might not be in the right place to stop it. So I’m left alone with these images attacking my mind. It’s maddening. And knowing all the time that I need to keep seeing them, wishing my mind would show me more, so I could prevent it.”

  I could barely keep up, he was talking so fast.

  “I told Kendall and Robert about your deportation, about how the council wasn’t going to wait. And things changed. Suddenly, parts of my vision went black; I couldn’t see anymore. We almost didn’t make it before those snatchers…before they had their fun,” he hissed.

  His hands were on my face now, his eyes not wavering from mine. “So I have to live with this on my own, Tess. It’s the only way I can assure I will be in the right place at the right time to stop it.”

  His fingers moved down my neck so they rested over my heart. I could feel the goose bumps across the trail his hand made. “I can’t lose you.”

  I closed my eyes, my head dizzy from the combination of his touch and his words.

  “I’m sorry,” I breathed.

  He pulled me closer so he was cradling me against his chest. He kissed the top of my head. “No need to apologize.”

  “So if you were to see this image again would it help you?” I asked, hoping my voice didn’t sound as shaky to him as it did to me.

  “Maybe.”

  I pulled away slightly so my face was in front of his. “Should we try again?” I couldn’t help but blush at the possibility of living another kiss like that, or the shudder that ran through my body at the thought of his violent reaction.

  I could see the anxiety on his face but also something else—desire. “Maybe the vision won’t be as strong this time. Maybe since I know what to expect I won’t see anything…and if I do maybe my body will be prepared for it.”

  I nodded. “Maybe.” It was the only word I could manage to mumble.

  I titled my chin up toward him, and before I could think another thought his lips were on mine. My body instantly heated up just like before. His hands knotted into my hair as I crushed myself against him. The kiss was filled with desperation. I knew I had very little of these moments left with him, and maybe his vision made him realize he had very little of these moments left with me.

  “Did you see anything?” I panted.

  “No.”

  I didn’t care and neither did he. This kiss was more than just an experiment. I found his lips again, wrapped my arms around his back, clutching him to me as tightly as possible. His lips moved down my neck. Suddenly, I was on my back, James on top of me. I reached up into his hair and grabbed it, forcing his lips onto mine again. I needed more. One of his hands was under my back as the other moved down toward my waist, leaving a blazing trail of heat as he did. I felt my back arch on its own, my chest now against his. I wondered if this was going to stop. I wondered if I wanted it to.

  My body was burning; I felt the sweat drip down my neck. It was happening again. I trembled with anticipation, waiting for the dreadful moment when he would pull away, and I would watch the scene of horror once again pass across his eyes. But he didn’t stop. He didn’t pull away. The kiss only deepened. I didn’t know how long I could stand the heat. I felt the cotton of my top begin to stick to my back. I knew we were racing toward the line that once was crossed couldn’t be uncrossed. Was I ready for that? Did it matter? I didn’t have time to feel ready. I only had two days.

  I knew I wouldn’t die if the worst happened. I could feel my lips begin to still themselves, and my hands fell limply to my sides. His lips moved back to my neck, his hand holding tightly onto my waist.

  I wasn’t ready.

  My first kiss had only been weeks ago. I wasn’t ready for what came next. I had barely made sense of my own feelings, my new situation in life. I didn’t need a new complication. And would this, this embrace of closeness, forever tie me to James? Tie me in a way that would make our parting much more difficult, if that were even possible? We hadn’t thought of protection. We hadn’t even discussed it. Yet, here it could be happening. Everything was happening so fast in my life.

  “Stop,” I whispered.

  He froze the second the word escaped my lips, the sound of our ragged breathing mingling with the silence of the room. I made an attempt to scoot away, but he was too heavy. I needed to be far from him, doubting my own self-control.

  He quickly lifted himself off of me and muttered, “Sorry.”

  I tried to read the emotion on his face. Did he look angry? Hurt? No, he was relieved. I wondered if he had been feeling the same way as me, unsure and not ready. I wondered if my self-control somehow was better than his, or if he was merely trying to give me what he thought I wanted. I briefly remembered the way his lips had moved and knew he had wanted it, too.

  “Some kiss,” I joked.

  James chuckled weakly. “Yeah.”

  “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have let it get so out of control,” I replied quietly.

  “You? It’s my fault. You have always made it clear your thoughts on this sort of thing,” he replied.

  “I think a lot of things I felt before have changed, James. I just didn’t feel—”

  “—ready,” he finished.

  I offered a small smile in response.

  He tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. “It’s fine. We have time.” The word time sounded stale, unreal, and I knew we both understood it to be a lie. We both knew what we had just given up. This was something we would never share. I wondered if later in life I would regret it. In this moment it seemed like the right choice to stop. I couldn’t imagine remembering our time together connected to only feelings of desolation and loss. I’d rather not have that experience at all than to see it so tainted.

  “I should probably go, let you rest,” he said, patting my hand gently as he moved to get off the bed.

  I locked my hand around his. “Wait. Maybe you could stay. I mean…just sleep.”

  He raised an eyebrow in response.

&
nbsp; I forced a grin. “We’re two rational people. We can handle it.”

  His face lit up in a relaxed smile. “I guess we have handled worse.”

  I moved to the other side of the bed and patted the spot next to me. After a brief moment of hesitation, he pulled back the covers and lay down. Both of us lay on our backs, not touching, staring at the ceiling.

  It was most certainly awkward. I couldn’t help but laugh. It was the most normal I’d felt in days. I had come to almost cherish these moments of teenage instability. They made the rest of my life seem like some bad dream. Just thinking about the situation made me laugh harder. James began to laugh, too, and it made me happy to know I didn’t have to explain what was so funny to him. He already understood.

  Chapter 36

  I kept having the same nightmare. I knew the memory was haunting me for a reason, but I couldn’t figure out why.

  I was six the first time I saw the mangled body of a rejected chosen one. I didn’t understand a lot of things back then. Now, at sixteen, some things had become quite a bit clearer. Others I still didn’t understand.

  My father bringing in the body of the chosen one is near the top of the list.

  I shouldn’t have seen it, but without a proper education us children had a lot of free time. The schools had been closed a few months prior. There were plenty of excuses thrown around to appease the parents at the time. Some claimed that education would no longer be needed once the compounds were completed. We wouldn’t work. We would have no need for reading and writing. We would want for nothing. Besides, books were filled with stories of emotions and selfish personal wants. These were the very things that had brought our society near extinction.

  Some people claimed our local sector couldn’t afford to search for and hire a new teacher. Our previous one had disappeared without warning six months prior. We had a war going on, and securing a new teacher just didn’t seem all that important.

  Those who wanted to educate their children would have to find the time to do it on their own. The council would provide simple guidebooks for these parents.

  My father worked ridiculous hours for the council, so I never expected him to become my teacher. My mother mostly kept to her liquor, so she wasn’t much help. Emma, God bless her, meant well when she tried to teach little Louisa and me, but since she found it damn near impossible to raise her voice, she couldn’t really keep us in check.

  I didn’t mind not going to school. I had friends to play with all day. Our house was a pretty popular destination for the sector kids, since we were one of the few with a working television, thanks to my dad’s job with the council. The sector had a large screen television brought out for council announcements, but a personal television set was a rarity. There’s no doubt that most of my friends only liked me for the TV, but at the age of six, I didn’t realize.

  It’s funny the things the council could supply us with in such desperate times. Electricity. Televisions. But I was beginning to suspect it had only been because it suited their purposes. How much did they keep from us in order to create a people so frenzied with poverty they would allow their government to do anything it wanted?

  One day I woke up anxious and exhilarated. They were scheduled to replay the very first public showing of the chosen ones’ power. For some reason I felt compelled to watch it every single time it aired. Mom had been having a good few weeks, so it seemed safe to invite my friends over to watch as well.

  But whatever had kept my mom sober for that brief amount of time had crumbled. When I trotted into the kitchen that morning, I saw my older sister holding back her hair as she threw up into the sink. Louisa sat crying in the corner. She always cried when our mother got like this.

  My older sister looked back at me when she heard me enter. Sympathy was written all over her face. She always tried to hold us all together.

  I used to wish she were my mother.

  I wanted to cry, but even then I saw that it would be pointless. I left without a word, slamming the door to the room I shared with my sisters. Even though our house was still small, and there were weeks we went without things like sugar and eggs, at least we had a house.

  There was no way to get word to my friends in time before they all started showing up. The phone lines had been down for weeks.

  I hid underneath my bed as Emma answered the door time and time again, telling each friend that I had come down with the flu and we couldn’t watch TV that day. I wish I had thanked her for it before she died. I never told her how much it meant to me that she saved me.

  After the last friend left, she knocked quietly on the door. “Tessie? Mama, Louisa, and I are going to take a walk and get some fresh air. I think it’s just the thing to get us all feeling right this morning. You want to come?”

  Yes, I wanted to go. If it could be just her and me I would go anywhere.

  I didn’t answer.

  “Please, Tessie.”

  “Please, Tessie,” I heard little Louisa begin to chant. The girl just wanted to be loved. She didn’t care by whom.

  After a while my older sister gave up. I didn’t blame her—at the moment my mother was the bigger crisis. I stayed hidden under my bed while they were gone. There wasn’t really anything else to do.

  I’m not sure how much time passed before I heard the front door open. I scrunched farther under the bed—I wasn’t ready to see the paleness of my mother’s face, or the way Louisa clutched onto her, forever hoping her love was enough to make Mom quit drinking. Louisa didn’t understand what was going on, not at all. All she knew was sometimes Momma didn’t want her at all.

  Much to my surprise, I heard my father’s voice travel through the house. “Anyone home? Girls?”

  I should have answered. Especially when he called out again I should have, but I stayed silent. I wanted to remain in my own little world for as long as possible.

  “What the hell we doing, Charlie?”

  My father wasn’t alone. The voice sounded faintly familiar, but I couldn’t identify whom it came from.

  “Just help me bring him into the bathroom. He’s losing a lot of blood.”

  Was that my father’s voice? It sounded so unlike him that I had to question it.

  After a moment of silence, I heard a strange shuffle as both men let out muffled groans.

  I crawled a little closer to the light that attempted to reach me under the bed.

  I could hear the bathroom door swing with force against the wall, followed by something crashing to the floor. I would have sworn my mother was home, but I knew she wasn’t. These noises made up my mother’s symphony.

  I slowly pulled myself onto my feet. Something inside of me was forcing my legs to walk toward that bathroom. It was the same part that always had to watch the television anytime they talked about chosen ones. An odd obsession I just didn’t understand at the time.

  I just needed to know.

  I always needed to know.

  I pressed myself against the wall near the bathroom door so no one would see me.

  “This is bad, Charlie. This is really bad,” the other man called out.

  “What was I supposed to do, just let him die? They were going to kill him. We’re not murderers, Jacobson.”

  Jacobson let out a short, bitter laugh. “Yeah. How much longer we gonna be able to claim that?”

  My father heaved a sigh.

  “We won’t get away with this,” Jacobson charged.

  “You don’t know that. We can ask for their help. I think we’ve proven what side we’re really on.”

  “I don’t think anyone is going to be able to help cover this up.”

  “Well, maybe I just don’t give a damn anymore,” my father snarled.

  The sound of running water made my eavesdropping near impossible.

  “Help…lift…up,” said my father.

  I could tell by their heavy breathing and grunts that this task was easier said than done. I figured the two of them would be distracted by the tas
k, and it would be safe for me to take a peek.

  I wasn’t ready.

  I couldn’t see much over my father and his friend, who sat on their knees tending to the chosen one in the tub. I could see the top of a head—a damp, bloodied head of sandy blond hair. One of the thing’s hands was clutching onto the edge of the bathtub, and I noticed the water faucet was turned to cold. I remembered my father doing this when Louisa had one of her spells. It had been important to get her fever down.

  The chosen one wasn’t making much noise, but I could tell he was in pain by the tension in the hand that gripped the tub. I could see one of his eyes widen as he spotted me over my father’s shoulder. The chosen one lifted his head to get a better view, and when he did I swear I saw a look of disappointment cross his face.

  Whatever he had been searching for, it certainly wasn’t me.

  As he looked, I saw the perfection of his features. Even bloodied I saw beauty. I couldn’t make out his whole face, just a chin and the outline of his cheek. But it was a beautiful outline. His eyes were just as they appeared on television—icy blue.

  There was a chosen one in my house.

  A noise issued from my lips. I’m still not sure if it was of excitement or fear—maybe both. My father turned on me with such quickness that it made me a little dizzy.

  If he was surprised to see me, he didn’t show it. Even in the biggest of crises, my father kept his mask firmly in place.

  His voice was calm when he spoke. “Tess, can you get me some ice?”

  I didn’t hesitate a second before running into the kitchen. By the time I got back to the bathroom with the bucket of ice, my father had pulled closed the shower curtain, blocking my line of sight.

  I handed my father the ice with a frown. He actually laughed at me.

  “I take it you got something you want to ask me?”

  Jacobson kept his eyes on the floor as my father crouched in front of me, waiting for my question.

  “I got lots of things to ask you,” I replied.

  I didn’t know how to hold my tongue.

  My father laughed again.

  “You won’t tell the other girls about this, will you?”