Ghost Heart

by Ripley Patton

  “No,” I blurted. God, no. But I couldn’t wait to get out of the hospital gown I was wearing. There was a serious draft up my ass.

  “Okay. I’ll give you some time before I send anyone in then.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “Of course, Marcus,” she said, turning toward the door.

  “Not Marcus,” I corrected her. “David. Marcus is—” I couldn’t find the words again.

  “Marcus is your middle name, but I thought you preferred to go by it.”

  “No,” I said. Except Passion had called me Marcus too. Why was everyone calling me Marcus and why did I feel that when Reiny had done it, it had been some kind of test?

  “Right. My mistake. David it is.” She smiled as she slipped out into the hallway and shut the door behind her.

  Ten minutes later, I was dressed and pacing in front of the window, the curtains pulled back.

  When I heard the door open, I turned to see Passion come in first, followed by a willowy gorgeous girl I could barely believe was my little cousin Sam. But it was. There was no mistaking those eyes and that smile.

  “David,” she said, rushing to me and throwing herself in my arms almost before I could open them.

  I crushed her to me, feeling the strongest sense of déjà vu I’d ever experienced. Had we done this before? No. I hadn’t seen Sam since she’d been six and I’d been seven. But we had been close back then; Danielle and Sam and I had been like the Three Amigos. Now, holding her to me and inhaling the smell of her, it was like those ten lost years were nothing. This was Sam. She knew me. I knew her. And I could trust her.

  “Um, you’re hurting me,” she squeaked, pulling herself out of my embrace, and that was when I noticed she was holding herself oddly, favoring one side of her body almost as if she were protecting it.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked, reaching out and pulling her shirt up without giving it a second thought.

  “Hey!” She smacked my hand away and yanked her shirt back over the bandages wrapped around her ribcage. “Watch it, Cuz. I’m a big girl now.”

  “You certainly are,” I said, grinning. “But it looks like you’re still getting into—” What was the word? I couldn’t find it, so I rushed on. “What happened?”

  “I got shot,” she said, “but it’s just a graze. Nothing too serious.”

  “You got shot?” I asked, incredulous. She had to be pulling my leg. “Yeah, right. Who shot you? And why? I thought your dad had super security covering your ass all the time.”

  “Yeah, well, I sort of ditched all the security,” she said, looking chagrined. “Not the wisest thing I’ve ever done, I know, but I had my reasons.”

  “Was it a guy?” I asked. Sam had always been strong-headed, an extreme extrovert, and she loved to be the center of attention. I could totally see her shaking my uncle’s security to sneak out and meet up with some love-sick admirer.

  “No, it wasn’t a guy,” she scoffed, punching me in the arm. “And it wasn’t a girl either,” her eyes flashed to Passion and away again, but not before I noticed the other girl blushing. “I was trying to save The Hold, you jackass.”

  “Save The Hold from what?”

  “My parents,” she sighed. “Mom is having an affair, and her new fuck-buddy and Dad are fighting over The Hold like it’s the one ring to rule them all.”

  “Shit. That sucks. I mean, the affair part.” So, my aunt and uncle were having marital problems. That didn’t exactly surprise me, but I still felt bad for Sam. As for The Hold falling apart, that was the best news I’d heard in a long time. “But why save The Hold? If they want to destroy it, why not let them?”

  “Listen, I know why you hate The Hold,” Sam said, crossing to a chair and sinking into it. “I get it. I really do. But it doesn’t have to be like that. We could change it. We could make it better. We could make it our own.”

  “And by ‘we’—you mean the Marked?” The title was like a bad taste in my mouth. “We aren’t better than anyone, Sam, just because we were born with PSS.” I didn’t want to believe she’d become like my uncle. I needed her not to be. I needed an ally.

  “I know that,” she snapped, heat in her voice. “It isn’t about being better. It’s about being united.” Her eyes rose to mine, pain spilling out of them. “It’s about never losing anyone ever again.”

  “That’s noble,” I said. She was talking about me and Danielle and my parents. “But it’s also naïve,” I added. “Whenever people form a group based on an ‘us and them’ mentality, someone gets lost.” The girl with the ghost hand flashed into my mind. She was grinning at me. Like she was proud.

  “They said you were having trouble talking and thinking,” Sam grumbled, looking accusingly at Passion who was still hanging back by the door as if she might bolt. “You seem just as articulate and stubborn as ever to me.”

  “You’re right,” I said, grinning. “I wasn’t even thinking about it and all the words were right there.”

  “And what about your memories?” Passion asked cautiously, coming further into the room. “Are they coming back too?”

  “No.” I shook my head. “I get flashes sometimes, but they don’t make any sense. Reiny said you found me at the bottom of a river, but I have no idea how I got there. Did you see anything? Did you see them take Danielle? And where the hell are we? It doesn’t look like Oregon out there.” I gestured at the window. “Where are all the evergreens? It doesn’t even look like spring. It looks like fall.” Fuck all Reiny’s dire warnings about me pushing too hard. I needed to know what the hell was going on. “How long was I out before I rebooted? What’s the date?”

  “It’s Friday, October 28th, and we’re in Indiana,” Passion said, her lips trembling, her eyes full of sympathy. “You were only out for seventeen hours, but you’ve lost your memories of the last eight months.”

  “Passion!” Sam said angrily, standing up and grabbing my arm to steady me. “We aren’t supposed to tell him. He isn’t ready.”

  “He can see out the window with his own eyes,” Passion said. “You know him. Do you really think he’s just going to let that go?”

  Eight months. How could I have lost eight months? Oh God, what could have happened to Danielle in eight months? I had to get out of here. I had to go after her. But I wasn’t even in Oregon anymore. How had I gotten to Indiana?

  The door to my room swung open and my Uncle Alex came in holding a tray of food.

  Passion and Sam turned and looked at him.

  “Is it a bad time?” he asked, looking from Sam to me and back again.

  I shook off Sam’s hand and launched myself at the man who had taken everything from me. Again.

  This time I was going to kill him for it.

  11

  MARCUS

  Slamming into my uncle was more satisfying than I’d imagined, and I’d imagined it a lot. I reveled in the look of fear on his face and the way the breakfast tray went flying, bacon and eggs erupting into the air around us.

  I pressed my arm into the cartilage of his windpipe, pinning him to the door. My other hand found the lock, turning the deadbolt into place. No one was going to come rescue him now, none of his bodyguards or entourage. It was him and me, man to man. I wasn’t a defenseless little boy anymore. I was bigger than he was. Younger. Stronger. All the weakness in my legs was gone. I had saved a life’s worth of strength for this one moment.

  “David, no!” Samantha cried, moving toward us. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Passion grab her hand and hold her back.

  “They need to settle this,” she said to my cousin. “You need to let them.”

  Nice sentiment, but it wasn’t going to happen. There was nothing for me and my uncle to settle. I was going to hurt him the way he’d hurt me and Danielle and my parents. I would run him over, leaving him mangled and abandoned beside a road somewhere. I would make him feel pain, endless, insatiable pain.

  “You killed them,” I spat into his face. “You ran us into a fucking trai
n, your own family, your own sister.”

  “No,” he squeezed out, trying to shake his head.

  “Yes!” I pressed my arm even harder into his throat. He didn’t get to say no to me. Not ever again.

  “David,” Samantha pleaded behind me, “don’t do this. Let him explain.”

  “There’s nothing to fucking explain,” I snarled at her, never taking my eyes off of him. “I was there. I know what happened.”

  His face was turning red and his eyes were bulging a little. He was running out of air.

  Footsteps pounded up the stairwell beyond the door. Someone downstairs had heard the noise, and they were coming to save him. Too bad there was a solid oak door between him and his lackeys.

  “David, please,” Samantha said, laying her hand gently on my bulging bicep. “He’s my father.”

  I turned just enough to look at her.

  Passion was standing behind her, still holding her other hand.

  I looked back at my uncle.

  I could kill him. It would only take a little longer. He was gasping for breath now, struggling weakly under my arm.

  I looked back at Sam, her eyes full of fear and pain, so like Danielle’s.

  “Fuck!” I roared, pulling myself off my uncle and pacing to the window, my back turned against all of them. I was too weak. I couldn’t do it. Not in front of Sam.

  My uncle was coughing and hacking, trying to catch his breath.

  There was a loud banging at the door and the knob rattled frantically. “Everything okay in there?” a man’s voice boomed. “Mr. James, are you all right?”

  “Yes, I’m fine,” my uncle called back hoarsely. It was hardly convincing.

  “Sir, do you need assistance?” the voice persisted.

  “No,” my uncle said, louder this time. “I’m fine. Stand down.”

  “Yes sir,” the voice said, but I didn’t hear the guy go back downstairs. He was waiting out there for me. I’d lost my chance, my only chance. My uncle would open that door, and I’d never be alone with him again. I’d never get the satisfaction I’d yearned for all these years.

  I turned and looked at him, a pompous man in an expensive suit with yellow flecks of egg in his perfectly kept hair. God, I hated him and the look of self-righteous pity in his eyes. How could he pity me when he was the one who’d fucked up my life in the first place?

  “Why’d you do it?” I asked. I couldn’t murder him in front of Sam, but I could expose him. It wasn’t anything compared to what he’d done to me, but it was still something. “I want to know, really. What’s your justification for killing me and my parents? I’m dying to hear it.”

  “I didn’t kill them,” he said, moving away from the door into the middle of the room, a hand still rubbing his neck. “That is something I’ve wanted to explain to you for a long time. Will you at least sit?” He gestured at the nearest chair. “You haven’t been well.”

  “No,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest. “I’ll stand.”

  Samantha and Passion sat though, each taking a chair near the bed within reach of each other. Sam was chewing her bottom lip nervously, looking back and forth between her father and me. I had a feeling she didn’t know what he was about to say any more than I did.

  “I understand why you believe what you do,” my uncle said, spreading his hands in a gesture of peace, “and I deeply regret you’ve been led to believe it all these years. Yes, I was in a car following you and your parents as you fled The Hold that night. But I wasn’t chasing you. I was escorting you.”

  “Escorting us?” I asked, my voice dripping with sarcasm.

  “Yes.” He said. “I was trying to ensure your escape. I would never hold your mother to something against her will. She was my sister, and I loved her. When she told me of her plans to flee The Hold, I offered my help, and I wasn’t alone. Bo, the man standing out in the hallway right now, was a childhood friend of mine and your mother’s, and he was with me that night. If you don’t believe me, you can ask him.”

  “Yeah, right,” I scoffed. “Because he’s likely to tell me the truth. Did your plan to ‘escort’ us also involve escorting us right into an oncoming train?”

  “No.” He shook his head, pain flaring in his eyes. “That was a terrible accident.”

  “I bet it was,” I mocked him.

  “It was,” he said, his voice growing cold and hard. “The Hold sent someone after you, just as we’d feared. The plan was for Bo and me to act as the buffer between your car and theirs, and that’s exactly what we did. We held the pursuers back, running them off the road into a deep culvert. But we didn’t want to hurt or kill anyone, so we stopped to make sure they were all right. When we saw them crawling out of their car, we got back in ours and raced to catch up with you. To this day, I have no idea why your father felt compelled to try and beat that train. It makes no sense. You weren’t being chased anymore. There was no reason for it. When that whistle started blowing and blowing, I didn’t understand. Not until we heard the terrible noise and came upon the crash a few minutes later.” My uncle stopped, rubbing his hand across his eyes.

  “Even if any of that is true,” I said, “which it isn’t, you left us there. You turned and ran. How can you possibly justify that? You left your sister’s body lying in the dirt and—”

  “No!” he snapped, glaring at me. “I didn’t leave her.” And then, more softly, “And she wasn’t dead.”

  “What?” My whole body went rigid, my mind spinning. What did he mean? Had he spoken to her?

  Had this bastard been the last person on earth to speak to my mother? No—he didn’t deserve that. It should have been me. Why couldn’t it have been me?

  “When we came upon the scene, she was badly injured,” he choked out, as if it hurt him, as if he were the one who’d just been gutted by the promise of a dead mother come back to say her last words. “Your father was—he died instantly. We couldn’t find Danielle. As for you—we thought you were gone, but your mother knew better. She told me about your ability, and Danielle’s. It was the main reason she’d run from The Hold. She didn’t want them to find out and exploit both of you.”

  “That’s bullshit, and you know it,” I said. “She left because they were going to force her to divorce dad and marry someone with PSS. She told us that.” He was trying to put this on me and Danielle, make it our fault instead of his. What had she really said to him before she’d died? Had she asked for us? Had she asked for me?

  “I know that’s what she told you, but that was only part of it. Her last request,” he said, fake tears rolling down his fake face, “was that I let you go. She wanted me to go back to The Hold to lead it, and change it. But she wanted you and Danielle to have the freedom to decide for yourself. She made me promise not to interfere. She made me swear on my life to protect you from The Hold, and I kept my promise. I’ve kept it for ten years.”

  No. That could not be true.

  “You’re a fucking liar,” I told him, turning my back so he wouldn’t see the tears on my face. Oh, he’d reeled me in good. He’d taken me back to that night, to the broken, devastated child I’d been, enticing me with my mother’s last words. But there was no way in hell her last request had been to abandon me and Danielle to fend for ourselves as wards of the state. I would never believe that.

  “I’m not lying,” he said, “and I’m still keeping that promise, even though it’s cost me dearly.”

  “Cost you?” I laughed, an ugly choking laugh, and wiped my sleeve across my face before turning back to him. “What has it ever cost you? Danielle and I grew up being tossed from family to family. They tried to split us up, over and over again. Do you have any idea what they did to us? What they did to her? Don’t talk to me about what it cost you.”

  “You’re right,” he said. “That isn’t fair of me. We’ve all paid the price, you and Danielle most of all. I promise you, your mother never anticipated that. She loved you both deeply. She wanted the best future possible for you. She co
uldn’t have foreseen how difficult it would be, or how much the climate would change toward children with PSS in such a short time.”

  How dare he throw me that bone? Your mother loved you, just not very well. Fuck him.

  “So, you made her a promise, and you left her to die,” I summarized. I wanted his story to be over. I wanted him out of my face, so I could get the hell away from him and everything he stood for. The security on the farmhouse wasn’t tight, and my window wasn’t too high. I was pretty sure I could jump out of it without hurting myself, and the bedroom we were in faced a wooded area, so it would be easy to escape unseen.

  “I didn’t leave her to die,” my uncle said, rubbing his hand across his face again. “We made her as comfortable as possible and called an ambulance. Bo went to try and find Danielle. We thought with her ability, she might be able to help, but he couldn’t find her. He did find you, however, though you hadn’t rebooted. Your head injuries were severe. Neither of us thought you would make it, despite what your mother had told us. And then she—passed—before the ambulance got there. And yes, we left, and I assure you it was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life. But we thought all of you were dead and staying would only have complicated things.”

  “Yes, well, we wouldn’t have wanted things to get complicated for you,” I commented snidely. I was so over this.

  “You think they didn’t?” he asked heatedly. “I had to tell Samantha you were dead,” he looked at his daughter, a haunted look in his eyes. “I have never seen a child so devastated. She thought it was her fault. She even stopped eating and drinking. We were afraid we were going to lose her too.”

  I had actually forgotten Samantha and Passion were still in the room. That’s how much he’d gotten to me. And I didn’t like what I saw as I looked at them. Both their faces were wet, but where Samantha had pity swimming in her eyes, Passion had a look of naked understanding. When she caught my eyes, I looked away. I didn’t want to be seen by those eyes. Not right now.

  “When I discovered you and Danielle had survived,” my uncle droned on, “I didn’t know what to do. I’d made a promise to your mother, but I almost didn’t keep it. I almost came for you. Maybe I should have. I still don’t know. I took leadership of The Hold a year later, and I moved the headquarters to Indy to give you both space. Since then, I have dedicated my life to making sure no member of The Hold ever feels in danger of being trapped or controlled the way your mother did. But now that’s out of my hands. When I was given the choice to fight for The Hold or protect you from it, I chose my promise to her. I will always choose that promise. You are no prisoner of The Hold here, David. I am no longer its leader.”