When Darkness Builds (The Caldera Series)

by M. C. Sutton

  But these new dreams were the complete opposite. She didn’t control them; they controlled her. That’s what she’d meant when he found her sitting alone on the living room floor that day. She was trying to use what she knew to stop whatever horrible thing was about to happen—or at least try to keep them all safe through it. Just like she had tried so hard to do back then.

  “Like before the war…” he mumbled.

  “Before the war?”

  Matt hadn’t realized he’d spoken aloud.

  “Did your mother dream about the war?” Professor March asked.

  Matt had never thought about it that way before, but it made sense. “Yeah.” His eyes widened. “Yeah, Professor, I think she did.”

  Professor March clasped his hands together and brought a finger to his lips. “And you think that’s what she is experiencing now? That she’s having these same dreams again?”

  My gosh, thought Matt. That was exactly what it seemed like. But if so, that would mean…

  Professor March rose and walked to the window again. He was usually good at hiding his emotions, but at that moment he made no attempt to do so. Matt knew exactly what he was feeling.

  “Professor?” Matt stood and joined him at the window. “Are you saying…” He took a deep breath. “Are you saying there’s going to be another war?”

  The professor didn’t respond. But he didn’t have to. Matt already knew the answer. He could feel it. He had been feeling it for months. And he had a sneaking suspicion he wasn’t the only one.

  “And it’s not just that. It’s something much more. Something much… worse,” said Matt.

  Professor March turned to look at him. And for the first time since Matt had walked into the office, he noticed the dark circles under the professor’s eyes. He hadn’t been getting much sleep lately either.

  “But you already knew that, didn’t you, Professor?”

  Professor March took a deep breath. “We had a pretty good idea, yes.”

  “We?”

  CHAPTER 15

  AFTER SPENDING MOST OF THE morning in the professor’s office, Matt couldn’t help but be disappointed. The longer they talked, the more confused and worried about his parents he became. The professor wouldn’t tell him much. He just kept making vague references to childhood stories. None of it helped, or even made much sense. Eventually the professor had to excuse himself to get to his next class.

  So the only things Matt knew for sure were that something was coming—something that had been brewing for a long, long time—and that there wasn’t anything anyone could do to stop it.

  Matt and Alex hadn’t worked out whether she expected him to come back to the café, but there was no way he was going to. He was too physically and mentally exhausted to go back. He preferred just to go home and pass out for the rest of the day. The last thing he needed, however, was one of his teachers mentioning to his mother that he’d missed a class. Which meant he needed a place to crash until Calculus at eleven-thirty.

  Unfortunately it wasn’t worth going all the way home, and he doubted he had the energy to make it there anyway. But there was one other place he could go. Matt checked his keychain to make sure he still had a key to the apartment Daniel kept on campus before heading toward the student housing. The guy was rarely ever there, anyway.

  The oversized plush couch called to Matt as he unlocked the front door of Daniel’s studio apartment. Must be nice to be the only son of a tenured professor and a physician. Not that Matt’s family wasn’t well off, but his parents had never offered to pay for an apartment.

  It looked like Daniel had actually been there for a change. Books were strewn across the coffee table, and dishes sat in the rack by the sink. It was odd for the place to look lived-in, but even odder for the place to look clean. As a med student, Daniel was usually way too busy studying to be concerned with something as trivial as cleaning up after himself.

  Matt dropped his keys and phone on the coffee table and collapsed onto the couch. He didn’t even care enough to set an alarm on his phone for class, deciding a lecture from his mother would be a lot less hazardous to his health than pushing himself beyond the point of total exhaustion.

  He passed out almost immediately.

  Matt wasn’t sure how long he slept before he heard the front door open. He assumed it was just Daniel, who wouldn’t care that Matt had crashed on his couch. After all, you don’t give a guy a key to your apartment if you don’t expect him to use it, right?

  But it wasn’t just Daniel.

  “Don’t give me that, Daniel! You’ve had plenty of opportunities to talk to him. You’re just making excuses now,” snapped Leah as she and Daniel burst into the apartment, apparently in the middle of a very heated discussion.

  Matt sat up and rubbed his eyes. Great, he thought. The last thing I need.

  “But, poppet, I don’t think you fully understand what you’re asking. It’s just different for us,” said Daniel. “Do you have any idea how hard it would be on you if anything should happen?”

  “You know, I’m beginning to think you don’t care about me at all,” Leah yelled, her face turning as red as it had after she fell asleep on the shore at Virginia Beach last summer. “And stop calling me that!”

  “But I thought you liked it?”

  “Well, not anymore!”

  Daniel sighed. “Darling…”

  He tried to put his hand on her arm. She pulled away from him.

  I should have just gone home.

  At first, the two of them were too engaged in an intense staring contest to notice Matt—Daniel with his look of obviously sincere concern for Leah, and Leah with her glare of consternation.

  Then Leah noticed him. “Matt!”

  “Hey.” He ran a hand through his hair, trying not to get sucked into her crankiness. “What are you doing here?”

  “What am I doing here?” she barked. “This is my boyfriend’s apartment! What are you doing here?”

  “Daniel gave me a key,” Matt snapped back at her. “He was my best friend way before he was your boyfriend, remember?” Though to be honest, the two of them hadn’t spent a whole lot of time together since Daniel and Leah started dating.

  “Ah, thanks, Matt, I’m touched.” Daniel winked at Matt as he dropped his bag on the couch.

  “Shut up, Daniel,” said Matt. So much for self-control.

  “What the heck is your problem, anyway?” said Leah. “Why do you care whether I’m here?”

  “For the same reason you’re so mad that I’m here, Leah! Because we both know darn well how Mom feels about you two being here alone together.”

  “Well, Mom isn’t here, is she? And besides, I’m nineteen years old, for goodness’ sake. She can’t tell me what to do anymore.”

  “Leah! She’s just trying to watch out for you. And she has enough on her mind without worrying about you two being as reckless and stupid as she and Dad were.”

  “I am not Mom! And she’s not trying to watch out for me, she’s trying to control me.” She turned to Daniel. “I wish everyone would stop treating me like a child just because I wasn’t born with some stupid mark on my forehead!”

  She spun on her heel and left, slamming the door behind her.

  Matt plopped back down on the couch. He now understood why Daniel’s apartment was so clean. Leah had apparently been playing house.

  Daniel sat down beside him. “You want to tell me what that was all about?”

  Matt took a deep breath. “I’m sorry, Daniel. You know it doesn’t actually bother me that she’s here. I trust you. I know my parents are a little overprotective because she’s not like us. But you’ve definitely got a better head on your shoulders than my dad did when he was your age.” Matt cradled his head in his hands. The nap hadn’t helped much. He was still exhausted. “I don’t know, man. I guess I just haven’t been feeling too hot lately.”

  “You don’t exactly look too hot, either.”

  Matt lifted his head. His friend l
ooked genuinely concerned.

  Matt stood and walked into the bathroom to look at himself in the mirror. His complexion was pale, even more so than usual, and nearly all the color had drained from his lips. The lightness of his hazel eyes contrasted with the dark, puffy circles beneath them. His arms began to tremble as he leaned against the sink and bowed his head. He looked horrible.

  “Matt?”

  Matt looked up into the mirror again, at the reflection of Daniel leaning against the door frame.

  “Maybe you should let me drive you down to the clinic to see Sarah,” said Daniel.

  Matt was touched by the offer. It was a two-hour drive to Bentonville and back, and Matt knew Daniel still had classes that afternoon. Playing hooky just wasn’t something you did as a graduate student in the med program.

  “No, it’s all right, I’ll be okay.”

  Daniel shook his head. “Well, if you won’t go see Sarah, at least let me have a look at you.”

  Matt smiled. “You’re not a doctor yet.”

  “I might as well be,” Daniel said with a grin. “I’ve spent so much time helping Sarah at the clinic, I could have already finished an internship by now.”

  Matt nodded. It was better than nothing.

  He sank back onto the couch while Daniel went to grab his stethoscope. Matt noticed for the first time the theme of the books spread out across the coffee table. Anatomy and physiology textbooks, medical journals, symptom cross-references. Daniel’s obsession with medicine went way beyond what Matt assumed was normal for a med student. It was true what Daniel had said about the time he’d spent at the clinic. It seemed like he was there helping Sarah every waking minute he wasn’t studying or with Leah.

  “Can I ask you a question?” Matt asked as Daniel sat on the couch next to him.

  Daniel smiled. “As long as it doesn’t involve your sister.”

  Matt guessed Daniel had had enough Leah drama for one day. “What made you decide you wanted to be a doctor?”

  Matt knew full well why he had chosen to study medicine. As a lifetime heart patient, becoming a cardiologist to help others like himself just made sense. Matt also knew he’d have an advantage in school with all the experience he already had with the subject.

  But Daniel was the type of ESPer known as a Savant. He had the ability to retain and apply information at an incredible rate. Savants often chose careers in mathematics, engineering, social sciences, linguistics… Daniel could have done anything he wanted. And with the way healthcare was these days, a career in medicine was much less attractive than it had once been.

  Daniel looked down at the stethoscope in his hand. “Actually, it was something your mother said to me.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. She said that if I was serious about your sister, it’s something I should learn. That I would…” He looked up at Matt, drawing his brows together. “That I would need it later.”

  Wow. If the amount of time Daniel devoted to studying was any indication of how much he cared about Leah, then he must be crazy about her.

  The Grants had learned to live with the fact that Matt’s mom caught occasional glimpses of the future. But the idea that something she knew could have such a direct effect on a person outside of their immediate family was still a little eerie, especially considering Daniel’s strong reaction. By the look on his face, it was something he was genuinely concerned about.

  It was also something, Matt guessed, that Daniel hadn’t told Leah. Matt didn’t blame him. Given Leah’s shaky relationship with their mother, she probably wouldn’t take it well. It was ironic, really, considering the flack Daniel took from Leah for studying instead of spending time with her.

  “Well, then, Doc.” Matt slapped him on the shoulder. “What say we get on with it?”

  “Right.” Daniel pushed the stethoscope into his ears.

  As he listened to Matt’s heart, Daniel’s smile faded. When he finally removed the stethoscope from Matt’s chest, he got up and walked across the room. He clearly didn’t like what he had heard.

  Daniel turned back to the couch. “It’s getting worse, Matt.”

  “I know,” Matt answered quietly.

  “Have you told your parents yet?”

  Matt looked down at his hands. A couple of years ago he had asked that his parents no longer accompany him to his doctors’ appointments. He told them it was because he was older and wanted to go alone. The truth was, he had known something was wrong.

  “And why in the world not?” said Daniel.

  “Because my parents already have enough to worry about without me adding to it.”

  “Matt, that’s ridiculous. You’re their son. They have a right to know. Especially if it’s as bad as I think it is.”

  Matt rubbed a hand across his face, sinking back against the cool fabric of the couch.

  Daniel sat beside him and waited.

  Matt took a deep breath, then proceeded to unload the entire story of what he had been feeling over the last few months, and what he’d discovered in Daniel’s father’s office that morning. Something was going on. And the world as they knew it was about to take a drastic change for the worse, with his parents right at the center of it.

  “Blimey,” Daniel whispered.

  “Exactly,” said Matt. “My parents have bigger things to deal with right now than me, and that’s why I haven’t told them yet.”

  “But Matthew—”

  “And that’s also why you can’t say anything to anyone. Not to my parents, your dad, or even my brother or sister. Understood?”

  “Matt, I don’t—”

  “I need you to promise me, Daniel. That this will stay between you and me.”

  Daniel raised an eyebrow.

  “Please. This is really important to me.”

  Daniel shook his head. “All right, mate, if that’s what you want.”

  “Thank you.” Matt checked his watch. It was a few minutes after eleven, so he may as well head for class. He thanked Daniel—both for letting him crash on his couch and for listening to his problems. Daniel reminded him that if he was that worried about his parents, he could always just use the phone in Daniel’s apartment and check on them the old-fashioned way—by calling them. After all, if an area the size of Bentonville still had cell service, then why wouldn’t Dallas?

  Matt wondered why in the world he hadn’t thought of that.

  CHAPTER 16

  THE DOCTOR CAME INTO THE Grant’s room four more times to recheck Emma before concluding there were no lasting effects of the overdose. He did, however, comment that Jon looked exhausted and suggest he get some rest as well.

  Jon was more than happy to oblige. He crawled beneath the sheets and collapsed into a coma-like sleep that lasted until Emma’s cell phone rang.

  Jon wouldn’t normally answer her phone, except that he already had a pretty good idea who it was. After everything that had happened that morning, he knew they’d be getting a call sooner or later.

  “Dad?”

  Jon felt a twinge of guilt at hearing Matt’s voice, for not having called to check on them first.

  “Hi, Matt,” he said, determined to act as if everything were completely normal. Jon knew he was already at a disadvantage, though, for having answered the phone instead of Emma.

  Matt remained silent on the other end of the line, like he was waiting for Jon to say something. Jon knew what Matt was trying to do, and refused to give in.

  “Dad, is everything okay?” Matt finally said. “Where’s Mom?”

  Jon tried to soften his tone as much as possible. He knew he couldn’t lie to Matt, but he didn’t particularly want to tell him the truth either. “Matthew, do you trust me?”

  “Of course I do, Dad.”

  “Then everything is fine.”

  “But, Dad, I just…” Matt sighed. “Can I just talk to Mom, please?”

  “No, you may not talk to your mother. The doctor said she needs to rest, and besides—”

  “
The doctor?”

  Crap. Jon slapped his hand to his forehead. So much for honesty. “Matt, your mother is fine, I swear to you, okay?”

  This wasn’t going at all the way he wanted. Emma had always been better at relating to Matt than he was. It seemed like no matter what Jon said to him, it always made Matt feel worse.

  “Listen, son, I know it’s hard for you not to worry. But you know that I love your mother very much and I’d never let anything happen to her, right?”

  “Yes, Dad, I know that, but—”

  “Then you think I can’t take care of my own wife?”

  “Dad! That’s not what I said at all.”

  “Well, all right, then. You trust that I’ll watch over her, and that I’m capable of doing so, so there really is no reason to worry, is there?”

  Matt sighed. “No, sir.” He didn’t sound convinced.

  Matt was most likely wishing Emma had answered the phone instead of Jon.

  Jon would probably think of a million things later that he could have said to Matt to console him. But right now all he could manage was to remind Matt how much they loved him and to keep an eye on his brother and sister.

  As he returned Emma’s phone to her bag, she opened her eyes. He sat down next to her on the bed. “Hey there, sleepyhead.”

  “Hey,” she answered with a scratchy voice and a hand to her forehead.

  “How do you feel?”

  “Like I got hit by a Mack truck.” Emma rubbed her hand across her face, then suddenly jolted upright. “Oh my gosh! What time is it?”

  Jon squinted at the alarm clock. “Um, it’s… eleven-fifteen.”

  “What? Jon! Why didn’t you wake me up?” She threw back the blankets and jumped out of bed, losing her balance the moment she stood.

  Jon grabbed her before she could hit the floor. “Whoa. Slow down there, hero. I don’t think you’re in any condition to go anywhere just yet.”