Aporia (Young Adult Paranormal Romance) (Wisteria Series)

by Leyton, Bisi

  “What did you do?”

  “I asked if he had a girlfriend.” Ollie’s pretty but sad gray eyes sparkled like jade. “I asked if you were his girlfriend.”

  “Why would you ask Enric that?” Wisteria was so shocked that if her jaw hadn’t been attached to her face it would’ve fallen to the ground.

  “I see the way he’s so protective of you and I wanted to be sure.”

  “You actually like him?” Wisteria hugged her.

  “Stupid, huh? Since he’s clearly so into you.”

  Wisteria rubbed the girl’s back. “Enric and I are—yuck.” Sticking out her tongue she shuddered. Compared to Enric, Steven was wonderful, she surmised. Shoot, Felip the psychopath didn’t look so bad in comparison either.

  “What, you don’t like him at all?” Ollie rested her head on Wisteria’s shoulder.

  “No, and Enric hates me. He only tolerates me because he needs my help. Trust me, he’s bad news and you’re lucky he’s not part of your life.”

  “He’s not that bad,”

  “You’ve known him two days and what you saw is Enric at his best. Listen Ollie, he is a horrible, horrible person. Plus, he’s way too old for you. You’re like what, fourteen?”

  “I’m sixteen.” Ollie rolled her eyes.

  “Well, he’s like thirty-five,” Wisteria lied. “He’s old enough to be your father.”

  Enric was only twenty, like Bach, but the girl really needed to steer clear of him.

  “Thirty-five? Whatever.” Ollie laughed through her tears.

  “Fine, maybe not thirty-five, but he’s old. And, one thing about Enric, we aren’t the girls he goes for. Unless your father is Lucifer, you stand no chance with him,” Wisteria said softly.

  Suddenly, a bright light shone in Wisteria’s face, and she shielded her eyes with her hand.

  “What are you ladies doing out here?” a man asked in a stern voice.

  “She came after me, Jason.” Ollie sniffled.

  “Oleander, how did you get through the fence again?” Frustrated, he shone his huge flashlight down the path along the fence.

  With the light out of her eyes, Wisteria could now see the man standing in front of her. She knew him. His hair was dark brown, not green, and instead of the large blue glasses he used to wear, he had small black ones. “Jason?” Wisteria uttered in disbelief.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Jason Webb was a half-human, half-Famila man in his mid-twenties who had disappeared from the Isle of Smythe when Didan and his cohorts arrived.

  Wisteria had been told that the empirics had taken Jason prisoner, and he was still rotting somewhere in a bridewell. “How is this possible?”

  “All of you--inside now,” he ordered without acknowledging her.

  “Okay.” Ollie dragged herself to her feet and slowly ambled down the path.

  Wisteria rose and examined the man more closely.

  Ignoring her, he trailed Ollie to the fence. Upon getting there, he unlocked the gate and led the girls through. When they were on the other side, he radioed someone and soon an electric car appeared to take the girls home.

  “We could’ve walked,” Wisteria commented. She wasn’t so certain now if he was her old friend. Surely by now he would’ve acknowledged her.

  “Consider this a courtesy. After all, you are ladies and I’m a gentleman.” He opened the door for Ollie.

  “Thanks Jason,” Ollie replied.

  It was him!

  After Ollie was gone, he turned back to Wisteria. “Wisteria, I’m sorry about the cold shoulder earlier. I didn’t want Ollie to get interested in what we were talking about. You wouldn’t believe the ears on that kid.”

  She hugged her friend tightly. “What are you doing here?” Wisteria finally let him go. “I thought Didan had you.”

  “He did, for a while, but I had the dark glass, so I used it to escape here. I barely made it here alive.”

  Dark glass was the substance from which thresholds were made. The Family used thresholds as doorways to travel between realms. Somehow, Jason had created a type of dark glass that allowed him to open up thresholds in any glass surface. This was an artifact that Felip had managed to take from him.

  “And they just let you in here?” Wisteria asked.

  “They let you in, right? So, why not me?” Jason pointed out. “I used to work with RZC and I’m a tinkerer, which is what they need if they want the biel core to last another twenty years.”

  A biel core was a black orb The Family used to generate power.

  “They’re using Family artifacts?”

  “Yep, the biel core is the only thing I know of that is powerful, clean, and small enough to generate the volume of energy this town consumes.”

  That explained why there was so much energy to waste on unimportant things, like electric scooters and TVs for kids. “Why do they have The Family’s artifacts?”

  “I don’t know, but it’s pretty obvious they were prepared; much better prepared than we were.” He gestured around.

  It seemed like the perfect place to wait out the end of the world.

  “You will not believe the kinds of things that used to go on here,” Jason shared. “They have almost got a real cure for Nero. Your father says in a few months, they will be there.”

  “That’s great!” She knew it. Her father wasn’t the monster her mother said he was. “He’s going to save everyone.”

  “I wouldn’t go that far.” Jason seemed uncomfortable. “There’s a lot about your father you don’t understand, but it isn’t my place to say.”

  “If it’s about my father, you have to tell me.”

  “Do not get me wrong--your father is a great man, now. I don’t think I should be beating a dead horse by talking about what he was before.”

  “Please, Jason. Tell me and let me decide.” Wisteria needed more time to wrap her head around Jason being back, but she also needed to understand who her father was. She wanted to trust him and knew if she did, finding her son would take minutes.

  “I have to show you something.” He unlocked his car. “Wait here, I’ll be back.” Leaving her, he returned to the gate and disappeared. After what felt like an hour, he re-emerged, carrying a laptop bag over his shoulder. Getting into the driver’s side, he started the engine.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “Something that you will find hard to believe, but something you need to see. It’s about you.” He drove the car through the quiet town, and they came to a park. Parking near a row of trees, he reached back and brought out the laptop.

  “This is what you wanted to show me?”

  Without a word, he turned on the computer.

  After a few minutes, she realized he was showing her a video of a young girl, standing in a large empty room. “That’s me?” Wisteria didn’t remember the place. Looking closely at her younger self, she saw that all her hair was cut short and there were several black spots on her neck and arms. Wrapped around one bicep was a bandage.

  “Yeah, it’s you.”

  “Where is this?”

  The room was gray and sparse, with only a white bed, a box of toys, and a boy who was lying on the floor. It seemed like the boy was either unconscious or dead.

  The boy, she knew, was Bach. “What happened to him?” she asked.

  “I don’t know; this where the video starts.”

  The young Wisteria seemed to be arguing with someone off-screen, but Wisteria could not hear what they were saying. When she went to turn it up, she saw it was already on maximum volume.

  “They keep the audio tracks differently, for security purposes,” he told her. “So if someone tried to do what we're doing, they would have a hard time understanding the whole picture.”

  She watched closely, as the younger Bach started to move, and a tall woman with very long black hair and extremely pale skin stepped into the frame, her hands glowing.

  “She’s from The Family?” Wisteria leaned in.

  The woman trie
d to pulse young Bach, but the young Wisteria lunged at the woman.

  Knocking the girl away, the woman sent thick streaks of blue electricity into her body, causing the girl to stumble and fall. Then, the woman went to grab Bach, who seemed to recoil at her touch. Looking up at the woman, Bach’s pale gray eyes were bloodshot and his face was covered in bruises.

  “We need the sound.” Wisteria tapped the screen.

  As the woman moved toward the boy, she pulsed him again with her red light, and he screamed and passed out. The woman rolled the boy over and stroked his head, almost lovingly, then pulsed him again.

  Young Wisteria rose and advanced toward the woman.

  The older woman pulled her hair back and turned to face the young girl. This revealed large black spots than ran down her neck and arms.

  “Are those shana?” Wisteria asked with a gasp, her eyes glued to the screen.

  The woman calmly talked to the girl, and then laughed.

  Her younger self responded by spitting at the older woman.

  Suddenly, the glass window in the room shattered to reveal several people.

  Before any of them could react, the shattered glass formed a threshold. This was the same way a threshold had formed in Jarthan two years ago when The Family was going to kill Bach. Instead of enveloping two kids, it started to suck the woman away.

  The woman shrieked, fighting to break out, but she was pulled in and disappeared. When she was gone, the young Wisteria fainted.

  Finally, men in black uniforms and white lab coats rushed in. She recognized one of the men in the lab coats as her father. The video ended. “This was when they were experimenting on me.” Wisteria’s head dropped. “So my father did know about it.”

  “Well, not your father, but yes, Doc knew,” Jason said sadly.

  “But, he was there.” Rewinding the video, she stopped at a frame of her father watching, unmoved. “That’s him.”

  “What’s more important here, Wisteria, is who the woman was.” He rewound it to just before the pale, black-haired woman was sucked into the threshold.

  “It’s going to be bad, isn’t it?”

  “Coia of the Third Pillar. My mother.”

  And, Bach’s mother? Wisteria knew. “This was before she died.”

  “This was the last time anyone ever saw her,” Jason went on. “For all intents and purposes, this was how she died.”

  “No, she was killed by . . .” My mother. “She was sent somewhere, which means she’s not dead.”

  “You sent her into The Deep. She would’ve starved to death, after seven years.”

  “The Deep?”

  “A realm, it’s like—hell.”

  “I didn’t send her anywhere.”

  “I don’t believe you intended to send her to The Deep. I suspect you wanted her to go to Ajana with the rest of her kind.”

  “And Ajana is The Family’s home realm?”

  “Oh no, Ajana’s a million times worse than The Deep.”

  “You can tell all that from this video?” Wisteria found that dubious, and she felt that he knew more about this but wasn’t going to tell her.

  “I did some digging when I first arrived. Spoke to a few people who were there and they heard you threatening to send her to Ajana.” Jason seemed to sense her doubt. “You were scared, because you thought she was hurting Bach and you created the threshold.”

  “Coia was crazy, wasn’t she?” Nular/Frieda’s remark came to mind.

  “No, they considered her crazy because she ran away from The Family. The same way they think Bach is weak because he chose you over them, and was prepared to die to prove it. If I had been there I might have been able to help you, and help her.” Jason forced a painful smile. “D’cara.”

  “So I killed her?”

  He nodded.

  Keeping her composure, she felt a pang in her chest. “This was what my mother was trying to keep from me—that I’m a murderer. Jason, I’m very sorry.” Huge tears ran down her cheeks. “Please believe me, please?”

  “I know you were confused about what was going on. Wisteria, you’re a good person, don’t—”

  “I killed an innocent person--by definition that means I’m not.” Right now, she wanted to feel numb but every nerve in her body ached. She’d murdered Coia. Not her mother or Red Phoenix—but her. Getting out of the vehicle, she staggered forward a few steps before falling to her knees. “You must hate me!” No wonder her father didn’t want her around. Wisteria didn’t know how far she’d wandered, or where she was going. Not like it mattered; no destination was going to change what she was.

  “You were scared. You didn’t understand what our mother was doing.” He crouched beside her. “I did not show this to you to make you feel guilty. I wanted you to know the truth about yourself, so when the time comes, you will know what to do.”

  Trembling she shook her head. “You’re not making any sense.”

  “Perhaps I should take you back to Jenny’s?” Jason suggested.

  “No, I can find my way back.” She ran away from him.

  *****

  “You are still not going to talk to me?” Enric stood at Bach’s door.

  “Enric, have you found Lluc?”

  “No.”

  “Have you got the wahr-chart working, and has Wisteria figured how to locate him?”

  “No, but—”

  “Then, we have nothing to talk about.” Bach was rising to shut the door when he sensed something.

  Wisteria. She was here.

  Leaving Enric at his door, he headed out and was surprised to see her standing across the street. They had their first civil conversation at the bonfire, and although it made him feel like the girl he once loved had returned, he knew she did not want that. He wondered if he should go to her. He was not in the mood for another one of her attacks, or declarations of love for Steven Hindle.

  She had been crying. Even though she had done a good job of composing herself, he could tell. Seeing her that way, he knew she was not coming there for a fight, so he crossed the street to meet her. “What has happened? Did your father—?”

  “I—I,” she stuttered. “I am sorry, about everything.”

  Finally, she had come round. He could not help but smile.

  “Bach, you—”

  He did not need to hear any more. His response was to kiss her voluptuous lips over and over. D’cara, she tasted incredible. Reaching his hand around her back, he pulled her close to him.

  Wisteria held his biceps as she stretched up on the tips of her toes.

  After two years of torturing himself, she was finally here in his arms because she wanted to be. Moving his head back, he wanted to look at her, and the moment transcended into perfection as his shana started growing on the sides of her face. The spots were the dark confirmation of her unbroken devotion to him. He trailed his fingers over the ever-spreading shana from her face, to her neck, and along her shoulders. Resting his hand on her collarbone, he leaned in to kiss her again.

  This time she took charge, grabbing the sides of his face and pulling him toward her. She kissed him so hard that she bit him.

  “Ah.” Bach jerked back and touched his lip. He was bleeding. Okay, this was not normal for her. “What is it?”

  Frowning, she dropped her head. “No matter what I tell you next, I love you,” she said in a low voice.

  “What about Steven?”

  “Don’t ask me about that. I was lying.” She started to shimmy her way out of his arms.

  “Let us go inside.” Taking her hand, he started to lead her toward the Marble House. “We have to talk. I want to understand why you left me for him.”

  She resisted. “I can’t explain it.”

  “We cannot move on unless—”

  “I killed your mother!” she blurted out.

  Bach stopped and turned back to her. “What did you say?”

  The wonder and passion they had shared evaporated, and something else was boiling up between t
hem again.

  “When we were held by RZC, I sent her to a place called The Deep, or Ajana. I’m not sure.” Wisteria fidgeted with the top of her green shirt and did not look at him. “I sealed her in there to die.”

  “Ajana?” he scoffed. “Ajana is a tale our parents told to us so we would behave. It is not real. It is full of Dy’obeth, monsters or something? Who told you this rubbish?”

  “It was The Deep. I sent her there.”

  “No one can open a threshold to The Deep—I do not believe you.” Bach was completely confused. The Deep was probably as fictitious as Ajana. “Who have you been talking to? Because whoever they are, they are lying to you.”

  “It’s the truth. There was a recording, and my father and you were there when it happened, but you will not remember because Lluc took your memories.”

  He crossed his arms and watched the girl he loved fidget nervously in front of him. He understood the words she said, but they did not make any sense. His mother was the purest person he knew--only a completely evil person would kill her and Wisteria was not that. “The video is a lie.”

  She backed away. “I am ready to stand judgment with your Family.”

  “Judgment, because of a lie? I will die before you ever return to The Family.”

  “Bach, will you just listen to me? Hear the words I am saying.” Grabbing the sides of his face, her fearful eyes locked onto his. “It’s the truth. I know it in my spirit: I killed that woman.”

  Watching her, Bach knew she believed it, but because of the Mosroc, he knew her soul. “You are not a killer and you can never make me believe you are.”

  “I have proof. There’s a video.” A large lump formed in her throat as she imagined his reaction when he saw the video. “You will have to see it first.”

  “How did you find this video?”

  “I got it from Jason Webb, your half-brother,” Wisteria elaborated.

  “The same Jason who was captured by Didan, and imprisoned was in Jarthan’s bridewell?” As far as Bach knew, no one could escape from The Family’s prisons. “That is not possible.”

  “He escaped. I guess he was in the mountain facility you told me about, because he went up into the mountains to get the video. He . . .” She sucked in a deep breath. “I wish it wasn’t true.”