by Jo Ramsey
“Stop.” That one word from Rex held all his terror. And no power at all.
Stop. The unidentified voice echoed in my mind.
My shield was gone now. I hadn’t even been aware of letting it go, but of course I’d had to in order to use the fire. If these four people in front of me were trying to use their powers against me, it wasn’t working, but I could hear the voice again.
Kellan, don’t hurt them. You don’t want to live with taking their lives. Remember how you felt when you hurt the guy back home. Trust me.
I wanted to ask who was speaking, but I couldn’t spare the attention. I suspected it was Shad, but the identity didn’t matter right then.
I didn’t stop the fire. I couldn’t take the chance. But I stopped using it to push the four people in front of me closer to the cliff’s edge. Now it was only another type of shield, keeping them away from me while I backed up.
Sirens wailed nearby, growing louder. Help was coming.
The others are almost there too. Don’t hurt them if you can help it, Kellan. Hang tight.
“You deserve this.” Rex again. “You killed someone. An eye for an eye.”
The sharp stabbing in my head knocked me to my knees, right on top of a pile of burning leaves. I felt no heat. The fire came from me. It wouldn’t burn me.
But Rex and the other three would hurt me. The flames faltered as the pressure in my brain increased. I couldn’t hold on.
The sirens came closer. The sound pierced my eardrums and my brain. Lightning bolts of pain slammed through my head. I wanted to scream, but I didn’t have the strength.
I couldn’t hear Shad in my mind anymore. I was as blind physically and mentally as I’d been before I’d been brought to the cliff.
The fire dwindled.
Hands dragged me to my feet. “You killed Yancy,” Rex hissed in my ear. “An eye for an eye. Good luck.”
The ground disappeared. Air rushed past me.
I screamed.
Chapter Eleven
WIND MOVED around me. Under me. Cushioning me.
I opened my eyes and could see again. Water and air surrounded me. Someone had thrown me over the cliff.
But I wasn’t falling. The wind held me.
Above me, smoke and flames filled the air. The fire hadn’t completely gone out yet. I’d started it, but the dry leaves and grass had given it more fuel. The fire department would have to put it out.
I hoped it took Rex, Treese, and the other two first.
Don’t hate. The voice was right. Hatred would make me no better than them. They’d acted out of hatred and fear.
I started falling again, more slowly, as if the wind were lowering me. Someone was manipulating it.
If I survived, I might find out who.
Above me the sirens cut off abruptly. So did the voices and other noises I’d barely been aware of thanks to whatever Rex had done to me.
The wind guided me down to a large, flat rock barely sticking up above the water’s surface. I landed on my feet, and the jolt rang through my legs. My knees buckled. I yelped and threw out my arms to catch my balance.
The pain didn’t matter. I was alive.
Father, thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
I closed my eyes, and warm wind caressed my cheek. Warm in spite of the November chill.
“Holy crap! He’s there!”
I opened my eyes and looked toward the cliff. A wide-eyed, open-mouthed guy in a blue uniform stood there staring down at me. I waved. Peace flowed through me. I was safe.
Getting me back to the top of the cliff took a lot of equipment and two guys coming down to me on ropes. Meanwhile, I froze and wondered where the bad guys had gone. Gene was still around somewhere, and as far as I knew, so were his buddies. Treese and the other guy, who should have been on my side but apparently considered me the threat, couldn’t have gone far either.
By the time I stood at the top of the cliff again, the warm wind had vanished. The natural wind sliced through my clothes and into my skin. My teeth slammed together, and I shivered so violently I would have fallen if one of my rescuers hadn’t chosen that moment to wrap a blanket around me. I nestled into the blanket and inhaled must and dust. I didn’t care. It was warm.
The blanket donor lowered me onto a stretcher that, from the way I saw things, had just appeared behind me. Of course, I knew someone had brought it. Everything had happened so fast that I’d lost track. Now I was too cold and tired to figure anything out.
They’d put out my fire somewhere along the line. Not even a little bit of smoke remained.
The emergency guy wheeled me to an ambulance. Garrett stood beside it, white-faced and furious. I shrank a little. I didn’t know if he was angry with me or someone else.
“I’ll go with him,” he said. “Right now he’s under my care.”
The emergency guy nodded. “Go ahead.”
Two guys got into the front of the ambulance. They left Garrett and me alone in the back. I was glad. I had some questions he wouldn’t have been able to answer in front of normal human beings.
The ambulance started moving, and I gasped as we hit a bump. My head throbbed, but I didn’t remember hitting it. Probably the aftereffects of whatever Rex had done to me.
“It was Treese and that other guy,” I said. “With my phone. It must have been, because they were with Gene’s friends.”
“I know,” he said. “The ‘other guy’ is Damian. He and Treese are being dealt with.”
I didn’t like the way he said that. “How?”
“Memory wipes. One of our members who doesn’t live at the house can alter memories. She’s taking care of them.” He ran his hand over his face. “I didn’t know they were involved. Treese mentioned shields. That’s one of her skills. She hid both of their minds from us when we tried to read them, and she did it so well we didn’t realize anything was hidden.”
“What about Rex and Craig?”
“They’ve been arrested,” he said. “They’re suspects in an assault case in Denver, remember? Not to mention home invasion and assault here. Rex smashed you over the head pretty hard and threw you off a cliff. It should be a while before he’s out.”
“He really did throw me.” I swallowed. My mouth was way too dry.
“I know. You’ll be okay.” He rested his hand on my shoulder. “I’m sorry, Kellan. We didn’t know he could teleport either. That’s a very rare ability, and it never occurred to me one of your stepfather’s companions would have it.”
“It never occurred to me he knew people with abilities at all,” I muttered. “If he can teleport, how are they going to keep him in jail?”
“Good question. Even if he escapes, he won’t be able to get to you again. I promise you that.”
He wanted to believe he could protect me. I wanted to believe it too. But he’d promised before to keep me safe, and he’d failed.
“The authorities are going to contact your mother,” he said. “I couldn’t talk them out of it. To be honest, I didn’t try very hard. She is still your legal guardian. From what you told me, it wasn’t entirely her choice to send you away. They had to call her about Gene anyway.”
I shook my head. Heat and rage built in my chest. They couldn’t bring my mother here. She didn’t even want me.
At the same time, a tiny part of me yearned to crawl into my mommy’s lap and snuggle into her arms the way I’d done when I was little. Her low, soothing murmur echoed through my mind.
A lump rose in my throat, and I swallowed hard. The heat ebbed away, replaced by a gray fog. My mother had kicked me out to protect me from Gene. Or because Gene had made her. Maybe both. That didn’t excuse her. She was my mother, and she should have kept me with her.
My head hurt too much to think or to work up too much anger toward her, so I gave up trying. I’d deal with her when she arrived, if she did. I was more interested in what Garrett had said about Gene anyway.
“What happened to him?” He should have been arrested t
oo. He’d been part of all of this, right from the moment Gene’s pal had shown up at my house days earlier.
Garrett didn’t answer right away. Before he spoke, I knew. I should have been sad about it, but I couldn’t be. Not yet.
“I’m sorry,” he said finally. “When you vanished, Lauren lost control. She can manipulate people’s physiological systems. Cardiac, mostly. Officially Gene had a heart attack, but it wasn’t from natural causes. It was, however, an accident.”
“I understand.” Lauren would be so upset she’d accidentally killed my stepfather because I was in danger. I’d help her as much as I could. I didn’t blame her for it. I’d come close to doing it myself.
Something Rex said came back to me. “Rex said I killed someone. The guy who attacked me at home. I didn’t know he died. I didn’t mean for that to happen.” I couldn’t work up any sadness for him either. For myself I could. I’d taken someone’s life. I’d been defending myself, but it had been hard enough dealing with knowing how badly I’d burned him. Knowing he’d died made me want to crawl into a hole and stay there.
Maybe I wouldn’t be much help to Lauren. I had to deal with what I’d done first.
“You didn’t even mean to burn him.” Garrett gave my shoulder a gentle squeeze. “That was as much an accident as what Lauren did to your stepfather. You and she will both get help to cope with what’s happened.”
According to Gene’s church, if you had enough faith in God, you would be able to cope with anything. You weren’t supposed to talk about trauma.
That was baloney, of course. I had faith God would bring me to people who could help me, which included helping me process everything that had happened in the past week. Not even a week. It stunned me. So much had occurred, and it hadn’t even been seven days since I’d burned Yancy.
The ambulance arrived at the hospital, and I was wheeled into a small room in the emergency department. The room actually had a door, not just a curtain, which I appreciated. I didn’t want to listen to people randomly walking past and talking, because I didn’t know if any of them might be after me.
The ambulance guys moved me off their stretcher onto the bed and then left. A nurse handed me a hospital gown and told me to change into it. She walked out too, and I just held the gown and twisted it in my hands.
“I’ll leave so you can change,” Garrett said.
“I don’t want them to examine me,” I said. “They don’t need to see everything, do they?”
“I don’t know.” He pulled a chair over from against the wall and sat down. “They’re professionals. You can tell them you’re transgender. They shouldn’t have a problem with it, and if they do, we’ll leave. They need to make sure you aren’t hurt worse than we can see. I think you’re all right, and we have a healer nearby who can take a look at you if you’d rather go back to the house. You should still let the doctor check you. Especially since you were brought in by ambulance. We don’t want to take any chances, and we don’t want questions.”
I hadn’t thought of that. If I said I was just walking out of the hospital, it probably would bring up a lot of questions from the hospital staff. I’d fallen off a cliff. They wouldn’t just take my word that I was okay. And my head hurt too much to try to use my powers on that many people. “Yeah.”
“Yeah you agree? Or yeah I should leave so you can change?”
“Both.”
Garrett nodded. “I’ll be right outside.”
He left, and I quickly changed out of my clothes—except the bindings and my underwear—and put on the stupid gown. The second I lay down again, Garrett came back in. Without a word he opened a cupboard and took out a blanket and draped it over me.
He sat in the chair again and folded his arms. “They can’t figure out why you weren’t killed when you fell off the cliff.” He paused. “When Rex pushed you, that is. You should have hit the rocks and died, or at least been critically injured, according to the emergency personnel.”
I knew the reason, but I didn’t want to talk about it here, where anyone might hear us. “Yeah. Can we talk about it later?”
“Yes. When we go home. Back to the house.”
“It’s home,” I said.
He smiled. “I’m glad.”
My mother was coming, and she had the right to drag me back to Arizona if she chose to. But as far as I was concerned, the house in Winthrop was the safest place I’d been in years. And the fact that everyone there, other than Treese and Damian, had risked themselves for me made them family. I wouldn’t leave without a fight.
A nurse came in and took my vital signs, and then a doctor came in and poked and prodded. No one commented on the bindings or my name being given as Kellan when according to my anatomy, I was a girl. I took a couple of seconds to thank God that I didn’t have to explain.
The psychic thing was a different story. “I should be sending you for X-rays and scans,” the doctor said. “I can’t find any evidence of injuries, though. Not even a bruise. How did this happen? They said you fell off a cliff.”
I shrugged. “Just lucky, I guess?”
He gave me a skeptical look and turned to Garrett, who shrugged. He turned back to me. “Okay, fine. I’ve seen enough in my career to believe in miracles, so we’ll call you one of those. You should still be checked out more thoroughly to be on the safe side.”
“I don’t need to be.” I didn’t want to be. I’d been here long enough, and all I wanted was to go home and sleep. They didn’t have to run any tests. The doctor was doing his job, but in my case, he could stop. I gave him a little mental push in the right direction and winced at the sharp pain slicing through my brain.
The doctor faced Garrett again. “Keep an eye on him. Any sign of concussion or internal injuries, call an ambulance to bring him back here. Someone should stay in the room with him at all times for the next twenty-four hours to make sure everything’s okay.”
“We can arrange that,” Garrett said.
“I’ll get the discharge papers ready. Wait here for the nurse. Kellan, you can get dressed again.”
He left, closing the door behind him. “You shouldn’t have done that,” Garrett said.
“I can’t stay here,” I said. “I don’t want to, anyway. How do I know there isn’t someone here ready to stab me with something poisonous or whatever?”
“That’s why I’m here, to prevent anything else from happening to you.” He sighed. “I’m sorry, Kellan. I promised to keep you safe, and I broke my promise. We tried. It’s going to be difficult for you, and we’ll help any way we can.”
“Right now you can help by leaving so I can put my clothes back on.”
He studied me for a moment as if he couldn’t decide whether I was joking or being rude. I didn’t give him any hints. Finally he went back out to the corridor, and I yanked my clothes on as quickly as I could and dropped the gown at the foot of the bed.
Once again, Garrett came back in as soon as I was dressed. This time he stood in the middle of the room instead of sitting down. “We should be out of here any minute now.”
“Did Shad get here yet? To Boston, I mean?” I wanted to see him. He’d been the one to send me here. He’d be able to tell me how much to trust the group. I had planned to stay with them, but now my thoughts argued with each other.
The house in Winthrop held warmth and safety. It was home, a feeling I couldn’t describe. But darkness hung over it because of Gene’s invasion and death. One of the people I’d wanted to trust had betrayed me. Would I ever be completely safe there?
Part of me yearned for Arizona. For my mother and sisters. The heat and dry air. The bickering and smells of chili and cookies. With Gene gone, that house also could be home.
Or I could just keep moving on. Running, always looking over my shoulder, heart racing, hadn’t been much fun. But seeing more of the country had been pretty cool. The United States had tons of buses and trains. I didn’t have enough money to travel forever, but I could move along and see where I e
nded up.
That idea tightened my chest. On the road I would never know for sure whether I was really safe. I would be on my own to protect myself. Moving on wasn’t the best choice, but it was a possibility.
Talking to Shad might help me sort out the conflicting thoughts and decide which one to listen to.
“He should be at the house soon,” Garrett replied. “You trust him more than the rest of us.”
He wasn’t asking a question. I nodded. “He helped me, and I spent a lot of time with him.”
“Good.” He hesitated, and his thoughts were loud enough he didn’t have to speak.
How could Garrett even wonder whether Shad would do something like that to someone else? “I’m straight. As in, I like girls. And Shad learned from the past. He’s my friend. Maybe my big brother. That’s it.”
Garrett nodded. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have assumed anything.”
“Right. You shouldn’t have.” I turned to face the wall, because I didn’t want to look at him anymore. He’d let something go on between Royce and Shad right in front of him. The relationship hadn’t been all Shad’s fault, but Garrett still blamed him for it.
The nurse came back in and handed some papers to Garrett. I didn’t listen while she went over all the instructions. I just wanted to get out of there.
After the nurse finished, Garrett and I walked outside. Since he’d ridden in the ambulance with me, I didn’t know how we were getting home. I didn’t have to ask. He led me to an SUV parked half a block up the street and opened the front passenger door for me.
Royce was in the driver’s seat. “Are you okay?”
“Dandy.” I got into the passenger seat, which meant Garrett had to sit in the back. I didn’t care. I didn’t want to look at him while we drove back to the house after what he’d implied about Shad.
“How did you manage not to get hurt, Kellan?” Garrett asked as Royce drove away from the curb.
I didn’t want to talk, but I couldn’t avoid the question forever. Maybe he’d be able to help explain what had happened as I’d fallen from the cliff, because I wasn’t having much luck figuring it out for myself. “I don’t know. I was hoping you’d be able to tell me. It was like the wind caught me.”
