“Everything looks fine,” Henry said, coming over to me and taking my hand in his.
“I just don’t want to leave this place a mess,” I replied, pulling my hand from his.
“It’s a converted medical room located in a rodent-infested dining hall. I doubt anyone cares if you know how to properly make a bed.”
“I care,” I said, tugging the sheet out again to remake the bed.
Henry grabbed my hand. “Will you just stop? Why don’t you want to go back out there? And don’t think I’m letting this hand go until you tell me,” he said, bringing my hand to his lips.
I sighed. “It’s just…why hasn’t Robert been here to see me?” I asked, changing the subject.
Henry sat down on the cot, pulling me with him. He scooted back so he was leaning against the wall, and I followed his lead. “He’s been really busy. He stopped by when you were sick, but once he knew you were better, he had to get back to work. Don’t worry, he’s updated on your condition all the time.”
“I wasn’t worried. If there’s one person who can take care of himself, it’s Robert. I just thought that maybe he would want to see me. I know I wasn’t the nicest person to him back in the woods, but I thought we’d made progress.”
“You did. And he does care about you. I’m sure we’ll see him later tonight,” Henry said, bringing my hand back to his mouth. He kissed the inside of my wrist.
I shivered. “Good. I’m glad he’ll be there. Next time I see him, we’re going to have a serious talk about this mystery job of his. I never see him anymore. He is family, and family should spend time together.”
Henry shook his head and grinned. “That’s it, isn’t it? You’re worried about us. You think we need a chaperone.”
I felt my face heat up. “Don’t we?” I asked softly.
“No. We don’t,” he said, giving me a quick kiss on the cheek. “Time to return to the world,” he added, jumping up from the bed and pulling me with him.
I yanked on his arm to stop him from dragging me from the room. “Why are you in such a hurry?”
“Now’s the perfect time. We can get you back into the room and won’t have to worry about anyone staring at you or asking ridiculous questions.”
She’s not what they expected. She’s not like Sharon.
I’m not sure why the words came to my mind at that moment, but they did. I wasn’t even sure they were real, or if they were just a part of another fever-induced delusion. Most people seemed to have respect and even admiration for Sharon. Was that because of who she was, or was it because of the many ways she helped the community?
“Can we just stay here a little while longer?” I asked, biting my bottom lip.
Henry let out a playful growl and picked me up, spinning me around. Once he sat my feet back on the ground, his lips met mine. Always hungry. Always so intense. He pulled away and laughed joyfully. “You’re a hard girl to say no to, always have been. But now’s the time. We can lock ourselves in the room. Work has been suspended for the rest of the week.”
I pulled away slightly so I could look up at him. “Suspended? What for?”
“I don’t know. Some sort of big meeting of the leaders,” Henry said, but he wasn’t looking at me. “I think everyone gets together and debates how long they can actually go without bathing before it becomes inhumane.”
“And we weren’t invited?” I asked.
“Somehow, I don’t think they want to know what two council brats have to say on hygiene. So, let’s go and we can finish that book or something…”
“Or something?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Or something,” Henry said with a wink.
I nodded. “Good, I’ve been dying to have some free time to mend a few shirts.”
“Exactly. Mending.” With a devilish grin, he picked me up and threw me over his shoulder.
I was glad that Henry had been right. The streets were entirely empty, which was a good thing because I was sure even the freethinking members of the community would have found Henry carrying me while I laughed hysterically to be a bit much.
I was surprised to find our room nice and neat. I’d imagined that with just Robert and Henry sharing the room, I would have come home to a serious mess. But there were even fresh flowers on the dresser.
“Where did you manage to find those?” I asked.
“While walking home,” Henry said.
“And none of the other boys made fun of you as you stopped to pick flowers?” I said, unable to stop from chuckling.
“I don’t give a damn what they think,” he said. “Also, I managed to get us enough food to last us the next three days. It’s not exactly a feast, but—”
“What?” I asked in shock. No one was ever allowed to take anything out of the dining hall.
“I’m pretty good at being sneaky when I want to be,” he replied matter-of-factly.
“And why would we want to stay in here for days?” I asked, tearing off a piece of the bread Henry had handed me.
“I’ll be a perfect gentleman if that’s what you’re worried about,” he said, rolling his eyes.
“No you won’t,” I scoffed. “But that’s not what I meant. Why do you want to hide from them so much?”
“Because I just got you back, and I’m not willing to share you yet. Besides, the more food I save, the sooner we can go after Louisa. Is that so devious?” he asked.
I could have loved him forever in that moment.
I set my piece of bread down on the bed and placed my hand against his cheek. “No, it’s not devious at all.”
Henry leaned closer. “I’m going to kiss you now.” He reached forward and pulled my hair to the side, slowly walking behind me. He kissed me lightly on the back of my neck, his lips grazing my two slash marks.
I bit down on my bottom lip.
“I’m going to kiss you again,” Henry said.
I nodded. His lips were inches from meeting mine when a knock on the door interrupted us. “I thought you said everyone was in some big meeting,” I whispered.
“They’re supposed to be,” he said, suddenly serious. “Let’s just ignore it, and whoever it is will go away.”
The knock turned into pounding. I sighed and pulled away from Henry. “I don’t think he or she’s going away.”
Before I could make it to the door, it slammed open. Lockwood stood before us, out of breath, his face red. “What’s wrong?” I asked. Considering Lockwood’s easy-going nature, something terrible must have happened.
“Don’t,” Henry growled.
“I have to. It isn’t right,” Lockwood said sternly.
“We talked about this. We made a deal,” he countered, putting himself between Lockwood and me.
There was something I didn’t know, and clearly it involved me. I walked over to the two boys who stood there staring at each other, fuming. “Mind telling me what exactly is going on here?”
“Please,” Henry begged. Gone was the anger. Henry was pleading with Lockwood as if his very life depended on it.
“I’m sorry, man. I agreed with you that she didn’t have to know, that things would be better for all of us if she didn’t, but that was when I thought they would just let him go. The leaders decided, Henry. They’re going to kill him.”
“Kill who?” I asked.
Henry shook his head. Defeated, he walked away. Lockwood took a deep breath. “James. They’re going to kill James.”
Chapter 20
James.
I must have misheard him. They were going to kill James? How was that even possible? I opened my mouth, then closed it. A thousand different thoughts, questions, and emotions overtook me, leaving me dizzy. Hope that it was true. Anger that it was kept from me. Fear as to what it all meant. Determination that no matter what—I would never let anyone kill him.
“We have to hurry,” Lockwood urged, moving toward me and taking me by the shoulders.
I shook him off and backed away. “You’re crazy. Why wo
uld you say something like that?”
If this was one of his jokes, I would never forgive him for it. I had talked to him a little about James while we worked, and even if I hadn’t shared every single detail of our relationship, Lockwood knew how important James was to me. He may have liked to laugh his way through life, but I would never find teasing me about something I had lost amusing.
“I’ll take you there. We’ll force them to listen to you. I thought they were just going to make him return, but they think he knows too much, and if there’s one thing the people hate around here it’s an abnor—a chosen one. In their eyes, it’s the damn council personified. They voted, and it didn’t go as I expected. I thought if he just left, you could continue making a life here. I knew they would never let him stay, and I didn’t think you’d want to go through that again,” Lockwood tried to explain, his voice desperate, rushed.
No. James was here? He had come for me? What had they done to him while I sat there and kissed Henry over and over again?
Henry. My heart beat so wildly in my chest that I wondered it if was about to give out. I couldn’t even look at him. Because if it was true, then he’d known. He’d known the whole damn time. Every kiss and caress was tainted with his deceit. Was he so determined to keep me that he would act like a monster?
“Henry?” I asked, staring straight ahead. I couldn’t look at him. I just couldn’t. I knew if I did, I would see every intimate moment we had shared, all the kisses that now left me feeling nauseous.
“I’m not sorry.”
Despite my resolve, those words pulled my gaze up. I had to see him. Angry tears filled my eyes. Betrayal. He had betrayed me in the worst possible way.
“Tess…I did what I needed to do,” Henry said. “You were dying, and he showed up like some fucking messiah. He had what you needed, so I begged, begged on my knees, for the leaders to allow him to see you. They wanted to shoot him on the spot.”
“So they let him in and then what?” I asked, my voice dead. Cold. Empty.
“As soon as you started to show signs of improving, they took him,” Lockwood said. “He didn’t even put up a fight. Robert told him to go without a fuss—we both thought it would buy him some points, validate that the only reason he was here was to save you.”
“And then what?” I snarled. My eyes were still focused on Henry, trapped in some silent battle. There wasn’t a single trace of regret to be found in him. I remembered how frenzied and crazed he was during our talk back at the compound.
I’ve been so lonely without you. Did you know that?
I’m going to show them they can’t keep me quiet.
They are nothing, Tess. They aren’t even human.
Did you ever wonder what makes someone a terrorist?
I would give anything for things to be different.
No, of course he didn’t feel bad for what he’d done. For someone who claimed he couldn’t connect with the heathens who made up the community, he sure did share their ideologies. He’d lost his family and Julia and made me his whole new life. And that was a dangerous way to live, because when someone did that, he’d do anything to keep it. Anything. Especially with a person like Henry, who had so much anger inside of him that he wanted to annihilate the council, and he didn’t care if he annihilated himself in the process.
So if keeping me meant that James had to die, so be it. He probably even convinced himself that he was doing me a favor, saving me from loving something he could only see as inhuman, freakish, immoral.
“They want him dead,” Lockwood said, returning my attention to him. “They think he’s here to steal information to take back to the council. The fact that he so easily found us is freaking everyone out. To be honest, it doesn’t shed a good light on any of you. You come here, and now we have two chosen ones in our community? Logical or not, some will blame this on you. So that’s why I agreed with Henry to keep it secret. I figured if you didn’t know, you wouldn’t go running in there like some lovesick teenager, and they would think you were innocent.”
His gift. That was how James had found me. I remembered him telling me that he could sense when something terrible was going to happen to someone he cared for.
The later versions of the chosen ones had been enhanced with certain abilities that the creators felt would be useful during the war. James and I had figured that he was created to be a bodyguard to some higher-ranked member of the council. But when, during his interview, James failed to give the answers the council spent years training him to memorize, he had been demoted to guarding a compound. James had seen the council coming for me after my inspection, and he was able to rally Robert, Henry, and the Isolationists together to extract me from their clutches.
His ability explained how he’d known I was sick, but I still couldn’t figure out how he had found the community.
“They’re going to kill him in the morning,” Lockwood finished.
In a normal battle, it would be near impossible to take down a chosen one. While a shot to the head would do, most anyone who tried would be taken out before they could even aim their gun. Especially those gifted chosen ones.
But James had surrendered willingly. For me.
I felt faint. Dizzy. Like my whole world was no longer my own. It must have been another nightmare brought on by the fever, because there was no way in hell this was happening. If so, that meant I had James back only to lose him again. It meant that the people closest to me had been keeping secrets. It meant Henry had destroyed everything.
Everything.
“Where is he?” I asked, turning on him.
“Don’t know. Don’t care. Because you’re not going anywhere,” Henry insisted. He took a shaky breath, his eyes softening. “I don’t want to be the jackass here, Tess. But somebody has to watch over you. This is a dangerous situation, and you’ve never been able to think straight around him. There are people here who don’t want us to stay, and you running after James to save him is just what they would need to convince the others to kick you out.” He sighed again. “I will do anything to protect you. Even if you hate me for it.”
“You’re deranged if you think you can keep her trapped in this room!” Lockwood yelled, appearing next to me.
“You’re going to stop me? I’d like to see you try. The leaders aren’t going to change their minds, Tess. And Lockwood is right; it’ll only make you look suspicious. You think these people are civilized because they don’t wear their overbearing authority around like a badge of honor? They aren’t that far off from the council, trust me. And now that they’ve started to figure out you aren’t going to repopulate the world for them, they won’t hesitate in standing you right next to that thing when they shoot him down!”
“He isn’t a thing—he’s a person! I’m sorry I love him, I am!” I screamed, not caring who heard me. “But how could you keep this from me? You really thought I would never find out? That I wouldn’t hate you when I did?”
“I didn’t care if you hated me. All I have ever cared about is keeping you safe,” he yelled back. “You can sit here and fight and scream all you want, but you’re not leaving this room.”
The click of the gun made all of us freeze. I spun around to find Sharon in the doorway.
“You might want to rethink that statement there, son,” she said, pointing the gun directly at Henry. “Besides, I don’t really think you get to make that choice for her.”
“I think you need to stay out of this,” Henry replied, suddenly shaky. The weapon scared him as much as it did me. “Please, Sharon. I’m begging you. She is everything. I need her. You need her. Let her stay here. Help me keep her safe.”
I clutched my fist, pulled back my arm, and let it fly right into Henry’s face.
He grabbed his nose and bent forward. I’d worry about my hand later. Right now, only one thing mattered—saving James.
I nodded at Sharon. I had no idea why she was there or would even think about helping me, but I was grateful.
�
��Take me to him.”
Chapter 21
“Can’t let you in,” Eric said.
The leaders were keeping James in a cell they created in another random room of the dining hall. I wondered how many uses they got out of that building.
“They have a right to see each other,” Sharon said. “The boy came all this way to save her. The least we can do is let them have some time together before he dies.” Sharon’s gun rested casually against her shoulder. I didn’t blame her. There was no way she could have come up here and treated Eric with the same force she used on Henry. Eric was one of her people, and Henry had never been that.
I wanted to scream at them both that no one would be dying, but I knew that battle would come later. The only thing I could think about was seeing James. We could figure out a way to save him once I got in there.
That was something we had always been good at—saving each other.
“I don’t really think that thing has any rights at all. Last time I checked, he was part of the group that liked to take away personal rights. So excuse me if I don’t feel particularly bad about not granting him one more night of defiling nice girls who don’t know any better,” barked Eric.
“Don’t be an ass,” Lockwood said.
“If I wanted your opinion, Lock, I would have asked for it. Don’t you have some cows to milk?” Eric snapped back.
“Nope. All my cow-milking duties have been halted so the people I’ve spent my whole life looking up to can unfairly murder someone,” he said.
“I don’t expect you to understand. Tess here is a pretty girl, and I’m sure she spends all day whispering to you how they are so misunderstood. And since you’ve never watched your friends literally being pulled apart by one of these creatures, or seen the things they have done to naturals, you probably believe her. But I’m here to tell you that abnorn is gonna die tomorrow, and he doesn’t get any last requests,” said Eric, looking directly at Lockwood.
Naturals (Lost Souls) Page 16
