“Not a chance,” McNair barked.
“It’s all right. Really. What damage could she do when I have my own army surrounding me?” I joked nervously.
“Are you sure about this?” James asked, placing a hand against my cheek.
I nodded. I gave him a quick kiss and moved to the girl. I couldn’t help but notice her eyes widened as she watched the small display of affection take place between James and me.
I tamped down any sort of nerves that existed inside me as I walked toward the girl. She bit on her bottom lip, and I could tell she was trying to stop from laughing. I wondered what could possibly be so funny.
Once I was in front of her, I crossed my arms in front of my chest. It felt like a flimsy defense, but it was the best I could do. “All right. I’m listening,” I said.
“You have to come closer. I want to whisper it to you,” she replied, throwing me a small wink.
She was enjoying this game.
“I don’t like this,” said Henry.
“It’s fine. She’s trying to scare us. I won’t give her the satisfaction,” I replied, forcing my voice to go hard.
I could hear someone move behind me, gently placing his fingers against my back. James. I sensed it was him without looking. I knew what he was doing—protecting me while giving me my own space. I didn’t blame him.
“I have to go to her. I know it’s idiotic. Crazy,” I acknowledged. “But I can’t let anyone else hear her out. This message was meant for me, and it’s time I stop letting other people stand up for me,” I said without turning back to look at him.
“I know. I’m right here if you need me,” he replied.
I leaned in closer to the girl.
“Not close enough,” she sang, no longer able to hide the demented, twisted smile that took over her face.
I leaned in. The girl placed her mouth close to my ear. “He wishes you would have listened to his first message. You were never supposed to leave the community.”
I felt the sensation before my mind could quite grasp what had occurred. I watched as the girl’s eyes lit up in excitement. She grinned so hard I could almost count every tooth in her mouth. Something fell from her hand to the ground, and she wiggled her fingers in front of me. Teasingly. Joyfully. They were covered in blood.
Once, before my family had entered the compound, a wasp had stung me while I was running around outside. The pain that radiated through my abdomen felt similar…only a thousand times worse. Instead of one wasp, it felt as if I had been attacked and mutilated by a whole army of them.
My knees buckled and I fell forward.
James was there to catch me. “Tess! Tess, are you all right?” he asked frantically.
I shook my head. I didn’t know what was wrong with me, but I knew it wasn’t good.
“Holy shit. That girl stabbed her!” Henry yelled.
The blood. Her maniacal laugh. The object that fell from her hand must have been some sort of knife.
James cradled me in his arms and began to put pressure on my wound. A layer of sweat now covered my forehead and dripped down my face. Was this going to be the way I died? In the woods, no home, so close to having a family only to lose it without even being able to try and fight?
Robert crouched down next to me. “How bad is it? Let me see.”
I turned my head to the girl. “Why?” I tried to ask over her continuous laughter echoing through the woods. Before she could answer, her head snapped back and blood sprayed into the air. The girl’s laugh could no longer be heard.
Eric had shot her.
“What did you do that for? We could have gotten answers from her! She singled out Tess. She was sent here for a purpose,” Lockwood said.
“She wasn’t ever going to give us any answers,” Eric replied dully. He clearly felt nothing about killing the girl. Just like he felt nothing when he killed the deformed chosen one during our journey to the community. An enemy was an enemy.
“Eric’s right. That girl was here for two reasons: to gather information and to stop Tess from going to see George,” said McNair. “Now let me see that wound.” James shifted so McNair could inspect the damage, but still held on tightly to my hand. McNair ripped my shirt and began to poke and prod where the knife had stabbed me. I tried not to gasp in pain as he went to work, but it was damn near impossible not to.
“So, this George sent the girl, then? Was he also the one who left the message for Tess on the body that Eric and the boys found?” Lockwood asked.
“The creepy message sure sounds a lot like George,” James said, “but not this. If he wanted to take Tess down, he would make sure it was as personal as possible. He wouldn’t send anyone else to do it. Not his style.”
“Besides, it appears the girl was trying to stop Tess from meeting George. This wound isn’t life threatening. It’s intended to slow you down. Just like maybe the message on the body was trying to keep you from leaving the community,” said McNair.
“McNair’s right. From what Tess has told me, you thought the message on the body was a taunt, but maybe it was a warning. Someone was trying to scare you into staying put in the community, letting you know how dangerous it was for you to leave. I know George. If he brought Louisa out here, he wants something for her. And if his goal was to hurt Tess, he would do it himself,” James said with certainty.
“Here.” Eric shoved something in McNair’s face. “I made sure to pack some first aid stuff. Needle and thread. Sorry, Tess, you don’t get to pick a color.”
“So…she’s going to be okay, then?” Henry asked.
“Yeah. She’ll be sore, and she’ll have to watch it so she don’t tear these stitches,” McNair answered.
“Looks like we’ll be setting up camp here,” said Lockwood.
I tried to sit but James gently placed a restrictive hand on my shoulder. “I know,” he said, meeting my eyes.
“We can’t camp here. The meeting with George is set for a few hours from now. He has my sister. We have to go,” I protested.
“Don’t be ridiculous. You were just stabbed,” argued Henry.
“Am I going to die?” I asked, looking up at McNair, choosing to ignore Henry. Someone who lost his family so long ago couldn’t possibly understand why I would do anything to save mine now.
McNair sighed. “No, you won’t die. But someone obviously doesn’t want you to go to this meeting. The message with the list of names was meant to keep you from leaving the community. This girl tried to hurt you, so you wouldn’t make your meeting to get your sister. Someone else is playing in this game, Tess. We can turn back. No one would blame you. You’ve been through enough.”
I shook my head. “Stitch me up.”
Chapter 32
“How you feeling?” Henry asked quietly, keeping his distance as I washed my face with the water from the stream.
“Like I just got stabbed,” I said, glancing at him over my shoulder. When he didn’t reply, I turned back around and splashed more water on my face.
“Maybe you shouldn’t go to this meeting.”
I whipped around to face him and immediately regretted it. I gritted my teeth in pain. “That’s not an option, and you know it,” I panted.
“Calm down,” he said, stalking toward me. “I don’t need you to bust your stitches. I wasn’t suggesting we abandon her. I was merely saying that maybe you stay behind with Lockwood. The rest of us could go to this George and demand he release Louisa.”
“You obviously don’t know George,” I scoffed.
“I’m not afraid,” he replied, his voice steady, firm.
I stared at him. My once best friend. He could die today. “You should be scared,” I said softly, suddenly wishing he wasn’t with me on this journey.
“I’m only worried for you.”
“I understand, but that doesn’t mean I’m not going.”
“Do you know how unbelievably selfish you are?” he busted out. “This is just unreal. I’m not even the one who should be ha
ving this conversation with you. Where is James? How come he isn’t here demanding you stay? Doesn’t sound like much of a hero to me.”
“You would think that! That’s why we never would have worked,” I replied, my voice rising.
“Please! We were doomed from the start. How long did it take before you jumped straight back into his arms?”
“I was ready to jump back the minute I found out you lied to me,” I argued, my voice cold.
“Even if I had told you about James’s imprisonment, things would have turned out the same. You were using me.”
“That’s not fair, Henry. You know it wasn’t like that.”
“Bullshit. It was. But that’s what you do best. You use everyone, whether it be to make yourself feel better or as an excuse for your screwed- up behavior. You used what happened to your father as your excuse to fear the council. You used Robert as an excuse to hate Emma, because you were so damn jealous of her goodness that you couldn’t stand it. You used me to fill the void left by James.”
I tried to ignore how hard it was to swallow. How much I knew he was right.
“And you’re using him, too.”
“Just like you used Julia, right?” I charged. “You helped her kill those children, but I didn’t see you next to her on the platform!”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he replied through clenched teeth.
I threw my hands in the air. “I wouldn’t, would I? You’ve got so many secrets that I don’t know if any part of you is real. Do you even remember who you are anymore?”
Henry took two giant steps toward me, his face inches from mine. He took a deep breath. His hands were shaking. “We don’t have time for this conversation right now, Tess. This isn’t why I came to talk to you.”
“Then what did you want to talk to me about?”
“I don’t want you to die,” he replied, his voice cracking.
Even if I would forever doubt Henry’s words because of his betrayal, I couldn’t doubt the truth he held in his eyes. All of my anger melted away. “I am such a brat,” I admitted. “You’re right. About it all…or at least the parts about me. You’re not right about him. I don’t deserve James, and most of the time I don’t deserve you, either.”
“Tess—”
“Let me finish. Please. I always blamed everyone else for who I was. The council. My mother. Father. You. But Emma grew up in the same world, and she was the sweetest, most caring person I’ve ever met. Sometimes I wonder if this is how I’ll be the rest of my life.”
“You won’t,” Henry said, reaching forward and wiping a lone tear from my cheek.
“How do you know?”
“Because I’ll be there to tell you that you’re being an ass,” he replied, forcing a smile.
“I don’t want you to die, either,” I said, another tear sliding down my cheek.
Henry nodded, his own eyes beginning to water. “Then, let’s make a promise.”
“What promise?” I asked, my chin trembling.
“Let’s promise not to die.”
“Does anyone else see that?” Robert asked, coming to a full stop.
I didn’t want to admit it, but despite not being able to see what Robert was talking about, I was glad we were taking a break. The pain in my side had settled into a dull ache, but it was constant. James wrapped his arm around my waist, and I laid my head against his shoulder.
“It looks like paper,” James replied.
“Did you two eat some mushrooms you found in the woods?” Eric asked, resting his rifle against his chest. Clearly, he was welcoming the break as well. “Bad idea. I did that once on a hike for supplies, and let me tell you…whew, the things I saw. One time, I swear, I saw these fairy things with the largest bo—”
“Nobody needs to hear about that,” McNair cut him off, throwing Eric a warning glance.
“I wouldn’t mind hearing a bit more about it,” Lockwood joked, raising his hand.
I couldn’t help but laugh a little, and when I caught Henry’s eye, he was laughing, too. The problems between us hadn’t just disappeared because we screamed at each other in the woods, but at least we knew one thing for certain—we would do anything to protect the other. Everything else could wait.
“I just meant that I don’t see a damn thing,” Eric replied, standing a little straighter under McNair’s cold stare.
“Well, our eyesight is a bit better,” Robert pointed out.
“Right,” said Eric, rolling his eyes. “You said it looked like paper, James? Last time I checked, I think even Tess, stabbed or not, could take down some paper.”
“Eric’s right; we need to keep moving,” McNair spoke up. He didn’t wait for anyone to agree with him, but instead promptly began to trek on through the woods toward the meeting point.
Lockwood whistled. “Eric’s right. Two words that I never thought I’d hear.”
It was a good thirty minutes before we reached the place that caused Robert’s and James’s hesitation. They had been right—the ground was covered in hundreds and hundreds of pages. Ripped. Torn. Tattered. Upon closer inspection, they were pages torn from a book—scattered along the ground like confetti from a child’s birthday.
Emma. She always made birthdays special.
I forced the memory away. I couldn’t think of one dead sister while I was in danger of losing the other.
“Yep. Paper. Scary,” Eric replied drolly, kicking at the scraps with his feet.
“The council sure did think so,” Henry said darkly, referencing the fact the council had forbidden naturals to read. I knew without looking at him that the need for revenge was back. The closer he got to our old world, the more the fire inside of him raged.
And in that moment, I knew even I wasn’t enough to put it out.
“Wasn’t so much the paper, friend, but the words printed on it,” Lockwood said, bending down to examine the writing on the small white slivers.
“I don’t like this,” James whispered to me. “It doesn’t feel right.”
I nodded. It didn’t. Not at all.
“How could this end up out here?” McNair asked, crouching down next to Lockwood, trying to decipher the origin of the words.
“Well, we did just have a bit of a run-in with a psycho girl. She couldn’t have just come from nowhere. We know someone sent her here,” Eric said.
“Yes, but why would she rip pages from a book and leave them lying around the ground for us to find?” Henry asked.
“Didn’t I just say she was crazy?” said Eric.
“Where would she get the book?” I asked.
“Probably from the same person who gave her the knife to stab you,” Eric countered.
“Which means she did this for a reason. The girl stabbed me to stop me from going to see George. Someone also sent the message on the body to stop me from leaving the community. All this,” I said, motioning to the paper, “can’t just be random. No one wanders out of the compound unless they’re an Isolationist or up to no good. The naturals are taught to fear the wilds.”
Henry nodded. “I think Tess is right. Any luck figuring out what book these pieces are from?” he asked, joining Lockwood and McNair on the ground.
Lockwood sighed. “No. They’ve been torn up so much, there’s no way I can tell what the words say.”
“Does this mean anything to you?” James asked me.
I shook my head. “Maybe if I knew what book,” I replied with a shrug. James gave me a quick kiss on the cheek before starting to shift through the papers himself.
“One last bit of fun before the big show, huh?” Henry asked, coming to stand next to me.
“Maybe Eric’s right. Maybe this is just something random. We’re all just being paranoid.”
“Eric’s right. Did you hear that, Lock? Tess said Eric’s right. That must be a record,” Henry called out. “Guess I should go aid the paranoia.”
Robert joined me as soon as Henry left. I turned to him. “Did you all make some
unspoken agreement that I shouldn’t be left alone?” I teased.
“You did lose a lot of blood,” Robert replied matter-of-factly.
We stood next to each other in a comfortable silence until the memory of Emma ceased to obey my command that it stay hidden.
“It reminds me of Emma,” I admitted quietly to Robert. I felt him stiffen next to me at the mention of my sister’s name; no doubt it was still painful for him to talk of her. “When Louisa was little, before the council took my dad, he and my mom fought. A lot. She thought he was putting our family in danger, and he, I assume, thought she was too much trouble. With her drinking and everything. Though he never talked about it to me. Things got pretty bad between them, and they forgot Louisa’s birthday. Not that we made a big deal about those things back then, but usually Mom made a cake. We sang. Dad somehow found a way to get us a present. But this time, they just forgot.”
“And Emma took care of it?” Robert asked, smiling, knowing how good and true my sister was.
I returned his smile. “Of course she did. She woke me up, panicked. She told me there wasn’t anything in the kitchen to make breakfast, much less a cake this year. Mom was passed out, and Dad was nowhere to be found. With no cake, no parents, no present, she was so worried Louisa would have the worst birthday ever. And Emma just loved her so much.”
“But she came up with something. Didn’t she?” he asked.
I grinned. “Of course. This is Emma we’re talking about. Earlier in the week, the council had shown images on the television of this, like, party, marching along down the street. There was music and festive colors and costumes and everything. They called it a parade. It was during a special on war, discussing how great our nation once was and how great it could be again. The parade was in honor of those returning from war. Anyway, they had this stuff called confetti fall from the sky. Louisa just sat and stared at the television in awe. She loved how the paper danced through the air. She reached out toward the television hoping, praying she could catch some in her little hand.”
“Emma made confetti for Louisa,” said Robert. He was right, of course. It made me happy to know how well he understood my sister.
Naturals (Lost Souls) Page 23
