Aven's Dream (7 page)

“Hey, pass me one of those,” Scott called.

He caught a can in his hand, and I cast a wary glance at the two figures across the room. Blood rushed in my ears, and I wondered who would hear me if I screamed. There were people shouting and laughing all over the house. No one would hear me, and the chance of making it past, not one, but three guys, was unlikely. But I wasn’t going down without a fight. I took another slow step backwards and tried to steady myself.

“I want to leave. Now,” I said with as much volume as I could muster.

I tried to keep my voice from shaking, but I had run out of air.

“In a while, new girl,” Scott said, his tone hardening.

He began to advance slowly, the look in his eyes making my stomach clench. I glanced again at the other two. They hadn’t moved. Yet. Swallowing, I prepared to make a run for the balcony, ready to kick anyone that got in my way, when I felt a rush of cool air. Scott turned and stopped suddenly. The other two turned as well and were staring toward the balcony at something I couldn’t see.

“H-hey,” Scott stuttered, fixated on something outside.

Curiosity getting the better of me, I craned to see past him. My mouth opened. The doors to the balcony stood open, and Will Kincaid sat casually on the edge of the railing, his blond hair a little wilder than I remembered.

“This is a private party,
dude
,” Scott said, struggling to regain his composure. “How long have you been hanging out there, dipshit?”

“Long enough.”

Will’s words hung in the air, and I fervently hoped that Scott and the others would depart now that there was a witness standing right there. As unexplainable as Will’s appearance was, I was eternally grateful. But I couldn’t get myself to move.

“Can you count?” Scott snapped. “We’re going to fucken destroy you if you don’t get out of here.
Now
.”

“No problem. But the girl leaves with me.”

Something in Will’s tone made goose bumps break out on my skin. It held a threat that seemed far from empty.
Is he crazy or overly confident
? I wondered bleakly.

“
What
?” Scott uttered a sharp bark of laughter. He shot a look at the other two. “Do you believe this asshole?”

The larger of the two figures leaning against the wall straightened up.

“You heard me,” Will said.

His voice was steady. He didn’t sound worried in the least. I still couldn’t see him well from behind Scott, who began lumbering toward the balcony. My eyes darted to the other two. They remained where they were, taking long draws off of the beer cans they were holding. I contemplated how much damage I could do if I jumped on Scott from behind. Not very much, I guessed, since he must have outweighed me by nearly a hundred and fifty pounds. Then it occurred to me that the best idea was to run for the door to get help, but I was still rooted in place by shock.

I watched in slow motion as Scott crouched low, like he was getting ready to push Will off the balcony. Screaming, I squeezed my eyes shut automatically. When I opened them again, I saw a bulky form hurtling through the air in the opposite direction and heard two more thuds and an awful cracking sound. I spun around dizzily, trying to make out shapes in the purplish light. Looking up, I was startled to find Will beside me. I looked up at him in confusion. He was in one piece. Staring across the room, I saw three crumpled figures in the shadows.

“How?”

“You have to trust me,” he said, taking my hand and propelling me toward the balcony’s railing. “Close your eyes
now
.”

Too numb to question him, I just shut my eyes and put my faith in someone I had met only a day before as his arm wrapped around my waist. I inhaled as my feet left the ground. It felt like I was levitating. Reluctantly, I opened my eyes and looked down. I was on solid ground. We were standing on the landscaped hillside at the back of the house. Warily, I looked up twenty feet or so to where we had been only moments ago. Clenching my teeth together, I commanded my dinner to stay where it was.

The echoes of the party sounded distant. Dazed and sick to my stomach, I looked a few feet away to where Will was standing. His eyes shone in the moonlight. The glowing, brilliant blue color was hypnotic, but a second later, the sound of a siren in the distance made me snap to attention, and I turned toward the noise. It was getting louder. I looked to Will again. In the pale moonlight, he looked like a ghost, and I almost expected him to disappear like a figment of my imagination.

“Shall we?” he said.

Before I could say anything, he took my hand again. I stumbled along beside him, trying not to fall flat on my face as we negotiated broken branches and stones littering the path through the woods bordering Jason Everett’s palatial house. After a few minutes, we came out onto an empty road adjacent to Jason’s street. I could still hear the music from the party, but just barely. Looking ahead, I saw a motorcycle parked a few yards away. The blood drained from my cheeks when Will began moving toward it.

“Would you like a ride?” he asked with the same playful tone from the evening before in the park.

I swallowed and stared uneasily at the motorcycle.

“Is it safe?” I gulped, still trying to gather my wits.

A voice in my head screamed back,
Of course it isn’t, dumbass!

“I think almost anything is safer than the company you were keeping back there,” Will said, nodding in the direction of Jason’s house.

His voice betrayed an edge, but no malice—toward me at least. I nodded weakly, and seconds later a helmet appeared in his hands. He pulled it over my head before removing his jacket and sliding it over my shoulders. My jacket, I remembered with a jolt, was in Sean’s car. In my preoccupation, I didn’t even notice Will getting on the bike. He offered his hand, and without thinking, I reached out. Seconds later, I was behind him, my arms instinctively wrapped around his waist. The motorcycle roared to life, and I shivered.
What am I doing
? I thought desperately.

“Ready?” Will called over the smooth purr of the engine.

“As ready as I’ll ever be,” I mumbled a fraction of a second before we shot out onto the road.

This was the first time I had ever been on a motorcycle in my entire life, and I knew with absolute certainty that my dad would kill me—or at least never let me out of the house again—if he ever found out. I gripped Will fiercely, my body glued to his, afraid that if I loosened my stranglehold even slightly, I would go hurtling into the blackness.

I shivered as the night air whipped by. Through the visor of the helmet, I watched an endless stream of densely packed trees. We flew past the city limits, and after a few minutes I didn’t recognize where we were. It could have been another planet, for all I knew. Will maneuvered the bike expertly through increasingly hairpin turns as we climbed rapidly in elevation. I looked over his shoulder and shuddered when the speedometer’s needle reached past a hundred miles an hour on a straightaway. My heart hammered in my chest, but I was sure that I was safer on the back of his motorcycle than I had been with Scott Adams.

As though pulled by invisible strings, the bike unexpectedly veered off the main road onto an obviously lesser traveled path leading deeper into the hills and away from any sign of civilization. We hadn’t passed a single vehicle since crossing the city limits. Another minute passed before the bike abruptly broke through the trees and began to slow. I tried to relax my grip, but my muscles wouldn’t respond.

When the bike came to a smooth stop, Will waited while I pried my hands stiffly from his waist. He turned and held out his hand so I could climb down. I reached out shakily, but the instant my feet touched the ground, my knees buckled. Something shot out and grasped the back of Will’s jacket before I could topple over. I looked to the bike, but Will had already climbed off and was standing beside me. With his free hand, he unfastened the helmet, and I slid it off. My hands shook as I handed it to him. He studied me and then slowly released his hold on the back of his jacket. The sensation in my legs was peculiar, like I had just landed after flying.

“First time on a bike?” Will asked pleasantly, reading my mind.

My head was still spinning.

“Do you always drive like that? We could have died,” I gasped.

He smiled darkly, but said nothing. I looked around at our surroundings for the first time. The valley floor was spread out before us, twinkling lights interspersed with large patches of darkness. During the day, I imagined it was possible to see all the way to the coast from where we stood, but I still wasn’t sure where exactly that was. I tried to guess where Winters was in relation to where we were, but I had no freaking clue. I stared in awe at the view. It was beautiful, but there was something else magical about this spot. It felt like another sphere of reality.

“This is … incredible,” I whispered, awestruck.

“I thought you might enjoy the view.”

His voice came from farther away than I had expected, and I turned, searching for him. He stood several feet away from me. But he was staring in a way that made my breath catch. Flustered, I turned and took a few steps toward the view. Then, just as I was about to set my foot on the ground, Will’s hand shot out of nowhere and caught my arm.

“Let’s step back, shall we?” he asked evenly. “Unless you can fly, that is.”

He pointed down, and my heart thudded again as I looked and saw that we were standing precariously at the edge of a very sheer cliff. Will held my arm until we stepped several feet back. Then he let go. Looking around, I saw that the motorcycle was parked in front of a large field encircled by evergreens so tall that they appeared to blend in with the night sky. I walked to the grass and leaned over to pat the ground before sitting down. Will followed me, but he remained standing.

“How did you find this place?” I asked, looking around again.

We were definitely in the middle of nowhere.

“Intuition.”

He smiled enigmatically, and I smirked.

“My family lived here a long time ago,” he amended. “This is one of my favorite places.”

“I can see why. It’s beautiful.” I paused. “Wait. You’ve lived here before?”

“My family was one of the first to settle here.”

My mouth dropped open as I envisioned the house on Kincaid Lane.

“Was the street in town named after your family or something?”

“Something like that.”

“And that house—the huge, creepy old mansion … Is
that
your family’s?”

He grew quiet. Watching him, I still couldn’t get over how the moonlight highlighted his golden skin tone. He looked like a perfect statue until he spoke again.

“It was, but no one’s lived there for a long time,” he said finally.

My eyebrows pinched together as I thought it over.

“So, where
do
you live then?”

“I own a home outside of town. I’m staying there.”

“
You
own a home?” I asked in disbelief.

My phone buzzed, and a jolt of panic raced through me.

“Oh my god!
What time is it
?”

“Eleven-thirty,” Will said without glancing at the expensive-looking watch on his wrist.

I took out my phone and saw a text from Sean. I groaned.

“I was supposed to go home with my friend tonight,” I explained.

I typed a message to Sean telling him that I had gotten a ride home, wincing when I remembered that we were supposed to get together tomorrow to study.
Great
. He was going to grill me endlessly about tonight.

“I’m sure your friend has more pressing concerns, given the police were on the way to that house. He’ll be too distracted to question your absence.”

Suddenly remembering exactly how and why we left the party, I jumped up.

“Tonight, how did you know—”

“Where to find you? I saw you upstairs, remember?”

“But how did you get into the room? The door was locked.”

Memories that suddenly seemed insane came rushing back to me. I had been so relieved by Will’s miraculous appearance that I hadn’t questioned the …
impossible
.

“I flew,” he said with a straight face.

I remembered closing my eyes, the sensation of my feet leaving the ground, and then instantaneously we were standing at the back of Jason’s house. I tried to remember seeing a rope, ladder, trellis—anything. But I couldn’t. It had been just twenty feet of empty air. I struggled to find some rational explanation. Will smiled again, and I smirked.
Two can play this game
.

“I see. And do you possess any other superpowers?”

“Would it change your opinion of me?” he asked in a strange way that made me shiver.

I stopped again, speechless, and stared at him. There was no question that he had saved me, but I had no idea why or how. Really, I didn’t know anything about him. I looked around. Here I was with a perfect stranger, miles from anything, and I still didn’t have the good sense to be afraid. Our conversation had taken a strange turn, and I was starting to feel the same way I had when Will first arrived in class—like I was slipping off the edge of the world.