Awaken (9 page)

Noah’s eyebrows rose in surprise. “Huh?”

“Diane, we’ll–” Baylie started.

“It’s that or you stay home.”

Baylie turned away, grimacing.

“What’s going on?” Noah asked cautiously.

“Chloe and I were planning to head over to
the bookshop where Maddox works,” Baylie explained. “But–”

“There was another kidnapping,” Diane cut in.
“And not to be anti-feminist or something, but I’d really prefer it
if the girls weren’t out there alone. So would you go with
them?”

Seeming a bit uncomfortable, Noah looked
between us all and then shrugged. “Yeah, sure.”

“Good. Thank you.”

Diane went back to the sink and turned on the
water.

Noah eyed her skeptically and then glanced to
me and Baylie. “You, uh, want to head out now?”

Baylie nodded and rose from her seat by the
kitchen island. Not knowing what to say, I followed her and Noah
out of the room. It only took a moment for me and Baylie to run
upstairs and grab our things, and then we were on our way.

The store was just opening as Noah pulled the
car to a stop, and the streets were mostly empty. In the park
across the road, a few people sat finishing their morning coffee or
talking on their cell phones. The bright sunlight made the shops
along the street seem lively and inviting, and cool shadows beneath
the store awnings added to the appeal. Leaving Baylie to tie
Daisy’s leash to a bike rack, I headed eagerly for the bookstore,
happily noting the books propped on display stands in the window
or, in one case, partially covered by the cat sleeping in front of
it.

A ding rang out as Noah pulled open the door,
and behind the counter, Maddox glanced up.

“Hey there,” he called, smiling.

“Hi,” Baylie said. She slipped past me to
walk toward him.

I trailed after her, my eyes scanning the
shelves.

There was something magical about places
filled with books. An energy to being surrounded by so many words
and ideas that whispered with each other and shouted at each other,
that agreed and disagreed and contradicted each other. The
combination created a pressure, a weight of presence that hinted at
all the opinions and thoughts that made up the world, and that
would take so much more than a lifetime to fully appreciate.

In a strange way, it bore a small similarity
to the sea.

I wandered farther into the store, leaving
Noah and Baylie chatting with Maddox by the register. Used books
and new books alike crowded the shelves, and tables filled the
space between the rows. I wound deeper into the store, skimming my
gaze across the titles and covers and enjoying the fact that,
besides one other store employee putting away books nearby, the
early hour meant I was alone.

“Um… can I help you find something?”

I turned. One arm cradling a stack of books
from his shelving cart, the employee eyed me questioningly.

“No thanks,” I said, smiling. The guy looked
like the staple of great bookstores everywhere: a pale-skinned,
grad student type with messy hair and a rumpled tartan shirt who
probably spent more time on books than personal grooming.

“Okay, well just let me know if you need
anything.”

I nodded and then went back to the books. A
hardback lying sideways on the shelf caught my eye and, grinning, I
picked it up to put it in its proper place.

A shadow moved at the corner of my eye. I
glanced toward it.

Something slammed into my head.

Red light and stars burst across my vision
and then the sharp-edged shelves hit me, sending heat rushing down
my face. The world tilted and the ground came next, and pain shot
through my shoulder as it took the brunt of the impact with the
thinly carpeted concrete.

A shadow fell between me and the glaring
store lights, resolving into messy hair and brilliant blue eyes.
Meaty flesh clamped over my mouth, pressing down on my lips and
nose and choking out any chance of a scream. The other hand grabbed
me, wrenching me up from the floor, and then a tartan-clad arm
wrapped me, crushing my chest. I tried to break the grip, to move
my arms and grab at his face or tear at his hair, but nothing was
responding correctly and the blackened blur of my vision was
devouring everything.

“Hey!”

Baylie’s shout was followed by an agonized
scream, and suddenly the grip on me vanished. I plummeted down,
hitting the ground hard enough to make the darkness swirl.
Footsteps thudded past me, and more shouts came, while the ringing
in my ears tried to smother everything in a rush of pain and white
noise.

“Chloe? Chloe!”

Fabric pressed to the side of my face and
instinctively, I jerked away. The blackness went to gray, and
through the clouds, I saw Noah crouched beside me.

“Chloe, can you hear me?”

I opened my mouth to speak, and choked.

“Baylie’s calling 911,” he said. “EMTs will
be here soon. Just stay still.”

Noah looked up at something, and I tried to
follow his gaze. By the stockroom door, Maddox appeared, his face
flushed from running and his expression furious.

“Got away,” he growled.

For a moment, he met Noah’s eyes, saying
nothing and through the fog, I couldn’t read the exchange. But then
Noah blinked and looked back down at me.

“Stay with me, okay?” he urged. “Just hang
on.”

I shivered. The ringing in my ears was
getting louder, and blackness was creeping back across my gaze.

And everything hurt. God help me, everything
hurt.

Blackness swelled. Weights pulled at my
eyelids as the ringing grew louder, drowning the sound of Noah
calling my name and dragging me down till darkness took the pain
away.

Chapter Eight

It’d been a few days since I’d reached Santa
Lucina and I was bored.

Really bored.

And I couldn’t get that girl out of my
mind.

For a while, I’d stayed near the ocean,
wandering between the beach and the water while waiting to see if
there was any change in the latter that would signal she’d
returned. Nothing much had come of it, though. The town was on edge
about something, and the tourists on the beach were less friendly
than usual. Most met any questions I asked with muttered responses
or suspicious replies, while a few had attempted to call the cops,
seeming to find the fact I was looking for an auburn-haired girl
something worth that level of alarm. After the third girl I’d tried
to talk to had been hustled off by her friends – with plenty of
wary glares in my direction – I’d given up and decided to head into
town, just on the off chance I’d see anything.

Which was when I heard the ambulance.

I’d been walking past the downtown shops,
enjoying the early morning and hoping to catch a glimpse of that
girl or anyone who might’ve been with her, when the howl of sirens
cut through the air. The sound drew closer and then an ambulance
shot past the intersection in front of me in a blur of white sides
and flashing lights. I followed, and found the vehicle pulling to a
stop only a few hundred yards down the street.

I hung back, studying them from the corner.
People rushed from the ambulance and ran into the store, while
several others jogged to the back of the vehicle and threw open the
doors to retrieve supplies. My brow furrowed as I watched them race
in with a stretcher, and I wondered if I should just leave.

And then they hurried back outside.

It was the girl. She lay on the stretcher
with blood covering her face and some kind of padded brace pinning
her head, but it was her. The blond guy trailed the stretcher from
the shop, with the other girl from the park clinging to his arm
like it was the only thing keeping her standing. Police surrounded
them, trying to ask questions, and then an older boy came out of
the store, angrily interrupting the barrage with questions of his
own.

The people loaded her into the back of the
ambulance, the doors slammed and then they rushed to the front. The
vehicle sped off.

I stared. She’d come back, obviously, or
maybe she’d never left, but now it looked like someone had attacked
her.

And from the blood, they’d done a pretty good
job of it too.

By the shop, the other girl was crying, while
the older guy yelled something at the police about how the girl
could die, so they needed to follow her.

A curse slipped from me in Yvarian before I
could stop it. I didn’t know what had happened and I didn’t care.
She was dehaian. She was possibly dying. It was true she was
surrounded by humans, which was bizarre in itself and meant that if
I brought any kind of help beyond what they’d understand, I was
risking the exposure of our people, but dammit, she was in trouble.
I couldn’t just do
nothing
.

And I wasn’t going to let this all end with
‘and then some bastard killed her’.

I ran for the coast.

Streets blurred around me, taking too long to
pass and stretching a million miles to the horizon. As the beach
finally came into view, I swerved, avoiding the morning tourists
and aiming for the most empty area I could manage. Wet sand sucked
at my feet as I raced into the waves, and as the breakers rushed
in, I dove, letting the water swallow me whole.

The change swept through me, dissolving the
clothes I’d been too rushed to bother removing. Ignoring the
debris, I kicked hard, rocketing forward and staying low so no
trace of my fin broke the surface. The shallows sped by, and then I
turned, racing for the supplies I’d hidden farther up the
coast.

Minutes slid past, and for all my speed, the
miles never seemed to end.

I barely knew this girl.

Annoyed, I pushed the thought away. So I had
to know someone in order to help them? Since when had
that
been a prerequisite of giving a damn?

The underwater portions of the cave came into
view. Ducking inside, I swam up through the seawater that never
dropped below the lower half of the place. Water-worn hollows and
ledges scored the walls, and the sun didn’t penetrate beyond the
low archway that formed the entrance, providing countless shadowed
hiding spaces. I drew up fast at the far end of the cave and
started climbing, my tail becoming legs as I went.

My bag was where I’d left it a few days
before, tucked into my usual hiding place on one of the uppermost
ledges. Yanking it open, I scanned the contents, fear spiking for a
moment at the thought I’d left the medicine behind when I’d
packed.

And then I spotted the container at the
bottom of the bag. Letting out a breath in relief, I sealed the bag
again and then slung it over my shoulder, knowing I’d need the
clothes inside when I returned to town. From the ledge, I dropped
into the water and took off, racing back to Santa Lucina again.

I really hoped she didn’t die before I got
there.

Grimacing, I pushed myself to go faster. If
she died, then I hadn’t broken too many laws and Dad wouldn’t be
too pissed. And if she didn’t, then the laws be damned, I’d have
helped save her life. Dehaian medicine was powerful, drawing as it
did on magic from deep beneath the water, and given how she’d
looked at that store, the sieranchine in my bag was probably the
best chance she had.

Assuming it didn’t send her into shock and
kill her, since that was its effect on non-dehaians and she wasn’t
exactly like anyone I’d ever seen.

I kicked harder, rocketing through the water.
I’d be careful. Try a bit at first and see how she reacted. She
was
dehaian, even if she did weird things to the water. She
should be fine.

The beach was annoyingly busy by the time I
returned.

Glancing around beneath the waves, I
hesitated, listening hard to the sounds from above the water, and
then I darted toward what seemed like the least occupied stretch of
sand. At a thought, my scales shed away, becoming legs and a dark
imitation of swim trunks. Slipping from the water, I hurried up to
the beach, hoping no one wondered why they hadn’t seen me go into
the water before I’d come back out – or why I had a bag over my
shoulder in the ocean.

But I didn’t have time to worry about it. She
could be dying.

Jogging as fast as I dared over the sand, I
fumbled a shirt and sandals from the bag, and then tugged them on
as I headed for the street. At the stoplight, a cluster of people
waited, several of whom eyed me skeptically when I hurried up.

“Where’s the nearest hospital?” I asked the
least tourist-looking one of them.

The woman blinked. “Hospital?”

“Yes, hospital. Where’s the closest one?”

She hesitated, and then pointed. “A few miles
that way.”

The stoplight changed, and the walk symbol
popped up.

“Thanks,” I called as I took off running
again.

Streets and miles and maddening stoplights
passed, until at long last I rounded a corner and the white walls
of the hospital came into view. Slowing, I adjusted the bag on my
shoulder and strode inside.

It wasn’t going to be easy to get near
her.

I scowled, shoving the thought away. I’d
figure something out.

Following the signs on the walls, I headed
for the emergency department. The building was a maze, and if it
hadn’t been for the sense of the ocean behind me, I would have lost
all awareness of direction by the time I reached the right
place.

In the entryway, I hesitated. Across from me,
a young brunette sat at a desk with brass letters overhead that
marked the area as reception. A pair of large sliding doors to my
right led to the outside – an entrance I hadn’t seen at all when
I’d reached the building, but that I’d damn well use to get out of
this labyrinth once I was done. In the glass-walled waiting area
nearby, the two guys from the store sat, casting annoyed glances to
the television I could hear playing in the room and looking as
though they could barely keep from pacing. An older man and a
police officer were with them, the latter of whom was still asking
questions from the look of it, though the pair who’d driven her
away in a car several days before were nowhere to be seen. Another
cop stood by the double doors to my left that blocked off the
remainder of the emergency department.