Broken Gates (11 page)

“Hey,” Jeremy’s voice made me jump about a mile and I looked up to see him carrying a tray with milk and cookies on it.

“God, you scared me.” I chuckled nervously at him.

“Sorry. But the good news is that I bring a peace offering from Jenna. She wanted me to drop these off on my way to workout. She even made me promise not to steal any for myself.” He smiled at me and set the tray on my nightstand. “I’ll come by on my way back, okay? To talk”

“Yeah, okay,” I interjected before he could finish. I was letting my nerves get the best of me and it was probably better if he just went to go workout so he wasn’t in danger himself.

Jeremy eyed me curiously, probably picking up on my nervous energy. “She also said to tell you she’d be down to check on you in a bit, and if you wanted to talk, then she’d be ready.”

Yeah, I bet she’d be down to check on me—to make sure I was dead. I had to fight back the laughter that bubbled up in my chest. “Yep, I’ll be here . . . ready to talk.”

Jeremy gave me one last curious glance before ducking out of my room. “Okay, I’ll see you in a bit.”

I didn’t know what was weirder . . . the fact that Jeremy seemed so cavalier about how I had tried to fry his lady love earlier, like we’d had a normal girl fight, or that my best girlfriend was trying to kill me. Or maybe the weirdest thing of all was how I was now taking all of these things in stride, like they were totally normal. Oh yeah, my life was definitely not turning out the way I had thought it would, not by a long shot.

“Khol,” I called out on shaky breath. “I need you.”

Khol appeared almost before the last syllable of my request had left my mouth, and he rushed to me with worry etched into the furrows of his face. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

I looked up at him and tried to mentally record every last detail about him, from his long auburn hair, to his high strong cheekbones that flowed up to his dragon green eyes. When I was with Khol I always felt so tiny in comparison to his large proportions, something that I’d always liked. He made me feel safe and protected, like I was the most precious thing in the world to him. I was going to miss him . . . more than I wanted to admit to myself. Khol had become a constant in my life from the first day he had literally popped into it. I loved Bryn too, but the fact was Bryn had been ripped away from me when I had needed him the most. I knew it wasn’t his fault, and I never blamed him, but he didn’t have an excuse now for walking away from me. Because he had done just that . . . walked away from me. His intentions might be sincere, and he might be doing it out of love for me, but that still didn’t change the fact that I felt like he had abandoned me and that I couldn’t trust him to always be there for me. I knew emphatically that Khol would never ever walk away from me, no matter what. He’d proved it time and time again, and truth be told, that was very important to me, especially with me having a baby on the way. I wish I wasn’t going to have to leave him behind soon. It wasn’t like I had a choice if I wanted to live, according to my birth mother, but it still didn’t make me feel any better about the situation. How would he react when I was gone and he couldn’t find me? My chest tightened as I thought about what he might do. I shook myself internally. I had to deal with the task at hand. “Jenna is trying to kill me. I mean not Jenna really . . . but a Rider got into her.”

Khol studied me with sharp eyes. “Are you sure?”

I swallowed the lump in my throat. “Yes, my birth mother left me a letter. She told me a Rider had slipped into her and she was going to try and poison me and not to accept anything to eat or drink from anyone tonight.” My lower lip began to tremble. “And sure enough Jenna sent Jeremy down with milk and cookies for me. She had to send him because . . .” Tears began to track down my cheeks much to my chagrin. I had told myself that I wouldn’t get emotional over this. It wasn’t Jenna, not really, and I would find a way to save her just like my birth mother said I could.

“Because if you saw her you would see the Rider in her,” Khol completed my sentence for me.

“Yeah,” I whispered.

“Then I must—”

“Don’t hurt her!” I said in a rush. “I mean I know you’re going to have to lock her up or something but don’t hurt her—please! Promise me you won’t! I can save her! I know I can! Just not now!”

Khol came to me and wrapped his comforting frame around me. “I know what she means to you. I promise not to hurt her.”

“Thank you,” I croaked.

“Drake,” Khol called with his arms still around me.

“Yes, my lord,” I heard Drake’s low voice rumble in response a moment later.

“Go to the little Speaker, escort her to a cell, a Rider has taken up residence in her, so expect a fight.”

“Should I just not kill her then?” Drake asked as if he was inquiring about the weather.

“No!” I exclaimed, pulling free of Khol. “Don’t hurt her!” I met Khol’s sympathetic eyes. “You go—please. I trust you.”

Khol nodded. “I will see to it myself then. Drake, get rid of those . . . They are poison.” He motioned briefly to the plate, and then he turned back to me and brushed his lips across mine. “I will be back shortly.”

A feeling of sadness washed over me as I thought about how I wouldn’t be there when he got back. I knew he would feel my sadness, but I was hoping he thought it was connected with Jenna’s situation. Soon I wouldn’t have to worry about him reading my emotions at all, and for the first time ever that made me sad too. “Okay,” I said.

Both Khol and Drake disappeared, Drake taking the milk and cookies with him and Khol off to imprison my best female friend.

I inhaled and exhaled a few times to try and center myself. It didn’t work, and for the millionth time in my life, I wondered who that kind of crap ever actually worked for? I raced to my closet and pulled the duffle bag with my things in it out of its hiding place. It was now or never, life or death, I had to do what I needed to do in order to save my world . . . and the people I loved. I placed the letter that my birth mother had intended for Khol on my bed where I knew he would see it when he returned for me. Again my chest tightened thinking about how he would react when he discovered I was gone and realized he couldn’t track me. But there was no time for thoughts like that now.

I reached into the bag and snapped the shiny bronze bracelet onto my left wrist. It was a perfect fit . . . of course. I turned my thoughts to the task at hand, steeling myself for what needed to be done and set out on my way. It was only the fate of the world that was depending on me to be successful.
Yep . . . no pressure at all.

11

“Your transcripts have already been sent over from your previous school. I just need you to fill out a couple forms and I need to see some form of identification from you.”

“Yeah, sure.” I shifted nervously from foot to foot as I dug into my bag to produce my fake ID for the elderly office lady. As I handed it to her, I tried to keep my hand from shaking. My birth mom seemed to have thought of everything, but I couldn’t seem to shake the feeling that at any minute someone would see me for what I really was . . . a fraud.

The office lady looked over my ID and copied down a few things before handing it back to me with a smile. “Here you go. You can sit over there and fill out these forms.” She slid some papers attached to a clipboard in my direction. “And when you’re done just bring them back to me and I’ll give you your class schedule.”

“Okay. Thanks,” I said numbly as I slid the clipboard off the counter and made my way over to the greenish couch she had indicated to me. The forms were pretty standard stuff, just asking for some information that I’m pretty sure they already had, but I filled them out anyways. When I was finished, I made my way back up to the counter and slid the clipboard back across the counter to the office lady. She looked over the forms briefly and then motioned for me to wait a minute with her finger.

“Here you are,” she said after digging around in a file to produce my class schedule. “If you have any problems, just let me know.” And with a smile and a nod she essentially dismissed me.

Of all the things I could have been faced with, going back to high school was definitely one of the worst. Not to mention that I found myself in the unfamiliar territory of being enrolled in a high school in Spring Hill, Tennessee. I’d never been to the south, unless I counted the vision I’d had about the Rider taking over Senator Bill Wexington, which I didn’t. I wasn’t even sure what the plan was beyond me enrolling here and pretending to be a normal high school senior.

I snorted. Yeah . . . okay . . . I was going to blend in no problem with my white hair and rainbow colored hairpieces that I’d clipped in to try and make me less old lady and more punk rock. I was currently channeling Jenna’s old look, which I was worried might be a bit much for the south, even if I didn’t really have a choice. I would have donned a wig, but that probably would have made me stick out even more . . . so multicolored hair and brown contact lenses it was.

As soon as I left the office, I bee-lined it directly to the girl’s room. I had already missed homeroom and part of first period, so I figured I’d just jump right into my schedule starting with my second class and to pass the time hide out in the bathroom until then. As soon as I was inside, I let my bag drop from my shoulder as I gripped the sides of a sink and glared at my own reflection. “You can do this,” I told my punk rock reflection. “You don’t need Bryn, or Khol, or Jenna, or even Jeremy. You got this.” My eyes slid down to the chain that held the ruby dragon pendant that Khol had given me. I tugged it free from my shirt and wrapped my hand around it.

“Then let me put it on you.” Khol took the necklace from my hands and walked behind me. I lifted my hair so he could have better access, and he placed the cool metal against my skin and fastened it. He then kissed the back of my neck before I dropped my hair back into place. I shivered belatedly from the combination.

I shook my head to dislodge the memory and dropped the pendant back inside my black t-shirt. I wouldn’t let myself grow morose over thoughts of either Khol or Bryn. They were a different problem that I didn’t have time to deal with now, and yet without thinking I brought my hand up to my stomach, the motion still comforting me for some reason. “We’ll get through this,” I whispered to myself and my unborn child.

“Your stomach giving you trouble?” A feminine voice drawled from behind me. Her accent wasn’t quite southern but there was a definite twangy undertone.

I dropped my hand and turned toward the owner of the voice. She was about 5’1” with long blonde straight hair that hung almost to her waist. She had the glowing stereotypical tan that I usually associated with girls from the south. Even though she was a petite little thing, she had some traffic stopping curves that made my jealously spike for a brief second. She wore a light pink t-shirt over a short jean skirt and cowboy boots . . .
cowboy boots
. I didn’t think people actually wore those anywhere but on a farm.
Toto, we’re definitely not in Kansas anymore, or maybe I should say Pittsburgh?

I fidgeted nervously as I saw her take in my appearance. If she represented the typical style for my new school then I had even less hope of fitting in than I had originally thought. “I guess I’m a little nervous,” I muttered. “It’s my first day.”

“I’m Laila,” she said with a smile. “You’re not from around here, are you?” She then laughed. “Of course you’re not, with the way you’re dressed and all.”

“That bad?” I said with a grimace. “I was kind of hoping to blend in.”

“You’ll do fine. The guys around here will probably fall all over the new Yankee girl. They get all excited when they see something new and different. The girls on the other hand might be a different story.”

Figured. I needed more guy attention like I needed another hole in my head. “Yeah, well I have a boyfriend . . . from back home. I’m not currently shopping for more trouble.”

Laila threw her head back and laughed. “Ain’t that the truth? Boys are nothin’ but trouble sometimes.”

I thought about all the drama, even though I loved them both, that Khol and Bryn had caused in my life, and I gave her a wry smile. “Sometimes?”

She stepped forward and linked her arm with mine. “Oh honey, you and I are gonna get along famously.” She pulled my class schedule out of my other hand and began reading it. “We have almost the exact same schedule.” She started walking and tugged me along beside her. “You can start counting your blessings, cuz I got your back now, hun.”

I couldn’t help but smile. Laila was like a smaller, peppier, southern version of Jenna. It would be nice to feel like I had a friend while I was off on my own trying to save the world.

“I don’t think I can take much more of this,” I grumbled to Laila as I tried to unsuccessfully ignore all the stares I was receiving at lunch. I suddenly wasn’t very hungry, and I dropped the French fry that I was about to eat back down on my tray. “This school isn’t very big; you think everyone would have seen me by now so that they could all stop staring.” The other thing that was bothering me, which I couldn’t tell Laila, was that her school was completely infested with Riders. It had skeeved me completely out at first, but I seemed relatively safe as long as I didn’t let on to them that I could see them. In that case, my first day nerves covered up my ‘holy crap my lab partner has an alien parasite inside of him’ nerves very nicely.

“They’ll get over it in a day or two,” Laila replied with cheer. “Besides gettin’ stared at isn’t always a bad thing.”

“It is to me,” I grumped. This whole situation was bringing up bad memories of my last couple of weeks at my old school where I had been shunned and persecuted for things that I hadn’t even really done. The girls had hated me there too, and the guys all wanted to hook up with me. The one explained the other. But at least I’d had Jenna and Jeremy there.

“So, how attached are you to your boyfriend back home?” Laila asked with false nonchalance.

I raised my gaze to eye her sharply. “Very. Why?”

“Well I don’t know, it’s just that only the hottest boy in all of Spring Hill High School is on his way over here right now.”

And he had a Rider inside of him. “Shit,” I swore under my breath, and froze in my seat as I watched the tall slender and yet completely ripped boy walk over gracefully toward me. I tried really hard to focus on his outer features and not on the duel imagery that usually freaked me out, but I was struggling. My breathing was coming in short little erratic bursts, and by the time he slid into the seat beside me, I was on the verge of hyperventilating.

“Hey, I’m Cliff, what’s your name?” Cliff and the Rider both smiled at me, or well I guess they were sort of one in the same, but either way the thing was grinning at me.

“I’m P—Paige,” I stammered. And now I knew why my birth mother had used my real first name on my fake ID. With my nerves, I had started to say P.J., and Paige was an easy save after that.

“Well, Paige,” the thing said with a slight southern draw much like Laila’s. “What do you think of our little school? Prolly a ton different than what you’re used to, I bet.” An easy grin settled onto its face as he looked at me expectantly.

I swallowed at the huge lump that had taken up residence in my throat. First, I had to stop thinking of the Rider as an
it
. I had to think of Cliff as a normal, non-alien hosting, teenage boy. I tried to meet his eyes but cringed away at the duel imagery again. I was so screwed. “I . . . umm . . .” I stammered.

“Well, look at you, Cliff. You got Paige all flustered. She’s kind of shy, you know?” Laila interjected, obviously trying to save me from myself. If only she knew the real reason behind my nerves.

“No need to be shy around me,” Cliff responded directly to me. He then reached out and patted my bare arm with his hand, in what he had surely meant as a reassuring gesture. But let me assure you, there was
nothing
reassuring about it.

I stood abruptly, as if a current of electricity had been shot through my body, my chair toppling noisily to the floor. I’d been in close quarters with one of the Riders before, namely the Emo boy from hell when he had tried to kill me and then bludgeoned me with the back of his shot gun, but I’d never had skin to skin contact with one before. It was wrong, so very wrong. I began to shake as a vision threatened to force its way into me. What would happen if I passed out right here and now? Would any of the Riders be suspicious of me or would they merely think I was sick or something?
Too late for the what if
, I thought numbly as I crumpled to the floor.

I focused in on Cliff, who was standing in front of a bathroom mirror wearing nothing but a towel. His dark blonde hair appeared darker from his obviously recent shower, and moisture glistened on his well toned, and tanned body. If not for the duel imagery of the alien Rider inside of him, I might have taken the time to appreciate his vast hotness. As it was, I was fighting the urge to not dry heave at the wrongness of it all. I then noticed that Cliff was staring at himself with a slight grimace etched into his chiseled features. “What’s wrong with you?” he muttered to his own image. Although I was sure Cliff couldn’t see the Rider that was currently residing inside his body, the Rider frowned out from inside him, obviously not liking Cliff’s reaction to it. The Rider’s face then contorted into what could have passed for it being in pain. “Get out of my head,” Cliff grated between clenched teeth as he raised his hands to press against the side of his temples. “This isn’t who you are.” It was then I realized I was witnessing a battle of wills between Cliff and the Rider inside of him. Cliff began to shake, and a trickle of blood slowly slipped from one nostril and oozed down his face. “I said to get out,” he whispered, his voice affected by his effort. And then something wondrous happened. The Rider just kind of poured out of him, looking like not much more than smoke, and it reformed in the shape of the alien standing just behind Cliff. Unfortunately for Cliff, that was right about the time his eyes rolled into the back of his head and he collapsed to the ground with a loud thud. The Rider looked at him with rage and let out a silent scream before he just disappeared.

I gasped as I woke up in the confines of someone’s arms. Someone’s arms that weren’t Bryn or Khol’s. “Stop,” I croaked before my eyes even managed to flutter open. “Low blood sugar.”

“What?” Cliff’s slight southern drawl answered me in confusion.

My eyes popped open in alarm and I looked up into Cliff’s face, who still had a Rider staring back at me from inside of him. It was time for me to be confused myself. I saw the Rider leave his body. I saw it disappear. What did it mean that it was back? Why was I shown the vision if it didn’t mean anything? “I have low blood sugar. I’m fine. You can put me down,” I said managing to sound much more stable.

“You’re not fine. You passed out cold back there. I’m taking you to the nurse. She might need to call—”

“I said to put me down!” I demanded shrilly at the same time that I attempted to extradite myself from his arms. And for my effort I ended up back on the ground, on my ass.
Lovely
. My breath left me with a soft
oof
before I scrambled to my feet. I narrowed my eyes and glared at my would-be savior, and host to the Rider, Cliff, who was staring at me with surprise.

“How did you do that? You’re stronger than you look.”

Shit. Not good
. “Adrenaline?” I said unsurely. “Yeah, adrenaline.” I repeated with more confidence. “I don’t like to be carried around like that, okay?” My mind skittered through the many times that both Bryn and Khol had both carried me in such a manner over the last year. A wave of homesickness washed over me as I longed for nothing more than to be back with them . . . where I belonged. And then a wave of nausea crashed over me and stole away any sentimental feelings I had been carrying as I proceeded to throw up right on Cliff’s shoes. I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand and met his blue eyes with horror. “I’m so sorry I—” I what? Apparently my morning sickness was back with a vengeance now that Khol wasn’t nearby to do his magic mojo to help me out. Any hope I had at blending in lay splattered all over Cliff’s ruined kicks. But surely my birth mother would have seen this and taken it into consideration. I mean . . . she’d been ready for everything else. Right?

“There you are.” A vaguely familiar female voice said with saccharine sweetness. Long feminine pale fingers, and yet strangely strong in their grip, wrapped around the bicep of my left arm and tugged me to a full upright position. I whirled my head around as fast as I could and met the dark eyes of probably the last person in the world I expected to see coming to my rescue . . . Nala. My lips opened and closed like a guppy . . . and a very surprised guppy at that. Nala and I had effectively been avoiding each other since . . . well, since we first met. She wanted Bryn, and Bryn was mine. At least he used to be. And wanting the same guy didn’t exactly produce warm and fuzzy friendship feelings between two people.
What the hell?