Descending Darkness (The Prophesized #3) (29 page)

“Yes, you do.”

“No, I don’t!” I yell as the tears come to my eyes. Claire sits down on the grass next to me and waits for me to calm down.

“You have to let it out.”

“I don’t want to lose him,” I whisper. “I just have this feeling that everything is about to get real crazy, and I know that I can’t protect everyone. I. Can’t. Lose. Him. I saw the Howicks’s memories of their daughter. She was tortured and killed because they were looking for me.
Me
. What if something happens to Colton because of me? What if I have to watch him die again? I can’t live through that. Not again. It freaks me out how much I feel for him. What if Dravin finds a way to capture him…or anyone else for that matter,” I say as I wrap my arms around my knees. Burying my head, I let the rest of the tears fall.

Claire wraps her arms around me and hugs me. “Nothing is going to happen to Colton, honey. I promise. You need him right now, and I know he’s upset that you walked away from him. He’s scared that he’s going to lose you too.”

“I know,” I hiccup and lean away from Claire. “How do you keep showing up in my dreams? I’m not complaining. I’m just curious…”

“I’ll always be here when you need me; never question that. Now wake up, and go talk to your soulmate.”

Colton

This ride is agonizing. I can’t sit still. I can’t think straight. I’m not listening to what anyone is saying. My mind is completely focused on Ryanne. She walked away from me. She’d only done that when someone was in danger before. She wouldn’t let me comfort her. She chose to wallow in her in her guilt rather than let me attempt to make her feel better. She’s in no way, shape, or form responsible for what Dravin is doing.

Natalie places her hand on my arm and tries to calm me. “There’s nothing you can do until she’s back here with me,” I say. No matter how long she tries to calm me, I’ll still worry. I never thought I’d be the clingy one in a relationship, but I am. I’ll admit it. I’m not going to stop worrying until I know that Ryanne’s okay.

Liam hands me his ringing cell phone. Why would he give it to me? I look at the caller I.D. It’s Bragden. “Hello.”

“Colton?”

“Yeah, how’s Ry?”

“She’s sleeping. What’s wrong? She wouldn’t talk to anyone. Larkin tried talking to her but she wouldn’t say anything.”

Ryanne’s asleep… “Does she show any signs of injury on her? Dravin always attacks her in her sleep.” I can hear shuffling on the other end of the phone and then Ryanne’s sleepy groan, but I can tell that she doesn’t wake up.

“No, she’s fine. She’s just sleeping.”

“You sure?”

“Yes, I’m positive. She’s propped against my side and looks as good as new…well almost.”

“What do you mean almost?”

“She’s frowning. Even in her sleep, she’s upset, man. Are you guys fighting?”

“No, we’re not fighting. She feels guilty about Rebecca’s death and won’t let anyone comfort her. She had nothing to do with it, but she still feels responsible.”

“Who are you talking to?” I hear Ryanne in the background.

“Colton,” Bragden says. I grimace. He should have lied and said Liam.

“Can you tell him I’m sorry?” she whispers, barely loud enough for me to hear.

“Why don’t you tell him?” Bragden says. I can hear shuffling as if Bragden’s handing the phone away. 

“Colton?” Ryanne’s soft voice asks.

“I’m here,” I reply. I can almost see her clutching the phone to her ear.

“I’m really sorry I walked away from you. I didn’t want to, but I saw everyone watching me, and I freaked. I needed some alone time. No one in this car knew what I was thinking about. I feel like you and Liam always know what I’m thinking, and Natalie can read my emotions, so it’s hard to keep anything from you guys.”

“Ryanne,” I start.

“JAMES!” Ryanne shouts right as the sound of crushing metal and glass breaking resonates through the phone. I can hear Ryanne scream in the background before everything cuts off.

“Ryanne?” Nothing. “Ry?”

Silence.

“We have to turn around,” I demand.

“Why?”

“They were in an accident. Ryanne shouted for James right as something crashed into them. I could hear metal breaking and glass shattering, and Ryanne screamed. Then the call ended.”

“Oh my gosh,” Emma says. Tom pulls into a parking lot and turns around. Pulling back into traffic, he flies down the road. James was a couple miles behind since he left the house after us.

If she’s hurt…I can’t breathe. Black spots start to fill my vision as I imagine Ryanne lying bloodied in the car. Natalie jumps forward and places both of her hands on my shoulders, calming me. Air rushes back into my lungs, but the worry remains. It won’t end until I see her safe and unharmed.

Two miles back, I see their car. James’s black sedan is lying on its side in a ditch with smoke coming out of the engine. From this distance, I can see James crawling out of the side window, but I don’t see anyone else yet. There are no other cars around, so what hit them?

I look toward Liam in the back seat. He’s not reacting, which can mean two things: that Ryanne’s unconscious or…Tom slams on the break and stops the car. I hurtle out of the side door and run toward their vehicle. I can hear everyone following behind me.

James falls to the ground outside the vehicle and winces as he tries to get up. We need to get everyone out of there before it goes up in flames. The left side door is completely smashed in. I run past James on the ground and look through the driver’s window. Ryanne’s not inside the car. Where is she? Bragden looks the worst out of everyone. He’s awake but trapped to the side. James walks up beside me and rips the side door off its hinges. Throwing it to the ground, he starts to help pull Bragden out. Larkin transports out of the car and lands in the grass behind me.

“Where’s Ryanne?”

“There was,” he gasps for breath and winces, “a man who came and grabbed her…out of the car.” He grimaces again as he stands up. “She was unconscious. He transported away. He was a traveler too.”

“She was kidnapped?” Liam runs past me and helps pull his brother out of the car. David rushes past them and helps Logan crawl out of the side. Natalie rushes toward the car and reaches for her brother. After helping Bragden out, Liam stops and reaches for Natalie as she runs past him. Wrapping an arm around her waist, he pulls her backward and away from the smoking car.

“I have to help him!” she yells as tears come to her eyes. She starts struggling against Liam’s strong grip. Natalie may be strong, but Liam is stronger.

“I’ll save him, Natalie,” Liam says as he tucks a strand of hair behind her ear…something I would do to Ryanne. Her attempts to get past him stop, though her eyes keep flickering to the car. With a nod, she resigns and backs up toward Emma. Moving towards my brother, I help him get Logan out of the car. Logan’s leg is heavily bleeding from where a piece of metal stabbed into it. I wrap his other arm around my shoulder and pull him out. He cries out as we move his leg.

“What happened?” David asks as we set Logan gently on the ground.

“I don’t know. I remember listening to Ryanne talk to you and then out of the corner of my eye, I saw a car come out of nowhere. It literally came out of nowhere. We were the only people on the road. He t-boned us and then drove off. I don’t know how there wasn’t any damage to his vehicle. I saw everything. Shards of glass were flying everywhere. Bragden turned his body and blocked most of the glass from hitting her, but she still hit her head against the ceiling when the car flipped. She was buckled, so I don’t know how that happened. Then suddenly there was another man in the car with us. He grabbed Ryanne and transported her out of the car. She was unconscious, so she couldn’t fight back at all. The rest of us were kind of in a daze. It all happened so fast.”

Ryanne’s in the hands of the Gadramicks again. I let go of Logan and start pacing. I can smell the smoke coming from the car. “We’ve got to move now. The car is going to blow!” I say as I start moving back. Larkin transports into the car, grabs Kyril’s shoulder and transports him out of the vehicle.

I run past David and grab Emma and Natalie and start running in the opposite direction. Everyone runs after me. Adrenaline pumping, I pull the girls away from the smoking vehicle. They stumble but keep up. Ten seconds later, I hear the explosion behind me. It sends shocks over the ground, knocking us all down. Landing on my stomach, I push myself up and look over my shoulder. The car is completely engulfed in flames; metal shards are falling from the sky.

I turn and look at David, who’s still supporting Logan. Logan’s wound is slowly starting to heal, but it’s going to take a while. In order to heal everyone else, we’ll need Ryanne here to help him.

I jump up and grab the back of my neck. What am I supposed to do now? I need to get to the compound. I need to get to her. I need to find my soulmate. I won’t be able to relax until she’s back in my arms. “How do we get her back?” I ask Tom.

*****

Darkness is slowly unleashing me from its strong grip. I open my heavy lidded eyes and try to push the hazy stupor back. It’s like asking the fog on an early summer’s morning to fade. It doesn’t listen; you just have to let it do its own thing. A loud high pitch noise is screeching in my ears, cancelling out any sounds around me. The left side of my body feels like something hard slammed into it. My left shoulder and arm are throbbing, and a cool liquid is sliding down my leg. “Colton?” I groan. My voice is barely audible, but the desperation in it is obvious. “Liam?

As the daze starts to dissipate, my blurred surrounding starts to become clear. Dang, it’s bright in here. I slam my eyes shut and slowly open them this time, letting them adjust to the intense lighting. My eyes connect with a pair of brown eyes standing over me. Instantly, I scream and cower back in the chair. Are you freaking kidding me?

Dravin’s mouth is moving, but I can’t hear anything through the ringing in my ears. I narrow my eyes at him and try to read his lips. Nope, apparently I’m horrible at lip-reading. Dravin stops talking and stares down at me. When the ringing in my ears subsides enough, I ask him what he said.

“Glad to see you awake,” Dravin says.
Now we can start.
“How are you feeling? Actually, don’t answer that. I don’t care.”

“How did I get here?” My voice comes out all wrong. Instead of sounding strong and confident, I sound weak and broken. A sharp pain shoots through my stomach with each movement, making it difficult to breathe.

“You don’t remember the car accident?” Dravin says with a smile when he sees my discomfort.
Maybe she has some brain damage. She is bleeding from the head.
He reaches forward and lightly touches the side of my forehead. I wince and flinch away from him. When he draws his hand back, his fingertips are covered in blood.

“Car accident?”

“Yep, my clever little rouse to get you away from that little posse of yours. It was a lot easier than expected considering the collision knocked you unconscious.”

The scene starts coming back to me. I was sitting beside Bragden…with James driving. I was talking. What was I saying? I remember waking up from sleeping against Bragden after hearing his voice. He was…on the phone. He was talking to…Colton. He was talking to Colton and handed me the phone. I was on the phone with Colton when the accident happened, and he heard everything. Is everyone else okay? Are they hurt?

“So what’s your plan now?” I ask Dravin. Dravin pulls up a chair and sits down next to me. I’m strapped to what looks like a dentist’s chair. Dravin stares down at me for a couple seconds before he opens his mouth to reply.

“I’ve learned that I shouldn’t reveal my evil plan to you anymore. Someone always comes to thwart it,” he says right as the cell door opens.

A tall man with dark brown curly hair walks over to Dravin. He looks to be in his mid-to-upper forties, and he’s dressed in a long white lab coat. “I need a small sample of her blood before I can try anything. I need to see if I can separate anything from it,” he says while looking down at me. Something about him seems off. My stomach begins to turn the longer he looks at me. I’m not going to be sick, but my instincts are trying to tell me something.

“That’s fine,” Dravin says as he pushes a button on a machine next to me. A wire is attached to the bottom of it. My eyes follow it up the machine and around the chair to my arm, where it’s firmly attached by a needle embedded in my skin.

“What’s that?” I whisper as my eyelids start to feel extremely heavy, and the pain in my body recedes.

I’m floating.

“Dormirako. It’s the only way we can allow you to have your magic without the risk of attack,” the mysterious doctor explains. My head rolls across the back of the chair as sleep beckons me again.

Dravin won.

Colton

“I say we go on with the plan,” Tom says.

“Are you insane?” I shout. “Dravin has her again! I’m not leaving her there.”

“Colton, we need to go on with the plan. If we don’t have anyone to help us, we won’t be able to get her back at all. Magic or no magic,” Tom explains.

“Tom, Ryanne is the unifying factor. None of this would be happening if it weren’t for her!” The car is still on fire in the background, but I don’t care. I care about Ryanne, and I want her back. “And right now she’s in the hands of the man who has harmed her more times than I can count, and if you think that I’m just going to go to someone’s house and ask them to help, without trying to find her first myself, you’ve got another thing coming.”

Liam, who is standing between Conner and Bragden to my left, suddenly gasps. We all turn our attention to him. He’s the only connection we have to Ryanne. His eyes roll into the back of his head as he falls to the ground. Natalie runs over to him and falls to the ground beside him. She turns his head toward her, but nothing happens. Resting her ear against his chest, she checks for a heartbeat.

“He’s in a dream, Natalie,” I say. “Hopefully seeing Ryanne.”

“So, what do we do now?” Emma asks. “There’s too many of us to fit into one car. I don’t think any of you guys want to sit in another guy’s lap, and half of us are in no position to walk long distances. Logan can’t heal, and Larkin shouldn’t be transporting, so…what now?”

“I guess we could call the Howicks since we’re not far from their house and see if they can bring us to the hotel,” Tom says. “I know you want to find Ryanne, Colton, but Larkin’s the only one that can get you there, and he’s injured. So right now, you’ll have to wait.”

I can’t wait. That’s the problem. I feel my magic calling me as I suddenly become invisible. Tom frowns but doesn’t say anything as he takes out his phone and calls the Howicks. I don’t bother trying to calm myself. “If they hurt her…” I mumble as Emma walks over to my general vicinity.

“Colton, we’ll find her. We’ll get her back,” she says as she sits down next to me; she’s pretty close for me being invisible. “You know it’s kind of hard to help when I can’t see you.”

My soulmate needs me, and I won’t be able to accomplish anything if I’m in this state. I think about how proud I was earlier when Ryanne defended me. I think about the way her eyes light up when she smiles, and how the left dimple on her cheek is more pronounced than the right. My whole body starts to vibrate. I think about how she looks when she first wakes up in the morning. She’s too beautiful for her own good with her hair going everywhere and her sleep laden eyes. I think about the goofy grin she gets on her face when she watches any comic book movie. She’s unaware she does that.

“Much better,” she says. “Look, Ryanne’s strong. She’ll be fine. She’s good at stalling; you know that. We need to regroup and formulate a plan. We may need more people, and we need to know what Liam is seeing.”

I guess that’s true. Taking a deep breath, I try to keep my magic down. I won’t be of any help if I can’t keep myself visible. Tom walks over to us. “The Howicks are coming to get us. I’ll drive everyone who’s injured, and the rest of you can go with them. We’re going to need to get everyone cleaned up since Logan’s in no shape to heal anyone at the moment.”

“Another reason why we need to get to Ryanne,” I mumble. Tom turns and glares at me. I know that he wants to find Ryanne as much as I do. We all know what Dravin is capable of, and we know what he wants with her.

Ten minutes later, the Howicks pull over to the side of the road. “What happened?” Mr. Howick asks; his eyes landing on Liam who is still in the dream.

“I’ll explain everything at the hotel,” Tom says as we reach down and lift Liam into the car. Natalie hops into the back seat beside him.

“Is he going to be okay?” Mrs. Howick inquires. Natalie brushes Liam’s hair away from his face.

“Liam’s a dream-walker. He’ll be fine. We don’t know what he’s seeing right now,” Tom explains as he moves over to help Bragden stand. David walks over and wraps Bragden’s other arm around his shoulder while I move to help Logan get into the car. I’m pretty sure Logan’s leg is broken. His magic is trying to heal him but due to the extent of the damage, it’ll take some time. When he’s finally healed, he won’t be able to heal anyone else for a while. His body will need to recuperate.

“Where are you headed?” Mr. Howick asks once everyone is situated. Tom gives him directions and then turns to me.

“Don’t worry, Colton. We’ll get her back,” he states as he walks away and gets into his car. I keep my mouth shut as I hop into the other car and close the door, watching as the burning sedan recedes into the distance.

*****

“Ryanne?”

I whirl around and come face to face with my protector. I run and barrel into him, wrapping my arms around his neck. He returns the hug. “I’m so glad to see you, Liam.”

“Where are you?” Liam asks as he puts me back on the ground. I don’t step away from him though. I need to make sure that this is real.

“Dravin’s compound.”

“Have they hurt you?”

“I don’t think so. I think all of my injuries are from the car accident. My heads bleeding, but I don’t know how bad it is. They’re keeping me under with dormirako, so I can’t tell. I can use my magic, but they won’t let me stay awake long enough to do anything. Some man just took some of my blood to see if he can separate my magic from it,” I explain. “It’s too late. If they can extract my magic, they’ll kill me, Liam. They won’t need me anymore.”

“Ryanne, don’t say that.”

“Why? It’s the truth,” I shout.

“Ryanne, we’re going to find you. Don’t think like that.”

“The only way you’ll be able to find me is if I’m awake long enough to call for Larkin, and they won’t allow for that to happen.” Liam winces when I mention Larkin. “Is Larkin okay? Did anyone get hurt in the accident?”

“Everyone got hurt in the accident, but nothing too serious. Bragden and Logan are the worst since they were sitting on the side that got hit. Bragden took most of the blows when he covered your body with his. Logan’s too injured to heal anyone, so we have to wait for him to recover before he can heal everyone else.”

“Oh my gosh,” I say.

Liam runs a hand through his hair. “We’ll find a way to get you, okay? Don’t do anything that’ll get you hurt.”

“Liam, I’m being kept unconscious. There’s not a whole lot I can do right now. They have me strapped to a chair, hooked up to an IV. I’ll be out for a while…at least until they find out whether or not they can take my magic.” I cross my arms and look off into the distance. This place has become so familiar to me. In a way, I wish I could stay here. If Colton was with me, I’d never want to leave. “Please keep your promise, Liam.”

“Ryanne.”

“No, I don’t see a way out of this situation right now. Maybe this is how it’s supposed to happen. We’re nearing the end, and you know it. Keep an eye on Colton for me, please. Claire told me that you and Colton were the ones that end the war and that I am elsewhere. Maybe this is where I’m supposed to be. Maybe this is the end for me.”

“Stop saying that!” Liam yells. I flinch away from him but shake my head.

“You can’t keep denying what’s right in front of you. I love you, Liam; I do. You’re like the brother I never had, but you can’t keep rejecting the fact that something could happen to me. I’m in Dravin’s compound, unconscious, while some man runs tests on my blood. Everyone that has the capability to come rescue me is injured. Dravin thought of everything!”

“There’s always a way, Ryanne. You just have to believe.”

“You can be the optimist, Liam. I’m going to be realistic.”

“Don’t give up just yet,” Liam says as he hugs me to him. “The night is darkest just before the dawn, and I promise you, the dawn is coming.”

I rest my head against his chest. “The Dark Knight.”