Gravity (23 page)

“What are you doing here?”

There was a pause.  “Seriously?  Do I need to explain this to you?”

I felt a blush sting my cheeks.  “Oh, please no.  For the love of all that’s holy, please don’t say another word.”

I was happy for her, but Brady was my brother.  Ew!

I tried to put out of my mind the disturbing mental image of what I could’ve walked in on.  Disconcerted, I turned my back and blindly tossed Lacey her bra before walking back to the door.

“Get dressed and come on.  I’ll drive,” I announced, snatching Brady’s keys from the top of the chest as I passed.

“Can she come to?” Brady asked.

“What do you mean?  Of course I can go.  Like either of you are going on some crazy late night adventure without me.  As if!”

When I heard the rustling of covers, I exited the room, walking straight through the house and out the front door to fire up Brady’s Jeep.  When the duo hadn’t appeared within a minute or so, I began to wonder if Brady would refuse to come, refuse to help his former best friend.  I silently prayed that he was better than that, that he was stronger than what was happening to us.

And he was.

Mere seconds after I’d begun to doubt him, the front door popped open.  In one hasty movement, he let Lacey dart through it before he followed suit, pulling it shut behind him.  They hurried around the hood of the Jeep and he opened the passenger side door for her, leaning the seat forward so she could get in before he took his place beside me.

“You’d better know what you’re doing,” he warned, clicking his seatbelt into position.  “And you’d better be careful.  If you so much as scratch her—”

“Shut up, Brady,” I snapped, shifting into reverse and backing out of the driveway.  On the street, I barely stopped before I pushed the gearshift into drive and punched the gas pedal, the tires barking in rebellion.  “And thank you for coming,” I said, grinning at him as we sped away from the house.

********

I was relieved to see that there was not a posse of supernatural creatures littering the meadow when we arrived.  In fact, at first I didn’t even see Trace’s truck, but then Brady directed me to a place where he would hide his vehicle to keep from being discovered outside town limits. And, sure enough, it was there.

He wasn’t in the cab, so I parked the Jeep and leapt out to look for him.  Brady and Lacey followed and we three set off to walk the edge of the meadow, taking great care to search every inch of the clearing for signs of Trace.

My stomach squeezed tight around a knot of fear.  Deep down, I knew something was happening, and I felt like it wasn’t good.  But still, I knew Trace was alive.  Somehow, whatever was going on, Trace hadn’t been killed.  That knowledge brought with it a modicum of relief, as that was what I was most concerned about—that he’d been torn limb from limb by a band of rogue wolf-like people.

As our trio scoured the tree line, I could hear Brady talking softly to Lacey.  From the bits and pieces I was able to pick up, he was telling her some big fat lie about why we were there and why we were looking for Trace.  He didn’t yet know that Lacey knew of his condition or that she had one of her own.  At least I’d been able to keep her secret until she was ready to tell him.  I couldn’t help thinking she’d better hurry, though.  The time was quickly approaching when I’d have to tell him about her so that we could speak freely in front of her. 

Just then, the rushing sound of the nearby river was carried to me on the breeze. 

“I’m going to check down by the river,” I called quietly to Brady and Lacey.

“Okay.  We’re right behind you,” he returned.

I turned and began walking through the long grass toward where I knew the river to be.  The ground began to slope downward, as it has a tendency to do when nearing water, and I let my eyes scan left and right as I walked, hoping to catch sight of Trace. 

The roar of water grew louder and louder the closer I got to the raging river.  I could see the white caps of the rapids as they churned in the moonlight.  Movement to the left caught my eye and I swung my gaze in that direction.  What I saw caused my heart to lurch inside my chest.

There were two figures standing in the darkness.  It only took me a few seconds to identify each one.  The uber pale skin and slicked-back hair coupled with sunglasses in the dead of night made Shawn, Trace’s father, easy to spot.  But that wasn’t what stole my breath. Trace did that. 

The picture he painted scared me half to death.  He was on his knees, facing his father, head bent in defeat, completely motionless.  And I felt absolutely nothing coming from his soul—no happiness, no light, no fear, no calm, no nothing.  It was just…blank.

“No!” I screamed reflexively, throwing myself into a dead run toward the duo.

At the sound of my cry, Shawn’s head jerked up and I imagined that behind his glasses, he was watching me.  But Trace didn’t move.  He didn’t respond as if he’d heard anything at all.  He simply swayed weakly from side to side, like a thin branch tossed easily by the wind.

I heard loud thumping behind me, but I didn’t turn to see what pursued me.  I had one goal in mind, one concern: getting to Trace as quickly as I could.

When I reached him, I fell to my knees at his side, scrambling around to slide between him and his father.  Trace’s face was nearly as white as Shawn’s and his eyes stared straight ahead, unseeing and vacant. 

I dug my fingers into his shoulders and shook with all my might.  “Trace!  Trace!  Talk to me!”

He moved like a ragdoll beneath my feeble strength, his head bobbing back and forth on his neck as if it were barely attached.

“Trace!”  With the fingers of one hand, I tapped his cheek gingerly.  He didn’t even blink.  More firmly, I slapped.  “Trace!  Look at me!” 

Still no response.

It was as I turned toward Shawn that I noticed Brady and Lacey had arrived.  She looked as confused as I imagined she was. Brady had a bewildered and worried look on his face.  I knew that, despite the changes he’d recently experienced, he still harbored some tender feelings toward his one-time best friend.  That much was obvious by his expression.

“Brady, he’s done something to him.”  With that, I jumped to my feet and lashed out at Trace’s father.  “What did you do to him?”  He said nothing, merely stood, unmoving, in front of me like a waxy statue.  Before I could think better of it, I threw myself at him and began beating at his chest with my fists, pummeling him as hard as I could.  “What did you do to him?”

“What had to be done,” he responded.

“What?  What did you do?”

As I beat and beat, as if against a brick wall, he held his silence.  He stood perfectly still and let me wear myself out, to the point that my knees could no longer keep me upright.  When they buckled beneath me, I would’ve fallen to the ground had Trace’s father not grabbed my upper arms in his steely grip and stabilized me.

“Don’t touch me,” I cried with no real conviction, now sobbing uncontrollably.  I wasn’t afraid of him, although I felt that I should’ve been.  I didn’t really care about him—what he might do to me, what might become of me.  At that point, although it made no sense, I wasn’t entirely certain I could think of one good reason to go on living.  In some mystical way, I felt as though I’d lost Trace.  And it was devastating.

Finally, when I’d calmed to a whimpering mess, Shawn spoke.  “I gave him some herbs to strip away the magic he’s being controlled with.  He’ll be fine in a few minutes.”

“Wh-wh-what?” I asked, unable to hear him clearly past the hiccups that had beset me.

“I said he’ll be fine.  His body is adjusting to the world without the influence of magic.  It might take him a few minutes to recover.  Just give him time.”

My mind whirled as I digested what Shawn was saying.  Questions chased one another through my head, things like
What magic?
and
What will the consequences be? 
Although I didn’t have answers to any of them, I understood the logistics of what he meant.  But it didn’t seem to matter.  I couldn’t seem to care.  I couldn’t seem to get past the terrible knowledge that I didn’t feel Trace.  Even though he was only inches from me, I couldn’t feel him.  I could see with my eyes that he was very much alive, but in my heart, he felt dead.  Not dead to the world, just dead to me. 

My face felt wet.  It took me several discombobulated seconds to realize that I was crying, soundlessly grieving an unspeakable loss.  Absently, I wondered how the devastating fire that was consuming my heart didn’t cause the moist tracks to evaporate from my skin. 

As though the blackness of night that surrounded me was seeping into my flesh, into my soul, I felt hopelessness spread through me.  Little by little, everything around me—the world and the people that occupied it—ceased to exist.  There was nothing and no one, but for the person kneeling behind me and the heart that beat inside his chest.  Somehow, when I wasn’t looking, he’d become my entire existence.

Pulling away from Shawn, I turned once more toward Trace and crumbled to my knees.  With the close proximity came a recession of the bleak darkness that had invested me.  It gave way to pain.  Excruciating pain. 

I gasped when an agonizing blade of loss sliced through my chest. I felt as though, in the space of a single moment in time, something more vital than the blood in my veins had been stripped from me. 

I knew on a spiritual level what was going on, what I was experiencing. I didn’t have to look down to know it, to see it and yet I did. I didn’t
want
to see it, but I
needed
to see it,
needed
to have the proof that it was, in fact, gone. I couldn’t help myself.  And so I saw. I got the proof I thought I needed. 

The threads of my soul were dancing in the air between my chest and Trace’s like dainty red spirals of smoke.  They were reaching for him, twisting toward him, clawing at the air as if in search of him.  Only they didn’t find him.  They found nothing in him to cling to, nothing to draw from or give to.  They found nothing, nothing but the cool night breeze.  His body was there, but it was still. And foreign.

I panted for air that evaded my lungs, for air that seemed stagnant and suddenly insufficient.  I’d never felt so bereft, so utterly lost as I did in those moments.  An hour ago, it would’ve made all the difference in the world when Trace turned his head to meet my eyes, but tonight, it just felt empty.  And painful.

“Trace?” I asked quietly.

“Peyton.”  He said it flatly, so much so that it pierced my heart like a dull, blunt knife.

“What has he done to you?”

Trace looked quizzically at me and then up at his father.  “He helped me.  He helped free me. He helped me to remember.”

Trace rose to his feet.  He watched his father for a few seconds before he glanced back down at me, holding out his hand to help me up.  I struggled to keep my chin from trembling when I placed my fingers in his.  I felt the jolt of attraction I’d always felt for him, along with the power of what I’d begun to feel for him since the eclipse, but I also felt that unfulfilled, unreciprocated connection burning in my soul.

“What do you remember, son?” Shawn asked.

Trace looked to him, although he kept my fingers wrapped snugly in his.  I wasn’t about to wiggle them free.  I wasn’t ready to let go of them yet, wasn’t ready to let go of
him
yet.

“I remember everything.  I remember being shot in the neck with something when I was taking the trash out.  I could see everything that was going on, but I couldn’t move at all, couldn’t even speak.  I know they killed Mom,” he said, closing his eyes on the words as the memory brought with it forgotten pain.  “I know they tried to kill you, too.  Somebody put something over my head and made me walk, like they were controlling me.  I couldn’t stop or start or direct my movements.  I was practically a puppet on a string.  And then they told me things, things that I knew weren’t true, but before long I started to believe them.”  Pitifully, Trace looked up at his father, as if his heart was breaking.  “I fought it as long as I could, Dad.”