Return (Awakened Fate Book 3) (18 page)

“…sorry about earlier,” came a girl’s voice. “Listen, why don’t you all get some sleep? I can watch her for a while.”

“I’d rather we stayed here.”

Mom. Anger rose in me, though I couldn’t seem to hang onto the reason why.

“She’s going to be out for a few hours yet,” the girl said. “Don’t worry. If anything changes, I’ll come get you.”

“Young lady,” Dad said. “I appreciate your offer, but her condition is–”

“I know about her condition. Grandpa told me. And about the treatments as well.”

There was a pause.

“I think she’s going to need you a lot more after she wakes up than now, don’t you?”

Another pause followed.

“We’ll be right down the hall,” Mom said.

I fought to pry my eyes open as footsteps creaked on the floor, moving away from me. My body felt encased in cotton, and about three sizes too big, and nothing wanted to move.

A door shut. I could feel my heart pounding. The floor closer to me squeaked.

Something slid on the thick flesh of my arm, pulling off from it with a pain like an insect bite and then being replaced by pressure a heartbeat later.

“Please be okay,” the girl whispered as though to herself. “Please.”

My arm lifted and fell as someone picked it up, wrapped something around it and then returned it to a soft surface. A moment passed, and then the entire series of sensations repeated on my other arm.

“Wake up,” the girl urged. “Come on. Be okay and wake up.”

I wanted to respond. To ask what had happened to me. Her voice was starting to seem familiar, though a weird, panicky feeling came with the recollection.

My heart pounded harder. That feeling was important. Something
had
happened. Something bad. I needed to run.

I had to get out of here.

The panic grew. An ache spread through me, permeating both the fog and the dense clay my body felt like it’d become.

My eyes opened.

A white blur lay in front of me, and slowly resolved itself into a narrow bed. Pale moonlight streamed through the gauzy curtains of the window to my left, lessening the shadows of the small room. A shut door waited on the opposite wall, with a tall dresser at its side.

I pulled my gaze to the right, finding the old man’s granddaughter standing next to the bed.

Relief filled her face. Quickly, she reached for the blanket covering me.

“I’m going to move you, okay?” she whispered while she tugged it aside. “I need you to help me, though. I-I know it’s hard, just please do everything you can.”

I didn’t respond. The ache was building into a burn, like someone was slowly turning up the heat on my skin.

She gave a swift look to the door, and then she took my legs, pulling them to the side and off the bed. Moving quickly, she turned and slid her hands under my arms. With a grimace, she hefted me up into a sitting position.

My hand caught the edge of the bed, bracing me while the world swam. I dropped my gaze to the floor.

“What…” I managed, my voice hoarse and choked.

My words trailed off. I was in a blue hospital gown and cotton shorts, with the back of the shirt left open to the air. On either side of the bed, IV bags hung from metal supports, while tubes ran down to where I’d lain on the sheets.

I looked back at the girl, my brow furrowing in confusion.

She grimaced as she turned from grabbing my shoes off the floor. “We need to go.”

“What…”

“I can explain when we’re outside,” she said as she pushed the shoes onto my feet. “Please, Grandpa or your parents could come back any minute.”

Fear and anger kept me rooted to the bed. We’d been having orange juice. My parents and Harman – that was the old man’s name. And she was Eleanor – had been making me nervous. And then I… I couldn’t remember. Mom had…

An image of Zeke falling flashed through my mind.

I gasped, my eyes going wide. “Zeke. Where’s Zeke?”

Her grimace turned to a wince. “He, uh… please, we need to go.”

“Where is he?” I demanded, my voice growing stronger.

“Please,” she begged in a whisper. “If I don’t get you out of here now…”

I stared at her, something in her face making me doubt the wisdom of continuing to ask questions till we were outside like she wanted. Because I didn’t know what had happened, but my parents or her grandfather–

His wrinkled face looking down at me. Bright lights behind him. Voices in the distance. Beeping too.

“Chloe, focus.”

I managed something like a nod, my heart pounding harder as I fought the memory and the pain away.

With a worried look, she took my arm and looped it over her shoulder.

“Try to support as much of your weight as you can. I’m going to lift you.”

I eyed her petite size doubtfully, but worked to do as she said when she struggled to pull me upright. My legs wobbled as I reached a mostly standing position, but after a moment, the shakiness began to pass.

We made our way toward the door.

“Okay, just brace yourself there,” Eleanor said, nodding toward the tall dresser to the left of the door.

I leaned on it, trying to keep breathing. The burning on my skin was getting worse.

Eleanor opened the door and peeked outside. She checked both directions, waiting for what felt like an eternity before finally nodding to herself. Turning back, she took my arm again.

We shuffled out of the room.

A plush, Persian-style carpet ran down the hallway, leaving space on either side for the hardwood floor to show, and small sconces on the wall provided dim and golden light. With a look to the closed door at the rightmost end of the hall, Eleanor turned us both and then headed for the stairs in the opposite direction.

Breathing was hard, and motion was too. Sweat broke out on my forehead as we passed another bedroom door and, by the time we came to the steps, I’d begun shaking and couldn’t stop.

The stairs stretched below me, ending in an oval of moonlight from the front door’s window that swam in and out of focus on the foyer floor. Drawing a breath, Eleanor shifted my arm on her shoulders and then started down.

My stomach rolled with the descent and I swallowed hard as I gripped the banister. I wouldn’t throw up here. Or at all, if I could help it. But definitely not here.

The first floor arrived.

“Just a bit farther,” Eleanor urged.

It was all I could do to keep putting one foot before the other.

With her free hand, she fumbled open the front door. The cool night air hit me, breaking through the nausea for a moment. I drew a breath in gratefully.

A door opened upstairs.

Eleanor made a tiny, panicked sound. Moving faster, she hurried us outside and looked around frantically.

A car door shut somewhere in the darkness. Eleanor kept going, her breaths coming in short gasps from the effort. Together, we hobbled to the porch steps and started down to the yard.

I heard a cry from the second floor. It sounded like Mom.

My heart climbed my throat. I tried to go faster, though I was shaking so hard it felt like my legs would give out at any moment.

Noah came running toward us.

“Take her, take her,” Eleanor pled in a whisper as he reached us.

He didn’t hesitate. His strong arms scooped me up and held me tight.

Footsteps pounded on the stairs inside.

Noah took off and Eleanor did as well, both of them tearing across the yard for the street.

A car engine started.

Hanging onto Noah as I bounced in his arms, I looked back to see Mom dash from the house. “Stop!” she cried, racing down the porch stairs. “Let go of my daughter!”

Gripping me tighter, Noah jumped the steps from the yard to the street and kept running. Baylie pulled her car up in front of us. Eleanor yanked open the rear door and scrambled inside. Noah pushed me after her and then followed us in.

Baylie hit the gas.

The car sped away, leaving Mom yelling after us in the darkness.

~~~~~

I sat between Eleanor and Noah, shivers wracking me while I fought to keep from throwing up. Heat burned my skin, sinking into my muscles and growing stronger despite the cool night air rushing through the open windows of Baylie’s car.

“What’d they do to her?” Noah demanded. He tugged the back of my hospital gown closed and then wrapped an arm around my shoulders to steady me as Baylie swerved the car past a turn and raced toward the edge of town.

Eleanor didn’t answer. Breathing hard through the pain, I turned my head, finding her in the darkness.

She grimaced. “A while back, Grandpa and some other people started developing a way to help kids who are half and half. They give them drugs, gene therapy, all sorts of experimental stuff. The goal is to repress what the kids are so the need to change won’t ever come.” She glanced to me. “It takes their dehaian side away.”

“But she’s not like that,” Noah argued. “She survived.”

Eleanor nodded. “I-I know. But her parents wanted him to do it anyway. They said there were these, um,” she glanced between Baylie and Noah, “these people after her and if they learned she wasn’t dehaian anymore, they’d leave her alone.”

A breath left Noah and he turned away.

I stared at her.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t want them to, but Grandpa…”

She bit her lip.

My brow furrowing, I dropped my gaze to the ground, staring unseeing at the gray carpet and the few bits of dried leaves and dirt there. Mom and Dad had done this. Wanted this. Mom and Dad…

Had brought me here to take who I was away.

And they’d looked so excited about it. They’d nearly run out the door just to drive here. But why not? Sure, there were the greliarans and the Sylphaen now, but before that there’d been years of hiding what I was because they thought that if the other landwalkers knew, they’d try to turn me dehaian.

It must have been Christmas to find out the opposite could also be true.

And that they could finally get the landwalker daughter they’d always wanted me to be.

Rage quivered through the nausea and the pain, making me shake for a whole new reason.

“So… so did they…”

I swallowed hard, barely able to finish a sentence. Noah’s arm tightened around me.

“It’s a process,” Eleanor answered. “It’s fairly effective from the first treatment, but it still needs boosters over time. Since you just had the one dose…” The worried look strengthened in her eyes. “You might be okay.”

“Might?” Noah growled.

“I-I’m not sure. She’s not like anyone else, and…”

Eleanor trailed off, watching me for a heartbeat before her brow furrowed and she dropped her gaze away.

“And it’s not just that,” she admitted uncomfortably. “Grandpa did other stuff too. He… he’s not a bad person. He’s a genius, really. But he used to be a doctor, and over the years, he saw a couple kids die. He thought Chloe could help him figure out how to make the treatments better. Keep the ocean from hurting half-and-half kids at all. There’s never been someone who’s been able to keep a balance between their dehaian and landwalker sides before. Who’s changed and survived and even come back all this way on land. He just… he didn’t take that the same way I do. He knows our history, but unlike some of the other elders and landwalkers, it’s only stories to him. Things he collects.” She paused. “He and his friends don’t want us to be dehaian. This was just the best chance they’d ever have to study somebody who became one.”

“What did he do?” Noah pressed, his voice dangerously low.

“I-I don’t know. I think he took her blood. Maybe tried other stuff too. He has this laboratory where he created the treatments for those kids, and he had her there for a long time, and on those IVs when they brought her back to the house, so…”

I shivered, my hand clenching on Noah’s arm as memories flashed like camera bulbs in my mind.

“Just please don’t do anything dehaian for a while,” Eleanor begged me.

I didn’t answer. I could see him. Little Harman, hovering over me with those bright lights behind him and a smile on his face.

Lab. He’d had me in a lab, doing this to me while I slept.

I couldn’t breathe. Panic gripped me, demanding I run though there wasn’t anywhere to go. There’d been tubes connected to me. Colored liquids inside them. People in the shadows and voices too muddled for me to understand.

And then he’d noticed I was awake. He’d adjusted something and smiled at me as the world drowned in fog again.

“Chloe.” Noah took my face in his free hand, pulling my gaze up to his. “Focus. Stay with me here.”

I couldn’t respond. His green eyes searched mine, visibly trying to calm me by force of will. And I just couldn’t… my whole body was burning from what they’d done to me… to us…

“Where’s Zeke?” I rasped, turning back to Eleanor.

She hesitated.

“Eleanor, where’s Zeke!”

“I-it’s Ellie,” she corrected awkwardly. “And I don’t know. They took him when they took you. They didn’t bring him back.”

I stared at her. “Who?”

She shifted uncomfortably. “Your dad and some guys my grandfather works with.”

More shudders wracked me. I wanted to cry from the way they hurt. “Where are they?”

“I-I’m not–”

“Where!” I shouted.

Pain stabbed me like spikes in my midsection and I doubled over, gasping. Noah grabbed me, tugging me back upright. I choked, my head falling back to rest on the top of the seat.

“Baylie, stop!” he called.

The car rocked as Baylie pulled over.

I clenched my hands on Noah’s arm. My bones felt like they were breaking, like my own muscles and skin were crushing them. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t scream, and my stomach kept trying to climb my throat.

Noah threw open the door and hauled me after him as he left the car.

My feet stumbled on the gravel and my legs refused to hold me up. As we reached the scrub grass beside the country highway, my stomach finally won.

Noah got me to the bushes just in time.

Shivers ran through me again as the heaving stopped. His hands on my shoulders, Noah helped me retreat from the ditch and then eased me down onto the edge of the highway. Baylie appeared beside us, a bottle of water in her hand. Quickly, she sank down next to me, pushing the bottle into my grip.