Seeker (Shadows) (23 page)

“No one else is touching her.” Ocean’s voice is quiet, defeated as he continues with the ropes.

Can’t have little Kara ruining the way they’re about to destroy all of us.
My heart beats so hard my chest hurts.

I look around Ocean because he’s trying to look at me.

“Well, we’ll never make it into a coven with this mess.” Landon chuckles and everyone but Ocean laughs with him. “I think our good intentions are going to have to carry this through.”

Is Landon always this relaxed when he’s not recovering from being with the shadows? This is probably the biggest event of his life and he’s cracking jokes.

“Ocean. Please,” I hiss through my teeth as despair has started to dry up my tears. “This isn’t going to end well. No one knows what they’re doing.
Please
.”

He finishes the knots, and they’re tight, but not enough to hurt me unless I try to escape, which I won’t because I have no doubt that Ocean’s as good at tying knots as he is with everything else he does.

“Kara. I feel that this is the right thing in every part of me. It’s killing me to do this to you.” There’s so much honesty in his voice that I have to believe him, but it doesn’t make me feel any less betrayed.

I close my eyes and refuse to look at him. Instead I lean back in the sand and wonder what I should do with the last minutes of my life. At least I almost hope they’re the last minutes—that would be better than whatever torture the shadows might have in store for me.

I’m so angry at all of them for making me feel like a fool over this.

“Why didn’t you just lock me up on the boat? Why could you not leave me with a tiny bit of dignity?” I yell.

“Kara.” Ocean’s voice breaks. “It’s not like that. I wanted to be here with you. I want you to join us, and I guess I still hoped that you would.”

I clench my jaw not wanting to hear any more. No. They all played on my weaknesses and asked me to come so they could keep an eye on me. It had nothing to do with wanting me here. And they brought me, and still are pushing forward with what I’ve begged them not to do.

“And if you’re right, and it all goes horribly, I wanted you close,” he whispers. “We couldn’t wait. Not with how we’re being followed.”

“We’re the ones following, Ocean. Us.” I widen my eyes. “We’re The Middle Men.”

He shakes his head. “There’s no way your dad would have only sent the two of us. We had to just be distraction. Had to be. We don’t have time to think over this decision any longer. Like Dean said—they’re close. They’ve just been waiting.”

The only way to keep myself from looking at him is to squeeze my eyes more tightly. I don’t want any part of my anger or resolve to weaken just because of him. “If you think it might end horribly, then don’t do it.”

Tears start falling again as I think about my parents and the house I grew up in and never seeing them again. Maybe the shadows will take our place in Middle Men headquarters. Maybe something horrible disguised in my body will show up at my parents’ house and kill them both. Maybe that burn on my leg was just a preview of what they plan to do.

The pain ratchets its way through my body and I start to sob again as I lie in the sand.

“Kara. Please…” Ocean’s fingers run up and down my legs.

“Don’t touch me!” I scream as I kick my legs against him until he moves out of reach. But I still don’t look at him. I won’t. He doesn’t deserve anything from me. Not after this.

No way he didn’t know. He kissed me today in the water, and he knew they’d already planned to do this. As awful as it seems, the humiliation is as worse as knowing I’m probably about to die.

“Come on,” Landon says. “While it’s still calm out, and before it’s black outside. We’re losing light fast, and we have company on the way.
Or here and hidden.”

“We need the candles to stay lit,” Addison adds, her voice sort of laughing but trill with nerves.

“Kara. Please don’t be mad at me.” Ocean hovers just out of my reach.

My chest aches with betrayal. I don’t move.

“Kara…” he pleads again.

“I think we’re ready,” Dean calls.

Ocean touches my toe, which earns him another kick. My eyes close more tightly and I wish to disappear into the sand.

I pull my arms closer, but they only come so far. Right. He had to tie me to a fixed point, like a small tree, so I can’t interrupt. I start to shake again but I can’t have my last moments be panic moments. I try to pull up good memories.

I see Ocean dancing in the converted dining room and then freezing when our eyes meet.

Okay. Something else.

The feel of our hands touching on the small sailboat.

Try again, Kara. Younger.

Taylor, the girl who helped me more than anyone learn to block both energy gifts and—

“Thank you,” Landon says interrupting my thoughts. “I know you all are putting a lot of trust in me for this.”

I’m just trying to breathe. Trying not to think about the burn on my leg, how long I could be tortured until I die. It’s not my fault those people were trapped. It’s not my fault they’re so angry.

“We’re all here because we want to be, Landon,” Addison says.

The shadows start to appear from everywhere as the five of them sit down. I can’t keep my breathing even and choke a few times as I try to get myself under control. I can do nothing now.

It’s over.

I try to drown out their voices and mutterings of holding hands to direct energy and bring myself to a happy place. Any place. It’s what I’ve been taught. Trained. I lie on the sand and listen to the ocean and the clacking of the palm trees and pretend I’m home.

I’m home and the people who are almost my friends are there. Samson is next to me. I reach my fingers out in the sand to reach him even though, logically
, I know he’s not here.

“I’m not ready to die,” I whisper, but I’m sure no one hears.

The wind picks up, and an unnatural coolness hits my legs pulling a whimper from me. It’s the shadows. They pass through me again and again making me shudder and I jerk to try to get away, but it doesn’t work. My hands are bound and I’m tied to some kind of tree, but I’m still afraid to look.

“Please!” I yell again with no response as my heart jumps back up to its’ frantic pace. “Help! Ocean!”

I try to focus on memories—Samson in the sand next to me checking out the hot lifeguards, but he’s not there. Ocean’s there. And I don’t want to see Ocean smiling at me right now because I hate him right now. But he could help. “Ocean!”

I jerk my feet as fire touches them. My eyes fly open, and all I see is a swirl of shadows around the group on the ground. The light from the blue hole is dimming and the candles are all out. What’s happening to them?

The fire moves up my feet and I stare. There’s no fire. There’s nothing, but pain.

The pain is burning, searing, I’m just waiting for the smell of my skin to reach my nose, but it doesn’t. It’s like something inside me is peeling apart.

I’m screaming and Ocean’s screaming that he has to help me and Landon’s yelling for him to stay in the circle and focus. But it’s like every cell in my body is on fire and then the ripping feeling starts. It’s not just burning anymore. My screams turn into wails. Nothing matters but the pain.

“Help!” I scream again because if I’m screaming and they’re not, no one here but me is hurting.

“Ocean! Almost. Hold still!” Landon again.

The pain continues to rip up my legs, through my torso, my chest, my arms, even my fingers. “Please…” I sob. This is what it’s like to be torn apart. Why couldn’t they kill me first?
It feels never ending. I’m not sure if seconds or hours have passed since the burning began.

I can feel by body rebelling, trying to lose consciousness as the pain goes up my neck, over every part of my face and head, and just as I welcome the blackness pressing in, everything stops. The pain. The air. The cold. The fire. The ripping. Silence wraps around me, suffocating. I suck in a deep shaky breath as I squeeze my eyes more tightly waiting for round two.

Choking sobs wrack from my body, and I can’t even try to hold them in.

I roll onto my side and the idea that the pain is gone hasn’t sunk into my brain yet. Am I still in one piece? Am I alive? Dead? Watching from a different place like the land where the shadow people live? My body starts to tremble, and I’m suddenly freezing, teeth chattering.

“Go,” Landon says quietly and footsteps come my way.

Ocean’s hands are shaking and pulling at the ties on my hands, but I can’t move.

“Kara?” His voice shakes like he’s crying but my eyelids are suddenly too heavy. My hands are too heavy. My legs are too heavy. “Kara? Please.”

“I’m hollow,” I whisper, afraid to open my eyes. Afraid of what I’ll look like. Am I burned? I feel fine, now. Hollow. Numb. Impossibly weak. But okay. “Are we alive?”

“Yes.” He jerks the last of the ropes from my hands and pulls me onto his lap, cradling me. I have no strength to argue. There’s no feeling left in me. “We’re all okay. The shadows moved on. This was good what we did. They didn’t come out. They can’t come back. The good ones pulled the bad ones through. We all felt the energy swell and disappear. It’s over.”

The trembling turns to shaking, and I wish to pass out. I don’t want to be awake for whatever’s coming next.

“Breathe, Kara. You’re going into shock. What happened?” he whispers. “Why were you screaming?”

“The pain. I thought I was burning alive.” I clutch onto him more tightly.

“I didn’t feel anything, I…” He stops suddenly. Too suddenly.

What else could possibly be wrong?

I let my eyes open enough to see that my body looks fine. I just don’t feel fine. I’m not right. Not the same. “Something’s missing.”

He pulls me into his chest, but I push away only I have no strength
and don’t go anywhere.

“Close your eyes,” he says.

I can’t now. Instead I’m frantically looking around me, wondering why he wants my eyes closed.

“A little trust, Kara. Please. Close your eyes.” But his eyes are wide and his breathing sounds too regulated, and I’m starting to freak out all over again even though my body’s weak from the pain.

“You really want to talk about trust right now?” I try to push away from him again, but my arms are like rubber.

When his arms don’t move, and he holds me more tightly, I give in.

My eyes fall closed, my fingertips shaking, my chin shaking, everything in me sliding and falling apart.

“Can you feel them?” he whispers.

“What?”

“Their talents?” He’s still whispering. “Landon, Micah, Dean, Addison.”

Nothing. I feel nothing. That’s why I don’t feel whole. My body starts to shake in another round of sobs as I realize why I was in so much pain. Why I felt like I was being ripped apart. It’s because I was. They took the thing I love most about myself. Maybe the only thing I love about myself. “They stole it.”

My heart wrenches in despair. I don’t know how to function without feeling those wavelengths. Wait.

“It didn’t happen to you?”

But as he shifts underneath me, I know they didn’t. He still has his talent, and he can sense them, which means they still have their energy, too. Dread soaks through me. I didn’t join them and now I’m half of what I used to be. A nothing. I’m just a regular person, and I try to crawl off of Ocean, but I’m so weak. My body’s not working at all.

And then I remember how I was tricked into coming here, and how completely, totally, and utterly betrayed I was and find the strength to stand.

“The Middle Men. Incoming,” Landon says. “Dean. Addison. We need you.”

I spin around. “Don’t you dare send them away. They’re my ride home.”

Everyone freezes like they’re surprised I don’t want to be part of their happy little group. Staring as I turn and walk away, stumbling on my weak legs.

“Kara!” Ocean calls as he runs up and grabs my hand.

I shake him off without looking. I can’t see his face because I might not be able to leave if I let myself look. “
Don’t touch me.” My heart’s breaking and crashing and I’m in shock over what I just lost. “There were a million better ways to do this.”

“Kara,” Landon says behind me. “I checked and double checked. This was the only way. I
didn’t know we’d get to keep our gifts. I swear. I thought everyone would lose the energy.”

“You couldn’t have waited?”
My scream comes out as a whisper. The wind has gone. Darkness presses in from all sides, and the small cove is still.

I’m not sure if I believe Landon or not, but it doesn’t matter. I can’t imagine the mess at home. What about the people who are working all over the world? Being
paid to be what they are. What will happen to them now? Who will take care of them? Bring them home? I have to get back. I have to help. If Landon thought everyone would lose their talent, then my guess is that everyone did but them. Mom. Dad. I can’t even imagine them without their gifts—who will they even be?