The Centerpoint Trilogy (22 page)

              Could her own father love her?

              The thoughts raced around in her head and she found herself praying for that, for a father’s love.
I believe you,
she wanted to tell him, but her voice was not her own. She was not able to tell this man what she was feeling, or what she was needing.

             
Do not believe him, child,
the Alturi in her mind said.
He is a liar and using your emotions to make you weak.

             
Grace knew that this was honestly the more likely answer. People were dishonest, untrustworthy, horrible things and there was nothing to be changed about that. Grace was only fifteen but she expected the worst in people, even her own father.

              The tearing inside of her made her rage. There was too much anger inside of her. When Grace raged, things flew. Around her in the dark room, wood beams ripped of the walls and dust particles swirled. Then the Alturi got control back.

             
The world may lie, child,
they said,
but we never would.

             
“You are nothing but a bunch of fairytales!” the man yelled, interrupting her anger and her deep thoughts. “You lot are nothing but a bunch of idiot alien fairytales!”

              These words displeased the Alturi greatly. Grace felt her powers being utilized, before she felt the consciousness summoning of them to the surface. She tried to close her eyes, but they were not hers to close, so she was forced to watch.

              The man writhed on the ground, screaming in absolute agony as she shot pain through him in the same way that her mother once could. The pain was beautiful and it was well deserved, at least in the opinion of the Alturi.

              Despite the fact that she almost agreed that he deserved it, guilt flooded her heart. She did not want to cause pain. That was the power of hers that she hated the most. Grace never wanted to bring pain.

             
Do not feel guilt,
the Alturi in her head commanded her.
You dole out the appropriate punishment.

             
The Alturi then picked the man up and slammed him down to the ground.

              For a moment, she thought that he was dead. His body was so deathly still. The Alturi in her head just laughed - mostly, at her.
No child,
they said.
He lives, but let’s not bother ourselves with him. We have more important things to do.

             
She sat helplessly, a passenger in her own body as the Alturi began to work in her body. It did many things, computerized things that she closed her mind to, even as she could not closer her eyes. It did all of these things with her body, without her consent.

She was just a passenger.

Chapter Eight

              Gen sat quietly as she and Rhi were taken home in the back of her dad’s car. He had been worried about them and insisted that they leave theirs at the library. Normally, Gen would have been horrified about this, but she did not want to be too far away from her daddy right now, honestly. Something had happened to Elliot and she was scared that the same fate would befall her own father. No, her dad was right. They all needed to stay close, at least right now.

              Meanwhile, Rhi was in total shock. Her best friend sat practically pressed to her side in the back seat of the car. She was deathly quiet. Her quiet was loud though, because it was saying so much without a sound. She put both arms around the other girl and just held her there. It was an intimate gesture, a very intimate thing to do, but they were closer than most friends were and they knew how to rely on each other’s physical comfort. “It’s going to be okay,” she whispered to Rhi, but her voice seemed to disappear into the air.

              They were almost home when all three of their cell phones began to ring at once. The sound was bleating, insistent and made Gen’s head feel a little like it was spinning. All three devices were blaring all at once. She immediately picked hers up out of her purse and looked at the screen. She held it in her hands for a moment, just staring at it. Then she unlocked the screen. Somehow, a video had appeared on the screen without her opening it.

              In the video there was a girl, sitting calmly in front of the screen. She was a very young looking blonde with intense, yet beautiful blue eyes. They looked familiar. She looked up at Gen and it was though she was staring straight into her soul. Gen wasn’t being dramatic about that, either. She could literally feel the gaze pierce into her and she was scared, so scared. The look on her face was terrifying and Gen bit her lip to keep herself from screaming out like an idiot.

              Before anything could happen, on the video screen or otherwise, Rhi had pulled out her own device and showed it’s screen to Gen. Her father kept driving, but he spoke quietly, “What is it girls?”

              They were both looking at the same video of the still silent blonde girl. They exchanged a glance in stunned silence. “It’s...it’s a video,” Gen tried to explain to her father, swallowing as the words came out in a stammering, stuttering mess. “A blonde girl’s on the screen and she’s just st-staring at us.”

              The girl with the frighteningly blue eyes smiled at them. She smiled and stared straight into them. Next to her, Rhi shivered. She and Gen were so close that Gen could feel the minute twitches of fear in her best friend’s muscles.

              “Hello girls,” she said, in a voice that did not match the face on the screen. Yes, it was a young woman’s voice speaking, but at the same time it sounded like it was the voice of something ancient. The voice was old and weary and at the same time young, because of the body it came from. The voice was world-weary, sounding as though it had seen universes come and go. “My name is Grace, or at least, well, that is the name that my current body possesses.” The girl laughed, like she had just told them the funniest joke ever. Her eyes then grew condescending, as if the viewers of her little message had not received the punchline. “I”m very glad to see the both of you right in front of me.”

              “Where are you?” Gen demanded, wondering if the girl could really see them in front of her. “What are you? What do you want from us?”

              “Do you have my dad?” Rhi demanded, tossing down her own phone and staring into Gen’s over her shoulder.

              “What a fire you both have,” the girl laughed, confirming that she did see, or at least hear them. Gen felt a shiver run down her spine. Her father stopped the car, but she couldn’t even really get up and look at him. She felt compelled to keep looking at the video. “But only one of you is the child of the man I currently have. Sweetheart, I do have your daddy. He’s not really your daddy though. It’s all a lie you’ve been telling yourself since you were a little girl.”

              Rhi snapped out of her daze. “Who the hell are you?” she demanded. “Where is my father?”

              The haunting girl on the video looked at them with a rage in her eyes that seemed to be made out of pure fire. There was also a sadness behind that rage, a longing that made her look even more haunting. “Your father?” she asked, laughing deeply. “You dare to call my father your own. Anyway, you can have him, if you wish. I’d rather he have a traitor and a coward as his daughter, when he is a traitor and a coward himself.”

              “Shut up and tell me where he is,” Rhi demanded. Gen had to admire how intense her best friend sounded. She sounded so sure of herself when she knew for a fact that the other girl was anything but.

              The blonde paused and then tilted her head to the side. “I am going to kill him,” she told them matter-of-factly, in the same way a person would comment on foul weather. “I’m going to kill him and I will be sacrificing his traitor’s blood to the benefit of the Alturi.”

              Gen felt her blood run cold at that. This person probably had her uncle and was threatening to kill him, although nothing else that she said made much sense. She looked so young, yet there was something else inside of her. It was so disturbing that it made Gen’s stomach twist. What was this girl? “What do you want from us?” she demanded. It was something she knew, even though she was young. Everyone wanted something.

              Her father had since gotten out of the car and crawled into the back seat with the girls. Gen could feel the cold rush of outside air. “Where is he?” her father demanded. His voice was so harsh and she was pretty sure that she had never heard him that angry.

              “You can have him back,” she said, laughing and widening her eyes, as if she had just decided this. “I’ll give him back to you, Ethan, if you give up one of the two lovely girls beside you. You can decide among yourselves which one, but I Require a sacrifice of one of those two in order to stop myself from slipping and killing my daddy dear. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

              Gen had seen her father act fierce before, but still it caught her off guard and took away her breath when he grabbed the phone from her hands. Ethan was truly, brutally angry, something that his daughter had never seen. He was a mild-mannered teacher and that was all there was to that. “Who are you?” he demanded. “What have you done with Elliot? Tell me now, or I’ll find you and I will kill you myself without a second thought.” The growling tone to his voice made even his own daughter shiver lightly with fear.

              The girl on the screen, however, was unwavering. “Are you hard of hearing?” she asked, her laugh a light, tinkling sound that sounded too innocent to be real. “I want one of the girls. I’m even playing nice and giving you a choice of which one. Chances are you want to save your own brat, so I’d send the other one down the river now.”

“Why do you want us?” Rhi asked. She had fallen quiet up until that moment, so the intensity in her voice surprised everyone. She was more intense than Ethan, but hers was not anger. It was beyond anger.

The girl on the screen hesitated.

“I want my father,” Rhi demanded, looking stronger than ever in that moment.

“I want my father now.”
There was a flicker of something in the girl’s eyes. It was brief, but Gen saw it. It was a recognition of Rhiannon, of the emotions that she was showing. She narrowed her eyes a little and then she shook her head. “Then you know what to do,” she said with a sweet smile. “You have one hour before I get trigger happy and end it.” That was when the video went blank.

              “Stop!” Gen yelled, but the video had already turned off and the screen was blank.

              “We need to go home,” her father said decisively, getting back into the front seat of the car. Gen felt the engine start and then they moved. She looked over at Rhi. Rhi was quiet. She was staring at the blank phone, unmoving. She could see the rage and fear and she was scared. Gen wanted to protect her best friend more than anything but Rhi was tormented.

Chapter Nine

Grace felt her body move back down towards where the man who claimed to be her father was kept. Her body went and unfortunately, she followed. As much as she hated to admit it, she was strapped in for whatever the Alturi chose to do. She was strapped down and forced to not only watch, but experience whatever the Alturi had her body did. She was like a passenger, riding a bus that was on fire and about to crash. The Alturi took her body down to where it was keeping Elliot Wayne, her father.

              She did not know how to handle the man and his existence. Obviously, she had to have known that there was a father in her life at one point or another, but as much as she remembered her mother, she knew absolutely nothing about her father and she supposed that her mind just closed out any thought or memory of him. It was sad, but it was not something that she had thought about. Now, she was reeling from the information that she had. She could not cope with the fact that there might be someone else out there who might care about her.

              The man was standing up. The Alturi had chained one of his arms to the wall with a long chained manacle. He walked as close to her body as the chain would allow him. “What did you do to this child?” he asked, looking into her eyes, but addressing the creature that held her as its willing captive. “She’s innocent. What did you do to her? You can’t just take a child’s body from her…”

              “Sweet Elliot,” the Alturi teased, shaking her head for her. “You’re so innocent, so naive, and yet you’re so wrong about everything. For one thing, this child is your daughter Grace, even if you have yet to accept that fact. She is no innocent either. You should see some of the havoc and pain that your daughter has caused and created. We can see it in her head, you know.”

              She screamed at that. It wasn’t her fault! The things that she’d done were awful, of course and they’d caused pain, but she hadn’t learned control yet. She was learning. She was capable of controlling herself and being a good person! She was innocent enough, wasn’t she? She then stopped her own rambling, because god, the screams in her head really meant nothing.

              The Alturi continued to speak. “Plus, your sweet child volunteered for this position,” it laughed. “She knew exactly what it would entail.”