The Fallen Stars (A Star Child Novel) (19 page)

Though William’s kiss rocked me unexpectedly, I knew he didn’t love me. Kellen did. Kellen had risked his life more than once to be with me, but more important, he just
understood
me, though we had nothing in common. William could never be Kellen. He didn’t even come close.

“Your lips said something different.” Slowly he touched his finger to his lips.

Fear warred with anger. Though I knew I had to get William out of the house, I refused to be told what to feel. Brow furrowing, I responded, “My heart disagrees. Kellen is the one that I’m meant to be with. I love
him
.”

My mind drifted to earlier that night, when Kellen and I had clung to each other, kissing. My body had been on fire. Had that only been a few hours earlier? It seemed like days ago.

William looked like he was going to challenge me again, but then he lowered his hands to his sides. “If only you would choose me, I could protect you,” William said.

“But so can Kellen,” I said.

Surprisingly, William didn’t argue that point. Instead, he reached up and touched my cheek. It took all of my reserve not to pull away.

“Think of me when you sleep.” His voice sounded sad, soft.

“I won’t,” I said, again trying to soften my words. “Please give me your key and please leave,” I said. I knew that he didn’t need a key to get in, but it seemed like an appropriate mortal gesture.

He stood there for a moment, staring at me. “I could make you want me,” he said.

Swallowing, I looked into his eyes again. “Then you’d be living a lie.” Maybe that didn’t matter to William, but there had been something in his kiss, a tenderness maybe, that made me wonder. Was there only evil in him?

Nodding, he said, “Goodbye, then.” Reaching into the front pocket of his oversized coat, William extended a key to me. When I didn’t reach for it, he laid it on a nearby table. He looked at me one more time. “You will be in my dreams for the rest of my life,” he said. “I will always want you.”

My jaw set in a hard line, I watched him walk away from me, down the steps, and out the front door, letting it bang behind him. How long would it take him to leave? Would we be able to be on the road in a few minutes? Where would we go? How could we escape without them knowing?

Those last thoughts were drowned out as Gabe’s shout woke me from my reverie.
Something’s wrong.
Unthinking, my feet carried me down the hall, toward the sound of Kellen’s cries and the unmistakable smell of salt water.

CHAPTER THIRTY

KELLEN—
NIGHTMARE

I’d been convinced that I’d never be able to sleep in the cold room without Cali. However, within moments of hitting the pillow, sleep overtook me and I crashed right into a dream. This time, I walked the path again that I’d traveled earlier that night along Compass Harbor.

Shuddering, I walked on, knowing somewhere within me that I dreamt. Unlike earlier in the evening, I walked freely along the path, nothing trying to lure me elsewhere. I was just about to turn back when the voices caught my attention.

They drifted in and out like a cell phone call with a poor signal. “Do not like it…”

“We’ve never done this before and—”

As quickly as the voices rose up, they disappeared, only to be replaced by the sound of music and a party. Tossing caution to the wind, I headed in that direction, my curiosity getting the better of me. I wanted to see the party.

My pace quickened. In the distance, a blue light bobbed ahead of me. It was hypnotic and soon I practically glided along the path after it. When I turned around a bend, the house loomed over me. It was magnificent. Lights winked merrily at me from every window. I started to climb the forbidding set of stone steps that led toward the light and the sound. The music got louder there and was circa nineteen-thirties. Billie Holiday, maybe?

“What are you doing here?” A dark-haired man stepped out of the shadows. Though his clothing blended into the night, a lamp illuminated his face, swinging back and forth on a stick that he carried in his hand. The frame of the lamp gave the light a blue haze.

“Sorry. I took a walk and heard the music. I just wanted to see the party.” It sounded stupid, like I’d been up to no good. Yet he nodded, his face not unfriendly.

“The party is over.” And as he said this, it was like he’d flicked off a light switch. The strange man was gone and so was the light that I’d followed. Looking back at the house, my heart seemed to jump out of my body and lodge itself in my throat. Moments ago, it had been lit up, bustling, but now there was nothing there. Nothing except the charred remains of the stone steps that led to nowhere.

Panic squeezed my heart and the fight or flight instinct kicked in. The problem was that I had no one to fight. I’d ended up alone, at night, in the woods…
again
. What a dumbass.

Turning, I ran down the steps, back the way that I’d come, the last vestiges of the Billie Holiday tune still clinging to the air like moisture on skin after a high-humidity day. Though my flashlight illuminated part of the way, I couldn’t focus, and I wasn’t watching where I was going. Was it the path that forked to the left or to the right?

I stumbled on gnarled tree roots that popped up out of the ground like elderly hands, trying to trap me, pull me down into the earth with them. Too late I realized my mistake, coming to a stop at the bottom of the path where it met the water. The ocean seemed closer, bigger here, as if it tried to eat up all of the land. A beast waiting for a sacrifice.

My feet halted and I looked up just in time to see the gigantic wave crash over my head. The tide pulled me underwater, the currents jerking me down into the sea, then up again, tossing me around like a rag doll. The water froze every part of me, making my body take on the posture of a stiff board. It had gotten even colder outside since my last visit.

Then the sea switched tactics. No longer did she merely toss me about, but she began to pummel me against the rocks. Repeatedly I slammed against their unforgiving surfaces, their jagged edges penetrating my skin like tiny knives, cutting into me.
You weren’t supposed to get hurt in dreams, were you?
But I could feel everything like it really was happening. Then the sinking feeling that this wasn’t a dream overtook me and I stopped trying to fight against the current, to protect myself out of pure shock.

Fragments of memories swirled around in my weary head, bouncing around inside my brain, just as I was being bounced around in the sea.
Calienta
and the first moment that I saw her.
Stephen
when he’d told me my mother died. Seeing my mother,
Addison
, in Faerie and holding her hand.
Gran
telling me that Calienta was a Star Child. They spun through my head in circles like an amusement park ride.

Wham!
A jarring slam against a rock seemed to have split my head in two. My arms flailed uselessly beside me, dead weights. A rusty liquid filled my mouth that I recognized as blood.
I’m going to die. Just like Grandda. In the sea.

The very thought spurred me on and I fought back, trying to swim to shore. I would not die without seeing Cali again
.

“Kellen!” Cali’s voice sounded far away. Despite my flailing limbs, I savored the sound of it, entranced.

“Kellen!” Gabe cried, his voice louder than Cali’s. “Dude, wake up! Wake up!”

Wake up? Wait…

Gasping, I sat up, sucking in air and looking wildly around the room. Blood rushed to my head as I did and I fell back down against the pillows, dizzy. I’d been sleeping in one of the guest bedrooms and I found myself there now. Someone had turned on a light and I looked around. No path, no rocks, no ocean; at least not in my bedroom.

Cali’s hand gripped mine, a worried expression plain on her face. I couldn’t feel her fingers. “Kellen, oh my,” she said.

“Whha-whhaa?” I began, but my teeth were chattering too much to talk. Shivering, I looked down at my body.
Soaked.
The bed dripped as though someone had turned a hose on it. It looked exactly like I’d been swimming in the sea, in my bed. It hadn’t been a dream.

This sort of thing had happened to me before, when I stepped right into my Gran’s backyard in Ireland from my graduation ceremony in Connecticut, via a portal that just appeared. At the time, I’d assumed I’d been dreaming, until I returned to graduation and realized I had sand on my shoes.

“Not aaaa-gain.” This came out as a sort of stutter.

“You’re freezing.” Cali took my hands and pulled me up. “You need to get into the shower and warm up. Gabe and I will take care of this.” She gestured to the bed.

I didn’t argue, but instead let her warm hands help me out of the bed. Slowly, she guided me to the adjoining bathroom, taking small steps that I could manage. Feeling too cold to care, I stood inside the bathroom and waited while she turned on the hot spray. After she’d gotten the shower going, I turned to walk toward it.

Cali touched my frigid arm. “Kellen, I’m sorry about before…”

Nodding, I met her eyes. “S’okay.” My words slurred, my body shook.

She seemed to want more from me, to talk further, but the cold ate at me from the inside out. I removed my wet boxers, not caring if she saw anything or not. The door clicked shut just as I stepped under the caress of the shower.

As the water rained down on my head, calm washed over me, allowing me to think more clearly. I could have slept under the spray, soaking up its warmth. Yet my mind wouldn’t stop. I’d been in the sea just now. The wet boxers and bed sheets proved that point. But why? How did I get there and who wanted me there? Was it the C.O.D.? What purpose would my death serve? How had they known where we were, anyway?

Thinking hard made my head hurt and I looked down at my feet, closing my eyes and stepping fully under the spray. When I raised my lids again, there was blood running off of me and onto the shower floor. My head started to throb and I touched my hand to it gingerly. More blood. Performing a survey on the rest of my person, I found cuts and raised bruises appearing everywhere, literally before my eyes. I didn’t remember bleeding before I got into the shower.

Cleaning up as best I could, I turned off the spray and stepped out of the shower, positioning myself in front of the mirror. A large bruise had formed on the left side of my cheek. Blood trickled from both my forehead and my damaged cheek to drip on the bathmat. Leaning forward, I winced. A sharp pain in my side told me that I’d probably bruised or cracked a rib. I stretched to examine the damage, grabbing an unused washcloth from the shelf and applying it to my head to stop the bleeding.

Wrapping a towel around my waist, I stuck my head out the door and called to Gabe.

Gabe peeked his sandy blond head around the corner. Instantly he surveyed the damage without my prompting. “Ew. When did you do…” The realization that this had all happened in my dream seemed to hit him like a freight train barreling down the tracks. “That’s creepy, man. I don’t understand, though. You didn’t look like this when you got up.”

Cali immediately came in, probably after hearing Gabe. She too looked at me and gasped. “Kellen?”

I stared at her. “Can they do this? To me…to us? How did this happen?”

Cali sat down on a small bench outside the bathroom door and ran her hands through her hair. Placing her hand on the edge of the blue-and-white-striped bench cushion, she looked at me. “I’ve been having a hard time remembering,” she said, an admission that I knew cost her a measure of pride. “However, this stands out to me, probably because I’ve appeared in your dreams so many times. If they know where you are, there’s nothing to stop them from luring you away from the house. They can’t come in without being invited, but in dreams they have open access, really. They just need to pinpoint your location first.”

“I think I did something to one of my ribs. Do you have any first aid stuff?” I asked Gabe.

“Yeah. Ugh. Dude, that is so uncool.” Gabe shook his head as he walked toward the hallway, his eyes wide. He returned shortly with a basket of medical supplies. Sorting through the basket, I found antiseptic spray, Band-Aids, and first aid tape. With Gabe’s help, I began to tape up my ribs, while Cali started applying bandages to the cuts and scrapes.

Looking at Cali, I asked, “Could you have done that, if you wanted to? Transport me, I mean?” My mind flashed back to earlier that evening, when Cali would have used her powers on me if she’d had them. I pushed it out of my mind.

“Perhaps I’d been naïve before, but I’d always been taught that no one should ever try and take a mortal out of his or his dream, to alter them in any way. The consequences could impact the entire universe,” she said.

My mind reeled. So whoever had taken me out of my dream had violated, what, The Immortal Code of Ethics?

“How could it impact the universe?” Gabe asked. He pulled tight on the tape, and I winced looking back at him.

“Father never said. However, I’d been so afraid after that talk, and I’d never considered doing anything more than
appearing
to
Kellen in dreams,” she said.

“Well, apparently someone wanted to do more than that. They wanted to kill me,” I said. Glancing at myself in the mirror again, I noticed that I looked like a prizefighter that had just gone ten rounds.

“This all started when we met William tonight. Gabe, he let himself in, right?” I asked. I’d assumed that he had, but now every fact mattered more than before.

“No, I, uh, invited him in,” Gabe said.

Staring at Gabe, a million thoughts popped into my head, beginning with
What were you thinking?
I pushed them all back in my mind. “That might explain it.” A wave of fatigue washed over me and I knew I was about to pass out. “I need to sleep.”