Unforgotten (12 page)

And then I fight. Oh, how I fight. Thrashing against my constraints. But it’s no use.

And that’s when I realize … no one is coming.

The fire will consume me. Melt the flesh right off my bones. Turn my entire manufactured existence into nothing but grimy dust to be carried off across the countryside with the slightest breeze.

The wind shifts and the smoke clears for long enough that I can just make out a tall, hooded figure standing alone on the other side of the river. Watching silently.

The fire finally catches my skin. The pain is excruciating. Like a thousand swords slicing through me at once. The scream boils up from somewhere deep within. A place I never knew about. My mouth stretches open on its own. My stomach contracts. And I release the piercing sound upon a city of deaf ears.

The man who arrested me is there. He steps up to the edge of the flames. “This is what happens when you welcome the devil into your soul!” he shouts. The spectators yell back their concurrence, raising their hands in the air.

All the while the flesh on my bare feet is rippling, turning black. The putrid smell gags me. I cry out in agony, feeling the fire devour my ankles next, travel up my shins.

When will it stop?

When will I black out?

Please
let me faint.

“And this!” He draws a long silver chain out of his pocket. Through the clawing flames I can just manage to see my locket swinging from the end of it.

Not destroyed. Not broken.

“The symbol of her pact with Satan!” he’s saying, raising the necklace high over his head. “This will accompany the witch back to hell!” With one flick of his fingers the necklace is suddenly in the fire with me.

I attempt to peer down through the flames, the heat scalding my eyes, causing them to rain tears. I blink them away furiously until finally I see it. Lying next to my charred feet. Only inches away.

Determination returns to me. From somewhere I summon strength. I kick out my left foot, feeling the rope dig into my burned flesh, sending another searing bolt of agony through me.

Blackness starts to invade my vision, withering in from the sides.

No!
I silently shout back. I can’t pass out now! Not when my salvation is so close. Not when I can almost touch it.

I let out a roar of anguish and I thrust my leg forward as hard as I can. The tightly bound ropes shift slightly up my leg, giving my feet a larger range of motion. I press against the wooden beam at my back, redistributing my weight so that I can slither my foot closer.

The fire continues to consume me inch by inch. The pain is excruciating. My body is begging to shut it out. Turn off. The darkness still creeps across my eyes. I blink it away furiously.

Stay here,
I command myself.
Stay present.

I wiggle my legs again, shimmying the rope farther up. I stretch my toes, extending them as far as they can go until I finally feel the hard surface of the locket under my singed flesh.

My mind rejoices but I know I have a much more difficult task ahead of me. I have to get it open.

I feel for the chain and curl my toes around it, then drag it toward me.

The man in the silk doublet is still entrancing the crowd with some kind of sermon about evil. Even if anyone is looking directly at me, I’m confident my actions are shielded by the blanket of fire and smoke.

The pain has reached a peak where I almost no longer feel it. It’s as if everything has gone numb. But the blackness is still threatening to consume me. Take me away. Render me useless. Leave me here to burn to death.

The smoke is so thick now, I can’t see what my feet are doing. It threatens to suffocate me. I stop breathing, wondering how long I’ll be able to go without air.

I hold the locket under one foot while attempting to wedge what’s left of my toenail on the other into the crack of the heart. The flames have reached my waist now, relentlessly ripping through skin and muscle.

The darkness moves in quickly. From both sides. Like a curtain being drawn across a brightly lit window.

Through the growing shadow of my vision, I see a flash of movement. The towering wall of gray smoke around me billows, a sudden gash tearing it open before it quickly closes back up. As though someone has cut through it with a knife.

I just manage to unclasp the heart and open the locket clenched underneath my toes when the curtain closes completely and the night swallows me whole.

PART 2

THE INVASION

17

BOULDER

I dream of water.

Cool and clear and magnificent. It lifts me up and carries me downstream. It runs over me, washing away my past, purifying my soul, erasing my mistakes, soothing the fiery pain in my legs. I can feel it healing me. The beautiful current cleanses my rotted, charred skin, rinsing it to make way for new, healthy skin. Fresh cells filled with life and perfection.

I am whole again.

I want to float here forever. Never waking. Never knowing what will happen next. Never caring.

I hear the
drip, drip, drip
of water running over a steep rock, fighting to make its way up the sharp incline before trickling drop by drop over the other side. I know I am moving toward this rock. I will smash into it. It will alter the course of this blissful journey. It will change everything.

I attempt to paddle, to steer myself away, but the gravity of the massive object is too strong. All objects are helpless in its pull. Even me. I continue to float toward it, afraid of what will happen when we finally collide. When our strengths are pitted against one another. When we are forced together at last.

I don’t know who will win.

I don’t know if either of us can.

* * *

When I open my eyes I am in a strange, unfamiliar room. It’s large with bare white walls, textured ceiling, and tall blackened windows. My eyes adjust immediately, seeing flawlessly in the near dark. But there is nothing to see. The room is empty. Apart from the bed I’m lying on, which is swathed in soft white sheets and a thick blue blanket, a small table at the foot of the bed, and a single dim lamp in the corner.

There’s an inherent sadness to this room. As though it’s not just vacant but somehow left behind. Abandoned. And now the loneliness breathes in and out of the walls. Like it has seeped into the paint, soaked into the plush beige carpeting, burrowed itself inside the foundation.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

I hear the sound again and I turn to see a tall metal stand next to my bed. It holds a plastic bag full of clear, unidentifiable fluid that drops into a long tube. I follow the tube to see that it leads directly into a vein just above my tattoo.

An IV.
I immediately recognize it from my days in the hospital in the year 2013.

Frightened, I bolt upright, tearing the plastic needle from my arm and kicking the covers from my legs. I am poised to jump from the bed and run, but something catches my eye. My legs are covered in a thick white gauze, wrapped in perfect symmetrical layers all the way to my toes.

Someone has bandaged my wounds.

Carefully and curiously, I grasp the end of one of the bandages, just beneath my hip, and slowly start to uncoil it. I gasp and drop the gauze when I see that my wounds are entirely healed. Where I was sure there would be mangled, burned flesh, there is now only a swirl of fresh pink-and-white skin. It’s new and slightly tender. But the pain is gone.

How long have I been in this room?

And how did I get here?

I suddenly recall how fast my wrist healed when I attempted to dig out my tracking device—less than an hour—but that was a small gash. This is different. That fire devoured my skin. Ripped at me like a ravaging animal with razor-sharp teeth. I don’t think there was much left when …

When what?

What happened after that? Before I woke up here?

I remember the witch trial. The mob of angry people. The blazing fire. And then …

My locket.

It was tossed into the flames with me.

I just managed to clasp it beneath my toes and unhook it, activating my transession gene before the smoke and pain and panic finally won the tugging battle with my consciousness and I passed out.

But how did I get
here
? In this bed.

And where is my locket now?

Desperately, I feel around my chest and collarbone. There is nothing but bare skin. I lift the covers up and peer toward the bottom of the bed, wiggling my bandaged toes.

I work quickly, unraveling the dressing until both of my new, healed legs are free and bare.

It’s only now that I realize I’m still wearing my thick and heavy seventeenth-century clothing, minus the kerchief. Half of the skirt is gone, burned in the fire, leaving me with a jagged, blackened hem just below my knees.

I glance anxiously around the room, searching for any sign of my locket. Wherever I am, however I got here, I need to leave. I have to get back to Zen. I can still save him. I can transesse to the day they brought him back to the Pattinsons’ home, after I was arrested. I can get him out of there. He doesn’t have to die.

The word
die
, even in my silent thoughts, makes my stomach retch and my head spin. I lean over the side of the bed and gag, my stomach heaving. But nothing comes out.

I apparently haven’t had anything to eat in the past few days.

I command myself to think. Focus. Come up with a plan.

I scan the room, noticing a door in the wall behind me. I have no idea what’s on the other side of it but it doesn’t matter. I can’t very well stay here. I have to find my necklace. That is priority number one.

Without it, I am trapped again.

I swing my legs over the side of the bed and test them separately, putting a little weight on each foot, pausing to check for pain or discomfort or for my newly grown skin to suddenly peel right off and slip to the floor like a heap of discarded clothes.

So far, everything seems to be working as it should.

I eye the door, preparing myself for what might be on the other side. I rise warily to my feet but am suddenly stopped when I see the door start to swing open with a low creaking sound.

My heart leaps into my throat.

I ready myself to pounce. To take down the intruder by any means necessary. I don’t know who brought me here, I don’t know who bandaged my wounds, but if they stand in the way of me finding my necklace and getting back to Zen, then I will have no choice but to hurt them.

A foot enters the room first, housed in a shiny black shoe. A modern one. Not the smooth leather boot or buckled mule of the seventeenth century. I can tell by the size and style that it belongs to a man. My gaze ascends as his leg crosses the threshold next. It’s muscular and thick, cloaked in dark gray fabric. I cautiously move my eyes farther up as the rest of him appears around the corner of the door. An untucked, creaseless black cotton shirt with buttons and a collar, sheathing an impressively formed muscular chest. A long, sturdy neck. And then I finally land on his face. And that’s when all the sensation in my head and hands and feet and fingers and toes and lips simply evacuates my body.

I’m completely unable to move. Except to fall back onto the bed.

It’s by far the most exquisite face I’ve ever seen.

His skin is smooth and satiny and unblemished. The color of ripe wheat bathed in sunlight. His features—nose, chin, cheekbones—are angular and appear to be chiseled out of fine marble. His dark blond hair cascades in loose, glossy waves around his temples, tickling the tops of his ears. And his eyes are the most breathtaking shade of iridescent aquamarine.

He looks young. Possibly the same age as me. Maybe older. And he’s carrying a trayful of food.

I try to hide my reaction to his stunning features but I know immediately that I’ve failed. He, on the other hand, is perfectly composed. His expression is as bare and emotionless as these white walls.

He walks silently into the room and sets the tray down on the table at the foot of the bed. There’s something very stilted and unusual about his movements. As though his joints click into place, rather than rotate smoothly.

“You’re awake,” he states in a neutral tone, making it impossible to tell if he’s happy about this development or disappointed. All I know is that the sound of his voice sends a quiver up my newly healed legs. Even though it’s detached and somewhat cold, there’s a penetrating depth. A strange intimacy. As though he’s breathing the words right into my ear.

“Who are you?” I ask, surprised by the tremble in my voice. Am I afraid of him?

Of course I’m not,
my mind answers instinctively. Without even giving itself a chance to contemplate the question.

If anything, I feel the opposite. Safe. Protected. Understood.

Like I know him. Like I’ve never
not
known him.

He stands at the foot of the bed, his arms tight and rigid at his sides. “My name is Kaelen,” he says, the syllables flat. Like he’s a stone reciting definitions to another stone.

And yet a swell of emotion undulates through me, ricocheting off every surface in this room.

Kaelen.

I don’t know this name but I want to. More than anything. I want to repeat it over and over again in my mind. I want to use it in place of every other word in the English language. Even if it means I will no longer speak sense.

“What are you doing here?” I bring myself to ask. I want to sound accusing. Harsh. I want to warn this stranger that I have a mission and I’m not going to let anyone stand in the way of it.

But none of that is conveyed.

And in this moment, staring into his endless blue-green eyes, I can’t even remember what my mission is.

A small, almost sinister smile dances across his lips.

“Sera.” Even through his dispassionate tone, I hear an air of condescendence when he says my name. As if the explanation he’s about to give is pointless. Wasted breath. Wasted energy. “I’m here because of you.”