Vengeance (20 page)

“What?” Chelsea asked, feeling the tension in the air.

“Come sit down and watch,” Lucas said, patting the cushion beside him.

Chelsea dropped onto the couch, and I sat next to Aiden. I already knew what had them all on edge, but I still wanted to see it for myself.

Lucas lifted the remote and pressed Rewind then Play. My chest tightened when I saw Aiden’s and my faces staring back at us.

“Holy shit,” Chelsea said. She wanted to see how I was taking it, but she couldn’t seem to tear her eyes away from the TV.

Our photos were dropped as the camera switched to a Gold Coast police officer standing outside my house. The officer began with a warning to anyone who might see us to stay away as we were considered dangerous.
Us? Dangerous?
If I wasn’t so shocked, I would’ve laughed.

Lucas switched the channel, and once again, our faces were on the screen, although they weren’t warning everyone how dangerous we were. A scientist was talking about Aiden and me being the people of the future. He was calling on us to work with him so they could put an end to death, pain, and suffering. Footage of us at the church replaced the talking head. The camera slowly zoomed in to show Chelsea’s neck being slit open by someone hovering in the air. The person dropped her and disappeared into thin air. I caught her in mid-air then laid her on the floor. I grabbed the knife, cut my hand, then pressed it against Chelsea’s neck. The camera zoomed in even closer, and the video showed Chelsea’s wound slowly fusing together.

Witnesses had confirmed the footage was not a hoax. The priest, however, claimed that the devil had tried to kill the poor girl, and through an act of God, I was given the strength and ability to heal the girl. He was calling me a saint.

Lucas switched off the TV.

“Well, that’s something you’ve never been called before,” Chelsea said with a laugh.

“They’re going to want to experiment on us, aren’t they?” I could just see them sticking me as if I were a pin cushion as they tried to understand what we were and how society could benefit—but more likely, who had the deepest pockets and what they wanted to do with the information. Either way, our futures had just taken a massive turn for the worse.

Aiden put his arm around me. “They can’t experiment on us. They can’t hold us. And they can’t use anything to take us down. There was no footage of your mum. All they know is that we can teleport and heal people.”

“But they’re going to try.”

“I think you’re missing the bigger picture,” Anna said. “You two will become nothing but a legend over the years. You can lay low until all of this blows over. They may only have eighty years left in their lives, but you’ve got eternity. Plus, they don’t know we don’t age. They’ll be looking for someone older as the years pass.”

“That wouldn’t matter, though, would it?” I asked. “I mean, we will forever look like the photos they have of us now.” I didn’t mention the fact that I didn’t want to be in hiding for the next fifty or a hundred years.

“Yes, but you know you can alter someone’s perception of the way they see you,” Anna said.

“Like Nathan did with Mum?”

Mum’s shoulders sank. She hated knowing she had been sitting at the very same table in
her
own home with my father, and she hadn’t known it.

“Well, it worked, didn’t it?” Anna asked.

“Yes,” Mum said softly.

“See?” Anna said as if she’d just solved the problem.

What Anna was suggesting was doable. I just hoped it wasn’t the only way.

My phone beeped with a reminder. “We have to go back to the hospital. The next shift of nurses is about to start.”

“Hold up,” Dave said, raising his hand. “You two can’t go back there after that.” He cocked his head to the black TV screen. “I’ll go instead.”

“Thanks,” Aiden said. “Two nurses are starting now and then another three in one hour.”

“Right.” Dave looked down at Anna. “I won’t be long.”

She smiled as he disappeared to take care of our dirty work.

Chapter 20

We arrived in the room to find Harry jittering around. It only took me a second to realise what had him so freaked and excited at the same time. He’d uncovered something that could blow us all out of the water.

I clapped my hand over my mouth. “Oh, my God.”

“Oh, my God, what?” Aiden asked.

Harry practically bounced over to us. “I though it was a mistake, but I ran the test again, and they were right.”

“What was right?” Aiden asked.

Harry took a deep breath to calm down, but he also felt that his news was so monumental it deserved a build up. “Nathan had laced the knife with some kind of new drug that can debilitate the gene that makes us evolved.”

“Let me get this right,” Aiden said. “You’re saying that whatever was on the knife turned me back into a normal human?”

“Yes. That’s exactly what I’m saying.” Harry began to pace. “The substance that was on the knife turned you back into a normal, and it was only because of Jade giving you her blood that you were able to heal again.”

Aiden’s face turned pale. “Does that mean I’m no longer evolved?”

Fear gripped me around the throat, reached down, and squeezed the hell out of my heart. There was no way Aiden wasn’t a next gen anymore. My whole life seemed to flash before me, a life where I’d have to say goodbye to Aiden at some point in the future, then I’d have to live on forever without the person who held the other half of my soul.

“Don’t panic just yet,” Harry said, thinking I was going to pass out. “It might just be a temporary thing. I need to do more tests to see if it’s worn off at all, and if the results show it has, then I think it would be safe to say it was only temporarily in your system.”

Aiden jumped up on the stainless steel bench. “Do it then.” He held out his arm.

On the way over to the cupboard, Harry stopped next to me and put a hand on my shoulder. “You should sit down.” He ushered me over to his swivel chair.

I sat and stared absently at the floor as I thought about how I’d only just got Aiden back and there was a possibility I might lose him all over again. But it would be worse. Last time, I knew I could go on, knowing he was alive and would find happiness, even if it was with someone else. But for Aiden to die… that was just too much for me to live with.

“Jade?” Aiden put his hand on my back. “Let’s get you back to the hotel.”

I stood up and grabbed Aiden’s arm, twisting it around so I could see his bicep.

“What are you doing?” he asked with a nervous laugh.

“I want to see if you’ve healed.”

Aiden placed his hands on my shoulders. “Just stop for a minute.” Aiden lifted the sleeve to his T-shirt and showed me where Harry had jabbed him. “It’s gone. See?”

I stepped closer and inspected the spot. There was nothing there. I let out the breath I hadn’t realised I’d been holding.

Aiden wrapped me up in his arms. “I’ll be okay. You’ll see.”

“Give me an hour, and I should have the results of your latest test,” Harry said.

“Okay,” Aiden replied then transported us back to the hotel. He eased me down onto the bed then sat down beside me. “I’m going to be okay.”

I turned to him, tears welling in my eyes. “You don’t know.”

“No, you’re right. I don’t know. But I do know that there’s no mark left from the needle. It closed up almost straight away, just like it should. And I’m still able to hear Chelsea’s thoughts, which has got to count for something.”

I grabbed the top of his T-shirt and pulled it down so I could see if his scar was gone. “Then why is that still there?”

“I don’t know. But I hope it stays there.”

“Why would you want that?”

He looked down and traced his finger over his scar. “Because it’s a constant reminder of how close I came to losing you.”

I let out a strained laugh. “I think it’s more of a reminder of how close I came to losing
you
.”

Aiden sighed. “Come here.” He pulled me to his side. “How about we don’t worry about it until we know it’s something we need to worry about?” When I didn’t answer, Aiden squeezed my shoulder. “Hey?”

Aiden’s positive thinking wasn’t going to stop me from worrying. I needed some concrete evidence. What I needed was a vision. But visions were not something I had control over. Then I wondered if maybe I did have some control since I was no longer doped up from Nathan’s drugs.

Turning to Aiden, I put my hand over his chest and tried my hardest to connect to whatever part of my brain allowed me to see into the future. A vision came.

Aiden and I stood in the room, listening to Harry give us the good news. The drug was no longer in his system. Harry couldn’t find any traces of it in Aiden’s blood.

I snapped out of the vision with a huge grin on my face. I threw my arms around Aiden, pushing him down onto the bed beneath me. I kissed him then pulled back so I could look into those hypnotic green eyes that I loved so much.

“You saw something, didn’t you?”

“Uh huh.” I smiled as a tear slipped down my cheek.

“And I take it that’s a good thing?”

“Uh huh.”

Aiden laughed. “Is that all you’re going to give me?”

“Uh huh.”

He tickled my sides, making me break into a fit of laughter.

“Okay, okay.” I brought down the barriers to my mind so Aiden could see for himself.

A smile spread across his gorgeous face. He turned me over and pinned me beneath him. “See? I told you I’d be all right.” He kissed me then brushed his lips over my jawline until he reached my neck, where he kissed me again.

Bringing down his own mind barrier, Aiden showed me just what he was planning to do to pass the time while we waited for Harry to tell us what we already knew.

Chapter 21

Harry grinned and said, “It’s good news. There was no trace of the drug in your system.” He watched us closely, wondering why we weren’t jumping for joy. “I thought you would be a little happier.”

Aiden said, “Believe me. When Jade found out I was okay, she was… over the moon.”

“You already knew?”

I nodded. “I had a vision.”

“Of course,” Harry said, thinking he should have guessed sooner. “I don’t suppose you found out anything else that could be useful?”

“Nope. Just that you gave Aiden the good news,” I said.

Aiden leaned back against the bench. “So, this thing Nathan put on the knife, is it something you could replicate?”

Harry picked up a small vial from the bench. He turned around and held it up between his finger and thumb. “You mean this?”

“Oh, my God,” I said. “Do you know what this means?”

A devilish smile spread across Harry’s face. “We can use it on Nathan. This is our way of getting rid of him for good.”

My heart sank when I thought about Lucas. By “for good,” Harry meant we should kill Nathan. “There has to be another way,” I mumbled.

“What?” Aiden asked.

A couple of weeks ago, I would’ve jumped at the chance to kill Nathan, but things had been different since I gained the ability to hear everyone’s thoughts. We needed to stop Nathan, but I didn’t know if I had it in me to kill him then watch Lucas try to cope with losing his father—albeit a psychopathic arsehole of a father, but still his father.

“There has to be another way to stop him rather than killing him.” When the two of them looked at me as if I were nuts, I decided to try another angle. “I mean, killing him would be too easy and too kind for what he deserves.” I sucked in a sharp breath as an idea came to me. “What if there was a way to make him suffer in the worst possible way but never hurt him or kill him?”

“Go on,” Harry said.

“What if we could inject this drug into his system then have him locked away? Think about it. All his abilities will be stripped. He would become a normal human, and then we can get him admitted to a psych ward or something. That would be worse than death.”

Aiden put his arm around me, pulled me close, and planted a kiss on my forehead. “That is brilliant.”

Harry smirked. “That would be the ultimate revenge for the arsehole. The only problem is that we don’t know if the drug only made Aiden normal temporarily or if it passed through his system because of your blood. And we don’t have time to figure it out. And if it did wear off on its own, we don’t know whether the time frame will be the same for Nathan as it was for Aiden.”

“Because Nathan’s stronger?” I asked.

“Exactly. So what we need is to have a constant release of the drug going into his system.”

“Are you able to put that stuff into something that will give him a slow release?” Aiden asked, eyeing the vial in Harry’s hand.

Harry held up the vial. “I think I can manage something.”

“This is so awesome.” I finally felt as if we were getting somewhere. If Harry was able to do this, then we could soon have our lives back. “How long will it take you to make it?”

Harry placed the vial on the bench. “Well, first I think we need to decide what type of device we’re going to make.”

“Can’t you make something like those contraceptive implant thingies? And then we could just stick it somewhere inside of him?”

Harry laughed, amazed by how simple I thought it would be. “Yeah, I could make something like that, but I think the question is how we’re going to get it into him.”

“We’ll need to have a foolproof plan,” Aiden said, once again coming to the rescue. “Obviously, Jade will be the one to bring him to us, then we’ll need to be standing there ready to inject it into him.”

“By
we
, you mean me?” Harry said.

“Well, you are so good at it,” Aiden said.

Harry shook his head. “Fine. I’ll be the one to stab the bastard.”

Do we have to figure out a way to subdue him ’til it does?” I asked.

Harry shook his head. “I’ll lace the syringe so it will have an instant effect on him.”

“So when should we do this?” I asked.

Harry sat in his swivel chair. “First, I have to get my hands on one of those implant
thingies
,” he said, mocking me.

“Smartarse,” I said with a smile.