Craft (31 page)

Neveah jumped out of the van and
looked at the hospital eagerly. Ellie could tell that her sister
had spent a lot of time planning whatever mission they were on. Her
eagerness increased Ellie’s worry. Ellie stared at the building,
wondering how a hospital held the answer to Neveah’s
bloodlust.

Ellie followed Cousin and Careen out
of the van. Cousin closed the door behind them and gave a nod at
the cousins. Neveah pushed Ellie to get her walking. They crossed
the small road and moved to the side of the building. There was a
small access door hidden by bushes and an air conditioning unit.
Neveah flicked her wrist and the door swung open. Ellie followed
the others inside. Neveah had a warning as they stepped
inside.

“Stay with me,” Neveah said. “Don’t be
stupid. Lives are at risk.”

Ellie nodded in agreement and looked
around the interior of the hospital. The halls were drab. They were
completely devoid of color. Fluorescent lights burned bright
overhead. The halls were long and full of medical equipment. Sounds
of distress filled up the space. It was the sound of patients
seeking an outlet to their various mental conditions. There were no
bars on the windows and doors, a hopeful sign to Ellie that the
patients were not violent. The lack of security did not make the
sounds any more comforting.

She held her chest tightly and walked
in a tight formation with the others. People looked out from their
rooms as they passed. Some were curious about them, others merely
stared without seeing.

Neveah was certain of their
destination. She took the turns as if she had spent her life
walking the hallways. She stopped at an open door. Ellie peeked
inside. A woman was on a comfortable-looking bed beyond a male
nurse. She stared up at the ceiling and did not respond to the man
as he checked on her. Neveah ushered the others back around the
corner as the man left the room. They waited silently for him to
pass, then they moved to the room again.

Neveah stopped in the doorway, to take
in the scene in front of her. Neveah was cold and distant for a
long moment, and then she smiled. Neveah’s smile reached a level of
malevolence Ellie had never seen on her face. There was only primal
emotion surging through Neveah’s veins. It went beyond
bloodlust.

Careen looked equally as affected by
the sight of the woman. For the first time, Ellie saw true darkness
in Careen’s face. Cousin was less emotional, but even he did not
appear as in control as he would have liked at seeing the woman. He
brought Neveah back to the present. He was focused on the task,
instead of the emotions behind seeing the woman.

“We best get on with it,” Cousin
said.

Neveah nodded in agreement. Ellie
stared at the woman, trying to understand her sisters’ reactions.
The woman stared right back. Her face was a shallow mask of a
person, her brown eyes deadened by the weight of unspeakable
madness. Her sunken cheeks and dry, withered features scared Ellie.
The woman did not look real. She had to be a dream or a nightmare.
There was no way a living person could look so dead.

“Who is she?” Ellie asked.

“She’s our ticket to ending the feud
for good,” Neveah said.

“Ending the feud,” Ellie repeated.
“How do you think you’re going to do that? It’s impossible to stop
the feud.”

“It is possible. You just have to cut
off the head of the family,” Neveah said.

“She’s the head of the family?” Ellie
asked.

“Course not, girly,” Cousin said. “How
is she running the feud from here? She can’t even move.”

“I just thought…” Ellie
said.

“This is his wife,” Neveah said. “We
can draw him out if we have her as leverage. With him and his sons
gone, the Coopers don’t have a chance of continuing the fight.
They’ll falter. We can hit them when they’re weak. We’ll finally be
rid of our Cooper problem and can get on with things.”

Ellie looked at the woman in sudden
understanding. The truth was alarming. This woman who looked more
dead than alive was not a random patient in the hospital. She was
not simply a Cooper they planned on hurting. She knew whose wife
she was. She knew the sons were not some nameless
Cooper.

It was Thane’s mother. And Neveah
planned on using her to kill Thane and his family.

Chapter 11:
Betrayal

When Ellie had first heard about
Thane’s mother, she had never thought she would meet her. Ellie had
thought the woman would be nothing more than a story told by Thane,
a sense of sadness when he mentioned her. Two of her worlds had
collided in a dramatic way. The collision rocked Ellie to her
core.

Questions circled her mind as she
tried to understand. How had Neveah known about her? How had she
known to come here? Had they waited for the solstice on purpose, so
that the Coopers would be safely distracted? What did they plan to
do with her once they had drawn out Thane’s father?

The others were not eager to explain.
They were eager to leave before they were caught in the middle of
Cooper territory. Cousin moved around the comfortable bed and
pulled the woman into his arms. She did not resist the touch. She
did not even seem to be aware of it. She set her head against his
chest, and he moved around the others on his way down the hall.
Ellie shook away her shock at seeing Thane’s mother. She needed to
understand. She did not care about punishment for daring to be
curious. She had to know. It was the only way she could figure out
how to remedy the situation.

“What are you planning?” Ellie asked.
“How do you know about this woman?”

Neveah grabbed Ellie’s arm and forced
her to fall in behind Cousin and Careen without answering. Ellie’s
panic grew as they made their way down the hall. They were
kidnapping Thane’s mother and she did not have the strength to stop
them.

Neveah, Careen and Cousin were tense.
Their eyes were everywhere in the hall. The low moans of the other
patients took new meaning. Every stray sound was a nurse or guard
coming down the hall. Their nerves stretched to the breaking point.
It took all of their training and willpower not to craft everything
in sight.

It took all of Ellie’s willpower not
to craft against her family to make them leave Thane’s mother
alone. Ellie knew attacking them was not the right way to keep
Thane’s mother safe. She would never win a fight against all three
of them. Their combined craft was stronger. If she attacked them
now, they would know how she felt and she would never get the
chance to warn Thane. Warning Thane was more important than picking
a fight she could not win. She could not let Thane walk into
Neveah’s trap. If that meant ruining the only chance they had at
ending the feud, she would do it. If it meant she would never be
counted as a Bumbalow again, she would do it. It was a matter of
what was right.

Ellie went through a profound shift as
she followed her family down the hall. Even as her mind plotted
ways to free the woman and to warn Thane, she felt all of her fear
and feelings of insignificance drop away. She was not the same
terrified girl. She was not afraid to do what needed to be done.
She would no longer be judged by Neveah’s scales. She would do her
own judging. And her judgment was that Neveah had finally crossed a
line. It was a line she could not uncross. It forced Ellie to pick
a side. Ellie knew her side was not with her sister.

They made it back to the side door
without meeting anyone in the halls. Neveah closed and locked the
door behind them with a triumphant flick of the wrist. They had
escaped.

Her triumph was
short-lived.

Four cars had pulled into the parking
lot. They were similar in design to Thane’s car. The people inside
the cars were in the process of getting out.

Ellie did not need Neveah’s hiss of
“Coopers!” to know who they were. She knew in a glance. It was
impossible to miss seeing Thane. Her eyes went to him immediately.
He looked up as she rounded the corner. He took in the sight of
Cousin holding his mother, Careen, Neveah and, finally, Ellie. His
eyes moved to her last, as if he was afraid to face the truth that
she was there. His eyes filled with horror as they moved back to
his mother.

Ellie could tell from the look on his
face that he had jumped to the wrong conclusion. He thought she had
told her family about his confession, that she had told him about
his mother. Ellie tried to tell him with her eyes that she did not
betray him, but he was not open to her communication. He believed
what he saw, nothing more.

The other Coopers missed the silent
exchange. They saw Cousin with Thane’s mother and immediately
started moving forward. They did not craft. They knew the risks as
well as Neveah and the others did. They did not want to draw
attention, but they were working on the indifference. It would not
take them long to start crafting. They would do whatever it took to
get Thane’s mother back.

Ellie looked past Thane. She saw
Connor, his face full of anger. He was livid at what he saw. He
would have never dared to believe the Bumbalows would kidnap his
mother. Ellie did not see anyone in the group who looked as if they
could have been Thane’s father. It was the only thing that kept
Neveah from cursing everything in sight. She wanted Thane’s father
more. She did not know she had his sons in front of her.

The cousins were already out of the
van. They were ready to fight. They did not care about odds. Neveah
knew better than to get in a fight on Cooper territory. It would
not end well.

Neveah ushered the cousins back inside
the van with a gesture. She grabbed Ellie’s wrist and pulled her
after her. Ellie did not resist the touch. She was too focused on
Thane to fight back. As they ran, Neveah flicked her wrist once.
Neveah had decided to break the rules.

A thick wall of darkness moved toward
the Coopers. As one, the Coopers dropped to the ground to avoid the
darkness. Neveah shoved Ellie inside the van as her craft moved
across the parking lot. Neveah jumped inside after Ellie. The back
doors of the van still open, Ellie’s cousin stomped on the gas.
Dark craft from the Coopers followed them as they sped down the
street.

Ellie saw Thane at the front of the
group, crafting for all he was worth. His eyes were full of the
same horror of before. His craft worked to bring his mother back.
She could not escape the sense of betrayal in his eyes. It followed
her.

Thinking fast, she remembered the book
he had given to her. It was their way of communicating. She put her
hand into her pocket and grabbed it. She focused on what she wanted
it to say. She focused on the truth and applied her craft to the
words.

When the van took a sharp turn to the
left, Ellie made the book to fall out of the back of the van with
silent craft. No one in her family noticed the book as it fell. It
rolled on the harsh pavement and came to a stop near the gutter.
She was not sure if Thane saw it fall or would connect the dots.
Even then, she was not sure it would be enough to convince him of
the truth.

When the Coopers were out of sight,
the cousins started cheering. They were proud of themselves; they
were proud of what they had accomplished. Neveah smiled as the
others complimented her on the success of the plan. She glowed with
their praise. Ellie listened to the compliments in quiet hate as
she tried to see a way to get Thane’s mother home
safely.

Around the compliments, the others
talked about the plan. The truth slowly came out with their words.
Ellie listened to the truth, wanting to understand. She needed to
piece it together so that if she ever did see Thane again she could
explain.

A month ago, Neveah had overheard a
pair of Coopers mentioning the hospital. It had taken Neveah a
while to connect the dots, to figure out what the hospital had to
do with the Coopers. She had visited the hospital several times
before the truth came out. That was when she came up with her plan
to abduct Thane’s mother.

Neveah was better at figuring out the
Coopers’ secrets than she was Ellie’s. If Neveah had known what
Ellie was plotting, she would not have been smiling so
happily.

Cousin kept an eye on the road behind
them as they drove back to the house. He did not even attempt to
appear as if he was smoking his pipe. He was alert and guarded for
an ambush. The hour drive back felt shorter to Ellie than when they
had gone to the hospital.

When they pulled up to Ellie’s house,
the family was waiting. The party paused expectedly as Neveah threw
back the doors of the van. Neveah pulled Thane’s mother to the
front of the van.

“It seems as if we stumbled across a
Cooper!” Neveah said to the group.

Ellie’s family started hollering and
cheering at Neveah’s words. Ellie had never felt more unlike her
family than in that moment. She had never felt so different. For
the first time in her life, she was glad for the
difference.

Neveah jerked Thane’s mother down to
the ground with craft and paraded her around the group. Thane’s
mother did not react to the abuse. She did nothing to try to free
herself. Her impassive expression did not change. Insults were
hissed to Thane’s mother and compliments yelled to Neveah. Neveah
circled the entire house, so that everyone could get a look at the
Cooper Neveah had captured. Then Neveah took her captive
inside.