Return (Awakened Fate Book 3) (19 page)

I could barely hold onto it. My hands didn’t want to work and I just couldn’t stop shaking.

“Where’s the nearest hotel?” Noah asked.

I made a noise of protest. We needed to find Zeke.

Everyone ignored me.

“Oak Falls, I think,” Ellie answered.

“Tell Baylie how to get there,” he ordered.

He scooted around, the gravel scraping beneath his shoes as he moved, and then he lifted me again. The world swirled as he turned and carried me back to the car.

My forehead pressed to his shoulder in effort to stop the spinning. Shifting around, Noah lowered me onto the seat, and then pulled me close as he joined me back there.

The door thudded shut behind him. I heard Ellie climb into the passenger seat. The engine started, and then the car bumped off the shoulder and back onto the country highway.

Tears leaked from beneath my closed eyelids, driven by pain and totally out of my control. The quiet sounds of the car felt loud as foghorns in my mind, and my fingers dug into Noah’s chest from the way it all hurt.

But I had to go. The pain didn’t matter, because I couldn’t lose Zeke like this. I couldn’t come this whole way with him only to have some psychotic, smiling monster dissect him. And that was if he didn’t just die, all these thousands of miles from the ocean and here because of me.

I had to go. His family needed him.
I
needed him.

And somehow, he had to be alright.

Chapter Fourteen

Zeke

Sweat dripped down my back beneath my sodden t-shirt and, stretched out on either side of me, my arms burned from pulling at my restraints. Curved bars of thick steel wrapped over my wrists and pierced through holes in the upright table behind me. My legs were likewise pinned with a single bar, and no matter how hard I tugged, the locks fastening the restraints behind the table’s surface didn’t budge. Boxy devices on chrome stands waited to each side, with cords coiled on top of them or trailing to the floor, while a metal table stood several feet away. Shelves stretched between the legs of the table, with strange jars of liquid arranged on them.

I wasn’t sure how long I’d been here. It felt like hours, but that could be wrong. I’d woken in this place, strapped to this table like I was standing in midair and with a headache that threatened to split my skull. It’d taken a while for whatever Linda had given me to stop dragging me back down into unconsciousness, but eventually the fog cleared.

And brought back the memory of that little bastard jabbing something into Chloe.

My arms yanked at the bars again.

Nothing changed.

I didn’t know what they’d done with her. She wasn’t here. The room was pitch black and the drug had slowed my body’s reactions, but after a minor eternity I’d been able to change my eyes enough to confirm that, at least. Something was going on beyond the door on the opposite side of the room, though. Voices carried through there occasionally, too muffled to understand, but enough to tell me I wasn’t alone.

Sweat stung my eyes and I blinked, shaking my head to drive it away. Stuffy didn’t come close to describing this room. The reek of oil filled the space, along with an earthy scent not quite like dirt. The walls were metal and, after baking in the sun all day, the trapped heat inside them made my lungs feel like they were working overtime just to pull in the air.

That wasn’t the worst of it, though. Not by a long shot. In the past few minutes, a weird, stinging sensation had begun to grow in my body. It was still faint, like a thousand hair-thin needles resting on my skin, but gradually it was getting stronger. I wished I could believe it was just numbness from the restraints or a residual effect of whatever drug I’d been given.

But I remembered this feeling.

The pain of the ocean’s distance was coming back.

And I was trying desperately not to think what that might mean about Chloe, or for me.

Hinges creaked in the darkness. My gaze snapped to the door across the room as it swung open. Light cut through the black and I winced, my eyes adjusting too slowly to keep the glare from hurting.

The little old man paused as he saw the glow fade. “Oh, interesting,” he commented. “I’d hoped to see that.”

With a coffee cup in one hand and a leather briefcase in the other, Harman nudged a switch beside the door. A row of panel lights flickered to blinding life above us. Letting the door shut behind him, he came farther into the room.

Anger sizzled through me. “Where’s Chloe?”

“How did you learn English?” he replied curiously.

My brow furrowed.

“I assume you don’t always speak that,” the old man continued. “I mean, that would just be silly, right? You must have your own language. What is it?”

I blinked, and then pushed my confusion aside. “What have you done with Chloe?”

He studied me as though trying to read something in my face. “Fascinating. Why do you feel the need to portray worry for your thrall? Is it a ploy for sympathy? A tactic to make others see you as human?” He paused, concern flickering over his face. “I
would
hope you’d have the intelligence to see I won’t fall for that.”

His brow drew down as if the possibility I didn’t troubled him, and then he turned to set down his coffee cup and briefcase.

My hands yanked at the restraints.

“To answer your question – because I want us to get past this so you can answer mine – your thrall is safe. Better than safe, actually, since my associates and I are treating her condition. That was what kept me; I do hope you understand. Amazing girl. So much to study, I simply didn’t know where to begin. Her body handled the treatments admirably, though, and I returned her to my home with her parents a short while ago. She’ll be out until at least tomorrow morning, but when she wakes… well, what we gave her should shake your hold on her quite well. After all, magic may be your people’s province but science is mine, and we’ve long since proven which one is stronger. The treatments will repress those dehaian contaminants in her system and begin to flush them out, and put the young lady well on her way to being her old landwalker self again.”

I stared at him.

“My boy, you honestly didn’t expect her parents to let her remain like that, did you? Magically enslaved to you and driven to become a soulless water creature as well?” He scoffed, and when he said the word ‘water’, he made it sound like a curse. “I’ll admit, they wanted to be kinder than I’d have been in their position – insisting I send you back to the ocean even after what you did to their daughter. But those are unscientific minds for you. Shortsighted and emotional. Regardless, it’s incredible the girl survived. I wish we’d had more time to study that, because there’s no telling how many additional clues she could have given us for saving other thralls and half-breeds from death. But the young lady’s mind was at stake. Who knows what damage more time as one of you could have done to her?”

Shaking with tension, my arms strained against the metal bars and I couldn’t take my eyes from him any more than I could wrap my head around what he’d just said. He’d stopped her from being dehaian? It wasn’t possible.

At least, it shouldn’t have been.

“You…”

“I wonder if she’ll remember you when she wakes up,” Harman mused, ignoring me. He shook his head to drive the thought away, and then turned to the table and opened the briefcase. “If she doesn’t, it would be interesting to study why.”

He turned back to me, a glistening pair of scissors in his hand. I tensed, pulling away as he came toward me.

“Don’t move,” he cautioned.

Harman reached out, taking the bottom of my t-shirt and then slicing up through it, cutting it from me. Doing likewise with the sleeves, he tugged the cotton away when he was done. Crossing to the table, he bundled the fabric into a plastic bag, sealed the top, and then scribbled something on the side.

“Just in case it’s scientifically interesting,” he explained as he set the bag down. “Now…”

He headed toward the boxy device on a stand to my left. Drawing up the thickest of the cords from where it dangled next to the machine, he fumbled around on the wall for a moment, trying to plug it in.

The device started to beep. Little lines of red and green ran across the screen on its front.

Ignoring it, Harman pulled a tray on rollers from farther behind me, positioning it at my side. Gauze and rolls of a white material that looked a bit like tape sat on the gleaming silver surface, while scalpels and needles rested on a cloth beside them. Returning to the machine, he took up some of the thinner cords with plastic discs attached to their ends and then came toward me.

I pulled back again, but there wasn’t anywhere to go. He tugged a covering from one side of the small, plastic discs and then pressed the discs to my chest, where they stayed.

Numbers appeared on the screen. The lines became zigzags.

I swallowed, looking from him to the machine and back. “What do you want?”

His mouth tightened thoughtfully while he scrutinized me. “Blood first, I think. Good to have a baseline for comparison later.”

My heart started pounding harder as he turned to the tray and picked up a syringe. “I said, what do you want?”

He looked up at me, his eyes the picture of innocence. “To study you,” he replied as though it was obvious.

I flinched as he jabbed the needle into the inside of my elbow. My blood started to fill the syringe.

“Oh,” he commented, his attention on my arm. “I
should
mention that you’d probably do well to refrain from charming me with that little magical ability of yours. For one thing, I have absolutely
no
intention of letting this opportunity pass me by, so I doubt your magic will do much. For another, my associates are watching us on closed circuit cameras,” he nodded to a tiny black device above the door, “and we have an agreement that, if any of us tries to let you escape, we’ll be killed on the spot and so will you.” He glanced to me. “Security measures, you understand. None of us want to live as a mindless slave.”

Harman withdrew the needle and pressed a bundle of white gauze to the place where it’d been. With his free hand, he set the syringe down on the tray and then took up a roll of tape.

“I can’t tell you how intrigued I was when I learned the Kowalskis had a dehaian with them,” he continued while he adhered the gauze to my arm. “Setting aside how you even managed to travel this far – although I do want to discuss that later and a clear explanation would be best, so please be thinking about it – I’ve been waiting for
years
to have a dehaian brought to me. But it never worked. They found so few, and when they did, they just couldn’t restrain themselves.” He shook his head, his attention on the syringe he was labeling. “It’s those pesky instincts, you see. They’re so driven by them. Like animals, really. They simply can’t keep themselves from what they were made for. And so few try. It’s rather sad, if you think about it. Or, at least, it is for what I need.”

He returned the labeled syringe to the tray and drew a breath. “But in any case, now we finally have–”

A knock on the door cut him off. His brow furrowing, he glanced back and then crossed the room.

“I asked not to be disturbed,” he said as he tugged open the door.

“And we thought we’d have the scale-skin you promised us by now,” came the response.

Harman stumbled back as a large man pushed past him. Built like a weightlifter and nearly as huge as Earl, the man scanned me up and down with disgust curling his lip. Four enormous guys with dark buzz cuts followed him, each of them like younger – but only slightly smaller – versions of the man who was obviously their father. More muscles than should have been possible covered their arms and chests, the latter of which were readily visible under t-shirts tight enough to have been painted on.

The four guys started right for me.

I tensed, my heart pounding at what damn near looked like hunger in their eyes.

They had to be the ones who’d been chasing Chloe and me. Noah’s family. The math was there, and I couldn’t believe five
other
behemoth freaks happened to be looking for a dehaian to kill too.

I pulled at the restraints, cursing internally at the thick metal and the way it had yet to give.

“Hey, hey now,” Harman protested, hurrying in front of them. “You don’t have any right to interrupt me like this.”

The biggest of the four pushed past him with a snarl.

“You offered us a dehaian in exchange for leaving the girl alone,” their father retorted. “That gives us all the right we need.”

“I offered you a dehaian
after
I was done with him,” Harman corrected, still trying to stay in front of the others. “You greliarans haven’t been able to provide me with a research subject in all these years, Richard. You have to give me time with this one now.”

Glowing cracks spread through the guy’s face as he came closer. My hands yanked harder at the restraints and adrenaline pushed the spikes out of my forearms.

“Wyatt!” the man snapped.

The guy stopped.

“Amazing!” Harman cried. He spun toward his briefcase.

I didn’t take my eyes from Wyatt. Growling under his breath, he stared at me and twitched as though barely keeping himself from lunging.

Harman grabbed something and then hurried toward me.

Silver flashed at the corner of my eye. I pulled my gaze from Wyatt just in time to see Harman clamp one of my spikes with the device in his hand.

Startled, I tried to pull my arm away and draw the spikes back in. Harman gritted his teeth, fighting me. His other hand came up, holding something that looked like scissors, only the blades were curved.

And quickly, he cut the spike off.

I cried out in pain as my other spikes retreated, the skin sealing over where they’d been. Gasping, I doubled over while my nerves screamed. It felt like he’d cut off a finger. Like he’d sliced straight through bone. All my other senses shrank down on that one spot of agony on my forearm, blocking out everything else.

A hand grabbed my neck, shoving me back upright, while another took my arm, crushing down on the place where the spike had been.