Everywhere and Nowhere (Safe Haven Book 1) (10 page)

The woman had lost at least forty years overnight.

“What’s happened?”

“We don’t know, but I woke up like this and it’s not just me. This entire place, everything looks so new. The roads are fixed, the trees are blooming and I can’t remember when last we had such a sunny day.”

Hadley wasn’t sure what to say. All her training in manners failed her. What should a person say in such a circumstance? “That’s wonderful. I’m so thrilled for you, however it happened.” Dizziness hit her like a sledgehammer and threatened to take her down to the floor.

“Hadley.” Hadrian grabbed her from his mother’s arms. “You shouldn’t be up yet.” He picked her up as if she were a baby and she cringed. This had to stop happening. It wasn’t okay to go through life being carried around as if you couldn’t walk. “We almost lost her last night. She had a terrible headache, high fever and some sort of delusions.”

Leopard gasped. “Why didn’t you wake me?”

“I knew what to do. I’m putting her back to bed.”

Hadley shook her head. “I don’t want to go back to bed.”

“Wait a minute, Hadrian.” Stone’s voice filled the room. “I think Hadley is a Healer. The lack of her mother’s presence nearly destroyed our whole world, so wouldn’t it make sense that, given the same abilities, Hadley is now setting things right? Maybe she is the reason things are looking new again. I bet if we retraced our steps from yesterday all of it will look better since she’s been there.”

Oh hell, more damn savior stuff. As soon as the room stopped spinning, she would put a stop to this once and for all.

“She’s only half her mother’s daughter. The other half is human. Last night she almost died. I can’t let her do this for the whole world. It would kill her in minutes.” And she knew how he felt about humans.

Leopard placed her hand on Hadley’s arm. “She feels cool—that is good. She just looks pale and worn out. Put her to bed, Hadrian.” Hadley tried not to watch the revolving patterns on the floor and the wall as they walked to his room. Instead she listened to the last thing Leopard said and grimaced at the thought.

“If Hadley didn’t know she did that last night, then I don’t see how we can possibly prevent it from happening again.”

So now she was doubly in trouble. If the poison didn’t kill her, this newfound ability obviously would.

She was dreaming and she knew it. But this time she didn’t have the giant squid to talk to. In this fantasy her mind had created, she stood bathed in moonlight looking out the window of a room she’d never been in her before. Looking around, she could see it was luxurious, like some of the finest hotels she’d visited. A giant bed, bigger than king-sized, sat in the center of the room. She walked over to it and smoothed down the white comforter. It was silk. She smiled. Well, if she had to be stuck in a dream, this didn’t seem a bad place to land.

The door opened with a bang and Hadrian stood in front of her, leaning against the frame. His hair, loose around his shoulders, blew gently. She raised an eyebrow. Where was the breeze coming from? Well, it didn’t really matter. This was her dream.

She walked toward him. “What is this place?”

“I don’t know.” He shrugged. “Don’t care.”

“You’re just a figment of my imagination. Not really you.”

Hadrian stroked the side of her face. “Does it matter?”

She thought about it for a second. “No.”

Hadley pressed herself against him and he kissed her, hard. That was okay. She didn’t want gentleness from him in that moment. She craved heat. Reaching between them, she found his cock and stroked it through his black pants.

He hissed in his breath but didn’t stop her ministrations. “You know turnabout is fair play.”

“I hope so.” Was that her voice, sounding so husky? She had to remind herself that she was dreaming. In real life she’d never be so sexy.

Hawk ripped her gown from her body. She took a step back so he could see her naked form completely. Did he like how she appeared?

Hadrian groaned and shoved her backward onto the bed. She gasped. Was he this intense in real life as a lover or did she simply imagine him this way?

“I want to taste you, Hadley, so I’m going to do just that.”

Her pussy wept. Yes, finally she would get completion. She needed him like she needed to breathe. It was…

The room faded around her. No! It couldn’t end like this. She wasn’t done. Hell, she wasn’t even started. Groaning, she wondered if the entire universe hated her—even the beings that made her dreams.

Hadley moaned and Hadrian smoothed the hair from her forehead. What was she dreaming about? Her hair spilled out on the pillow like a beautiful red sunset. He would never let her cut her hair. It might be ridiculous, but the night before when he’d held her close to him and done everything he could to bring down her temperature, praying to any deity that would listen not to let her die, he’d taken possession of her. At least in his mind. He realized it might take a while to convince Hadley of his ownership, considering how he’d treated her the day before.

Damn his temper. It got him into more trouble… His mother had once told him he didn’t have any filter between what he thought and what he said when he got really angry. For some reason Hadley flustered him, and when he felt befuddled he behaved badly. It was childish. He suspected Hadley was just the sort of woman to help work on that particular issue, especially because she hadn’t backed down or lost herself in hysterics.

But for now they had bigger problems. If Hadley was going to heal the problems of everyone and everything she came into contact with, she would be kept right where she was until he could figure out how she could do it safely. He’d brought her here to be fixed—well, it had been one of the reasons—and he’d be damned if he’d let something else threaten her life.

She opened her eyes, their blue depths staring up at him. Her cheeks immediately reddened. Was she okay?

“Why am I dizzy?” She closed her eyes and groaned as if she couldn’t stand to have them open.

“I have no idea. I’ve never seen anything like this happen before but I think I might know someone who can help you.”

He hated to ask the arrogant prick for help even if he was his own brother, but Dragon was the man for the job.

Just because parents were from Warrior families did not mean they exclusively gave birth to Warrior children—a fact that had driven his father to distraction. His sister was a Seer and his brother a Mystic. The royals used the Mystics to enhance their abilities, to teach them how to handle the gifts they were born with. Hadley needed Dragon and it would be Hadrian who would have to pay for it, maybe in blood.

“Hadley, stay here. Don’t try to get up—just relax, if you can, and I’ll be back. I have to make the equivalent of a phone call.”

One eye opened, showing him the beauty of its blue depths. The mysteries hidden in her eyes had been haunting him since he’d first kidnapped her on Earth. “Who are you going to call?”

He sighed. “My brother.”

“The Dragon.”

“He’s not a Dragon, that’s just his name.”

She nodded and grabbed her head. His heart fell into his stomach. This had to stop.

She was killing herself with no hope of controlling it to fix gods-knew-what in Haven. He was grateful to have his mother back in prime condition but he guessed even Leopard wouldn’t want her to die to make things better.

Hadrian walked with determination out of his room and through his home. There was no way Dragon would make this easy on him—he’d probably refuse about a hundred times before he agreed—but ultimately his brother could be relied on to do what was right.

In better days, and in less dire circumstances, he would simply send a message to Astor and wait for his brother to reply. They’d go back and forth debating logistics until Dragon caved and came back, if for no other reason than to see why Hadrian was pestering him so badly. But today required face-to-face contact.

Knocking loudly on his parents’ door, he didn’t anticipate a response and was not surprised to hear none. His mother would be out surveying how much had improved overnight. He twisted the door handle and the door slammed open, hitting the wall behind it with a loud thud, shaking several framed pictures on the wall. A grown man, he still found entering his parents’ domain odd. His father had been big on personal space and privacy, and the children had rarely been invited into their parents’ bedroom.

He waited a beat to see if the pictures were okay and straightened the one in the middle. It was a large framed shot of his family during simpler times. Hadrian couldn’t have been more than one hundred years old, his hair short and shaved closely to his head—he’d just completed his first round of Warrior training. He wore all black, the traditional garb of the newly installed warrior, and he held a satisfied, smug look in his eyes as if he could take on the world. Hadrian snorted. If he could go back and talk to that clueless young man, he’d tell him not to be so cocky.

Dragon, who never smiled, exhibited a half-smirk, the closest he ever got to the real thing, and Hadrian couldn’t be sure but he thought he remembered his mother cracking a joke right before the picture was taken, the cause of their grins. His older brother’s eyes already held wariness inappropriate for a person so young. With all his magical ability, had Dragon seen what was to come when no one else had?

Rabbit, barely grown up, showed signs of the great beauty he was often told she was. It was hard for him as her brother to recognize his sister in that fashion. She, like her brothers, had their mother’s black hair but her eyes, unique for their family, were lilac like the flowers his mother attempted to grow every year in her honor. They were the sign of a Seer—every child on Haven gifted with them grew up with the talent to see what was to come both in their home dimension and sometimes in others. Had it been Rabbit who had seen what had befallen them on Earth? If he ever got to see her again he would ask.

Their father stood behind them all, no joy on his face, but that didn’t surprise Hadrian.

Had he ever seen his father show affection? He wasn’t sure and he wasn’t convinced his mother would have cared either way. The wives of the Warriors knew the kind of men they married. They were hard men. The patriarch of their family stared at him now with cold brown eyes accusing him, challenging him and ultimately condemning him for what had happened.

Hadrian shook his head. No more—it was time to put a plan into motion that would finally end what had begun.

Striding farther into the room, he approached his task cautiously. The communicator was to be used sparingly if at all. When he’d left two centuries before, they still hadn’t been sure about the technicalities of why it worked in the first place. It had always bothered Hadrian. Why were they using something if they didn’t understand it? Who else could be monitoring their conversations?

Attacks on their realm were so rare and far between that Hadrian feared they had become too complacent about things. Like, for example, the possibility that a royal princess could be abducted and drugged into submission to breed children for an Earthman. On his father’s dresser, as if the man still lived and was likely to come through the door at any minute, sat the portal bowl. Next to it sat a ceramic pitcher of seawater from the natural border of the capital city of Astor.

All people of Haven had the same pouring device and bowl. Hadrian wasn’t sure if it was the water that made this possible, the special container or a combination of both, but in any case he was glad to have it available to him now.

He poured the water into the bowl and waited for a moment before he closed his eyes and pictured his brother. Communication was easiest if you knew the person you wished to speak to, but in extreme situations location could work as well. “Send me to Dragon.”

The air in the room thickened, taking on the density of fog, and his skin tingled as if tiny beads of electricity jolted him. Above the bowl a screen appeared, his brother’s face in it. Dragon stared blankly at Hadrian and it took Hadrian a moment to realize he’d woken him up. It wasn’t like his older brother to sleep in, or at least it hadn’t been before Hadrian had left.

Dragon cleared his throat. “So it’s true, then—you have returned.”

Hadrian nodded and tried to speak but his voice failed him. Dragon had their father’s eyes, not just in color but in attitude as well.

“You must have some need of me or you wouldn’t be calling. I certainly don’t expect to be invited to some sort of ‘congratulations on your return’ party.”

He wasn’t going to get into a pissing contest, at least not yet. “How are you, Dragon?”

“Pleasantries? Okay, why not? I am fine, Hadrian, how are you?”

“I am, I suppose, well enough. I hope I’m not waking you.”

Dragon narrowed his eyes. “It was a late night. The king has had all the Mystics and Seers working overtime trying to predict what will happen when this Halfling you’ve brought back with you from Earth arrives in Astor. She’s an unknown factor.

Almost no one is getting readings.”

Hadrian raised one eyebrow. “Almost no one?”

“Our sister picks up on her quite nicely. She was how we knew you were back.” Hadrian nodded. Well, Dragon had answered that question for him.

“And you?”

“I see things in relation to Zamara’s daughter but a lot of it is very vague.”

It was really important that Hadrian handled this part of the discussion perfectly, or Dragon would deny him just to watch him fail. “Have you seen anything in relation to yourself?”

Dragon stood and the picture of his face moved with him. “Why would there be any connection between myself and Hadley Pettigrew other than the fact that you brought her back and are evidently hoarding her at our ancestral home instead of bringing her here?”

If it had been anyone else but his brother, Hadrian might have considered explaining what was going on, but instead he thought he’d leave Dragon to stew on that for a while.

“So not a hint about how you might be involved in helping to end this entire problem, then? Okay, sorry to bother you.”

Hadrian poured the water out of the bowl, ending their conversation abruptly. He smirked and walked past his parents’ bed, in the direction of the room’s exit. As he could have predicted, a screen appeared in front of him.

“Hadrian.” His name alone held so much venom, Hadrian was sure if his brother could have reached through the screen and punched him hard in the nose he would have.

Actually, he wasn’t entirely certain his brother wasn’t powerful enough to do just that.

“Yes, Dragon?” He’d play innocent—it was still the best shot at getting what he wanted.

“How could I possibly be involved in ending this entire problem?”

“It seems that darling Hadley,” he thought he saw Dragon raise his eyebrows and he wasn’t sure why, “has the abilities of her mother tenfold. Everywhere she goes, everyone she comes near, is being healed by her presence.”

“That is wonderful news, Hadrian. Perhaps if you had gotten her here earlier much could have been avoided.”

Hadrian bit down on his tongue. He wanted to tell Dragon where he could take his presumptions and attitude but he needed to stay focused on the goal. Hadley was his first priority—he’d sworn it last night, this morning, and every pore in his body stood at alert demanding he take care of what happened to her.

“The problem is that the task is killing her because she has no control over it and no idea how it is happening to her.”