Fate Changer (The Lost Witch Trilogy #3) (18 page)

She ignored her broken pelvis and moved through her organs. She sensed recent healing and wondered if her father had been working on setting her organs straight before moving on to her bones. She mentally shrugged and then winced, knowing most or her ribs were broken along with the bones in her arms. But what made her gasp in horror was the fact that some of the bones in her back were broken. She refused to think about that and moved up to her skull and face. Her neck was fine surprisingly, but the back of her skull was broken into five fragments and there was bleeding on her brain. If she didn’t relieve the pressure building on her brain, she’d be dead within a few hours. Sarah sighed and closed her eyes. Why had her grandmother wakened her? This was impossible. This was too much.
She should be dead
, she thought sadly and closed her eyes wondering how hard it would be to slip back into the darkness.

She whimpered when she realized the silky gray darkness had left her. All she had left now was pain.

“You have me,” came a soft voice to her side.

Sarah cracked open an eyelid and noticed that the person who had been sitting next to her, sleeping, was now standing over her, searching her face.
Zane
.

She closed her eyes again and tried to look away.
Go away
, she thought in her mind, hoping he could understand her, since she hurt too much to talk.

Zane shook his head, looking confused. “
No
. Never. I’ll never go away and leave you,” he said, his voice sounding shaky with emotion.

Sarah felt a tear slip down her cheek and he immediately captured it with his finger. Sarah slowly opened her eyes again and looked up into the face she loved so passionately. What was the point? She was broken.

“Not for long,” Zane whispered and put both of his hands on either side of her head and then very gently touched his forehead to hers.

Sarah moaned in pain. Even the slightest touch was excruciating to her. Zane’s power formed a soft cocoon of energy around her. She sighed in relief, noting it was almost as nice as the darkness she had loved so much.

“See, that’s not so bad is it? You love the warmth, remember?” he said softly and then reached down to touch his lips to hers.

Sarah wondered why her power wasn’t reaching out toward Zane like it had always done before.

Zane sighed. “I don’t know Sarah. You’ve been out of it for three days now. Maybe you just need some time. Until you can access your power, use mine. Take it and use it to heal your body. Start with your skull and your brain though. Race says if we don’t take you to a hospital, you’ll die. But if we do, Charles will have you and you’ll be lost to us and to yourself. This is the only way sweetheart. Use my power to heal. Please try,” Zane urged, sending more of his power out of himself, surrounding her in a ball of perfect energy.

Sarah sighed in acquiescence and closed her eyes. She gathered Zane’s power to her as if it were her own and moved with it to her skull and the blood on her brain causing so much pressure. She used Zane’s power to dissolve the blood and then started on the cracks in the skull. It took so long but every time she paused and looked around to see if she had enough power to keep going, she did. She moved almost lazily from one broken bone to the next, fusing the bones and commanding the marrow to join together. Her legs were a disaster, but she went to work on them because she was too scared of what she would find when she started on the bones in her back.

She took extra time on her legs and pelvis, but finally gave in and moved to her back. She paused and felt around herself. She still had enough of Zane’s power to heal. She just didn’t know if she could.

She dove into the bone and the nerve endings and was surprised to see that they were broken just like any other bone. She didn’t know much about anatomy or what would cause a person to become paralyzed. She felt the words,
spinal cord
, pop into her head from Zane. Sarah smiled in relief and wiggled her toes. She moved through her body one more time and found a broken bone in her left hand she had over looked. She sighed in relief and then let go of Zane’s power.

She drifted tiredly back to sleep and didn’t protest when Zane lifted her gently and laid her on the side of the bed as he crawled in to lie beside her. He wrapped his arms around her and then went to sleep, completely exhausted.

Sarah woke up to the sound of squawking hysterical shrieks a couple hours later. She stubbornly kept her eyes closed and pretended she was asleep.

“She’s dead!” she heard Charlie scream and run from the room.

Zane yawned and turned on his side, away from the door, fitting her more firmly in the crook of his arm. He leaned over and kissed her lazily on the forehead before tucking the blankets more firmly around her.

Gretchen and Agnes burst in to the room, making gasping, horrified sounds. “Oh my poor baby, my poor, poor baby,” Agnes sobbed, leaning her head on Zane’s arm and reaching out a hand to touch Sarah’s cheek.

Sarah’s mouth formed into a slight smile as she realized that they thought she had died because Zane was holding her in his arms. She had been too damaged to touch just the night before.

She elbowed Zane in the stomach.
Tell them I’m alive
, she said to Zane’s mind tiredly, but he shook his head. “They won’t believe me,” he muttered irritably.

No one heard him over Charlie’s and Agnes’s crying. Gretchen had collapsed on the ground, and was rocking back and forth, crying into her hands.

Sarah groaned louder and elbowed Zane again.
Come on Zane. It’s cruel to let them think I’m dead. Tell them before they need counseling, please.

But just as Zane rolled away from her, gently extricating his arm from around her shoulders, the door burst open, hitting the wall so hard it put a hole in the sheetrock.

Sarah didn’t even have to open her eyes. She knew it was Lash. “No!” he roared, flinging himself at the bed and pushing Agnes out of the way.

Sarah opened one bleary eye and stared up into bright, blazing blue laser like eyes. She blinked a couple more times and then decided to see if she could speak.

“Good morning Lash,” she said in a raspy, old sounding voice that had everyone going silent.

Lash looked at her in shock and gently touched her cheek with his finger. “You’re not dead,” he said wonderingly. “You’re looking at me. You’re blinking your eyes,” he said in shock and then turned and yelled at everyone else in case they had missed what he said.

“She’s alive!” he yelled, his face breaking out in to a grin. He then picked up Charlie in his arms and danced around the room, yelling and whooping.

Zane groaned at the noise and turned over again, hiding his face in Sarah’s shoulder. She ignored him though as Agnes and Gretchen peeked over his inert body to stare at her in wonder.

“It can’t be,” Agnes said softly, reaching out to touch a strand of wavy red hair.

“It
be
,” Zane muttered. “Now go away, I’m begging you. Let me sleep or there will be a funeral. Mine,” he said nastily.

Sarah closed her eyes tiredly, with a smile on her face. She went back to sleep to the sound of Agnes ushering everyone out the door. In her dreams, she was back in the silky darkness, but this time, Zane was with her, holding her in his arms and the darkness was warm, not cool. She smiled happily and drifted into nothing.

Chapter 16 – Race

Sarah woke up twenty four hours later feeling stiff and cold. She yawned and turned on her side. She was completely alone in the bed and in the room. She frowned wondering where Zane had gone to.

She gingerly sat up in bed and winced at how completely weak she still felt. After being with Zane for a while, she should have been recharged. She moved her legs over the side of the bed and moaned softly at how stiff she felt. She pushed off and landed on her feet and winced as her knees almost buckled. She had been out for so long and hadn’t been able to eat. There were no IV’s here and Gretchen or Agnes dribbling water or soup down her throat must not have cut it. She took a deep breath and walked haltingly towards the bathroom. She’d shower and eat if she didn’t collapse on the floor first.

She made it slowly to the bathroom and stripped her clothes off and stared in shock at her body reflected back at her in the mirror. She was so thin and pale she looked emaciated and tragic. Her skin was mottled, pink, purple, green and brown with strips of white skin here and there. She looked as bad as she felt. She closed her eyes, wondering why she wasn’t healing completely. Why wasn’t she strong? And her power felt dormant. She attempted to call up her energy and felt . . .
nothing
. She remembered having to use Zane’s power to heal because she’d had none of her own. Something was very wrong.

She turned on the water and stepped in to the steam and closed her eyes as different sensations played over her skin. Pleasure and pain battled it out and she let them as she leaned her head against the shower tile. She very slowly shampooed her hair and washed her body and then wrapped a towel around herself. She had to sit down for a moment before getting her clothes on, but she was up and moving. She was alive and she had to be grateful for that. Raising her arm to comb her hair was a major chore but when she was done, she had to admit she looked a little better.

Now food. She groaned at the thought of walking down a flight of stairs to get to the kitchen. There was no way she could.
Yet
. She called out to Zane’s mind, hoping he could assist her.
Zane? Could you help me please?

Sarah sat on the edge of her bed and leaned her head against the bed post as Zane opened the door just a few minutes later with a large grin on his face.

“You look amazing,” he said, hurrying to her side and cupping her face in his hands. “What are you doing out of bed. After everything you’ve been through, you probably need another week of rest.”

Sarah shook her head. “No, not really. Zane, something is off. I’m not healing the way I’m supposed to. After everything we did, I should feel so much better. But I don’t. And I can’t call up my energy anymore.”

Zane stared at her worriedly and shook his head. “You were able to talk to my mind just a minute ago and you were able to use my power to go through your body and heal everything. That’s something. It’s not gone, you just can’t use it the way you used to. We’ll figure it out Sarah.”

Sarah smiled and nodded here head. “Maybe you’re right. I’d like to eat something now but I can’t do the stairs. Just taking a shower was exhausting. Will you carry me down?”

Zane moved to grab a pale green sweater out of her closet and helped her put it on as he nodded. “Of course I will. Sarah, before we go down, I just want you to know how sorry I am that,
um
, that I threw you out the window,” he said sounding like he was in pain.

Sarah winced but smiled up into his face. “It’s okay. Charles messed with your head. I don’t blame you Zane. But seriously, I had no idea you had such a temper,” she said with a grin.

Zane tried to smile, but ended up frowning darkly. “I can’t believe he was able to make me hurt the person I love more than anything,” he said, choking on his words. “When Race told us that there was nothing we could do and that you were dying, I swear I could feel part of myself die too. There’s no way I can do this without you Sarah. Please don’t ever take a chance like that again. Your life is too precious to me.”

Sarah felt sad for some reason as Zane picked her up in his strong arms. She rested her head gratefully against his chest and smiled in relief as she felt a very small wave of her power move to wrap around him. Zane’s energy wrapped around her at the same time and she felt better and stronger immediately. She had been missing this.
Why?

“Zane, have you not been near me? Is that why I haven’t healed or recharged?” she asked curiously.

Zane’s eyes turned hard and he glanced down at her. “Race has kept me busy and away from you as much as possible. He says he doesn’t trust me around you anymore. What a joke, when he’s the one who has been so unapologetic about his plans to kill you for the greater good.”

Sarah frowned and closed her eyes as Zane walked slowly down the flight of stairs. Something wasn’t right. And it had to do with Race.

“Is he still here? Is he in the house?” she asked quietly, hoping he had left and gone back to town.

Zane nodded his head. “Yes, he’s right back in the middle of everything now. But I don’t trust him Sarah. My mom sure is happy though,” he said sadly.

Sarah kept quiet as Zane walked through the doorway and into the bright and warm kitchen. She glanced quickly around the room and noted everyone was there. Including her father, sitting next to Gretchen and smiling complacently at something she said. Lash was to the side with Charlie, staring at her father and Agnes was in the kitchen, not looking very pleased.

When everyone noticed their presence, smiles broke out. She watched her father’s reaction and wasn’t surprised to see a flash of disappointment before it was replaced by a generic smile.

“Zane, set me down now please,” she asked, pointing to a bar stool.

Gretchen hurried to her side and motioned to the table by the window. “Wouldn’t you be more comfortable at the table Sarah? Your dad’s here. We’re just getting ready to eat some lunch.”

Sarah smiled but shook her head, not looking at Race. “No thanks, this is fine. But I am hungry.”

Race joined the crowd around her and went to the fridge. “There’s a special soup I’ve made you Sarah that we’ve been feeding you. It’s important that you finish it,” he said, bringing out a pot and placing it on the counter.

Sarah shook her head and looked at Race suspiciously. “I’m not eating that.”

Race looked at her impatiently. “If you’d stayed asleep for another day, you would have finished it anyways. It’s for the best.”

Sarah raised an eyebrow at her father. “Is that what has prevented me from regaining my strength? Have you been poisoning me?” she asked quietly, glancing at the pot of greenish liquid.