Sacrificed (The Ignited Series) (10 page)

The ringing in Alec’s pants’ pocket interrupted me from completely freaking out. Suddenly, I had more to be concerned about than rapidly developing specialties.

They never called.

Alec answered quickly and put it on speaker phone for all of us to hear as Nathan’s voice came through. The fact that it was him calling settled some of the galloping in my chest. He was fine, obviously. I didn’t need to worry about him. But what about Gabby and Richie?

I could hear the apprehension in Nathan’s voice as he asked for all of us to drive down to the cliff overlooking the warehouse. With one urgently spoken word, everything and everyone around me disappeared.

Now
.

Something had happened. Something was wrong.

I didn’t have a guess as to what it could be, but I knew it couldn’t be good if it had Nathan on edge.

CHAPTER 9

I was relieved to see Nathan waiting for us when we pulled up. I got the confirmation that he was okay, but I could tell from the look on his face that something big was going on. Though I didn’t know them very well, and what I did know is that they didn’t like me very much, I felt a pang of concern for Gabby and Richie. I hoped nothing had happened to either of them, and Nathan didn’t call Micah down here to do some diamond injury curing.

Nathan didn’t say a word as he led the way from the road to the overlook. It was a slightly uphill hike that was just long enough and steep enough to cause a little bead of sweat to pop out on my forehead. Gabby and Richie met us at the top, and neither of them were writhing in pain or muttering gibberish.

So what was the problem, and why the glum faces?

I opened my mouth to ask, but was interrupted by Micah.

“They’re gone,” he said in a hauntingly soft voice.

Who? The Skotadi? Gone? How did he know that, I wondered, and then I remembered who I was questioning.

Of course. I had read in that stupid book of his that some prophets could sense Skotadi from a distance. Micah, as arguably the strongest prophet alive, surely had that ability.

“Are you sure?” Nathan asked him.

Micah nodded. “Positive. I can usually sense them in the car on the way here, and it gets stronger the closer I get. Now, I’m getting nothing. I can’t feel them at all. They’re gone.” He hesitated, then added, “And I think they left in a hurry. Maybe middle of the night.”

Alec scoffed. “You can get all that from just standing here?”

Micah glared. “Yeah. I can.”

Alec narrowed his eyes at Micah, and looked close to firing a smartass comment in return. It was obvious that Nathan wasn’t the only one that didn’t like Micah. The animosity between Alec and Micah didn’t go anywhere though, since Richie interrupted their testosterone-charged staring contest by suggesting that we all go check out the warehouse. Then, there was something more important to worry about than who would get first dibs on kicking Micah’s ass.

“Go check it out?” I spun on Richie. “Are you crazy?”

“I’d think you would be eager to see what they’ve been hiding in there,” Gabby said coolly. She was intimidating for being such a small framed girl, but I refused to let her know she scared the hell out of me.

“Let’s go see what they might have left behind.”

That last statement came from Nathan, and was what started us all down the embankment to the warehouse.

I wrung my hands nervously as we approached the building
. Sure, I trusted Micah’s weird ability to sense a group of Skotadi. I trusted that he believed they were gone, but it still freaked me out to go inside their warehouse. Part of it was fear that a few, not enough for Micah to sense, had stayed behind to ambush us. Most of it was fear of what we might find.

What if it was something I didn’t want to see, to find out? What if we found that there wasn’t a way to alter the path I was destined for? The words that Skotadi muttered in the woods just before Richie put a bullet in his head still haunted me. What if we were about to stumble upon something bigger than what we were prepared for?

My skin prickled as we entered the building. Inside, it was cold and dark. The windows were haphazardly covered with black garbage bags, with weak bands of sunlight spilling through the occasional gap. It was a big, and old, and creepy building, but I was glad to see that it was open and spacious, which left few places to hide.

Our footsteps echoed ominously off the concrete as we fanned out. I jumped when Alec suddenly called out from beside me.

“Come out, come out, wherever you are!” he shouted. Gabby shot him a scathing look, and he shrugged his shoulders. “Wouldn’t you rather know if there’s anyone left now, than to keep looking over your shoulder?”

Before she could answer, Micah chimed in with a confident, “There’s no one left.”

“We should split up,” Richie suggested. “We can cover more ground before the sun sets and we can’t see at all.”

Richie, Gabby, and Micah—because they wouldn’t let Micah out of there sight of course—took one phone and said they would canvas the lower level. The rest of us climbed up a shaky set of metal stairs to a cluster of rooms that looked as if they might have served as offices.

The first room we came across was mostly empty, aside from some boxes that, from the amount of dust layered on them, had obviously not been touched in some time. Same went for the second room. The third room we entered had more boxes, but with less dust, and appeared to have been some sort of storage room. Likely for the Skotadi, since this room had been used more recently. It also appeared to have been emptied quickly.

Chances were that whatever they had kept in this room had been taken with them, and the boxes that remained held nothing of importance. We paused to sort through them anyway, just in case something worthwhile had been left behind.

After a few moments it became clear that nothing would be found there. Turning away from another empty box in frustration, I caught a glimpse of Nathan as he wandered through a door into another room. With a quick glance at Alec and Callie, who were busy sifting through a cluster of boxes in the corner, I followed him.

He looked up when I entered, and I saw the bluish hint still left in the corner of both of his eyes, all that remained of the broken nose I had given him. Seeing
the bruises now only made me feel all the more guilty.

“Hey, Nathan…” I started hesitantly. I didn’t know how to apologize for what I had done. Mostly because I knew that he wouldn’t expect, or want, an apology. As far as he was probably concerned, one wasn’t necessary. I had only done what he’d encouraged me to do.

It was the rest of it that I felt I needed to apologize for. The out of body experience I had encountered the moment I’d connected my fist with his face, the fact that I didn’t really remember doing it, and that I still couldn’t explain what had happened. But how could I apologize for all of that when I didn’t really want him, or anyone, to know what had happened? Not before I could explain it.

“Don’t,” he said like he knew exactly what I was trying to do. And of course he did. It was Nathan. He always knew what I was up to, sometimes even before I knew.

Sometimes I really hated that. “Yeah, but…”

“But nothing, Kris. You did what I wanted you to do. You hit me.” He rolled his head with a smile. “Just a little harder than I anticipated.”

I sighed, and then said the rest in a gush, “I’m sorry I broke your nose.”

His smile widened. “No, you’re not.”

My mouth gaped open. Did he really think I’d wanted to break his nose? Surely not. But then, well, I had been pretty pissed at him at the time.

He used my hesitation as an opportunity to close the door on the whole incident. That was fine. I’d apologized. Maybe not for
all
of it, but he’d gotten the message.

He turned toward the desk in the corner of the room. It, too, had been cleared, except for one piece of paper placed neatly in the center. He picked it up and examined it.

Since I couldn’t read it without stepping close to him—and being close to Nathan wouldn’t help me with that impulse control I’d been working on—I watched Nathan’s reaction as he read what was written on the paper. A muscle in his cheek twitched and his eyes hardened.

“What is it?” I asked.

Wordlessly, Nathan handed the paper to me. It was a letter addressed to him. From Lillian. My chest tightened as I read the words.

Dear Nathan,

I don’t know how you did it, but apparently you found us. I’m not sure what it is that you and your pet are looking for, but I can assure you that you are wasting your time. You won’t find us again. You can’t win. Give up and let us have the girl. You’re only postponing the inevitable. Until next time, when I find you...

Love,

Lillian

I had hoped she’d been killed when Nathan and Alec blew up her underground Skotadi compound in Kentucky. We hadn’t heard or seen anything from her since. Until now. She was alive and still looking for me. And still referring to me as Nathan’s
pet
.

He was across the room, rummaging through a filing cabinet, when I turned to him.

“This is the second time she’s called me your pet,” I said to him. “What does she mean by that?”

Nathan shrugged without turning to look at me. “We were dating when I found you. She knew what I was doing, checking up on you, protecting you. We got into a few fights about it.”

They used to fight about me? About Nathan protecting me when I was a kid? That was…weird.

“Why did she care so much?”

Nathan slammed one drawer shut and opened another. As he flipped through the files, he answered, “She didn’t want me to get caught, I think. I don’t really remember now. It was so long ago.” He stopped what he was doing to look up at me. “I was breaking just about every Kala rule there was.”

I half smiled. I doubted I would ever grow tired of hearing how Nathan had risked everything by helping me. In learning about the actions he had taken over the years to protect me, I’d uncovered the deeply rooted, though heavily guarded, feelings he had for me. I’d learned that he genuinely cared for me. Even if it had only started because he’d felt sorry for me, the pathetic little girl who had no one else.

Except for him. He had always been there.

His girlfriend had known…and hadn’t liked it. It wasn’t like it could have been a jealousy thing. I had only been three when he’d first started protecting me. And I had only been eleven when Lillian was changed to a Skotadi.

The same year Nathan had removed me from foster care.

When the Skotadi had lost track of me.

“Hey, Nathan?”

“Hmm?” He was flipping through a file he had withdrawn from the cabinet, and not paying much attention to me.

“Was Lillian changed before or after you took me out of that foster home?”

He tossed the file, apparently having come up empty on finding anything useful in it. He glanced at me distractedly. “Huh? Why?”

“I have a theory,” I said slowly as I sorted through my jumbled thoughts, hoping I was wrong. But afraid I was right. My pulse thundered in my ears. “Just go with me. Was it before or after?”

He tossed his head back as if to think. He pondered for only a second before his eyes flicked to mine, hard and serious. “Kris, don’t…”

“Just think about,” I insisted. “What if it wasn’t a coincidence?”

He shook his head as if to prevent my suggestion from planting, as if the idea was too painful to consider.

“She knew you, your strengths and your weaknesses,” I added. “They knew you were messing around in my life, and she knew you better than anyone.”

I saw from the look in his eyes that Nathan had never considered the possibility before. Honestly, I didn’t know how he hadn’t thought of it sooner. But I could also see that he didn’t want to believe it.

“You don’t think it’s possible that they targeted her and changed her to use her to find me?” 

He shook his head, but it wasn’t very convincing. Neither was his voice. “No, I don’t.”

I did. The more I thought about it, the more convinced I became. And it made me sick.

Because of me, Nathan’s life, and Lillian’s, had been turned upside down. I didn’t like her, but I still felt guilty that she was the way she was n
ow because of me. And I hated what it had done to Nathan. It was all my fault. All the pain that Nathan has been through was all because of me.

He must have seen the devastation on my face, because he crossed the room to where I swayed unsteadily as a chip was chiseled out of my heart. He cupped a hand to the back of my neck, forcing me to look up at him.

“I don’t want you to be thinking what I know you’re thinking,” he said softly.

I couldn’t help it. Gradually, I was only being reminded of how much easier things would be if I weren’t here. No more questioning the fate of humanity, no more fighting for my soul, no more heartbreak.

No more ruining the lives of everyone around me.

“Everybody would be better off if I had died in that accident.” The car accident that, by all means, I should have died in. I’d only survived because Nathan had saved me.

Nathan gripped my chin forcefully, making me hold his gaze. “Not me.”

“Maybe fate was trying to correct what you had interfered with all along?” I was in a downward spiral of self-loathing now, all my most negative thoughts rising to the surface, all the little things I had buried coming forth, all at once. The end result was shattering. “My foster dad, who would have raped and killed me, the car accident I should have died in? Maybe I was supposed to die when I was three, and fate has been trying to correct it ever since?”

Wallowing in self-pity had never been a trait I admired in anyone, least of all myself, but there I was, immersed in it. But what I said, I truly believed. What if Nathan had been throwing a kink into fate’s plan all this time?

“It’s best for everyone I know, not to mention all of mankind. I shouldn’t be here,” I concluded numbly.