Seconds Before Sunrise (The Timely Death Trilogy) (8 page)

I tightened my grip.
I don’t crash.

Slow down,
he screamed, and my concentration shattered at the exact time my tires hit the on-ramp.

My wheels skid
ded, and the back of the car leapt. Air froze in my lungs, and a rush of sounds pounded against my ears. Pierce’s voice returned, accompanied by my father’s yelling and the brief squeal of the tires.

Then
, I was flying – floating upward toward the windshield, and I squeezed my eyes shut when the horizon began tilting dangerously. I felt myself transition away from my human form, and even with the car spinning I could feel the seatbelt against my chest. A sound ripped the air just before I lost consciousness.

The smell of smoke broke through the blood dripping from my nose. I thought about moving, but nothing happened.
After a moment, a moan finally escaped me and I blinked through the dusty debris.

I coughed,
but my chest resisted the effort, squeezing my lungs. I coughed again, and tears sprung to my eyes. My fingers curled around the seatbelt latch, and I pushed. I fell, and my left shoulder collided with the crushed door. Glass scrapped my skin.

“Hey.” A man was in front of me. He hadn’t been there before, and he was already fading into the darkness.

“Stay with me,” he said. He reached in and grabbed my jacket. When he yanked my body out, my shoulder wiggled unnaturally.

I lifted my hand to help him, but then I saw my skin. I had turned back into a human.

A sharp pain shot through me, and I sucked in a breath.

Before I could comprehend it, I was opening my eyes to a flashlight. The man had been replaced by someone else,
and this one wore a uniform. Purple lights flickered behind him. Jessica’s purple rain drifted through my vision until he shook the flashlight at me.

“W
hat’s your name?” he asked.

I tried to look past him, but the purple lights were gone. They were never purple at all. They were red and blue
– police lights.

“Er—Er—Ar—Aec—Eri—c.” Every sound I made hurt.

“Eric?” he guessed, and I sensed another person. I was being tied down. “Is your name Eric?”

I opened my mouth to speak but spit blood out instead. He wi
ped it away, but I tasted it. “We—Well—Welborn.”

“Eric?” he repeated, and the gurney was l
ifted. My stomach felt as if it had been left on the ground. “Eric Welborn?”

I couldn’t nod. My head was
restrained. But it didn’t matter anymore.

The man’s
eyes widened, and he looked at the men carrying me up the hill. With every step they took, the lights became brighter, and consciousness became harder to stand. “Be careful,” he said. “That’s James Welborn’s kid.”

Eric

The lights were as dim as my thoughts, and I had to concentrate every time I opened my eyes only for them to shut again. I drifted in and out so many times that I wasn’t sure whether I was awake or asleep.

“Keep
resting, honey.”

The words were soft-spoken and unfamiliar. My own family didn’t talk to me that way
, but I felt like my mother would have if she were alive.

I shifted, wanting to see the woman, but she was gone
− replaced with a man I had seen every day of my life.

“How are you feeling?” my dad asked, leaning on his elbows.

I made a feeble attempt to speak, but all that came out was a cough. Pain wrung my chest, and my brow crumbled as he handed me a practical Sippy Cup.

“
Take it easy,” he said. “You broke a few ribs.” He stared at the wall behind me. “You almost punctured a lung, Eric.”

My human name explained my location. I was
in a hospital − a human hospital. I swallowed the water to drown my panic. “How long have I been here?”

“A day.”

The only time I had left was melting away, and I wasn’t even allowed to live it. I scanned my body, but it didn’t look as bad as I felt. My arms weren’t broken, but one had a large gash running down the side. I couldn’t see my legs, but I didn’t think I wanted to.

“What happened?” I asked.

My father straightened. I turned my neck without any pain and stared at him. He wasn’t responding until I repeated myself.

“You don’t re
member?” he managed.

I searched for any recollection. I had a feeling of spinning. That was it.

“Nothing,” I said, lowering my voice. “Why am I here?” I couldn’t fathom why they would bring me to a human hospital when the shelter could heal me in minutes.

My father cleared his throat and rolled his shoulders back. “You were angry,” he spoke slowly. “And you crashed your car.”

“What?”

“You got in a car accident,” he continued, ignoring my reaction. “It was just you. No one else was involved, but another driver found you and pulled you out.”

I expected my memory to return, but nothing came. I was teetering on the edge of nothingness. “I—” I couldn’t complete the sentence.

“What’s the last t
hing you remember?” he asked.

I opened my mou
th as if it was the easiest question in the world, but it wasn’t.

I knew the Marking of Change was close. Jessica didn’t have her memory, but her subconscious was aware of the Dark, and I could barely stand it. Pierce was her guard, and Camille was too busy
training to be around me. I went to training. I had driven by Jessica’s house.

“I sensed the L
ight,” I spoke before the memory even came and stopped myself before I continued. I didn’t know what to say. I had argued with Pierce, and my father appeared. I didn’t agree. I drove away.

I lifted my hand to rub my head, but my dry skin was cracked. I half-expected to see blood
, but I was clean. I dropped it in my lap, and every muscle in my body tingled.

“They gave you morphine a while ago,” my dad said, standing up from his chair. “It should wear off, but I imagine they’ll give you more.” He cupped his chin and whispered, “I’ve been monitoring what you say.”

“I said something?”

“Almost,” he admitted. “You were telling the nurses you weren’t allowed to be on drugs, because of the fight.”

I was going to be sick.

“You have
to get me out of here,” I said.

“I’m trying, but—”

“But what?”

My father crossed his arms and lowered his face. His
complexion was paler beneath the fluorescent lights. “The doctors are determined to heal you.”

I got it then. I was Eric Welbo
rn − his kid − and he had money. The politics of Hayworth were astounding.

“You’re lucky you lived, Eric,” he muttered, looking over his shoulder before continuing. “If you were human, you’d be dead.”

“That bad?”

He nodded.

I groaned and stared at the ceiling. The lights didn’t burn my human vision as much as they did when I was a shade, but it reminded me of my inhibitions. I couldn’t transform, and I knew what my father had done. He had taken my powers away.

“How lon
g will this take?” I asked.

H
e sat down before standing up again. He was pacing. “Until you heal naturally,” he said. “We can’t give them another reason to be suspicious. We don’t know who these nurses are.”

“So
, get one from the Dark.”

“It’s not that simple,” he r
etorted.

I drank more water
because I had nothing else to say. We were quiet for a number of minutes before he sat down on the edge of my bed and reached for my hand. He pulled back at the last second. “I’m glad you’re okay, son.”

“Thanks.”

His breathing was heavy, and he turned toward the hallway. Mindy and Noah were probably at home, but they had to know. Strangely enough, I wanted to know what they thought.

“Mindy took Noah home,” my father said, practically reading my mind. “Camille and Pierce were here earlier, but they had to train. I’m sure they’ll return tomorrow.”

I cringed at the reminder. “What about my training?” I asked, knowing I couldn’t fight as a human, let alone an injured one.

My father patted the bed instead of my leg. “Don’t worry about that now.”

“But—”

“Concentrate on getting better, Eric,” he said, locking his brown eyes on mine. Despite his harsh tone, he seemed much warmer than the man I knew as a child. “Just don’t crash again.”

I couldn’t help the smirk from spreading onto my face. “Sounds like I have nothing to crash.”

He chuckled. “That is a fortunate fact.”

“I wouldn’t call it fortunate.” I tried to suppress even a light laugh. My chest hurt, but my actions disappointed me. If I’d listened to Urte, I would’ve handled my anger better, and I wouldn’t have destroyed my only possession − my pre-murder gift.

“I am sorry.”

“I wonder—” he began quietly, “if you crashed because you lost control or because you were trying to leave Hayworth.”

His words clouded the hospital air worse than the sanitizers. The thought of fate controlling my life
was always present, but the destruction it would use in order to succeed was unfathomable. No one knew whether an event or our everyday lives were preordained. We either had little control or none, and the idea of bringing upon an early death just by defying something was terrifying. But the worst part wasn’t even about me.

Jessica’s parents died trying to escape, but she didn’t. She could leave whene
ver she wanted. She could be free.

Jessica

“My uncle is the one who found him,” Sarah Shrill bragged, leaning to the right of her palette. I couldn’t help but hear their conversation in art class. She was talking to Mitchell from across the room. “He couldn’t believe he was alive. His car was in pieces.”

Mitchel
l blew air out of his nose. “Too bad the car is gone.”

“He’s spoiled if you ask me,” Sarah said, pointing her brush toward him. “I guarantee he gets a new one before he’s even out of the hospital.”

“He’s still in the hospital?”

“He should be,” she said.
“My uncle said he wasn’t in good shape. He didn’t even recognize him.”

Mitchel
l cringed. “That bad, huh?”

“
I can’t believe he survived another wreck. You’d think karma would catch up with him.”

My stomach dropped, and my eyes froze on the twist of my painting. I couldn’t continue. My fingers were shaking.

“Abby didn’t even have a chance in the last one,” Mitchell said. “I wonder who was with him this time.”

“No one that my uncle saw,” Sarah responded. “He was there until the ambulance team took over. They said Welborn was lucky to be breathing.”

“I bet. How’d he crash this time?”

My homeroom p
artner doing crosswords flashed through my memory, and I stared at my backpack. My crossword book was still in the front pocket, even the puzzles with his handwriting.

“My uncle said he was speeding,” Sarah continued
. Her tone disgusted me. “He guessed Eric was going over a hundred. Big surprise, right?”

“I’ve seen him speeding before,” Mitchel
l added.

“I think most people have,” she pointed out. “He’s hard to miss.”

“Got that right,” Mitchell said. “The guy asks for it. He’s going to die young.”

“Probably deserves it
, too.”

I didn’t want to listen to my classmates. They were heartless.
I wanted to stand up and leave, but I couldn’t. The teacher was at his desk, and he would see me if I made my way to the door.

“You okay?”

I followed the squeaky voice to Jonathon Stone.

“Yeah,” I hesitated to answer his question of concern. “Are you?”

His thick eyebrows furrowed together. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“You don’t normally talk to anybody,” I remarked, pointing to his little chair
in the corner of the room. “You kind of keep to yourself.”

“I’ve talked to you before.”

“About a painting,” I retorted.

He pushed his glasses further up his nose. “You looked so worried,” he said as his eyes
− or his eye − traced across my face. “I had to ask if you were okay.”

“Thanks, but I’m fine,” I snapped
.

Jonathon ignored my bitterness. “You sure you don’t want t
o talk about it?” he asked.

I stared at him, wondering
again how he could ask me personal questions so easily. “I’m sure.”

“Who wants to guess how long Welborn is out of school?” Mitchel
l’s question gained my attention.