Unforsaken (27 page)

P
RAIRIE WANTED TO LEAVE HIM THERE
, lying in the dirt outside the office park. She figured his death would be chalked up as one more casualty of the night’s violence, and I knew she was right.

But I insisted we take him home to die.

He never regained consciousness. Blood bubbled from his nostrils and trailed from his slack mouth. Prairie had shot him in the chest, and there was a rattling wheeze as he struggled to breathe.

We laid him out in the passenger seat, and I held Chub on my lap in the back with Kaz as Prairie drove through town and into the darkened streets of Trashtown.

Curtains moved and lights flickered in the windows of the houses along Morrin Street. Despite the late hour, people were up: restless souls looking for a high; bitter men
looking for a target for their anger; fearful women hiding in their own homes. The Audi was still parked in front of Rattler’s house where I’d left it, and I imagined that everyone in town had noticed it and wondered who had come to call. Unsettled by indecipherable waking dreams of water and blood, the Seers would have known something was coming.

Prairie parked and we got out of the truck. Chub slept on, oblivious. Kaz opened the passenger door, and our eyes met.

“I’ll carry him in. Why don’t you and Prairie get in the Audi with Chub—I’ll be right back.”

“No.”
The firmness of my voice surprised me. “I’m coming.”

No one spoke for a moment. Prairie slowly got out of the car, wiping blood from her arm. She stared at Rattler like she’d never seen him before. And I realized that in a way, she hadn’t; at least, she’d never looked at him without fear before, never known him when he wasn’t a danger to her.

“Give Prairie the keys,” Kaz said gently.

I did; then I handed Chub over, and Prairie cradled him in her arms and walked slowly toward the Audi without looking back.

It was down to Kaz and me. He dragged Rattler from the car and got him over his shoulders in a fireman’s carry. It took effort; Rattler was solidly built, every ounce of him muscle and bone. I walked ahead, and when we reached the front
door, I knew the knob would turn in my hand. I’d guessed that Rattler would not lock his home, that he would not be afraid of any threat that could come through his front door.

I was right.

Inside, I snapped on a light switch and the front parlor was lit with the ocher glow from a china lamp on a battered hutch. Even in the dim light I could see that Rattler had made an effort to prepare his home for Prairie. Every surface—the humble pine floors, the old furniture, the paneled walls—was scrubbed and gleaming. Yellowed lace-edged linens were draped over tables. Crumbling crocheted doilies covered chair backs. Jars of wildflowers lined the windowsills.

My heart hitched as Kaz laid Rattler on a faded sofa, his long legs extending far past the end. It had been important to me that my father die here, in his home, among the Banished. There was no love between us; I knew that. Besides Prairie and Chub, he was the only family I had left—but more important, he was my link to my ancestors, and the blood that ran in my veins was his blood. I owed at least some part of my strength, my determination, even my bravery to him.

As I knelt in front of him, I could feel the energy of the place, the low, thrumming, familiar heartbeat of my ancestors, who lived on in the very soil here. The blood shed in these streets was Banished blood; the tears that fell in the rooms of these shacks were Banished tears. Our people had gone terribly wrong since they’d left the ancient village
centuries earlier, but as I watched my dying father take his last struggling breaths, I knew that I would never be able to turn my back on them, on who I was.

I looked up at Kaz. He was watching me, his expression full of concern.

“You’re going to heal him,” he whispered.

He knew it before I did, but once he said the words, my hands were already reaching for Rattler. I
was
going to heal him, not because I wanted to, but because I
had
to.

C
OMPARED TO HEALING
B
RYCE
, healing my father was simple. The words slipped from my lips; the energy traveled smoothly through my fingertips into his damaged flesh. Almost instantly I felt the jagged edge of the bullet wound begin to skim over.

Beginning the process was easy. Stopping it was hard. I took a deep breath, squeezed my eyes shut and wrenched my hands away in the middle of the verse. A splitting pain sliced through my head, and my hands twitched as though I’d been electrocuted. I almost fell, but Kaz crouched beside me and put his arms around me.

“What’s wrong?” he demanded. “What happened?”

“I’m okay,” I said hoarsely, disentangling myself from his arms and easing myself into a straight chair next to the sofa.
“I just need to talk to him for a minute. Would you mind … I need to do this alone.”

Kaz hesitated, but he bent and kissed me on the forehead. “I’ll be right outside,” he whispered before stepping out onto the front porch.

Rattler was awake now, and he was watching me, his eyes narrowed and his mouth a tight line. I knew he was in a lot of pain; I could sense it in the connection between us. I also knew he would live if I left right now—if he got to a hospital quickly enough, if they took the bullet out, if he followed doctors’ orders. I had not healed him all the way. I had stopped well shy of restoring his flesh. I’d slowed the leaking of his blood and I sensed that I had fixed something critical that had been severed—that much I could tell from the exchange of energy that ran between us.

“You’ll be all right,” I muttered. I didn’t want Rattler to die; I didn’t want his death on my conscience. I wasn’t afraid of him, not really, not anymore. His gifts were strong, but so were mine. As hard as he fought for what he believed was rightfully his, I would fight harder if I needed to.

But there was Prairie to consider. And there was Chub.

I leaned closer so that our faces were only inches apart. Up close I saw how fine and unlined his skin still was. And something else: for the first time I noticed that his nose, his chin, his eyebrows—all of them were similar to mine.

He was, unquestionably, my father. But I owed him nothing.

“You can’t have her,” I said softly.

He started to speak, then grimaced with pain. When he tried again, it was through gritted teeth. “B-b- … bitch shot me.”

“She’ll do it again,” I said. “And so will I. If you ever—
ever
—threaten any of us again. If you so much as show your face to me or her, or Chub or Kaz or Anna. This is your one chance. Next time I let you die.”

Rattler’s eyes sparked with fury and his mouth curled with contempt. “I’d li … li … like to see you try,” he said, and then he passed out.

His words barely registered. In my mind, I was already long gone.

JULY 4

T
HEY WERE SETTING FIREWORKS OFF
over the lake tonight. Kaz told me about it—how they loaded the fireworks on barges and floated them off the lakeshore, the colorful explosions competing with the beauty of the Chicago skyline. I couldn’t imagine anything more spectacular.

But there would always be next year.

We were staying with Anna and Kaz. It had been a week since the terrible night in the office park. After we left Trashtown, Kaz had driven all night long and we got to their house as the sun rose high in the sky above the north side of Chicago. He’d called ahead, and Anna was waiting on the back porch for us, the dark circles under her eyes testament to her worry since we’d been gone.

A week later the dark circles had faded, and there was laughter in the house as Chub chased the cat and sang Elmo
songs and Anna cooked one delicious Polish meal after another and Prairie and I slept late and we all took long walks along the lakefront. We didn’t talk about what had happened. That would come soon, I was sure, as would discussions about the future—where we’d live, where I’d go to school in the fall, what Prairie would do for work. But a few things were certain: we weren’t changing our names again, we weren’t going to run anymore, and we were all going to stay in each other’s lives somehow. Even—especially—me and Kaz.

I knew this not as a Seer knows things—I didn’t know what shape our relationship would take, or where our paths would lead—but I knew he would always be there for me, just as I knew the exact shade of his eyes and the way his heartbeat felt when I leaned against his chest.

This morning Prairie announced that we had a special mission to take care of. From the looks she and Anna exchanged, I knew they’d already talked about it, but it wasn’t until Prairie and I were in the car that she told me anything more. Anna and Kaz stayed behind with Chub, but Anna gave Prairie a small plastic bag as we left. Prairie slipped it into her purse, but not until I’d glimpsed the syringe it held.

“You remember Vincent,” Prairie said softly as we drove northwest through the city neighborhoods.

How could I forget? I remembered his vacant staring eyes; his wasted body, motionless in the hospital bed; his waxy skin and shrunken form, kept alive only by the extraordinary efforts of experimental medicine. But most of all, I remembered the anguish in Prairie’s eyes when she looked
at him, even after so many years had passed since her greatest mistake.

The first time I saw Vincent, I was horrified by Prairie’s choice: she had brought Vincent back from death, healed him after the last breath left his body. It was the one thing I knew must never be done, and I’d been sure I would never be tempted. But that was before I fell in love.

As we drove through the night, I thought about Kaz lying wounded in the dirt after the Pollitt house blew up. I remembered my terror when his eyes rolled up in his head, my desperate grief when I couldn’t find his pulse. I remembered my tears falling on his beautiful face and the warmth of his hand in mine and I wondered if I would have had the strength to let him go.

When we arrived at the tidy brick convalescent home, Prairie chose a parking space at the far end of the parking lot, out of the glare of the streetlamps. She cut the engine and turned to me.

“This is risky,” she said. “You don’t have to come.”

“I’m coming.”

“I thought you’d say that.”

She hesitated a moment longer and then she brushed her hand across my cheek, a simple gesture that made my heart tighten. I loved her so much; I didn’t know how to put it into words, but I would never take her for granted again. If there was any way I could be there for her, I would never let her face another difficult moment by herself. Not only had she risked her own safety for me over and over … but she and I had both
had enough of being alone in the world. Neither of us had parents. Neither of us had siblings. But we had each other.

When we entered the lobby, Prairie held her head high and pasted on her fake friendly smile. If I hadn’t known her so well, I would have thought she was just another pretty career woman, her face obscured by the sweep of glossy hair that fell over one eye.

At the desk she paused to sign the guest register.

“I don’t think we’ve met,” she said to the attendant, a bored-looking young woman with her finger marking her page in a book. “I’m Veronica. Here visiting my dad.”

“I’m just a temp,” the attendant said, stifling a yawn. “Everyone wanted off for the holiday.”

“Lucky them,” Prairie murmured as we walked away.

At Vincent’s door she quickly looked up and down the hall and then we slipped inside, and it was just as I’d remembered.

Vincent must have been handsome at one time. I’d tried imagining him the way Prairie described him—the football star, full of life, dancing with her at the high school prom. Vowing to be with her forever. Driving to the lake the night before he planned to buy her a promise ring.

The accident.

He wasn’t handsome anymore. The extraordinary efforts of the researchers had seen to that, preserving his tissues long after they should have crumbled to dust. At his bedside Prairie stiffened and made a small sound—a single choked sob—and then she put her hand on my arm and gently but firmly pushed me away.