The Returning Read online

  The girl. The one who had filled his mind and his dreams for days. She was strapped down tightly by thick black bands, wires and tubes coming at her from all directions, their ends buried under her skin. She was frozen in pain, her eyes closed, her face twisted in agony. She shivered from the cold, silent tears running down the sides of her face, and Willis found his entire being shaking with anger.

  Before he could react, someone else entered the space. A huge creature, more beast than man, with long, dark talons for fingers, dark-red eyes, and sharp, metallic teeth. The beast stared at Elise with a deep hunger and licked its lips with a long, rotting tongue. Her eyes shot open as the monster approached, and at the sight of him, another shrill scream escaped her throat.

  Willis’s body took over then, his feet racing forward, legs pumping like pistons, not thinking of what he’d do once he reached the beast. The only thought he had was Save the girl. Save Elise.

  When he was still several yards from her, the ground began to collapse and fall away. Like decaying stone, it crumbled into dust and disappeared, forming a widening circle around the chair and separating Willis from Elise. He pulled back barely in time, his feet sliding forward and nearly taking him over the edge of the newly hollowed crevice. He looked down into the black void that seemed eternal and then back up to where Elise was. The gap was too wide to jump.

  He darted to his right, running after the decaying floor as it continued to fall away. Willis pushed himself to move faster, to outrun the destructing stone. He only needed to get ahead of it long enough to make the jump across, but as he increased his speed, so did the crumbling. As if whatever acid was eating away at the floor had a mind of its own.

  Winded, his chest begging for air, Willis slid to a stop. Elise was now completely surrounded by the black abyss. An island in the center of darkness, alone with the beast that had been slowly inching toward her.

  Desperation clawed at Willis’s insides. Save the girl! screamed through his skull.

  But he couldn’t. There was no way to cross the ravine. Her screams echoed against the blackness that surrounded them, and each note sliced through his heart like a blade. Save the girl. It burned like fire under his skin.

  Willis’s heart rose up into his throat as the beast stopped just beside Elise’s chair. Her eyes met its glowing stare, and she started thrashing at the straps that bound her.

  “Elise!” Willis yelled, his voice breaking from the emotion collecting in his chest. “Elise!” He couldn’t get to her, but she should know he was here. She wasn’t alone.

  “Elise!”

  The beast raised its eyes from the girl to Willis, its mouth turning up in a snarl. Even from where he stood, Willis could feel the monster’s hateful energy. It washed over him with heat and his soul shivered. It felt like he was looking at the devil himself.

  But he wouldn’t stop, not even in the face of evil incarnate. Willis swallowed his raging fear. “Elise! Elise, look at me!”

  She must have heard him then, because she started to turn her chin his way, and the beast reacted in kind. It roared at the sky and lifted its clawed hand over her chest.

  No.

  The monster plunged its talons down into Elise’s chest and her mouth opened in a silent cry.

  “No,” Willis cried. “No!”

  A cloudy white haze filled Elise’s eyes, and horror rocked Willis to his knees as she gasped for air. “Elise,” he whispered, his mind reeling from shock.

  A deep, cruel laugh bounded up from the beast’s chest and shook the ground where Willis knelt.

  Save the girl.

  The laugh echoed in Willis’s ears, rattling his bones as he clenched his eyes shut. Wake up, wake up.

  “I will kill her, Willis,” a voice said, sweet and teasing. “You can’t stop me.” It was the beast. Then the laughter returned, working its way down Willis’s back and into his stomach.

  Willis pounded his fists into the ground and focused.

  Wake up, wake up.

  Save the girl.

  Wake up, Willis. Wake up!

  Willis sat up in bed, taking a desperate, deep breath, his lungs starving for air. The room around him was thick with moisture, hot and sticky. He couldn’t breathe, and he needed to get out of here. He scrambled from his sleeping mat, nearly knocking over the small table in the center of the room where the rest of the Seven were sleeping. His head spun and ached. A thunderous pounding steadily pumped between his eyes, making him squint as he stumbled from the room. Down a small hallway and out through the side door, into the cold night air.

  The stars above were bright, and the light caused another wave of pain to crash against his head. Willis struggled for breath, falling against the brick wall of the building. He tried to calm his lungs through the panic that was still exploding in his chest.

  It was just a dream.

  Deep breaths.

  Fear not.

  But it wasn’t just a dream. It was a nightmare—her nightmare. She was in trouble; he knew that as surely as he knew that the blood was pumping in his veins.

  Save the girl. An echo that slipped through the cracks of his fear and sounded in his brain. Save the girl.

  Willis took a deep, long breath in through his nose and let it out through his mouth.

  Save the girl.

  Message received loud and clear.

  11

  Roth Reynard stood with an arm behind his back, reading through the doctor’s findings. He had been testing Elise the past two days, putting her body through rigorous circumstances to try to detect the cause of her perplexing ability. Find the center of her power. A power he couldn’t help but covet. The darkness inside him cooed lustfully at the thought of it.

  Power like that was a waste in the hands of a stupid child such as Elise. And dangerous. Yet he didn’t want to destroy the power inside her; harnessing it for himself would prove much more valuable. Unfortunately, getting her to react the way she had back at the Genesis Compound was proving extremely difficult.

  “Nothing,” Roth said. He could feel his frustration building. He slammed the report down on the desk beside him and it snapped against the silence.

  “We are trying, sir,” the doctor said.

  “Not hard enough.”

  “We are pushing her as close to death as we can without causing long-term effects—” the doctor tried.

  “Push her harder! Do you think I care about long-term effects? We need her to activate that energy again so we can understand it. Extract it if possible. So do whatever is necessary!”

  “Yes, sir,” the doctor said, bowing slightly and leaving Roth alone.

  The Scientist moved to the window and looked down into the streets of the Authority City. How had she done it? The lingering question that haunted him day and night. The way she had reached into their minds and changed the effects his drug had on their synapses. As if she had rewritten their mental code. It had been thrilling to watch, and unnerving. The three who had been affected were still recovering at the Genesis Compound. Their minds slowly being re-erased, brought back to a place of total control from Genesis.

  The scientific questions this girl raised were enough to get Roth’s blood pumping, but the prospect of what she could offer him roused something more sinister. The door behind him opened, and Roth cursed under his breath. He hated to be disturbed.

  “You sent Nicolas and the CityWatch Army without consulting me?” Jesse asked, his voice heated and raised.

  “Watch your tone in my office,” Roth fired back. He turned to see Jesse ablaze, standing just inside the doorframe. “I told you I was going to handle the Seers.”

  “Yes, but to go behind my back . . . The Council is asking a lot of questions about the move, Roth. You should have consulted me so I could cover you,” Jesse said.

  “I didn’t think it necessary. And I was trying to be respectful of your . . .” Roth trailed off. He wasn’t sure what to call the pretend grieving that Jesse was experiencing. After Elise’s outbre
ak, Roth thought it best to keep the knowledge about her to as few people as possible. Jesse hadn’t made the short list. As far as the Authority president was concerned, the woman he loved was dead.

  Jesse dropped his eyes away from Roth, his fists balling at his sides. Roth found himself becoming irrationally irritated at the weakness Elise caused in his protégé.

  “The Council requests your presence at the next gathering,” Jesse said, his tone calmer.

  “I don’t care what the Council wants; that’s why I placed you in charge of them,” Roth said.

  “They’ll insist.”

  “I trust you know how to deal with them.”

  “Do you? Trust me?”

  Roth stared at Jesse for a long moment. “Can I?”

  Jesse paused but kept his eyes locked on Roth’s. He was angry, mourning, miserable even, but Roth knew Jesse had nowhere else to go. He was a smart man. He acted as if being in his position was torture, but that position afforded him power he’d never had before. And with Elise out of the picture, he wouldn’t compromise it. Roth was sure of it.

  “Of course you can,” Jesse said.

  Roth nodded. “That’s what I thought.”

  Elise had never known darkness like this. It invaded her mind and erased time and reality. This kind of darkness made you question whether you were still human, made you wonder whether life still existed. But then, she knew she was living, because she still had nightmares before being pulled out of sleep to face more torture. She wished the darkness would envelop her and stop rousing her back to life only to suck her underneath again.

  The beast was always there in her nightmares. Stalking her chair, ripping into her flesh. Acting as another form of torture while the man in the lab coat left her to recover from near death.

  Elise gasped for air as her eyes sprang open. Her throat burned and she coughed painfully as she tried to inhale enough air to fill her lungs. She remembered water, lots of water. Drowning, she thought. They had tried to drown her.

  Her eyes blurred at the pain in her shoulders and neck. She was strapped to the chair that had become her only constant, her arms numb, her chest bruised. She looked around at the familiar room. She was alone again, but they would be back. With new ways to push her over the edge, each time expecting some great power to come out of her. But there was no great power in her. It had been a fluke, nothing more. She was nothing more.

  You are stronger than you know.

  Remember who you are.

  Elise shook her head. The voice always came when she was alone. It let her suffer in silence and then showed up when she needed it least. Even in the thickest darkness it came. Part of her wanted it to stay; part of her wanted it to leave. All of her wanted it to save her from this misery.

  “I already told you; I can’t save you,” someone said in front of her.

  She glanced up to see him there. Aaron, standing a couple feet away, an image projected from her mind. “Then why come if you can’t save me?” Elise asked.

  “To help you remember you don’t need to be saved. You already are; you have just forgotten.”

  “Look at me! Look where I am!”

  “I am looking at you, but what I see and what you see are very different.”

  Elise huffed and dropped her eyes to the ground. “What could you possibly see?”

  “I see the precious, chosen daughter of the Father, filled with light and power unlike anything this city has ever seen.”

  Elise shook her head. “Your words mean nothing to me.”

  “I know you have felt Him calling to you. The still, quiet voice in the darkness, the one that has always been with you, telling you truth, reminding you who you are.”

  “That isn’t real,” Elise said, closing her eyes tightly. “Just like you aren’t real. None of this is real.” Tears silently slid the length of her cheeks.

  “Elise, let go of your fear. Listen to what He calls you,” Aaron said.

  The room filled with the familiar presence of wind. It floated over her and dried the tears rolling down her face. It wasn’t cold, like the wind she sometimes felt out in the Capitol gardens, but rather warm and comforting.

  “Let go and remember who you are,” Aaron said. His voice sounded distant, an echo bouncing back to her ears. She didn’t open her eyes to see if he had gone; she didn’t want to risk that the wind would leave with him.

  I am always with you.

  I am the light inside you.

  Hear what I call you, daughter of the Father.

  Daughter, Elise thought. A foreign concept that she’d only ever heard from the wind. How could such a thing be? She was broken, unwanted by all. Hadn’t she only created this wind to feel some sense of belonging? Was this not all just a trick of her mind?

  The wind whipped more urgently now, moving into every inch of the room. Heating the cold chair beneath her, buzzing with comfort and love. Another round of tears dried in its wake as it circled around Elise’s frame and seemed to tug at her.

  Remember who you are.

  Remember what I call you.

  Daughter of the Father.

  Elise desperately wanted to believe that she was more than just an unwanted child, that she mattered, but fear held her back. To let herself believe and be wrong . . . Elise couldn’t risk that. She opened her eyes and saw the wind swirling around the room. Light and warmth floated with it as it swept over every corner. The walls and floor vibrated with it, everything caught up in its path.

  “I can’t be what you say,” Elise cried out against the rustle. “The Scientist is wrong about me, and so are you. I am not what you all believe.” Hot emotion filled her face, and tears rolled from the corners of her eyes. The wind filled more than the room. It filled her entire being, moving around her body, igniting her spirit, and battling against her overwhelming fear. It seemed almost to be lifting her from the chair where she was strapped, carrying her up into the air, covering her completely.

  You are stronger than you know.

  Daughter of the Father.

  Remember who you are.

  Something slammed against the closed door in front of her, and immediately the wind dissipated, leaving her with just the coldness of reality. Another sound rocked against the steel door, followed by a softer thud, the sound of moaning after that, and Elise strained against her straps. Her doorknob jiggled, and fear erupted in her chest. They were coming back for her.

  The doorknob went still and Elise waited, her imagination conjuring up images of more torture. Her body braced for what was to come as the knob shook again. This time the center twisted as whoever was on the opposite side unlocked the door and pushed it open.

  His face came into focus and Elise went numb. It couldn’t be. The boy from the beach stood just inside the doorframe, his hand still holding the knob, chest rising and falling with vigor, eyes filled with determination. She watched his face flash with anger and sympathy as he looked across the room at her. His eyes widened with shock as his hands balled into fists at his sides.

  Neither of them said anything for a long beat, and then the handsome boy seemed to shake off whatever was rolling around inside his head, softened his expression, and took a step toward her.

  Elise tensed. She didn’t know anything about this boy. He was just another figment of her imagination, yet here he was standing in the flesh. Or was she imagining this, too, just as she’d imagined Aaron? She was having a hard time telling the difference. She was probably asleep again and dreaming this entire situation. This couldn’t actually be happening; the boy from her dream couldn’t actually be standing across the room. That would be insane.

  “Hi,” the boy said.

  “Hi,” Elise replied.

  The room felt like it was filled with a new intensity that overwhelmed all her senses. Elise told herself to stop staring at his face, but he was staring back at her, just like in her dream, and she couldn’t get her eyes to move from his. There was something familiar in his gaze, as if something
was understood between them, even though they’d met only once before. A voice inside her mind reminded her that he was imaginary, that she must be sleeping.

  Still, something in him called to something in her. Something deep and grounded and eternal. Elise just knew, without knowing how, and that scared her.

  “We don’t have much time,” the boy said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Before they come back for you. I need to get you out of here.” He moved toward her slowly, so as to not startle her, and reached her with a couple of long strides.

  “You can free me?”

  “I can try.”

  “And go where?”

  “Somewhere you’ll be safe. Anywhere would be better than this.” His eyes scanned the room again. “What have they done to you?”

  Elise didn’t want to talk about it, but a tremble of pain cascaded down her back at the thought of being nearly drowned or electrocuted again, and she was suddenly desperate to leave. “Get me out of here.” She didn’t know him, but that didn’t matter if he could save her from this nightmare.

  He nodded and started working at releasing her straps. He did it quickly and then carefully helped her sit up. Her feet shakily met the concrete floor and intense pain ran the entire length of her body.

  “Can you walk?” he asked.

  She noticed his hand still holding hers, his other firmly on the middle of her back, and she found herself distracted from her own pain. He was touching her; he had undone her restraints. He was more than a dream. Her wind whirled and she felt like she might throw up at his feet.

  She looked up and held his gaze. She didn’t want to die here in this room. “Yes,” she said and used all her strength to push herself standing.

  “I’m going to help you, but you have to trust me,” the boy said.

  Elise wasn’t sure why, but she did. It wouldn’t matter what she might encounter in the next couple of seconds. She wasn’t willing to take her other option.