This time it was Embry who drove. Gabriel let me have the passenger seat so I wouldn’t be alone in the back. I was grateful to see one of them had managed to get my bag for me, but the only thing I wanted from it was my blankie, which I couldn’t touch when I was covered in mud and blood. I turned up the heating instead.
Embry kept one hand on the wheel, but the other was on the armrest between us so he could hold my hand. The rhythmic rubbing of his thumb on my skin slowly calmed me down.
“We can’t defeat them, can we?” I asked eventually, looking to Embry for honesty. If the lowly sidekick was enough to take us down, how could we ever face the real Big Bad?
“Defeating them was not our goal tonight; it was just keeping you safe. We thought we gave you enough time to get away, but then the keychain when we came back told us they had you,” Embry explained.
“You gave me enough time,” I said quietly, turning to look out the window.
“What?” Embry was confused, and I could feel his eyes on me, meaning they weren’t on the road anymore.
“You’re driving,” I pointed out.
“How did they take you if you had enough time?” Gabriel asked me. I didn’t look back, but I knew the vein in his forehead was pulsing.
“I got out through the window and climbed one of the trees to hide. I had just made it up to the leafy part when a woman came through. None of them ever looked up, so…you gave me enough time.”
“Why didn’t you run and get away from them?” Gabriel asked from the back.
“It wouldn’t have worked. That is exactly what they thought I did. They immediately ran off, looking around, but they wouldn’t have found me up the tree.” I gave them the logical reason before the more honest one. “And I was not leaving you guys.” I remembered how unfathomable that concept had been for me, but thinking of Sam brought an overwhelming tightness into my chest.
“But they did find you. Do you not realize that we just died so that you could escape, not so you could hang out and wait for us?” Gabriel was angry and upset with me.
“You don’t think I know what everyone has been sacrificing for me?” I asked, the tears burning my eyes. “I saw your dead bodies at the motel, okay? I saw them and even though I knew you were coming back, I still knew it was because of me. And I saw them slit Sam’s throat because I said no to joining him. I was there, and I held him, and I know that he died so I wouldn’t have to—" I tried to keep talking, but the words became muffled in the tears and I couldn’t stop the sobs as I relived Sam’s final moments in my head.
“Sam is dead?” Gabriel asked more gently, his anger taken over by the realization of what I was going through.
“Because I said no,” I nodded as a fresh batch of tears rolled down my cheeks. I explained to them what Donovan wanted with me, what he planned to do, and how I said no, knowing it would cost Sam his life, but it was a price he was prepared to pay. I told them how I hadn’t even realized Donovan was dead because Sam was my main priority, how I hoped Embry would remember that the keys had a computer chip in them, how I tricked Jim into taking me to the bathroom, and killed him so I could run away. They were impressed that I had managed to stab Donovan and kill him, but I couldn’t bring myself to show the proper enthusiasm.
“Didn’t you see him when you woke up?” I asked, Sam’s dead body so vivid in my mind. “We should go back and get him, so we can…” I wasn’t sure what I wanted. To have a proper funeral, to bury him, to bring him home to Deanna…all I knew was that we couldn’t leave him at the motel, alone.
“I didn’t see him,” Embry told me, shaking his head before the two of them shared a look.
“Didn’t you look?” I asked, figuring they would have gone around to find me before commandeering a car.
“Not long after we woke up and found the keychain, one of the minions drove up in this.” Embry nodded to the station wagon he was driving. “We saw him grab one of his fallen friends by the boots and drag him towards the trunk, so we knocked him out to get the keys and came after you.”
“He meant discard people,” I understood what Slick had been referring to back at the motel. I brought my hand to my mouth when it hit me that Sam was one of those people, the thought making me sick. I closed my eyes and tried to block the images out of my mind before turning to look in the back of the car. I knew it was irrational, but I wanted to see something that would either confirm or disprove my thought. Instead, Gabriel moved so his head blocked my view. I tried to look past him, but he made me look into his eyes.
“Why did you leave the tree?” he asked, changing the subject for me, but also because he wanted to know the answer. I could tell Embry wanted to pull over so he could take me in his arms and try to comfort me, at least a little, but we had to get as much distance between us and them as we could. The hand that wasn’t holding mine was gripping the steering wheel so tight that his knuckles were white.
“I fell,” I admitted. I knew he was trying to distract me, but I wanted to play along. This wouldn’t have been my favorite subject of conversation either, but it was better than what my brain kept replaying.
“You?” Gabriel was skeptical. Once, when Embry had left me alone with him, before I understood that he was quiet, not evil, I had spent almost an entire day hanging out in a tree, watching him search the house and the grounds for me. Embry had found it hilarious when he got back.
“My little monkey?” Embry asked as well. That was the nickname he called me for the rest of the summer, to taunt Gabriel more than anything.
“I had another dream,” I said, causing them to exchange a worried glance.
“Who?” Gabriel asked.
“Beth,” I admitted.
“What did you see?” Embry pressed, knowing it had to be bad, or at least shocking, if it made me fall out of a tree.
“The prophecy,” I admitted, leaving her pregnancy out. For some reason, I felt like now wasn’t the time to share it with them. “The reason they’re after me and they killed Sam and you guys keep dying and all the ones before me and…”
“It’s not your fault,” Embry said pointedly.
“Did you guys know that’s why he wants me? Because I have the birthmark?” I asked.
For a moment they were quiet, then they looked to each other. I tried to read what their eyes were saying, but had no clue, before Embry answered. “No. We knew that your line was important to him.”
“But Annabelle did, I think,” Gabriel spoke up. “I don’t know if she knew her line would have replicas of her with identical birthmarks, but she was relieved and incredibly happy when she told me that Margaret’s only birthmark was a simple brown spot on her knee.”
“Why would Donovan’s master fight so hard to find Margaret if she didn’t have the birthmark? She would have been useless to him as far as the spell was concerned,” I asked.
“I don’t think he knew Annabelle didn’t pass the birthmark on to her daughter,” Gabriel admitted. “Maybe he thought it was something that would come to her when Annabelle died, or when she turned a certain age.”
“If Annabelle knew, why didn’t she warn you?” I asked, beginning to think Annabelle kept a lot of things secret when she should have shared them, or written them in her diary. “I could have removed the birthmark through surgery, or dyed my hair? He never would have known I was a replica if…”
“I think she thought it ended when she let them burn her,” Gabriel ventured, cutting me off so I would stop accusing the woman he loved.
“If ever a miracle happens, and I do make it out of this alive, I think I’ll adopt,” I said, getting a smile from Embry, but it was a sad one, and he knew that mine was fake.
“You’re making it out alive,” Embry told me like it was the only option.
We drove until we crossed state lines, at which point we brought the station wagon into what I could only assume was a chop-shop, where they would strip it down and repurpose every single piece. Instead of finding new wheels, we walked a couple of miles in the hopes of finding a place to stay for the night.
“Want to kill two birds with one stone?” Embry suggested when we got to railroad tracks with a cargo train pulling out. It looked like the cars were made out of wood that hadn’t been updated since the 1920s. It was still in that slow, building up energy phase, the perfect time to jump on board if we were to be reckless.
“You can’t be serious.” I looked at them, but knew better than to doubt them after spending days in a moving chicken coop.
“Quick, before it gains speed,” Embry recommended, so I ran behind them.
Gabriel got to the train first, but he let Embry get in, then waited for me to catch up. Embry put out a hand to sort of pull me in when I got close enough, then Gabriel joined once I was in.
“Any idea where this train is going?” I asked, pulling Gabriel’s jacket tighter around me. I was freezing when we gave up the car, so I put on a sweater from my bag, and Gabriel gave me his leather jacket. It did a much better job at blocking out the wind. I went to sit under the one tiny light in our compartment and took out the Chronicles.
“Home.” Embry came to sit across from me, while Gabriel explored the wooden crates that surrounded us.
“The plantation?” I asked.
“We can stop by the beach house on the way,” he offered.
“We can’t.” I wanted so badly to go home over the past month, but now I wanted to be as far from the manor and telling Deanna what happened as possible. I still wanted to take Clara in my arms and be comforted by Deanna, but I couldn’t stand them hating me. And I would never forgive myself if my death magnet struck again. “It’s too dangerous,” I only gave them my second reason.
“We have a bit of a breather now, while Donovan recruits a new army. We’ll get warnings before he comes back,” Gabriel explained, sitting on one of the crates.
“Like last time?” I asked.
“We won’t sit around and wait for him to come for us again. We’re going to go home and regroup, get some stuff from the bunker, then…” Embry turned to Gabriel, uncertain about the rest of the plan.
“Maryland has an old army base with a secure underground facility. Even the president can’t get into it, but I have a friend who…” Gabriel offered a new location, but I didn’t want another prison-like tomb to wait in for the real Big Bad to find me.
“No,” I argued, shaking my head before he even finished.
“No?” he asked like he didn’t understand the word.
“I don’t want to run to a new place to hide. Then wait for him to get close so we can try to run away again.” I wrapped my arms around myself. “I don’t want any more people dying while I escape, or hide in a not-so-safe house.”
“What do you suggest?” he asked like he was humoring me and had no idea what I was talking about.
My current emotional state made it hard to think straight, but I knew exactly what I needed to do. “I want to learn how to take care of myself. Not self-defense against regular guys, but…I want to stand a chance against Gifteds. We need to be ready for him.”
“How do you plan to do that?” Embry asked delicately.
“I’m going to find out everything I can,” I said simply, opening the Chronicles to the section on Beth, since I had finished Cassie’s.
“On the prophecy?” Embry asked.
“The prophecy, Donovan’s master, the Gifted…anything I can find out.”
“Are you looking for something in particular?” Gabriel questioned.
“Anything I can use to defeat him,” I said simply. “You’ve been running for centuries, but now we need to get ready to fight.”
The End
Continue Lucy’s story in Destiny (The Owens Chronicles Book Two)