Read Cora's Kismet (The Twin Destinies Saga Book 1) Online
Authors: Cheryl Davis
As Viola’s phone went sailing out of the rear window in
pieces, Patrick clipped the rear end of the van causing it to fish-tail a
little. Cora went falling to the side and hit her head, rather hard, against
the door.
“Damn!” Liam swore. “Are you ok back there?”
“Yeah, I’ll be fine,” Cora replied, while rubbing her head
where it’d hit the door. “How did he catch up to us so fast?”
“I don’t know, but it’s time to lose him. Get up here and
buckle back up, quickly. Where the hell is my team?” Liam bit out in a harsh
voice, as he pressed down on the accelerator.
Cora climbed up to the passenger seat as fast as she could,
buckled up and watched in the mirrors as Liam swerved in and out of traffic,
taking crazy turns, while trying to elude their tail. For some reason, Patrick
still kept up no matter how far back he’d fallen.
Frustrated, he picked up the radio and called to his team,
“Where are you guys?”
All he got in return was static. “Hello? I need some help
here.”
Nothing. Liam threw the radio onto the dashboard with so
much force Cora jumped in her seat.
“What’s going on? Why aren’t they answering?” Cora asked
with fear lacing her voice. Her hands were starting to shake.
“I don’t know but it looks like we’re on our own. Something
must have happened to them, and I don’t like it,” Liam said, with a deep scowl
marring his beautiful face. He took another sudden sharp turn, then another and
then another, before pulling into a car port, that didn’t have any cars
occupying it, and shut off the engine as soon as the van was stopped.
“What are you doing?” Cora asked confused.
“I’m hoping if he did manage to follow us through that,
he’ll drive right past us, and we can leave going the other direction,” Liam
replied, not taking his eyes off the mirror.
“Who are you?” Cora asked after they’d been sitting there
for a few minutes.
“My name is Liam Anderson,” he replied.
“Liam, I’m Cora Daniels, and that’s my sister, Viola.”
“I know,” Liam told her.
“How do you know who we are and where we live?” Cora asked.
She knew she should have known he would know who they were, since he’d been in
their room looking for them, and had known who Patrick and Anna were, but
adrenaline was making her thoughts scattered.
“You will get answers to your questions Cora, just not now.
Right now we have to focus on getting where we’re going, without Patrick
catching us. I need you to trust me for now, so I can concentrate on protecting
you and Viola,” Liam bit out, a little impatient. He wanted to explain things,
but knew if he did, he’d be in deep trouble. It was not his place. He had his
orders. Oh, but for her, he wanted to defy his orders and answer her questions.
He wanted to soothe away the stress lines that had formed on her beautiful
face.
“You keep saying that. It’s getting on my nerves. I have no reason
to trust or believe you. Why should I?” Cora responded. Her nerves were wound
tight and it was evident in her voice.
“I know you don’t, yet, but you’re going to have to,” Liam
responded, with a calmness he wasn’t feeling. She was beginning to irritate him
and the urge to tranq her, like they’d done with Viola, was getting stronger by
the minute, but the attraction he felt for her kept him from harming her in any
way.
“Don’t even think about it!” Cora exclaimed a bit louder
than she’d wanted to.
Liam’s head snapped around to look at her. His eyes narrowed
while he studied her. There was no way she was in his head. “Think about what?”
“Doing to me what you did to Viola,” Cora responded with an
angry glare in his direction. “I could see it written all over your face that
you were considering it and I won’t let you.”
“Care to tell me how you are going to stop me if I decide
I’m going to?” Liam asked with slight amusement, that he didn’t feel, lacing
his voice. How did she know what he’d been thinking? He knew he’d kept his face
blank.
“Trust me, you don’t want to know. Now, since there’s no
sign of Patrick, can we go?” Cora asked getting impatient. All of a sudden she
felt the need to move before something bad happened.
“Not yet,” Liam replied. “Soon.”
“No. I think we need to go now,” Cora said becoming more
urgent.
“What do you mean?” Liam asked surprised at the change in
her.
“Now. We have to go now, or something bad is going to
happen.” Cora looked at him as she spoke and Liam saw how turbulent her eyes had
become. He fired up the engine and backed out of the driveway. Then took off
down the road, going the opposite direction from the one they’d come from
before.
They traveled in silence for a while, each trapped in their
own thoughts, before Liam turned off into an area full of warehouses. Cora
looked around feeling desperate for familiar surroundings and not finding any.
“Where are we?” she asked.
“The place where you will get the answers you need to
survive,” Liam responded in a distracted voice. He wondered what had happened
to the rest of his team as he pulled the van up to a warehouse and pushed a
button for the garage door to open. Once it was open, he pulled through the
door, closing it behind them. After putting the van into park, he turned it off
and shoved his door open. He had to put as much space between the two of them
as he could.
Cora looked around, her eyes wild. She remained in the
passenger seat, making no move to get out of the van. When she heard the back
door slide open, she whipped around in her seat to see Liam and two other men,
reaching for her sister.
“Don’t touch her!” Cora screeched out. She unbuckled and
scrambled into the backseat, trying to protect her sister the best she could.
“Cora, nobody’s going to hurt you or your sister. We’re
trying to protect you,” Liam said, trying to soothe her.
“Protect us from what?” she screamed out. “You won’t tell me
anything.”
“No, but I will.” A very deep, masculine voice said from
somewhere behind Liam, where Cora was unable to see. She could tell by the
voice the man was a bit older, but that was all. There was a tickling sense of
recognition at the back of her mind, but she couldn’t pin it down enough to
know how she could know this man, so she dismissed the thought.
“Exactly who are you?” she asked, taking up a defiant tone
and posture.
“I am your father,” he said. Those four little words were
like a slap in the face to Cora.
Cora sat for a minute, blocking Viola with her body, in
shock, then, started laughing as if she’d never laughed before. “Yeah, right.
Our parents didn’t give a crap about us and now you want me to think you staged
this huge ‘rescue’ mission to save us from Anna and Patrick? That now you give
a crap? I don’t think so buddy. Liam, you need to take Viola and I somewhere
else. Now!”
“You are not going anywhere until you hear what I have to
say. Liam, bring Viola out of the van and lay her down over there. When she
wakes up, we’ll sit down and talk. Cora, you need to listen because all of our
lives depend on it,” the man calling himself her father said, in a calm, but
firm, voice.
She shook her head and tried to block Liam as he reached for
her sister. He grabbed her wrists and pulled her out of the van, handed her
over to one of the other men, even though he didn’t want anyone else laying a
finger on her, and removed Viola from the van, knowing anyone else handling her
sister would upset her more than she already was.
Cora fought with everything she had to get free and get to
her sister, but with no luck. She was pulled behind Liam to where he laid her
sister out on a bed, situated in a far corner from where the van was now
parked. The man who called himself their father followed at a distance,
studying her.
When Viola was resting in what looked like a comfortable
position, the man holding her was ordered to release her. She raced to her
sister’s side and curled up on the bed next to her, shielding her. Liam and the
other men were ordered to leave, which left Cora lying there even more
confused. She closed her eyes tight and tried to figure out what was going on,
and how she could save them both.
“You’re wrong you know,” the man said keeping his words soft
and gentle. Her head snapped up to look at him, anger clouding her features
when she heard those words. “We’ve always loved both of you. We didn’t have a
choice but to let you go. It couldn’t have been any other way and for that I am
very sorry.”
She didn’t say anything as she assessed his features trying
to find hers in them. Her erratic emotional state, fear, confusion and worry
stopped her from seeing anything that might be a resemblance between them.
“However, I do have proof. I wouldn’t expect for either of
you to believe me without it. I will give it to you when I can talk to you both
at the same time,” he said.
“If you’re our father, where’s our mother? Is she still
alive?” Cora asked, not daring to believe this man’s words.
“Again, I will answer your questions when I can talk to you
both at the same time.” The exasperation in his voice didn’t deter Cora in the
slightest. She thought this man was bogus. She just couldn’t figure out what
he’d want with them.
“What do you want with us?” she asked, suspicion defining
her tone.
“To keep you safe,” he replied.
“Hmph,” she said and rolled her eyes. She didn’t believe him
for a moment. There had to be something he wanted from her and Viola, otherwise
he wouldn’t have staged their escape from Patrick and Anna the way that he had.
She watched as he turned on his heel and stalked off.
When he was gone, she sat up and looked around, trying to
figure out the easiest way to get out of there. She’d rather be homeless, out
on the streets, fighting for their survival, than be used for some disgusting
purpose. There were guards at every door she thought could, possibly, get them
out of there. She was just going to have to be more creative on getting them
out. She didn’t know how, but she knew that she would, no matter what.
She sat straight up, gasping. “What?”
“Where are we Cora?” she heard her sister’s fearful whisper.
The fear in Viola’s voice pushed away any lingering sleep and grogginess she’d
felt upon waking.
“In a warehouse somewhere, but I have no idea where. Things
are crazy. We’ve got to find a way out of here,” Cora said, keeping her voice
low. “I’ve got a bad feeling about everything.”
“All I remember is walking into our room to get my purse and
there were a bunch of guys looking around. One of them grabbed me and covered
my mouth so I couldn’t scream, then started asking me where you were. I
wouldn’t tell them and tried to fight. I wasn’t strong enough and then
everything went black.” Viola shivered as she told Cora what happened to her.
The horror of what she’d gone through shown bright in her hazel eyes, making
the brown flecks more prominent than usual and widening Cora’s own eyes.
“Yeah, I went back to see what was taking you so long and
found you unconscious, on the floor, with a bunch of guys around you. I went
and hid in the hall closet, but ended up getting caught too, by this guy named
Liam. He got me out of the house just as Patrick and Anna were pulling into the
garage. Patrick tried chasing us but we managed to lose him, and something
happened to Liam’s backup team so they weren’t there to help us lose Patrick.
Then Liam brought us here, where we’re supposed to be meeting, get this, our
father. Oh, and to make things even better, our cell phones are toast,” Cora
said with sarcasm dripping from her voice.
“Our father? That’s a joke right?” Viola snorted in
disbelief, as Cora nodded, her face solemn. “I think you’re right. We need to
leave. Now,” she said, throwing her legs over the side of the bed.
“Good, you’re awake. Now we can talk,” said the man who
claimed to be their father, as he walked into the room and got straight to the
point.
“You have nothing to say that either one of us needs, or
wants, to hear,” Viola said, with her voice full of venom. “If you’re our
father, like you claim to be, then we don’t need to hear it. Let’s go Cora.”
“You will listen if you value your lives,” the man replied,
the viciousness with which he said it scaring the girls a bit. “This is not a
game, and you’re not prepared enough, yet, to survive. I don’t know what
Patrick and Anna have done to you, but they will be dealt with at the proper
time. The two of you are a part of something much bigger than either of you can
even imagine.”
Cora watched as the man paced back and forth, his agitation
obvious as his gaze flicked their way every few steps.
“There are things going on in the world you have no
comprehension of. There are forces at work that would like nothing more than to
see you dead at this moment. To strengthen you both for what is to come, you
both have to find your mate, the one you are meant to spend your lives with, by
your eighteenth birthday, in six months. The bond created between mates will
help to strengthen you to do what must be done and to help you be strong when
you feel like giving in. It is a very powerful bond. Each of you has a mate out
there, and you have only a limited amount of time to find him,” the man
informed them, watching their reactions closely.
Cora’s eyes widened as she looked at him in disbelief. Viola
started laughing. “You’re kidding right?”
“Not at all,” the man replied. “Whether or not you want to
believe me, I am your father. My name is Thomas Daniels. Your mother’s name is
Angelica. She could not be here for this, unfortunately.”
“You said you had proof,” Cora demanded.
“I do. Each of you has a different birthmark on the left
side of your chest in the shape of the moon, for you Cora, and the sun, for you
Viola. That is the only difference between the two of you. I, as well as your
mother, also have the similar birthmarks. It is proof of our race,” He
revealed, confidence filling his words.
“That’s supposed to be proof?” Cora scoffed.
“That and these,” he replied, pulling out an envelope. Viola
took the envelope and pulled out the pictures she found inside. She held them
so that Cora could see them as well. The first picture was of Thomas with a
beautiful woman, who was simply a more mature version of themselves, smiling
bright at the camera and showing off her very pregnant belly. The next picture
was of the same woman further along in her pregnancy. There were several
pictures like that until they came to the last one of the same woman in the
delivery room holding two baby girls, one in each arm with Thomas standing
behind her gazing down at his three girls with pride on his face. Both Cora and
Viola could not deny they were the infants in this picture, since they did have
baby pictures of themselves. Both girls looked up from the picture to stare at
Thomas in shock.
“Now do you believe me?” he asked in a whisper soft voice.
Cora could see hope burning in his deep hazel eyes with chocolate brown flecks.
Eyes so much like hers and Viola’s, she could no longer deny the truth he was
telling them.
“Why?” Cora asked him in a whisper.
“Why what?” Thomas asked.
“Why did you abandon us?” she asked. “In this picture you
look like you care, you both do, but then you just abandoned us, with Anna and
Patrick, like we were trash. Do you have any idea what they did to us?”
“We didn’t want to. Believe me we never wanted to be apart
from you. We’ve always wanted both of you with us. Always. They will pay for
what they’ve done, do not doubt that. There is, however, a prophecy and those
who would do anything to make sure this prophecy never comes to pass. The
prophecy revolves around the two of you. If you’re dead, the prophecy is not
fulfilled and everyone’s lives are thrown into chaos. After several attempts on
your lives, all of our lives, we bound your powers and sent you away, but made
sure the two of you would always stay together. Every so often, your mother and
I would get an update on how you were both doing. It was the last update that
prompted us to act to save your lives again, and bring you back to us. We found
out Patrick and Anna have switched sides and were planning to perform a ritual
tonight under the half-moon that would have left you both neither dead, nor alive,
but in an in-between state, which is worse than either. It would have made you
unable to fulfill the prophecy. I put together a team, led by Liam, and sent
them out to get you and bring you here, to safety, to us,” Thomas said, his
pacing becoming more and more rapid as he spoke.
“What is this prophecy?” Cora asked, hesitant to hear any
more.
“What do you mean, ‘bound our powers’?” Viola asked.
“Let me ask you this, do you feel a pull towards either the
sun or the moon? Do you feel stronger when you are out under one or the other?”
Thomas asked, with a gleam in his eyes.
“The moon,” both girls said at the same time. “We’re both
night owls,” said Viola.
“Yes, I thought so. You’re both Lunarians. Our people are
either Lunarians or Solarians and gather our power from either the moon or the
sun. In most cases, when we mate, a Lunarian will find their soul mate in a
Solarian, and vice versa, so there is a balance similar to yin and yang. That
was not the case with your mother and I. We broke the rules, so to speak. We’re
both Lunarians so when we had you, you became the strongest of our kind to ever
be born. The prophecy states that two girls born of a mated pair of Lunarians,
born on a full moon and at the same hour, shall be mated and bring a perfect
balance to the world of Solarians, Lunarians and humans, on their eighteenth
birthday. There is more you are not ready to hear, and your mother needs to
explain to you in person. In order to hide you away, we had to bind your powers
so you could not be tracked by them. I am so sorry we had to do this. As soon
as your mother arrives, we will unbind your powers so you can learn how to use
them to protect yourselves. You will also learn about our race and our
history.” Thomas stopped pacing and stood before them stiff as a board, waiting
for their reactions. If Cora was reading him correctly, he seemed nervous and
afraid of their rejection. Still she could not control her reaction.
Both she and her sister stared at Thomas with gaping mouths
and huge eyes. They could not believe how loony this guy was. He belonged in a
padded room, in a strait jacket.
Before either of them could say anything, Liam walked up and
spoke low to only Thomas, so quiet neither girl could hear what he was saying.
Liam glanced over at Cora several times while exchanging conversation with the
man, their father, before turning toward them. Cora felt an instant pull
towards Liam that she couldn’t explain and didn’t want to feel.
“We need to get you up to our medical facility and have you
both scanned. It seems Patrick and Anna have another way to track you and are
very close. We need to find whatever it is they’re using to track you and
dispose of it, right away. Go with Liam while I alert the guards. I will join
you as soon as I am able to.” Thomas spoke in a brisk voice and turned and
walked away without waiting for a response.
Liam reached his hand out for Cora’s, to help her stand.
When she didn’t reach for his hand, he leaned down and grasped hers, in a firm
grip, with his. Both of them gasped as an electrical current ran through their
bodies at the contact. A current stronger than the one that had occurred when
he’d placed his hand over her mouth earlier. Cora tried to retract her hand
from his grasp but found she was unable to.
“Let go of me,” Cora said in a breathless voice.
“I can’t,” Liam said pulling her to her feet. He stared deep
into her bright, hazel eyes. “It’s you. I can’t believe it’s you,” he muttered
in a voice so soft only Cora could hear him.
“What? What’s me?” Cora asked. She found she was unable to
tear her eyes from his.
“Nothing. Never mind. We need to get you up to medical right
now. Patrick and Anna won’t be alone. They’ll call in more of their kind.” Liam
kept a firm grasp on her hand while reaching out with the other one to help
Viola to her feet. She wobbled a bit from the lingering effects of the tranq
but gathered her balance without any more trouble. Viola said nothing as she
watched Cora and Liam, but curiosity was shining bright on her face. Once she
was steady on her feet, Liam led them to a staircase and up into higher levels
of the warehouse.