Fate Changer (The Lost Witch Trilogy #3) (17 page)

Sarah, Gretchen and Agnes watched Zane walk out of the room and then turned and looked at each other with fierce frowns.

“Holy crap,” Sarah whispered, feeling like she could sit in a corner and cry for the rest of the day.

Agnes bit her lip and shook her head. “Something’s not right. This is all a sham. It has to be. Either that or he’s seriously underestimating us. That’s all he did? Messed with Zane’s mind? He has to know you could fix that in a snap.”

Gretchen drummed her fingers on the table and glanced at the empty doorway her son had just disappeared through. “Not necessarily Gretchen. He has no idea that Sarah healed Teresa. And from all we know about Charles, he’s an egomaniac, so it would actually be expected for him to underestimate us. He can’t come get Sarah, so he fixed it so Zane would bring her to him. It does make sense, but it’s just too stupid. What do you think Sarah?” she asked, turning to the pale, miserable girl.

Sarah frowned and hugged her arms to herself. “You’re right about Charles being an egomaniac and underestimating us. From his point of view, what does every teenage girl want to do but go to parties? He’s trying to tempt me with what he thinks I want. He probably thinks I’m getting cabin fever and would die to get out and have some fun. And for Zane, of course he’d want to meet a model,” she said quietly.

Agnes winced and patted Sarah’s knee. “Just ignore that comment about gingers. Zane has no idea what he’s saying. Charles has taken a whisk to that boys mind and now we’ve got to unscramble him. Maybe if we can do that, we’ll figure out what’s really going on.”

Gretchen nodded and looked at Sarah expectantly. “You did it for my Mom and for Teresa and they were completely gone. Fixing Zane should be easy. He still knows who he is.”

Sarah breathed in and out slowly and shook her head. “You saw how he reacted to me getting close to him. My power tried to wrap around him and he slapped me back. Charles must have programmed him to push me away or something. And if that’s the case, if Charles has programmed him, he’s very clearly a danger to me now. Like I said before, Zane is the second most powerful witch we know. He could destroy me so easily,” she said, ending on a whisper.

Agnes clicked her tongue and shook her head. “I can’t believe it Sarah. But regardless, if Zane is worn out and sleeping, then now’s a perfect time to go in and fix things. He won’t be aware enough to push you away.”

Gretchen smiled in relief. “Yes! Sarah, this will work. Let me go in and check on him. I’ll come back and get you if he’s asleep,” she said, not waiting for a response as she jumped up from her chair and hurried after her son.

Sarah sighed and looked away from Agnes. “Please don’t look so hopeful Agnes. It makes me want to throw up,” she said, feeling hugely depressed by the fact that Charles had taken the man she loved more than anything and turned him into a jerk who hated gingers.

Agnes snorted and stood up shaking her head. “He’s not dead. Anything besides that is a blessing. Now put a smile on, put your shoulders back and get to work,” she said with no hint of softness in her voice.

Sarah rolled her eyes, but smiled a little. Gretchen rushed back into the room a moment later, smiling ear to hear and motioning for Sarah with her hand. “He’s asleep Sarah.
Hurry.
The sooner you fix him, the sooner we get the real Zane back,” she said in a rush.

Sarah nodded and glanced at Agnes before following Gretchen to Zane’s old room. She reached out and grasped Gretchen’s sleeve before she could walk into Zane’s room with her.

“No, please. Let me do this alone. I can’t have a lot of other emotions flying around the room. I need complete peace and quiet to do healing on this level,” she said as Gretchen looked at her in surprise.

Agnes shrugged and motioned for Gretchen to move back. “Fine. But we’ll be right here if you need us,” she said and didn’t have to add that they’d be listening to the door the entire time.

Sarah nodded and walked into Zane’s darkened room. She softly shut the door behind her and walked towards Zane’s bed. She looked down at his sleeping form and could feel the exhaustion pervading his body. She grimaced and tried not to think of the horrors he had experienced at Charles’s hands. She stared down in to the face she loved so much and reached out a finger very slowly to touch his arm. She had to have some kind of physical contact or there would be no way she’d be able to go deep enough to heal him.

As she touched him, his body jerked and he moaned as if he were in pain. She frowned but kept her finger where it was so he could subconsciously get used to her touch. Now that she had contact with him, she could feel the strain his body had been put under and shook her head at the stupidity of Charles. He obviously had instructed Zane to do his bidding, but the poor guy was just too wiped out to do anything until he got some sleep.

Sarah closed her eyes and felt her power wash over her, flowing through her arms and sweeping out of her and into Zane. He flinched and his eyelids twitched but he didn’t open his eyes. He moaned and flung his arm out to the side, almost knocking into her. Sarah frowned and reached out a second finger, needing more contact. His whole body jerked in response and she opened her eyes, pausing her flow of power and waiting for him to calm down. She’d have to stick with just two fingers then. She could just imagine what he’d do if she tried to touch her forehead to his. She winced and closed her eyes and tried to move in again. Her power swept up and inside Zane and his whole body went stiff. Sarah ignored it and dove upwards towards his mind. Zane moaned loudly and then whimpered pitifully.

Sarah clenched her free hand, not wanting to hurt Zane, but knowing that she had to do something to break Charles’s control over the man she loved. She breathed out slowly and pressed deeper, letting her power take over and move through the recesses of his mind. And just like with Teresa, she was grabbed and pulled under violently into a pit of darkness. But this time, she knew exactly what to do. She thought of Zane. She thought of their love and the first time he had kissed her and the last time he had kissed her. And then she thought of the vision she’d had of their silver eyed children. Just as she pictured her little redheaded boy with bright silver eyes jumping into her arms, she felt real arms push her violently away. Even as she felt her body slam into the wall with enough force to split the back of her head open and dent the wall, she remained exactly where she was, inside of Zane’s mind, fighting the darkness and creating as much light as she could.

“Get out of my head!” Zane screamed at her, standing over her crumpled body as Agnes and Gretchen burst through the door, staring at him in shocked horror as he pulled back his leg to kick her.

Sarah ignored the chaos and screaming and pushed all the sound and fury away as she thought more and more clearly of everything she and Zane had done, every look they’d shared, every kiss, every embrace, every feeling they’d shared with one another. She was faintly aware of Zane picking her limp body up with his power. She could feel words come into her mind from Zane,
If you don’t get out of my mind right now, I’m throwing you out the window.

Sarah ignored Zane and his threats and concentrated on the one thing she knew she could always count on. Zane’s love for her. She felt her body fly through the air and burst through the window. She didn’t even feel the glass cut through her scalp and face and arms and chest as she went sailing out the window and through the air as if she were a missile. Even Agnes’s hysterical shrieks couldn’t budge her. She was staying with Zane. She would never leave him. She refused to let Charles take him from her.

She felt the cool air rushing around her body as she remembered what Zane had told her in her mind the very last time they had spoken before Charles had taken him. She pushed that memory outside of herself, enmeshed it in her power and wrapped it around herself as she refused to leave Zane’s mind.

The impact her body made from falling three stories was violently horrific. Even though the dirt surrounding the house was mostly sand, Sarah knew immediately that most of the bones in her body were broken and that her brain was bleeding. As her power wrapped around her, still inside Zane’s mind, she felt him staring down at her motionless body. As he started screaming, she felt the darkness break open inside his mind and she was free. She floated back to her body on the surge of her energy and was immediately pulled into blackness again.

Chapter 15 – Broken

Sarah moaned and cracked her eye open, immediately shutting her eyes against the pain in her head.

“She’s awake!” she heard someone yell.

She groaned loudly, but didn’t hear anything. She slowly fell back into darkness. She floated in gray and black waves and wondered if she was swimming at night in the ocean. If so, why was she all alone? She didn’t even care. It felt so soft and silky and sweet almost. There was no pain in the darkness, there were no problems. There was just peace.

At times it almost felt as if someone was calling to her, but she just turned and swam away. She didn’t feel like talking to anyone. She just wanted to float by herself in the dark silk. She never wanted leave.

“Well, then that’s selfish of you isn’t it?” came a starchy voice she was sure she recognized but couldn’t quite place.

Sarah rolled through the gray, trying to figure out where the voice was coming from. “Go away,” she finally said tiredly, trying to get back to her peaceful, calm existence.

“No, I’m not going anywhere until you snap out of this. You’re in limbo child. Stupid, pointless limbo. Is that really where you want to be?”

Sarah kept her eyes tightly closed and tried to swim away from the annoying voice. “Leave me alone,” she yelled over her shoulder as she zoomed through the dark, to a corner where she wouldn’t be found.

“You can’t hide from me. You’re too bright Sarah. Now please stop running away and listen to what I’m trying to tell you.”

Sarah sighed heavily and felt the gray silk flow through her fingers. “Will you go away if I listen to you?” she breathed out.

The voice made a laughing sound. “Fine. If you listen to me, I’ll go away.”

Sarah shrugged and stretched back into the darkness, loving the way it flowed around her, wrapping her in coolness. “Deal.”

“You’re in a coma Sarah. Zane threw you out the window and your body is trying very hard to die. But you’re not doing your part. Every time you come up, you dive back down. Don’t you want to live Sarah?”

Sarah curled into a ball and felt the gray and black silk wrap tightly around her, protecting her as she thought about what the voice said. “I don’t know. It’s so nice here, why should I leave?” she asked irritably.

The voice sighed patiently. “Fine, I’ll name off a few things that should give you a reason to live. There’s a young man that is so in love with you he’s dying from it.”

Sarah sniffed and swam backwards, feeling her arms extend deliciously into the current of darkness. “
Oh him
. He doesn’t like me so much anymore,” she said sadly. “I couldn’t save him,” she said in frustration. “I saved everyone else. But not him.”

The voice made an impatient noise and she felt a tug on the silk surrounding her. Sarah frowned and tugged her darkness firmly back into place.

“You little twit, you could have drawn back for just a moment so you could fly down to the ground, but you were too stubborn. You refused to let go until he was free from Charles and you destroyed your body in the process. He
is
free now. You’re the one who is caged. You’re trapped in a body so broken you should have been dead days ago.”

Sarah frowned wondering if the voice was telling her the truth. She couldn’t be sure. “You want me to wake up so I can have a broken mangled body? No thanks,” she whispered tiredly and floated away from the voice. She’d done her part. She had listened. Now the voice needed to go away.

“If you float away from me one more time young lady, I’ll rip you out of this limbo myself and you will not enjoy it,” the voice swore sounding seriously ticked.

Sarah paused and looked back.
That voice
. It almost reminded her of someone. Someone she loved. “
Grandmother?
” she asked suspiciously.

She could feel the voice smile. “Yes child. I’m your grandmother, come to bring you home. You got lost, but I’ve found you now. It’s time to come back. If you spend too much time here, it becomes too hard to leave. Come back now. Come back to Zane. Come back to your friends and your cousin. They need you. We all need you. And you’ve left too much undone. You have to finish this so I can rest.”

Sarah sighed tiredly and shook her head. She stretched out in all directions and turned in a slow circle of silk. “Give me one good reason,” she said, daring her.

The voice cracked like lightening around her and she felt the gray and dark peel away in feathery strips. She moaned and tried to pull the darkness back as she heard the voice one last time.

“
Because I said so
.”

Sarah felt the crack of energy one more time and gasped as her chest rose in the air and her eyes opened to a darkened room. She blinked her eyes a few times and cautiously glanced around the space she was in. It looked like her room in her grandmother’s house, except it felt different. It was cold and smelled funny. It smelled like those cloying oils that her father sold at his office. Her nose crinkled in distaste and she turned her head slightly and noticed the slumped over form of someone sitting in a chair next to her bed. She groaned miserably. If it was her father, come to finish her off, he was welcome to. She wouldn’t be able to protect herself from a house fly in the condition she was in.

She winced and did an internal check of her body. She moved from her feet upwards and knew instinctively that both of her legs were broken badly. There were still splinters of shattered bone all throughout her calves and thighs. The dull and aching pain was constant and exhausting. She moved up to her pelvis and knew it was broken too. She was a mess. She should be in a hospital she thought in irritation and then remembered Charles. He’d love to have her in this condition. And he would if she stepped one foot over her lines.