Revelations (9 page)

“She’s hot,” Jonas said. “You’re not so bad yourself.”

I ran my fingers down his cheek. “You’re hot,” I told him. “But not in a good way.”

“Hey,” he said, opening his eyes to give me the appropriate look. Then he reached up and ran his hand through my wet locks. “Never seen you with wet hair. I kinda like it.”

“Are you okay?” I asked him, trying to divert my own mind from its logical train of thought. I should have done it right then and there, but I was hiding myself, had been successful at such for so long that I didn’t want to out myself…not yet.

“I’ve seen better days,” he said.

I found myself leaning over to kiss his temple. “I’ll let you sleep.”

I rose and went to leave, but his iron grip suddenly had my wrist.

“Stay,” was all he said.

One word broke my heart into tiny little pieces. That same heart began to beat faster and I sat back down. “I’ll stay,” was my answer. He said nothing, only closed his eyes and, with my help though not knowing I’d been of any help in that, he drifted off to sleep. “I’ll stay,” I whispered once he started to snore.

Stay I did. I crawled into bed behind him and put my arm around his waist, my hand resting lightly on his stomach. I found it quite easy to fall asleep beside him, especially since I hadn’t slept the night before. His snoring was soothing, even though it grew louder as he drifted off deeper into dreamland. I liked it. It was probably some of the most restful sleep I’d had in a while, even though my dreams were disturbingly vivid retellings of the accident that wasn’t, which was beginning to feel quite normal to me.

Chapter Thirteen

I woke with tears on my cheeks to the sound of my dreams dying away in my head. I could still hear the crunch of the car and my father’s cries of pain. Strangest thing of all, I woke alone. In many ways, I was glad of this; glad Jonas didn’t see me wake up crying. I hated my tears, despised them even. I didn’t want to take the time to explain. Jonas being gone from the room gave me time to compose myself before going to find him.

He was out on the front porch. It was just after dawn and he’d seen the sun rise. I joined him, quietly sneaking through the house so as not to wake anyone else. I went outside to sit beside him on the porch swing.

“You shouldn’t be out here,” I said.

“I’m okay, Chris,” he said.

I didn’t bother to correct him, on either point. He’d gotten in the habit of calling me such, and I still tried really hard not to mind. “You’re not okay,” I said.

“You stayed with me all night,” he said.

It occurred to me only just then I’d slept away the previous day and through the night.

“I figured you’d get tired of my snoring.”

“You don’t snore.” I lied. He snored like a one of those pug dogs with the squished faces.

“Starch says I snore,” Jonas said, and then he dipped his head and ran his hands over his face.

I moved closer to him. “Starch lies,” I said quietly.

“You lie, sweetheart,” he said.

“Jonas,” I whispered. I eyed him for a moment before saying his name more forcefully.

“All right, Chris,” he said, turning to face me. “I feel like hell. I got food poisoning when I was a kid. From eating gods-knows-what in the desert after I got away. That is what this feels like. And I don’t really like it.”

“I don’t like it either,” I said. “Let’s go back inside, huh?”

“Just let me look at you in the dawn light for a minute,” he said.

I rolled my eyes at him. “Come on.” I rose and offered my hand.

He took my offered hand, and I pulled him to his feet. He leaned against me, and I could barely hold his weight. All ninety pounds of me trying to hold up all two hundred some pounds of him did not work well. We made it to the doorway and he leaned up against the wall.

“Chris,” he said in a harsh whisper then his eyes rolled back in his head, and he collapsed.

My first instinct was to scream Starch’s name as Jonas hit the ground like a ton of bricks. Starch came running, still in the sweats and tee he always wore to bed. He was barefooted, I saw, as he bent down next to me.

“What happened?” Starch asked, his intense blue eyes finding mine.

“He passed out,” I said quickly. “He’s sick.”

“Jonas doesn’t get sick,” Starch said.

“He does,” I said back. “Help me get him inside.”

Starch called out for Pete, who stood nearby, having risen upon hearing my frantic yelling. Between the two of them, they managed to get Jonas inside and into his room. They laid him out on the bed, and I knelt at Jonas’s head. I reached into his fevered mind and brought him around.

“What happened?” he asked upon seeing me.

“Don’t talk,” I said. “You just passed out, that’s all. You’ll be okay.”

“I’m not so sure,” he said quietly.

When I looked up again, I saw everyone crowded into the doorway. “We need to get him some help,” I said, still unable to bring myself to simply use my hands and reveal my own true nature.

Hermione was the one who stepped forward. Philip, I found out later, had left very early that morning on business, and when he left, Hermione always took over as head of household. “We can’t take him anywhere,” she said.

I swallowed, feeling fear grip my heart.

“If we take him to a hospital, or even to a doctor, they’ll find out where we are.”

I didn’t even need to ask who “they” were. Yet I was determined. “We have to do something.”

Hermione came to me and put a hand on my shoulder to move me out of the way. She bent beside Jonas and laid her hand on his forehead, feeling the fever burning within him. She looked deep into his eyes then rose, shaking her head. Jonas closed his eyes when she moved away, as if accepting this as her diagnosis.

I caught Hermione’s thoughts without even knowing I was doing it. “You can’t just let him die,” I said forcefully.

“There’s nothing we can do except wait to see if he pulls through,” she told me. She dipped her head slightly, horns and all, not wanting to meet my eyes.

“Wait?” I said loudly, taking a step towards her. “Wait!” I clenched my fists at my sides. “Wait for what? Wait for him to die so we can bury him in an unmarked grave somewhere in the desert?”

“Christiana,” Starch said in a very gentle voice. His hand fell on my shoulder, and I threw it off.

“I don’t just stand back and watch people die!” I yelled. “You’re all his friends. Do something!”

“What do you want us to do?” Hermione asked, trying to keep her voice calm. “We all agreed on this when we came here. If one of us gets sick, and nobody here can help, we do not go to a hospital. We do not call a doctor.”

“Well that’s a stupid rule,” I growled, but it was one I was well aware of. Before saying my next words I reached out and mentally pushed Jonas into a deep enough sleep so he wouldn’t hear. Before I blew like Mount Vesuvius, I should say instead. “Get out!” I hollered. “All of you get the hell out of this room! You all can just stand back and let him die, but I’ll have none of it! Get out!”

Hermione made the biggest mistake at that moment. “Chris, we can’t—”

Lava should have been spewing from the top of my head, I screamed so loud. “Don’t call me Chris!”

Everyone actually took a step away from me, including Starch. Jonas didn’t move, he was so deeply asleep.

I stalked to the door like a tiger, put my hand on the door jamb and faced down Hermione. “If you don’t get out of here now, I will put you out myself. Like Jonas, you will not be getting up again. Now. Get. Out!”

That did it. Hermione, fuming, turned and walked down the hall in a huff. The others followed, all except for Starch who lingered in the room, but only briefly. When he walked out, I grabbed his upper arm and faced his beautiful blue eyes and said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean you.”

“That’s okay, Chris. Christiana,” he corrected instantly.

“You can call me that,” I said. “And you can stay.”

“You stay with him,” Starch said, gripping my upper arm. “You love him. You stay. Just let me know, okay?”

I nodded my head, and he released me. He went to the door and closed it silently behind him. I stared at the door for a moment before going to turn the lock.

Then Starch’s words came back. “Love,” he had said. I knew I loved Jonas. I hadn’t known it had been so obvious. A certain four letter word played badminton in the back of my mind as I went to kneel by Jonas’s head again. I didn’t stay there long. I began pacing a rut in the floor, my hands clenched tightly behind my back. It didn’t take me long to make my decision, and I went to kneel, one last time, by Jonas’s head.

I brought him around so I could talk to him before I performed my task.

“Hey,” he said, his voice barely a whisper.

“Jonas,” I said, my voice just as quiet. “Can you hear me?”

“I’m not deaf, you know.”

I smiled. “Listen to me.”

“I am,” he said.

“I need you to make me a promise.”

“Anything,” he told me, meaning it.

“Okay, a couple of promises.”

“I said anything,” he whispered, and his weary smile made my heart melt.

I sighed before saying, “First, tell me you love me.”

“You know I do.”

“I need to hear you say it.”

His voice was rough as he said, “I love you.”

I closed my eyes and took in his words, stuffed them deep into my heart and kept them there. This was the reason for what I needed to do. Had I not known how truly in love with me he was, I might have had second thoughts. Oh, who am I kidding? I would have done it for him even if he didn’t love me, if only because I loved him.

“Secondly,” I said after swallowing the lump in my throat. “Don’t wake me.”

“What?” he asked, but I was already at work.

Before he could move or ask again, my hands lay beneath his shirt, running against the grain of his scales. I could feel the fire eating him alive. Hermione was probably right; he probably would have died, his body temperature was so high. Too high in fact. Barring medical attention, he would have been lost.

Had I not been there.

My hands went to work instantly, and I drew the heat, fever, and illness from him. In doing so, I was able to make a diagnosis as to what was killing him. Then darkness surrounded me and I lost the information as I collapsed to the floor, completely unconscious.

Chapter Fourteen

If I remembered what I’d discovered in Jonas’s body, I would have gone ripping a head from a body. I didn’t remember. Half of my forgetting I blame on hitting my head on the corner of his nightstand. I woke with a welt on my temple and an ache in my head. I woke feeling like shit. I woke in up the bed.

I woke because Jonas was calling my name.

“Okay, stop it,” I grumbled, sitting up slowly. I held my head in my hands and swallowed the bile creeping up my throat.

“Chris,” he said, putting an arm around my shoulder. “I couldn’t help it. You’ve been asleep for ten hours. I was worried.”

“Are you okay?” I asked him, lifting my heavy head.

“Fine,” he said. “I’m fine. Thanks to you.”

I let out a groan as the world spun faster than it should.

“What did you do?”

I looked up at him through my fingers. “What I was made to do,” I told him.

He reached out and took my chin in his hand. “Are you okay?”

“That’s why I asked you not to wake me,” I said, putting the weight of my head in his hand. My poor head felt like it was full of rocks, and not the nice, small, smooth pebbly kind. “I need you to make me another promise,” I told him.

“Anything, love,” he said.

I cherished the word, but had my say anyway. “You can’t tell anyone about what I did to you.”

“I won’t,” he said, not even thinking about questioning my reasons.

“Good,” I said, closing my eyes.

“Lay down, hon,” he said. He put pressure on my shoulder, forcing me to lie back down in the bed, which I did quite willingly. “You don’t look so good.”

“Wonder why,” I muttered, glad to have my head sinking into a pillow.

He tucked my hair behind my ear, his fingertips barely brushing my earlobe in a way that made my body tingle. This wasn’t a time to be thinking along those lines. I really wasn’t feeling well. It had been more instantaneous than healing Christian. I wondered about this fact but put it aside, thinking it must have been the accident that wasn’t. Then again, I didn’t remember how I got from the hospital to the motel. I started to drift off to these thoughts, then his voice came to me once more.

“Chris?”

“Hhm?” I said without opening my eyes.

“I know you’re one of us. I mean, we all knew you could read minds. How come you never told anyone about that?”

“Jonas, people hunted me all my life,” I whispered. “If they find out I’m alive and here, they’ll hunt me down again. And probably kill all of you in the process. I can’t let that happen.”