Beyond - Volume 1 (YA Paranormal Romance) (28 page)

I don’t know how long the drive lasts, but it feels like it’s been an eternity when the bag is jerked off my head and my eyes meet the light again. I gasp for air, just like the time I reached the surface of the pond. They’ve brought me somewhere inside. I felt how they dragged my body, how my feet banged on the staircase, how they forced me to keep standing. I was only half conscious.

The light is so bright that I have to squeeze my eyes until they’re tiny slits, wanting to hold my hands in front of them. But my hands are still bound behind my back. Only my feet have been released. I can still feel the tight belt of the box strapped around my body. Luckily they haven’t found out yet that I’m wearing it. My jacket masked everything perfectly.

After I blink some fluid into my eyes, I look around and experience a brief moment of joy.

Damian’s standing next to me.

We gaze at each other. His look is calming to me, but then he glances at the people that captured us, and I can see the fire burning in his eyes. His lip is torn. His hands are bound, and they’ve gagged him too, but his feet are also freed. There are blood splats on his shirt, and it’s ripped open. The box with all the wires and the watch have been taken away.

Hearing his sniffs and seeing his swollen eyes makes me think he’s also continuously fought for his freedom.

I look around and see we’re in an office. In front of me is an old desk piled with paper and a computer on top. Behind it is a row of windows with the curtains closed and in the right corner a fern. In front of us is a bright lamp directed at our faces. When the lamp is turned around, I see who’s behind it.

“Interesting …” the guy says. He has medium blond hair that looks entangled, as if it hasn’t been washed
or combed in days. He has a sharp nose, narrow face, cheekbones that catch the eye and full lips. I think he’s around twenty five years old. On his face is the unmistakable scornful smile, full of arrogance. Sam.

“Don’t you think they’re useful?” Sam says as he points to our captors. “They do their job quite well. It doesn’t take me long
to find my prey this way.” He flicks his fingers and the men who kidnapped us pull the cotton from our mouths.

“Bastard!” Damian bellows
, and he wants to storm at the guy, but the men hold him down. “You killed him!” Damian screams. He’s like a bull, ready for the bullfighter.

“What do you want with u
s?” I shout.

“What do I want with you? So you mean to tell me you don’t know?” Sam laughs. I don’t get what’s so funny.

Behind us a door opens. A wheelchair rolls past me. In it is a lady in a gray dress. On her head are metal pins and plates attached to her skull with screws, wires with blue fluid streaming in and out. It’s the woman who’s been spying on us all this time.

“Amber, you did well,” Sam says to her.

Why is he rewarding her for spying on me, my family and my friends?

Sam just stands there, his hands in his pockets, laughing at us. People just got killed
, and he couldn’t care less. He can’t get away with this unpunished.

“You …” I say, grating my teeth while looking at the lady in the wheelchair.

“She is the one who led us to you,” Sam says, and he looks at Damian and me with emphasis. “She’s been busy tracking you down for a few days now. Amber developed her specialties quite nicely these last few days.” He laughs.

“What are you talking about? I’ve been seeing her all my life,” Damian growls.

“That’s right.” The corners of Sam’s mouth curl up a little.

“Are you saying that …” I mumble.

“She can travel to my past?” Damian says.

“Indeed
. I’ve been looking so long for you two. Ever since the moment you disappeared from my sight, I’ve been trying to find you,” Sam says. “Why do you think I couldn’t find you earlier? Because she hadn’t fully developed her powers yet.”

Our eyes are locked on Sam. I can’t believe my ears.

So there’s a ghost who can travel through time. Why are there ghosts who can do so much more than Damian? What does it all mean?

I still can’t manage to say anything. I can only gape at the scene in front of me
, at the woman. Every single time, I saw her at places she couldn’t have possibly been if she hadn’t known where we were from the beginning. She knows the past and travels to it like it’s nothing.

“Let us go!” Damian roars, trying to tug himself loose.

Sam laughs like an insane person. I want to lock my hands around his throat and squeeze so tight the blood will make his eyes pop out.

“That friend of yours, what’s his name again … Oh right, that Cheng boy, he learned something that wasn’t his to learn
, and you taught it to him, which makes you the one responsible for his death.” Sam laughs maniacally. “You won’t be going anywhere.”

“Who does something like that? He was innocent! How could you kill him like he was some kind of animal ready for slaughter?” I scream.

“Innocent? Far from it. I decide who gets to live.” The arrogant smile on his face is one I’d gladly rip off.

“We brought him here, you know. Thought I’d get some information from him, while we were at it, but he was stupid enough not to answer. Oh well, guess that’s one less ant on this planet.”

So Jianyu was alive when we left him there? He’s here?

“What did you do with him?” I ask.

“You’ll find out soon enough, Love.” Sam smiles viciously at me. “Oh, so long … so long have I been looking for you.” He clenches his fists and then looks at Damian with something that looks like a primal lust, as though Damian was the person Sam was searching for all this time. But this fiery gaze is not like mine, not with love. Sam’s eyes are bloodthirsty.

“And you …” Now he looks at me with a penetrating look and grabs my chin. “You’re a nice … unforeseen circumstance. I didn’t expect to find you two together like this. Talk about two birds with one stone.” He chuckles.
His fingers are digging into my skin, curled around my jaw, his pursed lips wriggling back and forth, while he studies my face. “Do you remember?”

My eyes widen
. “What are you talking about?”

Lines form on his face. He gr
owls. “So you’ve forgotten me.”

“What do you want with me? I don’t know you!” I flounder about, but the men squeeze me even tighter, making me gasp for air.

“How can you have forgotten all about me? I was always with you. Every moment of the day. We did everything together, and you told me everything!” He grabs my clothes, pulling my shirt toward him. “Did I mean so little to you?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Leave me alone!”

His lip quivers. I can hear his teeth grating. He shifts his focus to Damian. “It’s all your goddamn fault!” Then he smacks him in the face.

“No! Stay away from him!” I scream.

“He took you away from me. Five years ago, when you were eleven, you forgot about me. You forgot about all those years I spent with you.”

The accident. The car. That was five years ago. When I look at his face there are characteristics I recognize for some reason. A strange face, but still familiar to me somehow. The narrow eyes and
pointy nose that are right in front of me are things I’ve seen before when I was much younger.

When he looks at me again, his eyes twinkle with i
nterest. “Do you remember now?”

In my head I see a vague image of a white room with a boy sitting next to me. It’s him. Sam. We used to play a lot with toy cars and action figures. He was always there for me when I felt alone. Could it be true then? Could I have forgotten about him because of the accident? Did I get a trauma so bad that I simply for
got about that part of my life?

“You remember me, don’t you?” Sam lets go of Damian and stands in front of me again. “Those pills never protected you against me. It was a futile attempt. Your stupid mother thought she could take you away from me, but she was foolish enough not to real
ize I’d never leave you alone.”

“My mo
m?” I stammer.

His eyes glisten for a moment. “Oh? Don’t tell me you didn’t know yet? Why do you think your mother gave you those pills? So you wouldn’t have to see me again
, that’s why. I’m the reason she took off every time. Moving to different places. Not that it helped.” He shrugs.

My pupils dilate. My mother
knows I see ghosts? She decided to make me take the pills without telling me what they were really for. Those pills aren’t for psychosis, but meant to be used against seeing spirits? She made me believe I was hallucinating!

I shake my head.

“Yes, Love. It’s the truth. But you’ll never get rid of me.”

I feel the anger boiling up inside me. My jaws cramp up. “If I’ve forgotten you
, then that must’ve been for a hell of a good reason. You killed Damian’s mom. You don’t deserve to be recognized!”

I gobble up and spit in his face.

“Lock her up,” he says, and he takes a Kleenex from a box on the table and wipes my spit off his cheek.

I
fight as hard as I can when the two men grab me by my wrists and drag me to a little room on the right side of the office. I push and tug to make them lose their grips, but it’s too late. They shove me into a room and slam the door shut behind them. I scream and smack my bound hands on the door. Of course it won’t open.

Only when I turn around
do I see what’s on the floor beneath the window. Broken, twisted and hollow eyed. It’s the body of Jianyu Cheng.

I scream so loud my lungs almost burst. My knees give in
, and I sink down to the ground. I feel the bile burning in my throat, and then I puke on the carpet. It keeps coming, and I can barely stay conscious because of the shock.

I help myself up using the wall as support and gaze at the body that lies near the window. Jianyu is nothing more than a broken corpse now. His eyes are bleak and hollow. The bones in his legs and arms are shattered, in his hand a gunshot wound. He didn’t die of the fall nor the wound. They bludgeoned him to death.

I whimper and cry above his body. My tears fall down on his bloody shirt.

How can
anyone be so cruel? Jianyu didn’t give Sam the information he wanted, so he just had him beaten to death?

Then I hear someone scream. It’s Sam.

“It’s all your fault, Boy! You took her away from me. You don’t know what you’re getting yourself into. You’ll regret this.

Their voices are still very audible through the wall in this room.

“She’s not your possession.” I hear Damian say.

“She’s mine!”

“Shut up about Raven!” Damian yells with a fluctuating voice.

I can’t just sit here and
listen to them fight. Fervently, I search for something in this room to cut loose the ropes around my wrists. If I could only reach into my pocket and get my cell phone, I could call for help. Carefully, I scan the room. In the window I spot a screw sticking out. That’s my shot.

I wobble across the body and try not to look at his hollow eyes while I fumble around.
Rhythmically I push the rope along the screw. Fast, even faster, as fast as I can. I can’t stay above him long because I feel the bile sloshing through my stomach from seeing his corpse underneath me.

“You’ll
wish you never met her. And I’ll enjoy it.” Sam chuckles. It seems almost like it’s a game to him.

Done!
I’ve cut through a piece of the rope and can rip open the rest of it by using brute force. I shriek in pain. My wrists are red hot from the rope burns.

I have to force myself not to look at the body
underneath me and quickly step back. I reach into my pocket, but my cell phone isn’t in there.

Of course they took it. Well, there
goes my plan. What do I do now?

“You murdered my mom! And you killed Jianyu. You’ll pay for that!” Damian roars. “Why do you want to make our lives so miserable? Wha
t do you get from all this?”

I look around, but there’s nothing in this room that I can use to escape. The window is barred
outside, and the door is jammed. There aren’t any heavy objects I can lift to throw at the door. Everything’s been taken out. There’s only one option left. The watch.

“I hate you too. Nobody can take her away from me. I’l
l kill anyone who touches her.”

“She’ll never want to have a
nything to do with you. Never!”

“Oh, really? Well, if
I can’t keep her, no one can!”

Th
e guy is insane. A bloodthirsty, homicidal maniac. He should be locked in an asylum or put in jail, and they should throw away the key!

“So you won’t stop until you’ve killed us all?” Damian yells.

Sam only laughs. His cackles are harrowing.

“I’ll come after you even when I’m dead,” Damian says. His chilling voice tells me he speaks the truth.