Deception (2 page)

“You go find Chelsea, and I’ll go back to England,” Aiden said in a take-charge manner. “I’ll come to you as soon as I’ve warned everyone there.” He leaned down and kissed my forehead, disappearing before he pulled away.

Aiden must have thought the threat to Chelsea was huge if he was willing to let me out of his sight for a minute, and I had to agree. Chelsea had already been targeted twice, and let’s face it, she was a “normal” human. She was an easy target. That meant I couldn’t leave her alone, and if I couldn’t leave her alone, then she needed to stay with me.

Without giving myself time to think things through, I did something that would probably get my butt kicked by Aiden and every other next gen. I transported to England and brought Chelsea with me.

She stood in front of me with her mouth dropped open. Slowly, she moved her eyes from side to side without moving her head as she took in her surroundings. We were standing in Aiden’s bedroom, the very one I’d sworn I would never step foot in again after seeing it covered in blood. But I’d already broken that promise when I found mum in there watching the video of what I had since learnt was my father holding my mother hostage. Chelsea slowly scanned the room, until her eyes eventually fell on me.

“Hi,” I said nervously. I really hadn’t thought through a way to explain what I was to her. I could have gone to her, sat her down, and tried to have the same conversation Aiden tried to have with me when I began noticing I was different. But I didn’t. I never seemed to do things the conventional way.

“Um.” She gulped hard. “What the…” Her eyes rolled into the back of her head, and she collapsed to the floor before she could finish her sentence. I didn’t think quick enough to catch her before she whacked her head on the ground. But thankfully, she’d fallen on the shaggy rug. So she didn’t crack open her skull.

I rushed over to Chelsea, knelt down beside her, and quickly checked her golden-blond hair for any signs of blood—but I found none.

“Are you with Chelsea?”
Aiden asked.

“Um… yeah,”
I replied, still a little stunned by what I’d done.

I brushed her hair away from her face, then checked her pulse, just to be sure her heart was still ticking and she hadn’t died from shock. She was still with us.

“Where are you?”

“I’m upstairs, in your room.”

“Upstairs, as in my bedroom on the Gold Coast? Or upstairs, as in my bedroom in England?”

“Umm…”

“By your lack of wanting to tell me, I’d have to guess…”
Aiden phased into my sight. “Yep. I was…” Aiden rushed to my side. “What the hell?” He bent down, then placed two fingers on Chelsea’s neck.

“I didn’t kill her, you know.”

He dropped his fingers from her neck. “No, you didn’t. But you must have scared the crap out of her so much that she passed out.”

I glared at Aiden.

“I thought I told you I’d come to you as soon as I warned my parents—”

“Parents?” Chelsea’s strained voice broke through Aiden’s little freak-out. “I don’t understand. Your parents are dead.” She was lying perfectly still, looking between Aiden and me, trying to work out where she was, what the hell Aiden had meant by speaking to his dead parents, and most importantly, hoping to God she was just having a dream. ’Cause if she hadn’t, she had just woken up in some friggin’ Twilight Zone.

She slowly pulled herself into a sitting position, then did a backwards bum crawl as she tried to distance herself from us so she could get some perspective on the situation. Yeah, like that was ever going to happen. I remembered when Aiden had first tried to tell me what I was. He had made a complete mess of it all, which Anna had to try to fix.

“Well, is someone going to tell me what the hell is going on?” Chelsea asked. “’Cause, right now, I’m freaking out, and I’d really like it if you could just tell me I’m having a dream, or a hallucination, or something. ’Cause the last thing I remember was being at the hospital, watching over my mum, who is in a coma after narrowly escaping being blown to pieces when the house…” Chelsea trailed off when she remembered how both she and her mother had somehow gotten out of their house just before it exploded, and for some reason, I had been there beside her. Then my mother appeared out of nowhere, then Aiden did the same, and then we all disappeared, leaving Chelsea kneeling over her mother’s charred body—alone.

She looked up at me, her blue eyes begging for me to tell her she wasn’t crazy for thinking I had everything to do with saving her and her mother’s life.

“Don’t worry. I’ll take care of it. She won’t remember a thing.” Aiden’s mind-altering expression started to creep over his face.

“No!”
I yelled silently before he got started on removing all her memories of what I’d done.

He looked at me with his eyebrows knitted together, but he didn’t say anything.

“I… I want her to know what I am.”
When Aiden looked at me as if I were nuts, I added.
“I don’t want to lie to her anymore. I’m sick of lies. My whole life has been built on lies, and look where that has got us. My mother was kidnapped by my father, who is some friggin’ lunatic who wants to screw with me and everyone I care about to the point that he doesn’t care if they die so long as he, in some sick, twisted way, gets what he wants from me. And God knows what the hell that is!”

“Jade,”
he said, his eyes softening.

“Well?” Chelsea said when neither of us said anything.

Ignoring her, I continued to try to reason with Aiden.
“I just want some honesty for a change, and if I can’t give it, then how the hell can I expect to receive it?”
Before he could say anything, I continued,
“And besides, Chelsea is going to need us to protect her from my father, and the best way for us to do that is for her to stay with us. And let’s face it, it will be bloody hard to conceal what we are when she is with us twenty-four, seven.”

His face dropped in defeat.
“I won’t do anything to her now, but that’s not to say we won’t need to in the future.”

“Thanks.”
I knew that was the best he would agree to at that point in time. I just hoped he wouldn’t delete her memories in the future, either.

“Are either of you going to answer me, or are you just going to keep staring at each other?” Chelsea asked again.

“Chels—”

Aiden stood up. “How about I give you two girls a moment to talk?”

“Thanks,” I said sarcastically.

“What?” he asked with a surprised tone. “You saw the last time I tried to tell someone what we are. You really want me doing
that
again?”

I remembered how frustrated I had been with him trying to explain it to me. “Yep. See ya later.”

He smiled, then left, using the door, leaving me alone with Chelsea.

I slowly turned my attention back to her, realising only then how hard it must have been for Aiden to have this very conversation with me—not that I would ever admit it to him.

Chelsea put her hands on her hips. “Are you gonna tell me what the hell that was all about, or are you just going to sit there looking like an idiot? ’Cause Aiden kinda freaked the shit out of me with what he said about explaining what you guys really are. And what the hell does that mean, anyway?

“Umm,” I said, trying to get my head around what to say in response.

“‘Umm’? Is that all you can say?” she asked, getting exasperated. “Here I am freaking out because I somehow ended up in a room with you and Aiden when I know for a fact I was at the hospital with my mum. And I’m pretty sure I’m not dreaming.” She paused to pinch herself on the arm. “Ouch. Yep, I’m definitely not dreaming ’cause I’m pretty sure that wouldn’t have hurt if I was, so that rules that theory out,” she continued on her ramble. “And now isn’t the only time some crazy shit has happened. Like, how I felt a hand on me when I was in my bedroom getting changed, and then when I pulled my top over my head, I was no longer in my room. I was standing in my front yard with you standing beside me. Oh, and then my friggin’ house blew up with my mum still inside, but the next thing I knew, she was lying on the lawn in front of me. How the hell she got there, I do not know, but what I do know is with everything that’s been happening to me lately, you were the constant.” She narrowed her eyes at me. “So are you going to tell me what the hell is going on around here or what?”

Yep, it looked like I was making just as much of a mess as Aiden had when he was telling me—maybe even more.

“Well?” she asked again when I didn’t answer her straight away.

“God, Chelsea, just give me a minute to explain, would you!” I snapped, making her jerk back in shock. She didn’t understand why I was being so apprehensive when I was the one who clearly knew what was going on, and yet I wouldn’t tell her.

“Look, I’m sorry.” I took a step towards her. She didn’t say anything, because she didn’t really accept my lame apology. “I really am sorry,” I said again, trying to make her believe me. God, why the hell couldn’t I be as convincing as Aiden? It really would have helped out.

I grabbed her hand. “Come sit down, and I’ll try to explain it to you.” I dragged her towards the couch. She followed without hesitation and sat beside me with her feet planted firmly on the floor and her arms crossed over her chest.

“Okay.” I took a deep breath and hoped to God I wouldn’t screw up. “Remember when you were being held captive by that psycho, and I somehow got there, and I wasn’t sure how, and you said he’d probably drugged me or something, ’cause how else would I have gotten there?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, that wasn’t entirely true.”

“Go on,” Chelsea said nervously. She wondered why the hell I would’ve felt the need to lie to her about that.

“Well… I kind of just appeared there.”

She twisted in her seat to face me, putting one knee up on the couch. “Kind of just appeared how?”

Crap. How was I going to explain this. I thought back to when Aiden tried explaining what we were, and I remembered the one thing that completely, utterly, and without a doubt confirmed we were something else. Anna had appeared out of thin air. So I thought I would do the same.

“Like this,” I said with a smile, hoping she wouldn’t freak out too much.

She froze the moment I disappeared from her sight. Then I reappeared standing behind her. For a second, I thought I was going to need a paramedic because her heart was going to stop, but her short, shallow breaths confirmed all was still okay, considering the situation.

I waited for her to turn around to see where I’d gone, but she just continued to hyperventilate. I tugged on a strand of her hair. “I’m back here.”

Unable to say a word, she slowly turned her very pale face towards me. Her mind was a jumbled-up mess, trying to make sense of what she thought she’d seen, and her brain telling her it wasn’t humanly possible. And if it wasn’t humanly possible, then her best friend, whom she’d known all her life, wasn’t human. And if she wasn’t human, then what the hell was she?

Her mind instantly went in the same direction mine had first gone—vampires. I had to laugh. I finally saw how damn funny I must have been, coming up with all my theories about how I’d been accidentally set on fire in the science lab, but didn’t have a mark on my body and how Aiden always knew what I was thinking without me saying a word.

“How the hell?” She scooted back until she was at the far end of the lounge.

I decided to give her another show, just so she knew her mind wasn’t playing tricks on her. I phased out and reappeared sitting beside her on the couch.

Chelsea stared at me blankly. Her thoughts scrambled as she tried to process the impossible. The next thing I knew, her eyes rolled into the back of her head, and she collapsed backwards against the armrest.

Okay, so maybe it wasn’t such a great idea to rub her face in it. Maybe explaining the theory side of things would have worked a lot better with her. Oh well, she wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon, so I’d have another shot at it when she came to. And maybe I was going to need some help from Aiden, after all—yeah right. He would never let me live it down.

Chapter 2

Thirty minutes later, Chelsea was still out cold. Why I couldn’t have just explained it to her I didn’t know, but what was done was done, and I couldn’t do anything to change it. Actually there was, well not something I could do, but there was definitely something that almost every other person in the house could do that I couldn’t. But there was no way I was going to ask them to make her forget how much I freaked her out. I’d created this mess, and I would have to be the one to fix it.

“So how’s it going in there?”
Aiden asked. For a second, I thought he knew something was wrong, but since I had my mind-blocking thing up, I knew I was safe.

“Umm, everything’s fine,”
I lied.
“We just have a lot to catch up on. You know how Chelsea can be. Once she gets started, you can’t shut her up.”

Aiden’s laughter filled my head.
“I guess you’ll be up there for another couple of hours, with all the questions I’m sure she has for you.”

I laughed nervously.
“You’re probably right.”
He didn’t know the half of it. I was just praying she would wake up before anyone came looking for us.

“Do you want me to get Bernard to bring you guys up something to eat or drink?”

“No,”
I said a little too quickly.

He didn’t say anything. I half-expected him to appear in the room and find out what I’d done to Chelsea, and he would never let me live it down. But he didn’t show up.
“Are you sure everything is okay up there?”

“Yeah, of course. I guess Chelsea’s doing my head in with all her questions, and having this conversation with you isn’t really helping.”

“Okay, I get the hint. I’ll leave you to it.”

“Thanks.”
I sighed with relief, but quickly realised the worst wasn’t over. Chelsea was waking up.