Dissever (Unbinding Fate Book One) (35 page)

The area they were looking
at was full of elaborate monuments, adorned with angels and tall obelisks. Many
had stone urns, some of which were draped with a cloth, like what she saw in
the painting. Some had angel statues and columns or were covered with carvings.

Tanner tugged on the bars of
the gate but they were sturdy.

Continuing around the edges
of the property, they spotted a small stream. There was an arch in the wall covered
with bars to allow the water to flow through it. Looking around to make sure no
one was watching, Tanner carefully stepped down the small bank and checked the
bars.

 “We can get in through there,
but we’ll have to wait until after dark,” he said, walking back up and kicking
the mud off his boots. “We also need to get some flashlights, and whatever it’s
gonna take to open the crypt.”

They hit a local hardware
store and picked up some tools and flashlights. Once that was off their to-do
list, they grabbed dinner in the city, and then headed back to the cemetery to
wait. It was a nice break from everything to just sit and talk together. Addy
was surprised they were able to push everything happening aside and just hang
out for a little while.

She stared out the window at
a squirrel digging at the base of a nearby tree. “Can I ask you something?”

He tipped his head at her
sideways and grinned. “If I can wait to answer the first question until I know
the second one.”

She smiled, watching his
reflection in the window rather than him directly. “That’s fair.”

“You’re not looking at me—I’m
taking that as a
bad
sign.”

“It’s not.”

“Shoot then.”

She turned to him then hesitated,
unsure if she should ask him after all. He was giving her an impatient look so
she just blurted it out.

“You’re one of my closest
friends and I don’t know anything about where you grew up.”

Tanner shrugged. “I grew up
in Florida, not far from the estate.”

“What about your family?”

 He turned to look out the
window at the same squirrel she’d been watching.

“Never mind,” she said. “I’m
sorry
for being—”

“It’s
fine
.” He
cleared his throat and looked back at her. “I went to live with my adopted
parents when I was three.”

She knew she should stop but
couldn’t make herself. “Do you remember your real parents?”

“No.”

“But you remember every—”

“Listen girlie, my
parents
were older when I went to live with them and pretty set in their own life
already. They were wonderful people, but Oliver took care of me most of the
time.”

“Oh.” Addy reached for her
drink and saw Tanner eyeing her wrist. She pulled her arm back out of his view.

“Let’s find the book and get
the hell away from these people.” Tanner reached down and turned the radio off.
“They can destroy the stone, or not destroy the stone, or they can just go off
and destroy each other. Whatever they decide to do—they don’t need us around to
do it.”

Addy was caught off guard by
his words and the intensity in his voice when he said them. She didn’t have a
clue how to respond, but she knew she had to say something.

“Where would we go?” she
asked, biting her lip.

Tanner smiled and put the
side of his index finger on his chin. “Anywhere except abandoned warehouses.
We’ve already scratched it off our
places to see before we die
list
twice.”

Leaving the estate had been
her plan with Gage before he Scattered—it was a painfully familiar
conversation. She and Tanner joked about all kinds of ridiculous places, most
of which involved free-range cattle for some odd reason.

“It’s getting dark—we’d
better get ready to roll,” Tanner said, pulling his white t-shirt off.

When he was reaching around
to grab a black one from the backseat, Addy couldn’t help but notice all the
tattoos covering his upper body. She leaned way over to look closer in the dark.
When he turned around he blasted into her with his elbow.

“Whoa—
watch out
. You
alright?”

Unable to shake the urge to
examine his skin, she immediately leaned toward him again without saying
anything. It was dark but she thought something looked strange.

He started to pull the black
shirt over his head, but she reached out and stopped him.

There was definitely
something different about the skin where the tattoos covered it. Addy raised
her hand to run her fingers along his shoulder. Without any warning Tanner
grabbed her wrist, hurting the bruises Jax gave her, making her wince.

Tanner immediately let go
and pulled his shirt on. He took a deep breath and turned to her. “I’m sorry,
girlie. You just shouldn’t—”

“I shouldn’t have been a
space invader,
I know.”
Addy looked at him out of the corner of her eye
feeling like a complete creeper. “I didn’t mean to.” She couldn’t help herself
though. Even after she sat back in her seat, her fingers still itched to touch
his skin.

 Tanner leaned his head back
on the headrest. “I’m not used to having someone around who’s so—well you’re
just…”
He trailed off and she watched him close his eyes.

As she studied him, the fact
that he could simply stop coming around any time he felt like it rolled over
her like a boulder, causing her body to tense. There was nothing
making
him
spend time at the estate—
or
with her.

In a panic, she just started
talking fast. “I didn’t mean to be pushy with my questions or—
space invade
and
overstep by asking you to do crazy things like coming here.” She pressed her
hands down flat in her knees.  “I won’t do it anymore—just don’t stop coming
around and being my friend.”

He quickly lifted his head
and held his hands up. “Slow
down
—geez, girlie. How’d we go from you
being pushy to me not being your friend anymore all in like five
seconds
?”

She opened her mouth to talk
but he held his hand up again. Pulling his shirt up over his shoulder, he
reached over and took her hand, placing it flat on his skin.

Pressing down lightly, she
could feel fine lines under her palm. Addy moved her hand slightly and felt him
tense. “What is it?”

Tanner turned his head away
from her. “Scars.”

Slowly she moved across his
skin, lifting her hand so only a single finger was running along the edge of
the lines. They seemed to wind into a circular pattern.

Addy closed her eyes and
tried to visualize the design her finger traced in her head.  A chill crept
through her when it began to dawn on her what it was. She kept lightly trailing
along his skin until the entire picture screamed to life in her mind. Every
spot covered with a tattoo was hiding scars in the shapes of Akori symbols.

Tanner pulled his shirt down,
forcing her to move her hand. Addy had so many questions, but couldn’t bring
herself to ask them. She fought off angry tears at the thought of someone
hurting him.

“Ready to get it done?” he
asked, snapping her back to what they were there for.

Addy didn’t trust herself to
speak so she just nodded. She got out of the car and moved to the backseat to
change her clothes. Tanner stood outside of the car, a few feet away with his
back to her. She couldn’t even begin to imagine how he’d gotten the scars that covered
his shoulders and back. The only thing she knew for sure was that nothing like
that was ever gonna happen to him again as long as she was around.

As she finished getting dressed,
Addy realized she couldn’t press Tanner about his past again. She’d have to
wait for him to tell her, like Bernard said.

They loaded up the duffle
bag with the items from the hardware store and headed toward the stream. Tanner
easily kicked out two of the bars that blocked their way in and they were soon
walking through the pitch-dark cemetery.

“Finding it’s gonna be
impossible,” Addy said, raising her hands and waving them around. “It’s too
dark to see anything clearly and this place is huge.”

They wandered around for
nearly an hour looking for the right section based on the map Bernard gave
them. They’d entered the cemetery in what appeared to be an area of more modern
monuments, but she could tell by the change in design that they were getting
closer to the section they needed.

There was a noise behind
them like footsteps and Addy drew her sword. It started again and she swung
around, about to strike out.

Tanner immediately hooked
his arm around her waist. “Hold on, girlie.”

He shined the flashlight on the
grassy area. She followed it with her eyes until he stopped on a peacock poking
around.

“Are you freaking kidding
me?” Addy burst out laughing. “He owes you his life.”

She put her sword away and
he took her hand, probably to save the woodland creatures from her wrath, and
they continued through the dark cemetery until they found the section they were
looking for.

Addy stood in front of the
entrance to the Sanders crypt. “It’s so much bigger than it looked in the
painting.”

Even in the dark it was
beautiful. Built into a hill, the entrance was wider than a normal door, way
big enough to fit a coffin through. The angels on each side of the entrance
were as tall as Addy. The name
Sanders
was carved
in the top center.

Neither one of them had ever
broken into an underground burial crypt before, so Tanner just grabbed the
tools and started trying to find a way into the entrance. She checked out the
angels by the door and then walked around the immediate area, reading the names
and dates on the elaborate markers.

Tanner called to her in a
loud whisper, startling her. She hurried back to the entrance to see it was now
open.

It was pitch black inside
and the light from their flashlights made the shadows creepy. About ten feet
from the entrance there was a long stone stairway leading down. Tanner closed
the door behind them making sure it didn’t latch and they carefully started
down the stairs, hand in hand.

“Your
Kung Fu Grip
is
cutting off the blood flow to my fingers, girlie.” He unlaced his fingers from
hers and simply grabbed her hand. “I’m questioning why I do these things for
you.”

She let out a nervous laugh
that echoed eerily around them in the stairway. “Me too.”

They continued down about forty
feet before the stairway ended. The room at the bottom was around twenty feet
wide by eighty feet long. The stairs took up one wall and doors lined the sidewalls.
Three of the doors were closed.

In the center of the room
stood a stone sarcophagus topped with a tall angel statue. The ceiling was
about twenty-five feet above them. Statues of angels were placed between each
door and the walls were covered with intricate carvings of leaves and branches.

Tanner shined his flashlight
around the room. “It’s not what I expected.”

Letting go of her hand, he started
to walk around. He reached into the bag, opening the pack of emergency glow
sticks and began dropping them around the room to light it up.

Addy figured she might as
well check the rooms where her family was first. She poked her head into each
room and quickly discovered that the ones with the doors open were empty. A
strong, musty stench met her as she pushed the first closed door open.

Shining the flashlight, she
read the names by the coffins on shelves along the walls. It was Oren’s son Jon,
the second Overseer, and his son, the third Overseer. Their wives were also
entombed in there. She searched, but there wasn’t anything in the room she
could picture as a hiding place for Oren’s book.

Tanner followed her into the
next room. The same foul smell hit them at the door. There they found the fourth
and fifth Overseers and their wives. In addition, a smaller coffin that must
have belonged to a child was with them. Again, there wasn’t anything
particularly interesting.

He pulled door number two
shut after they exited to the main room. “You just want me to check out the
last room?”

 “I’m alright.” She followed
him across the room to her grandfather’s final resting place. “Thanks though.”

Ever since Addy received the
symbol from the stone, she’d been feeling removed from much of the pain she
felt about losing Fate. Even now, she didn’t feel like she would break down
being in the room with his body.

The smell in the third room
was horrendous and the floor was wet.

“Oh,
my—”
She started
gagging. “What
is
that?”

“Hardcore decomposition.” Tanner
grabbed her arm. “Watch the floor, its slippery.”

“Tanner, something’s not
right.” She flashed the light all around. “My grandmother isn’t here.”

“Are you sure she’s supposed
to be? You’ve never told me about her.”