Echoes (14 page)

The shattering of my heart into a million sharp pieces didn’t make any sound at all. Rage rose inside of me when before there had only been fear and suspicion. “He was an Upyr. Just like the others.”

The truth tasted like poison.

Frank spoke so quietly I had to strain to hear him. “You don’t know what a mistake you just made.”

“I killed a monster that wanted to kill me.”

“Kill you? That boy was the only thing standing between you and the rest of them. Now your protection is gone forever. When he comes back he won’t be the same. He won’t feel the same need to—” He hissed out a breath. “Stupid. So stupid. Both of you.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Forget it. It’s done. You’ve chosen your fate. Now get the hell out of here.”

I pulled the piece of paper out of my bag, the photo of Frank and the other men, and I slammed it down on the bar top in front of him.

“Tell me why you’re in this picture. That’s you, isn’t it?”

“You’re in way over your head, little girl.”

“I’m not a little girl.”

“Oh, but you are.” He finally swiveled in his chair. His expression wasn’t fierce or angry when he looked at me now. It was haunted. “You shouldn’t be a part of this. Any of it.”

“But I am.”

“Yeah, you are.” His bloodshot eyes met mine. “Sucks for you.”

“This was in your journal. It was
your
journal, wasn’t it? You were here a hundred years ago when the Upyri were around the last time. You trapped them.”

There was silence for a long moment. “Yeah. I did.”

At the confirmation my stomach twisted into knots. “You’re still here. You’re—I read it in the journal. You said you were
revenant
and that helped you. Tell me what that means.”

“Revenant,” he whispered. “Touched by the hand of death. That’s what I was. And that’s what you are, too. That’s why they want you just like they wanted me. Don’t you see?”

“No, I don’t see. I don’t see anything! That’s why I’m asking you these questions. I need real answers from you. Please!”

His bloodshot eyes turned cold and he grabbed my arm hard enough to hurt. “Shouldn’t have gotten rid of Ethan, kid. You only have yourself to blame for whatever happens to you now.”

His grip tightened and I let out a little shriek, my courage and anger falling away, replaced by fear. It wasn’t long before Joe and Goliath were there on either side of Frank, wrenching his hand off me.

“Easy, Frank,” Joe said, and there was no mistaking the warning growl to his voice. “No need to hurt the girl.”

“He wanted to help you,” Frank snarled at me. “It was all he wanted. It’s your fault that help is gone now.”

“Hey, you okay, Olivia?” Goliath asked.

I just nodded and staggered away from them. “I’m fine.”

Another lie. I was nowhere near fine. I didn’t think I’d ever be again.

Joe gave me a concerned look. “You got what you needed?”

I shook my head. I didn’t get what I needed. I was only more confused now. And according to Frank, there was only one person I could go to for the answers I needed. The answers, it seemed, I couldn’t live without.

It was time to see Ethan.

With every step I took as I ran toward the warehouse I grew more and more angry and scared. My heart felt heavy and damaged like it had been through a blender.

The boy I’d been falling for was a monster, the same kind of monster that wanted me dead.

The abandoned warehouse loomed in front of me, looking like a dark beast itself. I stood there for ten minutes trying to breathe. Part of me wanted to run away, go home, and pretend none of this was happening. Go get Bree and tell her everything, then come back later when I’d had time to think, to plan.

But this couldn’t wait. It had already been a whole day.

I pushed the door open in front of me. It was exactly as I’d left it yesterday. The locked room lay directly in front of me. I put the backpack on the wooden table to my right and pulled out the knife, looking at its sharp edge. It was the same one he’d used on the Upyr who’d attacked me in the park—the one using Mr. Watkinson’s body as a shell.

I knew this knife worked.

I let out a long, shaky breath. “I saw Frank. He told me the truth about what you are. So don’t even think about lying to me today.”

There was no reply. A shiver sped down my spine.

My hands shook, but I fought to keep my voice strong. “I need to know what you want. Why me? And why try to fool me for the past week?”

My frustration at his silence helped fuel my anger. “You said if we put an Upyr in there so he wouldn’t have the chance to get any blood for a day he’d start talking. So here we are. Talk to me.”

Nothing.

A thought chilled me. Maybe he’d escaped. I didn’t know how strong he was—strong enough to throw Peter across the hall yesterday. That might only have been a fraction of his real strength. Maybe, like Bree said, Upyri really were stronger at night. And this warehouse—I didn’t know how old it was. The lock could be flimsier than he’d originally thought. A hard enough shove or kick and it could have broken open. Ethan might be anywhere right now.

With the knife clutched in my right hand, I approached the door and tried the handle. It held firm. The door was still locked.

Sweat trickled between my shoulder blades in a cold line.

Grabbing the flashlight from Ethan’s bag in one hand, the knife clutched in the other, I went up on my tip toes and shone the light in through the small, open window.

I braced myself for a pale hand to reach out and grab me, but that didn’t happen.

I shone the light around the small, dark room. There was the bottle of water I’d left—cap off and turned on its side, empty. The sandwich was unwrapped, half eaten, the other half discarded. I moved the beam to the other side of the room and a gasp caught in my throat.

Ethan hadn’t escaped.

He lay on his side, his back to the door. He wasn’t moving. I couldn’t tell if he was breathing. He was so still he looked dead.

Wisps of smoke rose from his exposed skin.

Stabbing the other Upyri made them burst into flame and disappear. That was how their shells were destroyed. He’d told me if they went without blood for much more than a day, they would also burn. However, it would be slower. More painful. But the end result could be the same.

Ethan wouldn’t have drunk any blood while trapped in this room—a whole day now. His shell was slowly burning up because of that.

When I’d left him here yesterday I’d said I wanted to watch him burn for what he’d done. I’d meant those words, every one of them. But now that we were here and I was seeing the results with my own eyes the reality wasn’t quite as satisfying.

It was horrifying.

“Ethan, look at me.”

He didn’t move.

He was unconscious or in too much pain to move or speak.

I swore under my breath. Waiting and watching wasn’t getting me any closer to the truth. If Ethan burned up before my very eyes, I wouldn’t get the truth—not before it was too late.

He didn’t move, not even a little. I watched him carefully for a few more minutes looking for any sign that he was conscious, but there was nothing.

I pulled the key from around my neck and stared at it for a long, hard moment.

Time was running out.

After I unlocked it, the handle made a soft squeak as I turned it and pulled the door open very slowly. The larger room I’d been in had a large dirty window to the far end and light bled into the smaller room. It was still dark, still shadowy, but I could see without the flashlight.

Ethan didn’t move.

Knife in hand, I approached him cautiously. He was sick. He was dying. And I refused to feel any sympathy for him. He’d chosen this. It was his fault, all of it. But I needed him to wake up, to see that I had a weapon and wasn’t afraid to use it, and for him to tell me everything he knew before he finally went up in flames.

However, I knew that wouldn’t really kill him.

Upyri were immortal. This—Ethan’s body—was only a shell.

“That boy was the only thing standing between you and the rest of them. When he comes back he won’t be the same.”

More lies. I didn’t trust Frank to tell me the truth any more than I trusted Ethan. I didn’t trust anyone anymore.

“Ethan,” I said sharply, nudging him with the toe of my shoe. “Wake up.”

Doubt flooded me, but I fought against it. I didn’t care that I’d grown to like him over the last week—like him so much it hurt. That I’d quickly come to trust him with my life. The only reason I needed him alive for a bit longer was so he could give me answers so I could save myself and Ravenridge from the threat of other monsters like him escaping from wherever they were currently trapped.

The fresh, hot burst of anger this provoked gave me strength. I had the knife. I had the control here, not him.

I crouched down next to him and grabbed his arm, then yelped and drew back. It felt as if he’d been baking in the oven. I tried again, touching him more tentatively this time. So hot—I’d never felt anything like it.

No wonder his skin was literally smoking. He was being cooked from the inside out.

He moved so quickly I didn’t even see it coming until it was too late. The next second, both my hands were in his grip. He grabbed the knife from me and slammed me down onto my back. I didn’t even have the chance to scream before the cold, sharp edge of the knife pressed against my throat.

He loomed in front of me, the whites of his eyes bright in the darkness.

“Damn you, Olivia,” he growled.

I tried to push him away, but it was impossible. He was too strong. I was afraid to move or else the knife would dig deeper into my flesh. His skin felt like fire, hot enough to burn not only him but me as well.

“I hate you!” I snarled. If I was going to die, I didn’t want to let him see me weak, let him see me beg. “Kill me. Go ahead and do it, you bastard. What are you waiting for?”

He released me so quickly my breath left me in a rush. He threw the knife away from him and it clattered into the corner. He crawled on his hands and knees to the opposite corner, sitting with his back to the wall and drawing his knees up to his chest. He glared at me from the darkness.

“Just go,” he snapped. “Leave me alone.”

I was shivering so badly that my teeth started to chatter. “What the hell are you doing?”

He snorted humorlessly. “Preparing to leave this shell. What do you think I’m doing?”

“And then what? What happens then?”

“Then I find a new one once I’ve regained my strength.” His fierce gaze grew pained. “But it won’t be the same. I don’t care anymore.”

I scrambled back to the opposite side of the room. “You lied to me.”

“I didn’t lie. I said I was protecting you from them. That’s exactly what I was doing.”

“But you’re one of them.”

He didn’t reply to that. He continued to glare at me across the darkness of the room, that strange smoke rising from his pale skin.

It only made me angrier. “Admit it, Ethan. Just admit it! Tell me the truth just once before this is over. Can you do that? Tell me you’re an Upyr. That you’ve been an Upyr all this time. Say it.”

“Fine.” He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment before opening them again. “It’s true.”

Tears streaked down my cheeks, the ones I’d been trying to hold back for so long.

“You killed him.” It was a whisper, but the next time I said it, it was a shout. “You killed Ethan! Why would you do that? Why him?”

My hands were fists as I got to my feet and stormed over to where he sat curled up in the corner as if he was trying to hide from me. From the world itself.

I went to grab the knife again and he didn’t try to stop me.

I wanted to hit him. I wanted to beat him so badly so he’d feel the same pain I felt. I wanted to stab this knife through his heart and end this once and for all.

Despite the heat coming off his body, the look he now gave me was cold as ice. I kept thinking he was weakened, this close to whatever fiery death waited for him, but he rose to his feet in one smooth motion and I was reminded that he was several inches taller that me and weighed a lot more. That would have been threat enough if he was only human. As it was, all I could do was hold onto the knife so tightly that my hand started to ache.

I’d chosen to come in here to check on him. Whatever happened to me now would be my own fault.

“I didn’t kill him.” Each word was a snarl. His shirt was unbuttoned up the front, as if he’d been trying to stay cool, but hadn’t had the strength to take it all the way off.

I shook my head. “Why are you still trying to lie to me?”

He snorted at that and I looked at him with shock.

“Something funny?” I snapped.

“Yeah, actually. You caring what happened to Ethan Cole is hilarious. You didn’t even know he existed.”

“That’s not true.”

“Sure. Okay, maybe you actually
did
care about him. Maybe you liked him, but it was only from a distance. You harbored a crush on him for years that you didn’t want to act on, because it was too big, too scary for you to deal with. Because you were afraid of being rejected or laughed at.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Oh wait, no. That wasn’t you. That was Ethan himself.” He looked completely disgusted.

“You don’t know anything about him.”

“I wish that were true.”

The heat coming off of him was intense, like roasting in the sun on a summer’s day at the beach. He was too close to me. I held the knife between us, pointed directly at his chest.

“Here’s what I do know for absolute certain.” His jaw was tense. “I didn’t kill him.”

“You’re a liar.”

He glared at me, breathing hard, for a couple long and uncomfortable moments. Then he pulled his sleeves up and showed me his wrists. “
This
is what he did. This is how he died.”

I was afraid to take my attention off his face, but I did glance down. It was dark in the room but I could still see the faint pink lines over both of his wrists now that they’d been pointed out to me.

He stared down at them. “I was able to heal most of the damage, but it’ll never go away completely. It’ll stay as a reminder.”

Heal most of the damage
. Just like he’d healed the knife wound from the other Upyr.

“No.” I was shaking now, worse than before.

He looked pained and his gaze returned to mine. “You might think we’re monsters, and a hell of a lot of us are exactly that, but some of us stick to a code. We only take what’s left behind.”

I shook my head. “I don’t believe you.”

“I watched him before it happened. I sensed what he planned to do—we can
sense
impending death like that. I followed him. I watched. I waited. I couldn’t have stopped him even if I’d wanted to.” His expression twisted into one of anguish. “Nobody else noticed how much pain he was in, but I did. I saw how much he hated himself, hated living. He hid it all from the world.
He
hid from the world. And he decided to end it. He’d been thinking about it for a long time and he finally did it. His mom was out with his stepfather that night. They didn’t get home till the morning.”

Tears poured down my cheeks now, but I still didn’t loosen my grip on the knife.

“What then?” I choked out. “Tell me what happened then.”

His brow was furrowed deeply, the painful memory of what he’d witnessed played across his face. “Taking a shell so soon after they...” His jaw clenched. “Well, it makes us stronger. I knew I needed to be strong after I escaped. I needed to be able to fight. To act. But—but I took his shell sooner than I should have.”

I inhaled shakily. “What?”

He looked away from me. “We call them
echoes
. They’re memories that stay inside the shell. When we take over, they become a part of us. Normally it’s not a huge problem. If the spirit’s been gone from the shell for a few hours, or a day, it’s just background noise, like a television being left on in another room. You can ignore it, for the most part.”

“Echoes,” I whispered. “Memories. Mr. Watkinson—or the Upyr using his body—said he remembered his wife dying from cancer.”

“Yeah.”

“So what?” I looked at him with disgust. “You have Ethan’s memories? Great. I guess that helps you blend in all that much better. Makes it easier for you to lie since you don’t have to make it up as you go along.”

A muscle in his cheek twitched and he cast his gaze down at the ground. He scrubbed his hands over his scalp, through his dark hair. It helped to push it out of his eyes. His glare returned to me and nothing remotely friendly remained.

“Pretty much,” he said. “Ethan’s memories, they’re my memories now. And they’re vivid. The sooner you claim the shell, the stronger the echoes are and the more real they feel. It’s not just an annoying distraction anymore. It becomes your reality. And that I took this shell so soon…it complicates things even more.”

“Meaning what?”

“Ethan’s spirit wasn’t gone yet when I took over and healed his body.” He swallowed. “I acted too quickly. Now everything he felt, experienced, saw, thought,
was
...that’s what I am now. I
am
Ethan Cole now, fused with him, whether I want that or not.”