Hidden (Hidden Series Book One) (37 page)

“I feel weird asking,” she said and I …
snapped.

“So you want to sacrifice yourself so you
can be her hero? You’re not a hero because that’s stupid! You would
rather risk your life than raise your daughter? You’d make her grow
up without you? It will be your fault that she won’t know who she
is. Hearing about conditions and creatures and just accepting it as
fact. And she’ll miss you, even if she doesn’t remember everything
about you! You’ll turn into a terrible feeling, deep in her heart,
and it will never go away. You can’t…”

A chain slid across the floor as Nathan came
closer, cutting off my rant. The woman had backed away from me, and
the little girls eyes were bulging out of her head. Emma swept her
hand over her lungs and up to her mouth, like she was reminding me
how to breathe.

“Sorry,” I whispered to the woman. “I’m …
yeah … sorry.”

“It’s cool,” she said, face still turned up.
“And thanks. I’ll keep all of that extra stuff in mind.”

Nate took another needle from the ground and
wiped the tip on his shirt, sterilizing with cotton. “It’s for
her,” he said, nodding to the lady that Lydia’s baby, who grew up
to be Leah, had just gone off on for no reason. “Close your eyes so
you don’t feel it.” It didn’t work. I felt the pinch and the blood
rush out of the vein he’d poked. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” I said, even though I wasn’t. I’d
been tricked into meeting Remi, had a fight, been drugged, and was
now offering up my blood to a child and projecting my pain onto her
innocent mother.

“I’m sorry she made you think I texted you,”
Nathan said.

“It’s okay. I shouldn’t have believed her.”
My legs regained feeling and I kicked them around, rattling the
chain on my ankle.

He gently pulled the little girl’s needle
out of my arm when the vial filled. “Can I see her?” he asked her
mom. She brought her daughter to Nathan. He smiled at her, and she
smiled back. “What’s your name?”

“Kelsey,” she said, in the cutest voice I’d
ever heard.

“Hi, Kelsey. I’m Nathan. I’m going to tape
this on your arm, but you have to keep very still so it doesn’t go
in, okay?” She nodded. “And when they come to take it off, I need
you to pretend that it stuck you. Can you pretend to cry?”

She smiled and looked back to her mom.
“Yeah,” Kelsey said.

“Good. And you also have to pretend to be
human, okay?”

“But I’m not. I can make stuff fly,” Kelsey
said.

“I know, but we can’t say that today. It’s a
game,” Nathan said.

She smiled, her little eyes excited. “What
do I get if I win?”

“I’ll get you a new doll,” her mother
said.

Nate had pulled Kelsey’s old needle out and
taped the new one on while she wasn’t paying attention. I wanted to
smile with them, but I couldn’t. I’d probably given them false
hope. Remi could pull off the tape and see that it wasn’t in her
arm and we’d all be screwed.

I was close to crying by the time he’d
finished securing a new needle to Mallory, Kelsey’s mom. But we had
to try something. I was too weak to even try to move myself, and
they were all too afraid to try a spell, fearing it would backfire.
Lydia would call them idiots for that.

“Can you do more?” Paul asked.

“I can do all,” I said, still hopeful. Paul
crawled over and slid two more needles into my arm. I smiled at
Emma instead of wincing. They hurt even more since the drugs had
completely worn off now. “You too,” I said to Nathan.

He shook his head.

“Stop being an idiot,” Emma said. “You
expect us to leave you here?”

“You’re not coming with us, Nathan?” Kelsey
asked. “Please come.” I don’t think any of us could have been more
persuasive than that. He couldn’t tell her no, so he found yet
another vein to puncture on me.

“What are we going to do with those?” Emma
asked, pointing to their vials filled with blood that wouldn’t pass
the test. I rolled my eyes. My plan seemed even more ridiculous
now.

“Maybe I can help with that,” the sleeping
man mumbled. Nate pulled me closer as the really sickly guy sat up
in what I hoped was a puddle of sweat. “Cover the little girl’s
eyes.” He coughed and crawled to the blood. Then he drank it … like
literally downed the whole tube, then two more after that one.
“That’s better. Much better.”

It was so disgusting that I almost didn’t
notice I was in Nate’s lap. Almost. But it wasn’t the time to
comment on it, not while the guy sucked down blood and licked the
remnants from his lips like it was fudge. The nuns would call him a
demon – not a vampire, apparently they didn’t exist. They were only
evil spirits inhabiting human bodies that were demented enough to
drink blood. And because I’d been raised to think that, I was
terrified of him.

“Is he going to go potty again?” Kelsey
asked. Mallory shushed her, and Paul laughed. He and Emma weren’t
trembling like I was. I looked back, and Nate was glaring at my
arm, not at the … whatever he was.

“No, sweetie, I’m not,” he said. As the
color came back to his skin, I saw that he was actually kind of
handsome. “Because we are about to get out of here. If they think
you’re a witch, you must have human powers, and this is obviously
my lucky day. Did you make her drop the needles?” I shook my head.
At least I didn’t think I had. “She’s just really dumb, then. I
know her boss is. The blonde guy. Complete idiot. Now that I have a
little strength, I might be able to help.” His voice was southern
and charming and … Emma really noticed how cute he was.

Paul pushed her. “Stop staring,” he
said.

“They’re done,” Nate said, pulling out the
last three needles. The evidence of our scheme was all over my arm.
Nate saw too. “Can I?” he asked, raising my arm to his mouth.

I nodded, and he licked the puncture wounds.
“Ewww,” Kelsey said. Her mother shushed her again.

“Do you have the rest of this forecasted,
gorgeous?” the former sickly, now handsome, man asked me.

“No,” I whispered.

“I can help. I’ve been here for two weeks.
They bring in new prisoners every few days. They either join them
or…” He sighed, looking at Kelsey. “They get K. I. L. L. E. D.”
Thankfully, she didn’t put the word together. “Let me handle it,”
he said. “Follow my lead when they come back.”

He stuffed the rest of our evidence in his
pocket, the unused blood and all – possibly a snack for later.

“This will work,” Emma whispered. “They’ll
just … let us go.” No one answered her childishly hopeful thought.
“How much time do we have?”

“Probably less than an hour,” the guy said.
I was too scared and tired to ask his name.

“I think you’re going to faint soon. You
should rest,” Nathan whispered in my ear. “Do you want me to put
you down?”

I looked up, right into the eyes that hated
me the other day. I wanted to ask him to take me back, but since I
couldn’t take knowing that he was only being nice because we could
die soon, I just shook my head and nestled on his chest.

I didn’t fall asleep completely. Faintly, I
heard them talking about how Remi had asked Emma if she could have
her wizard boyfriend bring her to Texas to see her. Sophia had told
them to stay away in the one brief moment that they’d seen her
after the blow up at my house, but Emma agreed to meet at a bar out
of habit of saying yes to Remi. Paul went to protect her. Nate went
to give her a piece of his mind. She pretended to apologize to
them. They remembered eating half of an appetizer, then waking up
in this cell. Liam had taken Mallory and Kelsey from a nearby
restaurant by himself. They were his offerings, we were Remi’s. And
Phillip, the … whatever he was, couldn’t be killed easily, so he
was being tortured in the cell, wanting to drink his cellmates
every day but restraining himself.

It dawned on me as I floated somewhere
between sleep and awake that I shouldn’t think of Lydia or being a
copy around people who could read minds. Liam obviously couldn’t
read mine because he thought I was a witch.

“Think she’s going to be able to walk in
those after giving so much blood?” Emma asked, sounding three miles
away. I felt my shoes come off. “I think I can fit them.” Other
shoes, lighter ones, went on. “I love these. I wonder if she’ll let
me borrow them.”

Besides the fact that it was wishful to
think we’d be alive to share shoes after tonight, those weren’t
mine. At least I didn’t think so. They could belong to the person I
couldn’t think about.

Our cell door opened and startled me awake
in Nate’s arms. Remi looked better, like her face hadn’t collided
with concrete. Liam shoved her out of the way so he could walk in
first. I wouldn’t call him handsome. He looked like an average guy,
like the boys at school, but older. Thirty, maybe.

“Test the blood then get yours in line,
Remi. They’ll be after mine,” Liam said.

Phillip gestured to Mallory to cover
Kelsey’s eyes. He stood behind Liam, and I wanted to cover mine
too. He grabbed him by the neck and raised it to his teeth. While
we braced for a bite, he reached in Liam’s pocket and pulled out a
radio.

“Transport to sector five. There are humans
here,” Phillip said, in a perfect imitation of Liam’s voice.

He dropped Liam and stood over him, waiting
for him to stand. Remi jumped at Phillip with a needle in her hand.
He smacked it and it shattered on the ground.

“Listen, Liam. She lied to you. We are
human,” Nathan said.

Liam scrambled to his feet, pointing at
Phillip then at Nathan. “Liars. You will be tortured for what you
just did.”

“No, it’s true!” Emma said. “We can prove
it.”

Phillip kneeled in front of Kelsey and
peeled the tape slowly away from her needle. She remembered to cry.
It was very convincing. She may have a future in acting … if she
lived through this. “Test it,” Phillip said.

Liam took a lighter from his pocket and
tipped the vial over it. This time, I was glad to see nothing
happen.

“I watched you!” Liam said. “I was sure.
Shit! He’s going to kill me. A human kid. Shit!”

“I know for a fact that mine are not,” Remi
said.

“Test me,” I said, holding my arm out. It
was the only one still inside a vein. She did the test and gasped.
The rest of them pulled out their needles before it could be done
for them.

“Something’s wrong. They’re … I don’t know …
they did something. Let’s just bring them to him. He’ll get to the
bottom of it.”

“Shut up! You answer to me. I should’ve
known when you couldn’t get me pictures of them in action. Don’t
say another word, Remi. Understood?” Remi nodded and bowed her
head. She didn’t seem like someone who’d submit so easily. Maybe
the purging had changed that. Or maybe she was afraid of him. I
didn’t know for sure. I was entirely too tired to hang on to any of
the whispers in the air.

Liam snatched his radio from Philipp when
the rest of their tests came back negative. “Hurry with that
transport. Now!”

“If you don’t walk me out with them, I’ll
make you both my dinner,” Phillip said. Liam nodded and unchained
us from the wall.

When transport came, Liam prepped us to keep
quiet in the halls and threatened to find us if we ever breathed a
word of this to anyone. Nathan held my hand the entire time. The
outside air was cool and salty, and waves crashed against the
shore, too calm to say we’d just walked out of hell. To my
surprise, Liam pointed to a boat and ordered us to move towards it.
I’d assumed transport was a person with the power to bring us
home.

“You are making a big mistake, Liam,” Remi
said as we pushed through the sand. “We can’t go in there with
nothing. This is
my
big night. My first night with him. I
can’t fail!”

He groaned as Mallory lifted Kelsey inside
the boat. Then Emma and Paul went. Then Phillip. Nate stepped in
and turned around to lift me up.

“Okay. Her. We can take her,” Liam said.
“The famous one. We’ll say we got her because of that. If he blood
tests her and finds magic, then it will be a plus. Maybe … maybe it
will work.”

While we were stunned, Liam, who apparently
had an infinite supply of needles, pulled another from his pocket.
Nate grabbed it before he jammed it into my neck and crushed it in
his hand.

Liam winced and glared at me. “If you don’t
come, everyone on the boat is getting off,” he said. “Your
choice.”

It was an easy one to make.

“Okay,” I whispered.

“I’m staying too,” Nate said. I shook my
head at him, trying to push him away. He held my arms against my
side and pressed his forehead against mine. I gave up. He wasn’t
going to leave me.

Freedom was so close, and it was snatched
out of my reach. Emma and Paul yelled for us as the boat sped away
from the shore, and Remi and Liam pushed us back inside.

“We’ll take credit for them both.
Understand?” Liam whispered to Remi. She nodded. “Did you
practice?”

“Yes, Liam, a thousand times. I told you I
would.”

He sighed. “You’ll understand when you have
a student. It’s nerve wrecking. All of mine have died. I can’t fail
again. I won’t get another chance.”

We walked up flights and flights of stairs
and then down a long hallway, a glint of light ahead of us.

“C-13, exit,” a voice said in the distance.
A glass door swung open and a figure stepped out. From here, it
looked like a boy, my age or a little older. He met the large man
who’d called him out of there and turned on his heels like a
soldier. “C-14, exit,” he said. Another boy stepped into the hall,
slow and controlled, as we walked closer. Liam and Remi slowed. So
did my heart. “C-15, exit.” Another boy emerged and got in line
behind the others. “Liam, you may pass.”

They motioned us to start walking again.
Nate had to pull me. I couldn’t move. They’d come from three rooms
with glass walls and doors and pure white furniture. It was clean
and neat, no mess other than a few books on the beds and
floors.