Indigo Awakening (The Hunted (Teen)) (25 page)

When he left the room, the sound of his boots echoed in the chamber. The only person who went after him was Kendra.

* * *

She had to run to catch up to Raphael. Even weak and wounded, he moved fast to outrun the demons they shared. She could only imagine a fraction of the agony he felt. After Kendra lost sight of him, she found his jean jacket tossed on a hallway floor and she knew which way he went. She found him in a small courtyard that reminded her of her garden. The sounds of trickling water from a fountain brought back memories of the life and home they’d both lost—dreams and hopes gone in one night.

Raphael wore his pain in every muscle of his body. He’d blocked her from his mind and heart. Now he had his back to her, too.

Please...don’t shut me out. I need you.

She willed him to hear her, but he never turned.

“You were good to him,” she said. Kendra touched his arm, but he didn’t acknowledge her. “You gave him something he never had. Benny knew he was loved.”

Kendra understood Raphael’s misery more than he would ever know. It killed her that he wouldn’t let her in. She couldn’t feel him. She had no idea what he was thinking. This boy who wanted a family so much he’d built one, she understood that need—and he knew her, too. She didn’t have to link to his mind to see that she had lost him.

She couldn’t handle that, especially not now.

“Don’t make me go through this without you.”

He barely glanced over his shoulder.

“You’ve got Lucas. The others. You don’t need me.”

“You’re wrong.” She felt the sting of tears. “God, you are
so
wrong.”

She had to look into his eyes to show him what was in her heart. She reached for his hand, and when he turned, Kendra wrapped her arms around him. At first, Raphael didn’t react. He didn’t hold her, but she didn’t care. She held him tight until something happened.

When Raphael caressed her, he felt good against her, and she drew from the strength he always had for her, but when he lowered his lips to kiss her, she felt her body stiffen against him. Yet she didn’t stop him. A part of her let go. A part of her wanted this to happen. She kissed him back and her body wanted more.

“Oh, God, I can’t do this. I shouldn’t.” Breathless, she stopped and gazed into his eyes. “I’m sorry.”

She ran before he could say anything. She flushed with the heat of embarrassment. Kendra didn’t know what had happened.

Dusk

After the funeral and burial, Gabriel disappeared. Rayne went to his bedroom, searched the house and the patios, and even went to the domed Serenity room, thinking he might want the peace and quiet he’d found there, but Gabe was nowhere to be found. It wasn’t until the sun’s dying light bled through the windows of her bedroom that she went looking for him again.

This time she had help.

When she saw the evening sky filled with fireflies around the grounds of the mansion—and the children laughing and playing under their fairy magic—she found Gabriel not far away. He sat on a large boulder that overlooked a lush valley below the Bristol Mountains. He wasn’t alone. Hellboy was with him. When she joined him, the ghost dog wagged his tail and vanished.

“I think Benny would have liked this,” Gabriel said, but didn’t smile.

Rayne nuzzled into his arms and breathed him in. With the last warmth of the sun losing to the night’s chill, she welcomed the heat and the comfort she always felt in his arms. When he lifted her chin and kissed her lips, nothing could have been more perfect.

Gabriel had given her another sweet gift that she always wanted to remember.

“I want to thank you for finding Lucas, but I don’t know how to do that. Nothing feels...right.” She pulled from his arms to look him in the eye. “How do you thank a guy for risking everything...for a stranger?”

“I’m the one who owes
you.
” He curled a lip into a shy smile. “Uncle Reginald said you’re making arrangements for another guest to stay here. Should I be jealous of this guy? What kind of name is Floyd anyway? Very retro.”

“He’s very...quiet. I think you two will have a lot in common.”

Their talk came easily. They touched and kissed, and for the first time, Rayne felt that Gabriel had no more secrets. She didn’t feel the walls he always had between them. She felt like a girl talking with a cute boy, but that wasn’t all that Gabriel was.

“That vision you had, where you saw those men attack the kids in the tunnel.”

“Yeah.”

“We got there in time, sort of. I mean, it took us a couple of hours to drive to L.A., but we got there in time for you to see it happening. You know what that means, right?”

He shook his head.

“It means that you can see the future. You had the dream and it happened.”

“Yeah, but I couldn’t save Benny. I couldn’t stop any of it.”

Hearing him say that made her ache inside.

“Maybe next time you will.” The way she said it, even
she
didn’t believe it.

What Gabriel had done was nothing short of amazing. With all his gifts, she wanted him to feel good about what she’d seen him do, but if he had visions of the future—of terrible things he couldn’t stop—that would be torture.

He didn’t deserve that, but he had no choice—just as he had no option in the future that lay ahead of him.

“Did you mean what you said...about taking the fight to them?” Rayne asked as she watched the smaller kids play with the fairy light Gabriel had conjured for them. “I can see why, but most of them are...just kids.”

“No, they
were
kids. The Believers have their army. We need ours.” Painted in the soft pastel of a fading evening’s sunset, Gabriel had a haunted look on his face. “Uncle Reginald is worried. So am I, but we can train them. We have to.”

He’d come a long way from a boy with secrets who only wanted to be alone. Whatever decision he’d made about his future, she’d seen the same determined look in Lucas’s eyes.

“We have a fight ahead of us,” he said. “We don’t have a choice. Kendra is right. Getting the police involved will only make things worse and the church won’t leave us alone.”

“But this could be only a small group of crazies. You said Alexander Reese is here in L.A. and is responsible for all their operations in North America. Are you sure he knows what’s going on here? Maybe...”

Gabriel didn’t let her finish. He shook his head and said, “He knows, Rayne. He’s behind it.” He sighed. “Alexander Reese will learn from what we did. He underestimated us this time, but he won’t make that mistake again. We have to be ready.”

“You never answered the question Lucas had. If the church is so secret about hunting these kids, how is it that you know so much about the guy in charge?”

He looked as if she’d punched him. When he fixed his mesmerizing eyes on her, Gabriel touched her cheek and said, “Because Alexander Reese is my father.”

* * * * *

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Excerpt from Book 2 of

The Hunted

series

CRYSTAL

STORM

Los Angeles, California
12:45 a.m.

Gabriel felt his way through the darkness as easily as if it were daylight. Inside the formidable walls that surrounded the secluded estate, he kept watch of the men who patrolled the grounds. Dressed in black uniforms and armed, they guarded the posh residence in pairs.

He sensed every turn they made and anticipated their moves even before they made them. In evasive and fluid maneuvers that looked more like perfectly timed choreography, he ducked behind shrubs and crept through the deep shadows cast by the trees, almost daring the men to catch him.

The moon shed little light. That didn’t matter to a gutsy eighteen-year-old boy with a reckless spirit and an unrelenting taste for revenge. Like a child playing a dangerous game, he navigated the dark using his powerful gifts of second sight. The darkness would be a handicap only for the men who guarded the estate—protecting the man Gabriel had come to face.

As he got close to the house, Gabriel melded into the shadows and vanished. His physical body dissolved into dust that drifted and swirled in the evening breeze, but when a floorboard creaked on the grand staircase that led to the master suite, the boy crept in silence toward the bedroom where his father slept.

He opened the master suite door without a sound and listened before he moved again. Everything had come to this moment. The years of running, of hating, of grieving had gathered force to drive him here. He stood over the bed of his sleeping father and glared at the man who had ruined his life and destroyed his mother.

Hatred stirred in the center of Gabriel’s brain, and the power radiated through his body and heated his belly. It forced its way out into shooting spears of light that spiraled around him. The burst of energy concentrated its power and thrashed around him like a mounting storm—a Crystal storm.

Through the fierce light, he saw a man awake in terror and scream. When Gabriel fixed his glowing eyes on his father, he knew the man saw him for the very first time—and his last.

Alexander Reese finally understood what his son had truly become.

* * *

“No!” he yelled and leaped off his pillow.

Alexander Reese gasped for air like a drowning man and stared into the darkness of his bedroom. With his body drenched in sweat, he searched the room, looking for anything that moved. At first his eyes played tricks on him. Shadows shifted and even noises that should have been familiar made him strain to listen harder. He had to blink to make sure he was awake.

“Gabriel,” he whispered. A tear trickled down his cheek.

That nightmare felt as real as if it had happened. A part of him wanted his runaway son to be there for purely selfish reasons. Except for a blurry surveillance photo, he hadn’t seen the boy since his mother had taken him with her in the middle of the night too many years ago. Beyond wanting to see the young man he’d become, Reese never wanted to lay eyes on the boy again—for Gabriel’s sake.

Even though he still felt the haunting presence of his son in his memory, he sensed that he was alone. Only his shame lingered, over what had happened to Gabriel and his mother, Kathryn. A twist in his gut always came when he thought of his sworn responsibility to the church. He’d made a choice that had destroyed his family. He had no one else to blame, even though he believed he’d done the right thing.

Yet something more disturbed him.

Given the security at his estate, Reese knew breaching the defense measures of his home and grounds would be hard for anyone to crack. He found it odd that in his hellish nightmare he believed that Gabriel had done it.

“Damn.”

With a shudder, he sank back onto his dank sheets and stared at the ceiling with the sound of his breathing and the thud of his heart filling his head. Ever since he’d found out that Gabriel had come back to L.A., nightmares were his constant companion.

In truth, he feared his son. Not merely for what he had become, but Reese feared what he’d be forced to do in the name of duty. After he took a deep breath, he almost dismissed the lasting remnants of his bad dream, but something made him sit up and search the darkness again.

“What the hell?”

His nightmare could have merely been triggered by the chronic guilt he felt over Gabriel and Kathryn—except for one hard-to-ignore, undeniable fact. Something very real had been left behind.

The smell of Kathryn’s perfume.

Bristol Mountains—East of L.A.
1:30 a.m.

Raphael Santana paced the grassy hillside behind the Stewart Estate dressed only in jeans and boots, too restless to kneel by the grave he visited every night. A cool mountain breeze swept through his dark hair. It should have chilled the bare skin of his chest, but the fire in his belly kept him stoked with heat.

When his boot struck a rock, he picked it up and tossed it in his hands as he stared into the gloom. His heart searched this world and beyond for the spirit of a small boy who had left an ache in his soul, a gaping wound no one else could ever fill. With the moon hoarding its light—nothing but a razor slash across a pitch-black sky—the dark became a part of him. After living in the tunnels beneath the streets of downtown L.A., Rafe craved the hush of shadows.

For him there was darkness even in daylight now.

“Haunt me, Benny. Torture me. I deserve it.”

He flung the rock into the dark and heard it hit trees. The move made his side hurt, where he’d been shot in the same fight where Benny had been killed.

“You should be the one standing here, not me.”

Rafe collapsed to his knees at the grave with his throat wedged tight. He winced when he hit the ground and clutched his side. The others had left trinkets for Benny—a worn teddy bear, flowers and a toy that spun in the wind. Every time he came to the grave, he had to face what had happened to Benny. He wanted to remember the kid smiling and funny, but guilt wouldn’t let that happen.

“I miss you, little man.”

He ran his fingers over the name etched on the headstone—
Benny Santana.
He had given Benny his own last name and had it carved into stone forever. The kid didn’t deserve to be buried with the family name he got stuck with, so Rafe claimed Benny as the little brother he wished he had.

“I don’t know what to do.” Tears cooled his cheeks. “I don’t know who I am anymore.”

Rafe glared over his shoulder and stared up at the mansion that had become his new home by default after the Believers had destroyed the tunnels. Kendra Walker and the others, like him, had come to live here, too, but that didn’t make things better for him. The place looked like a fancy castle built on the peak of a mountain. He’d grown up on the streets of L.A., carrying everything he owned on his back.

“I don’t fit,” he whispered. “Not here. Not anywhere.”

Rafe got to his feet and took off his black leather “forever” bracelet—the one that used to mean something—and left it on Benny’s headstone. He stared down at the grave marker and wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. They’d buried Benny in the ground, but Rafe didn’t feel him here. He could think of only one place that the kid’s spirit might linger—the place where he died, the only real home that either of them had known.

If he had a shot at “seeing” Benny again, he had to risk going back to L.A.—and steal Rayne’s Harley to do it.

Downtown L.A.
4:30 a.m.

In the early-morning hours, Rafe sped down the interstates on Rayne’s Harley with his body pummeled by the wind and his blood fueled with a rush of adrenaline. He’d hot-wired her ride, stolen cash from Kendra, ripped off a bottle of liquor from Gabriel’s uncle, and when he didn’t take a helmet, he wondered if he didn’t have a death wish. All he had on were the clothes on his back—jeans, boots, a T-shirt and a worn jacket.

Everything he had done felt like a one-way trip. He hadn’t given any thought to what he’d do next. He kicked the bike into high gear with the wind lashing his hair.
Speed.
He couldn’t get enough.

When he got to one of the tunnel entrances—the location where the Believers had staged their attack—he downshifted and hit the throttle to rev the Harley. If the bastards had staked out the place out to see if anyone would come back, he had made an unmistakable announcement of his return.

Rafe killed the engine and hid the bike in the bushes, near a thick stand of trees. He headed into the darkness of the tunnels without an ounce of fear as he cracked the seal on the bottle of liquor and downed a long pull. It burned his throat, only the start of the abuse he deserved. He felt the alcohol burn into his body and kindle a fire in his chest. His old man only drank the cheap stuff. He had no idea what he’d ripped off from the estate. Probably some fancy shit. As long as it got the job done, the kind didn’t matter.

Drunk or sober, he knew the danger of returning to the very place where the Believers had hunted his kind and destroyed everything. He didn’t care. If they came after him again and wanted a fight, he’d give them one, but as he wandered into the tunnels alone, he felt numb. He didn’t recognize the place. The Believers had come in afterward and burned everything. Kendra’s garden—the beautiful oasis she had created that had fed and healed them—had been uprooted, doused with gasoline and torched.

Their home had been wiped out as if they’d never existed.

He sucked down more liquor and wiped his mouth with his jacket sleeve as he stumbled over the old railroad track that led to the cyclops, the old locomotive that had been abandoned in the tunnels. The metal beast loomed in the darkness as he rounded a corner, half-buried in old brick rubble caused by the explosion that had killed Benny. Its bared teeth of steel hovered over the rail and its blinded eye—a broken headlight—still breathed a fierce life into the old engine that was covered in dust and debris.

Benny had loved the steel beast. Rafe stood in front of the dead train, and looked up at its busted eye as he drank—
remembering one of the last times he saw the boy.

“Yo, Benny. It’s me. I got something for ya.”

“For me?”
A little head had popped out from the engine compartment.
“What is it?”

“I got you something to bring you luck. Your own piece of magic.”

Not nearly drunk enough to forget, Rafe shut his eyes tight and willed the kid to come to him. Little man had played on every inch of the old rusted train. It made Rafe sad to think that Benny’s fingerprints were still on every gauge and lever, the only mark of him left behind.

“No one’s ever gotten me anything before,”
the kid had said in a shaky voice. With little fingers, he’d stroked the leather bracelet with Kendra’s infinity charm on it.

Rafe pictured Benny sitting on the train’s step with that crooked grin on his face and his eyes welling with tears. The kid had broken his heart that day, but he didn’t know how much worse he could feel until he held Benny’s dead body in his arms days later. Rafe stared at the spot he’d tied the bracelet to the kid’s wrist and his eyes stung with tears.

“Screw infinity!” he yelled to no one. “What happened to forever, Kendra?”

He didn’t feel Benny, not like he sensed the dead.
Who am I kidding?
He wasn’t worth sticking around for. When he took another gulp, he felt dizzy and sick. Nothing killed the hurt. He grabbed the bottle and smashed it against the train. A shard of glass cut his cheek but he didn’t care.

He’d come to the tunnels—a place where he could be closer to Benny—but that place didn’t exist anymore. Rafe stumbled back the way he’d come, not knowing where he would go. He only knew it wasn’t here.

When he hit the night air, he wanted to puke. Bile churned in his stomach, mixed with the burn of alcohol. He wouldn’t outrun his booze slug to the brain. Heading for the Harley, he half decided to sleep it off, but when an arm grabbed his neck from behind, he couldn’t breathe. His side wound felt as if it were on fire, like it had ripped open again. He kicked and fought to break free, but every move felt like a crushing weight against his chest. Rafe couldn’t see faces in the dark. Men grappled with his arms and legs until he couldn’t move. He sucked air into his burning lungs in fitful gasps. When he saw stars, he felt his body give out.

“Boss man said you’d be the weak link, kid.”

Rafe felt the sharp sting of a needle stab his neck. It spread a burn under his skin, and his arms went limp.

“Guess he got
that
right.”

The gruff voice was the last thing Rafe heard before he drifted into a deeper darkness than he’d ever seen. Only one thing gave him comfort.

He felt Benny with him.