The Mind Keepers (The Mind Readers) (6 page)

A twig snapped, breaking into my
manic thoughts. I jerked upright, scanning the woods. Thoughts of insanity fell
to the wayside and instinct took over. Darkness was approaching fast and it was
hard to decipher shadows from forms. But I didn’t need to see, I
knew
. Something was wrong. Someone was
out there. The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end as a warning chill ran
over my body. Not just out there. No, someone was watching me. Slowly, I stood.

I could hear the soft murmur of
conversation from inside the house where Lewis and Cameron were discussing what
to do next, but I barely cared. We had more important things to worry about,
like finding out whoever was following us. If I called out to Cameron and Lewis
now, the man watching would know and bolt. Carefully, I made my way down the
steps, cringing when the stairs creaked.

From the corner of my eye I
noticed something shift in the trees. Crap. The perpetrator knew I was after
him. I leaped down the steps and raced toward the woods, determined not to let
him escape. When I hit the forest, the branches snapped like gunfire—pop, pop,
pop—warning of my approach. My mind cleared, any emotion fled. I was a trained
solider once more, the feeling familiar and welcome. I darted toward the
shadows, leaping over fallen logs. He would not escape. If there was one thing
I was good at it was tracking. I darted behind an elm, pressing my back to the
rough bark and waited. The woods were quiet. So quiet. Not even birds sang in
the branches above.
 

There it was again, the snap of
a branch to my left, so soft it was barely audible. The instinct to react tightened
my muscles, urging me to attack, but I knew better. Be smart, be patient, and
the culprit would eventually show himself. Mom had taught me well. I reached
out with my mind, attempting to read the man’s thoughts. Not surprisingly,
there was nothing there. Another mind reader who knew how to hide his thoughts
or an S.P.I. agent who had an implant in his brain?

Cameron!
I sent the mental warning, hoping she’d catch it, but this
far away it was doubtful.

A branch snapped, closer this
time. I stiffened. Whoever it was stepped lightly. A female then? I waited,
breath held, my thoughts blocked, waited until the branches snapped ever
closer. When I heard the last break of a branch, directly behind the tree where
I hid, I jumped out, preparing to do a roundhouse kick to the culprit’s face.
My foot met empty air. I stumbled, had just enough time to realize that the ass
had tricked me, when I was tackled to the ground from behind.

The weight, the scent…I knew
immediately it was a woman. With my face pressed to the damp earth, I could
barely hear, let alone breathe. She knew how to fight, that much was clear. It
was also obvious she was a mind reader. I could make people hear things that
weren’t real and apparently she could too. I shoved my elbow up, meeting
nothing but air.
 

“Calm down,” she hissed, using
her weight to hold me in place.

“Who the hell are you?” I
growled, spitting leaves from my mouth.

The heels of her palms were
pressed into my shoulder blades, crushing me to the ground. “I’ll tell you when
you calm down.”

I squirmed, attempting to break
free. “Go to hell.”

“Nora?” Cameron came crashing
through the trees, skidding to a halt only a few feet away. “Let her go!”

“Both of you just relax.” The
weight lifted as the woman shifted, standing. “Get up.”

I rolled over, tucked my legs
underneath me and jumped to my feet, fists raised, ready to fight. Yet, something
gave me pause. She stood in the shadows of twilight, barely recognizable.
Familiar, but not. Thin, obviously fit, dark hair…

Bemused, I lowered my fists. When
she stepped into a fading patch of sunlight that pierced the leaves above,
suddenly I knew. I thought I didn’t look like my mom’s family; I had been
wrong.

“Who are you?” Cameron demanded.

“Your aunt Lindsay,” she said.
 

It was at that moment that I
realized Mom hadn’t survived after all. She hadn’t miraculously come back to
life. She was still at the bottom of the sea, still dead.

Two days ago at the grocery
store, I’d seen her sister.

I turned and started toward the
house, numb, destroyed, all hope gone.

****

“Can I come in?”

I lay on my side of my half-sister’s
bed and didn’t move, didn’t even respond. Not even when a chill breeze burst in
through the open window, billowing the curtains and sending my hair tickling
across my face, did I flinch.

She sounded like Mom, and unwillingly
for the briefest of moments my heart fluttered in reaction. But it wasn’t her.
Would never be her. Yeah, as pathetic as it sounded I suppose I’d always wished
deep down that some miracle would happen and Mom would walk through the door
saying, “Surprise! I’m not really dead, it was merely an elaborate plan to keep
the bad guys at bay.”
 

But not even Mom could escape
death.

I heard the creek of floorboards
as my aunt entered the room. My body instinctively stiffened, preparing for
attack. But that’s how it was when you grew up learning to be on constant guard,
you could never relax, never trust. I had sleeping with one eye open down to a
fine art.

It wasn’t just her approach that
left me reeling, head pounding, I realized. It was her energy. A familiar
energy that startled me. An energy that put me at ease and made me nervous at
the same time. Confused, I sat up slowly, setting my feet upon the dusty carpet
and watched warily as she moved by me toward the windows. In the shadows, she
looked so much like my mom that it hurt. The numbness in my body gave way to a
tightness in my chest, a suffocating sadness that made my fingers curl into the
bedspread.

“So nice to see you,” I snapped,
irate that she was here after never visiting, angrier that she brought with
memories of Mom. Just when I was getting over her death, she had to remind me. “If
you’re here for the funeral, you’re a little late.”

“I had to miss it. There were things
going on.” Her voice was similar to Mom’s but huskier. What, I wondered, could
be more important than your only sibling’s funeral? Damn, she was cold. Maybe
that’s where I got my lack of emotion; it hadn’t been learned through life
experiences but had been inherited.
 

“You had
things
?” I surged to my feet. Mom deserved better than her. She’d
deserved better than the small private funeral with only me, Lewis, Cameron,
and Father Myron.
 
A funeral without a
body. No cemetery, no headstone.

“Fine, you want the truth?” She
didn’t even glance my way, but continued to stare out the window as if it
wasn’t important enough to bother with eye contact. “I stayed away to protect
you.”

I crossed my arms over my chest,
not buying her martyr act in the least. “And before? Where have you been all
these years?”

I admit I was angry. Angry at
everyone, and no one. So tired of the lies, tired of not knowing who to trust,
tired of never being able to relax, and just
be
. When I’d needed an aunt the most, someone to take over the
responsibilities, she should have been there for me.

She shrugged, as if abandoning me
was no big deal. “You know how our lives are.”

I narrowed my eyes. Her blasé
attitude hurt, not that I’d let her see how much it affected me. Did I really
mean so little? If so, then what the hell was she doing here now? “What,
exactly? Explain to me how our lives
are
so I can understand.”

She sighed and faced me. “Nora,
your mom gave up Cameron, her own daughter.” Flustered, she paced the room. Her
steps were longer than Mom’s, more hurried. Her entire being pulsed with the
frantic need to move, while Mom had been the calm in the storm. She had dark
hair, blue eyes, but she wasn’t my mom. And I hated her for that most of all.

She ran her fingers through her
hair. “You know how it is. Your mother thought it would be safer if we split
up.”

She wasn’t saying something. I
could almost sense the reluctance in her. I didn’t know how or why, but I knew
she was hiding something. Big surprise, our lives revolved around half-truths. The
sudden ache in my temples wasn’t surprising considering how frustrating my life
had become. “Why?”

“Because I was a bit of a
rebel.” She grinned a lopsided grin that looked eerily familiar…my grin. She
was trying to bond with me, the two rebellious Winters girls. When I didn’t
return her smile, she grew serious once more. “Your mom thought it would be too
dangerous for you and Cameron to be around me.”

Too dangerous? I didn’t buy it. “She
made you stay away?”

She shrugged.

I released a wry laugh, which
left her looking rather leery. Like everyone else, she thought I was teetering
on the edge of insanity. I held my arms wide, welcoming the madness. “I was
captured, tortured. Mom was killed. How much worse could it have been if you’d
been in our lives?”

She frowned and looked away, but
not before I noticed the guilt in her eyes. “You were captured because they
followed me to Savannah. It’s how they found you. It’s why your mom never
forgave me.”

My amusement fled, my body going
cold. Slowly, my mind turned over the past, trying to uncover long-buried
memories. But the pieces didn’t fit, something didn’t make sense. “Your fault?”

She nodded uneasily. No. No, it
didn’t make sense. If I had been caught because of her, that meant…

Frantic, I started toward her,
determined to understand. “Which time?”

She shook her head, confused. “What?”

I latched onto her upper arms,
desperate. “I was caught twice! The first time when I was young, and I got the
scar. The second time I was older. Which time were you responsible?”

“I don’t—”

“Which?” I demanded, tightening
my grip.

She jerked away from me, anger flashing
across her face. I understood, she didn’t like to be touched, something else we
had in common. But I didn’t care. “You were older. It was only a few years ago.”

Older. I had been older. I stumbled
back and sank onto the bed. Maddox hadn’t turned me in? Maddox hadn’t followed
me to Savannah and told them where I lived. All this time…

My aunt was talking, apologizing
for what had happened, but I didn’t care. At the moment nothing mattered but
the fact that Maddox hadn’t turned me in to S.P.I. He hadn’t betrayed me.

But he had, in a way,
that voice inside my head reminded me. I
frowned, knowing that voice was right. Determined, I hardened my heart. It
didn’t change the fact that Maddox had stayed with them. Instead of coming with
me, he had remained with the enemy. He
was
the enemy. I rubbed my temples, my brain throbbing. Hell, I didn’t know
what to think anymore.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said.

It doesn’t matter
, I repeated to myself. Yet it did matter so very
much. I released a wry laugh. I needed to take my anger out on someone, might
as well be her. “Right, I was tortured for a second time, but it doesn’t
matter, because you know, when it’s happened once, the second time is a breeze!
So why are you here now? Good ol’ family reunion? You finally decide to check
up on your nieces?”

“Listen, we have more important
things to discuss than whether I’ll be aunt of the year.” She crossed her arms
over her chest, a stubborn look upon her face. “I have the source, Nora.”

The words should have been
shocking. They weren’t. I swallowed hard. So she’d inherited Mom’s powers. It
wasn’t surprising. I’d sensed Mom’s energy when she’d entered. The rest of them
thought the power had died with Mom, but I knew better. Perhaps that’s why I
was so eager to believe she still lived.

“When your mom died, her powers transferred
to me.”

I wrapped my arms around myself,
feeling chilly, achy, almost like I had the flu. I so couldn’t afford to get
sick now. Something wasn’t right. My aunt was talking, but I couldn’t really
concentrate enough to hear her. My head throbbed, my reality threatening to
slip away. She had Mom’s energy. Maddox hadn’t turned me in… So many thoughts
whirled through my mind.

Suddenly she was standing right
in front of me. “Nora, are you listening?”

I rubbed my temples, attempting
to regain control, but I couldn’t. Everything was spinning, slipping away. “Yeah.”

“I am the source.”

I got it, what the hell did she
want? A trophy? I parted my lips intending to tell her that I didn’t care, that
I needed to rest, to leave, something, but she interrupted.

“That’s not all.”

I studied her warily, slowly
lowering my hands from my head, only to wrap, my arms around myself. Cold. I
was so cold. “What else?”

“The source has chosen the next
person to inherit, the person I will transfer my powers to when I die.”

A shiver of unease raced over my
skin. My mind was finally acknowledging what my body and senses had already. I
knew, didn’t I? The way I’d been feeling, the odd powers I hadn’t had before, the
way she was looking at me.

“It’s you, Nora. You have been
chosen to be the next carrier of the source.”

Chapter 5

When I opened my eyes and found
myself in a familiar locker room, I groaned. When I saw Maddox’s form sitting
against the wall as if waiting for me, even expecting me, I groaned even louder.
Not here. Not now. Not when I was so vulnerable.

I settled my elbows on the hard
cement. “Wonderful, as if once wasn’t enough.”

He stood, grimacing with the
movement. “Hey, we both know I don’t have any powers, so this is all your doing,
Sweetheart.”