Return (Awakened Fate Book 3) Read online

  I’d never been this tired in my life.

  Together we crossed the room and climbed the steps, Earl going ahead of us. At the landing, he turned and walked through an open doorway just beyond the staircase.

  Zeke led me inside. A queen-size bed waited to the left, covered in blankets not much different than the rough one I’d left downstairs. Twin windows flanked it, each of them partially shielded by ratty curtains and sunken into the wall with window seats on their bottom edges. A dresser stood at the far end of the room, its top as bare as the rest of the space.

  I clung to Zeke while he continued toward the bed, my legs feeling heavier with every step. I lay down, not even bothering to pull back the rough blanket, and my eyes closed immediately when my head touched the pillow.

  “You want something else to drink?” I heard Earl ask. “Not coffee?”

  Zeke hesitated. “Sure. Thanks.”

  My brow furrowed. Something felt wrong about that. About all of this. I couldn’t believe I was so tired.

  And then sleep claimed me.

  ~~~~~

  “…do it in Jeri’s old room.”

  Earl’s words filtered through the cotton stuffing in my head, barely making sense.

  “Yeah, well, seemed fitting.” He paused. “Listen, Richard, I called you as a courtesy, on account of how you said one got away from you yesterday. But it took me an hour after the girl collapsed to get the boy to finally conk out, and with that damn scum-sucker metabolism of theirs, you know I can’t promise either of ‘em will be down for long. You and your boys want any part of this, you better hurry up and get here.”

  Alarm struggled through me, weighed down by an exhaustion that wanted to smother my mind back into sleep. Scum-sucker? He…

  “Hang on,” Earl said as though interrupting someone. “One of them ain’t breathing the same as they were.”

  My heart began to pound harder while I fought to open my eyes. Breathing? He sounded so far away. How could he hear anyone breathing?

  Footsteps clunked on the hardwood floor. Light pierced the blackness around me as I managed to lift my eyelids. I was on the bed, facing the doorway. In the window seat, Zeke was slumped, his head resting on the wall. The room was dark around us, though the hall light was on.

  Earl came to the door. In one hand, he held a phone to his ear, and at the sight of me, he made an angry noise.

  “What’d I tell you? The girl’s awake.”

  He dropped the phone onto the window seat as he strode toward me, and all my dull commands to my muscles couldn’t make my body move. Striding past me, he retrieved something from the dresser and then returned with a sports bottle in his hand.

  I tried to pull away, but he just reached down and grabbed my head from behind, lifting it toward him. With his teeth, he popped open the top of the bottle and then shoved it into my mouth.

  Bitter-tasting liquid flooded my throat. I choked, the drink spewing from my lips, but he just dropped the bottle and clamped an enormous hand over the lower half of my face.

  “Swallow,” he ordered.

  I stared up at him. His grip tightened on my hair, tugging at my scalp.

  “Now.”

  Someone shouted angrily from the tiny speaker of the cordless phone, their words indecipherable. Earl’s face darkened and he glanced to the window seat.

  Spikes crept from my forearms, finally answering the frantic signals from my brain. As he turned back toward me, I flopped my arm out like the dead weight it was, succeeding in catching his side.

  With a pained cry, he lurched away, his hand leaving my mouth.

  I spit the liquid out and struggled backward, half-crawling and half-tumbling from the opposite side of the bed.

  “Zeke,” I croaked.

  He didn’t move.

  Earl made a furious noise while he straightened, clutching at his side. Blood darkened his flannel shirt.

  But he didn’t look startled. He didn’t look surprised in the least by the tips of the iridescent knives protruding from my skin.

  “What…” I tried. “Why are you…”

  He glanced from me to Zeke, and then to the phone still laying on the window seat. Annoyance twisted his face. He reached over, retrieving the bottle from the floor, and then he returned his gaze to me.

  Clutching the edge of the bed, I trembled. “Please. I’m not your enemy.”

  “Tell that to my daughter.”

  My brow furrowed.

  He started around the bed. I scuttled backward, my legs still refusing to hold me, though the spikes listened and grew longer. Half-sprawled on the floor with my back to the wall, I lifted one of my arms in front of me like a shield.

  Earl stopped.

  “I don’t…” I managed, breathing hard with the effort of keeping my arm up. “I don’t know your daughter. Please.”

  A snarl curled across his mouth. “Please,” he repeated scornfully.

  He kicked my legs, toppling me sideways. His hand came down on my wrist, avoiding the spikes, and he twisted it. I shrieked as pain shot through my arm. Dropping the bottle from his other hand, he took my throat.

  “Stab me again and I break your neck right now,” he growled.

  Not waiting for a response, he shifted his grip from my throat to my other wrist and then yanked me with him. Like a flour sack, he dragged me from behind the bed and started across the room.

  “‘Please’,” he muttered as he went. “That’s what you all come down to. You and your magic. Begging. You know she begged me too? My own girl. Begged me to kill her after what that scaly bastard did. After I finished him off. Said she couldn’t live without him.” He scoffed. “Him. First scum-sucker she’d found, and one she’d already started gutting like the fish he was. But then he got his hands on her and…”

  Earl looked down at me. “You try any of that make-me-love-you shit on me, I’ll be sure I remember just enough to kill your boyfriend nice and slow right in front of you, got it?”

  I stared up at him, screaming in my head for my limbs to move. For anything to start working. My arms were going numb from the angle at which he was holding them, and nothing in my body seemed to want to work right.

  My gaze went to the window seat. “Zeke!” I cried. “Zeke, wake up!”

  His brow furrowed, but he didn’t open his eyes.

  And then Earl pulled me into the hallway.

  Hardwood slid beneath my back and my legs bumped into the oak railings lining the stairwell. The light overhead glared in my eyes as we passed below it, and then Earl turned, hauling me into the shadows of another room.

  My vision sharpened out of desperation when he shut the door. Painted shelves hung on the walls, with figurines of ballerinas and horses on them. Faded posters were taped nearby, featuring Hollywood stars and pop bands that had been famous nearly two decades ago. Everything was covered in a thick layer of dust, as though it hadn’t been touched in years.

  Something like stiff fabric bunched up at my shoulders with a crinkling sound. Shifting his grip, Earl heaved me upward and then dropped me to the floor again.

  I rolled my head to the side awkwardly. Plastic. I was lying on sheet plastic.

  Heart pounding, I tried to push away from the ground, but my arms just tingled with numbness and wouldn’t hold my weight. I struggled to roll over, my gaze searching for Earl.

  He was standing at a white-painted vanity, with a four-post bed covered in teddy bears and a white quilt nearby. Pink ribbons hung from the edges of the mirror, while an old strip of pictures like those taken at an amusement park photo booth was tucked into the space between the glass and its frame. Swiftly, my eyes picked out the details. Earl, though his beard was shorter and he was smiling, and at his side, a round-faced girl of maybe fourteen or fifteen with curly brown hair and an embarrassed expression that didn’t fully hide her grin.

  Drawing a breath, he lifted a hand to the photos. In the reflection of the mirror, I c
ould see his eyes close, pain and rage on his face in equal measure.

  I shoved at the floor, succeeding in moving a few inches backward on the cold plastic. But my legs were still dead. Reaching down with one hand and not taking my attention from Earl, I rubbed at them frantically, trying to wake my muscles.

  “Jeri was so good with a knife,” Earl murmured without opening his eyes. “I taught her since she was practically a baby and she was always so good.”

  He exhaled sharply, as though pushing the memories aside, and he glanced back at me. “I found her in here, you know? Right about where you’re lying. After she’d…”

  A shudder ran through him. He returned his gaze to the vanity and then he lifted a large hunting knife from its top.

  In my head, I shouted for my legs to move, while spikes stood out from below my elbows to my wrists.

  “She was right, though. She always kept my spirits up with her belief you scale-skins were still out there somewhere. And she was right.”

  He turned, the enormous knife gripped in his fist.

  Adrenaline made its way to my legs. Shoving awkwardly from the plastic, I scrambled toward the closed door, not taking my eyes from him. My hand fumbled for the handle.

  The door was locked.

  “You know the wonderful thing about your kind?” he commented, watching me. “You don’t exist. So no cops’ll come looking when you disappear.”

  He strode toward me, the plastic crinkling beneath his feet. I felt desperately around the knob, trying to find the lock.

  My fingers landed on it. Frantically, I turned it and then grasped at the knob again.

  He lunged at me.

  I dropped to the ground as the knife slammed into the white wood above my head. Swinging out frantically, I slashed at his leg, and he jumped back, narrowly avoiding the spikes. I twisted, reaching for the handle.

  His hands grabbed me under my arms. With a snarl, he heaved me away from the door and flung me onto the plastic sheet.

  I landed hard, the air rushing from my chest while stars burst across my vision. Gasping with pain, I blinked, trying to make my sight clear as I looked toward the door.

  With a furious jerk, Earl yanked the blade from the wood and then turned to me.

  His eyes flared red. Fissures radiated across his face, glowing like fire burned inside and spreading farther down his skin.

  I stared, a whole new version of terror rushing through me as he started across the room. My hands pushed at the floor, my sweaty palms slipping on the plastic sheeting and my body protesting the motion. I retreated till the four-post bed brought me up short.

  Earl smirked. His fingers adjusted on the hilt of the hunting knife.

  Grabbing at the dusty quilt, I pulled myself upright, not taking my eyes from him. The faint moonlight beyond the windows caught on the blade of his knife, and beneath his feet, the crinkling of the plastic sounded as loud as the rapid pounding of my heart.

  The door swung open. Earl paused, looking back.

  Zeke stood in the hall, one arm bracing him on the doorframe. His face was haggard, and he breathed hard with the effort of keeping his feet, but rage colored his skin as he glared at Earl.

  “Get… the hell… away from her,” Zeke growled.

  Earl scoffed. With a quick motion, he hurled the knife through the doorway.

  Zeke dropped to the floor as the knife flew past him to impale itself in the wall on the far side of the stairwell.

  My gaze darted from Zeke to him. I lunged forward and drove my spikes into the enormous man.

  Or tried to.

  It felt like hitting a wall of rock. Pain reverberated through my arm, while the blades barely penetrated his side.

  Earl looked back at me, disgust curling his lip.

  His hand grabbed my throat.

  I choked as the pressure of blood unable to escape filled my head. My fingers clawed at his grip and blackness flooded the edges of my vision. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t scream, and my hands tearing at his might as well have been trying to bend stone.

  By the doorway, I saw Zeke push back to his feet and charge at Earl.

  The huge man seemed to hear him coming. Still gripping my neck, he twisted, his other hand catching Zeke.

  With an inhuman roar, he threw Zeke backward, propelling him into the oak railing lining the stairwell. My heart froze as Zeke clutched at the wood, barely stopping himself from going over the side.

  And then Earl turned back to me. His hand tightened on my neck and heat like a furnace poured from the cracks still spreading down his arm toward me.

  “For my daughter,” he snarled.

  I looked up at him. The pounding in my head was excruciating. Shadows were devouring the world. Nothing I could do would break his hold.

  My hand clutched his and with everything I had, I willed him to give a damn about me. To love me. Care. Anything.

  A shiver like electricity raced through my body, overriding the pressure in my head and the pain.

  Earl stumbled and gasped, releasing me.

  I crumpled to the ground while he staggered backward. Coughing, I pressed my palms to the slats of the hardwood floor, just trying to stop the world from spinning.

  “What…” he stammered. “What’d you…”

  My throat burned with every breath and my stomach roiled. I looked over at him, finding him staring down at me with confusion and fury waging an all-out war on his face.

  “You… you bitch!” A shudder ran through him and he made a choked sound, as though his body rebelled at the word. “I…”

  With a shaking hand, I grabbed at the side of the bed and dragged myself up. The world bucked and my legs wobbled as though neither of them wanted to hold me. Through the open doorway, I could see Zeke pulling himself back upright as well.

  “Get away,” I rasped at Earl, and another shiver tingled through me, as if the aveluria magic affected my words as well.

  The man shuddered again, his feet moving backward though the hatred on his face just increased. Gritting his teeth, he came to a stop and then shook his head, as if struggling to drive something from his mind.

  His foot lurched forward.

  “No,” I tried, every sound hurting. “S-stay back…”

  He retreated a step. A cry escaped him, the noise somewhere between rage and anguish. Desperation twisted his face while his gaze skittered across the room, coming to rest on his daughter’s picture against the mirror.

  A growl rumbled in his chest, growing louder. His body went rigid and his fists clenched. Fissures spread through his skin as though driven by an earthquake.

  I shoved away from the bed. In a stumbling run, I bolted around him toward the door.

  His hand swung through the air, grabbing at me and narrowly missing. With a snarl, he staggered after me.

  Zeke caught me and pulled me with him from the doorway. Shoving me ahead of him, we ran for the stairs.

  Earl was right behind us.

  We reached the landing. My hand clutched the railing as we whipped around the turn.

  Earl snagged Zeke’s shirt. With a roar, he yanked him backward and then drove Zeke through the open doorway of the room he’d shown us hours before.

  Red eyes glowing, he turned to me.

  “No,” I gasped. “No, stay–”

  My back bumped into the wall. My hands plastered to it while I inched to the side, attempting to get away from the gaping opening of the stairwell.

  A grimace of effort contorting his face, Earl reached for me.

  Zeke slammed into him. I ducked as Earl staggered against the wall above me and then twisted to grab Zeke again.

  I lunged and shoved him hard.

  Earl stumbled sideways. His foot hit the top stair and slipped. Lurching backward, he fought for balance and his hands grabbed at the banister.

  He missed.

  The ground shook as he crashed down the stairs.

 
And then the house was still.

  My eyes locked on the stairwell. I barely breathed. Trembling, I tugged my gaze to Zeke. He looked like the hand bracing him on the railing was the only thing keeping him standing. Swallowing hard, I crept to the top of the staircase.

  Earl lay on his side at the base of the steps, his arm pinned under him and his legs still sprawled on the stairs. On his skin, the cracks had mostly faded. His eyes were closed. But for the slow movement of his chest beneath his green flannel shirt, he showed no sign of life.

  “Come on,” Zeke said, moving past me and cautiously descending the stairs.

  I followed, not taking my eyes from Earl. We reached the first floor and, heart pounding, I stepped past the man, waiting for him to wake and grab at me again.

  He didn’t move. The rain pouring down like water from a hose was the only sound.

  I drew a breath, trying to keep myself from shaking while I looked around the living room. We needed to get out of here. He’d been talking to someone else on the phone. Someone like him, who wanted to hurt us.

  Someone who, from the sound of it, could be on their way here right now.

  The shaking got worse. With a trembling hand, I ran my fingers through the rat’s nest tangle of my hair.

  My gaze landed on his car keys on the table beside the door. I froze, shivers running through me for a whole other reason.

  I looked over at Zeke to find him regarding the keys too.

  He met my eyes, and from his expression, he seemed to have the same thought as me. “You drive?”

  I nodded.

  He went for the keys.

  My heart still racing, I looked back at Earl. At the wallet in his pocket.

  We’d need money. We’d need gas and maybe food.

  I couldn’t believe myself. My life. Any of this.

  Barely daring to breathe, I approached him. He didn’t move when I crouched down, as far from him as I could be while still keeping him in reach. Gingerly, I drew the wallet from his back pocket.