Archaic (25 page)

As soon as my feet touched the ground, I was running.

I kept imagining Mason would appear out of nowhere to stop me. I began to panic, because I had no idea where I was. Luckily from what I remembered Mason telling me, as soon as I was normal again it wouldn't be easy for him to find me. I just had to get away from the house and out of sight and wait for Jared to track me down.

He would be looking for me already. I continued to run down the road. I glanced back over my shoulder. There was nothing. But fearing I would be discovered, I needed to get out of sight.

When I rounded a corner, I saw the boundary of the forest; I could hide in there. I pushed myself and continued to run like my life depended on it. If Mason caught me now, I feared he would lock me away. I was lucky I was able to escape so easily although something gnawed at my subconscious that it had been too easy. Brushing the thought to the back of my mind, I continued to run.

I made it into the forest. My lungs hurt and I was breathing hard. It would now be harder for Mason to find me. I slowed down to a walk and struggled to catch my breath. Sweat dripped down my face. The forest was dense and it was difficult to navigate the rough and damp terrain without falling. I made my way as quickly as I could, farther into the forest. The branches scratched my arms, but I didn't feel the pain because I was high on adrenaline. I found some very dense bushes and crawled in among them.

The ground was damp and it was cold, but I didn't dare move so I sat with my arms wrapped around my knees and I waited. I didn't want to move or make a sound in case Mason and his sidekicks had managed to follow me. My heart hammered in my chest with fear. It echoed in my ears. Even though I was nowhere near Mason or the house, I still didn't feel safe. The truth was I wouldn't feel safe until Jared found me.

Hearing a sound I held my breath. I heard the sound again--I tensed. There was definitely someone there, but I couldn't be sure who it was, so I pressed my hand to my lips, trying to stop myself from making a sound that would give me away.

"I can't see her. Are you sure she's here?" It was Jared. Then I remembered Mason's voice was exactly the same, so it could be Mason. There was no way of identifying the owner of the voice through the thickness of the bush that hid me.

I nearly cried with relief when I heard Tyler say, "Yes, keep looking."

"Jared," I cried in a panic as I crawled out from in-between the bushes.

His strong hands lifted me up. Relief flooded through his features. I stifled a sob as his arms wrapped around me. The dam had erupted and the tears fell unchecked down my face. I was crying so much I couldn't speak. The sobs shook my body. I'd been in so much danger and now, in Jared's arms, I was safe.

He let me go. I watched him scan me quickly to see if I was injured and then he picked me up, holding me close to his body as he carried me out of the forest. Tyler followed closely behind.

Tyler's car wasn't parked far away. He opened the back door for Jared, who put me in the car and then climbed in after me. I crawled onto his lap because I didn't want him to let me go.

"You're safe now," he soothed as he held me. Tyler climbed into the driver's seat and started up the car. I heard Tyler in the background on the phone. "We found her. I should be there in ten minutes." Then I heard him disconnect the call.

I lay my head on Jared's shoulder. The tears had finally slowed. He pulled me tightly against his chest--he didn't want to let me go either. We'd come too close to losing each other. I couldn't think about it because a wave of despair washed over me. I took a deep breath.

All that mattered was Jared and having his arms wrapped around me. Feeling safe. The car stopped and I looked up to see that we were parked outside a strange house. I gave Jared a questioning look.

"We need to keep you safe so, until all of this is over, we'll be staying here."

Was this an attempt to keep me hidden from Mason so he wouldn't be able to find me? But as I'd learned, Mason could find me the next time I became a Hue--so it didn't matter where I was. I would never be safe.

It felt so hopeless.

I shifted off Jared so that he could get out of the car and I got out after him. He held my hand tightly and pulled me toward the strange house. Jared walked in first. It probably belonged to one of the Archaic. I hadn't even made it past the hallway before I felt a pair of arms wrap around me.

"You're safe," Catherine whispered as she hugged me tightly.

I couldn't talk because emotion had overwhelmed me, so I simply nodded my head and hugged her back.

"We don't have much time before she becomes a Hue again and we need to get some stuff organized," Jared reminded us.

She released me and I followed Jared as he moved through the house. Neve was standing in the kitchen when we entered. She rushed over and hugged me. "I'm so glad they found you," she said.

"Me too," I whispered as I hugged her back.

As she released me, I saw Jared take something out of the fridge.
Soda. Perfect. I am thirsty.
After he handed one to me, I gulped half the can down as quickly as I could. Neve and Jared hovered around me.

"You can't go back to school. You're staying home for the rest of the week," Jared stated.

I nodded as I took a seat by the kitchen table. Jared and Neve sat down on either side of me.

Thinking back to how I'd escaped out of the restroom, I realized, it had been too easy for me to get away from the Archaic at school. I was worried that if I managed to do it again I probably wouldn't be able to escape again. I shuddered at that thought.

"You can't go home, either. Mason knows where I live, so we're going to stay here. This is Neve and Tyler's house," he explained.

"There's no point because as soon as I become emotionless, he can pick up on the Hue energy," I explained to them. Jared and Neve looked taken aback by my information.

"How do you know this?" he asked, sounding surprised.

"He told me. It also explains why he is always around when I'm in an emotionless state. He can feel it."

"So there is no way to hide you from him when you enter an emotionless state?" he questioned further.

"No." It was a hard blow. It meant that they couldn't really protect me from Mason. It also meant that he would probably find me and take me away from them the next time I entered an emotionless state.

"What else did he tell you?" he asked, and I tried to think back.

"He said something about me not being able to live without the energy. The Hue know how to alter the change, and he said that it can be altered up until it completes. When the change completes, I'll become a synthetic Hue," I explained. "I asked him how they knew so much about it and he said it was because they were curious and they'd been experimenting."

"What did he mean when he said alter the change?" he asked.

"I don't know." I knew it was important but I'd been in an emotionless state and at the time the details hadn't been so important to me. If I had been my normal self I would have been desperate to know the answers.

"So, there is a way to alter it, but not a way to stop it," said Neve more to herself than to us.

"If we can't keep you hidden, we need to make sure we're prepared for a confrontation," said Jared as he stood up and pushed his chair back.

"Confrontation?" I asked.

"He's going to come for you, but I'm not going to let him get you," he replied. The hard look in his eyes made me shiver.

"I don't want you to get hurt," I said as I grabbed his arm to halt him. I didn't want any of them to get hurt trying to protect me, and it would be like fighting a losing battle anyway. Even if they managed to protect me from Mason, I was running out of time and soon I would turn permanently into a Hue.

He gave me a cocky smile and gave me a brief kiss on my mouth.

"We're trained fighters. You don't need to worry," he assured me. I let go of his arm and he disappeared out of the kitchen. I looked to Neve for confirmation.

"He's right. We know what we're doing. We've all been trained to protect ourselves."

It still didn't make me feel any better. It was at times like this that I wished I were a normal teenager with normal teenage problems again. This was all so worrying.

"Anne," I said in a panic. Neve grabbed my arm.

"Don't worry," she soothed. "She left for her business trip to the city for the week. Everything has been arranged. She left you a note at home and it said she would call you later."

I sighed with relief. It was hard trying to handle all this stuff, but trying to keep it from my grandmother was becoming more and more difficult.

I had too much on my mind. After all I'd been through today, I could feel a sense of panic rising within me.
I've escaped from Mason and I'm safe now, and Anne is away
, I thought. I kept trying to think of calming thoughts, but nothing stemmed the unbridled rise of panic inside and I could feel my lungs start to restrict.

Trying to stop my panic from smothering me from the inside, I took a deep breath and held it before releasing it. After a few more breaths, the panic began to subside.

Neve could see what was happening.

"Are you okay?" she asked, touching a hand to my arm. I gave her a weak smile before nodding.

"I'm sorry," I said, feeling so weak. They all seemed to be calm in these stressful situations and I was struggling not to have a full-blown panic attack.

"You have nothing to be sorry for," she assured me. "You've been handling all of this really well."

"Thanks."

She patted my arm and gave me a reassuring smile, and then left the kitchen.

It didn't feel like I was handling this whole situation very well. I let out an unsteady breath, trying to keep my fear at bay: the fear that, no matter what Jared and the Archaic did, I was still going to become like Mason.

I put my hands up to my face.

"Hey," a soft voice said and I peered through the gap in my hands to stare at Jared's vibrant green eyes.

"Hi," I whispered back.

"You okay?" he asked softly as he leaned closer across the kitchen counter, bringing his face closer to mine.

"I think so," I said. "It's so much to try to cope with."

I let out a deep breath feeling the warmth of my breath against my fingers.

"I know, Ava, but we will get through this. I will find a way to save you," he promised me fiercely as he gently pulled my hands away from my face. "I was so scared when I went to meet you outside your classroom and you never came out."

He paused for a few moments. I saw the fear he'd felt in his eyes.

"I was frantic. We searched the school, but we couldn't find you. So I raced home to see if I could get a signal from the tracker on your phone. I prayed that you still had your phone on you...I can't think of what would have happened if you hadn't had it." He leaned his forehead to mine as his hands held mine. I understood. I'd felt those same desperate thoughts. The thought of never seeing him again was too much to handle.

"I just remembered something else," I whispered to him. I don't know why I hadn't remembered it earlier.

"What do you remember?" Jared prompted as he pulled away.

"Mason said the altering was more painful than the initial charge of energy that initiates the change," I whispered.

So even if they did find out how to alter the change, it would still be much more painful. I couldn't comprehend that there could be pain worse than that.

"Did he say why the altering was more painful?" he questioned gently.

I tried to remember back to my conversation with Mason.

"He said something about it being replaced. I'm not sure what needed to be replaced, but he did say I couldn't survive without the energy. He also said it wasn't complicated."

Jared looked thoughtful for a while. It was like a riddle that needed to be solved. Maybe that was why Mason hadn't explained it further--so that if I escaped, I wouldn't be able to tell the Archaic how to alter the change and potentially save myself. I wasn't sure what the alternative was, but I was sure it was better than being a Hue.

"I'll need to talk to the others and find out if they have any ideas," he said. "At least we have more to go on now than we did before."

I tried to stifle a yawn.

"You need to rest," he insisted as he helped me up from the kitchen chair. I was feeling very tired all of a sudden, and my knees started to buckle.

"I'm always feeling so tired," I mumbled.

"I think it's part of the changes going on inside your body," he said. Maybe he was right.

He picked me up effortlessly and carried me upstairs to a bedroom. I didn't know whose bedroom it was and at this point I didn't really care; as long as I had a bed, I was happy.

Jared laid me gently on the bed. It was only then that I realized I was covered in dirt from hiding in the forest.

"But I'm filthy," I protested as I tried to climb off the bed.

"It doesn't matter. The linen can be washed. Besides, you won't be able to stay awake long enough to have a shower and we need to get you a change of clothes," he insisted as he pushed me back down onto the bed. "Don't worry. You need to sleep," he insisted.