The Centerpoint Trilogy (23 page)

              Lies! She screamed loudly. It was all lies. She knew little to nothing of what they had planned. They promised her mother - she just wanted her mother.

              “She’s still an innocent pawn that you’re using,” the man yelled, shaking his head and pulling on the chains, even though there was absolutely no way that they were going to give way at all. “You need to let her go.”

              “Why do you care about her?” it asked, using her voice. “You never even bothered to find out the truth.”

              Why did he care? Grace wondered about that. He was her father, and yet this was the first time that she had ever even seen him. He had never come for her, even when she was the loneliest girl in the world; even when she needed someone so badly that she thought she’d die waiting to stop being so alone. He didn’t care what kind of torment that his daughter had gone through, just trying to live a good, normal day to day life. Why did he care about her when he had never even cared enough to come save her?

              “I didn’t know she existed!” the man screamed, his voice raw and full of so much unadulterated pain that it made Grace want to cry, but that too was something that she did not have control of. She could not even cry. “Her mother told me that she lost the baby and I believed that psychotic…” He trailed off and looked up, looked into her eyes, but not at her. He was looking at the creatures who had taken her over. “Please, she’s just an innocent child.”

              Grace felt her lips curl up in a smirk that wasn’t her own. It was an evil, vile expression. “Can an innocent child do this?” she asked in a sing-song, purposefully childish voice, flicking her wrist lightly. She felt the power to cause pain, the power that had been the bane of her entire existence, suddenly flowing through her blood. She tried to close her mind, shut it off, when he fell to the floor, coughing and then screaming in pain. She tried to close her mind and her eyes, but she could not, however, shut anything down. She let out a cry, but the cry was all in her head. She had no effect on the reality around her, not at all. “How can this child be an innocent?” the Alturi asked in her voice, giving a barking laugh as she screamed.

              The powers were not her fault! Grace was not to blame for the things that she was capable of doing. She was born with her powers, and even though it was not unfair to say they were evil, it wasn’t her fault that she had them. She was born with them! The Alturi could not blame her for something that was out of her control. She was a good person. She cared about people. She was nice to people. Her powers did not make her less good or innocent at all - did they?

              Her powers had tortured her for her entire life… They did not make her who she was. Did they?

              She had been such a small girl when she realized just how evil the powers truly were. Grace had only been about seven or eight years old. Her classmate, Elizabeth, was just a little girl too.  She was a mean girl, one who made fun of Grace for various slights of the second grade playground, but she was just a child. Grace hated herself for what she did to Elizabeth.

She had hurt the girl. She had been angry and the power had shot through her like a wildfire. It had flowed out of her, hot and angry and desperate.  The girl - her name was Elizabeth and she liked to be called Eliza, Grace thought, but Grace tried not to remember that - shrieked and screamed but the powerful child showed her no mercy. She let the pain rain down on the child. She had let her scream. She had enjoyed it, hadn’t she? Maybe she was evil.

Eliza insisted firmly that Grace was the one who hurt her. “She looked at me and I saw something bad in her eyes,” the girl told their teacher, looking at the young woman, Ms. Carson, with earnest, desperate eyes. She was desperate for the woman to hear her and understand what she was trying to say, what she knew without a single doubt.

“Sweetie, you have a nerve condition, that’s all,” their pretty young teacher had assured her. That was the diagnosis they had given little Eliza. She had an undiagnosed nerve condition, triggered by some sort of allergy. It was too easy to believe a seven year old exaggerated when it came to pain. “Grace did not cause your attack.”

“She hates me.”

“Even if she was mad at you,” Ms. Carson amended, “she is not capable of hurting anyone.”

Grace knew, however, that she had hurt the child, because she had felt the evil intent flow through her body. Eliza had been mean and had made her hurt, so now she was going to make Eliza hurt worse. She had hurt her worse. Like her mom said in her dreams, she was special. She was special in an evil way.

Inside her own head, Grace cried and screamed but she could not scream. She could not scream as hard as she tried.

Chapter Ten

Rhiannon looked around the table. She was seated around a wide table with Genesis, both of the girl’s parents and her own mother. Everyone had dark, gloomy faces that were barely concealing their fear for her father. They were all deciding, in their heads, what to do. They had been silent for some time and Rhiannon knew the grave nature of the situation was hitting them all at different speeds. Still, her close family all seemed to have some kind of poker face going on. The situation was simply stated: some psychotic bitch had her father and they had to do something about it. The question was not so simple: What did they do now?

              “We have to go after him,” Rhiannon found herself saying. Her voice was strong, but it was strained. To her own ears, it sounded nothing like her. “She hasn’t given us any other choice and we can’t let her kill Dad.”

              “It very well may be a trap, Rhiannon,” her Aunt Anna said gently. Normally, Rhi would agree with her, because Anna was smart; she was also calm, rational and Rhi had always admired her as much as she did her own mother. This time, however, the calm, logical explanation made her feel like her brain was prepared to burst out of her ears. She was feeling so much pent up rage that it left her breathless. She could not take it. Her father had been taken captive and the only logical thing to do was get him out of that situation. Anna saw the look in her eyes and added quietly, “sweetheart, we can’t go in blindly.”

              “But…”

“Gen,” Ethan said suddenly, speaking up. His eyes were wide and he looked over to his own daughter.             

“Yes, Dad?” Gen asked, looking to him.

He reached over. She was positioned across the table from him. Ethan took his daughter’s hand in his and held it tightly. “We need to try and call out to him. We’ll be stronger if we do it together.”

Gen closed her eyes, a look of strained, forced calm crossing her pretty face. Rhi remembered then that Gen had to be very calm in order to use her powers. That was pretty much imposible, given the situation that they were in, but she was trying her best. Ethan perfectly mimicked his daughter’s calm, even expression.

Rhi was utterly helpless; she was unable to do anything but wait for her best friend and her godfather to do something. Moments passed, and neither did anything but close their eyes, somewhere off in the trance-like zone they went in when they worked their powers. She could see the discomfort slowly growing in both of their eyes. Gen kept twitching slightly, the muscles in her face jumping lightly with strain. She kept shifting in her seat. Rhi knew Gen well enough to really know exactly when something was bothering her.

“We’ve got nothing Rhi,” she admitted, opening her eyes. Her father’s distressed look mirrored hers, completely. Rhiannon felt an irrational surge of anger. How dare they look so sad, she thought. It was her father who was missing. Then she stopped and shook her head. No, it wasn’t their fault. She wasn’t acting like herself. She was scared witless. She could not let her fear change a fundamental part of who she was.

Pausing, Rhi realized something in that moment. She realized that she had to go after her father alone. None of them, not even her mother, were willing to take that risk, but she was. Her father meant everything to her. He might not be her birth father, but he had always been there for her, from the time he saved her life when she was eight and on. He was always in her corner and did absolutely everything to her. She needed to save him. There was something unhinged in that crazy bitch’s eyes and she was scared for her daddy.

“I need to go up to my room, sorry,” she said, giving Gen specifically a look that said she needed some alone time. Her eyes watered with tears naturally, but none of them, not even her best friend, would know that those tears stemmed from determination and not the urge to cry because she didn’t know what to do. She knew exactly what she had to do. “Give me a little time okay? I just want to lie down. This is making me sick.”

“Take whatever time you need,” Anna told her.

“Yes,” her mom agreed. “Go ahead honey.”

She walked up to her room with a thick feeling of dread sliding down her throat like a bad cough syrup. She entered the room and closed the door behind her, sitting down on her bed and looking out the window. It was getting late. The time was ticking by, slowly. They were given an ultimatum and as much as it hurt to follow the whims of someone who was insane, Rhi knew the truth - she could not ignore it. She had to get to her daddy, regardless of whether or not it was a trap, which it undoubtedly was. She could not live with herself if she didn’t try to save him. She might die trying, but she had to try.

She looked to the window for a long time. Finally, she realized that she needed to act now. She was running out of time and the rest of them would be distracted by their thoughts. The car she shared with Genesis was also parked a few spots down the street, far enough from the house for her to slip out discreetly, without being heard. She took a deep breath, stilled her rapidly beating heart, and then she acted.

Gen climbed out of her window without much issue. She was athletic enough to make it work without much delay. She shimmied down low, clinging to the slats as she headed downward. When she was low enough to the ground, about two feet up, she dropped herself down to the ground, landing with bent knees. She cringed and then she hurried along.

She headed down the road quietly, eyes cast downward. She unlocked the car and quickly entered it, still breathing heavily. Starting the car nearly made her heart leap out of her chest. It at least remained somewhere in her throat. The car roared to life without issue and she let out a delicate sigh of relief. It was all going to be okay. She closed her eyes and took off.

Rhi had only been driving for about half of a minute when her cell phone rang. She looked at it, sure that it was going to be her frantic mother, or a desperate Gen, but instead, it was a video that automatically popped onto the screen without Rhi even unlocking the phone. The blonde girl was back on the screen. Rhi drove slowly, glancing at the screen only when her eyes were not on the road. She could not look at the girl too long. It felt dangerous. The blonde laughed and shook her head. “Wise girl, pay attention to the road,” she said in a knowing tone, chuckling. “I need you here in twenty minutes, my dear. It took you so very long to get your act together.”

              “Where are you?” she asked dryly, swallowing heavily. She did not want to be the one caving in to this insane person’s demands. She knew that she had to, though. There was no other choice. She would do anything, include give up her own life, in order to save her father.

              “A small little warehouse on Garrison road,” the girl said idly, almost as though she was tired by the effort of their conversation. “Do you know where that is?”

              “Yes,” she said, as she pictured it in her head.

              “You have twenty minutes, and I think it’s a bit of a drive,” the girl laughed. “I would hurry.”

              With that, the image flickered off.

              Gen raced faster than she had ever moved before. She was amazed that not a single cop saw her, or else she would have definitely been pulled over. She drove down to Garrison road. It was a drive that should have taken twenty minutes and was there in ten. She stopped the car, heart pounding in her ears and eyes watering. She took a breath and stepped out. The cold air hit her and she shivered, shuddering hard.

              She took a step toward the warehouse. There were several in the area, but she instinctively knew which one. The area was abandoned. Rhi started to walk towards the warehouse, when all of a sudden her entire body was sparked through with pain. It was as though she had been hit by a lightning bolt. She screamed out and the pain overwhelmed her. It hurt so much and it drove her to her knees. Every nerve ending was on fire, twitching. She closed her eyes and tried to stop it, but she couldn’t. It subsided on it’s own, however, leaving her a ball on the floor. She looked up and saw the blonde girl with her crazy looking eyes.

“Thank you for coming,” she said coolly, as Rhi slowly rose back to her feet. She was a very young looking girl, who could not have been any older than sixteen. However, there was something dark in her eyes. It was terrifying and made her blood go cold. She brushed a hand through her straight blonde hair and smiled, her face looking so old. “You’re very brave, you know that? You’re brave and you’re also so very stupid. How could you come here on your own, into what you very well know has to be a trap? Are you really that stupid, or are you just reckless when it comes to daddy, Rhiannon?”

“Who are you?” Rhi asked. She was no longer experiencing the intense pain, but her body was buzzing with energy. It was like there were these tiny static zaps that were driving her utterly mad.