Vengeance (18 page)

“You’re blaming yourself again, aren’t you?”
Aiden asked.

I was about to answer when a video of me in Thailand appeared on the screen. I was standing at the counter, waiting for JD to return from the backroom, when the gunman entered the café and opened fire. The video’s pace slowed to almost frame by frame, so that everyone could see that my actions were not like the others—too much movement passed between frames. Just before the bullets entered their unsuspecting victims, screen-me closed my eyes and disappeared, and so did every other person in the camera’s view. The footage then cut to the beach, where Aiden and I stood talking to each other and, once again, moved way too quickly between frames. Again, we disappeared.

The mourners gasped and turned around to stare at me. Whispers filled the church. Too stunned to care, I continued to watch as the footage changed to one I’d hoped to never see again.

I was strapped to the bed with the psycho dragging the knife through me. Finally, the screen went blank, and I feared another message was going to be displayed. But nothing happened. I looked to my left, and Aiden was no longer there. He’d stopped the video.

Just as I was about to thank him, Chelsea was ripped out of her seat and thrown against the cross at the front of the room. Screams echoed through the church as Nathan pinned her down with one hand while holding a knife in the other. He slashed the knife across her neck before I had a chance to react.

I wasn’t sure if I flew or transported to the front of the church, but I managed to catch her on her way down to the floor. I knelt, holding Chelsea in my arms as her blood ran from her neck, draining the life out of her.

Aiden and Lucas were on their knees beside me in a split second. The glistening knife caught my eye as it fell to the floor. I picked it up and sliced my hand.

“What are you doing?” Aiden yelled.

Blood dripped down my fingers, and I hoped my cut wouldn’t heal before I had a chance to save her. I wrapped my hand around her throat, trying to push my blood inside her body. My blood started to fuse with hers, and the gash across her throat began closing.

Screams continued as people rushed outside, afraid that they were next.

“Where’s Gemma?” I asked, searching the crowd for her.

“She’s right here,” Lucas said, pointing behind him.

Gemma was sitting on the floor, hugging her knees to her chest as she rocked back and forth.

“Get her out of here!” I ordered Lucas.

He nodded, and they were both gone.

“We need to go, too,” Aiden said.

Chelsea’s eyes shot open, and she gasped for air. Her hands instinctively went to her throat. She didn’t understand how she was still alive and why there didn’t seem to be any pain where she was sure she had been sliced.

“You’ll be okay,” I said, wiping her blood-stained hair away from her face.

“We have to go.” Aiden grabbed my arm, turning me around so I could see why he was in such a rush.

Five people were standing at various places around the church, all holding up their phones. I was about to make them stomp on their own phones, but I realised it would’ve been pointless. They were doing live feeds. Our secret was a secret no more.

Aiden swept Chelsea up in his arms. “Where to?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“Come on.” He turned and ran through the doorway to the side of the platform.

I followed them into the back of the church. “Let’s take her back to Harry’s. I think it’s time I speak with Mum whether she likes it or not.”

“I think you’re right.”

We transported back to Harry’s room. Aiden lay Chelsea down on the bed beside her unconscious mother.

“What happened?” she asked in a croaky voice.

“You know what happened,” I said. “But you’re okay now.”

“How?”

“Well, you’ve got the bestest friend ever,” Aiden said.

“I gave you my blood,” I explained when she didn’t understand what Aiden meant.

Aiden laughed. “She practically pushed her blood into you.”

Chelsea sat up on her elbows. “Seriously?”

“Well, I wasn’t about to let you die.” My smile dropped instantly when I heard whose attention we’d caught on the other side of the door. “Crap.”

The door burst open. Mum’s eyes practically bulged out of their sockets. “What the hell is going on in here?”

I needed answers, and she was the only one who could give them to me. However, I didn’t think Harry’s bedroom was the place to have that conversation. I took a deep breath then exhaled slowly. “We need to tell you something, and I think it would be better to talk out in the lounge.” I then added silently,
“You know, away from Marie and Chelsea.”

Mum didn’t like me putting her off, but she knew I was right. She spun around and walked out the door.

I turned to Chelsea. “You stay here and get some rest. We’ll be just out in the lounge if you need anything, okay?”

She tried to nod, but her neck still felt strange. “Okay,” she whispered.

Aiden took my hand, and we walked out the door, down the hall, and into the lounge.

“What did you do?” Mum asked.

“I—”

“Oh, my God!” Gemma came bounding toward us from the hallway. “You’ve got to see this.” She held up her phone.

When she knew we could all see the screen, she pressed Play. We watched the events of what happened in church play on YouTube.

“No,” Mum whispered, covering her mouth with her hand.

Aiden said, “Shit.”

“And that’s not all,” Gemma said when the video stopped. She switched to another video then held up her phone and pressed Play again.

Everything that had happened since Nathan’s game had started was on display for the world to see. The video footage we’d seen at the church was only the beginning. Aiden had shut down the projector after it showed that I’d transported him to me, but the YouTube version continued. On the screen, Aiden stared down at the psycho, who suddenly dropped to the floor, screaming in pain until he died. The video then went on to show Chelsea and me appearing out of thin air outside her house, then the house exploded. Marie appeared out of nowhere, as did Aiden and my mother. Then Aiden, Mum, and I disappeared. The image changed to the night of Aiden’s birthday, where it showed me smelling my grandmother’s kidney. Conveniently, Nathan was the only one not within the camera’s view when we all then disappeared. The footage picked up in the room where Grandma lay on the gurney with her guts on display. Then, it showed how my blood made her stomach repair itself. Last was an image of me getting off of Chrissy’s dead body.

The screen went blank, then the familiar writing scrolled.

The footage you have seen today has not been tampered with.

People like this live amongst us…

The screen once again went blank before displaying:

I CREATED YOU. NOW I’M GOING TO DESTROY YOU.

GAME ON, BITCH!

“Holy frigging shit,” I said when the video finally stopped.

“What the hell has he done?” Mum asked, shaking her head.

“He’s just outed us to the whole world.” Aiden stood up. “There’s no way to fix this.” He put his head in his hands, and for the first time since I’d known him, he was freaking out.

“It’s already had over a billion views,” Gemma said.

Aiden dropped his hands and looked at my mum. “What are we going to do?”

“It’s time to come clean, Mum. We need to know everything there is to know about Nathan. Why is he doing this to me, and why am I so different?”

When I asked the last question, I hoped she didn’t know what I was talking about, but she did. Her heart rate soared as she tried desperately to calm herself down.

“What have you done?” I asked, my voice catching in my throat.

Aiden sat down beside me and put his hand on my back, letting me know he was there for me.

“I…” Tears glistened in her eyes. “I was young and stupid. Adam… I mean Nathan said it had something to do with all the chemicals everyone was using. He explained that they were killing off the human population, but some of us evolved. And he and I were the very first people to have done so.”

“And you believed him?”

“Of course I did. I knew there was something different about me. Then someone came along who knew what I was and seemed to have all the answers I had been searching for. I was naïve. I trusted everything he said.”

“Get to the point about me,” I said.

She nodded. “Adam was into experimenting on everything. And after years of being together, he talked about having a baby. But he didn’t want to do it the normal way. He said he had uncovered a special gene that could amplify what we are. He wanted to make a ‘super baby.’” Mum did air quotes with her fingers. “He wanted to watch and see what the baby would be like when it grew up.”

“So I’m just a science experiment,” I said. I already knew that, but I wanted Mum to admit it and feel bad for what she had done.

She turned to me, tears spilling from her eyes. “I wanted a baby. That’s all I ever wanted, and until I met your father, I couldn’t. There was no way I could’ve had a baby with a normal human because they would’ve wanted to have been in the baby’s life. And you know that would never be possible.” She reached out and brushed her thumb across my cheek. “What I did may have been wrong, but I did it out of love. I love you, Jade. I always have, and I always will.”

What she didn’t say was what brought tears to my eyes. Heartache ripped through her. She feared I’d never speak to her again. And if I wasn’t able to hear her true thoughts, her worst fear may have come true.

“It’s okay. I get it,” I whispered through tears of my own.

A few days ago, Gemma would’ve been sitting there making fun of us. But Aiden’s stabbing and what she had seen at the funeral had changed her in ways I never thought possible. She was crying, too.

Mum wiped her face. “So what’s the story with Marie?”

“We couldn’t leave her in the hospital for Nathan to use as leverage, and we didn’t have the ability to take care of her.”

“I’m guessing that means you did what I saw you do to Chelsea on the video.”

I nodded.

“So now you’ve healed three people with your blood.”

“Four,” I whispered.

“What?” Aiden asked in surprise.

I turned to face him. “I saved you, too.”

“What?” Aiden and Mum asked at the same time.

“When Nathan stabbed you…” I paused, thinking about the awful event. “You were dying. There was no brain activity. So, while no one was looking, I grabbed a knife, cut my hand, then pressed it against your wound.”

“Oh, my God!” Gemma said.

“You mean to say I was dead?” Aiden asked in disbelief. “How is that even possible?”

“I don’t think you were dead. But your brain had almost ceased functioning, and I’m guessing that I was lucky enough to get my blood into you in time. If normal humans can have a small window to be revived, then why shouldn’t we?”

Aiden shook his head. “How did you even think to do something like that?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. It worked for Grandma, and when I saw you lying there, I had to try something.”

He wrapped his arm around my shoulders and pulled me closer. “I can’t believe you did that for me. I mean you’re so scared shitless of needles and knives, and you willingly cut your hand?”

I looked up at him. “Of course. I would’ve sliced my whole body in half if it meant saving you.”

Aiden laughed. “I think that’s one of the nicest things anyone’s ever said to me.”

“I’m sorry to burst your happy bubble,” Mum said. “But I think you’re missing the bigger question.”

“Which is?” I asked.

“Why did the knife almost kill Aiden?”

Jack and Harry walked into the room. “What did you say?” Jack asked, thinking he hadn’t heard right.

Aiden’s phone rang. He stuck his hand in his pocket and pulled it out. “It’s mum,” he said and answered it.

Mum stood and walked over to Jack and Harry. She explained to them what I’d said about Aiden almost dying.

Aiden hung up the phone. “They’ve seen the footage.”

“Shit.”

“They want to see us.”

“They can come here,” Mum said, joining us again.

Harry and Jack sat down on the adjacent sofa.

Aiden typed a message into his phone. Less than ten seconds later, he had a reply. “They’re ready.”

I transported Anna, Dave, and Kai to us.

When I saw the looks on their faces, I wanted to melt into the sofa. They were pissed. I just counted myself lucky that it wasn’t me they were pissed with.

“How’s Chelsea?” Anna asked. “Did it work?”

I nodded. “She’s in Harry’s room.” I paused. “Um… she’s with her mum.”

“Her mum?” Anna asked.

“Jade healed her, too,” Aiden said.

Dave and Anna’s eyes widened.

“I couldn’t just leave her there for Nathan to get her,” I said.
“Don’t worry. I didn’t tell anyone about your involvement,”
I said silently to Harry. I didn’t think there was any point in dobbing him in the shit as well.

“Thanks. But it wasn’t necessary. I’ll take whatever shit comes my way.”
Harry then said, “I helped Jade.”

Mum whipped her head around to Harry. “Why the hell would you do that?”

“Told you,”
I said to Harry.

“Because she asked me for help,” he replied as if that was all the explanation that was needed.

When I heard the crap Mum was about to give Harry, I said, “I was going to do it with or without his help. I just thought it would be a lot less messy if Harry was involved.”

Remembering all the blood on the YouTube video, Mum looked down at my clothes then Aiden’s. “Why don’t you two go get cleaned up? We can talk afterward.”

“We’ll go back to the hotel to clean up,” Aiden said.

“We’ll make sure Chelsea gets cleaned up as well,” I said, standing.

“Do you need something to change into?” Mum asked, about to offer us some of Gemma’s and Jack’s clothing.

I shook my head. “We got some things from the hotel’s boutique. We’ll be back soon. And in the meantime, can you fill everyone in on what I told you about Aiden and the knife?”