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  “Izzy, you are the strongest person I’ve ever known. And you aren’t alone, this isn’t just on you. You have Ian, Molly, Conall, and me. The Division will also be there to back you up.” Kennan paused for a moment as if he didn’t want to utter the next words. “And you have Aberto. He’s already shown that he will do whatever it takes to protect you. This is not your burden to bear alone, Izzy. Give me some of the weight, or it may just crush you. I know things haven’t been easy with us the past few weeks. I haven’t been there for you the way that you needed me to be. I’m sorry for that. I truly am. I don’t think I realized just how much these changes were affecting you until now. You always seem to be so in control of everything, like you don’t need anyone else in the entire world.”

  “You should know better than anyone that it is a façade, Kennan. I’ve been trying to fake it until I make it since we got here. Not a day passes that I don’t feel completely freaked out by everything going on. The darkness coming, the changes that don’t seem like they are going to stop any time soon, not to mention the whole leader of the Council bit, I’m a hot mess right now. I just wish there was some sort of clear outline of what I’m supposed to do. The not knowing is the worst.”

  “You’re always a hot mess, Iz," Kennan snickered, pulling me from my pity party.

  “That is a true-fact.” I curled myself back into his chest. “How are we going to survive this, Kennan?”

  “The same way we do everything. Together. You need to spend some time talking to Aberto. We have to find out what is happening with you. For now, you need to sleep.”

  The thought of Kennan resigning himself to the fact that Aberto had to be involved was huge. I still hadn’t told him about Aberto’s confession, and then there was the dream that I’d just had. I wasn’t ready to look too close at that. As a thousand thoughts passed through my mind, Kennan began to utter the words that would send me off into a dreamless sleep. Only, it wasn’t a restful sleep that awaited me, it was something far worse than memories.

  A parade of images passed through my mind, calling forth memories long forgotten. It was as though I were sifting through my own past, searching for answers. At every turn he was there. I was in the dreaming, I was a child playing with my friend the Old One. I was a teenager, freshly struck with the grief of losing my parents. I was in the fog, seeking out Aberto, but not knowing what I was seeking.

  It seemed like at the end of each memory, there was a ghost of an image, a whisper that erased the time that I’d passed in the dreaming. Yet, the more I came there, the less afraid I was. I’d been wondering since all this had begun, how I could possibly have adjusted to the dreaming aspect of this world so easily. Now I knew, it was because I’d been there so many times before. I just couldn’t remember. I felt a wave of anger wash over me at all of the memories that had been stripped from my mind by Aberto. What right did he have to take them from me? My anger melted away as my memories brought me to a part of the dreaming I hoped never to experience again.

  I was back at the lab, being tortured by Xavier. Yet, in these memories, as I was being ripped to shreds by the wolves, resigning myself to death, there was Aberto. But this time, he didn’t intercede. He stood on the outskirts of the vision, as if to observe what I may do. I watched myself go through each of the torturous scenarios all over again, each time seeking out Aberto only to find him watching, waiting. Why hadn’t he helped me?

  By the time the endless parade of memories began to fade, I was furious. He’d left me there to suffer when he could’ve saved me. He said that he cared for me, but how could anyone that cared for me ever stand idly by while my world was torn apart? Then the last memory of him surfaced, a memory of my last nightmare at the farmhouse. He’d told me that it was time, he’d nudged me into action, into this mess I was in now. Why hadn’t he protected me?

  Chapter Six

  The fitful sleep finally released its hold on me as the sun began to retreat. Darkness was falling and I was left with a thousand questions, and only one person that could answer them. Well, not even a person. Whatever he was, he’d made my “people that I’d like to throat punch” list. In fact, he had moved right up into first place on the list. Sitting up, I stretched my arms high overhead attempting to shake off some of the dreams, memories, whatever they were. I looked across the room to find Kennan sleeping in a chair rested against the door.

  “Hey, handsome.” My voice came out like sandpaper. I’d startled Kennan from him dreams causing him to almost fall out of his chair. His arms flailed like some deranged cartoon character as he tried to steady himself.

  “Um, hey yourself. What time is it?” Kennan rubbed his hand down his face, a sure sign he was worn.

  “I’m not sure, but there is someone I need to talk to, and I need you to be cool about me doing it alone.”

  “Again? Already?” Kennan stood, trying to stretch out his stiff muscles and effectively rerouting my focus. “Izzy?” Kennan’s raised brow brought me back to the present.

  “Unfortunately. I’m going to head down to the office. If you want to go grab some food, I can get Conall to come stand outside of the office. I know it isn’t exactly pleasant for you to have to stand out there while he is in there with me.”

  “I’m fine, although, I am a bit hungry. Maybe you’re right, it might make things easier if I’m not there every time he shows up.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I trust you, Izzy. Nothing will ever change that.” Kennan pulled me close to him, kissing the top of my head.

  “Alright, well, let’s get to it then. I want to get this over with. I just hope his Oldness doesn’t try and play keep-away with the answers again. I’m awfully close to throat punching him right now, so he’d better watch himself.”

  “You’re terribly scary, you know that right?”

  “Oh, don’t you start with me, mister. I have lightning bolt fingers now. I could totally zap you when make me mad.”

  “I am truly terrified.” Kennan did his best to look afraid, although, I wasn’t buying it for a second.

  “You better watch yourself. I’ll zap you when you least expect it.” I raised my brows up and down like some sort of deranged scientist, all while drumming my fingers together. I thought I looked truly frightening. Or insane, but who’s counting?

  “Okay, fine, you are a fearfully and wonderfully made Seer of limitless talents. Happy now?” Kennan smirked.

  “For now," I preened as I walked down the hall toward my office, where Conall just happened to be waiting. Convenient, that.

  “Did someone tell you to be here?” I was curious how he’d gotten here so quickly.

  “Aberto said that you might be in need of my assistance this evening. He is waiting on you in your office," Conall said with a deep bow.

  “Oh that son of a biscuit eating, Old, secret-keeping asshat. I’m seriously going to zap him. He deserves it. The eavesdropping bastard.” I started to storm into the office as Kennan pulled me to a stop.

  “Breathe, Izzy. You know that half of what he does, he doesn’t realize is completely messed up.” Kennan becoming the voice of reason was seriously throwing my world off of its axis.

  “Um, when did you get on team Aberto? Aren’t you supposed to be as pissed off that he was thought-intruding again? Aren’t you supposed to be righteously angry about the whole Aberto intruding in our lives bit?”

  “I know that we need his help if we are going to make it through this. It doesn’t mean I like it, it doesn’t mean I like him, it just means that I don’t want this to be something that causes more of a rift between us. I need us to be okay, and I know that he has to be a part of our lives now. So, take a deep breath, and go in there with a calm and level head.”

  Calm and level head, my arse. I wanted to give Aberto the what for, but instead I did as Kennan asked and inhaled slowly, trying to erase the anger. In with the good air, out with the anger, or some nonsense.

  “Fine, I’m calm now," I mumbled through gr
itted teeth.

  “Yeah, that’s completely believable.” Conall’s disbelief did nothing to help contain my fury. I eyed him evilly as I slowly opened the door.

  “You, I will see in a bit.” I eyed Kennan steadily as I slipped through the door.

  “Get me when you’re done," Kennan answered before turning to talk to Conall.

  I entered the office, shutting the door just to lean against it. I glanced across the office to where Aberto stood gazing into the fire. Emotions bombarded me as the memories all scrambled to the surface once more. Joy and anger warred with one another as I looked that the man standing before me.

  “Why?” I whispered as tears brimmed in my eyes. The last of the memories surfaced, bringing with them the sting of betrayal. In the lab, he’d done nothing to help me. It was unforgiveable.

  Aberto moved towards me more quickly than any human could. He stopped just short of me and raised a hand to brush my cheek, something he’d been doing since I was a child. I pulled away from him, using that same speed to put myself across the room. Well, that was new. Awesome. Just call me Speedy Gonzales.

  “Don’t.” I choked back more tears as they threatened to pull me under. I needed to keep myself together. I needed to know. “You owe me answers, and not just some bullshit this time, Aberto. What in the hell is going on? Why am I remembering you from when I was a child? How in the heck did I get into the dreaming as a kid in the first place? And isn’t all of this stuff you think that I should’ve known? Would you have ever told me if I hadn’t started to remember?” I paused looking at the man in front of me. His beauty, even masked by years of loss and sadness, made the betrayal feel all the more fresh. “Why didn’t you help me? You were there.”

  “Because you wouldn’t let me!” Aberto yelled, as he rushed forward, crowding me, backing me against the wall. He lifted his hand to my face and everything came rushing back. Every last nightmarish scene played out in my mind as the truth came, sweeping me back into the dreaming to witness them all over again.

  The house was burning around me. The flames licked up my legs slowly melting my skin away and as I looked over I saw him standing there, shouting.

  “Izzy, let me in," Aberto pleaded from just outside the nightmare.

  “I don’t know you. You aren’t real," I shouted back. “Leave me alone. You’re just another form of torture. A promise of help that will never come.”

  “No, Izzy. You can stop this. You are in control, even here. Be strong.”

  “GO AWAY!” I shouted, as the flames fully engulfed me. As the vision faded I saw Aberto fall to his knees, pleading with me to let him in.

  When I finally came back to the present, I was on my knees struggling to catch my breath. The smell of my charred skin still dusted my nostrils, causing the contents of my stomach to roil. Aberto lowered himself to squat in front of me. He reached up to brush my tangled hair from my face.

  “I don’t understand.” I hoped that for once, Aberto might be able to tell me some answers.

  “Izzy,” his voice came out part promise, part plea, “you are more powerful than you could possibly know. Even before you began changing, you had the ability to block people out. Just as you blocked your Guardian from the dreaming, you were able to shield yourself from me. I would have gone through hell to drag you out of that torture. There is nothing on heaven or earth that would keep me from protecting you, except you, yourself. Only you have the power to stop me, Izzy. So please, don’t believe that I would ever let you suffer if I could end it. I would have taken that burden from you and protected you, my directive be damned. I was under the impression that you understood, where you are concerned, nothing is off-limits.”

  I stared up into his face, the impossibly tall figure that he was, and I realized that he was right. He would move the heavens for me, and he had. He had changed my fate and turned me into something, something that has never been before or will be again. Tears streamed down my cheeks as the charred smell finally dissipated.

  “But what about before, why did you make me forget? How was I there, Aberto? I don’t understand any of this. Why would you want me to forget, why not tell me the truth when I first saw you at the ceremony?” I paused, trying to gain my bearings before asking the question that had been on my mind the most. “Would you’ve ever told me had I not remembered?”

  Aberto sighed, dropping his hand to his side and raising to his feet. He turned away from me and paused. “Because you are the prophesied one, you can do impossible things. You’ve had a presence in the dreaming your entire life, Izzy. But, that knowledge, those experiences, they are not meant for one so young. You would have gone mad had I not interceded on your behalf. Would I have told you? No. I wouldn’t have told you, because there was no reason for you to know. What good, what knowledge, and what progress would be gained by you knowing? Nothing. Nothing could be gained from those memories, they were mere chances that we met in the dreaming.”

  “I would’ve known to trust you from the start. That’s not ‘nothing’, Aberto.” I rose to my feet and moved the two steps that divided us, what seemed a gaping chasm. “That matters. You’ve been there my whole life, protecting me, even when I didn’t know it. So, don’t brush that off. Those memories, they were mine. I feel like there is this whole part of my life that has been stolen from me, and now it has all come rushing back in. The flood gates are opened. You had to know that at some point these memories may return, what of the madness that they could bring now? Did you have a plan to protect me from that? Or did you just expect to make me forget again?” The more I talked, the more I became agitated all over again. I had started by trying to reassure him and moved right back into being royally pissed.

  Aberto turned to look down at me, his face as still as a statue. “I would do whatever it took to protect you, even if that meant betraying your trust, even if that meant taking memories from you. You can hate me, Izzy. You can be angry with me for taking things from you. I will do it again, and I won’t, for one moment, regret it, if it means that you will be safe from the world and yourself. Don’t believe that I am like your Guardian, willing to let you put yourself at risk just to make you happy. I will allow you to fulfill your calling, I will do whatever it takes to ensure you can bring the darkness to a halt, but do not get confused, I will not ever allow you to be hurt.”

  “You owe me answers, Aberto.”

  “I owe you nothing, Izzy!” Aberto’s tone grew cold, rooting me in place. “I have given you everything of myself, yet you still question me. What answers do you want? What is it you think that I am keeping from you? I have told you my darkest secrets, I have told you who I truly am. I can’t fathom what it is you think I am not telling you. Do you believe me to have some ulterior motive? I can ensure you, my only motivation on this plane or any other is you.”

  “Why? Why do you want to protect me? Why have you always been there? What’s in it for you? That’s what I don’t understand. How can you say you have no ulterior motives when you have been there my whole life, protecting me? Surely there is something you want, something you hope to gain from all of this. Otherwise, why even do it? The prophecy says I will fall Aberto, and fall I will if it means protecting the people I care about.”

  “My motivation has always been you. Someday, you will understand why. But this is not that day. This is not the time.”

  “Damn you and your ’this is not the time’ bullshit. You pulled that on me when we first met, and look where it is gotten me.” I lifted my rune covered arms to him as sparks began igniting down my arms once more. “I’m changing into something I don’t understand, yet you still won’t tell me everything. I can’t hide this forever, and when the Council finds out, God only knows what they will do. You do owe me answers, because you did this to me. You changed me, and while I am eternally grateful to still be alive, I don’t know what the hell I am now. Because, I’m not human any longer. Not the way I was before.”

  “I don’t know what you want from me.”
Aberto’s voice edged on anger as he closed the gap between us. “I have given you everything of myself. I am cursed to this existence for all of eternity because I interceded. I can never move beyond this existence now for what I did. Quit acting like a spoiled child and act like the Seer you are meant to be. Stop whining about the lot you have been given and embrace it; it may just save your life again. I am through answering your questions. When you are done wallowing in your pit of self-pity, I shall return. Until then, do not call on me.”

  Just like that he was gone. Poof. The bastard. My anger died a swift death as his words rang in my head. He was cursed to an eternity of what he had been living because of me. I still wanted answers, but I knew deep down that he was right. I had been spending so much time focusing on what was happening with me that I’d once more lost sight of the bigger picture. In the grand scheme of things, lightning fingers weren’t that big of a deal. I plopped down into the closest chair, allowing his words to wash over me. I still had no idea how I’d ended up in the dreaming, or why Aberto was there for me. It had not escaped my notice that he was still avoiding the biggest question of all, why he wanted to protect me so badly. But he was right, as he always had been, I needed to pull my head out of my butt and start doing my job.

  Chapter Seven

  Anger fled my body only to be replaced by the inescapable bone aching exhaustion. I curled into the chair, hoping to find some sort of reprieve from my current lot. I let the dreaming sweep me away, and for the first time I didn’t care what I would find there. I went willfully into its foggy embrace, not fearing the runes that may come.