Fractured Souls(60)

A place where I’ll eventually have to make a choice about what I want.
Or who.
Once we’re finished, we lay side by side in the mud, gathering our strength while we sink further into the forest ground.
“I’m sorry,” he says, staring up at the sky, his eyelids blinking against the drizzle of the rain. “I know this has to be hard for you.”
I find his hand and place mine over it, watching the lightening in the sky. “It’s not your fault.”
“But it is,” he insists. “I should have been stronger than to let some stupid Faerie stake me… the Death Walkers threw me off, though.”
“It’s not your fault,” I press, slanting my head to the side to look at him.
He refuses to look at me, however, fixated on the raindrops falling down to the earth instead. “Where’s Alex.”
I let out a faltering breath. “He wandered off… said he couldn’t watch.”
He squeezes my hand. “It’ll be okay,” he says, but I’m not sure who he’s trying to convince. Him or me. Regardless, the invisible, magnetic connection that I felt with him the last time he bit me is twice as powerful now and I can only feel it growing with each beat of my heart.
The weight of the rain and my guilt pile on me more and I just keep thinking: if only I could shut it off. I try a few times, very pathetically, but give up when the feeling almost builds. Rain crashes down and thunder booms as I keep sinking further and further into the ground.
I’m just about to let it bury me when I realize that it actually is. I’m being buried alive by the mud and rain. Laylen rolls to his side and I hear him say something, but his voice is muddled with the mud oozing into my ears.#p#分页标题#e#
“Laylen!” I cry and I feel him grab onto my arm, but the ground only opens up and swallows me whole.

Chapter 20
 
“Feel it, Gemma,” someone whispers. “Feel what you really are…”
“No, Gemma, don’t…” a soft voice whispers. I know that voice. It’s my mother’s.
I open my eyes to the yard covered with metal objects surrounding me. “I don’t feel anything.”
“That’s because you’re cold,” someone says as I sit up and glance around the junkyard. “And heartless.”
“No, she’s not,” my mother says and she emerges out from behind some metal crates. “She’s good and that’s why you’re so worried.”
“Yes, she is,” the voice purrs. “She’s bad and you’ll soon see that I’m right.”
“I am not,” I argue as ravens flock around my head. “I’m just confused.”
“Confused.” The voice grows louder and then laughs. “You’re messing with everyone’s head and playing with their emotions. You’re downright evil, which is good… it’s what I want.”
I suddenly recognize the voice. “Stephan.”
“Gemma, don’t listen to him,” my mom begs, not moving toward me, reaching out to me instead. “Please.”
“You know you never seem to learn from your mistakes,” Stephan talks over my mom as he steps out into the open. “You repeat them…which is beneficial for me and what I have planned. It’ll make it easier to turn you.”
“Turn me,” I say. “As in evil? Because that’ll never happen.”
“You’ll see,” he states with confidence as my upper arm begins to burn. “I know you have it in you. That’s why I chose you.”
***
My head is throbbing and I could swear my skull has been cracked open. When I open my eyes, I expect to be buried in the mud, but instead I’m in a small room with sunshine yellow walls, which is decorated with masks, pictures, and a colorful rain stick. The air smells lavishly of rain and forest.
I quickly start to sit up, but I’m jerked back down. I bounce against the mattress, restricted by metal cuffs and chains that are secured to my wrists and legs and tied to the bedposts.
“Shit,” I curse. My legs are spread out and my arms are above my head, locked and losing circulation. My clothes are caked in mud and my hair feels crusty.
Where am I? And how the hell did I get here? I don’t have an answer for either since the last thing I can remember is sinking into the dirt.
The crystal ball is still in my pocket and I close my eyes to try to Foresee my way out of here, but I can’t even so much as feel a charge of energy; despite how much I let my emotions own me. I give up and start jerking on my arms and legs, but the cuffs only bite at my skin. I use every ounce of my energy, trying to get away, until my wrist and ankles rupture open and bleed all over the bed.