Reading Online Novel

Reborn(3)



“Where’s Sam?” I asked.

“In town, filling the gas cans.”

“Cas?”

She bent down to fish out the first-aid kit from beneath the sink. “He went running about a half hour ago.” She unzipped the kit on the vanity top and started tearing into gauze packs. I caught her hand mid-tear, and she glared over at me.

“Stop,” I said. “Don’t waste the supplies. A rag will do.”

She frowned, but didn’t argue, and switched to a rag she dug out of the closet. She wetted it down and came over to me, hunching so we were face-to-face.

Her blond hair was braided, and it hung over her shoulder, tied off with a black rubber band. Dark shadows painted the skin beneath her eyes. She hadn’t been sleeping well lately. Flashbacks and old demons haunted her out of bed. I could relate. None of us really slept well, except for Cas. Cas could sleep through an air raid.

Anna cleaned the blood from my face and the open wound on the side of my eye, working with the methodic confidence of a professional, even though she wasn’t.

“Why do you keep doing this?” she mumbled.

I scowled. “Why do you keep asking?”

Another frown. It was her default expression with me.

“What’s going on, Nick? Is it more flashbacks?”

Yes.

I looked past her at the towel hanging from the towel rack. It used to be brown. Now it was a faded mud color.

I saw a flash of a girl. I kept seeing her. The same girl. And every time I did, she was shaking. No, not shaking. Trembling.

And there was always blood on her face, tears running through it. Blood pulsed out of a bullet wound in her chest, and she held her left side like it hurt.

I didn’t know who she was. I didn’t know how she’d been injured, or if it’d been me who did it. Sometimes I doubted the reliability of my head. Maybe she was an image left over from my life before the Branch. A girl I saw in a movie. A character I read about in a book.

If she was real, I couldn’t stand to live with the idea that I’d hurt her. The only way I’d have gone that far was if she was trying to kill me first. If the girl was connected to the Branch, then she wasn’t innocent. No one involved with them was ever innocent. Me included.

“In my files,” I started, “did it say anything about a girl from any of my missions? She might have been about our age. Or maybe a bit younger.”

Anna thought for a second. “I don’t think so, but I could check again.” She nudged my chin, forcing me to look at her, but I quickly shifted away.

Anna had always been the type of person who didn’t hesitate when it came to touching. For her, touching was caring. For me though, touching always meant pain. That’s what happens when your dad spends his free time beating the shit out of you. My life was crap even before I joined the Branch.

“Is that what all this is about?” Anna asked. “A girl?” There was a note of worry in her voice. Like she was afraid I’d fall down the rabbit hole of love and get myself shot. Fuck that.

I didn’t answer the question. Instead I did what I do best. I scowled at her. “Just look, please?”

She frowned, but nodded.

“Thanks.” I edged past her to the door to escape. This time she didn’t follow.





2

ELIZABETH



I SCANNED THE SHELVES ABOVE MY DESK and ran a finger down the row of cobalt glass bottles labeled with peeling stickers that said things like THAT DAY THE POWER WENT OUT, SPRING, and CARNIVALS.

My memories were carefully chronicled in fragrant oils, mixed in cobalt bottles, labeled and shelved.

I stopped when I found the bottle—the label—that I’d been searching for.

GABRIEL.

I dreamed of him last night.

Upon waking this morning, I was reminded immediately of just how long it’d been since he’d disappeared from my life, as quickly and suddenly as he’d arrived.

It was hard to forget someone when he’d saved your life, regardless of how much—or how little—you valued it.

Gabriel’s bottle was the oldest. The first. Tied to one defining moment in my life—the night that I was saved, the night that I escaped the people who had kidnapped my mother and me and held us captive for six long months.

I plucked the bottle from the shelf. Though the cork was still firmly lodged in the neck, I immediately recalled the way he smelled.

Musk. Pine. A drop of cinnamon. Bergamot. And finally, cedarwood.

The scar running from my left side all the way down to my hip bone flared, a phantom burning where a knife dragged across my flesh, slicing through tissue and muscle, nicking bone.

The second scar, the old bullet wound in my chest, pulsed.

I missed him. I missed him in a foreign way that I couldn’t explain. I didn’t really know him. I hadn’t even spent much time with him. But every time I thought of him, there was this crushing ache in my head, like Gabriel’s absence was a hole inside me, so deep and wide that nothing else would fill it. By saving my life, he’d taken a part of it with him.