Unraveled

TWO

ADEN AWOKE WITH A JOLT, a shout of pain caught in his throat, wild gaze cataloging his surroundings. Bedroom. Desk. Dresser. Plain white walls. Planked floor.

His bedroom in the bunkhouse at the ranch, then.

Alive. He was alive, not burned to a crisp. Thank God. But…

Was he intact? He patted himself down while looking himself over. Skin? Check. Smooth and warm, tanned rather than deep-fried. Two arms? Check. Two legs? Check. Most important—was he now a girl? No. Thank God, thank God, thank God. He expelled a sigh of relief, sagged against the mattress and took stock of everything else.

Sweat soaked him. His hair was plastered to his head, and his boxers looked like they’d…like he’d… His cheeks flushed with heat. If Shannon, his roommate, saw him like this, he’d be teased about having a wet dream. Albeit good-naturedly. That’s just what friends did. Still. No, thanks. He—

Saw the bottom of Shannon’s bunk, and his eyes widened. There were deep grooves in the wooden slats, as if he’d clawed and kicked at his friend’s bed. Repeatedly. He glanced at his fingernails, and sure enough. They were ragged and bloody, with wood shards embedded underneath them.

Great. What else had he done while crashing on vampire blood?

Worry about that later.

“Elijah?” he asked. Time for roll call.

Present, the psychic said, knowing the drill.

One down. “Julian?” The corpse whisperer, as they called him. A single step into a cemetery, and hello, walking dead.

Here.

Sweet. Two down, one to go. “Caleb?” The body possesser.

Yo.

Rock on. The gang was all here.

Once, Aden had wanted them gone. He loved them, but come on. A little privacy would be nice. But then he’d lost Eve. Her name might have been Anne in her real life, but she’d always be Eve to Aden.

He missed her, his motherly time-traveler. Missed her terribly. Now he wasn’t sure he could deal with losing the others. They were a part of him. His best friends. His constant companions. He needed them.

As always, that line of thought made him feel guilty. They deserved their freedom. Wanted their freedom. Maybe. Since Eve had left, they hadn’t asked him to figure out who they’d been before taking prime real estate in his head, as if they were afraid he would succeed and they, too, would have to leave and experience the unknown.

Where Eve had gone, none of them knew. They only knew that she’d disappeared and hadn’t returned.

So what’s going on? Julian asked.

What he means, Caleb said, is that our dreams were hot. And not the good kind of hot. We burned, dude. Burned.

And most of us normally don’t share your dreams, Julian added.

Well, Elijah did, but that was because Elijah was psychic and his visions were Aden’s. Tonight, last night, whenever, hadn’t been a vision, though. It had been real, a mind-merge, but now, pieces of his memory were missing. He remembered seeing Victoria, feeling those flames, then meeting her…sisters? Yes, her sisters. But nothing else stood out. The rest of what happened was blurred at the edges, as if his mind couldn’t process what it had seen. If that were true, though, why did he remember being burned alive? Why did they all remember that? Shouldn’t that be what they forgot? Something too painful to recall?

So? Julian prompted. An explanation would be nice.

“Vampire blood,” he reminded them. He couldn’t just think his replies because they couldn’t hear his inner voice amid the chaos. “We saw through two other sets of eyes.”

Oh, yeah. And speaking of vamps, Caleb said. Where’s ours?

Victoria, he meant. She’s mine, Aden wanted to snap, but didn’t. Caleb the Pervert couldn’t help himself. He lived for girls and “nookie” he might never get. “She’s supposed to meet us here and walk to school with us.” What time was it?

Before he could check the clock on his desk, his bedroom door swung open, and Seth and Ryder strode inside.

“—Shannon won’t mind,” Seth was saying. Seth Tsang. An Asian last name, though you couldn’t tell his race from looking at him. He’d streaked his black hair with red, and had blue eyes and pale skin.

Ryder Jones, who was behind him, arched a brow. He, too, had dark hair, but his eyes were brown. “You sure? You know how possessive that dude is with his stuff.”

Aden grabbed the sheets and jerked them over his sweat-soaked lower body. “Hey, guys. Knock much?”

They ignored him.

“So what’re you looking for?” he grumbled.

Again they ignored him. In fact, they didn’t even glance in his direction.

“Just check the desk,” Seth told Ryder, and the boy shuffled forward to obey.

Aden frowned. Once, these two had hated him. Once, but no longer. They’d reached a truce after their Treat-Everyone-Like-Crap idol, Ozzie, had been kicked off the ranch—and, as of this weekend, sucked dry by vampires. Not that they knew that part. They were as clueless about the “other” world as he had once been.

So why the silent treatment now?

“Where is it?” Seth muttered, crouching in the closet and rummaging through the clothes on the floor, wrist turning and revealing the snake tattooed there.

“Where’s what?” Aden repeated, sitting up.

Yet again, they ignored him.

Shirts and jeans were tossed over Seth’s shoulder, followed by shoes. At the desk, papers crunched under Ryder’s hands. Several minutes passed. Aden kept up a steady chatter—“this joke isn’t funny, try something original, will you just talk to me already?”—to no avail. He finally stood, sheet falling away, forgotten, and stalked to the desk.

With every intention of beating some sense into Ryder, he reached out. Except his hand wisped through the boy’s body.

No way. No damn way.

Aden’s heart pounded against his ribs as he tried again, shaking this time. Again, his flesh wisped through Ryder’s and he could only stand there, wide-eyed and reeling. How was that possible? How the hell was that possible? He’d burned to death, yes, but in someone else’s body. He’d thought… He’d assumed… Was he dead, too? Truly, no-coming-back dead?

No. No way. But… Blood freezing in his veins, he stalked to Seth.

“Found it,” Seth said, standing. He held a book triumphantly in the air. A book about vampires. Any other time, Aden would have floundered over Shannon’s chosen reading material. “Shannon’s weird, dude. He’s always reading this crap. Saves us a trip to the library, but, frickin’ please. I’ve never written a report about wackos with fangs before and I don’t want to start now.”

“Mr. Thomas is the weird one, my man. We’re supposed to write about how evil the bloodsuckers are, like they’re real or something. I can’t take that crank seriously, you know. I’ll probably fail, but ask me if I care.”

His shaking intensifying, Aden tried to wrap his fingers around Seth’s wrist. Nothing. No solid contact. Bile burned a path up his throat. His arm thudded heavily to his side, and he stumbled backward, black winking over his eyes, dizziness rushing through his head.

The answer to his question? Dead. He was really dead. That was the only answer that made sense.

The boys raced from the room, mumbling about stupid new tutors and dumb homework assignments. Aden just stood there. Doomed to live the rest of eternity as a ghost?

God, was this how the souls felt? Trapped, out of control, lost?

“Guys,” he whispered, not knowing how to begin. If he was a ghost, he couldn’t help them figure out who they’d been in their other life. And if he couldn’t help them figure out who they’d been, they could never be free of him. If that’s what they still wanted. “I think—I—This is—”

“Hello, Aden.”

The male voice came from behind him, and he spun. There, in the doorway, was the D and M’s brand-new tutor. Not for him or Shannon since they attended Crossroads High, but for all the others. Mr. Thomas had shown up the day of the Vampire Ball, and Dan had hired him on sight. Which was completely unlike Aden’s guardian. No background check, no intensive interview, just, “You’re perfect!”

Even weirder, the boys acted like they’d known him forever, already comfortable complaining about him. Aden hadn’t met the man officially, but Victoria had secretly pointed him out. Mr. Thomas, as it turned out, was not a let’s-all-learn-and-grow kind of tutor. He was a fairy and Victoria’s enemy, here to find out who was helping her.

The man didn’t look like Aden’s idea of a fairy—small, female and winged. Instead, he was tall, lean, his skin golden and even a bit glittery (okay, that was fairylike). And never had Aden seen a more perfect face. There wasn’t a single flaw. Perfectly spaced blue eyes, a perfectly sloped nose, perfect lips neither too full nor too thin.

And it was embarrassing as hell that Aden had noticed. Anyone found out, and they’d take away his man card or something.

“You can see me?” He gulped. “Hear me?”

“Yes.”

“Am I…dead?” Saying the word was more difficult than thinking it. And how could the fairy see and hear what Seth and Ryder hadn’t been able to?

A chuckle rumbled from the fairy, almost like a thrum of a harp. “Hardly. You’re…somewhere else.”

He wished he could take comfort from that. “Somewhere else?” When everything looked the same? “Okay. Where am I? How’d I get here?” He plowed his fingers through his hair. “What’s going on?”

Aden, Elijah said, and there was a warning in his tone. I have a bad feeling about this.

Dread instantly filled him. Elijah’s bad feelings were, well, bad.

“So many questions.” The man tsked. He waved to the chair at the desk. “Sit, please, and I will endeavor to answer you. After you answer me, of course.”

What should have been a simple request struck Aden as a threat. And with Elijah’s wariness, he suspected a fight would soon break out. He did a weapons check. He had nothing on him, but there were knives hidden in his boots. Boots he wasn’t wearing and might not be able to touch. Boots that were…tucked neatly beside the bed, he saw.

“Sit, Aden.” Two words, both layered with authority.

This time Aden sat. Without going for those blades. He didn’t want to play his (potential) ace unless absolutely necessary.

Blood will run before this meeting ends, Elijah said.

Ours? Caleb asked with annoyance and a hint of fear. ’Cause I like ours and don’t want to give up a single drop.

“My name is Mr. Thomas,” the man said before Elijah could respond, walking forward and stopping only a few feet away from Aden’s chair. He anchored his hands behind his back and braced his legs apart. A war stance.

Aden knew it well. He’d stood that way many times—just before launching himself at the person threatening him. Concentrate. The plain, ordinary name didn’t fit the man’s smooth features in any way, and had to be an alias. If it wasn’t, Aden would plant a big, fat wet one right on his lips.

“You want answers,” he said, wondering, About what? “Then you’ll have to tell me what I want to know. First. How are we here but not here? How am I alive but invisible?”

There were several beats of heavy silence. At first he thought Thomas meant to strike him for using his own tactics against him. With every second that passed, fury grew in those blue eyes. Fury and indignation.

Finally, though, the fairy said, “Your people would call this place another dimension, though it is the true realm of the Fae.” Despite his expression, his words were calmly stated.

Fae had to mean fairy. And another…dimension? Was that even possible? As soon as the question hit him, he wanted to roll his eyes at his own stupidity. After everything he’d seen and done recently, anything was possible. “So, just to clarify, I’m not dead?”

“This constant need for reassurance is tiresome, so listen carefully, because I will not repeat myself again. You are very much alive. But you are in another dimension, therefore humans cannot see or hear you.”

If Thomas was to be believed, Aden wasn’t a ghost. He could return to Victoria, to his friends. “And you brought me here?” A croak.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Another tension-laden pause stretched between them. Clearly, getting answers was going to be like pulling teeth.

“Because,” Thomas finally said on a sigh, “I had met all the students—but you.”

There at the end, the fury had returned to the man’s eyes, this time blended with disgust.

Oh, yes. Blood will run, Elijah said on a trembling breath.

“From a knife?” Please, please don’t say from a knife.

Don’t know, was the reply. Can only see the river of red.

“What do you mean, from a knife?” Thomas demanded.

He must not know of Aden’s reputation as the boy who always talked to “himself.” “Sorry. I wasn’t speaking to you.”

“Then to whom were you speaking?”

A question he’d been asked a thousand times by a thousand different people.

Maybe we should. Run, I mean, Caleb said, all his bravado gone. Before we bleed.

I’m with Caleb. It’s not like we know how to fight a fairy.

Caleb suddenly snickered, amusement momentarily obliterating distress. Fight a fairy. Do you hear yourself, Jules?

“Quiet, please,” Aden snapped, and Thomas hissed in a breath.

“Do not speak to me like that, little boy.”

Rather than explain, Aden rubbed his temple to ward off the coming ache. “There was no reason for you to meet me. You won’t be tutoring me.” He couldn’t run, as Caleb had suggested. Where would he go? Plus, he wasn’t anxious. Yet. He still had those blades. Maybe.

“No.” Thomas started forward, one step, two, then paused, thoughtful. “But I will be killing you.” Okay. Now he was anxious. Aden leapt to his feet. If Thomas issued another threat or made another move toward him, he’d dive-bomb the boots. And if he couldn’t clasp the blades inside them, he’d run like hell, despite his lack of direction.

“Do not even think of bolting, Haden Stone.”

“No one calls me that.” Not since he’d inadvertently butchered his own name as a kid and called himself Aden, and everyone else had followed suit. “I killed the last guy who did. True story.”

Far from intimidated, Thomas barked, “Sit. I answered your questions. You will now answer mine.”

Uh, that would be a big, fat no. He wasn’t waiting around for the second death threat, he decided. The fairy’s anger level had just jacked up a notch. “Sure thing.” Aden faked left, Thomas following him, and then spun right, ducking around the tutor and swiping at the boots. His hand ghosted through the leather.

He cursed under his breath as he sprinted for the door, not allowing himself to wallow in disappointment or fear. Only, some kind of invisible wall blocked him. He slammed into it hard and fast, the shock of impact reverberating through him and tossing him backward. Thomas was in front of him a second later, pushing him the rest of the way down and stomping one of his boots on Aden’s neck.

Instinctively, Aden wrapped his hands around the man’s ankle and shoved. The foot remained planted.

Bright blue eyes peered down at him, and if they’d been guns, Aden would have been blown to bits. “Several weeks ago, an electric shock split through my world, creating a doorway into yours. A doorway we cannot close. The source of that shock has been traced to this ranch. And now to you. I feel the energy wafting from you even now, tugging at me, drawing me. Even increasing my power.” The last was said in a drugged whisper. A needy whisper.

Increasing his power? Then why would he want to kill Aden?

Aden tried to form a reply, but the only sound that left him was a gasp for air. He continued to struggle, clawing at the man’s leg, shoving. Breathe, need to breathe…

He couldn’t die here. In this…dimension? He just couldn’t. No one would know what had happened to him. Not really. They’d just assume Crazy Aden had relapsed and split.

Suffocation doesn’t cause bloodshed, Elijah said. Stay calm. This isn’t the way you’re going to pass on. You know that.

Kick his ass! Caleb shouted.

Kick it good, Julian agreed.

They needed Eve, their voice of reason. But some of what Elijah had said did penetrate his fog of panic. Suffocation wasn’t the predicted end for him. Thomas was simply trying to scare him.

“We had hoped to keep you alive, to use you to finally close that doorway,” Thomas continued. “And yet, what do I find when I walk into your room to introduce myself? The stink of vampire. Our greatest enemy, the race that once tried to slaughter us.”

“I’m sure…they had…good reason.”

A muscle ticked in the fairy’s jaw. “Tell me, Haden Stone. Are you aiding them? Planning to lead them into this dimension to attack us?”

And just how was Aden supposed to lead the vampires here when he had no idea how he’d gotten here in the first place? “Can’t…speak…anymore.”

The pressure eased on his neck. “There’s no reason for you to answer my questions. I know the truth. You are aiding them, and that is why you must die.”

Aden kept his hands on Thomas’s ankle, taking a moment to catch his breath and making a production out of gasping as he stealthily searched the room for some sort of weapon he could actually use.

All he discovered was his own determination. Over the years, he’d fought too many corpses to count, their poison working through his body, weakening him, sickening him. Yet still he’d won. Every time. He would not let a fairy defeat him.

Use your hands, Elijah prompted. Unbalance him.

Aden curled his fingers under Thomas’s boot and jerked with every ounce of strength he possessed, upsetting the big guy’s center of gravity and finally sending him tumbling down. Aden was standing a moment later, assuming the same this-is-war pose the fairy had adopted earlier.

“That was not wise, boy.”

Though he’d never seen Thomas move from the floor, the voice came from behind him. Directly behind him. Warm breath trekked over the back of his neck, making him cringe. Slowly Aden turned, knowing a sudden movement would cause the fairy to strike. They faced off. Aden was tall for his age, just over six feet, yet Thomas towered over him.

“I do not like to see humans suffer, and would have ended you painlessly. But…” An eerie smile lifted the man’s lips. “I told you not to fight me. You disobeyed. Now I will show no mercy.”

Blood, Elijah gasped.

This was it, then. The big one.

“Bring it,” Aden said.

Suddenly the room’s only window shattered and a giant black blur flew inside. That blur—Riley in wolf form, Aden realized—landed, green eyes glowing, lips pulled back and sharp white teeth bared. A furious growl echoed from the walls.

Get back, Aden.

A command from Riley, whispered straight into his mind, blending with the others, yet still Aden heard it. “You can see me?” he asked, even knowing the wolf was too distracted to reply. If so, could Riley see Thomas? Could Thomas see Riley?

“Mistake, wolf,” Thomas said, turning to face Riley. There was enough menace in his expression to kill.

Apparently the answer to both of Aden’s questions was the same. Hells yes.

Without any more warning, the two leapt at each other, meeting in the middle of the room in a tangle of claws, biting teeth, odd bright lights and shimmering blades that appeared out of nowhere.

No question about this. As Elijah had said, blood would flow.

This match would be to the death.