Autumn in the Dark Meadows (The Autumn Series) (19 page)

“Is any of that yours?” he asked quietly, and began to reach for me.

I shook my head.  “It’s that guy’s blood, the guy Karl shot... Arnett,” I said, shuddering at the horrific memory of him begging me to take him with us, his blood draining from his body in front of my eyes.

“Are you okay?”  I lightly touched Grey’s stomach, and he winced.  He motioned for me to follow him, and we left the kitchen and entered a vacant room.  He leaned against one of the hospital beds and began to unbutton his sweater.

“Let me,” I said, as I took his hands gently away from the worn wooden buttons.  He seemed content to let me help and watched me as I removed his sweater.  I pushed up the t-shirt beneath and locked eyes with him.  Before I could comment on the redness blossoming across his stomach and chest, he reached for me, wrapping a hand around the back of my neck and pulling me toward him.  His mouth found mine, and I savored the taste of his sweet lips and the softness of his tongue.  I wanted to melt into him.  My hands moved up his sides and locked around his back as his kiss dropped from my lips and traced the line of my jaw and then found my neck.

I pulled back suddenly.  “I’m sorry about everything.  Not letting you explain, ignoring you, being rude to you.  I’m so sorry,” I said, desperately needing him to understand.  “I was terrified about what you’d told me, and all I could think about was that you’d kept it from me.  It made me feel apart from you, like you’d kept me in the dark, and that just reminded me there was so much I didn’t know about you and where you come from and the entire universe.  It scared me,
you
scared me.  I was so stupid, though.  I know you’d never...” I paused for a breath.

He held my face close to his and tenderly stroked my cheek.  “It’s okay,” he began.

“It’s not okay,” I interrupted.  “You gave me no reason not to trust you.  You saved my life more than once, and you trusted me with your secret.”  My voice grew sad.  “And then I just walked away from you.”

He shook his head.  “You had every right to.  You were scared.  I understand.  The important thing is you’ve come back to me now.”  He leaned in to kiss me again, but I spoke before his lips touched mine.

“Please don’t go,” I whispered.

“Where would I go?” he asked.

“The University ship.  Back home.  I can’t lose anyone else, especially you.”

“I am home,” he said.  “And I’m not going anywhere.  You have no idea how much I’ve missed you, Autumn.”

It was okay.  It was all okay.  Grey was staying here with me.  We were together again.  I knew I should be happy, and part of me was, but the rest of me screamed for Sarah.  She was really dead and had been for a year.  The idea of her being alive had given me hope and motivation and a joy I’d held inside me like a candle.  The warring emotions of grief over losing Sarah yet again and the happiness from being back in Grey’s arms tore at my insides.  I swallowed hard to keep from crying.

Grey pulled me against him and held me firmly against his chest.  I began to cry, about Sarah really being gone, about Grey, about Karl, about The Plague, everything.  The harder I cried, the more release I felt.  It was as if I was squeezing the sadness out.  Tears rolled down my cheeks, streaking through the dried blood left from Arnett’s fingertips, washing it away.

It was as if the last several weeks of separation never happened.  Grey and I were one again.  He sat down on the bed and pulled me into his lap.  He held me until I quieted.  He looked happy and sad all at the same time.

“Can you take us somewhere?” I whispered.

“Of course.”  He pulled his sweater back onto his shoulders and slipped his hand up from my back and into my hair, pulling my head back down to his chest.  I closed my eyes.

A rush of cool air gusted through my hair, and when I opened my eyes, we were very high up and I could see the desert mountains all around us with no obstruction.  My gaze widened with surprise, and I slowly broke away from Grey to look at the peak of the Eiffel Tower above us.

“Paris?” I guessed.

“Well, sort of,” he said.  “It’s the best I can do right now.  I figured we should stay close, just in case.”

We walked to the railing and looked down onto the tops of the hotels clustered around the base of the tower.  We were still in Las Vegas.  This wasn’t the real Eiffel Tower.  This was a replica, built by one of the hotels to simulate the grandeur of the City of Lights.

I saw his hand on the railing near mine and took it.  He stepped behind me and wrapped the open ends of his sweater around me, so I was inside it with him.  I leaned back and let my head rest on his shoulder.  The air felt crisp up here, and constant.  I closed my eyes and let myself feel every contour of his warm body pressed against mine.

“How’s your stomach?”  I whispered.

“It’ll be fine,” he said.

“I was scared I misread you on the roof at the warehouse store.  That you were too injured to project us away.”

“Honestly, I was scared, too.  I tried to project myself to you after they dropped me on the roof, but I was too weak.  I hoped Karl would keep talking long enough for me to gather enough strength to take us away.  Thank God you were smart enough to run to me.”

“I forget how hard astral projection can be for you.  You seem so perfect at everything you do.”

“Not perfect.”  He shook his head.  “How are you feeling?  Are you okay?”

“Physically, yes.  Mentally and emotionally, not really.  I’m mad at myself that I didn’t realize it was Karl all along, and I feel like Sarah died all over again.  But I guess it doesn’t really matter.  She wasn’t alive; she wasn’t the one texting me.  I should have known it was too good to be true, but I wanted her back so much.”

“That was cruel of him to use her like that,” he whispered.

The wound I’d let heal a year ago felt raw again.  The image of the last time I saw her played over and over in my mind.  Watching her wave at me through the bus window, her brown hair glinting in the afternoon sunshine.  “How?” I breathed.  “How could he have done this?”

“He might have gotten into The Water Tower.  Your family was famous.  It couldn’t have been hard to find out where you lived.  Though I didn’t see anything out of place when I was there to get those pictures for you.”

“He knew about a trip to Palm Springs Sarah and I went on together.”

“Did you write about it in a journal?”

I thought about the variety of journals I used to keep.  “I used to write everything in my journals.  He could have learned everything he needed to know about Sarah in there.  But how did he get Sarah’s phone?”

Grey looked out over the mid-morning desert and said, “When you check in at a hospital, the staff locks away your personal belongings in labeled bags.  Karl could have looked at your journal, and gotten the idea to see if he could find Sarah’s phone at UCLA when he read she went there.  That’s what I would have done, if I’d been Karl.”

I stayed silent.  I hated that the messages I believed were Sarah, had been Karl.  The sick feeling in my stomach returned.

“Did the hospital at UCLA really burn down?”

Grey remained silent so I looked up at him.  His eyes were distant.  He was inside a memory.  “Yes.  It was the fourth day after The Plague appeared, and a lot of people died.  The hospital staff was dying in the hallways.  No one slept.  No one knew anything.  Order broke down.”  He glanced down at me.  “It was a horrible week,” he said simply.

I couldn’t believe I was only a few miles away when he went through this.  I wondered how long Sarah had lived.  If Grey had treated her.

“Did you... happen to, you know, see her?” I asked.

He shook his head sadly.  “It’s definitely possible, but I saw so many people, and I don’t remember any of their faces.”

I shook my head.  I didn’t have the words.  I hoped she had died peacefully after finding her parents.  I hoped she was nowhere near the wing that burned down.  I shuddered.  I couldn’t think about this any more.

“So what are we going to do?” I asked.

“About The Front?”

“The Front, us... everything.  I’m so tired of everything being so complicated.  In a perfect world, I’d have met you in LA.  We’d be dating, and my dad would be telling me all the things he didn’t like about you, and why I shouldn’t be dating yet.  My mom would be asking you embarrassing questions, and I’d be telling Sarah every detail about you.”  I paused.  “Every detail I could share without breaking your confidence, I mean.”

“I would love to have met your parents, and Sarah.”

“Did you really bring it here?” My voice cracked.  “How could that have happened?”

“The last time I left Earth to briefly return to The University was four years ago.  I didn’t go anywhere else, and we have a rigorous decontamination process when we enter and exit the ship.  So I doubt I, personally, transmitted the disease, but I do think a member of The University brought The Plague here.  Originally, I thought it was an accident, but the more Lydia and I went over it, the more we both suspect it was premeditated.”

I turned around to stare at him.  “Whoever brought it here... they did it on purpose?!”

Grey looked heartbroken as he filled me in on his suspicions.  “The Plague spread too quickly for it to be one accidental exposure.  Even with the current rate of international travel, it would have taken weeks, or even months for it to spread across the globe naturally.  I’m fairly certain it was strategically released all over the planet at the same time.  It was the most massive terrorist attack this planet has ever seen.”

“Grey, that’s... crazy.  Who would do something like that to an entire planet?  You have to be wrong.”

“I don’t think I am, but it’s possible.  Lydia and I are in agreement, though.”

“Has this ever happened before?  At The University?”  I asked.

“No.  Never.  We’re a peaceful organization.  That’s why we left Andros.”

“Can you... go back and ask them about it?”

“When Lydia left, she said she’d report what happened here and find out what they know.  We will discover whoever was responsible, Autumn.  I promise.”

I turned back around to look out past the Eiffel Tower.  The ugly rooftops of the casinos filled most of my view, so I stared at the mountains in the distance.  I couldn’t fathom someone intentionally killing so many innocent people.  What would be the point?

Grey touched my back gently, and I turned around and put myself into his arms.

“I missed you,” I whispered into his chest.

“I missed you, too,” he whispered back.  “And I am still very much in love with you.  That will never change.  As long as I live, I am yours,
Fòmhair
.”

It had been a while since I’d heard him say my name in Gaelic.  The few words spoken between us in my grandparents’ native tongue were like our own secret language.  “I’m so glad you’re staying.  I thought you wouldn’t,” I whispered.

“I could never leave you.”

We stayed on the top of the Eiffel Tower for another twenty minutes before he took us back.  I didn’t want to go, but he had patients to get back to, and I needed to find Ben.  I owed him an apology.

Grey projected us directly back to an empty room at the Egyptian, so I wouldn’t startle anyone with the dried blood all over my clothes, then left again for the clinic.  After changing into clean clothes and washing my face and hands, I headed back downstairs.  Ben and Sam were eating lunch on the far side of the cafeteria, and Ben looked up at me immediately.  I lifted my hand in greeting, but Ben only nodded and Sam looked quickly back down at the food in front of her.  She looked miserable.  I felt drawn toward her suddenly, sympathetic to what she experienced in Los Angeles and what she went through to escape Karl’s grasp.  Maybe it was because the chance of Sarah returning to me was gone now, but I needed to repair the damage I’d done to the potential friendship growing between me and Sam.

I remembered Shad’s warning that Ben might confide in her I was worried about them being together.  I decided I should talk to her and explain myself, sooner than later.  I didn’t want my words twisted around, because the truth of the matter was, I had begun to like Sam, now that I had spent more time with her.  And after witnessing what happened to Arnett at the warehouse store, I had even more sympathy for the situation Sam had been in.

As I grabbed a bowl of ramen noodles, Sam left the room.  I abandoned my soup to follow her.  Now was as good a time as any, I thought.

I slipped out of the dining room and scanned the area but didn’t see her.  I searched the ruined casino floor, winding my way through the wrecked slot machines and miniature sand dunes.  I checked inside the Native American exhibit, where a group of people worked to catch all the fish and put them into large buckets to be transported to the Palmetto.  But Sam wasn’t among them.

I finally exited through the back entrance of the hotel and climbed out of the cavity of sand made by the recent excavation of the back door.  I found myself by the pool, where the water had long since evaporated and been replaced with a thick coating of sand and dead palm fronds.  Again, Sam was nowhere to be seen.  I sighed and resigned myself to finding her later to smooth things over.

I slid back down into the sand pit to the door and reached for the smooth steel handle, only to discover I was locked out.  I sighed, climbed back out of the sand pit and started the long walk around the massive building.

I rounded the pool, heading for the corner of the pyramid, and caught sight of Sam coming out of the shadows of the parking garage toward me.  She was running full tilt.

“Sam!” I called.  Her head snapped up when she heard me.  She slowed her run down to a jog and closed the distance between us.

“Autumn, hey,” she said, clamping her hand on my arm and ushering me in the direction she was jogging.  I was forced to keep up a brisk pace to stay with her.

“Do you have a second to talk?  I wanted to thank you for finding Snicket for me.  I also owe you an apology, or at least an explanation.”  Sam picked up her pace, and I began to jog to keep up with her.

“We’re fine!  No worries,” she said.