Chapter 20

Angie

I never cared about other people’s pain. Not that I’d had much of my own before the canisters fell. I’d lived an idyllic life. Perfectly safe from emotional turmoil.

Maybe if I’d paid more attention to what made other’s cry, I would have been able to handle the pain I was about to experience.

LATER THAT DAY

It was late afternoon when Stevron finally made the decision to stop and make camp for the night.

I glanced at the speedometer on the truck. It told me that we had travelled seventeen hundred and fifty-two miles. To my mind, it wasn’t enough.

Our truck had burned through close to ten fyre eggs. A very costly escape.

From what I could see out of the cracked and splintered side window, we were in the middle of nowhere. Further south than I’d ever been before.

The landscape was barren. Dry and harsh. I hadn’t spotted a mountain, hill, or any evidence that there were any caves in the area for a very long time.

That is unless the caves were underground. I didn’t like the thought of that prospect. It always made me nervous when Em insisted on sump diving. The fact that she had to do the egg retrievals without her helmet only made my fears worsen.

I felt the slightest tap pecking at the back of my mind. I quickly turned my attention away from Em.

I glanced to Stevron.

Several times during the day I’d wondered where the tall, Adonis was taking us. I’d asked. He hadn’t answered. I’d also asked where the nearest fyre arena was. He didn’t inform me. In fact Stevron had talked very little and looked at me even less.

His withdrawal from me made me feel unexpectedly uneasy. I don’t know why I was feeling so dejected. I’d been wanting Stevron to leave me alone for months. Why did I have this sudden need to know what he was thinking?

Disgusted with myself I pushed my wishy-washy, indecisiveness aside and reached for the truck’s door handle. I shoved the door open and climbed down.

The smell of water made my nostrils flare. Water, fresh flowing, with a hint of something sweet I couldn’t quite make out.

I hoped we had stopped beside some form of a lake. I was thirsty and badly in need of a good washing. My skin felt leathery and sticky. I’d been sweating pretty heavily for the last couple of hours. The day had turned scorching hot as we’d travelled.

The heat made me think of Jam and how the journey must have been hard on those in the back of the truck. The tap became a louder tap, tap, tapping. I immediately threw up my barriers to Jake.

“Not now,” I growled under my breath.

Stevron opened the truck’s panelled door and began to help people out.

The first thing I did was get the only tent and cot we’d managed to smuggle on board, before fleeing our base camp, set up so that my brother could get settled on it. Dirk and Carter helped and within minutes Stevron was administering another ‘treatment’ to Jam.

My heart sank as I watched the two. Jam wasn’t healing as fast as he used too. I tried to convince myself that it was because he had been more seriously wounded this time. I wasn’t doing a very good job of lying to myself.

I glanced at my arms. My once smooth and taunt skin had begun to sag at the elbows.

Depression crept over me. Only a few days had passed since the Prayers attack and yet I’d aged weeks. Was my aging speeding up? I couldn’t tell and I was too terrified to ask Calvin.

The sound of my sister swearing interrupted my thoughts. I turned around and looked out of the tent to see Em and Carter arguing. She slapped his hand away and then snapped at him. “Piss off, Barty’s-a-shit!”

Carter immediately retracted his hands. He’d been about to help Em take one of our bedrolls from the truck. Em stumbled and I saw the pain on Carter’s face as she fell to the hard packed ground. He made a move, but Em’s pained growl echoed around the small camp. “Don’t even think of touching me!”

Verena paused and sent Em a surprised, confused look. The other woman had been on her way to where Calvin was building a campfire with some dry bush. I don’t know where the scientist had gotten the twigs. There didn’t look to be any vegetation around.

I turned my attention back to my sister.

It was obvious that Em and Carter were both hurting. I couldn’t tell which one hurt more. My loyalties, although firmly parked in my sister’s corner, had me seesawing again. Carter was suffering, maybe even more so than Em.

Watching Em treat Carter with such hatred had me thinking that more was going on than just the fact that Carter had lied to Em about who he was. There had to be more. Much more.

Something wasn’t right. Em wasn’t the type to hold a grudge. She was kind and caring. More like our mother than I could ever hope to be. No something was going on that I didn’t know about. Something that had upset my sister. Could it have been Jake? Had he shown Em the Far Beyond?

I quaked at the terrifying thought of Jake showing Em the same horrors that he’d shown me over the years.

I immediately fingered the tiny pouch Stevron had given me earlier while we’d been alone in the truck’s cab. It held a couple of bushberries. He’d told me to keep them close, just in case. It scared me even more thinking that Stevron expected Jake to squeeze through a crack in my barriers and force me to crossover. Was Stevron afraid that I wouldn’t be strong enough to find my way back? I feared he might be right.

A prickling sensation, of another oncoming panic attack, crept along my nerve endings.

Jake was getting stronger. I could feel it. Then, so should I.

I took a deep breath. It was time I talked to my sister. Time to find out what was going on between her and Carter. No more lies…and no more hiding.

©Legend of the Sapphyre Wings by Janet Merritt