The Aberration of Eden Pruitt, page 10
Forrester jumped into the passenger side as Eden squeezed into the back. Cass threw the car into reverse, and peeled away.
15
Mom gritted her teeth and Dad stirred in and out of consciousness as Cassian maneuvered through traffic, trying to get away as firetrucks and police cars and military vehicles rushed in the opposite direction. Jack tried making calls on his cell phone. None of them went through. He tried finding Concordia News on the radio, but all he got was static.
It took forever for the traffic to thin, but when it did, Cassian punched the gas.
Eden watched the speedometer climb above 100 mph.
Nobody objected but the automated voice from the car speakers kindly and calmly asking him to slow down.
Cass ignored it.
Jack gave up on the radio, but not the phone. He alternated between Dr. Norton and Annette with no luck while everyone but Eden coughed, including her father, who grimaced with every single convulsion. The further away from Chicago they drove, the emptier the world became. Until it was just them on the highway, like they were the last people left on earth.
When Cass pulled up Dr. Norton’s gravel drive, he didn’t even come to a stop before the front door opened and two figures stepped out into the night.
Dr. Norton and Barrett Barr.
Cassian parked.
Eden opened the door.
“It collapsed!” Barrett said, his voice tinged with excitement, like this was some game instead of a living hell. “The Sapphire Hotel. The whole thing’s a giant ash heap.”
Dr. Norton took one look at Dad and fetched the wheelchair as Barrett continued talking. “Four more bombs have gone off since the first blast. All downtown. All within a block of The Sapphire. And get this. There were snipers outside waiting for people to evacuate.”
Eden’s mind spun.
Why?
Who?
Surely not Mordecai. He didn’t need to go to so much trouble to get her on the roof. Not when he had her under his control before the first explosion.
“Do they know who’s responsible?” Eden asked Barrett.
“No, but reporters are speculating.”
Mom hobbled out of the car as Dr. Norton returned with the wheelchair. Dad insisted Dr. Norton help Mom first, to which Mom objected. “I’m not the one struggling to breathe.” It was an unconvincing statement, given the wheezing that followed.
“Let’s get you both taken care of,” Dr. Norton said.
Eden lifted her father into the wheelchair, his lack of complaint a testament to how much pain he must be in. Cassian took one look at Eden’s mother, then swept her easily into his arms and carried her inside.
“Mordecai is dead,” he told Dr. Norton, an after-thought of a statement issued over his shoulder while the doctor pushed Eden’s father behind them, insisting that Jack follow so he could check him, too.
Eden stood outside with Barrett.
Her lungs were fine.
Her body perfectly intact.
She had carried her mother down sixty-five flights of stairs, inhaling smoke the whole way, and she wasn’t sore. She wasn’t even tired. Her hands, however? They shook like the rooftop floor of The Sapphire.
Barrett stared at her, his eyes wide in the dark. “Reporters are saying it might be Interitus.”
To that, she had no reply.
Eden stood in the shower, her hands shaking as she tried to wash away the stench of smoke in her hair. Grime and ash rinsed down the drain, but no matter how hard she scoured, the smoky smell remained. Every time she inhaled, memories flashed through her mind like scenes from a horror film. The fallen bodyguard’s disfigured face. Pulling out the gun from Mordecai’s holster. Pointing it at Cassian. Pointing it at her mother. Pulling the trigger.
She scrubbed harder and harder, more and more frantically, until a burst of pain sliced through her temple. With a sharp hiss, she clapped her hand over the spot. Eden stood beneath the spray, unsure what had happened. What was that? An aftershock from the torment she’d experienced on the roof? Or something else? Something new? She waited to see if it would come again. She didn’t move a muscle until the hard spray of hot water went cold.
When she got out, she wrapped herself in a towel and balled up the ruined dress from the floor. She shoved it deep into the trash bin with hands that still shook, pulled out the bag, and tied it tight to keep the smell of smoke inside. The diamond choker glinted in the sink's basin where it had fallen. Its velvet box lost somewhere in the rubble that was Oswin Brahm’s luxury hotel. Maybe Oswin Brahm was lost there, too. After all he’d done for America, after all he’d done to rebuild this country he loved after its near destruction—had Interitus claimed him in the end?
Eden dressed in a pair of sweats, set the smoky trash outside on the front porch, and stepped into the living room, where Barrett, Jane, Dr. Norton, and a very agitated Jack sat watching the news. Her parents were asleep. Cassian unaccounted for.
If he was smart, he jumped on his bike and rode away.
Far, far away.
The shaking in her hands moved into her arms. She hugged herself in an attempt to make it stop while reporters covered the war zone that had become downtown Chicago. Barrett was right. They were already speculating, throwing out the infamous and dreaded name—Interitus.
This was a well-orchestrated attack, they said. Interitus had tried to target Chicago twenty-one years ago and failed. Now, it seemed, they’d succeeded. Hospitals were overflowing. Airports and train stations were packed with frightened travelers. The entire country was in a panic despite America’s Executive Director urging citizens to stay calm.
Eden hugged herself tighter and looked away, her gaze connecting with an ominous device next to the vase of flowers on the table.
Bile rose up her throat as she stepped away, her stomach churning with nausea. Mordecai had used it to take control of her body without her consent. For several horrifying minutes, it hadn’t been her own.
The bile gathered into a lump that lodged itself in her esophagus.
She felt dirty.
Ashamed.
And absolutely, horrendously violated.
She tried to take a breath, but her lungs refused to cooperate. Feeling like she might retch, Eden pivoted on her heel and escaped out onto the deck.
Cass stood in the shadowed hallway, watching Eden go.
Nobody else noticed her leave. They were too riveted by the television as media moguls speculated over who was responsible and what exactly was happening.
He grabbed a bottle of sparkling water from the fridge, popped the cap, and joined her outside, where the night was quiet and eerily peaceful in light of the chaos unfolding ninety miles south. Eden sat in one of the Adirondack chairs with her knees pulled up to her chest and her arms wrapped around her shins—like she had their first night here, when she saw herself attacking her parents, when Norton explained to her why she’d done it. As he slid the door shut, she peeked over her shoulder, then quickly looked away like she couldn’t meet his eye.
He sat beside her, the night replaying itself like flashes in a lightning storm. Eden, in his arms on the dance floor. Her odd request to use the restroom. The explosion. The elevator doors sliding shut with her inside. Watching the lift climb to the top. His mad dash to the roof. Finding her with him. The terror in her eyes as she aimed her gun.
There were moments in Cass’s life—horrible moments—seared into his mind like a hot branding iron, each memory saturated with the same terror that had engulfed Eden. Watching his mother die through the slats of a closet door. The roar of the crowd and the blood on his hands as he stared down at a lifeless man who wasn’t his father. Standing in Beverly Randall-Ransom’s conference room, watching Eden hand herself over to the enemy, unsure if he would have to carry out a command that would not only destroy her but him, too.
And now, tonight. And the helpless, panic-stricken look on Eden’s face.
He took a long drink from the bottle. Coughed a few times.
Eden stared out at the lake, moonlight reflecting off her profile—her posture rigid and unyielding. He could see it in the bob of her throat. The clenched muscles of her jaw. She was a tightly twisted wire about to snap.
“Eden—”
“I understand if you want out,” she said quickly—a tumble of words—as she yanked on the sleeves of her sweatshirt. As though doing so might hide the tremble in her hands.
Cass cocked his head. “Why would I want out?”
“It’s too dangerous. I’m too dangerous.”
“You think danger bothers me?”
“I shot at you.”
“You missed.”
“I almost killed my mother.” She bit her lip in the wake of those words, her chin quivering tremulously, and wrapped her arms tighter around her shins. “I would have, if you hadn’t pushed her out of the way.”
“That wasn’t you.”
Her eyes flashed as she finally met his gaze. “Yes, it was.”
“You hit the dead center of a target the first time you fired a gun.”
“So?”
“If you were trying to hit me, you would have hit me. If you were trying to hit her, you would have hit her. You didn’t.”
Eden spluttered, as though grappling for an objection.
“You resisted,” he continued. “And that? That was you.”
She shook her head—short, jerky shakes—her lips pressed together, her nostrils slightly flared. “It was also me who pulled the trigger.”
“He was controlling you.”
“Because of what’s inside me! Because of what’s a part of me.”
“A part. But it’s not you.” Cassian Gray was not a man given to speeches. People, in his opinion, spoke too much. Used too many words. But right then, he would give an entire address if it would get her to see what he saw when he looked at her. Bravery and goodness and generosity and resilience and a dogged determination to protect the people she loved. “And you’re not the only one.”
She peered at him warily.
“You don’t think we all have the same struggle—a battle inside that has us doing things we don’t want to do? If you’re good, you fight it. You starve it.”
Moisture gathered in her eyes as she continued her short, jerky head-shaking.
“I’m telling you right now, I’m looking at one of the best.”
A tear tumbled down her cheek.
Cass leaned forward, reached under her chair, and swiveled it to face his, legs scratching against wood. He brought his hand to her face to still the shaking and caught the second tear with his thumb. “The world has plenty of monsters, Eden. You aren’t one of them.”
She stared at him like she desperately needed his words to be true.
He stared back, determined to show her they were.
With a sniff, she pulled away. Pushed all ten fingers into her towel-dried hair and clasped her hands behind her neck. “I’m sorry for shooting at you.”
“I’m sorry for finding you.” One corner of his mouth quirked. “Sort of.”
She laughed a hoarse, teary laugh and wiped her cheeks.
Cass leaned closer, his knees on either side of hers. Her long eyelashes damp.
“I guess we’re even then,” she said.
“I guess so.”
He couldn’t resist any longer.
With a piercing softness that grabbed him by the heart, he cupped her chin and kissed her.
She kissed him back—her lips soft but hungry, like she’d been waiting for this as impatiently as he had, fanning the desire he’d been so careful to constrain. He wanted to pull her into his lap. He wanted to keep on kissing her. Erase every inch of space between them. But she’d been through hell and his body was responding a little too eagerly, so he forced himself to pull away and take a ragged breath.
She brushed her thumb over his bottom lip, her eyes meeting his as a foreign, frightening emotion slammed through him.
Love.
He loved her.
He loved Eden Pruitt with a ferocity that alarmed him.
It was too fast.
Undoubtedly foolish.
He didn’t deserve her.
He didn’t fit into her world.
But it was true all the same.
He loved this girl who was self-sacrificing and brave. Intelligent and kind and steadfast with an equanimity that was rare at any age, let alone eighteen.
To keep from speaking the frightening confession, he picked up his bottle and took a long swig.
Eden tucked her hair behind her ears and sank back into her chair. “Who is the Monarch?”
Cass rubbed his jaw as Mordecai’s last words swirled in his mind.
They were … a gift …
His knuckles whitened as he squeezed the bottle in his hand. Whoever—whatever—this Monarch was, Eden was not a thing to be gifted.
16
The world has plenty of monsters, Eden. You’re not one of them.
The words held her together through the night. They held her together now, as she sat on the sofa in a crowded living room, watching the news with the rest of the world, sandwiched between her mother and the boy who had spoken them.
Cassian’s arm rested by his side on the couch cushion, his pinkie finger less than an inch from her thigh. A not-quite touch that was driving her mad or keeping her from madness. Eden couldn’t decide.
On her right, Mom sat with a brace around her injured ankle, and next to her—the man who had worked relentlessly on rehab for the past four weeks, looking drained of all energy. Last night, he’d spent every remaining ounce and now, he sat in his wheelchair, the spirometer Dr. Norton encouraged him to use untouched in his lap.
Dr. Norton moved about in the kitchen, brewing more coffee, and chopping vegetables for omelets while Jack paced like an addict jonesing for his next fix. He couldn’t get a hold of his wife. He had tried video calls and emails and anything else he could think of, but each one of his messages bounced. Every five minutes, he would stop and phone Annette. Then he would swear loudly and resume his pacing.
On the floor, Jane sat next to her sack full of clothes with Mordecai’s disassembled device in front of her. Jack had taken it apart. He found a chip inside and spent an hour studying it between failed phone calls before declaring it beyond repair. Now Jane was tinkering with the pieces like tinkering was an old hobby. Only instead of using any tools, she picked with her fingernails in the same rabbity way that she picked at her food. Eden had to fight the urge to sweep the pieces into the fire crackling in the grate. She didn’t want that device fixed. She wanted it destroyed.
Barrett perched on the edge of the armchair with the television remote in hand, running unsolicited commentary while flipping from Concordia Chicago to Concordia National to Concordia World, each running slightly different coverage on the same catastrophe.
Interitus had officially taken credit for the attack. Downtown Chicago was still burning. First responders had been cleared from the site. Military swarmed Michigan Avenue, which was marked by smoldering fires and precarious wreckage with hidden pockets ready to collapse. Hundreds remained unaccounted for, many of whom were high-profile leaders and celebrities. Candlelight vigils were cropping up across the nation to honor the fallen.
Every station would intermittently show mugshots of terrorists at-large affiliated with the evil regime, the most popular being a female named Prudence Dvorak, currently in her mid-thirties with an outdated photograph that depicted a girl much younger. A girl similar in age to Eden. They had assumed Mordecai was too young to be associated with Karik Volkova, but Mordecai wasn’t much younger than Dvorak. Had Volkova been recruiting teenagers? And if Mordecai was a member of Interitus, did he orchestrate the attack to get to Eden, or was he trying to get to Eden amid an already-planned attack? The latter seemed too coincidental, the former too excessive. But then, if Mordecai was part of Interitus, terror was his aim. Maybe he saw the Prosperity Ball as an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone: get Eden, sow terror.
The unanswered questions gave her a headache.
She couldn’t stop thinking about Mordecai’s last words.
A gift.
For the Monarch.
Nobody had heard them but herself and Cassian. And while it seemed like important information to share with her parents, she hadn’t been able to bring herself to do so. Not when they both looked so weak and vulnerable.
Jack let another curse fly and fisted his hair. “The attack happened in Chicago. Why is cell service down in Milwaukee?”
His question went without answer.
On the television, a news anchor for Concordia Chicago informed the public that Perk was on a temporary moratorium to stop the spread of false information. A photograph of a well-known and deeply beloved actress replaced the mugshot of Prudence Dvorak, followed by photographs of several others. America’s finest, the news anchor said. All of them gathered in one place. So many dead. So many more missing in the rubble.
Barrett flipped to Concordia National.
The press secretary spoke with reporters, sharing the same message again and again. Stay calm. If possible, stay at home. America’s Board of Directors were taking every means necessary to ensure the safety of its citizens.
“This vile regime is a cancer that must be eradicated. They have struck twice. We will not allow a strike three. The infrastructure of our great nation cannot withstand another blow, which means we must rally together and fully cooperate with these precautions to prevent another attack.”
“Maybe they shut down cell service,” Mom suggested.
“Like they shut down Perk,” Barrett added.
“What would that do other than cause more panic?” Jack replied.
“If they think Interitus is communicating via cell, it stops their ability to communicate,” Barrett said, watching as Jane smelled—actually sniffed—two of the pieces and clicked them together.
“Madam Secretary,” a reporter said. “How is it possible that Interitus was able to carry out such an orchestrated assault?”
