A Chosen Life Page 7

  “I feel fine,” he lied. “Are you going to be okay? Honestly?”

  She put her clammy hand over his fingers. “Don’t you worry about me, I’m—”

  Someone banged on the front door.

  Dane came scrambling into the room with his eyes wide. Tolen turned toward the door and his mother grabbed his arm.

  “No, Tolen. Don’t.”

  “Why not? You don’t even know who it is . . . knocking on the door at two in the morning.” His heart started beating faster and louder.

  His mother threw a nervous glance at Dane and he nodded toward the window. “Tolen, see who it is—I doubt the bad guys would knock.”

  Tolen peeked through the curtain to see a huge police officer standing in the glow of the porch-light, his thick arms folded across his muscled chest. “It’s a cop, but I don’t recognize him. County Sheriff maybe? I don’t see his car.” He glanced back over his shoulder.

  “Jeff probably called them,” Dane whispered.

  Tolen blanched. If they’d called in the sheriff, he was done for.

  The cop knocked again. “Ms. Parks? Tolen? I need to speak with you about what happened tonight.” His muffled voice sounded strange and unhappy.

  “What should I do?” Tolen asked.

  “Let me check his character.”

  “No, Mom, you’re too weak.”

  Dane moved to stand beside Tolen’s mother, his hand on her shoulder. “Tolen let him in. Areen, if it seems like the cop’s suspicious I’ll knock him out and we’ll get out of here. But there’s no sense drawing unnecessary attention by disobeying the law until we know more and there’s no way you can run until you regenerate.”

  “How do we know he isn’t a servant of the Dark?” She clutched Dane’s arm with shaking fingers.

  “Like I said, a bad guy wouldn’t knock. You know how the Dark works.” He gave Tolen the thumbs up, but his eyes were filled with worry.

  Tolen’s head spun with their strange conversation. They spoke of dark as if it were a thing, not what happens when the sun goes down or you turn out a light. And why was Dane suddenly giving orders?

  He opened the door and his stomach seemed to drop to the bottom of his shoes. The police officer’s bright sapphire eyes were frighteningly familiar. They were the same clear blue with dark cobalt lines stretching from the iris to the pupil as one of Tolen’s eyes. The pupils were dilating and constricting just like Tolen’s eye did.

  This guy was not a normal cop.

  “Hello, Tolen.” The cop cast a fleeting look behind him and Tolen noticed his black hair was long and tied into a thick ponytail. “May I come in?”

  Tolen’s knees felt like rubber. His heart thumped painfully in his chest as, seemingly without his control, his muscles contracted and he opened the door wide enough for the man to enter. It felt as if something inside him, more powerful than his fear, recognized the guy and trusted him.

  But as soon as the cop crossed the threshold, his mother sat up and screamed. Dane jumped in front of her in a protective crouch, and blindingly bright colors flashed across Tolen’s blue eye as if he were spinning in a room with multi-colored walls.

  “You!” His mother’s face drained of all color. “Get out of my house!” She slumped back to the couch in a dead faint.

  Tolen ran to her side but the weird cop made it there first.

  “Tolen, get your mother’s Lucid and wrap some of the dry tea in a wet rag. You, Doogar,” he looked at Dane. “Your father is Handrak the known Doogar tracker is he not?”

  Tolen shifted his gaze to his friend. Hank’s a what?

  Dane nodded, surprised.

  “Bring him here.”

  Dane shifted his feet. “He’s probably drunk. He doesn’t like being above ground.”

  The cop gave a curt nod. “Go home and sober him up. My Chosen ward will come for you soon. I have much to inquire of you both. You know it would not be in your best interest to try to run from me. Go. Now.”

  Dane stood on his tiptoes and glared at the cop. “If you hurt either one of these two in any way, you will have me and all of my people to answer to.”

  The cop glanced up and the look on his face made Tolen take an involuntary step back. “You know I would never. Now, GO!”

  Dane cast an apologetic look at Tolen and stumbled quickly out the door.

  “Boy?”

  Tolen jumped.

  “Did you not hear me? Lucid, and the herb pack. Now.”

  Tolen tripped over his own feet as he ran for the kitchen—his blue eye still burning and dilating wildly.

  What was going on? First Dane and his mother all cozy and familiar, now a cop whose eyes matched Tolen’s blue one. Did that mean he was the same kind of different as Tolen? But his mother had seemed hysterical when she saw him. Whatever that meant it couldn’t be good, but he was trying to help. And why would this stranger know of Dane’s loser dad?

  Tolen’s stomach turned. This was a nightmare. It had to be a nightmare. Any minute, he would wake up shaking and sweating.

  He poured tea from an already-brewed kettle into a mug. His hands shook so much he spilled more on the counter than he got in the cup. His head reeled, and he felt near passing out himself.

  He’d nearly killed Jeff tonight—was that what had brought the guy with the weird eyes to his house? Had more people than just Dane known about him all this time and he’d been the only one left in the dark?

  He sprinkled some dry tea on a wet rag, folded it over, and rushed back into the living room.

  The cop knelt on the shag orange carpet, running his hands along Tolen’s mother’s face. He reached for the rag without looking up and wiped it across her cheeks, forehead, and neck. He used his finger to place a few drops of the tea onto her lips—all the while singing a low song under his breath in a language Tolen could not understand. He’d guess it to be Native American, but the cadences were different, mixed in a way that didn’t fit anything he’d heard before.

  Tolen stood back with his palms sweating, fighting the panic that threatened to overwhelm him. The questions running through his head demanded answers, but all he could do was look at his mother’s ashen face, watch the slow rise and fall of her chest, and listen to her struggle for breath. She seemed so weak. Would this be the final thing to send her someplace where he would never see her again? Tears burned the back of his eyes as he tried to swallow the lump in his throat.

  “She will be all right, Tolen.” The cop’s deep voice was oddly reassuring—he sounded so confident. The peaceful feeling radiating from him slowed Tolen’s racing heart.

  “How can you be sure?”

  “Because I am.”

  The huge cop sat down on the floor by the couch, folded his legs beneath him, placed his elbows on his knees, and dropped his chin to his clasped hands. His eyes searched Tolen’s face. “You will have to trust me. She will need to sleep for a while. I only hope we will be safe here while she regenerates.”

  “I have no idea what that means.” The cop knows what we are. The words pounded through this head. He knows more about my mother than I do.

  “You may call me Bastian. It is nicer to refer to someone by his or her name rather than a term. Don’t you agree?” He tipped his head.

  Tolen rubbed his blue eye as it began to burn again. “What?”

  “It will be easier if you call me by my name, rather than continue to refer to me as ‘the cop’.”

  Tolen shook his head. How did the cop . . . guy . . . Bastian . . . whatever . . . even know that was what Tolen was calling him in his head?

  “I will explain it to you shortly.”

  Are you in my head?

  “Not in the way you think.”

  Tolen stumbled backward, fell over the rocking chair, and landed with a thud on his side. He scrambled to his feet, fear clutching
at his insides. “What are you? Who are you? How are you reading my mind?”

  “I am not reading your mind. I am simply aware of your thoughts. Come back and sit down so I can explain. If I were here to hurt you, I would have done so already. You need to trust me.”

  Tolen edged toward the door, torn between the desire to get as far away from this strange man as possible and the need to stay and protect his mother. “Uh, I don’t think so. I don’t even know who or what you are.”

  “You wish to know who you really are—why you can do what you can do. I am someone who can tell you that.”

  Tolen’s need for answers warred with his fear that the strange instinctual trust he felt was some sort of trick. Despite his doubts, he found himself slowly moving back to the chair.

  The man, Bastian, had an odd accent. He didn’t use conjunctions. His speech was measured, powerful. Rather than just hearing what Bastian said, his words seemed to move right through Tolen’s ears into his heart and bones. It was freaky, and intriguing. Could he really tell Tolen all he’d wanted to know for so long? His heart began to pound in anticipation and he had to focus to reign in his eagerness.

  “My mother recognized you. She wanted you to get out. That sort of implies that you can’t be trusted.” Tolen’s weak knees knocked together as he collapsed into the chair. He slid it back a few inches so he had direct line of sight to the door and Bastian.

  Bastian sighed. “Yes, your mother did recognize me. As for her reasons for not being happy to see me, well . . . I believe they go beyond me personally, to my race. You see, I am a Watcher.”

  “Watcher?”

  Bastian’s eyes narrowed, seeming almost surprised that Tolen didn’t know what a Watcher was.

  Tolen shrugged under the huge man’s scrutiny. If he thought Tolen was clueless now, he was in for quite a shock.

  Bastian cast a quick look at Tolen’s mother and took a deep breath. “The duties of my race are quite disconcerting for some. Of course, we will not know your mother’s exact reasons until she wakes up and I can question her for myself.”

  “Well, what’s so bad about Watchers? What is it you do that she wouldn’t like?”

  “Watchers are a race of people who can sense with almost complete accuracy the thoughts and actions—past, present and future—of those individuals they are responsible for.”

  That didn’t explain much. Tolen never thought he’d actually meet someone weirder than himself.

  “As to the depth of my duties, I shall explain shortly.” Bastian glanced out the window and Tolen followed his gaze. It was still dark out. Inky. Eerie.

  Tolen shuddered and turned away from the window. “You told Dane someone would be coming for him. You’re not alone?”

  “No. My ward is with me. Right now she is double-checking the perimeter of the house.”

  “Oh.” A very anti-climactic comeback, but Tolen felt at a complete loss for words. He rubbed his forehead, still half convinced he was dreaming the whole thing.

  Bastian ran a huge hand across the stubble on his chin. “Tolen, how much do you know about who you are? Where you come from?”

  Tolen gripped the arms of the rocking chair. “Nothing.”

  Bastian’s eyes widened and his pupils dilated and contracted so fast it was dizzying to watch. “Nothing at all?”

  “No.” The festering resentment rang through the single word.

  “Why . . . ?” he glanced again at Tolen’s mother.

  “I tried to get her to tell me, but she always refused.” The wood creaked beneath Tolen’s fingers and he took a deep breath. “I had to stop asking when her health went down-hill. Confrontation always made it worse.”

  Bastian glanced at Tolen with a speculative expression.

  “Who is your father?”

  “His name was Daedal—”

  The Watcher jumped to his feet so fast Tolen barely saw the movement. “Daedal Téloran?”

  Tolen cringed back in his chair. “I-I don’t remember him. He left us when I was a baby.”

  Bastian’s eyes traveled over Tolen’s face as if searching for something. “It cannot be.” He turned, started to pace the tiny living room, glanced back at Tolen, and lifted his hand in the air. “I am sorry for frightening you. This information, it is . . . confusing.”

  Tolen swallowed and nodded, uncomfortable with the fact that Bastian knew he was scared, but more interested in what the man might know. “You . . . knew my father?”

  Bastian’s eyes flashed again to Tolen’s face. “Possibly. Would you happen to have a picture?”

  “My mom’s got one. She doesn’t know I know about it. Um, I’ll be right back.” Tolen jumped from the chair, his mind going a million miles an hour, and jogged to his mother’s bedroom. He was sure his mother wouldn’t be pleased with the conversation he was having with a man she had been clearly unhappy to see, but he couldn’t stop the nervous excitement he felt to finally be getting some answers.

  His heart thudded with anxiety as he lifted her mattress.

  Underneath lay a faded photograph of Daedal staring down at a tiny baby in his arms. The caption on the back, written in his mother’s hand, read:

  Daedal and Tolen

  July 15, 1996

  Tolen had been just five days old. At one time, he’d wished that his father had been looking at the camera, wished to see a little of himself in the man there. Did he, too, have one blue eye and one brown? But as time went by, and Tolen never heard from the man, he stopped caring. He hadn’t looked at the photo for years. Why should he bother with a father that had abandoned him?

  His hands shook and the picture blurred.

  He took a deep breath and left the bedroom. Bastian was still pacing back and forth when Tolen reached the living room. He held out his hand for the photograph, stared at it for a long uncomfortable moment, and dropped back to the floor with his head in his hands.

  Tolen stuck the photo in his back pocket. “So, you do know him?”

  Bastian kept his head down. “Yes. I know your father.” He looked up with an expression that made Tolen’s stomach squirm uncomfortably; he looked . . . angry. “There are not many of our kind who would not have at least heard of Daedal Téloran. I have only met him once, but now that I really look I can see him in your features.”

  Tolen clenched the back of the chair. The wood groaned beneath his fingers and started to splinter. “Our kind?”

  Bastian’s hard look softened to one of sadness. “You must understand Tolen, the world you have been brought up in is not what you think. Elves, fairies, mythical creatures, they all have a basis, a true counterpart. As does every myth, every legend you have ever heard, contain a seed of truth. Time and the philosophies of men have covered the seeds, cultivating them into the imaginary stories you read in fairy tales. But the truth still lies there beneath the imaginary. The race that began almost all legend is the race you belong to . . . They are called the Hidden. They have existed among humans, hiding their gifts and differences as necessary, since the beginning of time.”

  “So I’m—I’m not human?” Tolen glanced at his sleeping mother. No wonder she hadn’t wanted to tell him. A government experiment, a weird twist of rare genes, an accident. All those things he’d tried to guess at weren’t even close to the truth. I’m not even human. I really am a freak.

  Bastian shook his head. “No, Tolen. It is not like that at all. Human is a relative word. All living things are connected, no matter their race or origin. One race is not superior to another. You are a Being, a gift of life with tremendous potential as all Beings are. Do not judge yourself based on a category that holds no value among the things that truly matter.”

  Tolen dropped back into the rocking chair and rubbed his pounding head.

  Bastian sighed. “I am afraid there is not enough time for me to explain everything to you, to reall
y help you to understand, but what I must tell you are the truths that are the most vital for you to know right now. You asked what my duties are. I am to find, train, and protect the Chosen ones . . . ” He paused and tapped his chin; it was almost as if he was choosing his next words carefully. “Tolen, you have been selected by the Balance to be a member of this elite group of Light followers. It contains those with incredible gifts that are suited to protect this world from the servants of the Dark . . . .”

  No, not gifts. A curse. Tolen continued to massage his aching head. Balance, Light, Dark. It was all just a bunch of gibberish.

  “They are gifts Tolen, I assure you.” Bastian took a measured breath. He seemed nearly as irritated at Tolen’s lack of knowledge as Tolen was. “With time I am certain you will see them as gifts as well. The Balance, the force that connects us all, sensed the Light, the goodness in you, and selected you as one of the Chosen. A pure-hearted soul who would not stand by and let the Dark, let evil, win. For centuries the gifted Chosen have kept the forces of darkness at bay—”

  Tolen stood up and spun around, his back to Bastian. His breath came in large gulps and colors swam before his eyes. He wants me to fight evil? This is nuts . . . This guy is nuts!

  “I am truly sorry Tolen. I do not know why your mother has kept the truth from you. I hope we can get to the bottom of it soon.” Tolen felt Bastian stand up behind him, but he didn’t turn around. “Go to bed. Rest. When it is safe for your mother to wake, I will come for you and maybe we can sort this out.”

  Tolen ran a shaky hand through his hair. “Like I’m going to be able to sleep after all this.”

  The front door opened and a tiny teenage girl—Tolen doubted she would reach his shoulder—stood in the doorway. Three dead crows dangled from her fist.