Chapter 26 Heidi
HEIDI
Despite my exhaustion, it takes me forever to fall asleep. I'm too keyed up from the gorgeous men in my house, and the excitement of my strangely hyper inner doe isn't helping.
But when I finally do sleep, I dream.
For a while, it's normal. I dream about working in Stephanie's bakery before the Upheaval, and going out to watch a concert with Jessica and a few of our other friends. One or two brief dreams of my younger years flicker by without bothering me much.
Until all at once, an all-too-familiar dream of a memory I can't stand comes boiling up like hot mind vomit.
I'm seven years old again, sitting with my arms wrapped around my knees on a frayed, stained couch in a dim, smelly old cabin. I peek at the door the big, bald man went through. He left me in here alone a few minutes ago after starting this cartoon on the old, dusty TV.
I don't like the cartoon, though. It doesn't drown out the terror of the other children, who I can sense locked in one of the two rooms in this scary cabin. It doesn't drown out the sick, strange, dark, hungry, wrong feelings of the adults who are now talking to the bald man in the other room.
Run, the animal inside me whispers.
But I can't. I'm too scared to move.
The scary, bald man showed up at my family's house wearing doctor clothes and told my mom he was there to pick me up for an appointment. Lately, she's been sending me off with all kinds of people to fix my face in private offices where no one will find out who I am.
I tried to tell my mom that the man was lying. I could tell from his feelings that he wasn't a real doctor.
I knew this man was doing something bad, but when I started crying about it, my mom got mad, shoved me into the man's arms, and told me to shut up and go already.
She's been anxious and stressed for weeks, ever since they started having people come take pictures of my big brother.
My mom wants him to do well and doesn't like it when I distract her.
No one else noticed the man take me away from the big Frost house.
It took him hours to drive me here, to this place in the woods.
Being here makes me sick because I know something very wrong is about to happen.
I know it, and so do the other children, because I can feel their growing terror and their deep sadness.
They have old, hurt, numb, scary feelings that turn my stomach until I finally lift one of the couch cushions, puking.
I put the cushion back down and curl up again. One of the men in the other room starts shouting, and I squeeze my eyes shut against the familiar sound. I don't want to feel what those people are feeling. Their feelings hurt me until tears start dripping off my cheeks.
Run now, my animal says. Run. Save us.
She wants to save us, but what about the others? Their horror and dread are so much worse than mine. They've been through something terrible.
If I can't move for myself, I should at least move for them. They shouldn't be here.
Slowly, I uncurl and move off the couch, tiptoeing toward their door. When I grab their handle, it's locked. I push hard, but it won't turn as more tears start to drip off my chin.
Before I can figure out how to get this door open, I sense someone else in this room. I turn quickly, but I can't see him.
I just feel him.
His angry, dangerous feelings are so quiet, I wonder if he can even hear them for himself.
Finally, a boy steps out of nowhere. He looks like my brother's age, but I don't think he's like Everett. He has dark hair, swirling markings all over his skin, and strange purple eyes.
I've never seen purple eyes before.
The boy tips his head as he looks down at me. By habit, I lift a hand to cover my birthmark. But the boy pays no attention to it. He doesn't say anything. Even though his quiet feelings are frightening, he doesn't seem bad to me.
Maybe he's here to help, somehow.
"C—can you help us?" I whisper. "Please?"
The boy with purple eyes opens his mouth to speak, but then his head turns to the side, and he disappears again. I can sense him still close by, though. Where did he go?
That's when the door the bald man went through opens.
"Hey!" his voice booms. "Get away from there!"
I flinch back against the door that the other children are behind. Their growing terror chokes me as the bald man shuts the door behind him and storms toward me. He grips my upper arm so hard that I cry out as he uses it to lift me off my bare feet.
He smells like smoke. His smile is horrible, and his very wrong feelings are crushing me until more tears escape, and I can't breathe.
"Trying to be helpful, are we? That's the last of that. These ones have an appetite for pretty little legacies like you, so we'll start with you, girlie."
His grip is bruising me. Fear chokes my mind and heart until my eyes want to stop working. But just as the bald man turns to drag me toward the door he came out of, the boy appears again.
He grabs the man, who drops me in surprise, and they both disappear.
At first, I'm glad the bad man is gone.
Until it hurts.
Really bad. Everywhere, like lots of deep cuts and stinging and terror and pain and—
I fall to the floor and cover my mouth, trying to stop the screams that want to come out as I feel it all. I can't scream, though, or the other bad people will come out and see something is going on.
Suddenly, the boy with purple eyes is back. He helps me sit up against the door as the pain cuts off suddenly. He's frowning. Even though all his emotions are so muffled, I think he's worried as he studies me.
"You felt that," he realizes. "You're an empath."
He talks the way some of Alaric's legacy friends do when they come to visit the Frosts from far away. I sense something like respect from him when I nod, still trying to keep my tears quiet.
"You said us. You sense other children here?" he checks, speaking softly.
I look at the door at my back, where I feel their terror still twisting and darkening into something more horrible than I've ever experienced before.
"All right," the purple-eyed boy says. "Follow me."
Without making a sound, the boy pulls a key out of his jacket pocket.
I realize he must have gotten the key from the bald man when he unlocks the front door of this horrible, dark place and takes my hand to lead me out into the woods.
My inner animal is relieved to be out here, even though she's still scared.
The purple-eyed boy pauses, asking if I can still feel the others' emotions. I tell him yes.
He goes further and asks again.
"Yes. I'm a type four," I tell him.
I don't know what it means, but I hear my mom describe me that way sometimes.
The purple-eyed boy takes me a lot further this time before stopping. "Sense anyone in there still?"
I shake my head.
"What's your name?"
"Heidi. What's yours?"
"Crypt."
I sniffle, still shaking as my bruised arm finally starts to get better. "I've heard Ian and my brother talk about you before. I don't think they like you."
"I'm sure I don't like them either, whoever they are." He points at a nearby tree. "Stay beside this tree. Close your eyes, cover your ears, and hum a song. Any song you like, just don't move. I'll be back."
I don't know how long I hum songs to myself. I don't know what I'm waiting for, but I hope the purple-eyed boy is getting the other children out, too.
Finally, someone taps me on the shoulder. I open my eyes to find the boy beside me again, but I cover my mouth when I see red splashed all over him.
It's blood. I can smell that it's blood, but he's not hurt. He was doing something to those bad people, I realize. That's what he came here for.
In my head, I send a prayer of thanks to the gods for him.
"Someone had an awfully messy bloody nose," the boy tells me, putting a metal lighter away in his jacket pocket.
"You're lying."
"Yes, I am."
"Are the other kids okay?" I ask, worried.
"Their ride home will be here soon." Before he's done talking, I hear sirens somewhere nearby. He looks at me, his voice kind even though he's covered in other people's blood. "Do you know where your family lives, Heidi? Could you give me directions?"
The only time I leave my room at the top of the big Frost house is for doctor's appointments for my face. I don't know where it is, so I use the only thing I know.
"D—do you know where Alaric's house is?"
The boy goes still. "Alaric Frost?"
My mom told me it's against the rules to talk about where I'm from or what legacy family I'm in, so I quickly say, "I just live at his house. I'm not a Frost."
The boy's attention moves to the birthmark on my face for the first time, as if he's finally understanding something about it. He says a few very bad words with my family's names.
"Now who's lying? So, you're Frost's little sister. He must not know you're here."
I shake my head. "Everett doesn't know."
The boy leans down to meet my eye better. "This is important. If anyone ever tries to take you away from that place ever again, ignore your damned mother and don't trust those other Frosts, either. Run to your brother first. He's a muppet, but he'll keep you safe. Got it?"
I nod before a sudden wave of horror makes more puke try to come up. I push it down. I don't want to face these feelings ever again or remember any of this, but I know I will.
"That bad man lied to my mom to take me," I whisper. "He said…he said those bad people wanted legacies like me. But I don't like being a legacy. I don't want to be one anymore."
“Don't be, then. Be whatever you like and fuck what anyone else has to say about it."
That dark, dreamy memory ends, but I don't wake up. Instead, I find myself sitting completely naked on the same stained, frayed couch again in that dark, smelly cabin.
I'm not a kid anymore. I'm my own age, but a new unease creeps over my skin—a feeling like someone is watching, their gaze slinking across all my bare skin.
This dream feels exactly like the tendriled, dark, sickening dreams I used to have in the Nether.
When I try to wake up, I can't.
"Sibin esthu,” Veld’s voice echoes in this dream. "Thae, tam breachra."
I wrap my arms around my vulnerable body, disturbed to be in this place again, even in a dream. I stand off the couch and try harder to wake up.
When nothing happens, no matter how hard I struggle, alarm and panic set in. I turn in a circle in the nightmarish, dim cabin living room, looking for the door that will let me outside.
It's not here, though. There are no windows, either.
It's getting even darker in here as shadows stretch across the room.
The TV flickers to life in front of me, but instead of the cartoon I remember, I'm on the screen.
It's me watching myself, naked and terrified and confused in between all the static.
"Mihi toilethas a'than volutlathem," that same voice chuckles softly.
Those same empty, nauseating emotions curl around me.
Oh, my gods.
The incubus is in my head. He’s in this dream, tormenting me.
I'm still trying to shake off this disturbing, empty dream when, abruptly, I feel hands on me.
The invasive, invisible hands roam up and down my skin, squeezing and seeking as that disembodied voice hums in enjoyment.
I scream and thrash, trying to get them off of me even as I trip over something and fall to the floor of the little cabin.
"Let me go! Get off me!"
There's laughing in my dream now, but it's a cold, unfeeling sort of humor that makes my hair stand on end.
“Uthe rèidhis.”
"Let me go!” I rasp, disgust clamping my throat shut so the words don't come out right. "Let me out of here. Stop, please stop—"
Someone is rocking me. "Shh, Sunshine, it's okay. It's just a dream."
"Let me…"
My soft plea dies as my eyelids flutter open, disorientation setting in hard as I finally wake up. All memories of what I was just dreaming about dissipate like smoke in the wind, frustratingly impossible to grasp the moment I’m fully awake.
I realize I've been crying in my sleep, tears dripping over my temples to wet the hair near my ears. I blink up at Ian and the tender way he's cradling me in my bed. His brow is pinched as he keeps rocking, holding me against his chest.
When he sees that I'm awake now, his lips brush gently against my forehead. His voice is a low, familiar lull that makes my stomach flip.
"Are you okay? Gods, you felt so terrified. It was just a nightmare. I've got you."
My disoriented brain is still playing catch-up. Without putting thought into it, I automatically reach up to cover the left side of my face since I washed my makeup off before bed.
Ian clocks the motion and scowls, grabbing my hand, kissing the back of it, and holding it so I don't try to cover it up again.
"Don't. Your face is fucking perfect."
Ian smells good, his very presence is soothing, and he's holding me like I'm the most precious thing in the world. My inner animal immediately starts to get loopy with excitement at his proximity. Being held like this by him feels so unbelievably good.
But when heat starts to creep its way into my system at the way my body is pressed against his, I instantly scramble out of his arms to put distance between us on the bed.
Because there is no way I'm about to embarrass myself by giving my brother's best friend a front row seat to how wildly attracted I am to him.