Аманда Хокинг - Fate

“I should probably go change too.” She started untying her apron but I held up my hand to stop her.

“You don’t need to stay in on my account!” I insisted. “You can go out there and swim while I clean up.”

“Nonsense,” Mae laughed, as if she would ever let me clean up after her. She whipped off her apron and set it on the island. “If you and Ezra are in the house, I can’t imagine what kind of fun I’d even have with the boys. They’ll probably throw frogs at each other or something.”

“They had just coaxed Matilda into the water when I left,” I explained, but she wasn’t that far off of base.

When left to their own devices, Jack and Milo turned into very silly little boys. Once, when it was raining, I’d had the pleasure of splitting up a mudball fight in the backyard. It’s very similar to a snowball fight, except with mud. That seemed like a genius idea to them both until Milo started getting bruises, because as it turns out, vampires can throw much harder than weakling fifteenyear-olds.

“That poor dog.” Mae shook her head and headed off down the hall to change. I followed after her, since the main bathroom was across the hall from her bedroom.

In the bathroom, I changed into my very ordinary clothes, and I wondered if I was being too picky not letting them buy me new clothes. After all, it would thrill Mae to no end to take on me on a shopping trip. She’d spent decades buying for only boys, and everything about me was a treat to her. The bikini I discarded in the bathtub to dry had probably cost over a hundred dollars, and she’d bought me three of them. But then again, they already gave me far too much, and I returned so little. In fact, I was more of a nuisance than anything else, as witnessed when Jack repeatedly pushed me away. Sure, he wanted to kiss me, but the fact that he had to constantly shut me down annoyed him as much as it did me.

I tried to dry my hair as best I could and clean myself up. Lake water is so dirty, even when it’s clean. There’s sand and bugs and fish poop in it. I really wanted to take a shower, but I had stupidly forgotten to bring a change of clothes. Mae would always let me borrow some of hers, but it was really ridiculous how much I already took from them. I had to draw the line somewhere, because she never would.

Before I had even finished washing my face, I heard a yell. I turned off the faucet, unable to believe that I’d heard right. But then Mae was shouting Jack’s name, and I knew something was wrong. I threw open the bathroom door and rushed out into the kitchen, and I realized why it hadn’t made sense to me when I first heard it. Jack was yelling, and he sounded terrified.

Mae was standing on the stone patio when I ran outside. Jack was still several feet away from her, standing closer to the shoreline. When I tried to run past her, Mae grabbed my arm, and her face looked positively stricken. It was too dark for me to really see what was going on, but all I could feel was pure heartbroken terror. Something terrible had happened, and Jack felt worse about it than he ever had before.

“Ezra!” Jack bellowed, and he had stopped walking forward. “Ezra!”

“I’ll go get him,” Mae whispered nervously. Her hand squeezed my arm so tightly it hurt, but I barely noticed. “Alice, you stay right here. Don’t move. I’ll be right back.”

“Hurry!” Jack pleaded, but she was already gone.

“What’s going on?” I asked. I knew I was talking, but it didn’t feel real. My mouth had gone dry and numb, and I felt like I was swimming in some kind of bad dream. Despite Mae’s warnings, I started taking a step towards Jack, and he shouted at me.

“Stop!” He was so forceful, I couldn’t help but listen.

Even though I didn’t move any closer, my eyes started adjusting to the darkness, and the moonlight splashed on him through the branches of a nearby tree. He was holding something laying limp in his arms, and my breath caught in my throat. Immediately, I thought that something had happened to Matilda. The boys had gotten too rough, and she’d gotten hurt somehow, and Jack knows how freaked out I get when animals are hurt.

Then I saw Matilda whining by his feet. Her white fur was dripping wet, but then I started notice dark patches running through it. It was running off of whatever Jack was holding in his arms, but I still couldn’t see it. It was perfectly visible, but my mind just couldn’t process. I suddenly felt very dizzy and disoriented, like I was looking down at the world from an amazing height and I couldn’t make sense of anything.

A wind rustled through the trees, moving the branches, and the moonlight struck him just right.

Then I saw his face, his eyes rolled back into his head, and I saw exactly what Jack was holding in his arms.

“Milo!” I screamed, and Mae wrapped her arms around me just in time to keep from running at Jack. I fought at them in a panicked hysteria, thinking that somehow, being a sobbing crazed wreck running at him could save Milo. Fortunately, Mae was much stronger than me, and I didn’t stand a chance at pulling myself from her grip.

Ezra brushed past us, hurrying down the embankment towards them. I just kept wailing Milo’s name, as if that would help somehow, and Jack looked absolutely tortured, but I barely noticed his expression or what he was feeling. All I could see was my little brother, lying bloodied and limp in his arms, and I didn’t even want to imagine what had happened.

“Get him inside,” Ezra commanded.

Jack kept his arms around Milo, cradling him like an injured child, and Ezra very purposely placed himself between them and me, trying to shield me from as much of it as he could. I bucked futilely against Mae’s arms as they walked past us, screaming anything I could think of, and I’m sure most of it was unintelligible.

“It’ll be okay, love,” Mae tried to reassure me, but I could hear the tremble in her voice. “Ezra will know what to do.”

I watched helplessly through the glass windows. With one quick move of his arm, Ezra pushed everything off the island in the kitchen, and Jack gingerly laid Milo on top of it. Jack just stood off to the side, watching apprehensively as Ezra inspected my brother. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but neither of their expressions looked good. Finally, Ezra just pursed his lips and shook his head.

“No!” I screamed, and for whatever reason, Mae finally let me go.

I have no idea how I got from outside into the house. The next think I knew was that I was reaching out for Milo, and Jack grappled me in his arms. His bare skin was covered in lake water and Milo’s blood, and it felt slimy rubbing against my skin. I hit him as hard as I could in the chest, even though I knew he could barely feel it, and tried to escape his grip.

“Let me go!” I wailed. “He’s my brother! And you killed him!”

“He’s not dead!” Ezra interjected, and it startled me enough where I stopped squirming away from Jack.

“Then what’s wrong?” I asked desperately. I had stopped fighting, so Jack loosened his grip on me but didn’t let me go. “Can’t you fix him? Shouldn’t we call 911?”

“I don’t think they can do anything for him,” Ezra said solemnly.

“But you don’t know!” I persisted, staring down at Milo. Other than the blood covering his head and chest, he looked just like he was sleeping, and I couldn’t imagine that there was nothing they could do for him.

“We just have to call! Where’s my cell phone?”

“Alice,” Ezra said, but I was already trying to search for my cell. Or I would’ve been, if Jack would let me go. I was working myself into a frenzy, certain that a phone call could to 911 would magically fix whatever was ailing my brother. “Alice!”