Fate's Revenge (Twisted Fate, Book 4)

Chapter Forty-Nine

"Have you tried it since Alyssa brought you here? Whatever you took to make the journey might react to what you'd already been given."

"Gabe—"

"No, Alyssa. You want to go make sure your friend is okay, risking an encounter with Darkness, but you're willing to risk friends who you're actually talking to? Even if that made sense, it isn't balanced," Gabe said, and then looked at Hailey and Tyler. "You have to stay here while we're gone. Afterwards, we'll make sure you can go safely and test it within a less unknown and possibly volatile situation. If Darkness comes for Alyssa, I have to be sure I will be able to leave with her without hesitation, and I won't be able to bring all four of us here without effort, which means hesitation."

Hailey looked like she was going to protest, but Tyler put his hand on her shoulder and she closed her mouth. They shared a look, communicating in ways we didn't understand. Tyler nodded and then Hailey looked back to us and did the same.

"If you're going, you should hurry," she said, no longer crying but determined.

My breath hitched in my throat, somehow even more apprehensive of what we would find because of her newfound stability. I looked at Gabe with pleading eyes, hoping he understand that I didn't want to waste any more time talking. As much as I wanted to ignore my initial assumption, everything within me began to scream that I needed to be at the hospital. I felt it.

Suzie is hurt.

The inner statement felt too true.

Gabe nodded back to Hailey and Tyler. Nobody said another word. Increasing the pressure only slightly, he guided me away with his hand at the small of my back. Down the halls, taking shortcuts through a door here and an entry there, I thought he was going to bring me back to the Brothers' home on the seventh floor. Perhaps I'd get to travel in the elevator again or finally get to fly—if any situation warranted it, this would be perfect. Instead, we went to the Diamond Room and walked through the doorway I'd fantasized of using in the far left back corner the day I'd chosen the Void instead.

The hospital held just as many bad memories as Hell's Fire, if not more. At least at the sham of a school for Dark Souls, my problems had been my own. Here... well, this is where my mother had been taken when Darkness scrambled her grasp on reality and I'd been rushed to the very next night—when my birthday revealed the truth and Darkness attacked—by ambulance. We'd both been allowed to leave, though in her case, it wasn't to go home. She'd been institutionalized until the day of my graduation, just before the ceremony had begun.

It was one of the last conversations that I'd had with my mother and it was only because Gabe and Mike had cured her when I couldn't.

Now, walking in hand-in-hand with Gabe down the corridor after trekking our way from where we arrived in the Mortal Realm to the hospital, knowing there was a problem but not knowing what it was, made me want to change my mind about coming. I wanted to run in the opposite direction and continue to not care. It would be easier. The smell of disinfectant and sterilization reminded me of the death I could so easily find here, and that brought the memories of all three of my own deaths too close to the surface, out of the box they'd been buried in. Keeping them suppressed was the only way to avoid being wrecked by emotion.

"Wouldn't the elevator have been faster? We could've arrived inside instead of the woods in the dark." Three blocks away.

"Probably, but that's how Mike would have brought Suzie back." He paused, taking a deep breath. "We don't know what greeted them there. It can only be activated by a Brother, so there is no risk of sharing its existence."

"And the doors in Glory Academy are what? Hidden so nobody knows they can leave?" I asked, ignoring what he implied.

"We don't make anyone stay, Alyssa."