The Survivors: Point of Origin (book 2)

Refugee

Everett bolted to my side and kissed my forehead, pulling me tight to his chest. "Sadie! Oh, my god." He clasped me so tightly I thought I'd break. Electric charges and blurred visions of colors danced in my head. I couldn't make any sense of them. "Don't ever do that again! I just..." he laughed through dry sobs. "I love you so much," he said, crashing his lips against mine, kissing me desperately. He couldn't get close enough to me. I empathized.

"Where did he take you?" Anthony asked.

"To a place inside his mind," I said dryly, dazed. "Where did they go?" I gestured to the empty graves.

"They disappeared—Sam too—when you came back," Ginny explained.

I looked down at Valentin's body again, his lips blue, his white-blond eyebrows shining in the moonlight, and my stomach tightened again. Ben was sitting on the ground, leaning against a headstone. Knees to his chest. Head in his hands. I was furious with Mark for letting him come.

I knelt next to him. "I'm sorry," I said, reaching out and touching his face.

I could see he'd been crying. "No, I needed to see it," he said, trying to be brave. "It's just...they were right there... Noah was right there..." he choked, tears welling up in his pale blue eyes again.

"I know," I said, and I sat next to him. What could any of us say to Ben, watching his innocence be torn from him in such a violent way? I put my arm around him and tucked his tearful face against my neck.

Oddly, I felt more electric charges, saw colors again. I felt sure this was my reading power, but it meant nothing to me yet.

"What happened?" Patrick asked. "What did Raven want?"

I motioned for Patrick to kneel to me, and I pulled violet wisps with aqua-green in them from my fingertips and put them into his head. My entire conversation with Raven was now in his brain. His eyes widened. "Tell them, Sadie. Tell them what he told you," he urged.

Exhausted, I looked up at the Winters. "He's going to start the war," I said flatly. "He plans to kill us all."

Anthony and Patrick wrapped Valentin's body in cloth they retrieved from the town. "We'll take him back to Narcisa. The nosferatu bury their dead."

On the jet, my mind began to function again. I hadn't realized how numb I'd felt with Raven until what he'd said started sinking in. What if I were part human? What would that actually mean?

I couldn't even process it. It had been what I wanted all along, only Raven had managed to take this from me too.

Deciding I didn't want to think anymore, I flicked through the pages of apps on my phone, zoning out as best I could. I opened up Twitter and came across a conversation between Corrina and Felix and Ginny and Mark. They'd long-since joined Twitter, amused at mine and Corrina's ramblings. Corrina had slowly warmed up to us on Twitter, though I had still not officially spoken to her since Dallas on her birthday. And on nights when not much was happening, for twenty minutes here and there, we'd all be on there, having one giant conversation. And even among the Winters, I'd feel normal. And I'd be okay.

I often disappeared from these conversations, as if unable to contribute to them because I was too busy to check in on them. Instead, I'd sit and watch as my phone would update, and I'd say nothing. I couldn't bring myself to realize that there were so few things for me to say that sounded normal, that I had a definitive limit on my ability to interact socially. Only none of them ever felt this way. Not even Everett.