Page 72 of Dragon’s Rebel

Chapter 32

Rebel slept through most of the three-hour drive to Milldale. Thorne kept an eye on her as he drove, guilt an worry gnawing at him.

He loved her, and he didn’t know what to do for her. The intimacy and closeness of last night and this morning had vanished like mist. Talking about her parents’ death had slammed her walls right back into place.

She’d always seemed to roll with the punches, to not take anything seriously, except maybe her job. And Tempest. Other than that, she acted like nothing could get to her.

He was beginning to realize just how much of an act that really was. She had a million thoughts and experiences and fears churning around inside her. She’d learned to mask it, stuff it down, ignore it.

She lived in the here and now, always moving forward, trying to leave the past behind because it was the only way she’d managed to survive all these years.

And now he was making her go back. She was going to have to dredge up all the things she’d buried—all the things the fucker who blurred her memories had buried.

He could tell himself how they needed the Seal to keep Vyrkos in the tomb, and how many people’s lives were at stake if they didn’t find it. Hers and Tempest’s included.

It didn’t make him suck any less for making her do this. He was supposed to be protecting her, not driving her into a world of pain.

When they reached Milldale, he reached over and laid his hand on her thigh to wake her. She came awake instantly, like someone who was used to being on the alert at all times.

As they drove down the main street of the tiny town, she leaned forward slightly, taking in everything.

“Anything looking familiar?” Zane asked from the back seat.

“I’m not sure…” she said slowly. Then, as they passed a side street, she said suddenly, “Turn down there.” Thorne did a quick right turn, annoying the person behind him, who honked irritably.

“Pull over,” Rebel said.

They were in front of a white clapboard house with black shutters, and she was staring up at a second-floor window.

“Do you recognize this place?” Blaze asked.

Rebel said, “It used to have green shutters.” Her voice was full of memories. “When the sheriff’s deputy picked up Tempest and me off the roadside, he took us to the station. But when they couldn’t find our parents, they had to put us someplace until the state could take charge of us.”

She was still staring at the upstairs window. “This is where. It was sheriff’s parents or something. We stayed in that bedroom up there. It had a window seat, and all my time sitting there looking out.” She pointed towards Main Street. “That storefront across from the end of the street was a different color, too. But the ice-cream parlor is the same. I’ll never forget that view. I stared at it for hours, waiting for…”

Her voice trailed off, but Thorne could hear the end of the sentence as if she’d spoken in his mind. Waiting for her parents to come and get her.

Waiting for her nightmare not to be real; waiting for a miracle that never came.

It took some asking around before they found out where the site of the ‘meth lab’ had been. The crude map drawn by the gas-station attendant led them down a winding country road with tall trees on either side, their branches arching over the road so it was like driving through a tunnel of leaves.

Zane and Blaze were talking quietly in the back seat, but Rebel couldn’t seem to hear them clearly. Her chest had been getting tighter and tighter ever since they left town, and she couldn’t seem to get enough air.

The light around them was green and dappled with bits of sunlight through the leaves, but somehow all Rebel could see was darkness. Darkness, and flashing lights of police cars.

She felt numb all over. She knew that feeling—she’d felt it the last time she’d ridden on this road, in the back seat of the deputy’s cruiser. Like the only way to keep all the horrors she was seeing and feeling from drowning her was to just not feel anything at all.

One tiny piece of her stood back and observed what was happening. Seeing the sunlit day, and the dark night. Back and forth, one after the other, over and over.

They slowed next to a field of green cornstalks, rustling in the breeze. She could hear them through the open window, and it brought back more memories.

Hippies, who lived in a commune where the kids ran around naked, and half the adults too. They grew fruits and vegetables, selling them from a roadside stand. There was a woman named Sunshine who worked at the stand and when they walked over from the trailer to buy fruit sometimes, Rebel’s dad would sometimes stay and talk to Sunshine and her husband about crops.

Tempest would play with a little girl who had a mermaid doll with long black hair. She could see Tempest brushing the doll’s hair and talking to the girl. Rainbow, her name was.

She could see all the mounds of shiny, colorful fruits and vegetables, still wet with dew. She could smell the fruit and the sunwarmed dirt.

She could see Tempest and her dad, happy with their friends. Mom was back at the trailer hanging laundry on the clothesline, and when they got back Rebel would sit in the cool shade between the bedsheets hanging on the line, and look up at the clouds and think…