23. Sebastian

23

Sebastian

I awoke to the harsh glare of fluorescent light overhead and the sterile smell of antiseptic filling my nostrils. A dull, throbbing pain radiated from my chest and left shoulder.

Blinking against the light, I turned my head slowly, grimacing at the effort. My father was sitting in a chair near the bed, his face etched with concern.

When he noticed I was awake, he leaned forward. “You’re finally back in the land of the living,” he said, lips cracking into a tiny smile. “How are you feeling?”

“Like I got hit by a truck,” I muttered. As I spoke, I felt for a button on the side of the bed, pressing it to incline my body into a sitting position.

“Careful.” My father leaned closer to adjust the pillows behind me. “You can’t move too fast right now.”

“I’m okay.”

“No, you’re not.” He tipped his head. “Do you remember what happened to you?”

“Unfortunately, yes,” I said, mentally shuddering at the recollection of the spike piercing me. I gestured around the hospital room. “I don’t remember coming here, though. Where am I?”

“Pinecrest Falls Hospital. The cultists brought you in. They said you fell in an animal trap.” His lips tightened. “The police will want to speak with you about it.”

“The police? Why?” I asked, brows knitting.

“I called them.” Dad’s nostrils flared, eyes filling with steel. “Animal trap, my ass. Those Covenant bastards obviously attacked you.”

I sighed and rubbed my eyes. “You’ll have to call the cops back and tell them you made a mistake.”

“Why?”

I sat up straighter, grimacing from the effort. “The Covenant people aren’t lying. It was an accident.”

“Bullshit. You aren’t thinking straight. It’s the painkillers, and the—”

I lifted my hand, cutting him off. “Dad, for fuck’s sake, my memory is fine,” I said. “I went into their hunting grounds and fell in a pit trap. The area was very clearly marked out, but I went in anyway. I thought I’d be fine.”

“Well, you’re not fine,” he said, eyes narrowing. “You’re lucky to be alive.”

“I know.” I winced as I tried to sit up even straighter. “I realized that when I was dragging myself off the fucking stick that was impaling me.”

“I called in Dr. Kramer from the city to operate on you as soon as I heard what had happened. She’s the best of the best,” he said, tone smoothly switching from angry to clinical. “You’ll need to rest for a while longer, but you’ll be fine in the end. No major damage.”

My brows furrowed. “Really?”

“Yes. As I said, you’re very lucky. A vein was nicked, so you lost a hell of a lot of blood, but once that was repaired, you were out of the woods,” he explained. “The stick went right through you. Didn’t hit anything important. You’ll end up with a very nasty scar, though.”

“Oh well. It’s just a scar.”

“Hmph.” His lips tightened again. “You can’t say I didn’t warn you. I told you it was dangerous up there.”

“And I told you it was an accident. The Covenant didn’t hurt me.”

He snorted derisively and reached over to the bedside table. “One of them left this for you,” he said, lifting up a charm made from twigs and bones tied together with twine. “He told the admitting nurse that it’s a special good luck charm. Supposedly it’ll keep you safe as long as you have it.”

“Right. Just leave it.”

He sat back again. “So… have you found any answers up there yet?”

“Not yet. But I’m still working on it.” I rubbed my eyes and yawned again. The wound didn’t hurt too much now, but the fatigue was killing me. “By the way, why didn’t you tell me you went to college with Augustus Trudeau?”

My father sat up, looking thunderstruck. “What?”

“You knew him, years ago. Why didn’t you tell me?”

Twin flames ignited in his eyes, and he leapt to his feet. “That slimy bastard stole your mother from me! Do you think I ever want to speak about him?” he spat, hands balling at his sides.

“Dad—”

He cut me off. “And it wasn’t just me. He stole her from you . You had to grow up without a mother because of that piece of shit. Because of all those fucking cultists!”

“Jesus, Dad. Calm down.”

His face suddenly softened, and he sank back into the chair. “Sorry,” he muttered. “I’m just… this subject always gets me emotional. I don’t like to talk about it.”

“I know. But I think I deserve an answer. It’s weird that you never told me you knew him.”

He bristled, face splintering into a thousand warring emotions. “I didn’t tell you about it because it was my fault,” he finally muttered, looking down at his feet.

I frowned. “What?”

“What happened to your mother. The whole thing was my fault.” He scrubbed a hand over his face, inhaled sharply, and looked back up. “You’re right—I knew Augustus in college, decades ago. He was… strange. As expected, really, given his background. But somehow, we got along. We were friends.”

I raised a brow. “He said he knew you and your brothers. I didn’t realize you were friends. ”

“Well, perhaps friends isn’t exactly the right word, seeing as it was never going to be permanent. But we got along, and we were also from the same neck of the woods, so I suppose we bonded over that,” he said. “After he graduated, he went back to Alderwood, and we never spoke again.”

“So how is what happened to Mom your fault, then?”

“Fifteen years after I last saw Augustus, your mother started displaying an interest in the Covenant. I told her to leave it alone. I knew they weren’t interested in letting outsiders in. But she wrote him a lot of letters anyway, begging to set up a meeting. He always said no.” Dad paused, staring into space. “She used her maiden name back then. In a professional capacity, I mean. Her academic achievements were all under that name, so it made sense to keep things that way, even after we were married.”

“Right,” I said, brows furrowing with confusion.

“Anyway, I suggested something to her one day. I told her to mention me in a letter. Tell Augustus I was her husband. It worked. As soon as she mentioned the Thorne name, he agreed to a meeting, and after that meeting, he agreed to let her stay and conduct her research in the village.”

I nodded slowly. “Your name got her through the door.”

“Exactly. If it wasn’t for me and my friendship with Augustus—which was ancient history by that stage—she never would’ve made it past the gate. Then things wouldn’t have gone wrong for her up there, and they wouldn’t have killed her.”

“Dad, come on. It’s not your fault.”

“Yes. It is,” he said softly. “But that’s my burden to carry.”

“You were only trying to help her career.”

He grunted and looked down, rubbing his jaw. “I should’ve told you I knew him back in the day. But I didn’t know how to talk about it. The older you got, the more I thought about telling you, but then I also felt guilty for keeping it from you for so long. That put me off telling you, time and time again.”

“I get it.”

“The police were always aware of the old friendship, though. It was deemed irrelevant because there wasn’t any apparent connection between that and your mother’s murder, apart from the fact that my name got her through the door, as I said.” He paused and slowly shook his head. “I really do worry about you, Sebastian. Those people are very dangerous. I don’t think you should go back up there again.”

“I’ll be fine.”

He pressed his lips into a thin line, head shaking. Then his eyes flickered over to the muted TV playing on the wall opposite the bed. “Christ, that oil spill is awful. Four days on and that tanker is still spewing all that toxic garbage into the Gulf.”

“Huh?” I snapped my attention to the news story on the TV. “Didn’t that only just happen?”

Dad frowned. “No, it sank several days ago. Terrible business.”

I sat up straight, ignoring the jolt of pain that shot through my left shoulder. “How long have I been here?”

“Three days.”

My eyes widened. “What the fuck?”

“Three and a half, if we’re being precise,” he said, tilting his head. “What did you expect? You were severely injured. You needed time to rest.”

“Shit, shit, shit,” I muttered, fumbling with the drip cannula on the back of my hand. Rose had been locked away for nearly four days now, with only water from the tap to fill her stomach. She would be weak and starving. Wasting away.

“Sebastian, what the hell are you doing?” Dad asked, looking thunderstruck all over again as he watched me tug the needle out of my hand.

“I have to go.” I swung my legs over the side of the bed and stood, resting one hand on the edge to steady myself. “Where’s my stuff?”

He abruptly rose to his feet. “You can’t leave. You need to rest!”

“Sorry, Dad. Emergency. Did you bring me any spare clothes?”

“You’re really going to walk out of here right now?”

“Yup.”

He sighed and rubbed his temples, presumably realizing there was nothing he could say or do to change my mind. “There’s a bag over by the corner,” he said. “There’s clothes and shoes in it. Your keys, phones, and wallet are in the drawer next to it. By the way, why on earth do you have two phones?”

“Long story.”

He let out another sigh. “I’ll stay here and take care of the discharge paperwork,” he said, voice dripping with irritation. “I’ll probably have to sign about a million things absolving them of responsibility if you keel over and die in the next few hours.”

“Not gonna happen.” I quickly dressed before stooping to grab my stuff from the drawer along with the Covenant charm. As soon as I picked up my keys, I realized I had a problem. My car was still parked at the rest stop near Alderwood.

I glanced over at my father. “Is there still a car hire place near here?”

“Yes. Just across the road,” he said stiffly. His eyes narrowed, and he shook his head. “I honestly can’t believe you’re leaving. You haven’t healed yet. You should be here for another two days at the very least.”

“I told you, it’s an emergency. Thanks for taking care of the paperwork.”

He muttered something under his breath as I hurried out of the room, but I didn’t stop to find out what it was. Probably something about me being a reckless idiot.

That was fine with me. It wasn’t like I could turn around and tell him the exact reason I had to leave. Oh, I just have to go and feed the prisoner I’ve been keeping for the last couple of weeks! That’d go down like a fucking lead balloon.

After I’d picked up a car from the hire place, I sped out of the lot and turned onto the main road leading out of town. My phone rang on my lap a few seconds later. Gritting my teeth, I hit the speakerphone button. “Dad, I’m fine, okay? I’ll—”

“It’s Jesse.”

“Oh.” I tightened my grip on the steering wheel, wincing as another bolt of pain shot through my shoulder. “Sorry, I assumed it was him. He’s pissed because—”

“Because you practically broke out of the hospital fifteen minutes ago?”

I grinned. “He told you?”

“Yeah. I’ve been trying to call you for a few days now, and you weren’t answering, so I was getting worried,” he said. “I finally called him because I was starting to think you’d fucking died, and he told me you were in the hospital. Were being the operative word.”

“I had to get out of there. You know what it’s like.”

“Yes, as someone who works in a hospital, I do indeed know what it’s like.” He chuckled and went on. “Anyway, that’s actually why I’ve been trying to call. I still haven’t told you about all that weird shit in the archives, and I’ve found even more stuff now.”

I glanced at the clock. I still had at least fifteen minutes until I reached the vacation house. “Tell me now.”

“It’s all related to IVF data. The first thing I found was a bunch of files from the early nineties. A couple had eleven eggs retrieved, and five of them wound up being turned into fertilized embryos. But in the final copy of the file, it says the couple were only given four. One was viable in a pregnancy. The others failed.”

“So? IVF embryos fail all the time.”

“Yes, but there were supposed to be five, not four. That couple could’ve had a chance at another child, if the fifth embryo turned out to be viable as well.”

“Clerical error, I bet,” I said. “There were probably only four embryos, not five. Sometimes people make mistakes in data entry.”

“That’s exactly what I thought at first. Just a typo. But then I kept finding the exact same mistake in other files when I was reconciling all the documents. There’s fifty-two unaccounted-for embryos altogether, spanning from the mid-eighties to the early noughties. One or two typos I can understand. But fifty-two separate cases where the medical receptionist has input the wrong data? That seems really… off. And like I said, it went on for almost twenty years. Either the hospital hired a bunch of absolute idiots, or staff members were being given the wrong data after the retrievals and fertilizations were all done.”

“Wrong data, I would assume. But you’re right. It’s strange that it happened so many times.”

“I guess it doesn’t matter now. Like I said, it was years ago, and I haven’t found any record of similar mistakes after 2004. So I—”

“Wait, what did you say? What year?”

“2004.”

My heart began to race. Something was gnawing at the back of my mind, trying to break through to my conscious thoughts, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.

“Sebastian?” Jesse said. “You still there?”

I remained silent, mind still whirling. 2004 was the same year my mother was murdered. But that was just a coincidence, surely.

No such thing as coincidence, I recalled Rose once telling me when we were languishing in the hot springs. The Entity doesn’t allow for that.

I shook the thought from my head. The Entity wasn’t fucking real, and coincidences happened all the time. Besides, a lot of shit went down in 2004. Not just my mother’s death.

Jesse piped up again. “Hey, man, you lost reception or something?”

“No, sorry, I heard you. I was just thinking.”

“Do you think I should email your dad about this stuff?” he asked. “I figured he’d want to know about any fuckups in his hospital, even if it’s all in the past, but I wanted to ask you first so I don’t end up wasting his time. I’m pretty sure he already thinks I’m a total idiot after I failed the bar and ran to him to beg for a job.”

I lifted one hand from the wheel to rub my tightly clenched jaw. “Don’t mention it to him yet. I’ll look into it myself.”

“All right.”

“I’m about to lose reception,” I said, spotting a familiar carved symbol on a tree. “Talk later, okay?”

Once I’d hung up, I gritted my teeth and accelerated. Images of Rose kept flashing in my head, weak and crying as hunger pains wracked her body. It brought an ache to my chest so intense I feared my rib cage was about to crack open.

The road ahead seemed endless, each second on it stretching into eternity, but I clung to the knowledge that every moment brought me closer to her. Closer to ending her suffering.

She needed me, and I would never fail her.