The Sentinels of Eden, Books 1-4

Chapter 14

Chapter 13

Bane had told his mother he would be home before dark, but he couldn’t go back yet, so he sent her a quick text to apologise—which, given the reception problems in Nalong, she probably wouldn’t receive until sometime the following day. He kept walking until he left the sealed roads and rows of tidy weatherboard houses behind. A couple of cars sped past him, coating everything in sight with choking dust and creating an eerie golden haze.

As usual, he ended up at the river. The events of the day had shaken him to his core, and the river was the only place he ever felt calm. He needed to think. What options were left to him now? He had promised himself it would end, even though it had meant giving up on trying to stick things out until the end of school. He’d convinced himself that if he just left town altogether, he could start fresh—maybe head for Sydney and try to make some sense of his life—but he’d only made it as far as Horsham before the nausea had made it impossible to keep driving.

It had happened before, but he’d assumed it was just bad timing, picking up some sort of a stomach bug just in time for his weekend away. Then it had happened again when he’d gone to his father’s funeral last year. He’d put it down to nerves and grief that time, although he’d never really known his father all that well. He remembered going to visit him as a child and he’d had no difficulty leaving town then. So what had changed in the last few years? His father had stopped asking him to visit once he’d hit the teenage years, and his mother couldn’t afford holidays to the city, so the furthest he’d tried to go since then was camping in the bush—no problems there. Horsham had been fine for him too until recently but whatever was going on, it was getting worse.

As the sun began to drag the day down with it, he took off his shoes and tiptoed along a sturdy log that jutted well out into the river, where the sound of the water drowned out all other distractions. Stretching a bit precariously, he doused his feet in the freezing current, feeling some of the tension flow out of him with the heat. Only then did he allow himself to turn his mind to Lainie. He had spent so much effort training his thoughts to stay away from her. She infuriated him. Why? Why was he always so obsessed with needing to know what she was up to? Why were there times when he just couldn’t control his actions around her? His behaviour was ludicrous, and he hated her for it.

He remembered a time when all he needed to do was watch her for a while, hiding with the smokers and their stink amongst the clumps of bracken and cape wattles on the far side of the school oval. No one had cared about that. He wasn’t the only guy who watched her when he could get away with it. But things had been getting worse. For over a year now, every time she’d played footy at lunchtime he’d been yanked away from whatever he’d been doing and forced to watch her, filled with inexplicable and impotent rage. That time when she’d gone up for a specky, launching herself so gracefully from Noah’s shoulder to make the catch before she was set upon by no less than four opposing players … his sudden shocking urge to wreak violence on anyone near her just then had sent him running for the bushes, gasping and vomiting. What the hell was the matter with him?

Reluctantly he reasoned that his two problems had to be linked, but it still made no sense whatsoever. All he knew was that when she was hurt today his whole body had felt like it was on fire until he touched her. Had he really healed her? He had no idea how he had done it, only that it had been such a relief to finally give in to the pull. It was the same pull that had been tugging at him for a good hour before the accident. He had needed to get to her, long before he ever saw the stupid dog. Trying everything he could think of to distract himself, he’d even resorted to drinking a shot of his mum’s vodka, but eventually he just had to get to where she was—fast. It was probably the vodka that had caused the accident. He almost wished that were true. It didn’t explain why he’d felt the pull in the first place, or how he’d known where to find her.

Even now, he knew he could have spun around with his eyes closed and still been able to point to exactly where she was. And as often as he told himself he was just imagining it, he knew perfectly well that he’d been able to do that for years. She pulled at him, constantly, and he was beginning to realise that the farther away he got from her, the stronger the pull affected him, even to the point of physical illness.

Lifting his numb feet back up onto the log, he drew his knees up to his chin and hugged his ankles, perching as still as he could. He closed his eyes and once again wished that someone would just tell him what a sick bastard he was and lock him up before he hurt someone. He’d tried to get help, to talk to someone, but he could never get the words out without choking on his own guilt. And why should he be the one to feel guilty? He hadn’t asked for this. It had to be her fault in some way. Everyone knew there was something strange about her; he could feel the way the air in the room always became slightly hushed whenever she and Noah walked in. She … distracted people, somehow.

Had she been the cause of today’s little miracle? Used him somehow? No. The look of fear in her eyes had been genuine … oh God, how that look haunted him! He’d healed her arm, but that wasn’t the image replaying in his mind over and over. Instead all he kept seeing was the way she’d flinched away from him. For as long as they’d known each other, and all the bitter clashes they’d had, she’d never once looked afraid of him until today.

Mosquitoes drifted around his ears, signalling the frenzied onset of evening. Conflicting thoughts tangled themselves, refusing to find resolution until he succumbed to the only course left open to him, short of breaking the law just to get himself arrested. For a moment he genuinely toyed with both options, until he had to admit that only one of them had any hope of providing the answers he needed.

Somehow he was going to have to convince her to talk to him. Maybe then he could figure out how and why his illogical instincts had saved her life.