Page 59 of A Light in the Darkness
“Where are you taking me?” I demand, speaking for the first time since the senator practically forced me into the passenger seat of his car. I guess I should be glad it was this and not the trunk, but I still don’t trust him. What are the chances that he just showed up to the same place I was taken prisoner if he wasn’t somehow involved? And why the fuck was Addie there?
My head is spinning, my throat hurts, but the physical things are a good distraction for the fact that I feel a peculiar emptiness inside. The senator turns to look at me, eyes wide and full of some sort of emotion I can’t decipher. Maybe losing my emotions took away my ability to recognize other peoples’. Maybe he created a psychopath in that basement.
“You need a hospital.” He says, looking me over for a second longer before tearing his gaze from me and glancing out at the road ahead. I see his jaw tighten and a muscle there twitches, but he remains silent for a minute.
“I don’t.” I tell him. “I just need a shower… and a nap.” My eyes are heavy, but I know better than to let them close when I’m still in danger. Though I have to ask myself, do I care?
“You could have smoke inhalation… it can catch up to you hours after leaving the scene. And your neck…” He shakes his head, and I watch his Adam’s apple bob as he works hard to swallow. “Remington would kill me if I didn’t get you checked out.”
Remy.
I close my eyes for a moment, giving them some relief from the burning feeling. I wish I could cry, flush the dry, stinging feelingthere, but it’s like there’s a door in my mind, like I’ve been thrown into the waiting room in my own head and had access to the rest of my brain taken from me.
“But Addie—” I wince at the word, which feels like sandpaper grinding inside my throat. “Said she’d meet you at home.”
The senator is quiet so long that I have to open my eyes to see if he’s still there… if I am. “I know.” He says, when he sees me looking at him. “But we’re not going there.”
Somewhere deep in the base of my spine, I know that something is wrong. Addie was as much a safe space for me as any person could be growing up. That’s not to say that she was motherly in the least, but she was the only constant in my ever-shifting world. Every time a new placement was made for me, it was Addie who picked me up, who delivered me to my next home, to the next family that was going totryto love me.
I learned early on that nobody could love me, but I let Rhea lull me into complacency, let myself think that someone could. This feeling now reminds me an awful lot of what it had been like the first few times I was old enough to realize what was happening… the first few times I had to say goodbye to someone I thought cared about me.
I don’t even realize my eyes have closed until a phone ringing cuts through the quiet in my mind, and my eyelids peel back slowly to see the name on the car’s monitor.
Dimitri.
When the senator hits the accept button, Dimitri’s voice fills the car. “Where is she?”
“I got her out in time. I…” I watch his fingers curl and flex on the steering wheel as he thinks through his words. “It’s bad. I mean, she’s okay, but I—”
“Claire?”
“Dimitri.” I say, just to let him know that I’m here. I can hear the rush of his breath across the line, a sound of relief.
“Are you okay? What happened? I saw the notification that you activated the tracker, but you didn’t answer your phone…”
“I…” I don’t even know how to explain the stupid decision I made to try and track down Wes all on my own.
When I’d lived in Remy’s house last summer, strutting around in skintight dresses and wearing my scars like badges of honor, it had been so easy to believe myself to be a badass. A goddess fashioned from dirt and destruction who could rise up to give back what she’d gotten from those who wronged her. Being back in class the last semester, I’d lost sight of that woman, but I still longed for her every day.
It was stupid to think that I could be her when I was only playing at her with Wes. I wasn’t in control then, no matter how much it had felt like it, because the situation was controlled. Trying to replicate that out here? Thinking that I could find Wes and use him to get to his father was asinine… and that’s to say nothing of the illusion that I thought I could go after Davos.
Honestly, the man who locked me in his basement was probably a kinder fate than whatever would have awaited me at Davos’ hand.
“Claire!” Dimitri’s voice pierces the haze of my thoughts, but I bite my lip, still not sure what to say.
“I’m taking her to Washington General. She needs medical attention. I don’t know…” His voice shakes. “I don’t know what he did to her.”
I can’t tell if the senator is shaken up by the sight of me or if he’s simply putting on a show. I don’t know this guy, and Remy hadn’t seemed to have anything to tell me of him. The fact that he’s married to Addie should, theoretically, give me some peace, but I’m too confused by it to feel any certain way.
“I’m three minutes away.” Dimitri says.
“We’re two.”
It feels like longer than two minutes, somehow, but the senator pulls up to a set of large glass doors and rushes around to my side.Dimitri is already there, opening the door and pulling me out into his chest.
“I can walk.” I say, though I’m not sure that’s true. There’s nothing wrong with my feet, my legs, but my head doesn’t feel right so I let it lay against his shoulder and allow my eyes to close as he carries me inside.
We’re greeted by someone asking questions rapid-fire the moment we walk through the doors, and I don’t know if the questions are for me or about me, but I ignore them all, drowning it all out as I let them move me around like a doll, positioning me where they need. I don’t really see the face of the woman who stands before me, shining a light into my eyes and pulling on my chin to part my mouth. I don’t really think about anything, don’t really see anything.
