Revival (The Variant Series, #1)

  * * *

  Declan managed a graceful landing.

  Alex, not so much.

  “You really ought to start warning me before you do that,” she said, dusting off her jeans.

  They were surrounded by a sea of green.

  Undulating hills stretched out in every direction, speckled here and there with the brilliant yellow of buttercups in bloom, hedgerows, low stone walls and the occasional elm and alder trees. Above them, the sun was high in the sky—suggesting that wherever they were, it was probably early afternoon—and glinted off the waters of a small stream on the other side of the knoll on which they had landed.

  A chilly breeze rippled through the grass. Other than a herd of sheep that dotted the hillside nearly half a mile in the distance, she and Declan appeared to be the only souls around.

  It was beautiful.

  “Where are we?” she breathed.

  “Ireland.”

  “Wait… What? But… But I don’t have my passport!”

  That earned her a funny look from Declan. “I teleport you half-way around the planet, and your first reaction is to worry about your passport?”

  “Well, what if we get stopped by a cop or something?”

  “You plan on engaging in some sort of criminal activity while we’re here?” Declan grinned. “Not that I mind, I’d just like a heads up.”

  “Very funny,” Alex mumbled. “You may have forgotten, but some of us are still working on ‘sticking the landing.’ What would I do if I got stuck here and had no explanation as to how I arrived? How would I ever get back home?”

  “And a passport with no entry stamp is going to help you… how, exactly?”

  Okay, so he had a point. Damn him and his cunning use of logic.

  He gave another low, rumbling laugh. “Would you just relax and enjoy the view? I can promise you the sheep won’t report you for illegal immigration before we make it back home.”

  Alex smiled in spite of herself. Maybe she was being a little ridiculous.

  And she had to admit. You really couldn’t beat this view.

  “Besides,” he continued. “All you’d have to do is jump. Even if you didn’t get the destination you aimed for, there’s only a few places you could end up. Most of them would get you back to the cabin… One way or another.”

  Declan sat down, resting his arms on his knees as he gazed out over the scene. He plucked a blade of glass and began to roll it between his fingers.

  “This used to belong to my family,” he said after a while.

  Alex sank into the grass beside him.

  “After my parents died and Grayson took us in, the property went into probate. Grayson eventually tried to settle my parents’ debts and get it back, but by then it had been sold.”

  “So this is where you were born?”

  “’Tis,” he said, with a lilt to his speech and a hint of a smile. “For me, this will always be home.”

  “It’s amazing.”

  “That it is.” He dropped the accent. “I come here when I need to think.”

  She studied him as he stared off into the distance.

  Alex had known him for less than 24 hours, but she was beginning to think that, even if she had the next 24 years, she’d probably never figure the guy out.

  One moment, he was being a complete ass and doing everything he could to get under her skin, and the next, he was offering her coffee and transporting them across an entire ocean just so he could share with her this magnificent place he’d once called home. The sudden changes in his attitude were giving her whiplash.

  He plucked another blade of grass and began ripping it into smaller pieces.

  “Declan,” she said.

  He turned to face her.

  Alex grimaced. “I… I just realized I never said thank you.”

  “For what?”

  “For saving me yesterday,” she said. “For getting me out of the bookstore. I owe you more than I can ever repay you, Declan. You saved my life. And I never even thanked you. You must think I’m awful.”

  His mouth opened and closed, then opened and closed again. He couldn’t seem to decide upon a reply. Finally, he gave up and became very interested in the herd of sheep grazing off in the distance.

  No wonder Declan couldn’t stand her. He’d risked his life to save hers, and she’d been so caught up in her own drama, that she’d failed to even acknowledge it.

  “You ready to start training?” he asked suddenly.

  “Train?” she said. “Here?”

  The edge of worry that had crept into her voice had less to do with her fear of jumping and more to do with the possibility that she would end up in the middle of a fog-covered lake, three thousand miles from Declan, on her first attempt.

  “We can practice here just as easily as we can at home, so why not?” he said, once more on his feet. “As an added bonus, there’s this really great pub in town we can hit up when we’re through.”

  She looked at him askance.

  “What?” He feigned innocence. “They serve food, too, y’know. By the time we finish, that second muffin’s going to be a distant memory. Jumping tends to work up an appetite.”

  He offered her a hand. Alex tried to ignore the electric current that spilled through her palm as she accepted his help and climbed to her feet. She wasn’t sure what was more unsettling—the sensation itself, or the fact that she was starting to enjoy the feel of it.

  Not that she planned on admitting that to Declan.

  Ever.

  “Okay,” he said, stepping back a few feet. “Jump.”

  “That’s it?” she asked, incredulous. “Just ‘jump’? No advice this time? No words of wisdom?”

  “Try not to fall in the lake again.”

  “That’s so helpful, Declan. Thanks.”

  Alex selected a location at the bottom of the hill and tried to call up the memory of how it felt when she teleported. The ensuing jump forced her eyes closed and she surrendered to the pressure.

  As she started to disappear, she congratulated herself. See? She totally had this down.

  That was easy enough, she thought.

  Something was wrong. The cool, dry air of the pasture now held an added weight. Everything felt damp.

  Alex landed with a stumble, opened her eyes and groaned. She was standing in the middle of the training field again. How was it that Declan made this look so easy?

  Remembering what she’d been told about selecting a destination, she closed her eyes and tried again. This time she concentrated on making it back to Declan.

  Seconds later, she landed in a heap on Declan’s unmade bed.

  Alex sat up, looked around, realized where she was and swallowed hard. She prayed Declan wouldn’t find out about this little side-trip. The smug smile it would elicit wasn’t something Alex wanted to see at the moment.

  The room looked roughly the same as it had yesterday, minus the signs of destruction.

  Band logos lined the walls, a mixture of punk rock, metal and alt-country. Among them, Alex noticed souvenir concert posters from bands like the Dropkick Murphys and Avenged Sevenfold, Flogging Molly and Lucero.

  It was an odd mix, but somehow, it was all so very Declan.

  The locations of the concerts ranged from Alaska to Ireland, from Tupelo to Tokyo. She supposed when you could zap yourself there in an instant, no concert could ever be too far.

  The thought made her smile.

  Her gaze traveled to the bookshelf next to his closet. Alex was of the belief that you could tell a lot about a person by the books they kept within reach, on the shelf closest to eye-level.

  She skimmed a few of the titles. Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, Milton’s Paradise Lost… definitely not what she’d been expecting.

  The door to the adjoining bathroom stood open. She could still smell whatever cologne it was Declan had used after he’d showered this morning.

  S
he closed her eyes and inhaled. It was dark, it was musky, and it smelled like… like Declan. The scent was intoxicating.

  It had his room smelling much better than most of the guy’s bedrooms she’d been in, in the past. Not that she’d ventured into the bedrooms of all that many guys. Just quick sojourns into those of Cassie’s brothers and Connor’s, really. And their rooms had always reeked of gym clothes and stale pizza.

  This was almost heavenly in comparison.

  Alex snapped out of it. She was supposed to be doing something right now.

  Jumping. Ireland. Right.

  What was in that cologne? Geez. It was like a drug. She took another appreciative sniff before she could stop herself, nearly jumping out of her skin when Declan’s bedroom door creaked open.

  “Hi, Alex.” Brian was smiling shyly at her from the doorway.

  “Brian!” Alex scrambled off the broken bed, looking guilty despite her relative innocence. “Hi. I was just—”

  “It’s okay,” he said, still hanging onto the doorknob. “I know you guys are training and that you got here by accident. I saw it all last night.”

  It took her a moment to realize that he was referring to one of his visions.

  “Can you do me a favor and tell Declan that my dad called and wants him to call him back as soon as he can? He’s called three times so far and he’s getting angry about Declan not answering his cell,” he said.

  “No problem,” she said. “I’ll make sure he gets the message.”

  He started to leave, but then paused. Turning back around, he smiled and said, “I’m glad you’re finally here, Alex. I always knew I’d like you.”

  “Finally here?” she echoed. It was obvious he wasn’t referring to her sudden arrival in Declan’s bedroom. “You had a vision that I was coming?”

  Brian’s grin faltered. “Erm. I mean… Well, yeah. It was a long time ago. Couple of years, I think.”

  Curiosity had taken hold. “Can you tell me what you saw?”

  The boy shoved his hands into his pockets and looked down, swaying back and forth on his heels. “It wasn’t much. I was in a park at night. You were there. So were Nate and Declan. We were… we were having a picnic!” he said. “That’s what it was. A picnic.”

  “A picnic?” Alex repeated. “At night?”

  Brian shrugged.

  Whatever it was Brian had seen, it hadn’t been a picnic. Alex was hardly a human lie detector, but it didn’t take much to realize Brian had fabricated that last part. She decided to let it be. It was obviously something he didn’t want to talk about.

  “I didn’t think you could see your own future,” she said.

  “Dad can’t,” he admitted. “But I can. I haven’t seen much. And most of it hasn’t come true yet. But I still see things sometimes.”

  Alex appraised the boy standing in front of her. He was, what, ten? Eleven, maybe? And his powers had started manifesting years earlier.

  The others seemed to have a decent command of their abilities as well and Kenzie looked to be the same age as she was. What, exactly, did that make Alex? A late bloomer?

  Well, that was embarrassing.

  “You should probably get back to Declan before he starts to worry about you,” said Brian

  “Declan? Worry about me? Somehow I doubt that.”

  “I don’t know. I think you’re starting to grow on him.”

  She looked at the boy, bemused. “How can you tell?”

  Brian’s smile returned as he reached for the doorknob. “See you later, Alex.”

  “Bye, Brian.”

  The door closed and Alex once again found herself alone in Declan’s bedroom. Time to go. Hoping the third time would be a charm, she readied herself to try again.

  It’s okay. You can do this. Just concentrate. Ireland… Green fields… A chilly breeze…

  Alex jumped… and found herself on the lakeshore.

  Crap.

  This might take a while.