A/N: Fair warning, I was slightly pissed when I wrote this. As I've noted over the years, my current attitude always contributed to my writing, so...
Thanks goes to MinniHowl and Mony19 for reviewing this story!
Chapter 3
All in the Eyes
Previously
...
Tess frowned
"We never went to New York, Max..." she told him slowly.
All eyes snapped towards her as Max's eyes widened with a sudden realization. Tess didn't have the power to control someone else for a solid two months from a distance before making them spontaneously forget, but someone else they knew did. Someone short, with dark hair, and an annoying voice that made you want to just strangle him. It was at that moment that he realized that Alex hadn't been mindwarped all.
He'd been mindraped. And, apparently, so had Tess.
"Nicholas." he growled out as his fists clenched. Exchanging a look with Isabel, he saw as her own eyes widened with Max's epiphany.
...
Tess blinked several times. Nicholas? What did that short little fuck have to do with all of this? Last time Tess checked, she blew him up. Literally. Lit him aflame with a dragon's breath.
"Max, Nicholas is. Well. Dead. He's been dead for a while." Tess told him condescendingly, wondering slightly if someone had toyed with Max's mind when she was away.
"Who's Nicholas?" Philip questioned, even as he sipped(read gulped) at the beer his wife had handed him. Normally, Philip wasn't much a fan of alcoholic beverages. But, at the moment, he was trying to wrap his mind around the current issues at hand.
What were his children involved in?
"It doesn't matter, he's-"
"Alive." Max interrupted. Tess shot him a look.
"Max, he's dead. He's been dead for months."
"He was in New York. Remember? We went to New York, Tess. You and me, together, with Lonnie and Rath." Max reminded her.
"Vilandra and Rath have been dead for over fifty years, Max." Tess stated in response.
Max exchanged a loaded look with his sister.
"You don't seriously think-" Isabel, sceptical, began.
"After Lonnie tried to murder me, Tess and I got separated. I found her in the middle of an abandoned warehouse, and she told me they tried to break into her mind. What if Lonnie and Nicholas actually succeeded?" Max pointed out.
"Murder?" Diane's eyes went wide. Her son had run off to New York, only t have a mysterious woman named 'Lonnie' try to kill him, and he hadn't bothered to mention this to them?
"Max, what on earth are you talking about!" Tess snapped.
Max turned to her.
"Last year. New York. The Summit. Me, you, Larek? Don't you remember? Try to remember. We went to New York with Lonnie and Rath for a summit. Nicholas was there. He wanted the Granolith, and I told him to go screw himself. Don't you remember, Tess?" Max was practically pleading with her to remember.
Instead, however, Tess walked up to him, grabbed him by the chin, and stared into his eyes with increased suspicion, tilting his head this way and that way.
"No red eyes..." she finally muttered, much to Max's confusion. Then, she sniffed him. Downright sniffed. It didn't get any weirder than that. At long last, she let him go and backed away, still looking at him oddly. "Well, it's not drugs that's making you hallucinate odd events that never took place, and it certainly isn't' me, so... Hmm." Tess wondered to herself.
"Please, drop the act, you bitch." Isabel growled, much to her parents surprise. She never swore. The Max swearing thing was slightly off, but, considering his attitude all year long, it wasn't that surprising. Isabel, on the other hand...
Tess arched an eyebrow.
"What act?!" she demanded.
"The innocent act where you sit there and pretend you and Max never went to that damn summit with my psychotic... Twin." Isabel amended, remembering the presence of her parents. At least she remembered, unlike Max, who continued to let shit pour out of that mouth of his.
"You have a twin?" Jesse, flabbergasted, spoke up. Another secret to add to his wife's growing list, he decided... Those divorce papers he kept wondering if he should file entered the forefront of his mind. He loved Isabel, he truly did- but the lies. So many lies. How the hell could he ever look at her with trust again? And, if he couldn't trust her... How could he be a good husband, lover, partner in life?
How could any relationship work, regardless of the love they shared... If trust in and of itself was virtually impossible for him to feel towards her ever again.
Isabel shrugged to the question, as if having a twin- another twin, other than Max- was something completely ordinary and not worth commenting on.
"Kind of. Wears dark makeup. Tattoos. Heavy New York accent. Calls herself Lonnie." Isabel answered.
"Tried to kill me and kidnapped Tess." Max added 'helpfully'.
"I was not kidnapped!"
"You've been kidnapped multiple times, Tess..."
"Name one."
"Whitaker."
"... Name another!"
"Obviously, Nicholas. And Lonnie. And Rath."
"Nicholas is dead, and there is no 'Lonnie' or 'Rath', Max!"
"They argue like an old married couple..." Diane whispered to her husband. Unfortunately, Tess heard.
"We are an old married couple!" she snapped before rounding back on her past-husband. "Technically speaking." she amended, ignoring the confused looks.
"I'm pretty sure the marriage vows read 'until death do us part' and, in case you failed to notice, Tess, we died!" Max corrected her.
"Died!" both parents exclaimed, alarmed.
Isabel face-palmed.
Max stuttered. Oops. That one wasn't suppose to slip out. He blamed Tess. Right. Tess. Back to the issue at hand. Max turned to her, lifted his hands slowly, and started to approach.
"What are you doing?" Tess, fearfully, backed away. Max had been acting odd since her return. There was really no telling what he was up to.
"I'm gonna heal you." Max's response was simple and ordinary. At least, for him it was. But, there was something about his tone, the glint in his eyes, the way he was treading slowly towards her as if she was a wounded wild beast...
"What part of me?" Tess questioned, suspicion leaking into her voice. She seriously doubted he was here to heal her leg.
Max considered what to tell her for a second, before settling on the truth. If he said leg then aimed elsewhere, the former king of Antar was fairly certain he'd get flung across the room.
"Mind."
Tess groaned. Loudly. She tossed her head back, ran her fingers through her hair, then looked up to glare at Max.
"No one messed with my mind, Max! I betrayed you! End. Of. Story!" Tess growled.
"Then there's no harm done in me healing you." then, the bastard had the nerve to smirk at her victoriously, blatantly declaring how he had 'outsmarted' her.
Meanwhile, Diane rebelled in her own victory. She knew her son could heal, she knew it! Philip, on the other hand, was also silently thrilled despite the situation. True, everything was downright confusing But, at least for once his children weren't purposefully keeping secrets from him.
"Max, this is pointless." Isabel sighed. At this point, she wasn't sure whether Tess was pulling an elaborate sham or if her brother really was this damn delusional. Considering Tess seemed to agree to the delusional theory, Isabel was leaning towards the latter.
"Then there won't be any harm done if I heal her, will the-"
"Oh for the love of Niara, just do it already and get it over wi-"
Max didn't need to be told twice. Before Tess could even finish her sentence, his hands, glowing white and pure, (which was the first indication something was truly wrong since his healing touch usually didn't glow like that unless there was something seriously wrong) were on either side of her skull, practically cupping her face in his palms.
The glow was the first indication.
The second was when Tess gave out a blood-curdling scream that awoke the sleeping Zan, who had slept through an entire screaming match way too peacefully, on the couch.
The third was when both Max and Tess were tossed back by an invisible force.
The main indicator, however, and the only thing that actually succeeded in convincing Isabel that perhaps there was more to all of this than met the eye, was when Tess looked up, gave and inhuman snarl, and, like a savage beast, launched herself at Max, her eyes a pure obsidian black the entire time.
