Page 14 of Crimson Born

Thatwas who the strange group of people at the accident site had been.

And that was how I’d been able to walk and move freely today, without pain, when I remembered my body being broken and nearly lifeless in the aftermath of the crash.

The beautiful woman hadn’t kissed my hand before leaving me. She’dbittenme. I just hadn’t been able to feel it because my spinal cord had been severed.

Raising my hand to inspect it in the moonlight, I searched my palm for the evidence. There, at the fleshy base of my thumb, was a small scar.

It looked like the vestige of a long-ago entanglement with a barbed wire fence, or maybe a paring knife.

Though she’d bitten me only last night, there was no pain or even redness—it had fully healed.

“It was a woman,” I told my stoic father. “She was there after the crash. I didn’t do anything wrong. I was lying in the road. I couldn’t move. She was kind to me.”

Her words came back to me, along with a vision of her face.Would you like to come with us?she’d asked.

“I could feel myself dying. I think maybe she bit me to save my life.”

“Your old life is over now,” my father said bluntly. “Knowing your mother, she will have compassion and want to keep you with us, even with the danger. Neither do I blame you. I know if you’d had a choice, you’d have chosen to die on the road instead of being... preserved in this unnatural state. But I have heard the English men talk of creatures like you. It isn’t safe for you to live among our people anymore.”

Creatures?

My throat closed around a hard knot. “They’re my people, too, you know.”

It was the closest I’d ever come to talking back to my father, having been raised to show him ultimate respect.

He cleared his throat. “Not anymore. You have a new...communitynow. You should go and live among them and learn how to... how to carry on.”

The buggy stopped, and I looked away from his solemn face to see a red and white illuminated sign that read, “Emergency.”

It seemed appropriate for the moment in every possible way.

“This is where I’ll say goodbye,” Dad said. “I think you should go in and make your peace with Josiah and then... then it’s best you leave Lancaster County.”

The disbelief was almost overwhelming now.

“And go where? I don’t even know the woman who bit me. I don’t know where to look for this new ‘community’ you mentioned. How will I live? Where will I sleep?”

My father opened his billfold and extracted a stack of paper money.

“Here. Use this to stay in a hotel and buy food until you find them. I will miss you Abigail,” he said in a voice scratchy with emotion. “You were a good daughter.”

Were.

Feeling like I was in a dream, I took the money and stuffed it into my skirt pocket. I climbed down from the buggy, took one last look at the man who’d raised me, then turned and walked through the sliding glass doors into the bright, busy emergency department.

“May I help you, hon?” a woman called to me from behind a high desk. “Are you okay? Do you need to be seen?”

“Be seen?” I asked in confusion, still dazed by the fact I’d been ex-communicated by my own father. Who was clearly afraid of me.

“Do you need to see a doctor? There’s blood on your clothing. Are you hurt?”

“Oh. No. I’m... fine,” I mumbled. “But my friend is here. I think. Josiah Yoder? Can you check and see where he is?”

“Sure. I can see if he’s been admitted.” She typed on a keyboard, peering intently at the screen before her. “Oh yes. He came in last night. Car accident—but I guess you know that already. He’s in the ICU now. They limit visitors, though.”

“Was anyone else brought in from that accident? Another young guy?”

My shaky memories contained images of Reece’s face and an overturned red sportscar engulfed in flames. But I also felt sure I’d seen him run away from the crash scene. It was all a jumbled mess in my mind.

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