“You mean after you sprayed me?”
I flinch. “I'm sorry.”
Van's smile says I’m forgiven. “It was during my training. We all have to do it. It is part of initiation.”
“You mean they did that to you on the first day?”
“Yes.”
“But you said you were a kid when you were sent away from your mother.”
“I was.”
“How old were you?”
“Ten years old.”
“The same age I was when I got sent away to Hawthorne. Who took care of you up to then?”
“I lived with all the other recruits in what you would call a monastery. There we learned everything we needed to know to become soldiers—history, discipline, cooperation.”
“I admire you for being so brave.”
“I was a child then. I did not know what danger was. I did not know what bravery was. I was not brave.”
“Well, you are now.”
He brushes a strand of hair from my eyes, and I feel his gentle touch all the way to my toes. “When I said that we are the same, you and I,” his voice strokes my insides as if he were touching me, “I meant it literally. We are made of the same stuff, human and Numen DNA. We have the same powers. You are just as brave as I am.”
I sigh. “I don't feel it.”
His thumb moves to my lips and skims the sensitive skin there. I shiver.
“Are you cold?”
My voice wobbles a bit as I say, “Don't you know?”
He leans down to me, and I hold my breath. He's finally going to kiss me.
A crash from the other room startles us both back to our senses.
I'm leaning against Van, his arm cradling my shoulders. Reluctantly, we both jump to our feet.
Porter's awake. The sounds coming from the exam room couldn't be anything else.
Van pushes the door to the exam room open to see Porter in full panic mode.
His eyes are wide like saucers. He knocks over a tray trying to get up off the table, but he must be dizzy because he falls against it, knocking all the sterile instruments to the ground with a crash.
I follow Van's lead. We approach Porter slowly to try to calm him down with soft tones.
Porter blinks. Suddenly, he seems to recognize me. His shoulders relax.
“Take a seat, buddy.” Van reaches for Porter to help him back onto the table, but Porter recoils.
“How do you feel?” I ask.
Porter's gaze slides to me. A blush creeps into his cheeks. He must be feeling better—the old Porter is back.
I reach out a hand to him, and he takes it. He sits again with my help.
Porter looks around the exam room. “How did we get in here?” His voice is hoarse. “The last thing I remember, I was on the street.”
“You've got a bump on your head,” I say, “but you're going to be fine.”
Porter reaches up and gingerly touches the bandaged wound on his forehead.
“Van brought you inside and patched you up.”
Porter narrows his eyes on Van as though he's got some reason to be upset with him. I’ve never seen Porter like this.
“Porter, what's wrong?”
His eyes flash to mine. It's almost as though he's afraid of Van.
“What is it?”
“Ask him!” Porter points at Van.
I turn to Van, who stands beside me. He doesn't react but watches us both with a keenly observant eye. But just as I’m about to ask for an explanation, the lights go out.
Not only do the lights go out, but everything else as well. The silence that follows a blackout, to me, is the most unnerving. I can hear myself breathe. I can hear my own heart beating. I’m always afraid that this time, it's the beginning of the end.
“Both of you stay here,” Van says calmly. “I am going to turn on the generator I saw in the shed when I arrived last night.”
“Last night?” Porter blurts out. “You mean you and him spent the night together?”
“Van is a perfect gentleman, a Shido, who puts my protection first.”
Porter scoffs.
I hear Van's footsteps on the stairs then the door to the basement closing behind him.
Even though it's pitch black in the basement, I know Porter is still here because I'm standing so close to him that the hairs on his arm brush mine, tickling my skin.
To take my mind off of standing here in the dark and imagining all kinds of goblins who could pop up at any moment and take me off to Antlia 2, I ask Porter what's been on my mind since he came to. “Porter, what happened to you out on the street?”
“I don't remember anything after I went down, but I know who did it.”
“You saw them?”
“Right before he jumped me.”
“He?”
“Yeah.”
“Who?”
“Your precious Van.”
“Van?” I laugh and shake my head. “It couldn't have been. He stayed right with me the whole time you were gone. He never moved. You must be imagining things.”
“I know what I saw.” Porter's voice seems to echo in the pitch blackness. “It was him. I’m sure of it.”
“Did you see anyone else?”
“Why?”
“One of the neighbors might have seen who attacked you.”
“I didn't see anyone out there but your boyfriend.”
The way he says the last two words lets me know just what Porter thinks of Van.
“Do you remember exactly where you were when you saw him?”
“I could show you.” Porter starts to get up, and I reach for his arm.
“Can you walk?”
“Of course I can walk,” he hisses.
This isn't the sweet young man I remember from school. This Porter is up against a wall. According to my stepfather, times like this shows character. I guess Porter's character is more warring than I thought.
By the time we fumble our way up the stairs to a window that overlooks the street in front of my house, the generator still isn't on because the house is getting cold, and it's still deathly silent. At least I can see where I am now that I'm up here where there are windows.
At the front window, Porter points to our mailbox at the end of the driveway. “Right there.”
Luckily, that's exactly where the major general aimed one of his surveillance cameras. He's constantly paranoid that someone will steal credit card statements from our mailbox. I've told him he can get those emailed to him, but he doesn't trust that even more.
The United States Postal service has been delivering mail since before you or I were born. If you can't trust them, who can you trust?
A good question, one that I'm asking myself right now.
“Wait here,” I say to Porter as I run up the stairs to my bedroom. I brought my laptop with me from school, not because I need to check my non-existent social media, but because I want to keep an eye on that satellite. “I can access my stepfather's surveillance cameras from this,” I say, typing in the access code for our address.
After several moments of waiting, the image that appears on the screen is shocking to me but confirmation to Porter. I gasp.
“I told you!” Porter's breath comes in and out in a rush.
He was right. It was Van who attacked him. “But that's impossible,” I breathe. “He was right next to me. He didn't move the whole time.”
“A picture doesn't lie.”
“Unless...”
The back door opens. Van's footsteps fill the back of the house, his boots tapping against the kitchen's tile floor.
The front door opens.
Before I can react, Porter makes a break for it out the door and down the driveway at a full sprint.
“Porter!” I call after him, but he runs even faster. “Stop! Wait! Come back!”
“Let him go,” Van says.
I don't turn around. I don't need to. Instead I hold my breath. The sun is setting in front of Porter, and this time, h
e gets away. No one attacks him. And no one would—Van is behind me now.
Chapter 10
∞
“Will the power be back on soon?” Van and I stand alone in the foyer. Porter is out there somewhere. Outside, the sky is gray, ominous, like something bad is on its way, but I can't say that to Van. For the moment, I don't know if I can trust him. I don't know if he really attacked Porter.
“The generator would not start,” Van says matter of factly. “It is out of gas.”
That seems odd. The major general wouldn't let himself run out of extra gasoline.
“I'm worried about Porter.”
“You need not be.”
“He was attacked out there,” I say, nodding to the street. “He says it was you. You were the one who jumped him.”
“I know.”
I turn to face Van. The look of shock on my face must be obvious to him, but he gives me a look I can't read. His eyes are narrowed. When people are angry, they're really afraid—another thing my mother taught me. I can hear his breath coming in and out of his nose. It sounds like genuine anger to me.
“How do you know?” I say carefully. I don't want to make him angrier.
“I can hear what you hear, remember?”
How could I forget that? Maybe it's because things like that don't actually happen in real life, none of this does.
“We watched the surveillance footage just now. I wanted to prove to Porter that it was just his imagination. I told him it couldn't have been you because you were next to me the whole time he was gone.”
“I know,” he says with heavy irony.
“If it wasn't you, then who was it?”
Van doesn't reply.
I tap my foot impatiently. “Well?”
“What?”
“What happened to him? Who attacked him?”
“It was not me. You know who did it. There is nothing more to say. That is an end to it.”
I feel like I’ve just been put in my place by my stepfather. Except he would say something like period to mean that he was finished discussing it. I don't like it. But Van is right. It couldn't have been him. Still, I feel something isn't right. There's something he's not telling me. But I don't have time to say anything more because Van takes me by the hand and leads me to the living room.
“Ask me a question,” Van says as we settle into the couch cushions, facing one another.
I almost choke. “What?”
“Ask me about myself. I like talking to you about my past. I wish you had been there with me.”
I really don't know what to say to that. Sentiment was the last thing I expect from Van right now.
“Before I say anything, I need to know, is what Porter said true, did you attack him? Or was it someone who looked like you?”
“The Numen can make themselves appear to look like anyone. I told you that.”
“You compared it to someone changing their hair color. But this would have to be more like shape shifting.”
“Then that is what you call it. It is a form of anyway.”
“That's really creepy.”
“They are good at what they do.” Van turns to look out the window. The river is in the distance. “They can copy any being almost perfectly.”
“What do you mean by almost?”
“They cannot copy anything that is not a part of a person's DNA, like scars or tattoos on the skin.”
“What happens to the person being copied?”
“If they do not possess Numen DNA, they will disappear, and a new body replaces them.”
“And what happens to their old body?”
“We speculate that it is taken to the Antlia Two Galaxy.”
“To be tested?”
“It is possible,” Van says with a weary sigh.
“And if they do not have the human blood protein?”
“There is no harm done. They will not be aware that they are being copied.”
“Nu-men,” I say, then suddenly it hits me. “Their name sounds like new man. Is that what they're doing, creating new men?”
“In a way. But their goal is to help themselves, not humans.”
“Their name's a Latin word. It means deity. Do they think they're gods?”
“They have been seen as gods by humans in the past, a dangerous way to view the world that leads to many wars. That is why our elders teach that reliance on the self and others is the purpose of life, that worship in any form creates a division between men. Now, ask me a question about my life.”
“Alright, I’ve got one. Do you regret becoming a soldier instead of something else?”
Van relaxes his long frame, resting one arm on the back of the couch behind me. “I may have misled you on how much choice I had,” he says lazily. “I did not.”
“You said your people follow their natural curiosity to find their calling.”
“We do. And I did. I became a soldier because I wanted to be needed. Shido are needed.”
“Who needs hired killers but a race intent on murder?”
“A race intent on protecting its people. Murder is not the Shido way.”
“You mean you've never killed anyone?”
“I consider myself fortunate to have never had to make such a choice.”
“But you know how. You could do it.”
“Shido teaches that there is no such thing as original sin, and therefore, man is not inherently evil. Instead it teaches the innate goodness and purity in every soul, including our enemies.”
“My mom's right. No one sees themselves as the bad guy. No matter what they've done, they always think they're doing it for the right reason. And that's the opposite of what my grandmother believes. She thinks that even tiny babies are capable of sin and have to be disciplined. She even says that children are not born with empathy or compassion and have to be taught it. I think that's why she and my mom don't get along.”
“Her way of thinking is dangerous. It is the way of death and destruction. Anger leads to hurt, which leads inevitably to war. Her way of looking at things comes from kings of men.”
“I don't believe what she says.”
“The Shido path is much older than her way.”
I laugh. “I wish she were here right now to hear you say that. She'd throw a hissy fit.”
Van laughs at that. It feels good to hear him laugh. I laugh with him.
“Where is your grandmother?”
“On a trip with her church. They go to Montgomery every Christmas.”
“Your grandmother may also not like to learn that inside our monasteries, unlike her church, you will find no objects or instruments of worship. Instead, a plain mirror is hung in the sanctuary.”
“A mirror? What for?”
“It represents the human heart, placid and clear. And in itself reflects the Deity.”
“I see. Anyone who stands in front of it.”
Van nods. “The Shido echo the old Delphic command to know thyself. Instead of raising eyes to heaven, we veil our heads for reflection upon the self, introspection.”
“So that's why you wear your hood.”
“That is why. Now, tell me something about you.”
I shrug. “What's to tell? You pretty much know everything now.” I cover our clasped hands with my other hand. “Never leave me, okay, Van? I’m afraid of being alone.”
“I have given you my word that I will not. What frightens you so about being alone?”
“Don't you know? You know everything else about me before I tell you.”
“I can hear what you hear, smell what you smell, feel what you touch, taste what you taste, see what you see, but I cannot read your thoughts.”
That's a relief. Maybe he can't tell how being this close to him makes me feel all the things I never thought I would feel.
“I'm afraid to be alone,” I say, “because when I was a little girl, my grandmother told me that one day a savior would come back to Earth, and that he was going to take all of the chosen pe
ople back with him to heaven. And that if you weren't one of the chosen, you'd be left behind, the Apocalypse. She told me that my mother was saved when she was five, and that my father, even though he was back-slidden for divorcing my mother, was going to heaven too. So, if I didn't want to get left behind, I was going to have to admit that I needed saving. But I refused. It was because of the way she put it, that the creator loved me despite my being unlovable. I thought that couldn't be right. If I was made, like she said in the creator's image, then why did he create an inferior being that needed saving? That'd be like the aliens taking credit for putting human beings on Earth then destroying it because we weren't worshiping them anymore. That's something an angry ruler would do. As soon as I found out that a lot of what's in the Bible could be interpreted as alien visitation that humans mistook for gods, everything made sense.”
Van smiles. “So that's why you have that poster in your room.”
“Every once in a while,” I say slowly, “the fear of being left behind comes back.”
“What did your mother tell you about what she believes?”
“That this life is not the only life we live. That we get to live as many as we need, like school. You can leave after eighth grade or you can get a PhD, as many as you like. That's what she said life is like. When she told me that, I started running around the house screaming, I'm not afraid to die anymore!”
Van's hand slides away from the back of the couch and comes to rest on my shoulder. He looks directly into my eyes. “I am sworn to protect you with my life. I would never let anyone or anything hurt you, rasa, not in this life or any other. Please know that. You are too important to me to let that happen.”
I snap my mouth shut, stunned by his urgency. His touch, firm and persuasive, leaves no doubt of his sincerity. “I didn’t know knights existed outside of fairy tales.”
His arms encircle me, one hand at the small of my back. My heart nearly stops.
I’ve stopped secretly hoping that he's going to kiss me. I can't take anymore disappointment. So this time, I decide to just enjoy breathing him in. But when his lips actually lightly brush mine for the first time, my whole body ignites. Then he changes the kiss. It becomes hungry, almost wild. His lips are soft yet firm. His breath is warm and mingles with mine. I’ve never experienced anything so exhilarating before. My senses are overwhelmed by him, by the breadth of his shoulders, the squareness of his jaw, the roughness of his cheeks where a day's worth of stubble grows, the way his calloused palm caresses my cheek, his masculine scent—soap, and something more, an aroma unique to Van. I could breathe him in this way for the rest of my life—my first kiss. I hope it never ends.
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