by Amy Berg
I ran. At full strength, I could have outpaced them easily, losing them in the close warren of downtown streets and alleys with little effort. But I wasn’t at full strength. Not by a long shot. And my energy was flagging. Ten minutes into the chase, I started to wonder if I’d make it. I should have quashed that thought instantly, but my mind leapt straight to Emlyn, hiding, waiting for me. What if I never returned to her? What would happen to my little girl?
I skidded to a stop, suddenly overwhelmed with the need to return to her. Baby, wait for me. I urged the thought to reach her. Though I’d never sent a thought to her before, I prayed she’d hear and understand. I’m coming.
A taxi was parked just up the street, though his fare light was off. I raced to the open passenger window. He glance up as I peered inside, struggling to infuse my voice with the irresistible charm of a Lilitu.
“Hey. I need a ride.” I flashed him a smile.
The cabbie looked at me, unimpressed. “Then call a cab. I’m off duty.”
Fear uncoiled in my gut, rising up, threatening to chase out all reason. I forced it down, trying once more. “It won’t be any trouble,” I said, shifting my weight suggestively. “I’m not going far.”
“Then maybe you should walk. I’m not taking any more fares tonight.” Without waiting for a response, the cabbie started his cab and pulled away, joining the traffic on the main street up ahead. I stared after him, stricken. If I didn’t have the energy to enthrall a man—
“There she is!”
I spun around. One of Clay’s men was charging down the street. I fled, racing toward the other end of the street. Only—they’d anticipated me again. Clay and another soldier stepped around a corner, blocking my escape. I skidded to a stop and then backtracked, scanning the area for an out. Distracted by the terror of leaving Emlyn to fend for herself, I darted into a blind alley. It took a moment for the dead end to register. By the time I realized my mistake, Clay’s men were closing in. Two of them blocked the south side of the street, while the remaining three approached from the north.
An instant regret flashed through my mind. I should have kissed that chef when I’d had the chance. Even the minimal energy I could have drawn from him might have helped.
Understanding sunk in slowly, leaving a numbness in its wake. There wasn’t a way out.
The Guard were taking their time, closing their net slowly. They knew they had me trapped. I closed my eyes, summoning Emlyn’s face in my mind. With everything I had left, I sent the fullness of my love out to her, raw and pure and painful. It would have to be enough to last her for the rest of her life. I felt the emotion surge through me, reaching out, taking an almost physical form. Like a golden thread, it wove through the air around me and then shot away, seeking its target.
Exhausted, I opened my eyes.
“Where is she, demon?” Clay stood at the head of the alley, flanked by his team. I made no move to answer him.
Something tingled in the back of my mind. We’re coming. It was so faint, I wasn’t sure at first if I’d heard it or not. I turned my head away from Clay, trying to hone in on the voice.
“That’s all right.” Clay smiled faintly. “I’ve gotten pretty good at inspiring communication over the years.”
Clay took one step forward. I heard the screeching of rubber on asphalt. Suddenly, Clay and his team were throwing up their hands to block out the lights of an approaching vehicle. The scene before me devolved into chaos. Clay’s soldiers turned and fled, throwing their bodies out of the way. Clay’s eyes snapped back to me, a snarl peeling his lips away from his teeth.
“Clay!” One of Clay’s soldiers grabbed the older man and threw him back, away from the alley, away from me—and out of the path of the white van that skidded to a stop at the mouth of the alley.
The door was standing open, revealing the van’s empty interior. No. Not empty.
“Get in!” Emlyn. Emlyn was there, in the van, calling to me.
Some part of me knew enough to move, though my thoughts were reeling. I lunged for the open door. As soon as I impacted with the bed of the van, Ben gunned the engine and we careened down the street. Emlyn was thrown back against the side of the van. She dropped to her hands and knees, locking eyes with me.
“Hold on!” Ben took the turn at full velocity. The tires squealed against the street beneath us, and I slid further into the van. As we rounded the corner, I caught one last glimpse of Clay and his soldiers through the van’s open side door, pounding uselessly down the street after us.
Shaking, I rose to my feet and slid the door shut, locking it for good measure.
Ben risked a look over his shoulder. “Everyone okay back there?”
“Yeah. Yeah.” My heart was racing, but my mind couldn’t seem to engage.
Emlyn threw herself at me, wrapping her arms around my neck and choking back a sob.
I caught her in my arms and held her. The adrenaline was already fading from my system. My limbs felt leaden, but I clung to Emlyn with a desperate need.
“I love you, too,” she whispered into my ear.
“Oh, cricket.” The tears I hadn’t had time for in close to three days finally breeched their dam.
“That guy…?” Ben glanced at us in the rearview mirror. “That’s what you were running from?”
I met Ben’s gaze in the mirror, nodding.
“So.” He licked his lips, uneasy. “What’s the plan?”
“We need to get to New Mexico,” I said, surprised to find my voice hoarse and trembling. Emlyn pulled back from me then, her eyes full of questions.
“Great. Okay. New Mexico. That’s only about a thousand miles from here, give or take.” Ben reached for the radio. “You guys like classic rock?”
“What are you doing?” I slid forward, leaning against the front passenger seat for balance. “You can’t drive us to New Mexico. What about your restaurant?”
“That’s what managers are for.” Ben shrugged. “I’m overdue for a vacation anyway.” When I didn’t answer, he sighed. “Please. Let me do this for you.” Ben gave me a quick glance before turning back to the road.
I studied Ben, uneasy. The mere suggestion that he shouldn’t drive us to New Mexico should have stopped him in his tracks…if he’d been enthralled. What if I’d lacked the strength to manipulate him after all? That meant he was doing all this out of the kindness of his heart. I sat back heavily. No part of me felt worthy of his compassion. But then my eyes fell on Emlyn. I might not be worth his kindness, but she was.
“Thank you.” I let out a long breath. “I’ll find a way to repay you.”
“Well,” he said, “you could start by telling me your name.”
“It’s Vyla.”
“Okay, Vyla. Why don’t you and Em try to get some actual sleep? I know it’s not ideal, but there should be an old blanket back there you could spread out on the floor.”
Emlyn spotted the blanket and dragged it out. It was some kind of industrial packing blanket, ugly but surprisingly soft. Together we spread the blanket out. It smelled musty, like the earth after a storm. I lay down and Emlyn curled against me, small and warm and safe.
I closed my eyes. The swirl of emotions in my mind slowed, losing steam in the face of sleep. Ben navigated us onto the highway, and the van’s tires hummed a soothing monotone. Slowly, the tension leached out of my muscles. As I drifted to sleep, one last thought rang in my mind.
Every mile that took us farther away from Clay brought us closer to a better future. Emlyn’s future.
About The Author
Originally from New Mexico (and still suffering from Hatch green chile withdrawal), Jenn includes Twentieth Television's Wicked, Wicked Games and American Heiress among her produced credits. Outside of TV, she created The Bond Of Saint Marcel (a vampire comic book mini-series published by Archaia Studios Press), and co-wrote The Red Star graphic novels (with creator Christian Gossett from 2007 to 2009). She’s also the author of the award-winning Daughters Of Lilith YA
paranormal thriller novels, and is currently realizing a life-long dream of growing actual real live avocados in her backyard. No guacamole yet—but she lives in hope.
Follow her on Twitter: @jennq
Visit her blog: JenniferQuintenz.com
Check out her Daughters of Lilith novels on Amazon.
“Still Waters”
by Lisa Randolph
It wasn't even loud enough to wake her. That felt like the most brutally unfair detail of how it all ended. Marion could picture what had happened. Arthur often woke in the middle of the night—a shuffle into the kitchen for a glass of water, a thunderous urination, or what he thought was a secret cigarette smoked just beside the cracked kitchen window. She was a fitful sleeper and forty-six years of marriage had taught her to let these little annoyances go. But the night Arthur fell, resulting in what was undoubtedly an alarming clatter as skull met weathered pine, Marion slept on. When she awoke to find his side of the bed vacant, she thought little of it.
It wasn't until her sleep-filled eyes took in the sight of his crumpled body at the bottom of the stairs that she knew her life was over.
Even two years later the farmer's market presented itself to Rachel as a social gauntlet. How was it possible that in this sleepy little town there was anyone left to wonder, "How is Patrick? Those fish bitin' for him this summer?” And yet she went, for the bulbous tomatoes, for the strawberries still warm from the sun, and most of all for the rhubarb pie crafted by eighty-seven year-old Deirdre Cummings. Rachel had developed a compulsion for well-made desserts since the need to replace the empty hole inside her with refined sugar had made itself so angrily known.
The conversation always went the same: "He passed away… Yes, cancer… Brain cancer.” The mere mention of the tumor that took out New England's beloved son Ted Kennedy was usually enough to shut down even the most prying Vermonter, cancer of course, being the great equalizer. All men fear its unpredictable death knell and the idea that one so young—"Just forty-two! Life can be so unfair…"—could succumb drove them to examine their own mortality, if only for a moment. But two years of questions had a sort of numbing effect on Rachel, and they were often followed with a complimentary potted jam proffered out of guilt. The very mention of cancer now served as a boon to her morning toast.
Rachel took the long way home around the lake, happy to enjoy the ambient scent of fresh apple cider donuts as it wafted from her mesh sack in the Subaru's backseat. But when she saw the sign she stopped the car and pulled over. The Andersons' house was for sale, the bold-lettered eyesore staked into Marion's perfectly manicured lawn. Rachel had heard about Arthur's death. The community of homes surrounding Harvey's Lake was a tiny section of an already tiny town, and an absurdly healthy seventy-year-old man dying after a freak fall down the stairs was the stuff of social headlines.
Marion hadn't been to the farmer's market in months. Rachel had gone through the motions, hoping to repay the many kindnesses friends and neighbors had bestowed upon her years ago: lasagnas and pots of soup were presented with words of sympathy. But Rachel uniquely understood that often quiet, solitude, and body-wracking tears were the only way through to the other side. And though she and Patrick had purchased their own little cabin from the Andersons ten years ago, when the elder couple upgraded to this stately five-bedroom across the lake, the two women had never been friends. Still, Rachel stared at that sign, knowing how much pain hid behind the words "FOR SALE.” She reached for the donuts and exited the car, making her way to the front door for an unannounced visit.
Marion assumed it was the realtor. That pesky woman with the ever-present smoker's cough thought nothing of dropping by at any time of day. She needed "unfettered access," she said, though Marion knew it was to make sure the widow hadn't fallen apart, dragging the home's cleanliness down with her. When she opened the door to Rachel Sargeant she was embarrassed to realize her first instinct was to recoil at the possibility of another unidentifiable casserole. The apple cider donuts from Dee Cummings' farmhouse kitchen were something of a relief.
"Would you like some coffee to accompany them?" Marion asked Rachel, insincere.
"Oh, that's all right. They're for you, and I won't stay long," the younger woman said, tossing off her handbag and settling onto a stool at the kitchen island nonetheless.
Marion looked at her, out of practice when it came to small talk, until Rachel blurted it out: "You're selling the house."
"Yes," Marion answered. "I'm told the market hasn't completely recovered, but…"
"Can I give you some admittedly super unsolicited advice?" Rachel interrupted.
A surprised Marion kept her mouth shut, hoping silence would convey her answer, but Rachel continued. "I thought about listing our cabin, too. Every month we put money aside for that house, even back when I was making four hundred dollars a week as a temp in Manhattan., At the beginning it was just a few bucks in a coffee can, but Patrick said it was the dream that mattered. When he was a famous novelist we'd move up to Vermont, buy a house on a lake with a giant writing desk looking out over the water, and spend our afternoons out on the boat, drinking Negronis and drunkenly making…" Rachel caught herself, remembering her company, "… kissing.”
Marion listened politely, longing for the moment she could enjoy one of Dee's donuts in peace.
"After he died there was nothing more painful than doing everything we loved to do together without him there. But now… it's all I have left. It's where I feel him the most, and I just… I wouldn't want you to miss out on that comfort because it feels impossible right now.”
Rachel looked at Marion, indicating that she was finished.
"Is that all?" Marion said.
"Yes. I'm sorry," Rachel answered, sensing the other woman's frostiness, but Marion interrupted. "Then I'll share with you that I don't want to sell my house. Not because it concerns you, but because it may put an end to this conversation." Rachel hesitated, having been rebuffed, but it was against her nature to leave a question unanswered. "So then… why?”
Marion looked down, both annoyed and saddened. "Building this house took almost everything we had. Arthur said it was an investment in our future, that we had time to make it back. But now… well, now I'm facing whatever years I have left with a paltry life insurance check in the bank and two children who are in no position to take over my mortgage. This house is all I have. Which means I don't have a choice.” Rachel took in the sadness of Marion's situation. "Where will you go?" she said. Marion took a moment to respond, indicating the brown paper sack still on the counter. "Thank you for the donuts.”
Even Rachel wasn't bold enough to ignore the hint that their visit was over.
"I brought Tito's. Do they even sell vodka out here?" mocked Erin, the giant bottle in her outstretched hand even as she struggled to make her way down the stairs of the monstrous "motor coach," a word that had somehow replaced bus in a pathetic attempt to elevate that almost intolerable mode of transportation. Rachel smiled and helped her friend to the car, eager for both the company and the vodka. Later, they sipped martinis and polished off a platter of local cheeses, the perfect meal in that it required no cooking by the challenged hostess.
"I've come to drag you home with me," Erin said, Rachel stunned by her bluntness. "Hey, we're three martinis in, a best friend knows how to pick her moments."
Rachel jumped up, grabbing more crackers and methodically spreading cheese over one's craggy surface in order to avoid the conversation. "Rach," Erin said. "There's nothing left for you here. All of your friends are in the city, five goddamn hours away. Let us be there for you." Rachel bit into the cracker.
"Cheese. Cheese is here for me, Erin. And it's made less than a mile away by a charming, rotund man named Gus. For real. Gus. That is his name." Erin ignored the attempt at humor.
"I just don't understand how you can stay. Everywhere I look I see Patrick.”
"That's exactly why I stay," Rachel answered. "You don't understand.”
&nbs
p; "You're absolutely right," Erin agreed. "But it's been two years. I need you back. And I think you need us too.” Rachel turned her attention to preparing another cracker.
"Marion doesn't understand either. She's selling her house.” Erin looked confused. "Marion?” "My neighbor," Rachel explained. "Across the lake. This cabin used to be hers. She and her husband raised their two kids here, then outgrew it. Sold it to us. He just died. Arthur. He just died.” Erin watched as her friend tossed another cracker into her mouth.
"That's really sad. But I'm worried about you, not your neighbor.”
"I'm okay," Rachel insisted. "I'm dealing with it, I've been dealing with it. And I'm not going to pack up and move back to New York, pretend like I'm ready to start a "new chapter" or some bullshit just to make everyone else comfortable.”
There was silence as Rachel left that hanging, suddenly realizing the vodka may have gotten the best of her. "Okay," Erin said. "I'll stop. I want to have fun with you this weekend. And I hope you and Marion are very happy together.” Rachel looked up to see a smirk on her face, the tension having passed as it always does with the oldest of friends. Erin had just enough time to dodge the throw pillow tossed at her head.
The sign was still there, but the word "SOLD" written in red negated its original implication. Marion couldn't help looking at it a beat too long every time she walked to the end of the driveway to take in the mail. Today, under the hot sun, the red of those four letters seemed even more final. She saw Rachel walking up the road and briefly considered making a dash for the house until she realized the younger woman had spotted her. She waved brightly and Marion waved back, always the good neighbor. Rachel had a familiar brown paper sack dangling from her hand. "Apple cider donuts. Your favorite," she yelled out, a proclamation that was about as true as one could expect from a woman Marion had so little in common with. Suddenly, Marion's neighborly instincts vanished, and all she could think of was a cup of tea and her book, snuggling under a blanket in Arthur's favorite chair and taking in the smell of him. "I'd ask you in but I'm afraid I'm terribly busy with the move," Marion said, lying easily. "That's okay," Rachel said. "It'll only take a minute. I have a sort of… a proposal for you.”