by Gina Sturino
The song ended, and Neal’s eyes closed. My heart stood still. Everything stood still. The people, the singing, the noise. Bright lights spilled over him, making him look angelic. When his eyes reopened, the room exploded in applause.
“Thanks, y’all, I know that’s one of your favorites. Thanks for a great night. Johnny Miles is up next. See y’all tomorrow.” Neal gave a slight bow of his head, then walked off the makeshift stage.
I immediately slid from my stool and began toward the stage.
“Nova, I’ll be here,” Dane called. I gave him a quick nod before proceeding.
People crowded Neal, but as I approached, he looked up, instinctively catching my eyes as if he knew I was coming.
“Hey guys, give me a second,” he said, pushing out of the throng. In three steps, he stood before me.
“Neal,” I whispered, searching his wide-eyed face.
We stood for several quiet seconds, each absorbing one another’s presence.
“I recognize that symbol.” Neal broke the silence. His eyes shifted from my face to my collarbone.
“Symbol?” I took an involuntary step backward. The intensity of his gaze jarred my already fragile nerves.
“Josie’s marked too.” With his index finger, Neal made a swooping motion, like the wings of bird. His voice softened. “What happened to you?”
“What happened to me?” I whispered. My hands flew to cover the freckles. The next musician began to play. “Can we go somewhere to talk?”
“Yeah, of course. My place is a block up the street. Let me grab my shit.”
Before I could answer, Neal turned toward the makeshift stage, grabbed his guitar case, and disappeared through a door marked “Private.” Glancing toward the bar, my suspicion that Dane’s eyes would be trained on us was confirmed. He gave a jerk of his chin, and I acknowledged it with a forced smile.
Instead of trying to fight my way through the crowd back to the bar to talk to Dane, I shot him a text letting him know I’d be leaving with Neal.
Me: Going to Neal’s apartment to talk. Will meet you back here. He said it’s a block away.
After hitting send, I looked up to catch Dane’s eyes shifting from me to his phone. He tapped at his cell, and seconds later, mine pinged.
Dane: Text me the address. I’ll meet you there when you’re done talking. Don’t want you walking alone in the dark.
I looked up and nodded my head, offering what I hoped appeared to be a sincere grin.
“Ready?” Neal asked.
Spinning around with a stiff smile planted in place, I again nodded.
Neal led me through the crowded bar. People greeted him with pats on the shoulder, half hugs, and wide, genuine smiles. He’d obviously made a name for himself over the years at the Broken Board Café.
Stepping into the crisp evening air, the hum of the waves beyond the bar provided a welcoming background noise, drowning out the awkward silence.
I fidgeted with the bottom button on my cardigan, buttoning and unbuttoning it, unable to keep my fingers still. I used to give presentations to packed rooms, but now couldn’t find a single word to say to my brother.
Before the button popped off, I dropped the hem and clasped my hands in front of me. We rounded a corner and turned onto a side street. I finally broke the silence. “You’re really good.”
Neal stopped walking. He looked to the sky, lips parting as his head slowly moved back down. Exhaling, he met my eyes. His lower lip dropped, as if he were about to speak, but before he could form a word, a swishing noise sounded from behind us, followed by a shrill, harsh caw.
Both our heads snapped around. My eyes darted to the top of a telephone pole where a lone black bird perched.
“Shit,” Neal muttered, grabbing my hand. “Shit, Novalee. Come on.”
Pulling me along, I nearly stumbled over my feet as Neal careened down the sidewalk. My head twisted back and forth, from a frantic Neal to the calm black bird that seemed to be watching us.
My heart pounded, and I swallowed deliberately, as if pushing my mounting fear back down. “What’s going on, Neal? What is that?”
“For so long, I’ve lived in the dark. Not knowing what happened to you, not feeling you… nothing. And like a bolt of lightning hitting my soul, you came back. Pieces of you, memories of you. You were back. It hurt, Novalee. It hurt so badly because as quick as it came, it fell away again, and I felt your loss. I thought in that moment, you were gone. Really gone. I swear, I felt it.”
“What?” I asked, tugging at his hand and trying to slow our pace.
“July fifth.” He marched forward. “I thought you died, but now I know. You fell.”
A bolt of lightning, a falling star. A fallen god.
The soft whispering words sounded in my ears. I squeezed my eyes shut and resisted the urge to snatch my hand from Neal’s grip to cover my ears.
“I felt it,” Neal continued. My eyes popped open. “And… I saw it. I saw you fall. As if part of my own soul had died.”
“But I’m alive, Neal,” I half whispered, half cried. “See, I’m here. I’m alive, and somehow, I made my way back to you. I got your message, the song you wrote, and I—I found you again.”
Neal ignored my cries, too lost in his own despair to acknowledge mine. His voice shook. “As if it were me behind the wheel, hitting you.”
“What?” I squeaked. My palms dampened beneath his grip.
“Come on.” The emotion in his voice dropped away, and he motioned to a brown, wooden cottage with a dilapidated front porch. Neal led me around to the back. “This way. My place is back here. Hurry, I think it’s following you.”
“What?” I asked again. “Following us? Who?”
Inserting a key into the door, he pushed through, then moved past me to open the first interior door inside the hallway. Neal ushered me in before closing and locking the door behind himself. He scurried to the lone window at the far end of the room and yanked the shade down. Standing still for a second, his shoulders dropped and he slowly turned to face me. His eyes narrowed as he studied my face.
“Neal, what was that all about?” I leaned against the wall and tried to catch my breath.
“Messengers, Novalee,” he whispered, as if sharing a secret. Neal gestured toward the two-person table pushed up against the wall in the small kitchen. “Have a seat. I need a minute to think.”
Messengers? Instead of asking more, I silently took a seat. Tears remained moist against my cheeks. With the back of my hand, I rubbed them away. Taking a few deep breaths, I settled into the seat and rested my head against the peeling paint of the aged, yellow wall.
Neal breathed deliberately, seeming to gain composure, and nodded toward the refrigerator. “Want a beer?”
After the weird exchange on the street, the normalcy of his question almost made me giggle.
“No, thank you.” I glanced around his apartment. Adjacent to the kitchen, a small living room held a simple cream-colored recliner and a brown couch. No pictures, no décor other than a surf board propped against the wall in the far corner.
Neal tilted his head and pursed his lips, as if he were about to say something but thought better of it. He swung open the refrigerator door, pulled out two beers, popped the top off both, and placed them on the table in front of me.
“You look like you could use one,” Neal said. He pulled a chair out and sat down opposite of me. Leaning back, he picked up the beer and downed nearly half the bottle in one long gulp.
I took a sip of mine. “Let’s start over, start from the beginning.”
Neal ran a hand over his gruff chin, then nodded.
I closed my eyes, recalling the early weeks of summer. “I was working on a project in London, trudging through the motions, not really myself. I felt off for weeks. Finally, I wrapped things up and flew back to the states. On my way home from the airport, I got into a car accident. A pretty nasty wreck.” Neal’s face softened, making him appear more like the sweet boy of our yo
uth. “I was lucky to only walk away with a concussion and some bruised ribs. Call it a near death experience, but since then, well, I saw how quickly life can change. I knew I needed to find you, reach out to you. We were so close. Aunt Lu wouldn’t have wanted us to drift apart like this—”
“Aunt Lu?” Neal interrupted. He shook his head, then rubbed his palm over an eye. His head twisted upward, looking to the ceiling as it continued to shake. “Lucille, of course.”
My cell pinged, momentarily diffusing the odd tension.
“That’s probably my, um, boyfriend checking in.” I pulled my cell from my bag, silenced it, then set it on the table. Neal’s fingers nervously strummed against the tabletop. He appeared so edgy, ready to flee, I didn’t want to reveal the entire truth, that my memory of the accident included him behind the wheel, Lucille on the sidewalk.
As if it were me behind the wheel, hitting you.
Was it possible that after all this time, Neal felt my pain? Through the miles, was Neal somehow, spiritually or otherwise, with me during the wreck, helping me cope? I vaguely remembered being comforted following the accident. The feather-soft touches that stroked me, held me, shielded me.
I breathed out, closing my eyes as I chose my next words carefully. Relaxing my tone as soft as possible, I asked, “Why didn’t you email me? I know you deleted your account, but mine hasn’t changed.” I glanced down to my cell. My phone number may have changed a few times over the years, but not my personal email address.
Neal scrubbed his face, now with both hands. “I’m guessing Lucille has something to do with this. Otherwise, you’d know damn well why I haven’t written.”
“Where’s this animosity toward Aunt Lu coming from? I know you and her had your differences, but running away? Not coming back for her funeral? You left us. You left me.”
“Funeral?” He eyed me like I had two heads. His focus shifted to my collarbone, and my cheeks blazed. The freckles felt more and more like a brand scarring my skin. “You’re talking about it as if it really happened.”
My jaw dropped. The more Neal talked, the more agitated and fidgety he became. His fingers went back to the tabletop, thumping to the rhythm of my pounding heart.
“Something’s wrong. Something’s happened to you.” He jabbed a finger in the direction of my collarbone, then hitched his thumb toward the window. “Their messengers are following you.”
Wide eyed, I could only stare as Neal’s rant continued. My breath escaped in short puffs.
“You need to talk to my friend; she can help you. You need to talk to Josie soon, before they come sniffing. They already have their eyes and ears tailing you.”
When Josie said she hoped I could help Neal, did she mean drugs? Mental illness? The intensity of Neal’s words, his apparent paranoia, made me realize how deeply he believed his own outrageous claims.
Yet, I couldn’t help but ask, “Before who comes sniffing?”
Neal’s eyes burned with hatred. “Hunters.”
Twenty-Nine
“Hunters?” I whispered.
“Josie can help—” Neal was cut off by pounding on his apartment door.
“Nova! Open up,” Dane’s authoritative voice commanded from the other side.
“What the hell? Who’s that?” Neal shoved his chair back from the table.
Before I could answer, Dane burst through the door, chest puffed and eyes wild. “Nova, are you okay?”
Neal jumped to his feet. His chair skidded a few inches before toppling over. My hands flew to cover my mouth. The clatter quieted, and we stood in a jagged triangle.
“What have you done? Novalee, what have you done?” Neal whispered. Eyeing Dane, his lips compressed with disgust. Hostility rolled off him in visible waves, shuddering his limbs as his hands balled into fists.
I took a slight step back, unable to speak.
“Cool it,” Dane’s low voice growled.
“Don’t tell me what to do, Hunter.” Neal’s vicious eyes narrowed to slits. The tension between them thickened the air, stifling the room. The temperature seemed to have risen ten degrees in ten seconds. Through gritted lips, he muttered, “Get out of here. Get out!”
“Calm down.” Dane defensively flipped his palms up. I stepped in front of him, creating a barrier between the two men.
“Dane?” My hand came up to his chest, and I gave him a gentle nudge. “What’s going on?”
“Oh, the hunter hasn’t told you?” Neal growled.
“Hunter?” I looked up to Dane, whose eyes remained trained on Neal. “Dane, who’s Hunter?”
“Not who—what.” Neal’s lip snarled. “He’s a hunter. And the worst of their kind. A killer. You led him right to me.”
“What?” I whispered, leaning into Dane.
“This has nothing to do with you, okay?” Dane’s voice softened as his arm came around my waist.
“I don’t know what he’s told you, Novalee, or what he’s done to you, but get him out of here.” Neal’s urgent voice wobbled. “Get him out of here, or I’ll—”
“You don’t want to do this.” Dane’s tone was unusually calm, betraying his furiously beating heart. I pressed closer against his chest. Peeking from within Dane’s hold, I spotted a small black handgun in Neal’s shaking hands. Too stunned to even gasp, my lips formed a silent ‘O’.
“Of course, I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to become like you. This is your last warning. Get out of here, or she’ll see something that’ll burn her innocence forever.”
“Neal, no.” I choked out the words as I pushed from Dane’s chest. “What are you thinking? Put that down.”
“I know you’re messed up in the head, Novalee, but what are you thinking?” Neal’s arm rose. The gun trembled in his hands. “I’ll do it; I swear I’ll do it.”
“I’m not here for you, dammit!” Dane bellowed. His voice gentled when he spoke again, his confession regretful. “I’m not here for you.”
“What?” I whispered. My head swiveled between Dane and Neal. “Dane? What are you saying?”
Dane shook his head at Neal. But he wouldn’t look at me, wouldn’t answer my question.
“Go on, tell her, Dane,” Neal urged sarcastically.
“We’re leaving. I’m going to take Nova back to the inn, and once you calm down, you two can talk again.”
I am not here for you.
If not for Neal, then… me?
Dane’s hand wrapped around my bicep, and I stiffened.
“Get your hands off her,” Neal said.
I didn’t know what to do, who to trust. My body began to tremble. Fear tingled up my spine and shook my vision. My head shook side-to-side. My lips parted, but no words could come out.
“Give me a minute. Let me explain,” Dane pleaded with me.
“Your kind takes without question, without warning,” Neal’s voice quivered as violently as his hand—the hand holding the gun. “And you want a minute?”
With his eyes laser-focused on Neal, Dane jerked his chin, and the gun in Neal’s hands flew across the room, cracking the wall before plunking to the ground.
My stomach dropped. Air burned my throat as I took heavy breaths. The hum of the refrigerator and the rapid thump of my heart sounded above the room’s sudden silence, vibrating in my ears. I watched Dane’s Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed. He closed his eyes while his lips settled into a thin, grim line.
“Let me explain.” Dane didn’t move, but a gentle touch stroked my cheek. Whispery words sounded in my ears. I want you to know me. What I am. A memory flashed in my head. Dane on my patio, us overlooking the park. The rustling leaves, the groan of thunder. “A moment of weakness, a moment of anger, and I was recruited into this life. I eliminated evil, but in doing so, I’ve done evil.”
No longer my buddy’s protector, it came to symbolize the hunter I became. The need I felt on that mission to find and destroy. The tattoo on Dane’s chest, his confession. My blood ran cold.
“I’m paying
my penance. I’ve had to look at humanity, realize its faults, and find my way back. You’ve helped me find my way back.”
The room was still, yet I felt it—feather-soft brushes against my skin. Stroking my cheeks, hushing my fears, sheltering me, blanketing me in warmth.
“The night of the accident.” My voice was barely above a whisper, yet I knew Dane and Neal heard me. I shuddered as I held my fingers to my temple. “Dane, I remember. The night of my car accident, you were there. It was you.”
Somehow, my legs followed the subconscious command from my brain to flee. I pushed past Dane, out of Neal’s apartment, down the short hall, and out of the building.
Running into the dark night, my sandals pounded against concrete, only slowing when I hit the cold, wet sand that separated land and sea. Waves roared in synch with my heaving chest. I stopped to catch my breath. Kneeled over, my palms grasped my thighs as I panted, desperate for air.
Swooshing noises came from behind, drowning out the sound of my pants. Closer and louder, they mixed with a shrill sound, the guttural croak of a sorrowful bird. Tears leaked from my eyes as they snapped left and right, then forward toward the rocky shoreline.
Again, I found myself running. Running without thinking, without seeing, racing on a foreign trail that ended at a sparse clearing overlooking the sea. The sound of flapping wings and crashing waves pounded in my head as my feet pushed against dense sand.
Steps from the edge, I stumbled on a stick strewn across the path. A scream escaped my lips, cursing the briny air. I crashed to my knees. Sediment flew up from the ground, creating a puff of dust that blurred my teary vision and assaulted my nostrils.
Through the haze, the soil and sea illuminated under the moon’s glow. An echoing mix of wings, waves, and wind surrounded me, growing louder. Pounding and fluttering, they culminated to a high-pitch rumble that matched the furor of my heart.
Clumsily moving on all fours, I scooted backward, frantic to escape the dark energy that swirled around me. I moved slowly, deliberately, inching to the edge which jetted high above the ocean like a pirate’s plank on a stolen ship.