"I do."
"What's it called?"
"It's called Moby Dick." He seemed to smile to himself. "I know it doesn't sound like the best book, but it actually is. I can't explain why I liked it so much, but it had a lot of meaning behind it."
"I've never read that book before," she told him still looking out towards the sun as it set behind the hills. It was beginning to become a lot darker now and she could honestly think to herself that there was no better company than Levi. "I'll have to read it."
"That would be really good. I've never really had many people to talk to about it before. All everyone's interested in is those training books and all they have taught me is how to punch someone and where to punch them when I could have been taught that in person."
Kit felt like her jaw was about to hit the ground. "That's the exact same as me! I'd turn around and my friends would always have their heads in those training books and I'd think to myself that they have never truly escaped this labyrinth of fighting."
Levi turned his head to look at her. She crossed her arms. "When we were going through that test thing the other day and you said something about never being able to truly get out of the labyrinth, what did you mean?"
She bit her lip nervously. "Well, I don't know whether anyone else has actually thought about it, but all we have been doing since getting into this Academy was learn how to steal things for the Academy's glory. We're just puppets in their effortless pleas to help them and all they do is teach us how to. There is no way out of the labyrinth because you're in it alone."
He nodded his head and looked back at the road. "They teach us to fight, but they have never taught us to be ourselves. My friends are all the same, all they talk about is how they stole something out of one of the gang's houses and they bragged about it for hours. I think I lay under my covers, clicked on a torch and woke up with my face in my book." He laughed.
"I feel like a shadow and all I am following is more darkness. You know why? Because shadows are attracted to darkness and all they care about is whether they're around something dark. Maybe my shadow is trying to find who I'm meant to be, but not even I'm sure of who that is."
"There really aren’t many people like you, Kit."
She looked at him, really looked at him, watching the way his gorgeous dark hair fell in front of his beautiful blue eyes. She watched the way that moonlight shone over his skin, lighting the fact that his flawless skin was shining with perfection.
"Is that a good or bad thing?"
"It's good. Really good."
Her eyebrows creased into a confused line as she looked at him. She was reminded of that time just before when she had taken him by the hand and had begun running from the shadows.
In that moment she felt like she was pursuing the light and the light was right between her fingers.
"How is it good? I'm not sounding insane, am I? I have been told numerous amounts of people by both friends and strangers about the odd way my mind functions, but seriously, you of all people shouldn't think that's bad."
He grinned lopsidedly in the cute way he did. She felt shivers going down her spine by just looking at him. "It's good because now I can pick you from an entire crowd of people and I'd know it's you."
*
Eventually, that huge range of black clouds that had been towering above their heads had eventually released all its hellfire upon Kit's head. She had begun laughing incredulously because she hadn't seen that much wind and rain and lighting in forever.
"Wow," she said as Levi stopped the car. They couldn't see a thing with all the fog in the air. "Do you think we should stop?" she watched the massive amounts of rain as they fell from the sky like someone had dumped a million buckets of water.
"I read a sign a few minutes back, we're in a town and maybe we could stay somewhere for the night and keep going. If we wait out this storm we might be able to make it to Philadelphia by tomorrow."
"Good idea," she said with a nod, having to strain her voice to be able to be heard. The rain and wind smacked across the window and the lighting cursed in the sky, appearing like big fork shapes.
Kit picked up her bag that sat next to her. "Ready?"
"Ready," he returned and they both opened the car door and ran into the outside world. Her legs wobbled from sitting in the care for two hours and she felt her dark hair whip across her face while the trees were sent so far back that they looked like a medieval slingshot of some sort.
"Where do you think the nearest motel is?"
Kit's clothes were already soaking wet as she looked down at herself. "I think we should go that way," she pointed towards the group of small shops in the distance and most of them read: GENERAL STORE or ANTIQUE STORE.
Levi followed Kit towards the middle of town and she could see that the wind was already blowing all this rubbish into the air. "That can't be good for the environment," she commented.
"I don't know how you think of these things at these apparent times," she heard him say and she stifled a laugh.
Eventually, after waiting in the ferocious wind, Kit spotted a large building that said, "Motel Inn".
"I found one," she said in a sing-song voice. Levi looked over at her as she guided him through the rain. Her legs had begun hurting from having to fight through the wind. "I hope my books not wet," she muttered as an afterthought.
"Hello," said the man at the front desk. He wore spectacles that made his eyes look massive and a relatively impressive beard. His skin was tanned, and he looked perplexingly out the window. "How can I help you two?"
Kit looked down at her armoured self and bit her lip. She probably should have gotten changed, mortals didn't understand why Night Walkers wore armour – to start with they had absolutely no idea about the race of Night Walkers and had not much evidence to back up their claims. To mortals, Kit would look like a normal human with armour on.
"We'd like a room for the night."
He nodded his head, "that's be 45 dollars for the night please." She handed him some money over the register. "Enjoy your stay." He gave her the keys to the room and told her the number.
The floors creaked whenever she stepped through the corridor. She and Levi seemed to be the only things breathing in the entire motel. Everything seemed like a perfect place for ghosts to be.
"This is creepy," she noted, hearing the odd sound of the windows opening and closing in one of the rooms. The rooms weren't massive, and the corridor was narrow and had paint peeling off the walls. She shivered.
"I'm freezing. Are you cold? I think I should change." She looked down at the small bag she held, hoping she had enough dry clothes in it. Her teeth chattered as they entered the room.
"Yes, it'd be hard to not be cold in this place, wherever it is."
The room was neat but bland. The walls were painted white and there were three rooms, one had a bathroom, one had a bed and a few draws, and another had a couch and a TV with a neat looking book shelf that sat entirely empty with gathering dust forming on the wood. She noticed that there was only one bed. Great...
"This should do for the night." He paced around the room, nodded his head, dumped his bad on the floor and turned back towards her. "I'll change in here while you change in there."
"Okay." She grabbed her bag and walked into the bathroom. The floor had aloof tiles that were slightly cracked and the window above the shower was slightly open, exposing large amounts of rain. The lights were flickering slightly, and she felt as though she wanted to curl up in a ball with her blanket over her shoulders and a copy of Pride and Prejudice or Wuthering Heights on her lap.
Kit took her light black leather armour off and threw it on the floor in a heap. She'd have to pack it away so that she could easily use it again. She slipped a white tank top and black denim skinny jeans and wore her comfortable black jacket that she absolutely loved.
When she was fully dressed, she placed her gear back in her bag and threw her dark brown hair over her shoulder, noticing how it was
beginning to turn into curls that trailed past her shoulders.
"Hi," she said, greeting Levi who sat on the couch. He wore jeans and a black jumper, he had a copy of Moby Dick in his hands which he was obviously very into already.
"Hi," he returned, not quite being able to take his eyes off the page he was up to. It made her smile as she walked over to sit beside him. He closed the book and looked at her.
"It looks like a really god book. I've heard of it, but I've never been able to find the copy. When I was doing assignments back in Manhattan, I went to book shops and sat there and read. I did that all the time since they didn't have many real novels in the library."
"I used to do the same, I still do. I keep them hidden in my room though," he looked taken aback, as though he was remembering something, "but I didn't tell anyone I read mortal books." He looked down at the book that rested on his lap. "Here," he handed it to Kit, "I want you to read it."
The moment she grasped the leather-bound book in her hands and felt the pages, she knew It was would be a book she'd like.
She smiled at him and eyed the book with interest. "You're nothing of what I though you would be. In school everyone says that you're popular and you had Natalie as your girlfriend and everyone knows just how popular she is. Never did I think you'd be the type for reading books and talking to girls like me."
He hid a smile. "Natalie was a bitch," he said with all the simplicity of nature, "girls like her deserve to be dumped. I never realized it. Girls like you are completely different. Even though you seem like the most un-extraordinary girl to everyone else's eyes, to me, you are one of the most extraordinary people I've ever met. That's partly because you're like me, and everyone who knows me really well will know just how different I am as well."
Kit could feel her cheeks to flush crimson and she half hid her face beneath her long flow of brown hair. She couldn't help but stare at him as he finished his words, even then she was unable to stop his words coming into her mind. "Thank you," she breathed and hugged the book he'd given her close to her chest. "You've no idea how much this means to me."
"Well, all I can think, and hope, is that it does mean a lot to you."
After spending a while on the couch, heads fixed veraciously into the transfixed words that poured off each of the books, Kit's eyes began to feel rather heavy.
"I'm really tired, but this book is so good!" she said after what felt like an hour of reading. She'd gotten so caught up in the world of Moby Dick before she finally realized that she had to sleep before she got too tired.
He smiled, "I know, it's great."
She smiled as she lay there, staring that the ceiling.
"I'll sleep here," he said and lay down on the couch.
"Okay, good night," she whispered.
"Good night Kit."
Levi made everything so much easier to imagine a life of complete light, where every day was just as good as the day before and all Kit ever wanted was something that gave off light, rather than something that spread the darkness and the shadows.
CHAPTER THREE
PERPLEXITY
The stillness of the room began invading Kit's mind as she opened her eyes from the blazing sun that shone through a crack in the window. She frowned as she rubbed sleep from her eyes and looked around. Levi was nowhere to be she peered around the empty room. It was quiet – she'd never minded the quiet – but right now it just made her wish there was someone else around. Someone like Levi who she could talk to.
She stood up, running her hands through her hair as she swept it back over her shoulders, watching the way it cascaded past her shoulders with the slightest wave between each singular strand.
"Levi?" she whispered. The darkness quietness regarded her with nothing but a slight shatter from the window as the sharp wind outside whispered against the crack. "Levi?" she called once more.
Kit sighed. She'd always hated the feeling of not knowing what was going on. It reminded her of the time that Debra had snuck out of their dorm window to meet up with a guy named Sam Walters after curfew. Debra and Sam got caught after half an hour of seeing each other.
"Focus Kit, focus," she told herself as she looked around the room. In a few shorts strides she had made her way to her backpack.
It was still so silent, and it wasn't even the good type of silent. It made everything edgy and made Kit's heart pace begin to pick up. She noticed how everything looked slightly out of place.
Why would Levi have left her alone? He hadn't planned to go, anywhere had he? Maybe he was fooling around, or he was just getting something he needed.
Still, Kit was left with this inevitable feeling that something bad was happening. She hadn't remembered anything and couldn't think back to whether Levi had snuck out. At the bottom of the flight of stairs stood the man who had given Kit and Levi the room last night. He was smoking a cigarette and looking lazily at the ground as if there was nothing better he could do and there probably wasn't.
As Kit approached him, she kept trying her best not to cough. "Hi," she began, watching the way his slow expression moved around to look at her. "I was wondering whether you've seen my friend. He was that guy I was next to and he-"
"Yeah, yeah, I know. He came right through here." The man's look began shaping into an uncomfortable one as he looked around the room. "He was following something, couldn't say what..." he trailed off as if just realizing the armour Kit was wearing.
"Oh," Kit replied, "do you know what it was he was following?"
"Nope. Sorry, good bye and I hope you, ah, find what you're looking for." He looked away as if hiding something. After quite a long time at living in an Academy where all they teach you is how to fight, see whether someone's lying, kill people and feel nothing whilst doing so, Kit knew how to read people. In other circumstances she could even take to calling herself a pro at doing just that.
"I think you're hiding something," she whispered menacingly, keeping her voice low and cool. The man looked away and started coughing as he inhaled the cigarette smoke.
"I think you better go-"
She cut him off as she drew the knife from the sheath at her waist. In one fast motion she had it at his throat and as she pressed it to his skin she watched as his face begun to cower.
"Now," she breathed, "are you going to tell me? Or will I need to slit your throat because believe me, I will make a mess if I need to." She pressed it a tiny bit more – not enough to draw blood but enough to make a reddish mark.
"Fine!" he said, arms flailing in the air as his eyes shone with a plea. She softened the touch of the dagger but kept it against his skin. "He told me not to tell you, but he had to do something, and he slipped out the door, said he'd be back any minute but I don't know where and I swear it!"
Kit kept her eyes focused on his eyes, watching the way his eyes were widened and clear, the creases of his forehead and face showed very little signs of him lying and so she released the cool dagger from his skin.
"Thank you. Sorry I had to do that." She looked away as the man jumped back a large step until his back was pressed up against the stone wall.
"You best be going," he looked scared and she felt like she was the monster the Academy had transformed her into, but she shook it off as her eyes darkened as she watched the merciful man.
She nodded her head towards him before slipping out the front door.
It was light outside – or it would have been if it weren't for the still grey clouds that towered above her head. The ground was dampened from the rain and in the clear distance of the tiny country town she could see the trees as their leaves flew in the wind.
She looked across the parking lot towards the truck. It was still parked there, and her eyes narrowed as she saw a figure as it approached her. He was tall, had dark hair and stepped in rather long strides.
Levi.
She closed her mouth, not knowing what was going to come out. Who knew what she'd had to do just to know where he had been. When he was a mere metr
e away and Kit closed the distance between them, she just stood there, arms crossed over her chest and a stern expression clear on her face.
"Where the hell were you?" she asked, really hoping to slap him or something. But today she wasn't quite in the mood for that and instead just continued to glare murderously at him.
"I heard something," he said, coming straight out with the truth, "it was still so dark, and I could hear it like it was outside and I still don't know what it was. I told the man to not tell you and made him swear because I didn't want you to worry about m-"
"Levi, you can't be serious. What if something bad had happened to you and I'd be stuck here, not knowing how to drive and not having anywhere to go and no one to even help me get back!" she raised her voice and looked away, "I'd be even more lost than usual." There was a "without you" that wasn't mentioned in the sentence, but Kit kind of wanted to say it.
Levi bit his lip and looked at her. "I didn't want to wake you and I just wanted you to be safe. You could have gotten a train back or a bus back to the Academy..."
"A bus or a train wouldn't be able to get you back," she said. Then when she realized what she'd said, she covered it up with, "because then everyone would wonder where you were and then what would I tell them?"
Levi remained silent as he shook his shoulders. "I guess we better get to Philadelphia, sorry." He quickly apologized before slipping away towards the car. Kit tagged behind him with her arms crossed over her shoulders.
Now it would probably turn into a silent three-hour trip.
* * * * * *
The very first look of Philadelphia was the most beautiful thing Kit had ever seen. They were in the main city and it was night-time and the lights of the city reflected such a magnificent light.
Kit had never seen something quite like this. It was so alive and buzzing with people as Levi drove the car down the road. He had his eyes fixed completely on the city and Kit watched the way his expression changed as he saw the scene unfold before his eyes. It was enthralling, and she was unable to take her eyes off the people who walked by, smiling and laughing and the cars appeared to march by with peak-hour-traffic.
The Night Walkers Page 4