by C. L. Parker
A light in one of the second-floor bedroom windows illuminated and she could see Sinclair in a white nightgown making a lunge for the blood-splattered doors that led out to their balcony. She never stood a chance.
Totem demons were beasts with three heads each stacked on top of the other, each with gaping mouths and a whole hell of a lot of teeth. And they were hungry sons of bitches with insatiable appetites. Three mouths, all chomping at flesh and bones at the same time. Tori didn’t have to wonder about Drew. She knew he would have been first on the menu. When the doors burst open, Tori could hear Drew’s strangled cries mixed with Sinclair’s blood-curdling screams the likes of which no horror film starlet could ever master.
Sinclair nearly fell over the balcony, her eyes wide as saucers as she leaned forward and stretched her hand out in Tori’s direction. “Tori! Help me!” she begged.
Frustrated tears streamed down Tori’s cheeks as she fisted her hands at her sides, squeezed her eyes shut, and turned her head away. There was nothing she could do. No way to get to Sinclair, and even if she could, it wouldn’t have done any good. Tori should have been able to take solace in the fact that none of it was real, but seeing the people she cared about being brutally murdered was never an easy thing to witness.
Yanked by her hair, the totem demon dragged Sinclair back into the room. Just as the door was slammed shut, Tori was sent careening backward and out of her dream, falling onto her bed in a heap.
She lurched forward with a sharp gasp, opening her eyes to a dark room. Gone were the screams, the demons, the death, and yet another of the precious few morsels of sanity that she had left. All that remained in the aftermath was silence. She hugged her knees to her chest, letting her head fall forward. And then she wept. Because that was all she could do.
The next morning, Tori was up and about before anyone else in the house; the reason being she hadn’t been able to force her lids to close since her nightmare. Each time she had tried, she kept seeing the terror on Sinclair’s face as she begged for help. And those screams . . . they had echoed in her mind. They were so maddening she had spent most of the night with her hands over her ears. Not that it had helped; they were inside her brain, so essentially, she had only been holding them in, not keeping them out.
When the sun finally decided to make an appearance, she threw on her clothes, grabbed her journal, and went to the kitchen to start the coffeepot. Her mother would be thankful for the jolt of caffeine when she woke.
The whole time she waited for the last bit of percolation, her mind kept wondering to the back of the house, remembering the statue and wondering if it really was there. Of course it was. One of the things that always made her nightmares feel so real was their uncanny knack to use very real details about her surroundings instead of some make-believe world of places she had never been and probably never existed.
Once the coffee finished brewing, she poured herself a cup and carried it toward the back of the house along with her journal. Those French doors were there, all right, and they opened up into the most beautiful garden she had ever seen.
Tall shrubs stood like a sentient wall that barricaded in the little slice of paradise and had obviously been sculpted with the fine eye of an artist. Within the whole, there were smaller gardens of roses in every color imaginable—hyacinths, peonies, cymbidiums, gladiolas, and gigantic stargazer lilies—and those were only the ones Tori could name off the top of her head. Paths of lush grass weaved around each separate garden, all leading to the center of focus—a fountain with the very same statue of the woman from her dream the night before standing amid the water.
Gone was the sadness, and instead, the kind eyes were back. So was the slightest hint of a smile. The mystery behind Mona Lisa’s smile had nothing on this woman’s. She knew something; something others could only guess at without ever really finding the answer. It was a silly thought to have about an inanimate object, but this statue almost seemed alive.
She walked out to the center of the garden and sat on one of the benches placed around the perimeter of the fountain. Feeling a bizarre kinship to the mystery woman, Tori opened her journal to a blank page and did a quick sketch, taking care to include the most important details. Mother Nature had taken its toll on the statue, yet perseverance was prevalent in the set of her chin and the ferocity of her eyes. She had weathered the worst and still remained standing tall. Tori wondered if the same would be said of her some day.
Once she was relatively satisfied she had captured each nuance of her new friend, Tori decided to add in the garden surrounding her because it seemed important somehow. When she was done, she wrote about the details of her dream. He had acted very odd, even more so than usual, and she couldn’t help but feel like there was a code in what he had said. He always chose his words carefully, like he was giving her vague pieces of a puzzle and challenging her to put them together.
Tori closed the journal, and took in a deep breath. She’d figure it out some day, but with as little sleep as she’d had, her brain simply wasn’t going to cooperate, so today was not going to be that day. She needed a reprieve from her thoughts, someplace she could go to mentally shut down. There was only one place like that for a Guardian of the Light, and her soul seemed to breathe a sigh of relief the moment she made up her mind to go there.
It had been too long since she had been to her sanctuary. Purged of the thoughts plaguing her and feeling the tranquility of her surroundings, she decided there would be no better place to find the solace she required in order to delve into her mind’s eye. She closed her lids and inhaled another deep breath before exhaling it in a long, steady stream. It took nothing more than a flicker of thought to go to her sanctuary, but it helped to be in a meditative state.
Opening her eyes, she found herself in a mystical land where she had only been in her mind, a place that didn’t exist for anyone else. It was a robust meadow where flowers of every bloom, fragrance, and color lived and thrived like a colony of inhabitants that called Tori’s sanctuary their home. Humming birds flitted from bulb to bulb, nursemaids tending to the young plants and magically encouraging their buds to open up into vibrant blossoms. To the east was a lake, twice the size of an Olympic pool with water clear as glass and vibrantly colored koi fish swimming just under the surface. Majestic redwoods stood proud and tall on all but one side of the meadow, and although the sun shined brightly and there was scarcely a cloud in the sky, intricate flakes of snow fell softly around her. It never chilled the air and never buried the foliage, but it provided a light dusting of white that made everything in the meadow all the more beautiful. It was the best of both worlds: A wonderland of impossibilities, and it was all of her making.
Except for the wall.
The wall had always been there, but she had never told her parents about it. Having heard Kerrigan describe the perfection that was her own sanctuary, Tori was ashamed of the blemish in hers. She had tried to make it go away, but it remained, almost mocking her with its defiance—a permanent deformity of an otherwise magical kingdom that loomed ominously on the edges of her sanctuary. With every visit Tori had made it crept closer and closer, swallowing up everything she held sacred. Covered in black, purple, and red oozing goo, it pulsed, alive and menacing. Like a fungus, it drained the vitality from her sanctuary. Everything it touched withered and decayed. There was something evil about it, and Tori had no idea why it was there in a place that was supposed to be so sacred.
He was behind that wall, and even though she had never seen the proof for herself, she somehow knew they were there as well.
But there was something different about this trip to her personal nirvana. She wasn’t alone. She could feel it in the air. Someone was there. From the corner of her eye, she caught movement and she whipped her head in that direction. A woman with long blond hair that waved gently in the breeze was crouched by the small lake. She dipped her fingers into the water and the koi gathered at the bank, allowing her to touch them.
Tori
gasped, having never seen anyone else in her sanctuary before. The sound caught the attention of the woman and she slowly turned her head toward Tori and smiled. Her eyes were a shocking pale blue, soft and kind, and her skin was porcelain white, flawless and creamy. She was the most beautiful woman Tori had ever seen.
The stranger inclined her head slightly, acknowledging Tori with a delicate smile.
“Who are you?” Tori asked, in awe of the utter goodness that saturated the air from the woman’s presence.
“I am you,” she answered. The mere sound of her voice traveled the distance between them and caressed Tori’s skin with familiarity. Overpowered by the sensation, Tori couldn’t speak, couldn’t even think. “I am breaking the rules by allowing you to see me, but it is a risk I am willing to take. Time is of the essence, Victoria. I must warn you not to trust him, for he is the great deceiver.”
Tori would’ve asked who she was talking about if she’d had a voice.
The woman smiled and stood, her long white gown flowing over her bare feet. “The choice is yours, but you must choose wisely.”
Without a further word, the woman turned and walked away, fading from sight after just three steps.
“Wait!” Tori called after her, having finally found her voice, but the woman was already gone.
“Good morning, Tori.” She was instantly warped out of her sanctuary and back into the real world with those three simple words.
When she looked up, she found Sinclair standing beside her. Dumbfounded, she blinked herself back to coherency. “Uh, good morning, Mrs. Dickens.”
Sinclair laughed. “Honey, Mrs. Dickens was my mother-in-law, God rest her soul. Call me Sinclair. You’ll find I’m not one for formalities, unless I really have to be on my A-game.” She sat down beside Tori. “What are you doing out here so early? I thought people your age slept in until at least noon.”
“I’m not like most people my age.”
“Yes, I know that.” The sun reflected off Sinclair’s jet-black hair, giving it a sheen most catwalk models would pay their weight in gold to achieve. Tori couldn’t help but notice the resemblance to Dante. Her eyes were the same color blue as his but without the added brightness being a Guardian afforded or the honey-colored flecks—those were from Drew—and they had the same high cheekbones and full lips.
For just a moment, the lively woman in front of her turned into the picture of fright from her nightmare, the resonance of Sinclair’s screams still lingering on the edges of Tori’s mind. She wanted to apologize, to explain that if there had been anything at all that she could’ve done, she wouldn’t have hesitated.
When Sinclair felt Tori staring, she turned toward her. “Is something on your mind, sweetie?”
Tori shook her head and looked away, her attention focused on the meticulous landscape before her. “You have a very beautiful garden.”
“Thank you, but I’m afraid I can’t take the credit. This is Dante’s handiwork. That gift of his sure makes for some stunning creations, but I don’t have to tell you that.”
Pictures of the clearing with the fairy mound flashed across Tori’s mind. So that’s how he had done it; he’d used his Light.
Tori nodded toward the statue of the woman. “Who is she?”
Sinclair smiled. “She’s beautiful, isn’t she? Drew’s family has owned this land for hundreds of years. No one really knows when they took ownership, but they were the first to build upon it. When his parents passed away, Drew inherited it. This garden was full of statues—magnificent, but crumbling. We didn’t get rid of them out of respect for his ancestors, but when Dante grew older, he begged his father to let him take care of the garden, and Drew agreed. Dante had all of the statues removed . . . except for this one. He was quite taken with her.” Sinclair laughed. “We were worried his fondness for a non-living thing had become an unhealthy obsession, but there was just something in his eyes when he looked at her, something I can’t quite explain.” Sinclair stared at the statue as if still trying to unravel the mystery. “He insists this is the statue of Eve.”
Tori looked confused. “Eve?”
“As in Adam and Eve—the first woman, the first mother . . . the first sinner.”
Intrigued, Tori examined the statue more closely, but having no physical description to go on, she had no way of knowing if it could be possible or not. “And what do you think?”
Sinclair gave her a dazzling smile. “No one’s ever asked me what I thought of her before, but I was glad of it because Dante would be pissed at me.”
Tori gave Sinclair a mock gasp at her choice of language.
“What? Honey, I might be older and wiser, but I’m still me through and through,” Sinclair said with a wink. “Anyway, I’ll tell you what I think, but I need you to promise you won’t tell Dante what I’m about to say.”
Tori smiled and shook her head, curious about Sinclair’s thoughts on the matter. “Of course not. You’re secret will be safe with me.”
“I trust it will be. The truth is, I don’t really consider myself a religious person by nature, so I can’t say that I believe Adam and Eve ever really were people. I think they were, and are, representations of our thoughts versus our actions. There were three parts to the story: Eve gave Adam the forbidden fruit, he ate it, and because God deemed that to be a sin, they were both banished from the Garden of Eden. Right?”
“Right . . .”
“Okay, hold on to your big-girl panties and stay with me now, because this is about to get tricky. In my interpretation, Eve would be the equivalent of the little devil on our shoulder, seducing us into doing something we know we shouldn’t. Adam would be the conscious part of our mind that made the decision to accept the action and follow it through. God is our conscience—or our judge, jury, and executioner—that part of us that decides what is right and what is wrong. So, when our conscience decided a wrong was committed, that triggered what I believe is the most potent human emotion of all: guilt. Guilt is like a virus that spreads through our subconscious and upsets our ability to truly be happy in our own mind—we became our own worst enemy at that point, thus paradise was lost to us because we were then conscious of our imperfections.”
Tori’s mouth dropped open in astonishment, and Sinclair looked at her with her nose scrunched up. “Too much?”
Both women giggled as Tori bumped her shoulder into Sinclair’s. “Jeez, Sinclair. A little heavy for this early in the morning, don’t you think? Maybe I should’ve waited until after I had my second cup of coffee before I asked.”
Sinclair shrugged and looked out over the garden again. “When you have a beautiful place like this to sit and not much of anything else to do, you find you have a lot of time on your hands to reflect on your life and what led you to make the decisions you’ve made. It helps if I can reason it all out somehow, but I wouldn’t change a thing about what I’ve done because those decisions led me to Drew, and eventually, they brought me the one thing I thought I could never have—Dante.”
Tori had the sneaking suspicion that Sinclair was much wiser than anyone had ever given her credit. Like the statue, she had been beaten and battered, but she was a survivor.
“Enough about me,” she said, turning back to Tori with a lighter air about her. “Tell me what you think of my Dante.”
How was Tori supposed to answer that? Should she tell Sinclair the truth: Her son was an ass who stripped her clothes off without invitation, snuck into the bathroom while she showered without invitation, and ogled her unabashedly without invitation? Should she tell her that he had a point when he said the both of them feeling the pull toward each other had to mean something? Oh, and that he had the body of a Greek god, the smile of a movie star, and moved in a way that was almost pornographic without even trying? No, none of those things would be embarrassing or shameful at all.
“Um, Dante is . . .”
“Dante’s what?” Dante suddenly appeared behind them wearing a muscle shirt and a pair of cutoff sweats—casua
l in every aspect, but he still looked like he stepped out of the pages of a fashion magazine. How was it fair that someone could roll out of bed looking as gorgeous as he did?
“Dante is eavesdropping and being rude, that’s what,” Sinclair answered. “Lucky you didn’t hear something disparaging about yourself in the process, although it would have served you right.” She stood and went to kiss his cheek, fussing with his hair when she pulled back. “Good morning, darling. Are you about to start your training?”
Like a child, Dante pushed his mother’s intrusive hands away in aggravation as he stared at Tori. “Yes, and I thought I’d see if Victoria might like to join me.”
“Oh, that’s a wonderful idea!” Sinclair turned to look at Tori. “Kerrigan was telling me about how hard you’ve been training. It might be nice for you to have another Guardian to practice with. It would be a really good way for the two of you to get to know each other better.” Clearly Sinclair was very excited by that prospect.
“My thoughts exactly, Mother.” He put his arm over Sinclair’s shoulder and looked at Tori expectantly. “What do you say, Victoria? Want to get out of here for a while and let me give you a proper work out?” Then he lowered his chin and looked at her, his thick, sooty lashes accentuating the hint of wickedness dancing in his eyes. “I promise to be gentle.”
True to his nature, Dante was serving himself up as the irresistible main course with a side dish of innuendo, but it was the challenge he presented that Tori found alluring. He probably thought that because she was a woman, one who had been sheltered by her parents for all of her life, she was easy pickings. Boy, was he ever wrong about that. He needed to be knocked off that smug pedestal of his, and she was just the one to do it.
“I’d love to,” she told him with a cordial smile.
“That’s great!” Sinclair said with far too much enthusiasm as she turned toward the house. “I’m going to go pack some cold water bottles and a little snack for you two in case you get hungry. You’ll need a way to replenish your energy.”