Mom circled the living room.
“Martial arts?” she asked. “If you say so. We’ll get her enrolled in some after-school classes. Right after Christmas? Yes, I understand. Thank you. You, too.”
I hung the star from a branch at eye level and looked at it on the tree.
“That was Agent Melcher,” she repeated.
A sudden flash of irritation burned through me. Yes, she mentioned that already.
“He would like you to start informal training. He said it will help you during orientation.”
I folded my arms over my chest. “I already told you I’m not going back to that place.”
Mom gasped. “Aurora, you have to.”
“Why?”
“The agents…they said if we don’t comply…you’ll die.”
Her voice quivered and broke on a sob.
I took a step forward, placing a hand on her shoulder. “Mom, it’s okay. I just want to know what they want from me. How did the agents even find me to begin with?”
She sniffed and sucked in a breath. “I don’t know. When I received the call about your accident they already had you on base.”
Sounded more like a kidnapping than a rescue mission if you asked me.
“And what did they tell you?”
“I can’t remember,” Mom said a little too quickly. “I was in a state of panic. It’s hard to remember much. I was in shock.”
“Try to remember—they must’ve said something.”
Mom stared beyond me. “They said there was internal bleeding and that your heart was giving out. They mentioned that three organs needed replacing if you were to have any chance of survival.” Mom made another choking sound. She took a breath. “They said they were your only hope.”
“And what did you agree to in return for my operation?”
“The agents believe you can be a big help to their division. They want you as an operative. Top secret stuff. They gave me their word that you wouldn’t come to any harm if I agreed to secrecy and you complied.”
My voice quivered. “What kind of operative?”
Mom avoided my eyes. “Only the agents can tell you that.”
For all their mumbo jumbo about viruses, modified organisms, and the greater good, I was at a loss as to their intent. Curious as I was, I’d sooner steer clear of the agents all together—for the rest of my life if possible. I didn’t want to train. I didn’t want to be an operative. I did not sign up for this.
And why were they called agents, anyway? If they were on base, shouldn’t they be lieutenants or sergeants?
I held out my arms. “Look at me.”
Mom looked.
“Do I look like I should be in the military?”
Mom shook her head slowly.
“I like to read books. I like to write.” I lowered my arms and began pacing the room. “You know what I don’t like? Gym and whistles. I should be going to college—not the service!”
“Let’s just wait until orientation. I’m sure the agents will explain everything there.”
“Whatever,” I said. “I’m done decorating.”
4
Holiday Blues
The last day of school drifted by in a trance. All the seniors went on about how they couldn’t wait for Christmas break and how, “Oh, my God”, when we got back it would be graduation year.
At the end of the day, I bypassed my locker to avoid receiving phony smiles and weak hugs.
I boarded my bus and stared out the window until I got home. Snow fell gently from the sky when I disembarked. It was like padding over the earth—soundproof padding. Snow still fascinated me. I’d lived in Alaska my whole life, but when the snow came down in thick white flakes, I could swear there was nothing more beautiful in the world.
A freshman gathered some of the snow in his bare hands and attempted to make a snowball, but it was too dry and turned to dust in his fingers. The herd of kids walking up the street thinned as they disappeared inside their warm homes, until only I remained—trudging alone to my house at the top of the hill.
If I kept walking, maybe I would find myself. I looked ahead to where the end of the road met the woods. She was out there somewhere: The person I was before the accident.
I looked sideways at my house and passed by.
Snow clung to the spruce trees ahead like long white coats. My heart pattered as I approached the clump of woods at the top of the hill. A dirt path led into the cave of bark and branches and silence. I walked toward it.
Inside this clutch of woods, the temperature dropped, and the light dimmed. The spruce trees didn’t appear as gentle when I came closer to their sharp needles. I trampled through, keeping my eyes straight ahead. Smaller paths made by moose veered off in random directions.
There was no sound in here. No twigs snapping under hooves or ravens cawing. No rowdy teens sneaking in for a smoke or children crossing over with their sleds to slide down the steep hump at the top of our hill. The world was silent.
The trees didn’t taper off where the next neighborhood began—they just stopped. This street was quiet, at least. The homes began to mash together in the next neighborhood until I reached the main road.
Snow snaked in crystallized clouds over the pavement with each passing car. I observed traffic until my toes went numb. No more shivers. I couldn’t even feel the cold anymore. When there were no cars in sight in either direction, I crossed to the median, made sure it was still clear, and crossed again.
There was a hill leading to a strip mall with take-out pizza place, dry cleaners, and video store. I waded my way through the deep snow.
The next part was like something from a dream. When I rose from the hill I saw Fane standing at the top smoking a cigarette with another guy several feet in front of the video store. It was Fane who looked at me in disbelief as though seeing a ghost emerge through the snow. He dropped his cigarette and took several steps forward.
“Aurora?”
A smile hovered on my lips. So he did know my name.
Fane’s companion looked me over with a scowl. “Chum of yours, Francesco?” he asked in a British accent.
Fane ignored his friend. He stepped closer. “What are you doing out here?” He gazed into my eyes. When I didn’t answer he looked beyond my shoulder. “Do you live nearby?”
“Yes.”
“Are you going somewhere?”
“No.”
Fane’s bystander made a sound of exasperated impatience. He looked a lot like Adrien Brody, the clean-cut version in The Pianist, with pale skin, narrow cheekbones, and a lanky, thin frame.
“I’ll give you a ride home,” Fane said.
I screeched the moment he grabbed my arm. “No!” I wasn’t so out of it that I’d get into a moving vehicle with someone other than my mom.
Fane’s friend sneered. When he spoke he sounded all snotty British. “It’s not enough that you’re hanging out with those adolescent twats at Denali, now you’re consorting with a girl who is clearly insane.”
Fane let go of my arm and glared at his companion. “She was recently in a car accident.”
The scowl became further pronounced. “A car accident occurs every second—103,680 a day—over 35,000 fatalities annually in this country alone.” He walked around me as he spoke, studying me as though I was a marble sculpture at the Louvre. With my pale skin, I was nearly white enough.
He stopped directly in front of me and stared me in the eyes. “Happens all the time. Get over it.”
Fane crossed his arms over his chest. “Maybe it’s time you got over it.”
“This isn’t about me.”
“It’s always about you,” Fane said. He turned to me. “Come on, I’ll walk you home.”
“I’m not going home.”
“Oh, really?” Amusement danced over Fane’s eyes. “And where exactly are you going, Aurora Sky?”
I lowered my lashes and tried to think. “I don’t know.”
“I say you leave her out here t
o freeze,” his buddy said.
Fane rolled his eyes. “I’ll be right back. Go pick out your movies. Try to find something with more action and less subtitles.”
Fane took my arm and led me down the hill. “Here we go—back home.”
“I don’t want to go back home. She’ll want me to decorate and eat cookies.”
Fane laughed. “Clearly you come from a dysfunctional family.”
He removed his hand when we reached the sidewalk. When there wasn’t a vehicle in sight I nodded my consent to cross.
Fane followed my lead and shadowed my steps. When we reached the opposite side of the road he smiled. “Made it.”
Dressed in his usual black jeans and ribbed tee, he was as dark as doom against the fading light. Even the snow didn’t stick to his long leather jacket.
I didn’t know why he was doing this. I kept expecting him to offer to sell me drugs to ease the pain. But there was no pain, only a numb sense of nothingness, and he made no offers.
“Did you die?” he asked.
I craned my head sideways to look at him.
“You know, white light opening in front of you welcoming you into the heavens?”
“No, there was no white light.”
I looked away. The snow hadn’t let up. If anything, it fell thicker and faster. The flakes were like particles of light broken into tiny fragments across the sky.
My voice dropped. “But there was a white room. I didn’t like the white room.”
“I’m not much for hospitals, myself,” Fane said. He kicked a mound of snow and it scattered like dust. “Avoid them like the plague.” His words ended on a laugh.
We worked our way through the crowded neighborhood and started up the hill that led to the woods.
“Got any Christmas plans?” Fane asked.
I didn’t answer. I didn’t want to think about the gifts my mom would give me in an attempt to buy my forgiveness. I didn’t want to moon over my upcoming orientation with the agents.
As we walked through the woods I imagined Fane taking my hand in his. I wasn’t sure if Valerie was his girlfriend or if they were just fooling around. Either way, he kept his distance, returning me home as though I were a lost puppy.
Well, I wasn’t lost.
Once our feet hit the road, I stopped and turned to Fane. “You can go back now,” I said.
“Is your house nearby?”
“Yes.”
Fane leaned forward. “Very well, Aurora. I’ll wait here in case you try to wander off again.”
I narrowed my eyes. “I’m not a child.”
The shock of blond at the top of Fane’s head made the blackened hair on the sides look like demonic angel wings. I hate your hair, I felt like saying. Not a child, but certainly feeling childish at the moment.
Fane looked down the street. “Which one’s your house?”
I glanced at the yellow home behind me.
“Go home, get warm. I’ll leave just as soon as I see you walk through your door.”
Why did Fane Donado of all people care whether or not I made it home? I looked him in the eye for the longest time then turned for my house.
“Take care, Aurora Sky,” Fane called after me.
I didn’t turn my head for a last look. Not even when I reached my door. I guess I was alone in thinking Fane should kiss me before we parted ways. Isn’t that what boys did when they walked a girl home?
What a cringe-worthy thought. I had to be the most repressed eighteen-year-old on the planet.
The moment I walked inside my mother accosted me.
“Aurora? Aurora, thank God!” She rushed forward and crushed me in her arms. She stepped back just as suddenly. “You’re soaked.” She peeled off my coat.
My father stood just past the doorframe in the space between the kitchen and dining room. Usually he wasn’t home until eight or nine. Even after a month’s absence he chose to spend extra time at the office rather than home. We’d see how long Mom kept her mouth shut this time.
“Where have you been?” Dad demanded.
Mom hurried to fill my silence. “Aurora, your father and I have been worried sick. When you didn’t show up after school…well, I didn’t know what to think. I called the school. I called your friends.”
“And then she called me.” My father moved into the doorframe. I didn’t know if he meant to walk through and scold me by the front door or block my way to the kitchen until I apologized.
“I am neck deep in work right now. It’s the end of the year. You know what that means.”
Mom put my coat away. “Yes, I’m sorry, Bill. If I hadn’t been so worried…”
“It’s not your fault, Dana.”
My father looked at me with an expression I’d never seen before. Blame.
Funny, ’cause I wasn’t the one who threatened not to come home the last time he left the country on business.
I held him in my gaze. The creases in his forehead deepened.
“Go to your room, Aurora,” he said.
“I’ll bring you up a cup of warm tea,” Mom said.
“No tea. She needs time to think about what she’s done.”
I really wished I’d get the feeling back in my face because I would have liked to roll my eyes. I wasn’t sassy by nature, especially not to dear old Dad, but it burbled inside me in the form of a smirk twitching over my lips.
“Oh, you think it’s funny, do you?” Dad said, stepping toward me.
“Bill!” Mom said.
The fog lifted momentarily, and I saw him clearly—this man who’d stopped raising me, who ceased knowing me years ago. Like the forgotten wife at home, I was the forgotten child. And now that I was an adult, a senior in high school, he thought he could send me to my room?
I leapt to the first stair and faced my parents for one final show down.
“I’ll go to my room,” I said. “Happily. If you like, I’ll even spend Christmas in my room.”
Then I raced up the stairs.
5
Vampire Blood
The agents called me in for orientation at the end of the year. I was to report to duty early in the morning.
Mom didn’t have to make any excuses to Dad. He had checked out of Hotel Sky an hour earlier.
Mom sat sipping a diet soda, reading the newspaper at the kitchen table. The ice cubes in her drink cracked against the glass every time she lifted and sipped.
I’d barely taken three bites of my oatmeal.
Mom looked at my bowl. “Is that all you’re eating?”
“I’m not hungry.”
Mom frowned. “You’re going to get hungry if you don’t finish your food.”
No I wouldn’t. Not with my stomach full of knots.
Mom folded up her newspaper. She sounded resigned. “The agents said to bring a change of clothes.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
At least they weren’t making me wear camo. Then again, they could have hundreds of pushups and jumping jacks in store. Maybe I would be drenched in sweat by the end of the day.
I stared out the window as we headed downtown toward Elmendorf Air Force Base. Each passing street brought us closer to certain doom. A beige sedan pulled into our lane right in front of us and, instinctively, I threw my right foot forward and pressed it into the mat. My mom pumped the brake and grumbled at the driver.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
I liked the tone of her voice. It was firm and assertive. She never took her eye off the road.
“Yes,” I all but whispered.
We drove down the Glenn Highway a short distance before my mom took an exit right and crossed the bridge over the highway to the gated entrance leading into Elmendorf.
The sick feeling in the pit of my stomach returned as we approached the line of cars at the gate. I wasn’t aware the feeling had gone until it came back worse than before.
“What if we turned around?” I asked suddenly. “Tell the agents I’m ill.
Tell them I’m not ready yet.”
“Aurora, you’re going to have to get this over with at some point. I think it’s best you complete orientation before the new semester starts. You’ll feel better once it’s done.”
We were currently fourth in line. The lead vehicle, a truck, didn’t appear to be going anywhere. A young military man leaned outside the booth, took something from the driver, and disappeared back inside.
“Don’t worry,” Mom said. “I know you’ll do fine.”
The military man’s head reappeared right before the gate went up, and the truck drove forward. The next vehicle went right in.
Now only one car stood between me and captivity.
I turned to Mom. “Talk to them! Tell them I’ll pay them back for the operation. I don’t care if it takes me my entire life. I’ll get their money back.”
“They don’t want money,” Mom said. “I tried that. I would have paid any price to get you back. But we can’t buy organs…the government can. We’re lucky. The agents chose you. They wanted you to live.”
Melcher and Crist didn’t want me to live so much as serve. Why did my mom have to try and glorify this?
The car in front of us sped through the open gate. Mom drove forward, right up to the gates of hell.
“Hello,” she said with a bright smile. “I’m Dana Sky, and this my daughter Aurora. We have an appointment with Agent Melcher.”
The young military man showed no emotion. “IDs.”
Mom and I dug out our wallets and pulled our driver’s licenses out of their tight compartments. The man glanced at our cards, turned to a walkie-talkie, and spoke into it. “The VH recruit is here. Over.”
Static ensued followed by scratchy words saying, “Send them in. Over.”
The young man handed Mom our IDs. He tilted his head toward a black sedan waiting just through the gate. “That black sedan is your escort. Follow him.”
The gate lifted and we drove onto the base.
My mom and I didn’t speak as she followed the vehicle in front of us. The black sedan tuned on its right blinker. Mom did the same. We followed it down a wooded road. If my internal compass was any good, we were now traveling north, adjacent to the now-hidden Glenn Highway.
Aurora Sky: Vampire Hunter Page 3