Forever Young (The Forever Land Chronicles)

by Sawyer Bennett

  We continued to talk, it seemed about everything. I was laughing over a story Caiden had just told me when I glanced at a couple approaching the restaurant. My stomach plummeted when I realized it was Sarah walking across the beach, arm in arm with the guy that tried to crash the party the night of the field trials. That young, pimped out dude that Caiden chased out of the bar. He was dressed more sedately tonight in casual pants and a yellow linen shirt. Without the fedora hat, I could see he had brown hair, buzzed short in a military cut. I looked over at Caiden as they approached the cafe and his eyes narrowed when he saw them.

  When they made their way to the top step, Sarah saw us sitting there and walked over. She looked down, glancing between the both of us with her lips thinned into a tight smile.

  "Caiden...Charlie...lovely night isn't it?" Sarah's voice held no warmth in her greeting. The man stayed by her side and stared at me, almost with wonder. It kinda creeped me out.

  Sarah clearly was not happy to see us there...together. Before I could say anything, Caiden brought my hand to his mouth and gave it a small kiss before releasing it. Sarah's eyes flashed in anger but Caiden was calm and collected.

  "It's indeed a very lovely night, Sarah. And what brings you here?"

  "Just a friendly dinner with Jimmy," she smoothly replied. "Well, we better get in. Charlie...I see you didn't heed my advice. Don't say I didn't warn you."

  I watched as they walked inside, deep in thought. I got the impression that man was bad news. He seemed...shady. So why was the headmaster of our school with him? Caiden would probably have some answers. I turned to ask him but he beat me to the punch.

  "What advice did she give you?"

  "Oh, I forgot to tell you about that. She tried to warn me off from seeing you. What were her words? 'He'll chew you up and spit you out', I think."

  "You're kidding me?"

  "Nope."

  "She's unbelievable."

  "I know, right? She actually told me that you cheated on her and then cried big, fat crocodile tears." I laughed over the idea but when I looked at Caiden, he wasn't laughing. His face was hard and bitter.

  "That's a lie, Charlie."

  "I know," I said softly. "She cheated on you."

  He looked at me clearly startled. "What makes you say that?"

  "Well, I heard her apologize to you that day in the gym. I didn't understand why, but now I get it. That's the favor you called in when you saved me from getting expelled, right? She owed you for that."

  Caiden nodded his head and gave a sarcastic little laugh. "It's not like she exactly owed me anything. Hell, I didn't know if she even had any guilt over it, but I had to try to use that so she wouldn't expel you. Fortunately, it worked."

  "So who is that guy she was with? He's the same one you made leave the bar on the night of the field trials."

  Caiden's face grew hard. "His name is Jimmy Patere. He's sort of Semper Terra's version of a mobster. He's on his Second Life but spends most of it here aboard his yacht out there." I looked to where he pointed...the large yacht in the lagoon. That must be the Jolly Roger.

  "Was he an Annihilator?"

  I could see a muscle ticking in Caiden's jaw as he was staring out at Jimmy’s boat. This was something he apparently didn't like to talk about but I wasn't going to let it go. I'd opened up to him tonight. He could do the same.

  "Caiden? What is it between you and this guy?"

  He looked at me and grabbed my hand. The look on his face was tired, as if he had been battling against daimons all day. I was starting to worry what he would say. He took a deep breath.

  "I have a long history with Jimmy. He and I were best friends and Annihilators back in the early 19th century. Sarah and I were...well, we were together like I told you. Jimmy was a very close friend to her as well."

  He paused and looked back out to the lagoon, as if trying to come up with the right words. I gave his hand a squeeze in reassurance and he continued. "Our little group was torn apart when Sarah and Jimmy had an affair."

  I winced in sympathetic pain. "What happened when you found out?"

  Caiden looked at me with a wariness in his eyes that made me uncomfortable. I was really not prepared when he said, "We fought and I cut Jimmy's hand off."

  Stunned doesn't even begin to cover how I felt and I released Caiden's hand as I reeled backward. I couldn't see Caiden doing something like that. I mean, I could see him killing a dark daimon, but cutting a man's hand off? Surely I heard him wrong.

  "You literally cut off his hand? And that's why he wears a prosthetic now?"

  "Yes."

  "That's it? Just yes...I cut off his hand. Surely there's more to it than that."

  "No. Surely there isn't more to it. I found out he was sleeping with Sarah, I went crazy, we fought and I cut off his hand. End of story."

  Caiden was clearly getting defensive and it was making me defensive in turn. "Did you do it intentionally? You know...the whole 'cut off a man's hand for stealing your woman' kind of thing?"

  "It wasn't like that," Caiden gritted out. "We got into a heated fight with swords. We were evenly matched. One of my blows caught him on the wrist."

  "But, could you have avoided it?"

  I don't know why I was pressing him. I wasn't even sure what I was looking for or why I felt so unsettled by this story. And I couldn’t believe we were actually fighting on our first date. At this rate, it would probably be out last date.

  "What do you want me to say, Charlie?" Caiden was getting angry. "That I'm sorry I did it? Because I'm not. The only thing I can tell you is that I didn't set out for it to happen that way, but you are not going to make me regret entering into that fight. It was a fair fight and I had no choice but to cut his hand off."

  Caiden stood up from the table and left. I watched him walk down the front porch steps and head across the beach to the lagoon's edge. He stood there, looking out over the mood laden water, his hands stuffed in his pockets. His back was rigid and I could tell it was stiff with anger.

  Caiden said he had no choice but to cut his hand off? How can you not have a choice? Granted, Jimmy was a complete and utter jerk for cheating with his best friend's girl, but surely that didn't merit cutting off his hand. I tried to imagine Caiden and Jimmy, battling it out with swords. Both fueled by anger and hurt. Fury propelling them on, both needing to win the battle. I wondered if the fight had really been intended to end in someone's death.

  And then it hit me like a ton of bricks. Of course he had no choice but to cut off Jimmy's hand. I remembered what Huron told me about melee battles. You needed to be ready to see it all the way through because they usually ended with the demise of one of the participants. The battle between Caiden and Jimmy, two Annihilators, would have been for nothing less than to the death.

  I got up from my chair and headed out to the beach. I came up softly and stood beside Caiden. He didn't acknowledge my presence, so I tugged on his arm until his hand came out of his pocket. I slipped my hand in his and squeezed.

  "You're right. You had no choice and I'm sorry I even doubted you for a second."

  Caiden's eyebrows shot up but he looked at me with suspicion. I felt terrible that he didn't trust the truth of my words to him. So I continued with my theory. "You had no choice but to cut his hand off. Because that ended the fight, right? If you had not done that, it would have ended in Jimmy's death. And you refused to kill your best friend, even though he betrayed you?"

  I watched in fascination as Caiden literally deflated in front of me. His shoulders hunched forward and he scrubbed his other hand through his hair. He looked at me with misery, and oddly, relief in his eyes.

  "Jimmy was losing the fight but he would not quit. I even tried to talk him down. He was going to die and the only way to stop it was to put him out of commission without killing. So I took his hand."

  Oh, poor Caiden! He had faced the ultimate betrayal. His best friend and lover had an affair. His anger led to a fight...one he was destined to win
. And despite his fury over being wronged, he still couldn't kill his best friend. Standing beside me, I had to be looking at the most amazing man ever. His eyes still had a haunted look to them that tore at my heart.

  I stepped in front of Caiden and placed my hands on his cheeks so he would look at me. As he gazed down into my eyes, I felt his arms wrap around my waist. As he held me close, I whispered, "You are incredible. And I'm lucky just to know you."

  The sadness melted from his eyes and they grew in wonder. A smile turned the corners of his mouth up and he leaned down to kiss me. I watched him come closer, as if in slow motion. This was it. My first kiss and I thought the anticipation might cause me to pass out. He did nothing more than graze his lips lightly across mine but it caused my entire body to shudder from that slight touch. His arms tightened around me and he deepened the kiss. The world around me disappeared and I didn't care that we were standing on the beach, in full view of the patrons dining on Café Syreni's porch.

  After only moments into my first true kiss, Caiden pulled back. After staring into my eyes briefly, he leaned forward and placed a soft kiss on my forehead. In other circumstances, that might have been a brotherly type of kiss, but there was a wealth of meaning and care behind it. It moved me just as much as the kiss he had placed on my lips.

  "Come on. Let's get you home so you can dream sweet dreams about me."

  I chuckled. "What makes you think they will be about you?"

  "After that kiss, Charlie—trust me—we'll both be dreaming about the other person tonight." I smiled to myself because I knew he was right.

  PART THREE

  "All you need is faith and trust, and a little bit of pixie dust." Tinkerbell

  Chapter 19

  I simply couldn't help it. I was losing my heart to Caiden. It didn't matter that I had known him barely a month. He was the most perfectly, amazing man I would ever know. I suppose some would call me young and naïve to fall for someone so quickly. And I admit, maybe this was happening a bit too fast. But the connection I had with Caiden was otherworldly in my opinion. Which was appropriate, seeing as how we did live in another world. And even though my feelings were traveling at Mach Three, I decided I needed to live in the moment.

  The weeks of training at the Academy seemed to fly by. I knew I would have decades, maybe centuries, to be with Caiden. But every day that passed, I felt I could never have enough of him. We spent much of our free time together—when Caiden was not off battling daimons in the First Dimension—and I had never been happier in my life.

  For the most part, our relationship was easy going but in no way casual. I knew our feelings for each other were deepening as every day passed and I could talk to Caiden about anything. I opened up to him about all of my guilt and pain over my parents' murders. I told him things I had not even told my therapists. He also opened up to me about his life, and of course, he had a lot more to share seeing as how he had a few hundred years of age on me.

  I had asked Caiden one day about the comment Sarah had made to him in the gym. We were at his cottage eating dinner he had cooked for me. It was basically hot dogs and potato chips, but it was delicious because it was made by Caiden for me. At first he didn't remember the comment so I reminded him.

  "You know...she said something like she had already lived her Second Life so now she could be happy here again in Semper Terra."

  Understanding dawned on his face. "Oh, yeah. I remember now." He paused to stuff a few chips in his mouth and I waited patiently for him to continue. He just smiled at me and continued eating. I threw a potato chip at him and he laughed.

  "Okay, okay. Chill out, my impatient princess."

  I flushed with secure warmth. The word princess from his mouth now was said with reverence and care. "When Sarah and I were together, she wanted to move our relationship to a more committed stage. To her, that meant giving up our lives as Annihilators and moving to the First Dimension to start a Second Life."

  "And it's not something you wanted?"

  Caiden shook his head. "Nope. I just can't see myself doing it. I don't think I'm cut out for a normal life. Marriage, kids, a boring job."

  "But you don't have to have a boring job in the First Dimension. You could still fight evil. Or you could join the military. Or become a CIA operative. See...lots of exciting stuff you could do."

  Caiden swallowed the food he had been chewing and looked at me with dead seriousness. "It wouldn't be enough for me, Charlie. I don't think anything can fulfill me the way being an Annihilator does."

  For the first time since we kissed, I felt a distance between Caiden and me. I won't lie that it hurt a little when he said that nothing could fulfill him like being an Annihilator. I wanted him to scream to the world, "Nothing can fulfill me like Charlie Wright!" But that was naivety on my part for sure.

  Prior to this discussion, I had not thought much about a Second Life. I was far too young to even think that far in advance. But now that I knew Caiden didn't want that, it made me a little sad. Because, what if one day down the road, I did want a family and a life in the First Dimension? I supposed when you are destined to live forever, I was foolish to let myself think that Caiden and I would always be on the same path. There was a definite probability down the road we would diverge in our wants and desires. I mentally shook these feelings off. Our relationship was too young and too fresh to even mar it with thoughts of how we may break up one day. I would be content with what I had in the here and now.

  And in the here and now, it became harder and harder at the end of our evenings together to stop our kisses and say goodbye. I was on the verge of becoming an adult woman and I would be lying if I didn't say I wanted more in our relationship than just kissing. I know Caiden wanted more too, but he always gave me a soft kiss on the forehead to indicate it was time to pull back and slow down. He reasoned to me, that in a world where time stood still, there was no rush for us to go further in our physical relationship. I tried to reason to him that I was almost eighteen and if I was old enough to die for the Alliance, I was certainly old enough to do something more with him other than kiss. He just chuckled at me, admiring my logic but in no way buying it.

  Luckily, my friends were amazingly supportive of my relationship with Caiden. No one made me feel self-conscious of our 380 plus year age difference and part of that was Caiden's knack to relate to all people. He was adaptable and easy going and that had to have come from the experience he gained over his four hundred years of existence. You would think someone that old would be "old" in his ways, but sometimes Caiden could have the personality of a teenager, particularly when he, Justas and Ben got to kidding around.

  About halfway through my Academy training, I had decided to host a pizza party. Caiden was off in the First Dimension battling daimons and I missed him like crazy. Ben was taking a rare Saturday night off trusting the running of Café Syreni to his staff so he could join us. Sadly, there were no pizza delivery services so I thought it would be fun if we made the pizzas ourselves.

  We were all stuffed in my little kitchen, tossing pizza dough—sometimes at each other—and layering goodies on top. Ben and Justas were working toward becoming drunk on their favorite beer. As a joke, I guess, Justas brought me a six pack of wine coolers—tropical peach—to tempt me. I had one and I had to admit, it tasted pretty darn good.

  Once our pizza was ready, we sat around eating its gooey splendidness and talking about our classes. Ben was fairly quiet, which was not normal, and I couldn't help but wonder if it was because we were talking about the Academy. Because Ben had not made it through as an Annihilator, I was afraid that perhaps it could be painful hanging around with us. Normally, he always joined in our conversations about daimons, and weapons, and what not. But tonight, he was a little distant.

  "...and then, Charlie used a battle axe during target practice and she nailed the bull's eye five times in a row. You could tell Huron was impressed." I heard Emerson bragging about me.

  I smiled at Emerson. G
one was the frightened girl I first saw in the cafeteria when Payton was spewing her hate. Ever since Emerson let Huron stab her, she had become relentless in trying to be the best in our class. She was more confident and her easy charm was always hovering at the surface. I still worried about her, being fifteen and all. She was smaller than the rest of our class, but what she didn't have in brawn, she certainly made up for it in smarts.

  "I may have nailed the target but our dear Emerson here has more brains than all of us combined. She's aced every single test we've taken. I think Bashir wants to make her an Elder by the time she's sixteen."

  Justas ruffled Emerson's hair. "If your parents could see you now, Emerson, they would be so proud."

  Emerson swatted Justas' hand away but giggled as she did it. "Yeah, I'm sure they would."

  I turned to Ben as I took another slice of pizza. "What about you Ben? Do you fall in with the orphans like me and Emerson, or do you come from an insanely wealthy family of Annihilators like our resident stud, Justas, here?"

  Ben gave a snort. "I guess you could say I'm a little of both. My parents are indeed retired Annihilators living on their Second Life. However, the disappointment I handed them by failing to become one was apparently too much for them to bear. They haven't spoken to me in close to ten years."

  My pizza stuck in my throat which was a good thing because I didn't know what to say. That was horrible. It was one thing to have your parents taken away from you by circumstances beyond your control, but to have your parents ignore you because you didn't become what they wanted. He was indeed an orphan of the saddest variety.

  I looked at Justas for a quick second and I could see the compassion on his face. Justas was so blessed to have such an accepting family. In a twist of fate, he could have easily been as outcast from his family as Ben was, just for being gay.

  "Do you have any siblings?" I asked.