by Ryan Schow
Then a man, an extremely tall man—so tall he blocks the sun from view—he comes up and sits down beside me in a beach chair he brought with him. He’s dressed in an Armani suit by the look of it, and he’s handsome. I don’t recognize the look of him, but I do recognize the feel.
My nose starts to bleed, and the headache that forms is as excruciating as it is familiar. I throw my blockers up and say, “Hello,” to the man who freed me from my human tethers and turned me into this extraordinary thing I am today.
I think I hate him, but maybe I want to like him. He is an unsolved mystery. One I’m sure I’ll spend the next millennia contemplating.
“Hello, Savannah,” the doctor from Dulce says. “You’re looking well.”
He knows me, my new name; he knows everything I’m thinking.
“Other than your entrance, I’m feeling quite well,” I say, wiping my bloody nose with a towel. “Why are you here?”
He laughs for a moment, lifts his face into the air. He, too, makes an easy smile I know he feels. Although he is accustomed to an underground life, the heat and brilliance of the sun upon him is akin to a near sex experience for his species.
“You are an enigma, my dear,” he finally says. “The first of your kind to both kill yourself and survive.”
“I could still kill myself,” I say, playing the Devil’s advocate. “How do you know I won’t do that?”
“You already have. There are no traces of Raven de’ Medici left in history. And there are very few traces of Savannah Crawford-Swann in the future. One of which is not her death. There is, in fact, precious little evidence at all of you being anywhere. And yet, in the future, you are alive.”
“And you know this how?” I ask.
“Because I sought you out and I found you.”
“When?”
“In the late twenty-sixth century. You weren’t excited about the intrusion, but you understood.”
“I suppose I should trust you.”
“You never really had a choice.”
The same boys walk past me again, as do a pair of teenage girls who can’t stop staring at me because I’m that pretty, or him because he’s that tall. Taking off my sunglasses, looking right at the doctor, I say, “So why are you here, emptying your proverbial bladder on my happiness?”
“I told you that everyone like you eventually kills themselves. You don’t. You won’t. Perhaps I find you…more interesting than before. Perhaps I am wrong.”
“And that’s why you came to see me today?”
“In part.”
Looking up at him, his eyes human looking, I say, “Do elaborate, reptilian.”
He snickers at the label. He’s not sure if I’m being rude, or finally acknowledging him for what he is. I shield him from my thoughts, to which he grins, waves off the comment and says, “It’s time you do something for you.”
“That’s why I’m in South Beach and not back in California.”
“It’s time to let yourself love. That is the ultimate human experience, one that you have denied yourself for too long now.”
How can I not think of all the boys in my life when he says this? Jake Teller, Brayden James, Damien Rhodes, Caden Reynolds, Jacob Brantley, Sebastian Fray. Are any of them worth loving? I don’t know. In some ways they all are, in other ways, not a single one measures up.
“How do you know I’ve denied this of myself? Besides, I’m seventeen. Not old enough in the state’s eyes to understand love, let alone sex, which is an expression of this love you so aptly describe.”
When it came to Jake and Tavares, I was anxious to throw myself into them, be their everything, give them my everything. I have not just denied myself this love, this love has been denied me as well. Which is to say others are complicit in this loveless existence of mine.
“If I were human, I would tell you everything you ever wanted to know about love,” he declares, “but I’m not, which is to say I personally know nothing of it, so you’ll have to figure out those things on your own.” Looking so deep into my eyes—because he wants me to know how serious he is—he says, “You should start.”
Trying the idea of falling in love on for size once more, I think: maybe. No, I think, I want to. But is it possible for me to fall in love for real this time?
“Yes, it’s possible,” he says, getting through my defenses and reading my mind. “Just start with someone. You know who you want. You know who you love.”
And he’s right, I do. It isn’t like the movies, though, where things are easy, or clear—the guy I want, he won’t be reduced to geek, jock, stranger, first crush or best friend. Perhaps he’s a mixture of all of them, and more. Or maybe none of them. So many of the Hollywood movies today, they’re just canned scripts with storylines so formulaic it’s amazing they even get clearance to go into production. Love isn’t as easy, or so obvious—it doesn’t choose.
It just is.
It’s lust, desire, a kiss, that look; it’s friendship in difficult times, and trust when you trust no one else; true love is selfless, it’s sacrifice, loyalty and compromise; love is an enduring thing, an irresistible emotion that holds you hostage, that sucks you into its gravitational pull and won’t let go, even while all your other feelings grow dim and wither away.
I know this because future Raven knew and understood this. And I recognize true love because I experienced it in full four times in the future. Yes, the doctor from Dulce is right. I know who I want. I know who I want to love, and I’m only hoping he’ll love me back. If I’ve learned anything, though, life holds no guarantees. And it makes no promises.
The smile breaking on my face, it’s me finally choosing. The doctor stands and gently kicks the sand from the tops of his designer wingtip shoes. I shade my eyes from the sun, gaze up at him.
Looking down on me from so far up, the seven foot reptilian says, “Good choice, Savannah.” He knows who I choose. Not that this surprises me. Apparently he knows more about me than I do.
But that’s always been the case.
“Yeah,” I say. “I think so.”
He leaves me to the beach where I wiggle my toes back into the warm sand and lift my face into the ocean breeze once more.
My mother calls two days later. I’m riding a rented bike through South Beach wearing skimpy white shorts, a bikini top and Prada glasses when she says my father took her back, that it’s time to come home.
I pull off the bike path, balance myself and say, “Really?”
She laughs.
“Really, honey. It’s time to come home. We miss you.”
When I’m packed and waiting outside the gate for my plane at Miami International, I think about the road ahead, about the love I’m about to pursue, and the truth is, I don’t know how it will work out, or why it should. For the first time in a long time, though, I’ve decided who I want to be with and I can get to it with a fresh face, a new body, and no ties to the past.
My best chance at love, I think, is right now.
When I get home, when I drive the Audi into the driveway, for obvious reasons, I don’t just walk right into the house. I knock, and my father answers. Orianna is behind him looking at me with curious eyes, eyes that marvel at the beauty of this face and body, but they don’t yet see me.
“Yes?” he asks, having never seen this version of me before. “How can I help you?”
Smiling, my heart is finally at peace as I am not only their daughter, but once again their genetic daughter. This time I am made of the best of them both, rather than the worst.
“It’s me, daddy,” I say, my eyes soft and finally forgiving. “I’m home.”
END OF BOOK VII
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Book 8 of the Swann Series Novels:
ENIGMA
Life is cyclical, and sometimes you make your own do-overs, but such rare opportunities don’t always turn out the way you would hope, as both Savannah and Brayden will learn.
Despite her rich and astonishing history, Savannah’s future is now an unwritten book. With no one hunting her and perfect anonymity hers for the taking, can she settle into a normal teenage life, or will the nightmares of her past and the tendencies of her once future self have her kicking the hornet’s nest once more? As powerful and as intelligent as the seventeen year old is, she travels no easy roads, and the future is as daunting and as dangerous as the past. Savannah knows she must lose herself to find herself, though, for love must always supersede vengeance, even if the task requires changes in her she’s unwilling or unable to make.
Brayden James barely recognizes himself. He’s left behind the wreckage of multiple relationships while getting no closer to having the girl he truly wants. After returning to Vegas, to divided friends and the city that both haunts and enthralls him, he brazenly walks into the FBI field office with a haphazard plan and juvenile demands. With nothing to lose and all the puzzle pieces of his future needing to find their respective places, he unknowingly pits himself against one of the most notorious groups of black hat hackers the FBI has ever known, a reckless decision that will either guarantee his freedom or cost him his life.
ENIGMA is the eighth book in the groundbreaking Swann Series novels. In the high stakes world of underground genetics and disappearing identities, one must tie up the past to disappear the future, and for an enigma like Savannah, that means she must betray those people she respects to save the ones she loves.
Don’t wait, download your copy of ENIGMA now!