Hidden Realms

by Unknown

  I was surprised to see a woman, let alone a pretty one. Even though her features were hardened by the permanent scowl standard on all Skotadi, it was obvious she had once been beautiful. Her dark hair was pulled back in a high tight bun and, except for the shiny gold ring, her eyes were black. But whereas most Skotadi were unnaturally pale, she had an olive complexion that softened her features.

  While her appearance had initially caught my attention, what I now noticed above everything else was the way Nathan looked at her.

  He wasn’t blown away by her beauty. He wasn’t sizing up a Skotadi threat. He was in a trance as if, in his eyes, he was looking at a ghost. Her name left his lips as a whisper. “Lil?”

  As in Lillian? As in the tattoo on his arm? As in his girlfriend who was supposed to be dead? I didn’t know how, but seeing the look on his face, I knew it was true.

  She took him in calculatingly, and her lips twisted into a wicked smile. “Hello, sweetie,” she said in a voice as cold as her eyes. She rotated her head slowly to fixate on me. “I see you’ve still got your pet.”

  I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what that was supposed to mean, and I didn’t get a chance to find out. Once her focus shifted to me, Nathan sprang to life. He stepped sideways to put himself between her and me. He must have noticed that his dead girlfriend was very much alive, and very evil. It wasn’t hard to miss.

  “Aw, I’m not going to hurt her,” Lillian purred. Her eyes cut into me. “I need her.”

  I didn’t like the sound of that.

  With a sharp nod of her head, the rest of them descended upon us. As a large Skotadi pulled my arms behind my back, I felt the wave of panic seize my body. It threatened to cripple me until I met Nathan’s eyes. He held mine with his, and I drew my strength from him.

  They wanted us alive. I didn’t know why, and didn’t know if I should have been relieved or concerned. I settled with relief for now. I would worry about why they wanted us alive later.

  We were led by Lillian and three beefy escorts farther into the barn and to the real safe house, which, as it turned out, served as a large Skotadi base. And by large, I meant large.

  The compound was built under acres of farmland, and was accessed through a trap door in the floor of the barn. Steep and narrow steps chiseled out of the earth took us down and dumped us into an elaborate network of tunnels. It was cold and smelled of damp dirt and a touch of sulfur that stung my nose. Every fifty yards there was an overhead orange light so obscenely bright I preferred the stretch of darkness between them.

  We walked so long and turned so many times, I lost all sense of direction. There were no signs, no maps. They navigated the tunnels by memory, effectively ensuring that Nathan and I would have no way of figuring our way out if we managed to escape.

  When I saw the brick jail cell looming ahead, all hope of escape vanished. I wanted to panic...again, but even though I couldn’t see his eyes, I felt Nathan’s reassuring presence behind me. He held me together.

  They removed our restraints and threw me in first. I waited for Nathan to spring, and to suddenly find ourselves fighting for our lives again, but he didn’t, and was tossed in behind me. Lillian oversaw the entire process then turned the key in the lock, securing our captivity behind bars. The muscled men retreated, leaving her alone with us.

  Her eyes were on Nathan, hard and unforgiving. “Isn’t it great how I know all your tricks? Let me guess. You parked half a mile back and walked in?”

  He stared straight through her, surprisingly free of emotion. I considered the possibility that he was in shock. Other than to say her name, he hadn’t spoken a word since her return from the dead, and he chose not to acknowledge her with an answer now.

  Rather, he turned his back to her and crossed the length of the cell to where I cowered in the corner. Over his shoulder, I saw Lillian smirk before she withdrew into the tunnel. Positioned mercifully between two overhead spotlights, we were bathed in soft shadows, with just enough light to see each other.

  “You alright?” he asked as he scanned me for any obvious signs of injury.

  “Physically, I’m fine. Emotionally and psychologically, probably not so much. But what else is new?” Really, it was becoming normal, me being screwed up. “How about you?”

  “Fine,” he said hastily, like his well-being didn’t matter.

  “You sure? Was that...” I paused, unsure how to approach the subject. “I mean, is she...”

  “Yeah. And no, I don’t know any more than you do.” His tone made it clear he didn’t want to talk about it.

  I wanted to know how it was possible, if he had known it was possible. There was a lot I still didn’t understand about this new world I belonged to. Based on Nathan’s reaction, switching teams was not something known to happen. We were witnesses to something extraordinary and, from the looks of it, were in the middle of something big, and we didn’t have a clue what it was.

  “You probably should have gone back to Joe’s when you had the chance,” I muttered.

  Nathan’s lips twitch into a reluctant grin. It was the one thing I wanted to see the most at the moment.

  Other than maybe daylight.

  “I wonder what time it is.”

  It has been hours since someone came back to confiscate Nathan’s watch. I wasn’t sure what they thought we would do with it, other than tell time, but they took it, and left us with the impossible task of guessing the time.

  “Stop thinking about it,” Nathan returned. “You’re going to drive yourself, and me, crazy.”

  He sat against the cell wall beside me, his legs bent in front of him and his forearms rested on his knees. He had extensively searched every brick and every crevice in the cell for a weakness. After reluctantly accepting a flawless design, he had conceded to join me on the floor, where we have now been sitting for an eternity.

  Our arms just touched and, unlike a few weeks ago, I wanted to keep it that way. Feeling him beside me kept me from losing it. Only knowing that they weren’t going to leave us like this forever, knowing that they had us there for a reason, and with each passing minute we grew closer to learning what that reason was, filled me with dread.

  “I’m tired.”

  “That’s what happens when you get up at the crack of dawn,” Nathan grumbled, though I heard the smile in his voice. Surprisingly, he was in good spirits. I suspected it was only to keep me from freaking out, but whatever the reason, I was grateful. He rolled his head to look at me. “Why don’t you get some sleep?”

  I wrinkled my nose at the hard floor. “I don’t think I’ll be able to.”

  Nathan surveyed what we had to work with, which was nothing. Not a cot, not a blanket. Nothing. We didn’t even have a toilet. Not that I would have used it anyway.

  He stretched his legs out and patted them with his hands. “You can lay your head on me,” he suggested with a shrug.

  Oh, man, I hoped I was hidden in the shadows enough that he couldn’t see the flaming of my cheeks his suggestion provoked. “What about you?” I asked.

  “I’m not that tired. Besides, I can sleep sitting up if I have to.”

  Of course he could.

  He nudged my arm. “Come on. Get some sleep.”

  I was exhausted and the offer was enticing. Quickly, before I lost my nerve, I rolled onto my side, facing away from him, and rested my head on his outstretched legs. While it was nice to have somewhere soft and warm to lay my head, the rest of me was at the mercy of the unforgiving earthen floor, and I pulled my knees close to my body for warmth.

  Nathan threw his arm over me and tugged me snug against his torso. The heat that radiated off of him encircled me. As I warmed—from his body and from a mysterious fire burning inside of me—I relaxed. It was more comfortable than I expected. Sleep may be possible after all, thanks to Nathan.

  I smiled to myself. He was taking care of me yet again. Somehow, he always found a way to take care of me.

  He always has. The answer to the longstandi
ng question hit me like an out of control train and, only then, did I realize I had known it all along.

  “Hey, Nathan?”

  “Hmmm?”

  “You’ve always been around, haven’t you?”

  I felt the rhythmic movement of his chest as he breathed. “What do you mean?”

  “You told me how you found me when I was little. You said it was random that the Kala picked me to save. But what about the other times? Those weren’t random coincidences, were they?”

  His breathing faltered. “No.”

  “So you were around all along, and somehow knew when I needed you?”

  “Kind of,” he said carefully.

  What was he keeping from me? What was he so afraid of? I turned onto my back to look up at him, silently pleading for the truth. Finally.

  He stared at me for a long, long time before he took a deep relenting breath. “I had a prophet that I trusted watch out for you. I asked her to let me know if she saw anything bad happen to you. I got two calls. The first one came the night I got you out of that foster home when you were eleven. The second was the night of the car accident.”

  My heart pounded, and I feared that he would notice. But I needed to know. “The Kala don’t normally do that, do they?”

  He hesitated. “No.”

  He had broken the rules for me. “So why did you?”

  “I don’t know,” he murmured softly.

  “You’re not the type of person to do something without knowing why you’re doing it.”

  He looked away with a sigh.

  “Why did you?” I pressed.

  “Because you didn’t have anyone else,” he said quickly, with a shrug, like it was no big deal.

  I lifted my eyebrows. What kind of explanation was that?

  He rolled his head as if he knew that answer wasn’t good enough to get me off his back. He tried again. “I bet you didn’t know that night was my first real mission.”

  The night my family was murdered? That was news to me. “Really?”

  “They thought a human rescue mission would be an easy way to break me in.” I heard the irony in his voice.

  “It wasn’t?”

  “No.” He smiled. “I walked away with a little ankle biter leaching off of me. Fourteen years later, she’s still here.”

  I jabbed him in the ribs, hard. His grin grew.

  “Tell me what happened that night,” I said.

  Nathan narrowed his eyes as he tried to dig up the memory. “We got there too late,” he said. “We took out the intruders, did a quick sweep of the house, but didn’t find anyone alive.” He paused. “Are you sure you want to hear this?”

  I nodded. It wasn’t a question of whether I wanted to hear it or not. I needed to hear it.

  He sighed and continued, “We knew how many victims there should have been. We found all but one. You. I went to check the kitchen a second time, to look for anything we might have missed, and I heard this pathetic little whimper.” His lips tipped into a smile as he remembered. “I opened the pantry door and there you were, scared to death. I had to do a lot of coaxing, but once I got you out, you grabbed onto me and wouldn’t let go.”

  I mirrored the smile on his face as I listened intently to the details I had forgotten.

  “One of the girls tried to take you,” he continued, “but you clasped your arms around my neck and screamed hysterically. You wouldn’t go with anyone else.” He met my eyes with a dismissive shrug. “I guess I was the first one you saw, when you knew you were going to be okay, and felt safe with me. I don’t know.”

  I bit my lip. This was the one part of that night I remembered vividly. “That wasn’t why.”

  “Then what was it?”

  “Your eyes.”

  Nathan wrinkled his brow quizzically.

  Oh, boy, here comes severe embarrassment. I tipped my head back and stared at the ceiling to avoid meeting the eyes I was referring to. “They were so blue and...” Beautiful, I thought, but I didn’t dare say that. What I was about to admit to was mortifying enough. I said it in a rush, “I thought you were my guardian angel.”

  There. I said it. I kept my eyes raised for several seconds before I found the courage to look at him. His eyes were on me, soft and...amused? Maybe flattered? Yet again, I had managed to render him speechless. My cheeks reddened with each silent second that ticked by. Finally, he offered a shy smile that only made it worse.

  I was desperate to change the subject and swing the focus back on him, and what he was avoiding. “That doesn’t really explain why you kept tabs on me.”

  “Sure it does,” he said like the answer was obvious. “I never forgot that night. I kept thinking about you, and about leaving you like we did at that orphanage. I never stopped wondering if you were okay, and I just had to check up on you...” He trailed off with a sheepish shrug.

  What wasn’t he saying? He kept tabs on me to make sure I was okay...because he cared? Was that what he was so afraid to admit? Was it really that simple?

  In my heart I knew the answer was yes. That was it.

  There was no hidden agenda. He wasn’t on some secret mission. None of it had been a coincidence. He had been there, ensuring my well-being, all along. And he had done it all because he cared about me. Even if he hadn’t actually said the words, I knew was the truth. The epiphany brought a tiny smile to my face.

  “You did it all from a distance?” I asked, my voice unable to rise above a whisper.

  “At first. You changed foster homes a lot. It was hard to keep up sometimes.”

  “Is that why you took me to Gran?”

  His eyes clouded as he dove into unwelcome memories. “That night...” He didn’t have to say it. I knew exactly the night he was referring to. “I didn’t know if I would make it in time. That’s when I decided to take you to Gran. I knew you’d have a better life there, it would be easier to check up on you and get to you faster if I had to.”

  My experiences in foster care were something else my brain kept me sheltered from, but one thing I remembered clearly was the night Nathan had come for me when I was eleven. I had always wondered if my foster father would have gone through with his threat. Fortunately, Nathan had arrived before I found out. But then, for him to show up and whisk me away to a new life without a trace left behind, he must have been told something horrible had happened to me.

  “What did the prophet see that night?” I asked.

  Nathan’s eyes were dark when they lowered to mine. “You don’t want to know. I wish I didn’t know.”

  “But it didn’t happen.”

  “That doesn’t mean I want to tell you about it. You’re better off not knowing.” He brushed a stray hair off my forehead. My breath caught from the touch, but he didn’t notice. He didn’t even seem to realize what he had done. Either that or he wasn’t as affected by it as I was.

  “Like the night of the car accident?” Did he think I was better off not knowing the truth—that he had not only saved my life, but brought me back to life?

  Nathan rolled his eyes shut again. Clearly, he wasn’t thrilled to relive all my near death experiencers. “What about it?”

  “You didn’t just pull me from the car. I was dead. You brought me back.” He didn’t answer, but then he didn’t have to. I knew what I had seen in that dream had been real. All of it. “I have nightmares about it all the time,” I continued. “In one of them, I wasn’t me. I was watching from the outside like it was a movie. I saw everything that I never knew happened.”

  Like when you kind of kissed me...

  “It could have been just a dream, a figment of your imagination,” he suggested.

  “Was it?”

  He had fallen right into that trap, and he frowned down at me when he realized it. “No,” he finally said. “I thought I was too late. It was the longest five minutes of my life trying to get you back.”

  “And you did.” My eyes drifted to his lips as I smiled up at him. When I realized that I was imagini
ng what it would be like to feel them on mine, I peeled my gaze away. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I was trying to protect you.”

  I wrinkled my brow. I didn’t get it. Protect me from what? The truth?

  “That was the real reason I couldn’t go back for your friend, and why I let her die.” He hesitated as my breathing faltered, and I knew what he had been afraid to tell me. The guilt. He had been sparing me from a guilt worse than what I already suffered. “I had to stay with you.”

  One tear slipped free and I swatted it away with the back of my hand. Hearing the truth made me feel surprisingly liberated. With that lone tear went the weight of the extra grief and guilt his revelation would have otherwise caused. Nathan didn’t know it was a good tear, and looked down at me like he expected me to be mad with what he’d told me. I offered him a small smile.

  “You’re okay?” he asked softly.

  “I’m okay.” I paused, and my smile grew. “You know, Nathan, if you keep saving my life, I’m going to start thinking you might actually care about me a little.”

  That got me a smile that only made his lips look even more kissable. “I can’t have you thinking that. I’ll lose my edge.”

  “You already lost it,” I said and patted his chest apologetically. “You may be tough on the outside, but I know you’re a true softie at heart.”

  He considered my words with a slow grin and finally gave a nod of acceptance. “Okay, but don’t tell anybody.”

  “Our secret.” I flashed the Girl Scout’s pledge and rolled onto my side before I did or said something stupid. I was dangerously close to finding out if his lips felt as soft as they looked.

  He slung an arm around me again. His other hand rested near my head, and he combed his fingers through my hair. I forced my breaths to steady, slowed the galloping in my chest, and pretended the meant-to-be-soothing gesture wasn’t slowly unhinging me. We were quiet for a long time as I fought to gain control of my body, the sound of our breaths was all that reached my ears. I just started to drift off to sleep when his hand stopped, entangled in my hair.