by Tara Brown
She shrugs and he offers me a hand off the boat.
I don’t take it. I don’t trust him. I climb off and inch closer to the elevator, without going too close to her. I steal a glance at her and notice her face looks normal.
I watch her, waiting for her to turn it back on. “What are you?” I ask.
She looks at me and raises an eyebrow.
“My mom is one of us.”
I think for a second. “But if your last name is Van Helsing, and your mom is a Van Helsing . . . how deep is the gene pool?”
His mother's face instantly turns, and she growls at me.
I put my hands up. “Sorry, I talk when I'm nervous.”
He grabs my hand and pulls me behind him. He presses the button and the wall slides out and we start moving up. She doesn’t stop clenching her jaw or giving me the death stare.
The wall shoots open, and she storms off the elevator. He looks back at me. “You're rude, Rayne. Really rude.”
He drags me off the elevator, and I notice his sister sitting in a chair next to their uncle.
The uncle looks at me, then Wyatt. He shakes his head.
Wyatt ignores the obvious warning and pulls me up the stairs.
Of course, what does he care; it isn’t his neck out on the line. It's mine.
I try to tug my hand from his but his grip isn’t relenting.
He drags me across the foyer and up the second set of stairs. I start to struggle, but he flips me over his shoulders and carries me to the room.
“Put me down.”
He doesn’t speak. He places me in the room that I showered and changed in, and he closes the door. I hear a key clanking in the lock.
“Try to rest, Rayne.” His voice is muffled from the other side.
I put my hand against the door and slump onto the floor. Tears don’t fall. I'm not willing to be weak anymore. I'm not willing to let him be more important than me.
I am fading from the lack of food and water. I'm exhausted and scared.
‘Don’t be sad.’
I look around the room for the voice I swear I heard but no one is there with me. “Whose here?” I whisper.
'If I show myself to you, you must stay calm. Swear it'
I nod. “I swear.” I continue to hunt the darkening room. The whisper is different than the dead who whisper to me.
I see a sparkle of light. It's faint, and I can only see it if I focus hard. It gets brighter. My eyes do the thing they do, and suddenly I can see her. She is a beautiful girl in a long, flowing white dress. She is distorted and ephemeral in her movements. She is there, and then she isn’t. She sparkles with life or light that is beyond what I live and breathe. Her long red hair is shiny and sparkles with the same dusting of faerie magic as the rest of her.
“Are you a faerie?”
She smiles but her movements seem delayed and imprecise. Her giggle fills the air but her mouth has long since stopped the giggle. She puts a finger to her lips and floats to me. Her gown flows around her and moves with the air, or maybe her disposition. It is as much a part of her as my skin is of me. I have a hard time seeing where it stops and she starts. She is horror-movie creepy, but I feel no fear.
“I am your mother's friend.”
“What are you?” I whisper.
She floats around me and never seems to be able to sit still.
“I have no time, Rayne. The evil in the house prevents me from being here completely. If they come, they will catch my essence and destroy it. You must get away. You must run from them.”
“How can I? I'm dangerous, and I don’t know enough about myself. I killed a man. Willow told me about needing the sins of bad humans to survive, but she only told me what she knew. She was told by my mother to keep me safe and help me control it. She was to keep me from hurting myself or anyone else. She knew I would collect the debt of the world. That’s what she called it.”
Her light fades, but her voice is strong, “JUST RUN, RAYNE! FIND LILLITH! FIND THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD, AND FIND YOUR FREEDOM!”
Where her entrance was jerky and inconstant, her departure is swift and frightening. She is sucked backward rapidly as she screams, and then she is gone, and I am alone. Alone in the dark. I now see this is the theme of my life. I've always been alone in the dark in some way or another. I blink and look at the wall she got sucked out of. I wait for the delayed terror I should be feeling.
I am not shocked or afraid. Everything else that’s happened in the past couple of days has either stripped common sense from me or weathered my sensitivity. My responses are not what they used to be. I stand and look around the room. I miss my old self.
I lift one of the windows and feel the instant cold wind attack. It's a blustery day on the ocean, and the wind finds the open window without delay.
I push the screen, and it falls out onto the shingled roof. It scrapes its way down the shingles and falls down onto the grass below. Every scrape and sound is magnified by the wind and the fact that I am trying to sneak out.
I close the window and sit on the bed. Surely he will come after a noise like that one.
I sit and wait. My hands fidget. I love fidgeting. Pretty Woman or no Pretty Woman, fidgeting rocks.
I tap my foot and count to one hundred. He doesn’t come. I count to two hundred and nothing. I am standing up to peek out the window when I hear the key. I sit back down and look out a different window.
“You hungry?” I turn to see a tray of food.
I want to eat it, but I saw Flowers in the Attic. I look for cookies with sugar dusted on them, but it's a huge bowl of soup. It looks like tomato. I can smell the basil in it. My mouth is watering. I could drool like a dog. Not just any dog either. Like a bullmastiff.
He places it on the dresser. There are huge fluffy white rolls and butter, and an assortment of squares.
“Would you prefer to eat downstairs with us?” he asks.
I shake my head and walk to the tray. I lift the spoon and smell it. It's amazing. They must have a professional cook to go with their mansion.
I hold the spoon up to him.
He frowns and opens his mouth. He swallows the soup. I butter a roll and offer him a bite. He takes a bite and chews it. I might as well have offered him cardboard to eat by the look on his face.
I pour a cup of the tea in the teapot and pass him the china mug. He sips from it and passes it back.
“You may go.” My words are soft.
He looks broken in some way. I've insulted his mother and her food, and for that I must suffer through the heartbroken look on his face. Lucky for me, I don’t believe he has a heart.
He remains where he is. Watching me.
A treacherous look settle upon my face as I speak, “You cannot love something like me, remember?”
He winces; it's subtle, and only because my eyes are doing their thing can I see it.
I butter the rest of the bun and the other side. Hunger pains are nearly crippling me.
He runs a single finger down my arm. I shiver from it. He leans in and kisses my cheek. I turn and let him have me. He kisses and pulls, wrapping himself around me. He encompasses me completely. It's not like with other guys. When I kiss them I feel something filling me. With him, I feel like my body is trying to pull, but he is an empty hole. So I pull, but the wind just whistles through him.
His fingers are greedy and his lips needy. He is sucking and pulling and tracing, and my body is going crazy. He is stirring everything up but he can't fulfill the feelings I am having. I'm getting nothing from him.
He pulls me back and looks at me. “Stop it.” He is smiling, but I can see he's annoyed.
I shake my head. “What?”
He grumbles, “Stop trying to eat me. I can't kiss you and hold the control. I can't do both. You have to do some too.”
I push him away. “I can't do this. I'm sorry. I'm just starved. I shouldn’t have kissed you. I don’t want that.”
He flinches again and walks to the door.
He stands at the door and looks at me. “How many times do I have to apologize?”
I shake my head. “I think it will always be one more time, and even that will never be enough.”
He nods once and walks from the room. He turns the key and suddenly my food feels like prison food. While he was here, it was a meal. Now it is survival. I try not to enjoy it too much, but I am past the point of hungry and it tastes remarkable.
Chapter Thirteen
I don’t slide down a lot of drainpipes. Rebellious teenager has never been my thing. I never snuck out. I never did anything, until I asked to go to college. My idea of rebellious was eating fudge cookies and sometimes whole chocolate bars. I was a binge eater, not a rebel. Willow was strict, and I've always been a chocoholic.
I roll my eyes at myself, muttering and sliding down the drainpipe. My fingers bite into the metal that crinkles and tries to announce my escape. I crawl along the roof to the farside of the house where the garage is. I totally assumed that there weren’t many windows here and that I could jump down without them seeing.
Dangling from the drainpipe is an experience all its own. I make it halfway down the first story and jump. My legs and feet sting from the landing. I think about the swords and polearms, and my skin tingles.
I run. I'm not much of a runner but I run anyway. Just like when I was fleeing from the restaurant, I am wheezing and huffing after a short amount of time. I manage to run though.
“Rayne?” His voice has never struck panic in me the way it does now. My feet dig in and my lungs expand in a hope to escape. My legs burn but I run. My instincts tell me to run to the sea. I veer to the left and push past the branches and bushes.
“RAYNE!” I can hear the panic in his voice. I can feel it.
I know he's fast. I know he's trained his whole life to chase “things” like me. I push myself and run hard. I can hear him in the trees. I can hear him right on my tail. I can see the water. I dig in for the last bit of energy and my legs push harder. I make the beach and crash onto the rocks. Everything aches. I get up and run for the sandy spot on the beach. I run into the waves and dive into the water. I swim. Swimming in shoes and clothes is a bad plan. I look back and watch him. He doesn’t enter the water. He runs a hand through his hair and looks for an idea. I can see him thinking. I bob in the waves and watch. He false starts several times and makes it look like he'll come into the water, but he doesn’t. He pulls his phone from his pocket.
He flashes his cocky grin at me and I swim out.
He points as he hangs up the phone and shouts at me, “Be right there, baby.”
I fight against the waves and make my way out into the sea. The salt water is in my mouth and making me gag, but I push on. A light comes from below. My heart races seeing it. I start to swim back to shore, but it looks like the girl in the room. I pause and wait. Of course, the moment I decide it could be something good, my bitchy common-sense side snarks at me. What if Sirens are real and she lured me out so she could kill me? The voice in my head is telling me to panic.
I hear a boat. I look up to see a man in Wyatt's boat.
I look at Wyatt. He puts his hands out and screams at me to stay calm, or get in the boat, or a combination of that. I look down at the light and see a woman just like the redhead in my room.
Her hand reaches for me. She smiles and her light makes me feel warm in the freezing-cold ocean water. I look at the boat and decide I need to trust my mother.
I don’t know my mother at all, but Willow was her friend and she never hurt me. Willow would never hurt me.
I look at Wyatt on the shore and know he would hurt me again, in a heartbeat.
I reach my hand for her and she pulls me under. I can hear the boat and Wyatt's screams for a second. They die off as she pulls me down fast and silence fills my mind. It's not alone though. The fear I will die at the bottom of the ocean is bouncing around in there as well.
Her ghostly fingers are cold. Cold as the sea. She stops and looks at me. My cheeks are puffed out, and I'm starting to struggle with the loss of air.
Breathe, Rayne.
I shake my head. She nods. She has the same beautiful face as the other girl, but blonde hair that floats all around us. It is so light that it feels like it's lighting up the dark ocean, but I think it's my eyes.
I start to choke and feel faint. She smiles at me and laughs. Breathe.
I shake my head and grip my throat. I'm clawing at my chest, which feels like it's about to explode.
Just as the light is leaving my eyes and my vision has become a pinhole, my mouth opens and a wondrous feeling fills me. I breathe. The water is air. I don’t know how, but it feels miraculous.
She giggles and holds her long slim fingers up to her face. Angels can breathe on every corner of the earth, Rayne.
I inhale the water, but it feels more like I have something that pulls the air from the water. I don’t feel liquid entering my body. I still taste the salt though. It makes me shiver.
She pulls me along the shore, and when we get to a spot where I can see lights on the shore, she brings me to the surface.
Find the light of the earth, Rayne. Find it and find your freedom.
I nod and swim to shore. My teeth are chattering and my body is aching. I'm not in very good shape for the child of angels. The creepy floating lady in white waves a hand at me and is gone again. I pull my soaked and bedraggled body to shore. I crawl on all fours, and when I stand I am exhausted. Heat tingles in my body and I know I need to do what Willow told me when we were in the garden. I just don’t know where to find a really bad man to suck dry.
I am covered in sand and seawater. I can hear traffic and see the lights of Newport Bridge. I know where I am. I've been here before. Willow brought me and we stayed with hippie friends. Yeah, hippies . . . I was a gullible kid.
My hair feels like a clump. The rat's nest is so bad that I can't drag my fingers through and detangle it at all. I walk along the seawall of Newport and pass the light-blue inn I stayed at with Willow. We slept there one night. The people were kind, and I got to see dolphins. It was my first time. They came into the bay and right up to the blue house. Willow cried.
I am alone. I want to cry, but I'm tired of the taste of salt.
I walk to a small white house that looks like my old house and sneak across the street quickly. I slip into the backyard and walk cautiously to the back door. I try the door and sigh when it opens. It's dark, and I'm praying the dark windows mean no one is home. I enter and look around.
“Hello?” I call out but try not to be too loud. “Hello. Your house is on fire.”
No dogs and no people. I close the back door quickly and strip naked. I ball up my clothes and shoes and dump them into the garbage in the kitchen. The house smells like cleaner. Old people's house for sure. I tiptoe and try not to make any mess.
I open the fridge and devour the ham sandwich I find. I drink a huge glass of milk and stuff two huge raisin pumpkin muffins down my throat. Eating has completely become about survival. I rifle through the drawers and cupboards. I find a stash of money taped to the lid of a cookie jar. I steal their power bill from the counter and slice it open. I stuff the money inside. I'll get someone to mail them the money I stole. I'll need their address when I repay them.
I climb the hardwood stairs, assuming the bedrooms are upstairs. For once I am completely grateful my eyes see what they see. I function like normal in the dark.
I step into the shower and rinse the sand and salt off. With the shower curtain and bathroom door open, I shampoo and condition quickly. That way, I can see if a car pulls into the driveway and lights the front of the house up.
The soap smells like roses and old ladies. I love it. I love old people. Always have. Kids, not so much, but old people—yes.
I climb out and grab a towel from the cupboard. I towel off quickly. I ball my towel and place it in the hamper in the master bedroom. I dry the floor with my hair towel and fire it into the h
amper too. I fish through the closet and find men's jogging pants and a thick t-shirt and a sweater. I pull it all on. I am finally feeling warm again. I take a coat that is at the back of the closet. I hope it's something he doesn’t wear. I put on triple socks and some old shoes he has in there. Old loafers. I feel like a homeless person. I look like a homeless person.
I slip down the stairs and out into the night, before they come home to find not-so-goldilocks cross-dressing in their bedroom.
I'm better at this than I would have imagined. For the cozy life I've led, I'm not doing too badly.
I walk along the seawall and realize the starvation is still here. I'm starving for something that ham and cheese on white bread can't cure. I rub my hands together and feel something I've never felt before. Something calls to me. It pulls right. I turn up a street away from the bridge and the water. I cross the street and turn down another street. I stop feeling it. I look around for whatever it was that was calling me.
Nothing is there. I hear a car's tires driving on the wet pavement. I have a strange feeling, excitement and fear mixing in my belly. I duck into a bush just in time to see the silver-white Lexus driving slowly. I don’t see his face. I don’t need to. Seeing the fancy sports car in the small town is enough.
I wait and sneak into the yard of the house I was hiding in. I creep in the backyard to the next house over. It has no lights on. I slip into the car in the driveway and look around in the dark for the keys. I don’t find any. I get out and look around the car. A small box is hidden on the back of the car. It's tucked up in a lip. I slide if open and take the key. I get in and start the small car. It smells like smoke and mildew. It rattles and clunks down the road, but at least I can get over the bridges and then ditch it.
I drive over the Newport Bridge and then cross the Jamestown Bridge. The car clangs along until I reach the Warwick exit. I pull over and leave a twenty-dollar bill in the ashtray and close it. I lock the car and put the key back. She might not have given birth to me, but I am Willow's daughter. She taught me about karma.