Touching Smoke

by Phoenix, Airicka

  “Mom…”

  Her head came up fast, her small hands ceasing their war with the bags. I don’t know what I expected her to do… Run? Scream? What I did not expect her to do was sigh and say calmly, “Hello, Isaiah.”

  Chapter 5

  “You know him?” My voice came out embarrassingly shrill and high-pitched, but that was the least of my problems.

  In the dingy glow of the fluorescent light, I had my first real look at my savior, the chance to see all the things I missed while fire was raining down on us.

  He was tall, much taller than I remembered, at least six-two, and he was lean, kind of like a boxer, all masculine on top and limber on the bottom. He seemed even more ethereal and beautiful if possible, clad entirely in black. His golden complexion appeared to pulse with an inner light that emphasized his unfathomable blue eyes like pools of liquid electricity. Wrapped in darkness, it was nearly impossible to tell where the night began and he ended. The dark state of his clothes didn’t help. The black slacks, black t-shirt beneath a worn, black jacket in soft, faded leather, molded over him with the grace and style of some magazine model. He was a walking symphony of predatory magnetism. Every motion rippled with the prowess of a very large jungle cat, all feral and mesmerizing.

  Tendrils of charcoal-black hair fluttered across his face, having escaped the band holding the shoulder-length strands at the base of his neck. His penetrating gaze burned straight through me, never wavering, like a panther hypnotizing his prey before devouring it whole. He held me prisoner with such intensity that I could scarcely breathe by the time he finally reached us.

  “Hello, Diana.”

  I surfaced from the silvery mist swirling around me with a jolt. “Diana?” Who the hell was Diana?

  I actually glanced back, half-expecting someone else to have slipped up behind us. But the only thing there was the open — empty — doorway leading into the motel room. I turned back to him.

  “What—?”

  “What are you doing here?” my mother interrupted me, slamming the trunk lid shut. “Why are you following us?”

  He never so much as blinked at the venom in the scathing words, nor did his tone suggest he was affected by it. “You know the answer to that.”

  Mom seemed to tense all over. Her complexion dropped several shades of chalky-white. “Forget it!” she hissed, reaching over and wrapping cold, clammy fingers around my wrist. “Get in the car, Fallon.”

  “But what—?”

  Her head snapped around in my direction, green eyes sparking with a fire I’d never seen before. “Get. In. The. Car. Now!” she growled through her teeth, leaving no room for argument.

  I dared a glance in the stranger’s direction, startled to find him already watching me. Something unexpected leapt in my chest, scaring me even more as I ducked into the passenger’s seat and slammed the door. I watched through the window as Mom and the stranger exchanged a handful more words that I couldn’t hear before mom circled the front of the car to get into the driver’s seat.

  The Impala groaned in protest when she slammed down on the gas and roared out of the parking lot, leaving behind a cloud of smoke and the distinct stench of burnt rubber. Twisting around in my seat, I glanced back through the rear window at the shrinking figure watching us, but I must have blinked because the next second, he was gone.

  “What the hell was that?” I cried, dropping back into my seat and turning to my mother. “Who was that guy? How do you know him? Why did he call you Diana?”

  “Fallon! Enough!” She raised a shaky hand and wiped the sheen of sweat coating her brow with the sleeve of her robe.

  I hadn’t even noticed she was barefoot and in her night things until that moment. Her short cap of auburn stood in erratic disarray around her strained face. Her green eyes darted wildly between the road and the rearview mirror as if she expected something to come barreling out of the darkness after us.

  “What’s going on, Mom?” I whispered, failing miserably to conceal the rise of panic climbing through my voice.

  “Not now, Fallon,” she replied, tone as tight as her firmly pinched lips. “I’ll tell you everything, just… not now.”

  I didn’t push. I wanted to, but at the same time, I felt almost sick at the thought of knowing. Instead, I shifted in my seat, swiping the back of my hand beneath my nose, collecting dirt, snot and sweat in a single sweep.

  “Are you hungry?”

  “No.” The lie came automatically, like sneezing; I had no control over it when it burst out.

  Any other given day, Mom would have argued. She would have picked up on the lie and called me on it. But she seemed distracted, lost in whatever thought keeping her focus away from me. Perhaps, she never left that parking lot with Isaiah. Whatever it was, whatever had her preoccupied saved me from further prodding, but it did nothing to keep away the twinge wrenching in my gut, doubling me over in my seat.

  I smothered a groan, clutching my stomach and tearing into my bottom lip with my teeth. I shifted a panicked glance over into the next seat, relieved to find my mom still focused on the road and the demons in her head.

  No! I pleaded to whatever holy power was listening. Please not now! Not now! But it was over. It was too late. Until brought to attention, my brain hadn’t registered the cramps or the headache making home within my battered body. Until Mom had said it, I hadn’t noticed the unconscious rub of my free hand over my stomach. So, until that moment, my body had ignored the warning signs, but now that I had nothing but that to focus my attention on, the gnawing fury increased by ten folds, furious at being ignored for so long.

  Sweat chilled a path down the length of my spine. I closed my eyes and rubbed an unsteady hand over my clammy brow. The leather beneath me squeaked, alerting me to my unconscious rocking. I tried to stop. I rubbed my palms against my thighs. I shifted in my seat. I grabbed the door handle. I dropped my head back on the headrest and stared at the ceiling, and still it screamed.

  “We’re almost at a gas stop,” Mom said without looking my way.

  So much for keeping it from her, I realized. How long had she known? It didn’t matter. What mattered was the monster trying to claw its way out of me with razor-sharp talons. Nothing else could explain the brutal agony or the sensation of being torn open from the inside.

  “No,” Mom put a hand over mine, stopping me when I reached with shaking hands for the emergency granola I kept in the glove compartment. “We’re almost there.”

  Her reassurance distorted in my ears, hollowing out like voices in a dark tunnel. I blinked and shook my head, struggling to dislodge the pressure building between my ears. The world around me faded, deserting me to a dark void where I was surrounded by the sound of water sloshing through the night. It was like having my ear pressed up against a balloon, swollen with water and listening as the water splashed around inside its belly and all I wanted was the water. Needed it.

  Craved it.

  An all too familiar twinge began just beneath my gums, over the sharp points of my canines. Saliva made an audible gulp going down as I struggled not to lick my lips, not to drool as I watched, mesmerized by the purple veins straining beneath my mother’s pale hand.

  The pounding increased, drumming wildly between my ears. One taste. One. Taste. Just one. It couldn’t hurt. It wouldn’t. I wouldn’t let it hurt. Just a little nibble. Just to see if she tasted as good as her skin smelt, as the life beneath her skin smelt. I would be quick. Just one, small puncture and it would all just flow free like wine from a tap.

  My jaw slackened. My lips parted. My head bent.

  “Fallon?” I jumped, spell broken by the uncertainty in my mother’s voice.

  I slapped her hand away from me, breaking contact. “No!” Bile choked me. I shuddered in repulsion, rubbing with both hands over the goose bumps infesting my clammy flesh. “Don’t touch me!”

  She didn’t. Her small hand went past me to the glove compartment. I hungrily watched her every move as she opened it and
fished out the granola bar. It landed gently into my lap. I didn’t bother with the wrapper. I tore through the treat with my teeth and finished it in two greedy chomps.

  The unsettling hunger didn’t go away. It never did, but it was pacified for the time being. The demon inside me had gone back to its dark corner, leaving me alone to huddle in my seat, disgusted and humiliated, staring out my window at the thin strip of dawn climbing over the horizon.

  My mother made no comment. I guessed she was too used to seeing me like that to be concerned. Usually we tried to avoid it, keeping a ridiculous amount of food on hand to ward off the hunger before it grew to that point, but this was different. I was always hungrier after participating in any sort of physical activity. The more energy I burned, the more I needed to eat. So it was easy to see how running from fire-throwing demons could build an appetite.

  “Did you want to go inside?” That was code for, ‘do you feel human enough not to go crazy around normal people?’

  Of course, Mom would never actually say that or even hint at it, but that’s what it was. Sometimes, when the hunger got that bad, I couldn’t be trusted around people, especially with food so close by. I turned into this wild, rabid… thing that would literally jump on tables and eat other people’s food. That only happened once before — I was eight — but it was enough to make me edgy about going into public places when the monster was lurking so close still.

  I shook my head, going so far as to turn completely away from the large, bay windows overlooking the handful of truckers littering the place inside. “I’ll wait here.”

  Mom didn’t push. She opened her door only a crack, just wide enough to slip through quickly before any possible scents could slip into the car. I didn’t watch her, but I heard the trunk open and things get shifted around. The entire vehicle rattled when she slammed the lid shut again. Gravel crunched beneath her feet as she rounded the car and came to my window. I leaned forward and rolled it down a slit, just wide enough for her to drop three granola bars into my lap before walking away.

  I took the wrappers off this time.

  I was on my second one when the sound of something large, feral and dangerous filled the air. The deep, penetrating rumble seemed to echo from everywhere, bouncing off the circle of trees were the dingy diner resided, just off the empty road.

  It was impossible to miss the familiar, black motorcycle that rolled up next to the Impala. The mystery rider straddling the beast cut the engine and just sat there for a moment, face concealed completely by the glossy, black helmet. But I knew, even before his long, toned hands reached up to grip either side of the helmet, just who’s face I would be seeing once the mask was removed.

  Sure enough, escaped strands of silk tumbled down the back of his leather jacket before his square, rugged jaw was revealed, followed by his prominent nose and finally… those eyes. The crumbly morsel of strawberry granola in my mouth went down like a chunk of rock, settling uneasily in my fluttering stomach.

  He turned his head then and looked straight at me, and my heart might have stopped for a split second before regaining consciousness. I rolled down my window, a stupid decision no doubt, but the guy had saved my life just earlier that night. He wouldn’t hurt me. I knew this with baffling certainty.

  “You’ve been following us.” It wasn’t a question, because even if I hadn’t recognized his bike, I was engulfed by the familiar tug throughout my body. The same ripple I got every time the mystery motorcyclist was near. I knew he was the one my mom had driven off the road. I knew he was the one in the parking lot of Lady Clare’s Academy. I knew he was the one who had been following us for so long that I couldn’t even recall just how long. It had always been him.

  “Yes,” he answered.

  “Who are you?” I demanded, hoping my voice sounded firmer than I felt.

  He ignored my question, narrowing his eyes instead. “Why did you run?”

  I really hated it when people answered a question with a question, but I answered him anyway, “Are you serious? There were guys throwing fireballs at my head… with their bare hands! I wasn’t going to stick around to find out why or how.”

  “You could have gotten killed!” The protectiveness in his tone tightened something in my chest.

  Man, he had a nice voice. It was probably a bad time to notice, but it was true all the same. It was all low and husky, the kind that should have been reading poetry — something deep and meaningful — in a smoky café. I really shouldn’t have been so drawn to the sound, to him. He was a perfect stranger, yet every bone in my body, right down to the marrow, vibrated the way a magnate does when too close to another magnate. I felt like, at any minute, I would snap and wind up crashing through my only barrier, straight into him. The draw should have been frightening, but I wasn’t scared. I was… aching.

  “Who are you?” I asked again, almost pleading.

  “Isaiah,” he paused for a heartbeat before adding. “I’m a friend of your father.”

  Chapter 6

  The car door screeched when I threw it open without a second thought and lunged out of my seat. Granola bar wrappers fluttered out of my lap and rolled with the morning breeze under the car. I stood staring into those beautiful blue eyes of his with my breath caught in my lungs.

  “You knew my father?”

  His head cocked to the side, his brows furrowed in confusion. “Knew?”

  “Get away from her!” My mother appeared — I could have sworn — out of nowhere. Her faded, yellow robe billowed around her as she ran in her slippers towards us, the grease-stained paper bag containing our ‘breakfast’ clutched against her chest. “You have some nerve, Isaiah!”

  He never batted an eye at her growl. “The same could be said about you.”

  “Hey!” I intervened sharply. “That’s my mother you’re talking to!”

  His gaze swerved in my direction, his features contemplating before turning his attention back to Mom. “Should condolences be offered for your loss?”

  I had no idea what he was talking about, but my mother’s face tightened, flashing crimson. Her eyes narrowed and she looked pissed enough to chew steel. The paper bag hit my chest. I fumbled for it, just managing to hug it to my gut, simultaneously, knocking the wind out of myself.

  “Get in the car, Fallon!” my mother hissed through her teeth, her sparking gaze never leaving Isaiah.

  “Wait!” I protested. “He said he knew Dad!”

  Mom bristled. “He doesn’t!”

  “I do.” Isaiah countered challengingly.

  I was sure my eyebrows touched my hairline.

  “Just get in the car!” my mother barked, tearing her eyes away from Isaiah to grill them into me.

  “You can’t keep hiding this from her,” Isaiah folded his arms over his chest and fixed Mom with a deadpan stare. “She deserves the truth, don’t you think, Diana?”

  “The truth about what?” I demanded at once. “What the hell is going on? Who is this guy and why does he keep calling you Diana?”

  “Because that’s her name,” Isaiah answered, ignoring Mom’s deep growl.

  I shook my head, a little harder then was necessary and nearly staggered at the head rush it caused. “No, her name is Erin. You have the wrong person.”

  His eyes narrowed and a malicious sort of smirk curled his lips. “Do I now, Erin? Is that why you tried to run me off the road? Were you hoping you could get rid of me that easily? You know I can’t die.”

  “Leave her alone, Isaiah,” my mother murmured quietly. “She’s not a part of this anymore.”

  “A part of what?” My shout went ignored as the two faced each other down.

  “You can’t run anymore!” Isaiah hissed his lips curled back over straight, white teeth. “They know about her and they’re coming. You’re putting her in danger, and I won’t let you!”

  Mom shook her head, almost as hard as I had earlier, but the dazed look in her eyes had nothing to do with a head rush; it was fear. “We’ll leave
the country… they’ll never find her—”

  “They will!” Isaiah said tightly. “She’s becoming unstable. How do you think they found her last night?”

  More than hating people who answered a question with a question, I hated people who talked about me as though I wasn’t there. I was there. I could hear them and they had all but forgotten about me.

  “Hello!” I waved one arm while holding the paper bag with the other. “I’m still here! Someone answer me!”

  “No,” my mother whispered, still not hearing me. “She was supposed to be safe…”

  “She will be,” Isaiah promised, voice softening. “I promise you that. I will never let anything hurt her.”

  Mom dropped her chin and rocked her head slowly side-to-side, squeezing her eyes closed. “I can’t…”

  “What the hell is going on?” I finally screamed.

  Isaiah turned to me, looking ready to say something, but he seemed to think better of it and turned back to my mother. “They’re not far behind. You’re almost out of time, you know that.”

  Instead of answering him, Mom lifted her head and stared at me. Her eyes glistened with unshed tears and appeared enormous against her pale face. Seeing her so torn and in pain only intensified my need to do something, to protect her. But I had no idea what I was protecting her from.

  “What’s going on, Mom?” I whispered, practically pleading with her to answer me.

  But she didn’t. She just stared for what felt like hours before she finally came to some private conclusion.

  She turned to Isaiah, looking somehow more put-together and determined than before. “Keep away from her, Isaiah. She’s my daughter and I’ll take care of her. I don’t need… him or you.” She stalked around the Impala. “Get in the car, Fallon,” she said over her shoulder, never glancing back.