Atancia

by Figueiro, Wren

  “I don’t even have my passport!”

  “I have it. Don’t worry. That’s why I went to the house, though I had hoped you were there too. I knew where you kept it. I saw it one time when we were going to go out. You went to grab your wallet.”

  “Oh,” was all I could come up with. We were flying out of Sydney.

  “Wait, but Ben’s coming soon! Shouldn’t we wait?”

  “Definitely not!”

  “You’re freaking me out, Matt!”

  He reached for my hand and squeezed it. “It’ll be OK, Atty. I’ll take care of you.”

  We both fell silent as we rushed toward Sydney. Matt would glance in the rearview mirror occasionally, and it made me wonder if we were being followed or if he was just trying to drive safely. I had no idea what to think.

  When we got near the center of the city, Matt pulled into a parking space by a store and told me to get out of the car. I complied and he grabbed my hand and started walking. He led me toward what I realized was a hotel, we stood in front, and he said we were waiting for a shuttle. “I don’t want anyone to find my car at the airport. It will be too obvious.”

  He bounced on the balls of his feet, never letting go of my hand, until the shuttle arrived and we got on. He glanced around it as if he expected someone to attack him, but then he settled and we just sat and endured the ride.

  At the airport, we rushed through the crowd and got to the counter Matt was looking for. He bought two tickets to Los Angeles. The flight was leaving in less than three hours. When the clerk at the counter seemed surprised by our last minute purchase, Matt told him that one of our relatives was deathly ill. I hoped it was just an excuse and not actually true. The clerk didn’t comment on the fact that we had no luggage. Matt had a backpack, though the fact hadn’t registered until just then. At least we looked like we had a carry-on.

  We got through security without incident and then we just had to wait for boarding time. Matt couldn’t stop moving. I had sat down in one of the chairs by the gate, but he just kept pacing in front of me. After about 20 minutes I reached for his hand and pulled him into the chair next to me.

  “Relax Matt. There’s nowhere to go right now. We just have to wait.”

  “I know, Atty,” he whispered. “I wish I was as strong as my brothers. I can’t feel anyone who doesn’t want me to feel him. They’ve never admitted it, but I think my brothers can feel through even each other’s shields. I’m sure my father can. I just wish I could tell if someone was coming.”

  “Me too. But for now, we’ll just have to rely on our primitive senses. Just keep your eyes peeled,” I said and gave him half a smile. He gave me a half smile back. Between the two of us, we could manage a full one.

  The hours we spent waiting to board the plane were torturous. I was on edge because a thousand scenarios were running through my head and I couldn’t ask any questions. I got more worried each time I looked at Matt. He seemed so jumpy that I wondered if I should be even more nervous than I was. He didn’t relax until we were in the air. He’d studied every person who walked on the plane as if they were all murderers out to get us. Once he was convinced no one on board was Durand, he managed to sit still. He even fell asleep for a little while mid-flight.

  A short while after he woke I couldn’t help asking, “So what are we going to do once we get to L.A.?”

  “Leave.”

  “Leave?”

  “Can’t risk that someone’s waiting. I’ll explain later,” he said, shifting his eyes toward the passenger sitting closest to us. I understood. We couldn’t talk.

  When we got off the plane, Matt was visibly on guard again. He never let his gaze stay on one spot. He stopped me before we got out of the gate, looking around carefully before deciding it was safe to walk. The passengers behind us weren’t very happy about it, but he didn’t seem to care about their frustrated sighs and throat clearing.

  “Come on,” he said as he led me away from the crowd of people following the signs for customs. We walked toward the bathrooms, and he stopped just before I protested that I couldn’t go into the men’s room. A guy came out carrying a magazine. He held it out toward Matt.

  “Hey, you want this? I don’t need it anymore.”

  “Sure,” Matt said and reached for the magazine. “Thanks, man.”

  “Anytime.” The guy kept walking and we turned away from the bathroom and toward another gate. Matt sat down on one of the chairs and I sat next to him. He looked around us before opening the magazine and flipping through the pages. He took an envelope out from inside, then put it in his backpack before standing up again and leading me to a restaurant for the travelers who frequented the terminal. He tossed the magazine in the trash as we walked in. We ordered some food and he took out the envelope under the table.

  “Here,” he said, handing me something that had been inside. “It’s a driver’s license. You’ll need it to get on the plane.”

  My eyes widened, but I didn’t say anything as he took out another license from the envelope and two tickets. He leaned into me smiling as if everything was fine and whispered, “You’re traveling as Patricia Marengo.” I nodded and giggled nervously as the server approached our table.

  “You two on your honeymoon?” she asked.

  Matt smiled and said, “Not officially.” I just looked back and forth between them with a fake smile plastered on my face.

  “Well, you’re cute together. Hope it’ll be official soon.” She put our food down and walked away.

  “Sorry about that, I hope pretending to be with me doesn’t make you too uncomfortable.”

  “That’s the least of what could make me uncomfortable right now, Matt.”

  “I guess we have bigger problems.”

  “Just slightly.”

  We twirled our food around, too anxious to eat and paid the bill when it showed up. Matt seemed to be carrying a lot of cash. I guess he didn’t want to leave a trail. My stomach was in knots as we walked to the gate to catch our flight. I really hoped Matt knew what he was doing. For now, I just had to trust that he did.

  Chapter 34

  Many miles and hours later, we were in a motel in the middle of nowhere, on the verge of passing out. “Is it safe now? Can you tell me what’s going on?”

  “You might want to rest a bit first, Atty. Before I tell you.”

  “No, Matt. I’m fine.” We’d been traveling for more than a day, but I’d slept a bit on the planes, and now I was too worried to sleep until I knew what was happening.

  “I’m not sure where to begin.”

  “How about with whom we’re running from?” I suggested.

  “That’s not a good idea.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because without the rest of the explanation, you’re going to bolt if I tell you that first.”

  If I had been freaking out before, now I was almost at full panic. “Please, Matt, just tell me what’s going on!”

  “OK. Yesterday, or the day before that, whenever it was that we were in your room, the time differences have me confused.”

  “Matt, you’re rambling.”

  “Sorry. You told me about Aldric’s list. The one you weren’t sure was right.”

  “Yes. What about it?”

  “So I looked into it. I went to see him and asked for the list. I guess he didn’t see anything wrong with that, so he handed it over. I did a web search of the names.”

  “OK…”

  “They’re all rich, Atty.”

  “Huh?”

  “The list. The people on it. They were in order of their net worth. As far as I could tell anyway.”

  “So they’re rich. I guess that’s why they could afford to fly to Australia for a miracle.”

  “Right, that could have been it. But it worried me, so I asked Aldric about it. He didn’t tell me anything helpful. Then I remembered that he can lie.”

  “Lie?”

  “Yes. I mean, I go around assuming that people don’t lie to m
e because most of the people I have ever encountered are human or young. I forget that my brothers, and Aldric obviously, can lie to me.”

  “And you think he did?”

  “Oh, I know he did. He told me that the net worth thing was just a coincidence. I wasn’t convinced, so I went to see the only friend of my family’s I know can’t lie yet.”

  “Who?”

  “Martha.”

  “Martha?”

  “Yeah. I had never liked the way she studied you when we were at the reserve. I always thought something was going on with that. It was just too creepy. It occurred to me she might know something about it. So the morning after I saw you, I went to see her.”

  “What did she say?”

  “Well, I was trying not to be obvious that I thought Aldric was lying, but she didn’t seem to notice that I was asking questions that I shouldn’t. Maybe she didn’t realize my brothers hadn’t let me in on the plan.”

  The pit of my stomach was beginning to fill with lead. “What plan, Matt?”

  “The plan to get you.” He said it quietly and waited while I absorbed that.

  “What does that mean, Matt?”

  “Well, according to what I could get out of Martha, my brothers started looking for you the moment I told them that your mother had mentioned having a child.”

  I stared at him, still confused and a little shocked.

  He must have thought I was mad. “I’m so sorry about that, Atty! When my father asked if I could check on Viveca, it never occurred to me he was actually using me as a spy. I would have never asked her if I knew what they would do with the information.”

  “Matt, I’m not understanding you.”

  “I know, I’m sorry. It’s just such a mess. Apparently, when I told my father what Viveca had said, that she was protecting her child, he sent Ben out to look for you.”

  “Look for me? No, Matt. Ben was in Miami on business.”

  “Yes, finding you was his business.”

  “That’s not possible Matt! I met Ben at a party. He was there before me! It was a coincidence.” I was about to break down again. He had to believe me. I had to believe me.

  “I wish it was, Atty, but he went to Miami with the explicit intention of finding you. You can’t actually be sure that he was at that party before you. He can feel you from five miles away. He could have easily snuck in after you.”

  I couldn’t think. He was confusing me. It wasn’t possible. I stared at him, and he sighed and ran his hand through his hair looking away from me for a moment.

  “Atty, my father has wanted someone like you for a very long time. He wanted your mother, but she was under your father’s protection. When he died, she ran. Think about it, Atty. She had no other reason to hide. There’s no one more powerful than my father. There’s no one else who could take you if he wanted you. They kept saying you were in danger but barely watched you. You walked all around the clinic with just Aldric around and to the reserve with just me. I’m no bodyguard, Atty. They knew the only danger to you was them!”

  “They could have been watching from afar,” I argued. “We don’t know what else might have been happening. There could be all sorts of reasons why my mother ran. And I don’t know anything about Durand politics: How do you know your father is the most powerful?”

  “Because my mother ran from him, too! I just didn’t know it. She was protecting me, too. Atty, this makes sense. My father, if he controls you, he controls the world. You have to see it! Anyone willing to pay him could live forever. Anyone with something to offer him could live forever!”

  “Even if that’s true, Matt, Ben loves me! He’s taken care of me all of this time. He was there for me when I lost Nana. I love him!”

  He looked so sad then. He let his eyes fall and took hold of my hands before looking up at me. “Atty, Martha said it was Ben who had Nana drained.”

  My heart stopped. I swear it did. I couldn’t breathe. I ripped my hands from his grasp. “You’re lying! She lied to you!”

  He waited a moment. “She can’t lie to me, Atty. And there’s no reason for anyone to make something like that up just to play with her.”

  “Why would she say that? Why would you ask that?”

  “I didn’t ask. She said it nonchalantly, like Ben was so good at everything that he did it all easily, even convincing you that he loved you. He wanted to push you to try your power. He had nothing to lose. If it didn’t work, Nana would be out of the way and it would be easy to get you to go with him.”

  “Ben didn’t even know about my power until after Nana got sick!”

  “He did, Atty. He knew the second your mother admitted you existed.”

  Could Matt be right? Had it all been a show to make me think I’d surprised him with my gift? The shock in his expression when he saw me re-energize that lizard couldn’t have been feigned, and his shield had fluctuated just like Matt’s did when he was surprised. Could Ben have been acting? Unfortunately, I was intimately acquainted with the control he had over his energy so that argument wasn’t even worth stating out loud, but I didn’t want to believe anything Matt was saying.

  “But Ben is an angel! He helped open the clinic; he’s helping with a hospice!” I protested.

  “To provide you with a constant source of energy.”

  “What?”

  “The hospice will be full of people no one cares about,” he explained. “No one will ask what happened to them. They just had to convince you it was OK to take from a human. That’s why they filled that children’s ward with willing donors; they knew it would convince you to take from humans.”

  “Willing donors? Like Velma? But she knew what she was getting into. She was partially Durand.”

  He looked shocked, “I don’t think they knew that, Atty. Martha said that they had purposely looked for ill children with adults willing to give their lives up for them. They kept you from helping them with animal sources so that in desperation you’d transfer from a human. They knew once you started transferring from people, thinking you were doing the right thing, it would be easy to transition to transferring to whomever they told you needed it.”

  “OK, stop! Stop talking! I don’t want to hear any more of this right now.” I was crying too hard to form words correctly. I hoped he’d understood me.

  “If it helps, I thought he loved you too.”

  I completely lost control then. I sank onto the bed and sobbed. I could feel him nearby on the chair in the corner of the room, but I didn’t care. I cried until I passed out from exhaustion.

  Chapter 35

  From the way the light pushed through the cheap curtains in the room, I could tell it was full day when I woke up. Matt was asleep on the same chair he’d sat in the night before. I had forgotten all the horrible things he’d said until I saw him there. Could it all be true? I didn’t know.

  I stood up and went into the bathroom. I didn’t have a toothbrush or anything else thanks to our quick departure, so I just washed my mouth out and patted my hair down before retying it with the rubber band I’d been using.

  When I came out of the bathroom, Matt had stood up and was stretching his back out tentatively. “How are you, Atty?”

  “Horrible.”

  He smirked. “It’s nice to know the truth.”

  “Not really.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “I know what you meant.”

  I walked over to the bed and sat again. “So Martha didn’t know she wasn’t supposed to tell you all that? What happens when she finds out?”

  “Umm, well, actually, she found out before I left.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I got nervous that she’d call one of my brothers or my father after I left. I was probably acting suspiciously. I locked her in the closet.”

  “What? Are you serious?”

  “Yes, unfortunately.”

  “That’s why you were so worried that someone would follow us?”

&nb
sp; “Well, I also ran into my father when I went to get your passport, and he thought it odd that I was in your room. I told him I’d dropped something the day before. It was probably a good thing you weren’t there. He wouldn’t have let you leave with me.”

  “Why not?”

  “They had kind of banned me from seeing you.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah. Javed told father about that day in my room. They discussed it and thought it better if I weren’t around you. I don’t know if they told Ben. Father requested that I stay in Sydney for a while. I was OK with it; I didn’t want to cause you trouble. I didn’t want to betray my brother either, and being around you was really hard for me. I guess that betrayal would have been pretty minor compared with the things they’ve been doing.”

  I let out a small cry. The part he said about it being hard for him barely registered. All I could think of was Ben, wondering if he had truly betrayed me. Matt came over to the bed and sat down next to me. He held my hand with one of his and lifted the other to my cheek again. “I’m really sorry about all this, Atty. I don’t know what to say to make it better.”

  “Say it isn’t true.”

  “That’s the one thing I can’t say,” he replied sadly.

  “You know I’m still not sure, right?”

  “I know. I wish I could doubt like you, but looking back now on the way my mother lived, I can see that it was my father she was running from.”

  “But how could you not know? Why wouldn’t she have told you?”

  “I think perhaps it would have been dangerous for her to tell me. Like if we got caught and I had a grudge against my father, it would have put me in a very bad position.”

  I could see that he believed it all, but I just couldn’t comprehend it. Ben had been so kind to me, so gentle. I loved him so much. I realized that then, more than ever, how my stray thoughts about Matt had just been infatuation. Ben was my love. I would find out the truth. I would find out if he really loved me or if Matt was right and he was just manipulating me for power. I stood up, causing Matt’s hands to drop to his side.

  “I’m going to figure this all out Matt. I’m going to find out the truth.”