Ever (The Ever Series Book 4)

by C. J. Valles

  “What’s wrong?” the young woman purrs, pulling away from me.

  I look down at her, acutely aware of the chasm in my chest. Then, I hear the girl in Portland sigh in her sleep. Indifferent to the reaction of the young woman clutching at my chest, I push her away and shift into the small bedroom with the lavender-colored walls. I stare down at the sleeping form, one pale arm extended off the bed, small fingers clenched tightly.

  Wren. Wren Sullivan. Daughter of Thomas and Caroline Sullivan, recently and acrimoniously divorced. An only child until the birth of a half brother, an infant she has yet to lay eyes upon. She is a good student. An avid reader. It only took a few moments time to learn all there is to know about this girl—with the exception of one thing: what it is about her that continues to draw me in and haunt my every thought.

  I continue to watch her, waiting for my decision to become clear. Then, as the hours pass and the room gradually begins to brighten with the weak morning sunlight, I know this: I must protect her.

  2: Eye Contact

  This girl, Wren Sullivan, should have died yesterday. I know this. My hesitation is a betrayal to my compatriots who spent an eternity as slaves under his rule. Audra would never believe my treachery to the cause—or that I would risk everything we have waited an eternity for.

  Sitting outside the nondescript house on a quiet street in a neighborhood just over the hills from Portland, I listen to her thoughts as she hurries through her morning routine. She is nervous, desperate not to be late for her first full day of school. I feel her anticipation humming in my consciousness as she attempts to cajole her mother out of bed with a large cup of coffee.

  When her mother’s car pulls up in front of the school, I park at the far end of the student parking lot, watching as Wren jumps from her mother’s car and walks across the deserted campus through the front doors of the school.

  The only other being on the school grounds at this hour is the one of the custodial staff. I search his thoughts, finding him mostly harmless. A drinking problem and too much money spent on lottery tickets. He walks out of a supply closet, startling her. She spins around awkwardly and takes a shaky breath when she sees the man in front of her.

  Suddenly I recognize the extent of the danger I have brought down on us. At any moment she could be taken. While the other side would prefer she surrender her mind and body willingly, they could take her by force. After all, an open portal suits Victor better than our assured victory if I had destroyed her and closed the window into this dimension.

  When she asks where Gideon’s classroom is, the man points down the hallway, momentarily thinking of the young daughter he lost custody of to his ex-wife. I track Wren’s movements as she slows to study the trophies and pictures of the school’s teams. I frown as she pictures herself in physical education class being knocked senseless by a volleyball.

  While we have failed to uncover how it is this minute segment of the human population developed powers similar to ours, the most likely explanation—and the one that Alistair subscribes to—is evolution. What is the trigger, then? Why does the mutation only express itself in a tiny fraction of the human population? Or is it possible that something as simple as a blow to the head could cause a slight fracture in their fragile psyches, allowing for something beyond their realm of reality to take root?

  My attention snaps back to Wren as her eyes land on a picture of that unctuous boy Jeffrey Summers. I am filled with a perverse sense of relief that she does not seem particularly impressed by him. She shakes her head, smiling as she compares her vision of log cabins—her original preconception of Oregon—to the suburbia she has encountered. Her thoughts are almost wistful, as though she would have preferred a savage wilderness to civilization.

  She walks into Gideon’s room and looks around before sitting down and focusing on schoolwork. I follow her train of thought idly as vehicles begin to trickle into the parking lot. A boy creeps toward my car, peering avariciously at the vehicle’s sleek lines. When he looks up and sees me seated in the driver’s seat, he jumps.

  The students with proper sense know to be wary of me. Others, like Jeffrey Summers, harbor a misplaced sense of competitiveness with me. His jealousy might be amusing if I did not find him so repugnant, even more so after yesterday. I feel my hands tighten at the memory.

  The episode I did find mildly amusing was the day his girlfriend had approached me in the school cafeteria. Since arriving in this unassuming offshoot of Portland, I have seen no reason to humor these humans or pretend that their petty quarrels have anything to do with me. However, on that particular day, I had enjoyed some small amount of satisfaction as Emily Michaels sat down on the edge of my table, so assured of her success. She had pouted her lips and waited for me to say something, having convinced herself that I was watching her. Her certainty that I would come to life in the wake of her attention made me even less inclined to play at normality.

  Frustrated and annoyed, she began talking—about what I never noticed—and I could feel the attention of the student body watching. Soon after, she had stormed off in a huff, her heels clicking stridently on the linoleum flooring. Suddenly the drumbeat of the minds around me changed from who is he? to what a freak. Derision and seclusion, for me, has been a welcome relief in contrast to the fascination that is projected upon the empty screen of physical beauty.

  Hearing the arrival of other students and having finished her review of the previous night’s schoolwork, Wren rises from her seat and begins walking around the room, studying the artwork Gideon has on display. She reaches one of mine propped against the counter at the back of the room. I expect her to study it and move on, but she kneels down, squinting at its surface. A nearly inaudible gasp escapes her lips as she struggles to recognize the images beneath the glossy black exterior.

  Gideon is approaching, his attention riveted upon the idea of sneaking outside for one last cigarette—a thought he has entertained so many times I have lost count. When the doorknob turns, Wren straightens with rush of adrenaline as she hurries to her belongings. The volume of Gideon’s music is loud enough that he fails to notice her until she calls out. He sighs, disappointed by his lost opportunity for that one last cigarette.

  I watch their exchange, knowing that I will have to make a choice soon. Either I leave here now, consequences be damned, or I stay and watch over her—consequences be damned. I know that if I stay, I will position myself against both my foes and my allies. What will I tell them? Again, I think of Persephone, Alistair’s companion, who at one time long ago, was as this girl is—human, but different.

  I shake my head. Persephone has been one of us for multiple millennia, and it is patently wrong of me even to think of this girl in the same manner. She is nothing to me. However, this thought begs the question: Then why did I fail to destroy her yesterday at the first opportunity? This is a question I fear may haunt me for the rest of my existence.

  Watching as students begin arriving in Gideon’s classroom, I remain frozen. Ashley Stewart enters the classroom, and I feel a brief rush of relief coming from Wren.

  Wren. How have I reached a first-name basis with a girl to whom I have never even spoken?

  The girl to Wren’s right side, Mandy Simmons, just entered class, and her thoughts are immediately proprietary, as though I have looked at her once. Wren turns and makes eye contact with her seatmate, only to be barraged with a cacophony of aggressive contemptuousness. I watch as she winces and turns away from the silent abuse.

  He won’t notice her, either, Wren’s seatmate thinks bitterly.

  Ah, how wrong this young virago is. Consigning myself to defeat, I shift to a dark corner of the school grounds and begin walking toward Gideon’s classroom at the same time young Wren Sullivan begins to wonder in horror if Jeffrey Summers is the occupant of the seat to her left. She smiles in relief when the bell rings and the seat beside her remains unoccupied. Unfortunately for Ms. Sullivan, something much more dangerous is coming for her. Gideon has just
begun his lecture when I step inside the classroom. Pausing, he turns to me with a wry expression of mock chagrin.

  “Well, Mr. Casey, once again you’ve decided to grace us with your presence.”

  I offer him a smile as I turn to face the classroom. Wren, her pulse hammering so loudly that it beats in my ears like a drum, looks carefully around her easel, studying me quizzically. As she debates my age, her cheeks turn pink and she glances over at her newfound friend, Ashley Stewart, who grins slyly and offers a conspicuous thumbs-up signal.

  Wren Sullivan looks back at me as I begin to approach. She sees me as human, despite the tiniest reservation in the back of her mind. However, her perception of me is surprisingly accurate—and I know it will not be long before she sees beyond the façade that I have projected to conceal myself.

  Finally I turn and let my gaze sweep over her, for the first time allowing myself to recognize her true beauty. Then my eyes lock onto hers. Before I can pull it back, I feel the beast in me rise up, unbidden, to unleash a memory from the darkest corner of my mind.

  The expression freezes on her face, and I sense a shockwave of pain travel through her mind as she struggles to interpret sensations from another world. I watch as the air leaves her lungs as her mind expands beyond its limits. She sees herself from above for a brief moment as a scream bursts from her lips.

  Suddenly she is in the outlands during the hunt. I feel her fear as her body goes into shock. She senses, but cannot see, what is coming for her—for me—in my memory. She feels their presence—the evil, the unending hunger, and the depravity—licking at the edge of her consciousness.

  Time is nothing.

  As she screams my words in her mind, I move forward—faster than any human in the classroom can comprehend—to catch her in my arms as she collapses. Her vital signs are weak, and if I leave her like this, her mind may never recover. Reaching out, I place my hand gently over her face, feeling an unfamiliar rush of sensation as I analyze the damage to her molecular structure.

  As I hold her, I have the strangest vision of myself holding a small bird in the palm of my hand. Her jade-green eyes open for a single instant.

  “Sleep,” I whisper.

  Chaos erupts throughout the room as human space and time intrudes. Gideon calls for emergency services on his mobile phone as I listen to her quietly drawing breath. I hate myself for the spike of pleasure I feel in holding this fragile young creature in my arms. Finally, with more strength than it should require, I place her on the cold linoleum floor and walk out of the classroom.

  I should leave here now and never return, but I know I cannot. Instead, I follow her ambulance to the hospital and watch as her hysterical mother rages like a lioness whose cub has been injured. After countless tests—the magnetic resonance imaging, the computed tomography scan, the blood work—Caroline Sullivan stays by her daughter’s bedside, asking sharp questions of any medical personnel entering the room.

  Dehydration and exhaustion. These are the only medical diagnoses the physicians can offer. I wait, perfectly still in the corner of the room, unnoticed by all who come and go. Wren Sullivan’s mind remains hidden from me in her unconscious state, and I find myself missing her quizzical internal voice.

  When she begins to fight her way through the inertia of the chemical cocktail they have injected into her system, her thoughts are muddied but still focused on her mother. She remains so worried about her mother, as though their roles in each other’s lives are reversed.

  Wren becomes aware of the needle in her arm and tugs at it. Suddenly, rocked by pain, she sees a fragment from my memory—a dark, gnarled, and deadly thing. Coughing, she becomes fully alert, sitting upright with a jolt of adrenaline as the smell in the air registers in her mind. Her eyes scan the room as her heart rate monitor beeps frantically. Finally she drops back onto the pillow and begins to drift off again before her mother starts screaming and pressing impatiently at the call button. A nursing assistant comes in and checks the IV solution moments before a young resident enters the room and takes the girl’s chart from the end of the bed. Wren is disoriented, and I watch uneasily she looks up at the young doctor.

  “How are you feeling?” he asks her with practiced condescension as he ruminates over his long hours.

  “Twelve more hours?” she mumbles, responding to his internal grievances rather than his spoken question.

  I wince, wondering if I will have to alter his memory. Instead, the young physician disregards her mumbled query and turns to Caroline Sullivan, who is weeping softly. When he mentions the possibility of a seizure, her mother becomes visibly agitated, instantly worried that the slurred speech from the sedatives is attributable to neurological damage.

  Watching as Wren loses her grip on consciousness, I wait until the doctor leaves. Then I wait until her mother reluctantly departs as the lights are dimmed for the night. Stepping forward, I stop at her bedside and stare down at her, unable to extricate the image of a tiny bird from my consciousness.

  I reach out and touch her small, pale hand, using my energy to conceal her from my hunter brethren, with the knowledge that Audra or Chasen will destroy her without question or hesitation.

  A moment later, I shift to the house on the coast, still aware of her quiet breaths even from nearly a hundred miles southwest of the hospital where she is sleeping. I should join the others. I should tell them that I have found her—the last vessel, the key to ending this war—but I know now that I will not.

  Picking up a sketchpad and a piece of charcoal, I allow my hand to fly across the paper, watching greedily as her face appears before me. The image on paper is a pale substitute for the flesh and blood girl I held briefly in my arms hours earlier, yet I can almost imagine her looking into my eyes without fear or revulsion at what lies behind them.

  By day’s end, there are a hundred sheets of paper with a hundred different expressions I saw on her face. The images give me a strange sort of comfort. Solitude has never troubled me, yet I now find myself adrift, time passing with incalculable sluggishness. I have no right to intrude on this girl’s life, yet I am bound—eager even—to keep her from danger, for both practical and impossible reasons. If the other side takes her, this world becomes forfeit, as will our existence in it. And if I lose her, my increasing fear is that I shall lose the shred of myself that feels hope for the future.

  Wednesday morning, Wren leaves the hospital and spends the day resting at home, dreading her return to school, where she has become a topic of curious conversation. Caroline Sullivan reluctantly tells her daughter the details she has forgotten from the day before. Wren, while embarrassed, does not remember that the individual who caught her as she collapsed was also the one who caused her near death experience.

  That night as I watch her sleeping, I am unnerved by the silence of her mind. I watch her eyelids moving rapidly in her sleep, I can only guess at what dreams she might have. Watching her sleep leaves me to wonder if I will become the monster of her nightmares, or if she will even remember anything of me when she awakens. I leave her bedroom in the early hours of Thursday morning, having convinced myself to watch her from afar.

  I find myself hoping that she will stay home for the rest of the week, but instead, she awakens determined to finish out what is left of her first week at Springview High School. Her mother rises earlier than normal to try to convince her daughter to stay home, but Wren simply smiles and insists upon going to school, fearful that her peers already believe her to be mentally deficient.

  I watch from an adjacent street as Wren reassures her mother for the fourth time as she and I listen to the jumble of anxious thoughts floating around Caroline Sullivan’s mind. Wren wants to reach forward and smooth out the lines of worry etched in her mother’s forehead—yet she is relieved to step out of the car and escape her mother’s anxiety.

  I did not leave the car at school, preferring to allow anyone who notices my absence to think that I have left. As Wren makes her way to Gideon’s room, she s
tops by the office with her medical release form in hand, dread gripping her as the woman in the office betrays a sense of the drama that has surrounded Wren’s disappearance. I feel another flare of culpability as I see how much I have already impacted this girl’s life.

  I am standing not far from a bus stop several blocks from the school when a woman passes me. In her early twenties, her lifestyle and garish makeup have conspired to make her appear closer to her early forties. Pausing, she turns back and asks if I have a cigarette. With no effort to appear regretful, I shake my head. It has, since humans’ evolution in this dimension, puzzled me endlessly why these creatures choose to entertain habits they now know will further shorten their brief existence. However, I see her gesture for what it is—a thinly veiled attempt to see if I am willing to engage in conversation. Her apartment is around the corner, and her ne’er-do-well boyfriend of late is not there.

  “Yeah, well screw off,” she mutters as she continues on her way.

  The contrast between this woman and the girl who would have died yesterday at my hand is striking. Perhaps that is what drew me in—her youthful innocence mingled with the wariness of an old soul. When Wren reaches Gideon’s classroom, Ashley Stewart bounces from her seat, thrilled that she has an excuse to talk to Wren, given she was one of the only people at Springview High School to have spoken to her. I feel a strange resentment toward Wren’s new acquaintance for her ability to be so close to the one who has haunted my thoughts.