The End of Never

by Tammy Turner

  Training and instinct focused the security guard’s eyes on the middle of the intimidating stranger’s forehead. He saw no guilt there.

  “Where?” asked Wayne.

  “Follow me,” Kraven told him, his azure eyes locked on the hazel orbs of the skittish security guard.

  Wayne fell in, lockstep, beside Kraven as they advanced toward the doors of the terminal. Forgetting to light his cigarette, Wayne kept his hands shoved inside his pants pockets.

  The passersby, a multitude of travelers, seemed a blur to Wayne. They walked together into the evening. They went toward the crowded parking deck and up two flights of cement steps to the open, top floor.

  Hypnotically marching—left, right, left—the security guard’s boots squeaked against the cement. His path did not veer from the lead forged by Kraven.

  Kraven knew the Hummer would be unlocked, even before he placed his fingers on the door handle. She had been anxious and furious, which had made her careless. So what if the truck was stolen? She had insurance. Her husband would buy her another one.

  She did remember the unlocked car while she was waiting in line to buy a ticket on the first flight out of Atlanta that night to Miami Beach. But she was in too much of a hurry to go back.

  In the parking deck, Wayne obeyed Kraven, who told him to climb inside the Hummer and hand over his uniform and gun. Wayne would do anything to be left alone. He wanted to lie down, close his eyes, and sleep away the pain boring into his head between his eyes.

  Removing his clothes, he felt much cooler. “Go,” he stuttered, giving his clothes to Kraven. Then he passed out across the back seat of the Hummer and did not awake until dawn.

  Although Wayne was shorter than Kraven, the security guard stood wider, and his clothes fit loosely over Kraven’s t-shirt and camouflage cargo pants. Cinching a belt around his trim waist, Kraven flexed and stretched the tendons in his back as they constricted, a spasm of anticipation tingling through his taut muscles.

  “Sweet dreams,” he told the security guard snoring in the back seat and slammed closed the back door of the Hummer.

  Kraven walked swiftly toward the airport terminal. Lost in the steady stream of travelers passing in and out of the glass doors, he rode the wave of preoccupied humanity to the security gates and flashed his gleaming brass badge and wide grin at a security officer to bypass her lengthy line.

  Pushed by the throng of chattering travelers toward an escalator, he stood patiently on the moving staircase as he descended into the bustling airport. At the foot of the moving stairs, the crowd spilled from the steps onto a platform to wait for the monorail train that would whisk them to their concourses. Some travelers, however, chose to walk to their planes through the miles of windowless, underground corridors.

  Eager to rid himself of the babbling crowds, Kraven chose to head underground. Through the cement-block walls, he could hear the roar of engines throttling for take-off. His heartbeat pounded in his ears.

  Not yet, he scolded himself as his shoulder blades trembled. His eyes darted across the faces of the ambling travelers, looking past them down the endless cement corridor.

  He saw it no more than twenty yards farther down the hallway: his escape route. The door was inconspicuous and unmarked, the same pale white as the walls. It had no handle and no lock.

  Carefully, slowly, Kraven approached. Nodding politely to a couple in matching khaki shorts and Hawaiian print shirts, he let them pass as they rolled their overstuffed carry-on suitcases behind them.

  No one else was approaching, not for another hundred yards in either direction. Alone, he stuck his ear to the door, the chill metal vibrating against his skin as the rumble of a jet engine thundered on the runway on the other side.

  Kraven raised his leg and kicked dead center into the door. It swung helplessly on rusted hinges, and he pushed his way outside into the night.

  “Hey you!” a shrill voice accosted him. Kraven blinked in the moonlight. A whistle popped in his ears. A man in a neon-yellow vest and hard hat pointed a flashlight at his face.

  Kraven jumped at the man, who was standing behind the wheel of a luggage cart. “Be quiet,” Kraven said softly, his hand over the confused man’s mouth. Kraven placed him gently on the ground.

  Kraven seized the steering wheel of the luggage cart and stepped on the accelerator pedal. When he lunged forward, all of the suitcases spilled to the ground. He raced down the center of the taxiway, where plane after plane was waiting for take-off. Passing the roaring jets, Kraven clasped his gut in his hand as he steered the stolen cart to the front of the line.

  From his belly, a spark rose into his throat, and his lips parted wide. Slamming his boot against the brake pedal, he flew from the seat, a cloud of smoke cloaking his rising body. He spit a flame at the rear of his abandoned vehicle.

  The gas tank ignited, the explosion engulfing the cart in raging orange and blue flames. Kraven brushed the sparks of fire from his flesh and waited behind the burning cart, confident no one could see him. All the people aboard the planes were focused on the fire, not the figure lurking inside the smoke. Aboard the plane closest to the burning cart, the pilots listened breathlessly to the control tower, which halted all take-offs.

  All the airplanes waiting in the sky to land were told to circle. No approaches would be permitted until the fire was safely extinguished.

  As the cloud of thick, gray smoke engulfed the runway, Kraven released his grip upon humanity and tore the melting shirt from his back. Fleshy, red-scaled wings sprang from mounds beneath his shoulder blades and stretched above his head.

  Crouching to the cement, his thighs parallel to the ground, he closed his eyes and then sprang upward. Higher and higher he rose. A shroud of smoke swirled across his flapping wings and concealed his flight.

  A low cloud bank occupied the evening sky around the airport and hid Kraven from disbelieving mortals. The firefighters disappeared beneath him, their figures too small and fragile for him to recognize as he soared into the night.

  I will find her, he promised himself. He could hear her heart beating somewhere below him. His angel did not live in the heavens. He would descend again for her, die for her, destroy himself if that meant saving her.

  25

  Dead Man Walking

  Soft but persistent, like the wings of a hovering hummingbird, a determined voice attempted to wake him. “Jonathan,” the voice sang. He thought that the voice sounded soothing, like a summer rain bursting on a roof.

  He woke slowly. He had been sleeping on the rotting floor of a one-room shanty. Grizzled and weary, he could not rub his eyes because his arms were bound behind his back. Through blood-crusted lids, he recognized a face staring at him.

  Jonathan Peyton had seen the man before. He stared closely as he regained full and coherent consciousness. The man had pale-blond hair, streaked white at the temples. His aquiline nose was bent ever so slightly to the right from playing football with no helmet. He had a hard, clenched jaw and dimpled chin. He looked at Jonathan with sad, wide eyes. Recognition lit Jonathan’s haggard face.

  “Uncle Joe!” he said, panting, struggling to raise his back from the wooden planks.

  They had never met, but Jonathan knew the sight of his uncle’s face well enough from the pictures his mother, June, had treasured. Joseph had died when Jonathan was only an infant. There were two versions to the story, he knew. The official story was that Joseph had died of a gunshot wound in a hunting accident. But as his mother had told the story to him, she had been holding him in her arms when she heard her brother cry out in the woods. That cry was his last breath. A wolf had attacked Joseph mercilessly in the forest surrounding Peyton Manor.

  Jonathan fought his bindings, the tightly wound rope rubbing his skin raw.

  “Jonathan,” the figure above him called his name again.

  His heart pounded ecstatically in his heaving chest. He was forced to rest, taking short gasps of staggered breath. Although his wrists burned as if he ha
d stuck them inside a bonfire, he realized that the rope had loosened.

  “Why are you here?” Jonathan Peyton asked, unafraid of the apparition standing beside him.

  In the center of the small shack, a lit candle flickered, but the figure cast no shadow. In a dim corner across the tiny room, a single rocking chair stood motionless, a threadbare quilt of worn rags thrown across the back.

  Dressed in the field fatigues of a soldier, Joseph stood next to the chair. He stooped to the burning candle and raked his palm across the flame. “I am here for the same reason you are,” he answered, as his nephew Jonathan continued to pry at the rope around his wrists. “For Alexandra.”

  The gasp that spilled from Jonathan’s lips shook the frail walls of the one-room shack. He dug his heels into a wide gap in the rotting floorboards and stretched his wrists frenziedly behind his back. The rope binding snapped.

  The fading apparition of his uncle smirked and pointed a finger to the candle. With his chest heaving, Jonathan shoved his knuckles to his teeth to stifle a maddening cry in his throat. Kicking the candle with his foot, he fanned the flame that smoldered on the dry, thin floor planks.

  Swiping the quilt from the chair, Jonathan flung the filthy cloth onto the candle and cupped his palms around his mouth as the blanket ignited. Sparks flew to the ceiling as smoke engulfed the room.

  “Uncle!” Jonathan called out as the apparition dissolved into the haze.

  The fire licked at his flesh as he choked for fresh air. While flames consumed the walls and rose to the roof, he stumbled through the doorway.

  The full moon lit the forest floor, and he recognized each of the towering moss-draped oak trees standing stoic and brave around him. The furious blaze devoured the shack that had long hidden beneath their shadows.

  Run, he told himself as he lunged into the trees. The house is close.

  26

  Insomnia

  Tossing and turning in the stifling heat of the late summer night, Brad punched his lumpy pillow and launched himself from his mattress. There was no power and no air conditioning. For once, he missed his cramped dorm room at Vanderbilt.

  His second-story window overlooked the ocean that was behind his parents’ beach home. Raising higher the already cracked window, he leaned his hot face into the soft breeze billowing in from the sea. Drying his damp forehead with his undershirt, Brad wrinkled his nose. Bracing his palms against the window sill, he stuck his shiny face into the moonlight.

  Not a soul stirred on the stretch of beach separating his parents’ home from the vast Atlantic Ocean. Craning his neck, he peered down the beach toward the Peyton family property.

  A whiff of smoke aroused his attention. He still wore the khaki cargo shorts he had thrown on that morning. Clumsily, he searched in the dark for the pair of leather flip-flops he had kicked off before falling into bed. He was still sure that he wanted to try the beach route to the Peyton house.

  The top drawer of his dresser held a flashlight, which worked. “Thank you,” he whispered when the LED beam bounced off the Bob Marley poster hanging on the wall behind his headboard.

  Slipping into the hallway, he killed the light and listened to the snores rumbling from behind the closed door of his parents’ bedroom. He knew they would be up at dawn.

  “Be home by sunrise,” Brad said to himself as he unlocked the front door, remembering lessons from long nights out with friends in high school.

  He tasted the smoke in his mouth when his feet hit the driveway. Aiming the flashlight beam at his motorcycle, he remembered that he had left the helmet on top of a packed trunk at the foot of his bed.

  “No time,” he muttered and turned around, his toes gripping the edge of his flip-flops as they dug into the sandy path around the side of the house.

  He sprinted over the dunes to the flat stretch of beach that he would follow a half-mile to Peyton Manor. Turning on the flashlight, he gripped the handle like a relay baton and flew parallel with the water. The moon guided his charge.

  “Faster,” he panted to himself as his feet kicked the sand.

  When the peaks of a roof loomed over the dunes, he eased his racing legs to a slow stop. Gently, the lapping waves of low tide licked his burning feet. He stood on the beach, staring at Peyton Manor. Expecting flames, he gasped in relief as he tossed his head back and stared up at the star-filled sky. Sucking in a breath, he coughed and sputtered at the smoke wafting from the trees toward the shore.

  “Still time,” he told himself. Squinting at the silent house, he held up the flashlight. The beam merely flickered. “Come on!” he said gruffly. When he beat the handle against his palm, a faint beam flashed twice against the sand dunes before the weak batteries died.

  Over the pounding of his own heart in his ears, he heard a howl echoing from inside the dense forest surrounding the silent house. Gulping, he stood motionless. The warm waves splashed against his ankles. His gut told him to go home, but his mind was still curious about what was going on. The decision about staying or going was made for him when a shriek, a human cry of terror, burst from the dunes close to him.

  As he rushed across the beach, his knees kicked against his heaving chest. Stumbling up the side of the sand dune, he brushed away overgrown seagrass from his face. But his shaggy blond curls fell into his eyes. He did not see the rotting driftwood log hidden in the loose sand until he collapsed, face first, to the earth, his body tumbling down the side of a dune and into the sod-grass backyard of Peyton Manor.

  A wooden splinter dug deep into the pink flesh at the tip of his middle left toe. Stifling a curse as he lay on his stomach, he felt the rush of a hot breath on the back of his neck.

  “Help,” a tired, desperate voice said behind him.

  Flipping over onto his back, Brad stared at the man’s worn face, his green eyes pleading with the frightened boy. The man reeked of smoke, and his rusty-gray hair lay matted in sweat against his forehead. Brad sniffed the faint scent of blood.

  “My mother,” the man said, pointing to Peyton Manor. “Fire.”

  Brad nodded. He understood. “Get inside,” he said, jumping up from the grass. Shuffling slowly behind him, Jonathan Peyton dragged himself up the back steps of his mother’s home.

  “Does Miss June have a gun?” Brad asked, offering a hand to help Jonathan across the top porch step.

  Nodding his head up and down, Jonathan collapsed to his knees against the wooden porch planks, his hand clutching a fistful of shirt above his heart.

  “You can’t stay out here,” Brad told the weary man as Cyrus yelped from the trees. “There,” he said, pointing to a broken kitchen window.

  Urging the man up from his knees, Brad pushed him gently past the shards of glass and crept through the window sill behind him. Slumping against the stove, his shaking back rattling the stainless steel, Jonathan whispered the location of the pistol. “Desk,” he muttered. “Library.”

  A candle and box of matches sat on a butcher-block counter by the stove. Striking a flame, Brad lit the wick, his shadow swallowing whole the gasping man resting on the floor. On the other side of the closed kitchen door, a single creak of a wooden floorboard shattered the silence of the house.

  “Get down!” Jonathan shouted at Brad.

  Ducking to the floor, Brad narrowly missed the aim of the single bullet that blasted through the center of the door. Cracking the wood, the bullet left pine splinters scattered across the kitchen floor. It had come to rest in the drywall above Brad’s spinning head.

  The candle shook in Brad’s hand as the door eased open from the tap of the gun barrel against the wood.

  “Jonathan!” June cried, stepping into the dim glow. Her slippers shuffled over the slivers of kitchen door sprayed across the threshold.

  The pistol trembled in her hands as she knelt down to her son. “It’s you?” she asked him. “It’s really you!” she sobbed, tossing her arms around his neck.

  Untangling the pistol from her fingers, Brad shoved the barrel in hi
s waistband.

  Jonathan gritted his teeth at the pain swelling in his knee. He patted his mother’s shoulders tenderly. “I’m glad you never took shooting lessons,” he told her. “You nearly killed us.”

  “You nearly killed me,” she told him, clasping his hands in her own. “But I always knew you would come home.”

  Ashamed at the impatient tapping of his fingers against the countertop, Brad hid his hands in his pockets. “Miss June,” he said, staring at his flip-flops, “we have to get you out of here. There’s a fire in the woods.”

  “No,” June protested and clung to her son’s neck. “We can’t leave. She won’t find us out there.”

  “Who?” Brad asked. “We should go,” he pleaded.

  “Alexandra,” June whispered as Jonathan squeezed her frail arm. “She’s coming. I hear her.”

  A footfall on the porch silenced her voice and the growl shook her bones. A snarl erupted from outside the broken window. Brad snuffed the candle with his breath.

  “June Bug, dat ya?” Jasmine asked from outside on the porch.

  “Yes, Jasmine,” she answered.

  On trembling legs, June raised herself from the tiled floor and stepped toward the voice echoing through the window.

  Jasmine cackled in the pale moonlight as she patted the head of the wolf crouched beside her on his haunches.

  “Dat girl here?” Jasmine asked.

  Cyrus whined, his tail wagging furiously and slapping the porch.

  “Alexandra,” Brad whispered. He glanced at the pale face of the man slumped against the stove.

  “My Alexandra,” Jonathan said softly, his eyes locking on the pistol in Brad’s waistband.

  “Light that candle again,” June told Brad firmly.

  He did as she asked.

  “Give it to me,” she said, yanking the burning pillar from his hands. “I want to see that witch’s face before she dies.”

  27