by E. L. Davis
“Call me if you need to be picked up early, okay?” her mom reminded her.
“Yeah, I will. Thanks again, Mom.” She didn’t like the way her mom was looking at her. It was like she thought she would never see her again. Alexia pushed her mother’s worried looks to the back of her head and went into the Café with her friends. A small stage had been set up where the pool tables usually were. Some lights had been hung from the roof and were pointing right down at the stage. The bowling section was closed, and tables scattered the floor. Alexia’s heels made noise on the dark hardwood floor as they walked over to an open table.
“There are so many people in here tonight.” Ellie was looking around and waved at a couple of people from school.
“What do you expect?” Cheri responded. “This is probably the best band they have ever had in this town.”
Alexia laughed at her friends comment because it was true. It was rare to have a band come to Youngstown, especially a good one. “I’m just happy that they let us in here with our ‘pops’.” The girls knew they wouldn’t be able to bring alcohol into the Café, so they had split it evenly into three empty Sprite bottles. Ellie and Cheri had barely had any of theirs, but Alexia was already halfway done her bottle. She always out drank her friends at parties, which usually backfired on her. She didn’t want to get too drunk, but the alcohol was helping her forget all about Roman and Demetri. “It looks like you guys need to catch up a little bit.” Alexia displayed her bottle for her friends and both their jaws dropped.
“Oh my gosh, Alexia, what are you, an alcoholic or something? Slow down, I don’t want us to get into my sister’s car completely wasted. She’ll never buy liquor for us again.”
“Don’t worry so much, Cheri, I am fine.”
“You know how you are, Alexia. All that alcohol is going to hit you at once and you’re going to be wasted.” Ellie snatched the bottle away from her. “You can wait a while before having any more. Let Cheri and I catch up with you.”
Her two friends took a chug of their drinks, although they weren’t even close to catching up to her. Suddenly everyone in the Café was cheering and clapping. The owner had gotten on stage and was getting ready to introduce the band. He was a short man with fiery red hair and a bright green suit on. Alexia couldn’t help but be reminded of a Leprechaun. It took everything she had not to burst out laughing.
“Thank you all for coming out tonight! It’s not often we get live talent in this town so everybody give a warm welcome to Walking with the Dead!” Once again everyone cheered and clapped. Four guys with a hardcore rock look about them walked onto the stage and reintroduced themselves.
“Hey everybody, we’re Walking with the Dead and we got a great show for you tonight. Are you ready to rock?”
The crowd answered back with a loud, ‘Yeah!’ and the band started to play.
“They are pretty good!” Alexia shouted to her friends. “I didn’t think it would be this loud, though!”
“Me either!” Ellie shouted back.
“Do you guys want to move to a table closer to the back?”
“What?!” Ellie and Alexia shouted back. Cheri made a gesture meaning she wanted to move to a table farther back. Alexia nodded, and they grabbed their bags to move. They were just about to sit down at a table as close to the back as they could get when Demetri and Roman walked in.
“Oh no.” Alexia pushed her friends into the bowling booth right beside them.
“I saw one further back than this.” Ellie got up to move but Alexia pulled her back into the seat.
“Demetri and Roman just walked in!”
“Both of them?” Ellie questioned.
“Together?” Cheri added.
“Yes, both together.” Alexia was ducking down low, hoping they wouldn’t be seen. Her friends, on the other hand, were poking their heads up over the booth trying to see if she was telling the truth. Alexia took her chance and snatched her Sprite bottle back from her friend and gulped the rest down. Immediately, she thought she would be sick, but she held it down and the burning in her throat from the harsh alcohol subsided.
“I’m going to kill you, Alexia!” Cheri lashed out. “My sister is never going to trust us again!”
“Give me a break, the biggest drama of my life just walked through the door.”
“More drama,” Ellie warned. “They’re walking this way and they are with a girl.”
Great, Alexia thought to herself, they figured I would be here and now they want to make me jealous. If she wasn’t drunk, she probably would have cried.
“Talk to me, act like you didn’t even see them.” Alexia let out a loud fake laugh just as they reached their table. The girl they were with was stunning. Alexia had never seen her around town before, and she would have remembered somebody that pretty. Her skin was tanned and flawless and she had brown eyes that were unlike any eyes Alexia had seen. They weren’t beautiful like Demetri’s or Roman’s, but instead were kind of sad and had no life in them. Her brown hair was long and tightly curled, her slim body was emphasized by the tight black top and pants that she wore over an odd long cloak. If it hadn’t been for the cloak, Alexia would have called her perfect, and it killed her to see the guys she liked with this girl.
“Alexia, my name is Astropos. I know this is strange but you’re going to have to come with us.” Demetri rolled his eyes and Roman slapped his right hand on his forehead.
“Okay, that is why I said we would do the talking; you can’t just walk up to people and tell them they have to come with you,” Demetri said while sounding frustrated. Roman simply rolled his eyes. Demetri now directed his attention to Alexia. “What she means is, can you please come with us, we have to tell you something.”
Alexia was doing everything she could to look away from his eyes because she didn’t want to listen to him. “No, I’m having a girl’s night with my friends.” She sounded rude, but she was drunk and didn’t care. “Whatever it is can wait until Monday.”
Roman bent down and looked her in the eyes. His eyes were sad and not bright at all. The blue colors that usually gave her a calm feeling were making her feel anxious and scared. “Please, Alexia, you’re not safe. Come with us.”
Not safe? How could I not be safe, I’m fine, she thought to herself.
“Alexia, follow us out of here,” Roman insisted. “Ellie and Cheri can come with us, too. They have seen you with them, so they’re not safe, either. If you won’t do this for us, do it for them.” He was practically begging her to come with him, and he looked scared, as did Demetri.
“What’s going on?” Alexia looked from Roman to Demetri to the girl they were with. “Tell me or we won’t go with you.” Demetri shoved Roman out of the way and grabbed Alexia’s face and made her look right into his green eyes. She felt it right away, the urge to kiss him and to be in his arms, and then she wanted to leave with him. More than anything, she wanted to take her friends and go with them.
“Give in, Alexia, don’t fight it.” Instantly, she shot out of the booth and was standing between the two boys.
“Let’s go.” She reached for her friends who had stayed quiet the whole conversation.
“You’re kidding, right? You have no idea what they are talking about Alexia, and you just trust them?”
“Please, come with me. I want to know what is going on.” She would leave without them if she had to. She didn’t want to leave her friends, but she really wanted to leave with the trio before her. “They are saying it’s not safe, you guys, so come with me.” Cheri looked over at Ellie who was sitting on the inside of the booth. Ellie rolled her eyes and motioned for her to get up and do what she wanted.
“Walk between us, please. We don’t want them to get an opening on any of you.” It was Astropos who spoke now, and Alexia could tell Demetri didn’t like the way she was handling the situation.
When they walked out the front door, they were hit with a gust of cold wind. Alexia’s hair went flying all over the place and so did
her friends. When she looked at Astropos, she was shocked to see that her hair stayed completely still.
“Where are we going?” Ellie looked at Alexia and she could tell her friend was scared. Alexia shrugged and looped arms with her friends, pulling them in as close as she could. They walked right behind Astropos, with Demetri and Roman right behind them. Alexia spotted Roman’s car and turned to ask him where they were going to take them, but before she could get the words out, they were shoved to the ground and Demetri was over top of them like a shield.
“Alexia, don’t talk.” He barked the words at her and she was terrified, so she obeyed. She felt around for her friends’ hands and squeezed them hard. “Roman, pull the car around now!” Alexia hadn’t even heard him running away from them before she heard the roar of the engine and suddenly the car was in front of them. Demetri stopped being a human shield and practically threw the three girls into the back seat, hopped in the front, and told Roman to floor it.
They peeled out of the parking lot at such a fast speed that the girls’ heads whipped back painfully. Cheri was in tears and Alexia was getting the spins and thought she may be sick. It was Ellie who spoke first. “Can she talk now?” her voice was trembling, and she was clutching to her purse and her sprite bottle like it was the only things keeping her alive.
“Yes, you can, as long as you promise you’re not going to freak out and make Roman crash the car.” Demetri was turned completely around in his seat looking back at the girls. His face was flushed, and his always perfect hair was a mess.
“What the hell just happened back there? Why did you shove us to the ground like that?” And then Alexia realized Astropos wasn’t even in the car. “Where did that girl go?”
“She is making sure we aren’t being followed by what just tried to attack you back in the parking lot.”
“When you say, ‘what tried to attack us’, you mean ‘who’, right?” Cheri was choking on her tears and was starting to hyperventilate.
“No, I meant what I said. It wasn’t a human that tried to attack you, it was a member of the Union.”
“I don’t know what that means, Demetri,” Alexia’s voice shook. “What’s going on?”
“I’m not the person to be telling you this, so you’ll have to wait until we get back to our house.”
“What do you mean ‘our house’?”
“He means where Demetri and I live,” Roman said from the driver’s seat.
“What? You live together? But you guys hate each other.” Ellie was confused; they all were confused about what just happened. Alexia, however, was not confused about the two boys living together.
“This is your brother, Roman? The ‘Dee’ you told me about at the ice cream shop, this is him, isn’t it?” Demetri looked surprised and turned to face Roman.
“Are you stupid, Roman? Dee? That’s damn close to my actual name. What if Amarantos never turned and she put two and two together, and realized I’m your brother? You would have lost, you know that, right? You’re so careless, you don’t even deserve her!” Alexia was barely hearing what he was saying because she was too focused on Demetri’s eyes. Roman was about to retaliate when Cheri screamed. Roman slammed on the brakes and Demetri covered his face.
“Your… your eyes… they were black,” Cheri stuttered.
Demetri lifted his hand from his face and his eyes were once again their beautiful green. “It’s dark in here. You can’t even see my eyes.”
“Yeah, Cheri, you’re seeing things,” Roman reassured her.
“Don’t lie to her, I saw it too.” Alexia’s voice was fierce. She didn’t want to be lied to, not when she already had no idea what was going on. Demetri looked at Roman and motioned for him to keep driving.
“Now who’s careless?” He pushed hard on the gas and they took off again.
The rest of the drive was silent, and Demetri kept his back to the dashboard while watching the girls in the back seat. Cheri could barely look at him, she was so scared, and Alexia, who was sitting in the middle, was staring at Demetri and then at Roman. She couldn’t believe she didn’t see it before. They didn’t just look alike, they were almost exactly alike. Their face structure, eyebrows, nose, and ears were identical. The only thing stopping them from being identical was their eyes, hair, height, and personality.
After driving for about fifteen minutes, they finally turned into a long driveway. When they pulled up to the house, Astropos and a man were standing outside. Demetri was reaching into the back seat to help Alexia out and Ellie, who had gotten out first, reached for her hand as soon as she stood up straight. Her hand was trembling as she clung to Alexia. Cheri who had gotten out on the other side of the car, raced away from Roman, who had helped her out, to take Alexia’s other hand, and she was trembling worse than Ellie was.
She could tell the house was old, and it reminded her of a stone castle, except much more beautiful. There was a balcony on the second floor with snow piled on top of it, with long razor-sharp icicles hanging from it. Before Alexia could take in any more of her surroundings, Demetri gestured for the girls to hurry up and get inside the house. As they got closer to Astropos and the unknown man, Alexia’s heart started racing, and she started to get the déjà vu feeling again. This time it was stronger than ever, and several images flashed in her mind. They were so fast she could barely tell what they were, and they made her very dizzy. They were right in front of the two strangers now and she knew it was this man she had seen in the images, and somehow, she knew him.
“Hello, Alexia, my name is Ahaz. Perhaps you remember me?” A smile snuck across his face right before millions of images flashed in Alexia’s mind, and then everything went black.
∞ CHAPTER SEVEN ∞
“I don’t think she’s okay, Ellie,” Cheri said with concern.
“She’s fine. Ahaz said she was just shocked and that she should wake up right away.”
“Don’t you think it’s a little weird that she just suddenly dropped to the ground? I would understand if she went into shock when she saw Demetri’s eyes go from bright green to black, because I almost did. There is something not right about what happened to her, Ellie. I think she should go to the hospital. Look how pale she is.”
After Alexia had passed out, Demetri had picked her up like a baby and took her inside. The house was huge with many bedrooms; he took her into a room with a huge bed and laid her down. Before leaving Cheri and Ellie alone with her, he instructed them to yell for them when she woke up. She had been out for almost an hour and Cheri was starting to panic, and Ellie was trying to keep her calm.
“I don’t need to go to the hospital.” Alexia opened her eyes to find herself in the unfamiliar room.
“You scared me half to death, Alexia!” Cheri said as she hugged her so tight it hurt. Then she turned and yelled, “Roman, Demetri, she’s awake!”
It took a moment for Alexia to realize where she was. She looked around the huge bedroom, taking in as many details as she could. There was an old rocking chair sitting on the right side of the bed with a dingy quilt hanging off the back. A fire was going in the fireplace directly across from the bed, and to her left was a huge bookcase that looked like it couldn’t bear the weight of one more book. The bed she was lying in was huge, just like the room was. The blanket she was covered with was light blue and extremely soft, and she was surprisingly comfortable. Demetri entered the room followed by Roman, Astropos, and Ahaz. As soon as Alexia laid her eyes on Ahaz, she started to sweat and felt dizzy.
“You’re looking a little shaken, Alexia. Do you wish for me to remain outside the room?” His voice was calm yet scratchy. He was a short man with thick blonde locks of hair falling around his face. He was wearing all black like Astropos, and was sporting shiny dress shoes. His face had some kindness about it, but you had to look closely to see it, and she had the feeling this was a man in power.
“I’m fine, who are you?” Alexia was looking intently at Ahaz now, trying to figure out where she knew
him from. “I know you from somewhere and I can’t figure it out.” Ellie moved closer to Cheri, who was nearly right on top of Alexia, to make room for others to sit on the huge bed, but they all remained standing.
“My name is Ahaz. I am now the leader of The Union. I used to be second in command to a man named Amarantos, and he is the reason we” – he gestured to himself and Astropos – “are here, to warn you, to warn all of you. If I continue without asking if you know what Astropos, Demetri, Roman, and I are, I’m afraid nothing will make any sense to you. Do you know what we are, Alexia?”
All she could do was shake her head.
Ahaz smiled and nodded before taking a seat in an old rocking chair that creaked under his weight. She felt like he was preparing to tell a long story. “In ancient times we were called ‘Aionos’, which is a Greek word that translates to forever or everlasting. We are Immortal. The first of our people lived for thousands of years, giving birth to more ‘Aionos’ so they could sustain our species. After the gods were satisfied with them, they allowed them to move on and join them in heaven.
“You would think that because we are Immortal it wouldn’t be hard to keep our species alive, but not all of us become Immortal. If you are born as one of us, you can grow to be old and die. If you die when you’re supposed to, you join the gods. If you die before your time, you turn Immortal and you stop growing, you remain the same age, and you will walk this earth until its last day.”
Alexia’s head was spinning as this was too much information at once. How could any of this possibly be true?
Ahaz continued. “Now, before our ancestors went to join the gods they were instructed to do two things. First, to create The Union, which is basically a government for our people. Second, they had to write a book, containing everything they learned from being ‘Aionos’. Unfortunately, this book was lost about a thousand years ago. It was a big part of our history, containing many secrets and important information.” He paused for a moment. “Have you understood everything I have told you so far?”