Falling into Forever

by Tammy Turner

  Her mouth lifted into a pained smile.

  Abruptly, the window behind Kraven shook violently, as if a mighty fist pounded on the glass. Harder and harder the punches landed on the window behind the closed blinds.

  “What is that!” screamed Alexandra, grabbing at him. Clutching handfuls of his uniform in her fists, she buried her face into his neck. “Make it go away,” she said, her body shaking.

  Kraven lifted her from the bed as if she were a doll and cradled her against his chest. Yanking the heavy blanket up, he covered her head and draped it over her body, while she wrapped her arms around his waist. “My clothes,” she said, before he yanked them into his arms as well.

  Cracking open the door of Room 401, he peeked into the deserted hallway. Jumping from the doorway with Alexandra securely in his arms, he slammed his shoulder against the emergency exit door by the elevator and looked up and down the stairwell. A laugh echoed from somewhere high above him.

  Alexandra stirred under the blanket. “I can’t breathe,” she said, trying to pull the heavy cover away from her head.

  “Please,” he warned. “Keep quiet.”

  His long legs carried them downward three steps at a time, while under the blanket, Alexandra held on tightly and buried her face in his shirt, listening to the calm, steady beating within his chest.

  He smells like smoke, she thought, like a wild fire.

  The stairwell emptied to an exit door. Kraven cautiously poked his head out into the rain. Parked cars lined the empty side street; and in the distance, ambulance sirens wailed toward the hospital’s emergency-room doors. The borrowed patrol car still sat where he had parked it across the street, and he ran for the driver’s side door.

  Once they were inside the car, he removed the blanket from Alexandra’s head. Alexandra stared silently into his eyes.

  “Who are you?” she said softly.

  Looking out the windshield, he cranked up the engine and pulled away from the curb slowly. “You already know that,” he said, turning to look her in the eye. “We’ve met before. I’m sorry you don’t remember.”

  “The park!” she exclaimed, running her trembling fingers through his black hair. Alexandra felt herself blush in the dark interior of the patrol car. “What is your name?” she asked.

  “Kraven,” he spoke quietly, staring ahead through the windshield.

  How do I know that name? Alexandra asked herself.

  Her brow furrowed, and she stared into the night outside the passenger window. Kraven pressed his foot harder on the accelerator. Digging her fingernails into the seat, Alexandra closed her eyes and listened to the racing engine. In her mind, she pictured her friend Taylor’s convertible.

  “Where are we going?” she asked, her eyes still tightly shut. “Do you have the heat on in here? I’m burning up,” she said, tossing her head drowsily from side to side. “Let’s put the top down, Taylor,” she told Kraven before her head fell backward, asleep once more.

  23

  Truth

  Kraven rested his palm on her forehead as she slept against his chest in the cramped front seat of the police car. With only a few hours left before sunrise, the car sat tucked away in a dark corner of the airport deck’s top level, far away from the glare of any overhead lights. He slowed his breath and strained his ear to her lips as she mumbled softly. He could barely hear her, because a plane rumbled overhead.

  “No secrets,” Alexandra murmured. “Tell me the truth.”

  “Be careful what you wish for,” Kraven whispered.

  Outside, the rain that had pounded the city into submission during the night began to retreat, leaving behind a thick fog that wrapped itself heavily around the airport parking deck.

  In the parking spot across from the police car, the blaring horn and bright lights of a yellow Porsche 911 honked and flashed in Kraven’s face. A tall redhead in spiked heels navigated the parking lot toward her Porsche, pulling a pink-and-white, polka-dot suitcase behind her. A security patrol truck eased out of the shadows and slowed to pass her, while she maneuvered the bag into the passenger seat.

  Climbing into the driver’s seat, the woman turned the key in the ignition, and the powerful engine roared to life. The Porsche’s headlights illuminated Kraven’s face. Easing out of the parking spot, she winked in his direction before revving the engine and shooting across the lot toward the exit.

  Alexandra stirred against his chest. “Where am I?” she drawled, sitting up slowly in the seat and rubbing the back of her head.

  “You need to leave,” Kraven told her, as a plane engine roared overhead in the dense, heavy clouds.

  “No,” said Alexandra calmly, staring at the side of his face. “Look at me,” she ordered.

  Kraven turned his head slowly toward her, his dark eyes fixed upon her trembling lips. Alexandra’s eyes swept across his rugged face and studied the worry hiding in the deep furrows of his forehead.

  “Where do I know you from? Or am I crazy for thinking I’ve seen you before somewhere?” she asked him.

  Turning his head away to the window, Kraven stared into the foggy sky, his eyes trailing the lights of a jet’s underbelly as it climbed into the heavens and disappeared behind the clouds. “It is true. We have met before,” he said. “And I have met your father as well.”

  The words took Alexandra’s breath away. I’ll see for myself, she thought, biting her lip in determination. Prying his hand from its tight grip around the steering wheel, she closed her eyes and held his palm. A familiar warmth spread from her fingers and raced up her arm.

  “Show me,” she whispered, as she entwined her fingers in his and raised his hand to her racing heart.

  “Concentrate,” he advised. “We will find what we seek.”

  Alexandra’s eyes opened. She saw a dresser mirror. Kraven’s face stared back at her, as if his face were her own. In the mirror’s reflection, her father stood at the foot of a bed, a suitcase standing open before him as he hastily shoved clothes and papers inside the bag. Shifting her eyes downward, she saw a flimsy cardboard gift box on top of the dresser. It was undoubtedly the necklace, the gift from her father. She heard her father’s voice. “What if it does not reach her?” he asked.

  “It will find her,” said Kraven. “Believe. But you must hurry now. I will shadow you to the train, but you are being followed closely.”

  Behind Kraven, Alexandra’s father stopped throwing clothes into his suitcase and looked at Kraven. Their eyes met in the mirror’s reflection.

  “You will protect my daughter?” Jonathan Peyton asked. “With my life,” Kraven answered.

  Alexandra retreated from the vision. She stared motionless at Kraven beside her as the roar of another jet shook the car. “You can’t make me go anywhere,” she told him. “You made my father leave, and he never came back.”

  Kraven winced. “He was in danger, as you are now.”

  “What a coincidence,” Alexandra hissed. “You seem to be the cause of it.”

  “No,” he said, dropping her hand. “You do not understand.”

  “So where am I supposed to go? Did you think about that? I’m seventeen. I’m a senior in high school,” she said searching for the door handle. “Where did you send my father?”

  “Calm down, Alexandra,” he said, pulling her away from the door. “Please,” he pleaded. “I was foolish for bringing you here. I should have known better. You are not a coward. I understand that now.”

  “You’re not a policeman,” she whispered. She pointed to the name sewn on above the pocket on his uniform. “I know Marion, and you’re not him. You’ve been following me.”

  “I’m not the only one,” he said.

  Alexandra rubbed the back of her head and winced, as if the wolf still held her long hair in his mouth as he dragged her across the wet road. “Does he want this?” she asked him, rubbing her thumb against the dragon medallion dangling against her chest.

  “I don’t think so,” Kraven surmised. “It holds no power,
” he said, closing his eyes to a vision. In his mind’s eye, an auburn-haired beauty with brown freckles and green eyes grinned at him from across a wide, flowing river. A soft breeze rustled the yellow-and-white wildflowers tucked into a loose braid that flowed down her back. She was waving goodbye. Around her neck dangled the dragon medallion, a wedding gift for his princess bride.

  “You are more powerful than any trinket,” he said.

  Alexandra rested her palm against his cheek and turned his face to her eyes. “Tell me what happened to my father,” she said.

  “I promised him that the necklace would find its way to you—that I would protect you,” he whispered earnestly.

  “Protect me from whom?” Alexandra asked.

  “Your father is a good man and an honorable scholar. Not all men are so reputable. Your father discovered that people he had trusted were selling artifacts illegally to private, powerful collectors. These people would go to great lengths to keep their transactions a secret.”

  “They would kill him?” Alexandra asked, shaking. “What did he do to hurt anyone?”

  “He merely stumbled upon the truth. Men have died for less,” Kraven answered. “But I don’t know that he is dead, Alexandra,” Kraven hastened to say. “He may be still be hiding.”

  “You really think so?” she asked in hope, reaching her fingers to his chin. “I don’t like secrets,” she said, holding his face gently.

  “I know,” he said, bending his face closer toward her.

  “You owe me some explanations,” she said, closing her eyes and rubbing her forehead. “Start with what attacked me,” Alexandra said, wincing as she shifted her scraped and bruised legs beneath her.

  Kraven sighed and answered, “A shape shifter.”

  “A what?” she asked. “Do you know how ridiculous that sounds?”

  “Did his bite feel ridiculous?”

  “No,” Alexandra shook her head and wrapped her arms around her shaking body.

  “The beast is part man and part wolf,” Kraven tried to explain. “He phases by necessity; but even when he looks like a man, his soul is that of a beast. It governs his entire being.”

  “Why did he want me?” Alexandra asked, clutching her necklace tightly in her fingers.

  “The filthy dog does not think for himself,” Kraven spat the words. “He simply does what his master commands him to do. As for his own needs, the beast only desires to feed.”

  Alexandra stared out the windshield at the foggy shroud surrounding the car. “The journal,” she mumbled to herself.

  “What did you say?” Kraven asked, grabbing her shoulder.

  “I stole . . .” She paused. “I mean I borrowed a book from my grandmother’s house. It is a journal that her brother kept in the Army. It’s full of crazy things that he saw in some cave. He kept saying he saw a devil, and that he knew where he lived.”

  “The beast wants the book,” Kraven said definitively, shoving the car keys into the ignition. “He probably has been promised you after he brings his master the book.”

  Alexandra gulped and hugged her knees to her chest. “Where is Callahan?” she asked, looking out the window into the fog. “Did you leave him alone out there with that thing?”

  “It was his idea for me to take you to the hospital for some help.”

  “It wasn’t his idea for me to run away, though,” she pointed out.

  “No,” sighed Kraven. “I took you here to the airport because I want to protect you.”

  “If I have somehow dragged Callahan into this mess, then I’ll drag him out of it,” Alexandra declared, staring into Kraven’s dark eyes.

  “I will do whatever you ask of me, Alexandra,” Kraven told her with a note of jealousy in his voice. He turned the key in the ignition.

  “Tell me one thing,” Alexandra said as Kraven revved the idling engine. “How do I know this isn’t all a dream, or that I am going crazy?”

  “You are not like other people, Alexandra.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You have already discovered one of your gifts,” he said, stretching his palm up toward her eyes.

  “This doesn’t happen in real life,” Alexandra muttered.

  “Cast away your fear, Alexandra,” Kraven said. “There are truths in the world beyond the walls of your school and your life—truths that are incomprehensible to you right now. But in time, you will come to accept and understand.”

  “My life is never going to be the same,” she said ruefully. Her stomach twisted into a thousand tiny knots. On the floorboard, her toe kicked the clear plastic bag. “Would you excuse me?” she asked Kraven, her fingers already fumbling with the door handle.

  Nodding, he stepped from the idling car and followed the lights of the lifting jet planes above him while Alexandra shed her hospital gown. While dressing her bruised and battered body with her stained and tattered uniform, one word danced through her head: destiny, she thought to herself, her dragon medallion rising up and down with the heaving of her chest.

  24

  Battle

  In the shadows of the cemetery, the wolf was restless. With every passing minute, the night grew shorter. Under the cover of the foggy mist enshrouding the tombstones, he stalked over to the cemetery wall. The beast sniffed the air. The girl’s scent lingered lightly, but the smell of new prey tempted him.

  Leaping over the cemetery wall, he crept past the girl’s car and into the driveway. The scent grew stronger as it trailed toward the steps of the house. Inside on the sofa, Taylor yawned and stretched her arms.

  “Alexandra has been acting really weird since we got back from our trip,” she said to Callahan as he hovered on the sofa next to her, his elbows to his knees, holding his chin in careful thought. “I can’t figure it out,” Taylor told him, shaking her head. “Hey, Ben, would you mind getting my pack of cigarettes from your mom’s car?”

  “No problem,” Benjamin said, leaning against the fireplace mantle.

  Fumbling with keys in his pocket, he stepped across the living room to the parquet foyer. “Did you hear that?” he asked aloud, his hand frozen on the door knob. He rested his ear flat against the smooth, wooden door.

  “Stop playing around,” said Taylor, rolling her eyes at him.

  A viscous snarl echoed through the thin glass as the beast hurled itself against the window behind her. Taylor screamed madly, and Benjamin jumped back from the door.

  “What the hell is that!” Benjamin shouted.

  The window shook inside its frame as the beast on the porch lunged again.

  Peeking from behind the curtains, Callahan examined the pacing creature. Its body was covered by matted, brown fur, caked with dried mud and brown blood. Its body was strong but too lean, as if it had not eaten a satisfying meal in a long while.

  The beast lifted his nose from the porch planks and met Callahan’s eyes through the thin, clear glass. Barring his sharp teeth, the wolf growled, his paws scratching at the wood beneath him.

  “Filthy beast,” said Callahan, scowling while he closed the curtain. Yanking Taylor from the sofa into his arms, he shouted to Benjamin, “Hurry, Ben. Follow me quickly.”

  Benjamin obeyed and followed in stunned silence while Callahan, with some difficulty, carried Taylor up the staircase in his arms. Racing past the second floor bedrooms, they stumbled up the narrow attic steps.

  A yelp escaped Callahan’s lips, his bruised ankle aggravated by the rush. “Don’t drop me, please,” Taylor whispered, clinging to his neck. “I’m not that heavy,” she said.

  “Hush, my dear,” he told her softly, his cape fluttering behind him in Benjamin’s face.

  Ben swiped the flowing black cloth from his eyes and mumbled, “And I thought things were crazy in California.”

  They locked themselves inside the pitch-black attic.

  On the porch below them, the creature reared the weight of his body to his hind legs and stretched his paws forward, throwing himself against the window. Catching his brea
th, his tongue dangled from side to side over his razor-sharp teeth. His black eyes followed a crack that was creeping across the glass. Pacing backward across the porch, he allowed himself room to gather speed and ran full gallop toward the window, his body heaving against the weakened glass.

  The window shattered on the sofa, and the canine landed on his paws inside the house. Bits of clear glass stuck in his fur; and as he shook his brown body, the shards scattered across the room. He smelled the bodies: they cowered in the dark above him.

  Taylor started to squeal in terror, so Callahan shoved his sweating palm over her mouth.

  “I can’t see anything in here,” complained Benjamin, kicking boxes piled in a corner. “Don’t you have pistol, a sword, something?” he asked Callahan, as his foot trampled a sleeping bag spread across the floor.

  “Geez!” he exclaimed, certain that he had felt the outline of a body inside the bag. “I don’t want to know. I really, really, really don’t want to know.”

  Their eyes grew adjusted to the dark. Leaning against a heavy wooden dresser, Callahan let go of Taylor’s mouth, and she wiped her lips with the back of her hand. “Push that in front of the door,” she suggested pointing to the dresser as she hobbled toward a cloudy, round window. Swiping at the thick cobwebs, she strained to see, through decades of dirt, to the street far below. She couldn’t see anything moving outside. Through the walls, a car horn pierced the night.

  In the foyer downstairs, the beast placed a heavy paw on the bottom step of the staircase and sniffed the smooth, wooden boards. But the approach of a car pricked his ears toward the gaping window. Agitated, he growled and approached the broken glass as the curtains fluttered in the soft breeze.

  The scent outside told him that the girl had returned. With a careful leap, he landed on the porch to welcome her. A car purred, closer, hidden inside the fog. A pair of headlights swept across his black eyes, and the car stopped at the curb behind Alexandra’s Jeep.

  “This isn’t a dream,” Alexandra gulped under her breath when the headlights illuminated the porch. The beast’s eyes glinted back at her through the windshield.