“Come here for a second!” I grabbed the hand closest to me, leaving him to hold the wheel with the other hand for now, and pulled the glove off before he could protest. “Here!” I held his bare hand in both of mine. “Take it! Please take it, Sytrius. I can’t feel it all the time!”
He looked at me for a moment, hesitating.
“Come on, Sytrius,” I begged. “You will stop in time. You know now that you can stop.”
He nodded firmly and squeezed one of my hands gently. I felt the familiar cooling sensation on the skin of my hand immediately and resisted the urge to pull away. He held on to me for a couple of seconds longer as the cold spread up to my elbow. I watched his face when he threw his head back for a moment and closed his eyes briefly, pulling in a lungful of air as if taking a cleansing breath. I saw a flash of bright orange-red light when he opened his eyes and then felt him release my hand and pull his hand out of mine.
“Thank you,” I said and meant it.
I lifted the cup of still warm coffee left from my breakfast from the cup holder in front of me. The numbness left inside of me instead of the taken emotion was quickly filled by other, more ordinary feelings: the satisfaction from drinking the coffee, the enjoyment of watching the sunlight sparkle on the snow and the blissful feeling of calmness. I even had the warm sense of affection for Sytrius left. I just didn’t feel like ripping his clothes off, at least for now.
Even with Sytrius driving all day and through the night, taking only the necessary breaks, we didn’t make it to Toronto until the afternoon of the next day.
We drove through the city and left the car in a paid parking lot near Union Station. Sytrius paid for a full day of parking, but we had no intention of ever picking the car up. Eventually, it would be towed away. Hopefully we would be out of the country by then. If the Council found it, I hoped that they would first assume that we left by train.
Sytrius was still trying to convince me that they would abandon any search for me soon, if they hadn’t done so already. When I asked about the search for him, he only said that it might take a long time and didn’t elaborate any further. I sensed that he didn’t want to discuss his own situation and I didn’t push. I assumed that he would have told me if it was unsafe for me to travel with him. As for myself, I firmly believed that being near him was the safest place I could find at the moment.
After abandoning the car, we had coffee in a café downtown. Well, I had a coffee and a muffin while Sytrius sat across from me at the table with a bottle of cold water in his hand. He still refused to eat any human food, claiming that periodically taking my pent-up sexual frustration in the car on the drive here was more than he ever remembered eating in centuries, and he didn’t need any of the human food to fool his hunger for now.
As bizarre as his words sounded, I was glad that his hunger was torturing him less. He seemed more relaxed and even cheerful now too.
Afterwards, we took the express train to Pearson Airport. I wanted us to stay at the hotel at the terminal while we waited for our passports. My logic on it might have been flawed, but the main reason I wanted to stay at the airport was to be able to leave as soon as possible, the very moment we got our papers. Being physically at the airport already felt like we were about to board the plane and be finally free.
The closest hotel that was right at the airport was very nice. I remembered staying there once with my parents when we had a flight early in the morning, and my mom didn’t feel like taking a taxi from our condo building at 5:00 am.
I was worried, however, that the elegantly dressed, professional-looking lady at the front desk may not accept cash for the room as easily as the guy at the motel did. There was still the problem with my ID, or the lack of it. Not to mention that we didn’t exactly look like a sophisticated couple on vacation who would typically stay in a place like this.
After days spent in the car, my face felt puffy, my hair looked disheveled, and my clothes were wrinkled and messy. To be fair, I didn’t think it would have been possible for me to look presentable in a pair of sweat pants and snow boots even on one of my best days.
I took a quick look at Sytrius.
Well, okay, he might not be wearing sweat pants and snow boots, but he really rocked his casual outfit of combat boots and cargo pants! How did he do it? He spent the same amount of time in the car as I did, but he didn’t look it at all! If anything, he looked better right now than he ever did since I first saw his face.
The dark, sharp shadows on his face had lightened and softened, being barely visible now. With his sun-kissed face, with the unzipped, fur-lined parka on his tall frame and with the huge, worn duffel bag casually slung over his shoulder, he looked like a handsome, seasoned world traveller who was just as confortable sleeping strapped to the side of a mountain in the middle of nowhere as he was in a five-star hotel.
It didn’t hurt that he walked into the lobby of the hotel as if he owned the place.
“Okay then,” I sighed. “I’m sorry, Sytrius, but it looks like you will have to get the room for us again. You look more like you belong here than I do. Not to mention that they won’t let me have a room without an ID. You will have to check in first, and I’ll come to the room later.”
“Will they need to see my ID before they give me a room?”
“Yes. That’s how it works. You have an ID, don’t you? A driver’s licence?” I was beginning to worry again. I just assumed that he had one, but I never actually asked if he did.
“No.” He shook his head. “The last time I had an ID was in the 1960s, but it expired.”
“What?” I lowered my voice and pulled him by the sleeve to the sitting area behind a wide pillar in the lobby. I wanted us to get out of the direct line of sight of the several people in the short line to the front desk. “You just drove thousands of kilometers across the country with an expired driver’s licence from the ‘60s?”
“Well, no.” He shook his head again as I pulled him to sit on the couch next to me, hoping we didn’t attract too much attention. Well, beside the attention of a couple of women in the lobby already ogling Sytrius. “I destroyed that one long ago.”
“That’s not the point, Sytrius!” The fact that he was taking it so casually made me only more irritated. “What if we had been stopped by the police? What if we got arrested? Yeah, that’s right, why would you be concerned about being arrested? You would just walk right out of any jail! Right through all the walls, doors, locks and all! Well, I can’t walk through walls or break out of jail…”
“I would break any jail to get you out, Alyssa,” he said simply. His words stopped me in my tracks, my anxiety suddenly ebbing. He shook his head slowly and explained as if he was talking to a child. “I obeyed all traffic rules; there was no reason for the police to stop me.”
“Sure.” I waved my hand at him, giving up. “I couldn’t even begin to explain to you how wrong it is what you’ve just said. There was so much more that could have happened to us on the road, and we could have gotten ourselves into so much trouble if we were discovered not to have any IDs! You should have told me.” I leaned back on the couch.
“There was nothing to be done about it.” He took my hand into his gloved one. “You would’ve had only one more reason to worry.”
Well, that much was true. I was beginning to lose the track of all the things I had to worry about.
“Well, what’s done is done.” I exhaled. “If all goes well, you won’t need to drive anymore until we leave the country. We will need to stay somewhere until then, though. We’ll have to figure out where.” I was going through the list of my friends in my head already. Could I crash at someone’s place for a couple of nights? Who would let me sleep on their couch without asking too many questions about the big hot guy with me and, well, about my rising from the dead of course?
“Why can’t we stay here?” he asked, his eyebrows furrowing at my distress.
“The IDs, remember? Even if they took cash instead of a credit card…
” I started.
“Just let me try.” He didn’t let me finish and got up from the couch. “Wait here until I call out the room number.”
“What?” I was left sitting on the couch as he adjusted the duffle bag on his shoulder and headed in a sexy, confident swagger towards the woman at the reception desk.
What? I repeated in my head. Was he getting us into more trouble now? I didn’t stop him, though. I just moved all the way to the end of the couch to better see the reception desk area.
The short line of people that was there when we entered was gone now, and the woman was alone behind the desk. She was probably in her early thirties, with strawberry blond hair pulled into a neat elegant bun at the back of her head. A shiny nametag was attached to the lapel of her black tailored jacket, and a pale yellow silk scarf was tied artfully around her neck. She looked nice if a tad too severe and not overly friendly.
I watched Sytrius approach the desk with a small smile on his lips and an open disarming expression on his face. I couldn’t hear what they were saying from where I was sitting, but I could see the exchange very clearly.
He didn’t lower his duffle to the floor, I noticed, and realized that he did so on purpose. I knew that it cost him zero effort to hold the bag, but the woman behind the counter didn’t know it. Seeing him holding the bulky heavy bag all the time while they talked would add urgency to their conversation in her mind, even if only on a subconscious level.
Sytrius nodded in greeting, and I was surprised to see the mirth of happy anticipation dancing on his face. He reminded me of an actor coming onto the stage, confident in his skills and anticipating the pleasure of playing the scene.
The woman kept her expression mostly in check, except that her welcoming smile came up a little too quickly and was just a little too wide to be considered simply polite. Still, I had to give her a credit; she remained professional. She shook her head at whatever Sytrius had suggested and started explaining something back to him.
Her expression turned apologetic, it was obvious that she didn’t want to turn him down, but “rules were rules” and all that.
He dipped his hand into the duffel bag and pulled out a wad of cash. I think I heard the woman gasp. It might have been my own gasp, though; I really didn’t think that waving cash at her would help. If anything, people usually only got more suspicious seeing so much money in cash nowadays. It raised more questions than anything.
Sytrius put the money on the desk between them, slightly closer to the woman. She only glanced at it quickly, looking more and more uncomfortable if not outright scandalized. I started to work on a retreat plan in my head when Sytrius leaned onto the counter casually and optimistically began to tell her what looked like a long and funny story.
I watched in amazement the incubus at play, withholding any possible moral judgment of what was happening in front of me for now, simply mesmerized by the flawlessly executed performance. Clearly, he was in his element, and it was hard not to admire his skills, just like I would have admired skills of any talented athlete or performer.
The woman seemed to relax a little. She put a loose strand of hair behind her ear, and I could have sworn she batted her eyelashes at him at least once, her smile getting wider.
Sytrius casually took his gloves off and put them in his pocket. He actually made her laugh at that point with some particularly funny part of his story. I saw his dimples come out to play too as he laughed along with her, happy and carefree.
Her hand was still twitching nervously on the counter next to the cash between them. Sytrius leaned towards her across the desk as if trying to relay a more intimate moment of the story. He covered her hand with his while whispering something into her ear. She giggled like a schoolgirl and quickly swiped the cash off the desk with her other hand, placing it somewhere under the desk.
I was too far from them to be sure, but I thought I saw her blush too. Still giggling and still leaving her hand covered with his, she punched something with her free hand into the computer next to her and then put a printout in front of Sytrius. He lifted her hand off the counter, turned it over and kissed her palm, keeping his eyes on hers.
…Leopard’s spots, I said to myself once again. He was a predator, just like he said he was, and now he was going for the kill.
She was no longer giggling; her smile slowly disappeared from her face. Her lips partially opened and her eyes were glued to his mouth as he was saying something over her hand held in his. He then gently lowered her hand onto the counter and took a pen from the holder to sign the paper in front of him.
The woman blinked, still enthralled, then placed a plastic key card straight into his hand. She kept her hand on top of his for way too long, in my opinion, while she was saying something to him, her eyes sparkling, before finally removing her hand.
He nodded, smiled, pushed himself off the counter and walked away from the desk as she watched him from behind.
Sytrius took several steps towards the elevators then turned around as if forgetting something and shouted towards the reception, “Room 316?” The woman behind the desk nodded.
“Thank you!” He flashed another one of his winning smiles at her and entered the elevator.
Well, I just sat there for another minute, absorbing what I had just seen. The shamelessly flirting Sytrius, selfishly playing a woman in pursuit of his own agenda, even if it was our common agenda. This Sytrius was new to me, and I wasn’t sure I liked him very much.
Had I unleashed a demon on the unsuspecting humankind?
Chapter Twenty Five. Demon Unleashed.
The door to the room # 316 was left ajar, and Sytrius was sitting on the bed, talking on the hotel phone when I finally walked in. He looked up and smiled before hanging up the phone.
“Where have you been? I was beginning to worry that you got lost in the elevator!” The smile remained on his face as he got up and walked towards me. I was right in my earlier observations: sometime between now and when I woke up first in his cave, his appearance had changed and along with it his behaviour was changing too.
He looked younger, less tired and gloomy, more rested and refreshed. His skin took on a healthier hue. He also seemed more confident in himself, more certain about his words and actions. Smiles were appearing on his face much more often now too.
He came up to me and put both of his still ungloved hands on my upper arms.
“I ordered room service for your dinner.” He tipped his head towards the phone. “The order is for seven o’clock, which is in a couple of hours. Unless you would rather go to the restaurant downstairs?”
“You are a huge flirt!” I shook my head at him slowly. “What did you promise that lady for the room?”
He threw his head back and laughed heartily.
“Nothing! Don’t worry, nobody is going to knock on our door in the middle of the night demanding sexual favours.”
Well, I wasn’t so sure about that. Judging by the way the front desk lady looked at him, even if he didn’t lead her on, she seemed more than interested to knock on any door if he was waiting for her behind it.
“I just told her a story from a travel documentary I saw once,” he continued brightly. “Apparently, the hotel does take cash for rooms here, with a deposit. The fact that I had no ID was what she had a real problem with. Well, until I convinced her that I could be trusted!”
“Did you …do something to her? Did you make her feel a certain way? I saw you touching her hand.” Kissing it actually, but I didn’t want to go there.
He took my jacket off and hung it into the closet.
“I couldn’t make her feel a certain way, Alyssa,” he answered a little more seriously now. “I can’t create emotions in humans; they create them on their own. I can only take. So when she felt a little uneasy about me, a little too suspicious and anxious, I took it from her, and then all the positive feelings of attraction that she felt for me took a better hold of her. Don’t worry please. She wasn’t harmed. She felt goo
d about herself and was full of positive energy when I left. I scanned to make sure.”
“You took some of her negative emotions? Didn’t it suppose to hurt you?” Was I actually worried for him now? He didn’t look hurt.
He took me by the hand and led me to the bed to sit down.
“Her negative emotions weren’t that strong, barely there, and I can fight them better now. Besides, she had plenty of positive emotions for me to skim to make myself feel better right away.”
For some unexplained reasons, his words rubbed me the wrong way. The jealousy that simmered deep inside of me ever since the lobby flared anew. It was the most bizarre thing. I was feeling jealous of him feeding on another woman’s emotions! I couldn’t believe I was that eager to keep the dubious honor of being his sole source of nourishment!
“There is that odd shade of green again,” I heard him say as he stood over me. “Only now I know what it is.” I shot my eyes up to his as he continued. “You are jealous, Alyssa. Aren’t you? Why?”
Well, it was futile to deny anything with him, wasn’t it?
“I don’t know why, Sytrius,” I snapped at him. “Why would I care where you get your food from? It’s just ridiculous isn’t it? It’s like… I don’t know …a chicken complaining that you collect eggs from other hens, or like …a cow demanding that you don’t milk from other cows! It’s absurd! Just a joke.” I kicked my boots off with force, feeling mostly angry with myself now.
“You can’t help how you feel, Alyssa.” He sat on the bed next to me and took my hand in his.
“Don’t.” I tried to pull my hand away.
“I’m not going to take any of your emotions right now unless you tell me, Alyssa. I’ll just hold your hand. It grounds me and it calms you down too,” he continued when I let him hold my hand after all. “I don’t need to know the reasons for your feelings this time. You don’t need to have any reasons at all. I just won’t feed off any one else if it makes you feel better. We can worry about the reasons later.”
Demon Mine Page 19