by Dean Murray
Chapter 21
I woke up expecting to see pale blue eyes burning a hole through me. Haunting eyes set above terrible fangs. Instead I found myself lying atop a gigantic bed in a room I didn't recognize.
The sheer shock at still being alive prevented my mind from working very well. It took several minutes before all of the other relatively inconsequential details started filtering in. My hands were bandaged, as was my elbow and right calf. My dirty, ripped jeans and shirt had been replaced with clean clothes that were only a little too small.
That last fact should have alarmed me more than it did. Somehow being stripped down by a stranger paled in comparison to a near-death hallucination involving wolves and a monster straight out of a science fiction movie.
The bedroom was possibly the nicest room I'd ever been in. A movie star or millionaire would have had a hard time topping this place for sheer decadence. The walls were paneled in some kind of rare, doubtless expensive imported hardwood.
The bookcases that covered the majority of the wall space seemed to be made out of the same kind of wood, and were filled with more books than I'd seen in the local bookstore the one time I'd convinced Britney to stop by on our way home after school. They were all hardbound, with leather bindings and engraved covers.
There was a stereo system off in one corner, hooked up to a laptop and some kind of portable music player. I had to look around the room twice before I finally spotted the speakers to the system. They were built into the walls and ceiling, and based on their number and varying sizes I had a sneaking suspicion they'd produce nearly as much volume as the monsters professional DJs brought to dances. Based on the amount of money involved in setting up such a system in the first place, they probably cranked all that out without even the slightest hint of distortion.
As impressive as the stereo no doubt was, it was all of those shelves filled with books that finally pulled me off of the bed and onto the incredibly lush, maroon carpet. Emerson, Ayn Rand, Shakespeare, and Tolstoy were all present. Whoever lived here was either incredibly well read, or a complete poser who bought books just for show.
Almost scared to find out which it was, I reached over and pulled out the copy of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, and opened it up to find a well-cared-for book that'd still obviously been read several times.
I carefully slid the book back into its spot and then noticed the faintest glimmer of light coming from an open doorway off to my right. It was an art gallery. One covered in pictures that were eerily familiar, all with a circular signature at the bottom right hand corner. They were mostly of mundane kinds of things, landscapes, or people, but there were overtones that caressed a hidden chord inside my soul. Everything was done in drab, painfully boring colors, overlaid with incredibly vibrant, hues that were almost unreal in their perfection.
It wasn't until I'd moved around a corner and entered what looked like a new phase for the painter that I figured out why the paintings looked so familiar despite the fact that I'd never seen any of the places or people depicted. The realization hit with such force that it distracted me from the familiarity of the signature.
The new pieces were all breathtaking. The drab colors were gone, leaving scenes made up of multi-hued strands of light. It was like waking up and having someone tell you they'd been reading your mind. The pieces weren't of specific places or events from my dreams, but they were an exact match for how they'd looked and felt.
I felt my hands start to shake. It was like I'd had too much forced on me too quickly. I wanted to just collapse and let unconsciousness overcome me, but something pulled me onward towards the next series of pictures, and then the next after that. I wanted to stop. Each piece opened up another fragment of my soul, revealing a new pain that I'd kept hidden for the last few months.
The last picture was next to a door, which I opened almost without realizing I was doing so. The organized confusion of a true artist met my gaze. I'd seen it with my mom, when she was so driven to complete a shot that she couldn't be bothered to clean up after herself. She left just enough structure to the mess to find needed tools, but didn't waste any effort on anything that wouldn't help her with her great aim.
Brushes were scattered everywhere, old and new canvases stacked in the corners of the studio, and flecks of paint had found their way onto almost every visible surface. The rich smell of paint was nearly overpowering, but I noticed it only in passing as I made a beeline towards the easel that dominated the center of the space.
The painting was still wet, right down to the signature which had been done in the palest green. The scene was from the point of view of someone looking into a bedroom window, darker than most of the later stuff I'd just looked at. The centerpiece, done in a dimmer light than what I remembered from my dreams, was the sleeping figure. She was delicate-looking. A tiny figure, a being of light temporarily clothed in flesh, one who seemed almost at the point of breaking out of her mortal husk.
She was so breathtakingly beautiful it was several seconds before I noticed the other, nearly unformed details of the room. They were so indistinct it took me a full minute to place them. Once I did, my eyes darted back to the sleeping figure, the gorgeous one whose features I now recognized as Cindi's. Only it couldn't be Cindi because the room was mine, the one here in Sanctuary.
My pulse racing, I refused to look at the signature again. I now knew what it was, but if I ignored it maybe I could ignore the ramifications of everything I'd just learned. The room was swimming as my battered psyche finally took one blow too many, but I fought the attack with everything I had left. I couldn't afford to be found here collapsed on the floor. I had to get away before he realized I was awake.
My shoes were at the foot of the bed; I grabbed them, but didn't put them on. I needed to be quiet, more now than ever. I crept to the other end of the suite, passing a curious collection of items ranging from a mundane, if expensive-looking, desk, to an intricately tooled broadsword, black with age, and sized as though made for a giant.
I finally found the exit and was halfway down the hall when I heard voices for the first time. While it didn't sound like anyone was out-and-out yelling, they weren't the calm voices of friendly conversation. I quickly reversed direction, and found an external door less than a minute later. The voices had faded away to nearly nothing as I'd gotten further away from them, but all of a sudden they peaked into a full-blown yelling match, punctuated with an incredible crash that sent a tremor through the entire house.
Any thoughts I'd had about trying to find a phone and calling 911 vanished as full flight instinct took a hold. A few seconds later I was outside and running. The moon was so obscured by clouds it provided only minimal light, but even the poor visibility couldn't convince me to slow my flight through the near jungle waiting outside the house.
I could barely make out the stone path that led through the garden, but I stumbled along it as quickly as I could with my sprained ankle, deciding between branches in the path completely at random.
I'd only been running for a few seconds when lightning tore its first gash in the night sky and opened up the way for a monsoon-like rainstorm. Within a few seconds the cold rain was falling so hard that I couldn't see even a few feet ahead of me. I started shivering instantly. As much as my body had been through in the last few hours, I needed to find shelter before I got chilled.
The next lightning strike was so close it lit the entire sky up. The telltale flash of glass up ahead was just enough to guide me to a door that was nearly hidden by the rampant foliage.
I pulled the door open with less effort than expected, and slipped inside. The heady fragrance of flowers told me immediately what I'd stumbled across. "As if there wasn't enough greenery outside, he's got to have an entire greenhouse too."
The abrupt lessening of the rain assaulting the glass roof brought back my sense of urgency. Nobody could possibly find me while the most intense rainstorm since Noah had sealed up the ark was going on, but I couldn't stay here once
it stopped. I slipped my battered shoes onto my abused feet, and turned to leave just as the door opened of its own accord.
I fell back in amazement as he stepped into the pool of light that'd materialized as the clouds parted. The jeans were mundane, perfect, but completely normal for all that they were snug in all the right places and loose everywhere else. The shirt, unbuttoned in his haste to follow me, was also perfectly normal, entirely believable. Everything else, however, was too surreal to really grasp. The sculpted stomach and chest were exactly like I'd secretly imagined they would be, but my gaze was pulled instead up to the massive bandage covering most of Alec's shoulder. The bandage alone should have told me I hadn't been hallucinating, but the fragments of memory didn't coalesce until I saw his eyes. The amazing, pale blue eyes were the final, poetic piece of evidence threatening to shred my sanity.
I'd never really liked Alec, but I never suspected he was an actual monster.
It was too much to process so quickly. When Alec took a careful step towards me, all I could think of was that I'd just seen those same eyes hovering above bloodstained fangs. I shrank back away from him, and saw his face go from calm to expressionless in a barely detectable flicker.
I'd opened my mouth, maybe to apologize, or possibly to scream for help, but it snapped shut at Alec's response. Moving faster than I would have believed possible, he spun around and fled through the door. Between one heartbeat and the next he disappeared into the darkness, letting the door slam shut with enough force that the glass in the ceiling should have come down in a rain of razor-edged shards.
The flowers closest to me swayed slightly from the force of the vibrations, pulling my gaze towards them. I felt my heart skip a couple of times and tears start to flood my eyes as I took in beautiful white petals edged in an amazing shade of purple.
Lagrimas del Angel. The whole greenhouse was filled with them, and suddenly I couldn't ignore the significance of the circular signature on the paintings anymore. I hurried outside, looked desperately from side to side for some hint of which way he'd gone, and then headed off to the right towards the sound of shattering pottery.
Just before I was about to give up hope of finding him, I heard another crash and turned into a small grotto. The sight of rock walls nearly covered by a swath of greenery caused me to pull up with a suddenness that only barely saved me from tumbling into the small reflecting pool off to one side. Alec froze at my appearance, a large planter that easily weighed as much as I did dangling from one hand. The shards of pottery strewn about the grotto answered any questions I might have had regarding its imminent fate.
Neither of us moved for several seconds, and then he turned towards me with a glare.
"Go away!"
The command was so forceful it was almost more than I could do to stop myself from turning and running away in terror, but I held my ground.
"Leave. Leave now and I won't follow you."
The anger was still there, but now there were other emotions, one of which I could identify, one of which I knew how to handle.
"It was you the whole time, wasn't it? The bank. The mayor. Were you responsible for the Les Misérables tickets too?"
"Why? What possible difference does it make one way or the other?"
The words had lost most of their force, but none of the feeling behind them. "Because I want to understand. Why me? Why would you do all of that for me?"
"You really don't understand? You saved Rachel from a beating. If for no other reason, then for that."
I took a careful step forward and placed a hand on his arm. He absently let the huge flower pot drop, but didn't step away from me.
"That isn't why you did it though. Is it?"
Alec finally shook his head. "No, I just did it for you. Maybe not so much at first, but I couldn't get you out of my mind. You were everywhere I looked. In my class, at lunch, even in my dreams. I couldn't get away from you."
I felt my heart skip another beat. Everything good that I'd attributed to Brandon had been Alec all along. I didn't understand what I'd seen a few hours ago, but he wasn't a monster. The amount of hurt in his voice took him out of the category of frightening. I moved a little closer. "Do you still want me to leave?"
"Do you want to leave? I won't stop you if you do. If you can convince your mom to leave town there's even a chance you'll be safe from Brandon."
Shivers worked their way down my spine as some of the pieces clicked into place. "He's like you, isn't he?"
Alec's laugh was a bitter, humorless thing. "You mean a monster? Yes, we both feel the call of the moon. Does that scare you?"
I shook my head. "No. I guess a little, but not like it should. You wouldn't hurt me after everything you've done for us."
"I could kill you without even meaning to. You're so fragile. All it would take is an accident, a momentary loss of control. I really am a monster."
"No, you're not. I don't understand what you are, but you aren't a monster. Brandon is. Vincent, Cassie. They're all monsters, but you aren't."
Alec finally let his eyes fully meet mine. "How can you know that when sometimes I'm not sure myself?"
Almost without realizing it, I moved my hand from his arm to his stomach, and then wrapped both arms around him and pressed my face into his rock-hard chest.
"Thank you for saving my life. Were those wolves some of Brandon's friends?"
I felt him nod. "Simon and Nathanial."
"I didn't know them that well, they mostly ignored me, but I didn't think they'd kill me."
Alec finally put his arms around me. He hugged me like I was made out of fine china, but it was a start. The tingling sensation I'd always felt around Brandon was back, stronger than ever. Despite the incredibly grave nature of everything that'd happened in the last few hours, I felt mildly euphoric. Maybe this was what people were talking about when they said they were buzzed.
"Maybe they weren't going to kill you. I can't say for sure, but they've both killed people before. I couldn't take the chance that they weren't just playing around. I had to stop them."
I thought for a moment that my knees were going to collapse on me. I carefully reached up and brushed the bandage on his shoulder. "They could've killed you?"
Alec shrugged. "I came out okay all things considered."
He was going to have to rethink this deflection thing, but now didn't seem like the time to get pushy. I forced a measure of gaiety into my voice and smiled up at him. "Well, I'm glad things turned out the way they did. Otherwise we'd both be dead."
Alec flinched slightly, and then looked at the grotto. "I suppose I'd better clean this up or Donovan is going to be very unhappy with me."
"Who's Don...." I felt my mouth drop as I finally recognized my surroundings. "I've been here before. In my dream. Then I drew it, which I didn't understand because I only ever draw real places, and this was imaginary. Only it wasn't, but there wasn't any way for me to know..."
I turned around, expecting to have to field a barrage of questions, but Alec was calmly watching me. "Isn't that odd? Doesn't that make you want to know what's going on?"
He was debating whether or not to lie to me. I could see it in his eyes. Funny how I'd never realized how expressive they were.
"Don't lie to me."
Alec sighed, and then shrugged. "I'm not sure what to tell you. There's so much you don't know, and most of it I can't tell you. More importantly, you're better off not knowing."
I waited for several seconds, expecting him to go on, and then finally realized the matter was closed as far as he was concerned. "Hold on there. You can't just leave me in the dark about all of this. I'm in up to my neck; you have to at least let me know what I've fallen into."
He was shaking his head again. "I'm sorry, I know this has to be hard, but you don't belong in this world. You admitted yourself that you don't know anything about us. It was a mistake for me to let you get involved. I'm going to remedy that right now. We'll get you home, and then your mom is going
to get an offer that's too good to pass up. With any luck you'll both be out of town within a couple days. I think I can arrange it so neither of you will be back for a year or two. That should be more than enough time for this all to resolve itself one way or another."
I felt my eyes go wide with panic as I realized what he was proposing. "Wait. No. You can't do that." I tried to grab a hold of his arm, but he'd already taken several steps away. The pleasant tingly feeling was gone, but that loss was nothing against the sense of cold abandonment rushing through me.
I tried to step forward, tried to follow him, but my vision was dimming and my heart felt like it was about to explode. I managed a single step before my knees collapsed and the ground jumped up to meet me.
Consciousness was slow returning. When my eyes finally fluttered open, I was surprised to find myself in Alec's arms once again.
"Are you okay?"
He tried to set me down, to stand me up on my feet, but I grabbed onto him as tightly as my shaking arms were able. "Don't leave me. Please don't make me go."
I didn't realize I was crying until I tried to talk. It was embarrassing, but was I too worried about being sent away to care. Any amount of ridicule would be worthwhile if it meant being able to stay with Alec. He obviously still wasn't convinced though.
"Adri, you don't understand. This is the only way to keep you safe. I can't protect you here. I can't even protect my own family."
He was still trying to disengage my arms from around his neck, but it was obvious he didn't want to hurt me, and I was holding on with everything I had.
"No, you don't understand. This whole time I thought I was in love with Brandon, I didn't even know him. You did so much for us and didn't even hate me when I was so rude. I've been so stupid, please don't send me away."
I was halfway to another attack before Alec finally put a finger to my lips and nodded. "Very well. I should send you away for your own protection, but I'm too selfish to do what's best for you. Maybe later I'll be able to do what's right, but not right now, not so soon."