Marked for Vengeance (29 page)

This place looked
like something she had seen in the movies – the flora and fauna seemingly
untouched and wonderfully magical, illuminated by the setting sun that beat
down through the wispy clouds and felt warm and comforting on her healing skin.
The fresh, island air allowed her soul room to breathe. Her gut told her that
everything was far from over, but after being a prisoner to trepidation for so
long, this was a welcomed break.

When they arrived
at the cliff, Cindra stopped along the edge. Alyx slowed to a jog just short of
reaching her and walked to her side, afraid that she wouldn’t be able to stop
soon enough and run right over.  Her toes lined up to the ledge, and she peered
down its rocky slope that rose several hundred feet above the white, sugary
sand below. A strong urge tugged at her to scrunch the powdery substance
between her toes.

Just off the
shore line laid the jagged boulders she had imagined. Salty white caps barreled
into them, spraying water into the air. Her vision magnified the mist which
looked like tiny, glass globes, reflecting the ocean, shore, and sky in each
one.   

“Breathtaking,
isn’t it?” her friend asked with a peaceful smile, and Alyx turned to meet her
eyes. When they locked, Alyx stumbled backwards, and her friend’s arm shot out
to catch her fall. “Whoa!” 

Cindra’s eyes shone
black as night, something Alyx hadn’t expected to see. She
knew
Cindra
was a Protector now, but to see her friend like that for the first time was a
little disturbing. “Sorry,” Cindra giggled, and her eyes returned to normal in
a quick flash. “When I’m running I like to be able to see everything.”

“You can change
form?” Alyx asked as she worked through her breathing. The run had barely
winded her, but she was still slightly breathless.

 Cindra looked
her over worriedly. “Are you…
tired
?”

 Alyx forced her
lungs steady. Was she not supposed to be tired? Her friend’s breathing hadn’t
been affected, and she could hear her stable, exact heartbeat as though it were
on a timer. Embarrassed, she brushed it off and inhaled a lung full of the warm
air while she wafted it toward her face with her hands. “No, I’m just soaking
all of it in,” she insisted.

Cindra curled
her lip. “Ok, you weirdo,” she said and playfully jutted her elbow into her arm.

Alyx chuckled as
she jumped to the side, hoping Cindra hadn’t caught on as she usually did.
Apparently, her tiredness was a flaw of some sort, and she wasn’t ready to
admit it. At least not out loud anyway.

Cindra tugged on
her arm to sit. “I’m surprised you didn’t know you could change back,” she said
as they settled on the patchy ground of rocks and grass. “Let me help you.

Intrigued by
this possibility, Alyx closed her eyes to concentrate.

“Imagine there
is an invisible layer of skin over the top of yours. And remember when you
changed, that burning sensation in the center of your chest that flashed out to
your arms and legs?”

Alyx shuddered.
“How could I forget?”

“I know.  Close
your eyes and imagine pulling that inward, back to where it came from.”

Alyx pressed her
eyelids tight and imagined drawing the invisible layer back through her limbs.
Tingles covered her skin.
I must be doing this right.
They flashed up
her spine and hurled into her chest, like someone delivering a swift punch. She
gasped, and her head jerked backward from the pain.

“Hurts at first,
doesn’t it?” Cindra said through clinched teeth, in pain from merely watching. “Sorry,
girl. It gets easier.”

Alyx’s brown eyes
reopened and scanned over the water, its sparkle more of a shiny glistening.
Her body felt the same though, strong and solid. Being in ‘form’ must have
strictly been about the heightened senses.  She enjoyed tapping into them but
definitely felt more at home in this form.

Her gaze moved
to Cindra who eagerly awaited her commentary. “This isn’t so bad,” Alyx said.

Cindra rolled
her eyes. “Oh, whatever! Feels weird to be out of form, huh?”

“No, I think I prefer
this form.”

“Oh, you’re
crazy! To me, it feels as though I’m living in a big foggy bubble.”

“Well… why do
you, then?”

She flung her arms
in the air. “We were
told
to. They said it would help us to stay ‘equal’
in the eyes of the humans. Something about everything staying as ‘normal’ as
possible for them.”

Alyx understood
that instruction after seeing Cindra in form. It
did
look intimidating.
“Makes sense, I guess,” she said and bounced her leg that lay stretched in
front of her on the grass, worried that her preference for this form was yet
another mark against her. Not only did she tire, unlike Cindra, but she was
also more comfortable with her senses restrained. It would be too much for her if
she was constantly aware of every microscopic detail and buzzing insect – and something
wasn’t particularly right about that, just as she had speculated about her
instincts on the car ride there. Something was ‘off’ with her. Broken.

“We aren’t to
fly either,” Cindra added. “Only when they allow us to. Otherwise, we’re to
walk around like normal people. Do you know how
hard
that will be? I
flew straight here with my Marked and loved every second of it.”

“I thought we
weren’t
supposed
to fly here.”

“I heard that
too, but I didn’t care,” she said with her chin in the air, flipping her hair over
her shoulder.

“It wasn’t hard
for you to fly and keep your shield around the both of you?” she asked,
remembering how hard it was to concentrate on driving, nonetheless if she had
attempted to fly.

“Don’t get me
wrong, it took a lot of concentration, and there were a few times I dipped down
in the air when it broke. Those beasts are ruthless. But I did alright. We were
the first ones here!”

“Show-off,” Alyx
jibed and rocked sideways, bumping into her. 

Cindra bumped
her back, and they laughed, leaning into each other.

“So, what is
this place?” Alyx asked to change the subject, not wanting to disclose how hard
of a time
she
had. Although, the healing wounds spoke for her anyway.

“I’m not sure,
but from what I gather we’re still on Earth, just a different dimension or
something. Someone guessed an island in the Bermuda triangle.”

They chuckled at
the thought of it. “Maybe we are,” Alyx mused. “And this life certainly suits
you. You look great!”

Cindra grinned
as she pulled one of her golden lochs straight and watched it recoil into a
perfectly shaped spiral. “Thanks. I guess I’m better at being this than I was a
true human. It was hard to know how to fix your hair and what to wear. Now it’s
like my appearance simply falls into place.”

 She looked over
at Alyx and nudged her with her elbow. “You,
on the other hand, must
have been the exception.” 

 “Well, I had
three lifetimes to learn how to be a human.”

 Her face lit up
with amazement. “
Three
lifetimes! We
do
have a lot to talk about.
I’ve talked to the other Protectors, and this was all their first lifetime,
including me.”

Alyx flashed a
smile and looked back over the ocean. It came as no surprise to her that this
had been Cindra’s first year alive; her optimism and naiveté about the workings
of life and love had always been humorous to her. It actually made a lot of
sense now. Maybe Cindra’s quick adaption into this Angelic lifestyle
was
because she hadn’t lived as long as a human, and maybe that was why Alyx had
the opposite problem. She had lived the longest of any of them, after all.
Adjusting to her new body took awhile when she first changed, and being able to
switch between forms and shield her Marked wasn’t second nature. In fact, it
didn’t feel natural at all. Her comfort remained in her former humanity.

“The other women,
they must be Protectors too,” Alyx surmised.

“Yes. They were
the ones standing there when I ran up.”

 
No wonder
they looked at me like that,
she thought, and her face flushed with mortification.
It would take every ounce of will power to go back and face them now,
knowing what they had seen.

Cindra touched
her knee.
“
What’s the matter?”

“Oh nothing,”
she said, swatting her hand in the air, “I didn’t get a friendly vibe from them
is all.” 

To add to the
list of things she couldn’t acknowledge out loud yet, kissing Isaac was one of
them.

“Everyone is so
nice, don’t worry,” she said, patting her leg, “getting along with them is
easy.”

Easy?
Alyx thought.
Nothing
has been EASY for me yet.

Cindra tugged at
Alyx’s white streak. “New dye job?”

Alyx had noticed
that, as well. None of the others had the same white streak that she did. “No,
it happened when I changed.”

 “Weird… wonder
why that happened.”

“Your guess is
as good as mine. I’m defective, I suppose.”
To put it lightly.

“I guess we
should talk about the inevitable now, huh?” Cindra said as she picked a blade
of grass.

“Now or never,”
she agreed.

“Let me start by
saying that I’m sorry I went AWOL on you there in the end. That is, of course,
after you went AWOL on me.”

Alyx nodded. Of
course
she would throw that in there. “I’m sorry too.”

Cindra smiled in
approval of her apology and looked down at the blade of grass as she picked it
apart. “I’ll start first. This might be the only time we have to talk privately
so I’m going to be one hundred percent honest here.”

“Go ahead.”

“When you left
early from work last Monday, and you didn’t answer my phone calls or texts, I
knew something was wrong. So I stopped by your apartment late that night, and
your door was open.

Alyx thought
back through the days. So much had happened since then, and it was hard to
remember
exactly
what had happened that Monday night. She started with
the weekend first, Saturday was their girls’ day, Sunday was dinner and Benjamin’s
apartment, and Monday was work and the rooftop…

Alyx’s heart
sank.
Oh no,
the
rooftop
, she thought, and it all came
back to her; the drinking, Isaac confronting her on the dark sidewalk, her staggering
home and passing out naked on the couch.
Crap
.

“I came in your
door and I saw you on the couch, smelling like wine with cuts all over your
face. And I noticed your scar.” Cindra lovingly placed her hand on Alyx’s
shoulder, and her voice lowered to a reflective whisper. “All of this time, my
best friend, right in front of me… and you were just like me.

Alyx pressed her
cheek against her hand. She had always felt a connection to Cindra, she just
never fathomed how deep it actually was. She was also thankful that Cindra was
the only one who had seen her scar or had walked into her apartment that night.
Who knows what could have happened – or what she could have compromised – if
the man in the black suit had found his way in.

“I just knew
something was wrong,” Cindra continued. “Because of the way you acted and the
way I found you, so I had an impulse to look through your camera – sorry, by
the way – and I saw the picture you took of the window, and it confused me.
That was the window that
my
Marked lived at.

HER marked?
Alyx couldn’t
wait
to see where this went.

“I couldn’t understand
why you would do that. Why would you take a picture of his window? But then I
thought back to the restaurant and remembered how you acted around Isaac –
nervous, hesitant, and totally giving off vibes of attraction.

Alyx squirmed. She
didn’t realize it had been
that
apparent.

Cindra smirked
gratifyingly at Alyx’s reaction, which had confirmed her utter accuracy. “It
was obvious you were into him, but,” she said, raising her finger in the air,
“at first I thought you were avoiding him because you wanted to be faithful to
Benjamin, but when I saw the picture I realized it ran deeper than that.

You have no
idea.

“Even though you
were
with
Benjamin, you could still have anyone you want. But yet, here
you are taking pictures like a stalker outside of his window, and I determined
that it was because you
couldn’t
have him.

Astonishment seeped
into Alyx’s expression, but she didn’t want to interrupt Cindra’s train of
thought with words of incredulity. Her friend was just getting started.

Cindra drew in a
breath to continue. “And I had texted Benjamin earlier that day to check on you
because you wouldn’t answer me, and he said he hadn’t heard from you either. I
knew
that
was weird too. So there you were, my ‘together’ friend, who’s
also a Protector like me, passed out drunk in your apartment with a picture on
your camera of Isaac’s apartment window, who you’re also ‘into’, ignoring both
Benjamin and I. Why would
Isaac
be the one person you agonized over? You
could have anyone, and he was obviously willing to get to know you.”