Marked for Vengeance (3 page)

When she opened
the car door, invisible waves bellowed from inside, distorting the air in front
of her as though she had opened an oven door.
Ugh!
She leaned into the
car to roll the windows down and allow the muggy Georgia heat to escape. After
it was bearable, she slung her bags inside and went on her way.

Ten blocks and
numerous pedestrians later, she parked her car in the small parking lot beside
the three-story brick complex that she had lived in for the past three years, retrieved
her bags, and headed through the white, wooden entry door. She climbed the
stairs to the top floor, pulled out her keys, and entered her modest one
bedroom apartment – number 301.

Kicking off her
shoes just inside the door, she dumped her bags onto the dark hardwood floors
that shone from the thick coat of polished lacquer. As she pattered down the
short hallway to the bathroom, she stripped off her work clothes, leaving a
trail of pooled fabric. She turned the nozzle to let the hot water steam, and
as she waited, craned her neck over her shoulder to look in the mirror at her
back. The scar resembling a three-peaked Celtic knot surrounded by a circle on
her left shoulder blade had faintly tingled ever since their encounter with the
strange man in the elevator. Her nose crinkled as she rubbed the raised, fleshy
symbol with her fingertips. S
o unusual, it’s never done that before
.

Pushing the
uncomfortable memories of when she was branded with it from her mind, she
stepped into the ceramic tiled shower.

After washing,
she twisted her wet hair into a towel and slipped on a pair of baggy, grey
fleece pants and a white tee
.
She strolled to the kitchen and stared
into the refrigerator she had adorned with pictures of her and Benjamin, and
pulled a Tupperware container of leftover pasta from the bottom shelf. While
the container warmed atop the spinning glass plate, she eyed the wine rack
beside the fridge and bit her bottom lip. It didn’t take long for her
contemplation to turn into resolve, and she snatched the red merlot. With the
wine bottle and glass in hand, she hurried to the living room and sank onto the
leather couch to get a head start on the wine before her pasta was ready.

The TV flickered
on, and she scrolled through the scheduled programs for the night. One for
Eighteenth-Century England was slated to come on the History Channel at nine
o’clock. Occasionally, they had something on that particularly interested her,
and this was one of them. For now, she would settle for a reality competition
of some kind.

The microwave’s
shrill, uniform beeps alerted her that the meal inside was properly heated, so
she grabbed her steaming dinner and nestled into a chair at her high-top dining
table with her glass of wine. As she twirled the pasta around the prongs of her
fork, her phone chimed. A text from Jessica awaited her in the inbox.
Hey, Alyx!
Ran into Cindra at the store and she said you guys were busy this weekend. We
should try to get together in a few weeks. Miss you guys!

Alyx grinned and
messaged back. S
ounds good. We’ll get together soon! Miss you too.

Jessica worked
at Bachman and Yorkshire until two months ago when she went into business for
herself as a cake decorator. On occasion, she would send cupcakes and other
treats to the office, such as petitfors or cake pops to remind them she still
existed. Regretfully, Alyx’s schedule had been a little busier on the weekends,
and that didn’t allow for a ton of extra friend activities.

Remembering
their last ‘girl’s night out’, Alyx scrolled through the pictures on her phone of
them singing “Pour Some Sugar on Me” at a Korean karaoke bar during the summer.
Her cheek rested against her palm as she reminisced.
What a fun night
.

*
* *

The cable box
read nine o’clock. After eating dinner, cleaning the apartment, and three
glasses of wine later, she settled onto the couch just in time for the program
to start. Her head buzzed from the alcohol, but she watched attentively as it
went over the early years of Queen Victoria’s reign with a nostalgic look in
her eyes, as though she watched a home video hoping to see her favorite parts. This
was for a reason, however – this wasn’t Alyx’s first time on Earth. It was her
third. During her second lifetime, Alyx lived in eighteenth century England,
also known as the Victorian era, which she adored the most.

Alongside her
brethren, Alyx’s birthplace resided in the darkness that dwelled between the
heavens and the stars, and much like the unusual scar on her shoulder indicated,
their creation served a distinct but vital purpose. Her superiors sent her to
Earth and ordered her to blend into society until they summoned her to capture her
Marked. And if they didn’t summon by the time her Marked passed away, her soul
would ascend back into the darkness as it had done twice before.

None of her kind
lived longer than three life spans, so this was Alyx’s last time to walk
amongst the humans, which saddened her in a way, but also provided a small
sense of relief. She loved Earth and the humans that inhabited it, but she also
wasn’t sure if she could handle living through another. She learned that life
was full of joy, but also loss and heartache. Another lifetime of that might be
too much, and apparently her superiors had anticipated this.

She often
wondered, however, what it would be like when her soul departed for good. They never
mentioned during their briefings what would happen once their three lifetimes were
up, and the unknown disquieted her from somewhere within. Despite its ups and
downs, life on Earth was all she knew, and she had become quite good at it.

During a
commercial, she rested her cheek against the arm of the couch and drifted into
a wine-induced, sound sleep. As she slept, short visions resembling vivid, faraway
memories bounced around inside her head. In one, a lady with ginger hair pulled
into a tightly curled coif wore a fancy Eighteenth-Century gown made with rich,
red and gold fabric. Her skirt split down the front to reveal an ivory
petticoat with matching gold trim. This elegant lady hooked her arm around the
waiting elbow of a gentleman, who sported a camel-colored cutaway coat with an ivory
waistcoat and black breeches. A cropped, dark beard trimmed his face, and he
walked with a limp and a long, black cane. They descended down the stairs in
front of their home to get into a carriage that awaited them on the cobblestone
driveway below, chatting and laughing about the promise the night held.

 Alyx stayed
hidden amongst the shrubbery across the road, grasping a looking glass when the
dream slowly blurred away, fading into muted colors and faint murmurs of the
couple as she fell into a deeper sleep.

* * *

The doorbell
startled her awake. Alyx bolted from the couch with her hair in a tangled mess,
the TV still on, and the empty wine bottle on the coffee table beside her. Her eyes
squinted to tiny slits from the light pouring through window, and she cradled
her forehead in her hand. The beginnings of a headache gnawed just above her
right brow.

She glanced at
the cable box.
Two minutes past ten
.
Cindra, she’s early.

She snatched the
wine bottle and hustled to the kitchen to toss it in the trash, rubbed her
eyelids, and went to open the door. When she swung it open, there her friend
stood, bright eyed and bushy tailed with two lattes, one in each hand. Cindra
took one look at Alyx’s hair and her eyes widened. “Oh,
girl!
Who beat
you with the nappy stick?”

“Good morning to
you too,” Alyx replied, flipping a bird, and headed back into the living room.

Cindra doubled
over with laughter, cackling and holding the lattes upright.

Alyx stopped by
the kitchen and raked her hands through her hair as she scowled.

“You know I love
you,” Cindra said, shutting the door behind her with her foot, “and I knew you
would sleep late, so I thought I’d give you a wake-up call and bring you a
latte.”

“That’s
exactly
what I needed,” she said and took the cup from her hand. “I figured you were
early because you were extra eager to get going today.”

“Well… that
too.”

She pointed a
finger at her disheveled hair. “Now let me go take care of this mess. I won’t
be long.”

“Yes, PLEASE!”

Armed with the
latte, Alyx made her way to the bathroom to get ready for their girls’ day and
pulled her make-up bag from the cabinet while her hot rollers warmed.

“Since when did you
start watching the History Channel?” Cindra yelled from the living room. “I
didn’t realize you were an old person disguised as a young whippersnapper.”

Alyx’s hand
paused as it went to swipe on the first of her foundation, and she studied her
reflection in the mirror. For lack of a better description, that’s
exactly
what she was; an old person disguised as a ‘young whippersnapper’-- as her
friend so eloquently stated.

Even though she
had lived three life spans, each time her soul was placed into a new earthly-vessel
that began its lifecycle at the age of twenty-five and aged like a humans
normally would. This ensured that she successfully blended in with society, her
cover story this time being that she was a single girl who moved to the city in
search of career opportunities. Her final assignment commenced three years ago,
the day before she started at Bachman and Yorkshire. So as far as Benjamin,
Cindra, and everyone else at work knew, Alyx was only a mere twenty-eight human
years old.

Because her
vessel always began in the mid-twenties, her life spans were considerably short.
The past two were thirty-eight and forty-three years a piece, which technically
made her eighty-four years old to date. In total accumulation, including the
years she spent in the darkness between lifetimes, her soul was around
three
hundred
years old. But Alyx had become so accustomed to her human veneer,
she felt more human than she did anything else. Mainly because her time spent
in the darkness was more of an unconscious limbo.

After a brief
moment, she shook her head with a hint of a smile. “Don’t hate, Cindra!”

She completed
her hair and make-up in record time, threw on a knitted beret, a pair of skinny
jeans that she tucked into brown, leather boots, an ivory knit t-shirt, and
some dainty gold hoop earrings. “Let’s go make history,” she said as she
grabbed her purse, and they headed for the door.

CHAPTER
2:

Isaac

The
disorientation frightened him. Try as he might, he couldn’t recall his name or
where he lived, and couldn’t see so much as an inch in front of him as he
thrashed through the night air to search for something to hold on to. After his
futile attempts to decipher a sound or a shape in the darkness, he gave up and
blindly walked forward over the cold, grassy earth.

Clueless as to
where this decision would lead him, he placed one foot in front of the other
when the branches above slowly thinned away to allow the tiny, twinkling lights
to shine through, illuminating his path.
This is the right way.
What
seemed like a guess in direction before was now clear. Something pulled him
there,
she
pulled him there, like a gravitational force.

By the faint
crashing of a waterfall in the distance, he knew that he was close.
Fifteen…
fourteen… thirteen
… Only a few more paces and he would see her again.

The tree line
broke, and he emerged into an open field. The same woman he had seen in past
dreams sat on her knees amidst the tall grass, gazing sullenly at the ground.
Her glossy black hair enveloped her shoulders with a single strip of white
flowing along the left side. He felt strangely attracted to this creature --
despite his partial inward protests to the contrary -- and like all of the
times before, he couldn’t distinguish the details of her face, except her eyes,
which were entirely black, disturbing, but fiercely beautiful. They resembled
two dark, shiny marbles, something that would haunt the dreams of children, but
their sorrow comforted any fear they might have inspired.    

As he approached,
her eyes didn’t shift upward to acknowledge his presence this time, as though
he weren’t standing there at all. To steal her attention, he opened his mouth
to call to her, but the steady splashing of the waterfall masked his efforts.
Desperation washed over him as the imagery faded back into darkness, his futile
cries ignored.

As a result of
his panic, the forceful pounding of his heart lifted him from his sleep and he
awoke with a frantic gasp.

Isaac Walsh scanned
the living room with bloodshot eyes, soaking in his surroundings like a sponge.
The TV in front of his sofa bed flickered with images of infomercials, the
picture on the windowsill of him and his son stared back at him comfortingly,
and the remnants of his late night snack lay on the floor beside him.
Home,
he thought and lay back down with a thud, his wrist resting across his
forehead. This strange woman had invaded his dreams for the past two weeks.

At first, he
didn’t mind her being there, but now the dreams were more like nightmares – intrusive
and daunting.  His morning routine involved lying listless on the bed while he
composed himself.

His head pivoted
to glance at his phone on the end table.
Eleven thirty.
I need to
call and check on Micah.
He dialed the number, and a few rings later his
voicemail answered. “Micah, ‘tis your father,” he said in his mild Irish brogue,
“let me know when to get you from Jordan’s. Text me back.”

Isaac lived with
his thirteen year old son in their flat, which occupied an entire corner on the
third floor of an abandoned mill that a developer bought and divided into separate
units. Their flat had concrete floors, high ceilings with exposed pipes, and
floor to ceiling windows in the living room that provided a view of another set
of apartments across the street. The kitchen, living room, and bathroom were on
the main floor with furniture and décor mainly from IKEA, which complemented
the architectural style of the flat with their straight, simple lines. In the
back of the living room, a suspended, metal staircase spiraled to a loft where
his thirteen year old son slept on a twin size bed.

 Isaac used half
of the flat as an art studio that remained hidden behind a sliding, metal door.
He paid a little extra for the adjoining room, but determined that it would be
the perfect space for an art studio. Isaac painted canvases, some of which he
displayed in the living room with long, steel cables hanging from the ceiling.
He made his living mainly from his craft but also had a side job as a waiter at
the bistro around corner.

He rubbed his
eyes and swung his legs over the side of the sofa-bed to make his way to the
bathroom in nothing but his plaid boxer shorts and the silver cross that hung
around his neck on a leather cord.

Water from the
faucet of his pedestal sink pooled into his cupped hands, and he splashed it onto
his hairline that dripped with night sweat.
After
blotting his face with a towel,
he placed
his hands on either side of the porcelain basin and stared into the mirror to
help shake off the rest of his disorientation from the recurring dream. His
dark hair fell past the tops of his ears and dusted the brow of his mysterious
eyes, which were two different colors – one blue, one green – and sat perfectly
proportionate on his handsome, but slightly boyish, face. Even though he was
three weeks shy of turning thirty-seven, others often mistook him to be in his
twenties, and it didn’t help that he was incapable of growing any type of
facial hair except a small patch on his chin that he kept shaved.

A gurgle rolled
through his stomach, reminding him that lunchtime neared, and he had yet to eat
breakfast. Isaac went straight to the kitchen and pulled a carton of eggs and a
package of ham from the fridge to make an omelet. After folding the cooked eggs
over the cut-up chunks of ham, he turned the burner off and ate the omelet
straight from the pan, finishing it in five bites. He tossed his makeshift
plate into the sink and warmed a stale cup of coffee from the night before in
the microwave.

Carefully
blowing the steam that curled from the mug, he sat at their round dining table to
read the newspaper when his phone beeped with a new text message.
Hey, dad,
come get me at three o’clock. See you then
. The corner of his mouth rose
into a half smile, pleased that his son had answered him fairly promptly.

As he closed his
phone to read an article about a new art exhibit in Atlanta, a familiar,
creative inspiration swept over him. His gaze moved to the center of the flat, and
he lightly tugged on his ear, envisioning what he wanted to paint.

Leaving his coffee
on the table and the bed still unfolded, he made his way to the metal, sliding
door of his art studio. The dream was fresh on his mind, and he only had two
and half hours before he needed to be on his way to pick up Micah. When he immersed
himself into a painting, two and a half hours would sneak by as though it were
fifteen minutes.

The squealing of
the rusty chain he used to raise the door grated against his eardrums. He had
lived there for close to fourteen years, and with every one that passed, it worsened.
One day I’ll oil that thing,
he thought, cringing with each tug.

Once inside the
open, quiet room that smelled an odd blend of must and the strong chemical
smell of paint, he thumbed through the newly purchased canvases that rested
against the wall and chose the largest one. He placed the canvas on the dark,
wooden easel speckled with multicolored splatters and slid it to the center of
the room in front of his leather stool. After resting atop the worn, black
leather, he pulled his metal box from a cubby on the easel and picked a handful
of aluminum tubes to make an acrylic paint-filled palate with green, black,
blue, yellow, and white to recreate the scene from his dream.

The anticipation
of reliving the moment was almost too much to bear, and his hand trembled as he
reached for a brush from the cup of murky water that sat atop lip of the easel.
He chose a broad, horsehair brush and dipped it in the black paint. The setting
of his dream would be first – the dark field, the night sky. He drew in a
breath to steel his nerves and focus on his objective.
I need to get this
right
.

The brush swept
across the top of canvas to begin with the sky and followed with the sprinkling
of golden yellow and white to represent the stars. It would never compare to
the brilliance of his dream, but he resolved to work meticulously to somehow do
it justice. He labored over his new creation for the next two hours, engrossed
in the unforgettable scenery his mind replayed.

*
* *

When it came
time to leave, Isaac added one last star to the sky and slid the easel to the
corner of the studio by his other paintings that sat in perfect alignment along
a glass shelf. These recent paintings were of angels and demons at war, and all
he had left to do was settle on a price for each one before he displayed them
in an art show next month.

The angels’
enormous wing spans stretched across the canvas, and their feathers’ intricate,
textured detail popped from the scene. The valiant cherubs appeared to be
warriors as their muscular physiques entangled with the foul, offensive beasts
that he depicted with smoky, black bodies and exposed fangs, gnashing at their
opponents. The beasts overpowered the angels, in spite of their splendor,
tearing into their flesh, portraying them to be the weaker of the two, but
still valiant and brave. Not frail by any means.

Because it would
only appeal to a specific clientele, Isaac wasn’t sure how his recent
collection would sell, especially because most of them wouldn’t appreciate the
depiction of angelic beings as ‘weak’. But he didn’t care. He only wanted to
paint what came from his soul, which his dreams typically inspired, just as the
one he had painted that afternoon had been.

As indicated by
his paintings, Isaac had a penchant for anything spiritual. This past spring he
designed a montage of angels, intertwined with crosses and other religious
symbols, and had it tattooed in a sleeve over his entire left arm. His
enthrallment with the divine was partially due to his Catholic upbringing in
Dublin, Ireland, but he had dreamt of angels as early as he was able to talk.
His father told him that as soon as he awoke, he would say his ‘friends with
wings’ visited him again that night.

After Isaac had
moved to the States, fourteen years ago last November, he shied away from the Catholic
faith, fancying himself more of a spiritual person than a religious one as he
found his own way in the world. Although, he and Micah would still attend
church every now and then, visiting different denominations each time. Of
course his father, being a devout Catholic, didn’t approve of this initially,
but he accepted and loved his son anyhow. The importance of maintaining a
relationship with son and his grandson eventually overcame his own prejudices.
Partially because it was what his late wife, Isaac’s mother, would have wanted,
but also because his father’s health had continuously deteriorated due to stage
four liver cancer.

Isaac sat his
box of paints atop the stool so he could continue when he returned, lowered the
door to the studio, and went to the coat closet by the door where he stored his
clothes. From a shelf in the back, he pulled a folded pair of fitted jeans that
hugged his lean waist seamlessly and a v-neck, dark-green shirt to proudly
display both his cross necklace and tattooed arm.

Once dressed, he
grabbed his keys and phone from the kitchen counter and grinned as he slipped on
his ratty old tennis shoes, recalling Micah’s protests the last time he wore
them,
Dad! When are you going to get rid of those nasty-looking things?
Don’t come pick me up from anywhere again in those!

He liked
embarrassing his son on occasion. Keeping him grounded was one of his highest
priorities.

While jingling
the keys in his pocket and whistling a tune he couldn’t remember the name of,
he locked the door behind him and strolled toward the elevator located in the
center of the floor. Before his finger met the round, plastic button, the
elevator opened.

Inside the cabin
stood a man in a black suit who stared from under the brim of his hat,
centering his eyes on Isaac’s torso. Isaac looked down to see what he could
have been looking at when the strange man plowed forward, almost running him
over. “Pardon,” Isaac said as he stumbled backward, and then determined that
the man was the one who was rude. The strange man didn’t say anything in return
as he walked in the direction of Isaac’s flat.
Where is he off to?
he
wondered.  No other tenants lived on their floor.
He must be lost.