Revelations (7 page)

“Well,” Jonas began, “they used to experiment in the house, but the smell was overpowering. We made them move out here. You’ll see what I mean.” He paused and laughed. “I mean you’ll smell what I mean.”

“Okay,” I muttered.

With that said but unexplained, Jonas knocked on the door.

The young man who answered shocked me enough to make me take more than one step back. Even more shocking than Jonas’s sharp, pointed teeth. He only smiled and moved away so quickly to let us pass I barely got a glimpse of him. A glimpse was more than enough. What I did see were a pair of horns ringing up around his ears and a soft pair of brown eyes. He then disappeared into the darkness.

“Hey, Humbolt,” Jonas said as he walked into the shed.

I instantly smelled what Jonas meant. I swallowed against the thick scent, thicker to me and my sensitive nose, and quickly identifying it as decaying flesh. Humbolt reappeared behind me, and I got a better look.

Humbolt was shy, to say the least. He was about an inch taller than me, which made him five foot five. His features were round and his big round eyes a nice, deep brown with a golden tint, almost as if flecked with gold. His thick, short cropped hair hung around his horns, which resembled those of a ram. His build was thick, much like his hair and much like the smell in the room, but he was not fat. I liked him instantly, just like Jonas.

Then his sister, Hermione stepped forward out of the dim light. She was backlit so I couldn’t see her features very well, but she held out a hand to me. That I could easily see.

“Hello,” she said, her voice musical and sweet. “You must be Christiana. What are you doing wandering around with Jonas? He’ll just get you lost.”

Jonas growled from behind me. When I turned around, he smiled. “Pay no attention to her,” Jonas said. “She thinks she’s funny.”

Hermione’s next move was to stick out her tongue at Jonas, which I totally did not expect. Then she came up to me and put her hand on my shoulder. Her fingers were thick, like sausages, with large, thick nails. Her arm, I could see, was covered in a layer of light brown hair. She caught me looking.

“This must all be so interesting to you,” she said.

“You have no idea,” I muttered.

Hermione guided me by my shoulder over to her work table. I finally got a good look around the room. The shed was about ten feet by twenty but so cluttered with things it looked a whole lot smaller. Bare bulbs dangled from the ceiling, giving off little light. A worktable dominated the room, lit by a quality florescent. On the table was a microscope and a whole bunch of other stuff I could not identify, stuff that looked like it would be right at home on the set of
Doctor Who
.

Hermione began to explain. “Right now, my brother and I are working on a genetic comparison of our own DNA.” She gestured with her stubby hand towards Humbolt, who leaned against a bookshelf. “As you can see, he and I are quite different, yet we are twins.” Hermione was right about that. She and her brother were different. They were the same size, in height and weight. Her face looked much like his, round and beautiful, but her horns were straight, measuring about a foot and extending from just above her forehead. “We are trying to discover what it is exactly that makes us this way,” she continued. “For instance, the horns. And then there’s this.” From behind her, she produced a genuine tail, tufted at the end like that of a cow.

I couldn’t resist. “Can you swish it?”

She swished her tail so it thumped her chest. “I can swish it.”

I bit my lower lip in something that might have been embarrassment, but when you meet a cow person…well, you’ll know what I mean if you ever do. Hermione was beautiful and intelligent, and I couldn’t resist her charm. I stayed and listened to her talk for a good twenty minutes while Jonas and Humbolt joked on the other side of the shed. When she asked me questions about myself, I answered her as honestly as I could without revealing too much about my true nature. I didn’t know much about me anyway, so she offered to run some tests to see what she could discover. I surprised myself by readily agreeing to this.

Then I said goodbye, as I could see Jonas getting bored and beginning to poke into things while Humbolt told him to quit it. Once again I found myself alone in the presence of the lizard man. All we did was go inside where Jonas made me a sandwich. Alendra disappeared to who knew where, and I didn’t bother to pry. Philip joined us after a while and we sat and discussed what life was like out here in this desert Commune. I listened and gave my opinion, but my mind drifted elsewhere. In this house with these people I would soon consider my family, I could think of nothing else except my father, my real family, who disappeared.

Chapter Nine

My time at the Commune would be shorter than I would have liked. It wasn’t my fault, what happened there, at least not in full. I loved everyone there, including Alendra, who became a dear friend eventually. I shudder now to think of them. I considered them my family in many, many ways, and it was my betrayal that brought it all to an end. Yes, eventually they did find me, though I didn’t lead them there, not directly, anyway.

Here I am, getting ahead of myself. I lived at the Commune for over a year. I spent many an hour at the movies with Cadence, always during the daylight hours and always holding her hand in the theatre since she was terrified of the dark. Starch and I became the best of friends from the moment of our initial meeting. We had an affinity for
The X-Files,
for obvious reasons. Philip and I had many an intellectual conversation on many a philosophical topic, as did Hermione and I, often with her shy, silent brother simply looking on. Alendra and I discovered a common ability. That we could never deny. I spent many a night in envy of Pete and Patty’s symbiotic relationship. Anyway, I fell in love with the place, fell in love with the desert, and fell in love with the people.

Back to my favorite subject: Jonas.

Chapter Ten

Jonas became the only person to know who and what I really could do before the final incident that led to the end of my days at the Commune. The reason he came to know was because of how he felt about me…and how I began to feel about him. Jonas, from moment one, felt something about me I cannot nor never will be able to explain. Jonas liked me. I mean, really liked me.

The proof of this came about two months after my arrival at the Commune. We were the only two at home one afternoon, and Jonas decided to drag me on a walk through the desert we’d seen together about a dozen times already. He loved it. In fact, he adored it, and since the cactus was in bloom, he loved it even more.

He held my hand and led me around. We were about a mile from the Commune, and I carried a bottle of water in my other hand. Jonas didn’t drink as much water as normal people, being what he was, so the water was all for me. I was getting used to the heat— and lucky me, I don’t sweat— but it still hit me hard enough to need water on long, romantic walks.

Anyway, he named off cactus blooms to me as we went along. He had plenty of time on his hands to learn and made it a point to see he was highly educated. Jonas might have been a brute force when provoked, but he was very smart. He taught himself mechanics as well as the names of all the flora and fauna of the desert.

“They’re all so beautiful,” I said. I dipped my nose to a perfectly formed blossom. The deep red flower gave off a lovely scent and filled my sensitive nose.

“I thought you’d like them,” Jonas said, yanking gently on my hand, as was his way, to make me move on. “The desert is so drab, and you’re used to the city, I figured flowers would make a difference.”

“Good thinking,” I said, though I knew he didn’t really think the desert was anywhere near drab… and neither did I.

“You know,” he began quietly, “if I could, I’d have some nice flowers delivered here for you. So you’d have something pretty in your room for a few days.”

I grinned up at him. His golden eyes glowed down at me, and I said, “I don’t think I could ever see anything more beautiful than your eyes.”

“Stop or you’ll make me blush.” He tightened his grip on my hand, and for the first time I noticed he’d filed down all his fingernails. That made me squeeze his hand even more.

“I don’t think you can blush,” I said.

“Never know,” he said.

I only continued to smile.

“You know,” he said, “I’d kiss you, but I don’t think you’re ready for that yet.”

I unpuckered my lips, metaphorically, of course. “How do you know?” I said, tilting my chin up.

“I just know,” he said. His hand reached out and his forefinger traced the line of my jaw and stopped below my earlobe. “Well, you’re certainly more beautiful than any of these flowers. Wanna see some more?”

I nodded, his words ringing heavily and sweetly in my ear. His hand drifted away from my face, and he dragged me along to see more flowers and more creatures, all of which he knew by name, both English and Latin.

* * * *

A week later, Jonas kissed me for the first time. It was late at night, and we sat on the ridge overlooking the Commune. We were looking out at the desert lying far behind the reach of our eyes. The stars were abundant and the moon full; that’s why we were out there. There was going to be a meteor shower we knew we could not miss.

As the stars flew by overhead— and I know that they aren’t stars but they certainly look like stars— Jonas scooted just a little bit closer to me.

Something popped into my mind as I leaned back on my elbows, and I have no idea where the thought even came from. “Did you know I can’t have children?” I said absently.

“What?” Jonas said.

“I can’t have kids,” I repeated. “The doctor with me when I woke from my coma told me.”

“Bummer,” Jonas said.

I smiled.

“Why are you telling me this, anyway?” he asked.

I shrugged.

“I don’t care, you know,” he said. Until that moment, his eyes had been on the skies above. Now he turned his amber gaze to me.

I looked at him and lifted one corner of my mouth in a minor smile, something I picked up from hanging around Starch. “You don’t?” I said after a moment.

He shook his head. His stunningly beautiful eyes glowed in the moonlight. “Who would want to have my kids, anyway?” he asked. “A couple of scaled little lizards running around….” He trailed off, his eyes once again moving skyward.

The words fell from my mouth before I even knew they formed in my mind. “I would,” I said.

Jonas looked back at me in surprise, an eyebrow ridge lifted. “Really?”

I nodded, shrugging my shoulders, as was typical of myself. Then I gave him my best smile, the one I reserved just for him.

He then leaned over and kissed me. I swayed a bit under the effect, feeling a chill rush up and down my spine. Now, I’ve been kissed before, and by many more men than I’d like to talk about. I was a wild child. When Jonas kissed me, it was like all the other moments in my life washed away and disappeared down a storm drain. I mean
all
the other moments in my life. My eyes wanted to roll back into my head, and my skin felt like it was sliding off my body. It was euphoric. I’ll never forget it.

We stayed up there until the meteor shower ended, his arm around my shoulder and my head against his chest. He never let a day go by without giving me the greatest of kisses. Yes, I loved him, but I still couldn’t bring myself to tell him. People I love have a tendency to disappear…or die.

Chapter Eleven

I told Jonas everything I could bring myself to tell about my early life. I spoke to him about my mother. I told him about my father, what little I knew. He believed me when I said I wasn’t alone in the car when it crashed. He even got in the habit of saying, “Accident, my ass,” whenever the subject came up. I didn’t go into much detail about my life in the orphanage. I left out Holt and the reasons my father and I were chased. I didn’t tell him how I’d found my father dying in a hospital room. Nobody knew about that, not even Philip or the good Doctor, Michael Daniels. I kept that as my own little secret.

He knew about the headaches, which I was pretty good at hiding, but he only knew because hiding anything more from him was something I wouldn’t do. I hadn’t had a really bad one in a couple of weeks when suddenly I felt one coming on. Jonas and I were sitting outside. It was dusk, and he just finished up work on the same white pickup I’d seen him working on the day I met him. He still hadn’t gotten the old truck running.

I sat in a plastic chair, one leg hooked over a chair arm. This was a couple months after walking through the desert with him, after the day I realized that I was madly in love with him but hadn’t gotten up the courage to tell him. It had been slowly climbing all day, the headache. It hit dizzying heights just as the sun set. Except I wasn’t about to get up and leave Jonas alone and out of my sight. He was my favorite thing to look at. Even with my eyes closed, I could still see him. With my eyes closed, I can still pretty much see anything as long as there’s someone else’s mind around to pry into.

He finished up his work and pulled out the red rag from his back pocket and wiped the grease off his hands. He always worked until the sun set, when he could see no more. He was highly determined to get the truck working, and he’d work his ass off until he did. Alas, today was not that day.