The Blood Talisman (21 page)

“
You think you know how
mean he is but you haven’t a clue. He has my wife and children
somewhere. By following his orders, I keep them alive and
healthy.”

Shocked at this revelation, Selene
said, “That’s no way to live.”

“
It’s the only choice I
have.” John replied softly.

Selene started fidgeting with her
hands, like she used to do when she was a girl, before all of this
happened. Alex noticed and smiled. He took her hands to stop her
and she looked into his happy eyes and smiled. She wondered if he
missed that trait about her. Her shy innocence had slipped away
through all of the recent emotional pain that she’d had to endure.
Perhaps he didn’t like her new attitude.

“
Is there any place in
particular you’ve always wanted to go in Mexico?” she asked Alex
quietly. She thought a shy approach would help bring him out of his
depressed state.

“
It doesn’t matter,” he
replied and removed his hand from hers. He turned his eyes to the
dark window on his side of the car and stared out as they passed by
miles of flat, dirty land.

Selene scooted closer to him and laid
her head on his shoulder. He shuffled away slightly but she forced
him to accept it.

“
I need you, you know,” she
said.

He responded by relaxing his shoulder
and placing his arm around her. She scooted in closer until he was
completely holding her. She closed her eyes and enjoyed the ride.
He kissed her on top of her head and laid his own head back to
relax.

They drove for a couple of hours in
silence. Selene took the opportunity to nap while Alex stared out
of the window thinking about the women in his life.

Upon feeling the car stop, Selene
peeked open her eyes at the fluorescent lights of a gas station.
She straightened herself up in the car and Alex rubbed the arm she
had been laying on.

“
It went numb,” he
commented as he shook his arm, trying to wake it.

“
Sorry,” Selene said and
smiled. “You’re so comfortable to me.”

John finished pumping the gas and got
back into the car. He bumped his head as he got back in and Alex
and Selene looked at each other and snickered. He frowned at them,
a little mad at their laughter.

“
We are close to the beach.
Do you want to go there?” John asked.

Selene looked at Alex with her
eyebrows raised.

“
Sure. Let’s go,” Alex
nodded.

Selene clapped her hands like a little
excited girl and Alex chuckled at her innocence.

John smirked in the rearview mirror
and said, “I remember those days with my wife. She used to be so
young and just giddy.”

His smirk quickly faded into an angry
grimace.

“
What happened? To your
wife, I mean,” Selene asked.

“
The confines of loose
imprisonment haven’t suited her well. She’s slipped in and out of
depression and this last episode…” He trailed off.

Selene sat back into her spot beside
Alex and looked up at the ceiling of the car with no words left to
say. Silence reigned until they reached palm trees and the distant
sound of waves crashing along a shoreline.

“
I’m so sorry. I had no
idea that he had done so much to make you do his evil
bidding.”

John drove in a circle and parked in
an empty, dark parking area. The wind blew and sand immediately
dusted the black car. They got out of the car and stood watching
the ocean as it gently swashed the shore.

Selene slipped her shoes off and threw
them on top of the car. She skipped over the wood fence surrounding
the parking area and went running barefoot through the sand. John
and Alex looked at each as if they were wondering which one of them
should go after her. John motioned his head for Alex to go, and did
so reluctantly.

Selene was all the way down by the
ocean, letting the water cover her feet. She stood there staring
out at the ocean and Alex took a mental picture of the beautiful
view. Her hair was gently blowing in the breeze and her clothes
flapped in unison. He felt at peace for a moment. The pull of the
relaxing sounds of the ocean made him feel at home with her. For a
second she looked like Amalia from behind, but he blinked his eyes
and the image in his mind of her was gone.

He walked up to her and stood next to
her gazing out at the water himself.

“
Just beautiful,” he said
aloud.

Selene looked over at him and the
comfort on his face. He looked relaxed and peaceful. It was a much
needed change from the depressive and distant looks of a few days
ago.

“
Let’s walk up the beach a
bit. Give us a little distance from John,” she
suggested.

They both looked back at John. He was
leaning against the sand-dusted black car, lighting up what was
left of his cigar.

Selene grabbed Alex’s wrist and pulled
him to follow her. He freed his arm from her grasp but followed, a
few steps behind her, avoiding conversation. She stopped suddenly
and turned back to look at him.

“
Why are you distancing
yourself from me?” she asked.

“
I’m not.”

“
That’s bull crap. C’mon
now. Spill.”

“
I don’t wanna do this
right now. Let’s just keep walking,” he said and strode ahead of
her.

She ran after him.

“
What did I do to deserve
this?” she yelled out to him.

He stopped in his tracks and put his
head down, looking at the sand. She caught up with him and looked
into his face. The depressive look was back.

“
I can’t love you anymore,”
he said softly.

Her heart broke a little
inside.

“
You can’t help who you
love,” she said.

He looked up at her, into her eyes.
His eyes were glassy from the tears she was trying to hold back.
She grasped his face and kissed him passionately. For a moment,
they were the only two that mattered. They were the only two in the
world. He ran his hand down to the small of her back, pulling her
even closer to him. His soft tongue sent electric shocks all the
way to her toes.

She broke the kiss for a moment and
looked deep into his loving eyes. He couldn’t quit loving her no
matter how hard he tried. He kissed her again, tenderly stroking
her face and hair. He brought her down to the sand and lay on top
of her, kissing her passionately.

She pulled off his dark t-shirt and
rolled over on top of him to pull off hers, but Alex stopped her
suddenly. The look on his face told her he wasn’t doing so because
he didn’t want her. He turned his head and sat up with her still on
top of him. She admired his chest but he paid her no
attention.

“
What’s wrong?” she asked,
softly stroking his pectoral muscles.

“
I hear something,” he
said.

She remembered a wolf’s hearing was
exceptional. He was hearing something far away. Something that she
couldn’t hear.

He decided it was nothing and returned
his attention to Selene. He brushed her hair back from her face and
tucked it behind her ear. He leaned in to kiss her again but
stopped just shy of her lips. He picked her up off of him and
placed her softly onto the sand. He stood up and began walking
farther down the beach. Selene sighed in frustration and stood up,
stomping the sand behind him.

“What’s your problem?” she
asked.

He shushed her and kept walking. His
steps became faster and faster until he was in a full out sprint.
She struggled to keep up, wandering the whole way what was going
on. Then suddenly she knew.

Before them both sat a dying man. He
looked to be in his early forties and was extremely distressed.
Tears covered his face and blood his arms. He stared up at Alex in
fear. Selene tried to pull Alex back from the weird guy covered in
blood, but when he turned and looked back at her, his eyes were
wolf yellow. The wolf within him had arisen again. He must have
smelled the blood and heard the cries of the desperate
man.

The dying man lay back down onto the
sand as every drop of blood he had remaining within him continued
to leave his body. Alex dropped to his knees beside him and picked
up his bleeding wrist. He licked the blood dripping from his
arm.

One taste was all it took for him to
change. He achingly changed into the wolf and bit into the man’s
fleshy arm as he lost consciousness. Selene backed away quietly.
She didn’t want to watch as he destroyed the man. It was truly
horrifying. The sound alone was unbearable. She closed her eyes as
she stepped backwards, only peeking every few seconds to make sure
he didn’t notice her leaving.

He growled and grunted as he tore flesh
and bone. Selene felt sick listening to it all. She cupped her ears
with both hands and kept creeping backwards, blindly.

He stopped eating his meal and turned
to see Selene backing up the beach with her hands over her ears and
her eyes shut tight. Blood and strings of flesh dripped from his
dog-like snout. It covered the hair on his wolf chest and it was
caked beneath his wolf nails.

She glanced at him again to see if the
madness had halted. His sights were now set upon her. The wolf
stood and charged towards her. The sand seemed to only help him
gain speed. She turned and ran away from him. He pursued her like
prey.

She ran as fast as she could but fell
and he quickly gained on her. He jumped on top of her, blood
dripping off him. He smelled her skin and she turned her head
towards the ocean waves. His rough hands held both shoulders to the
ground. The force pushed her deeper into the sand. She whimpered
and prayed silently for him to not tear her to pieces.

She closed her eyes, waiting for the
pain, when a pop in the distance made him fall to the sand beside
her. She opened her eyes in sudden relief and fear at the same
time. She was happy that he wouldn’t be having her for desert but
fearful that he had been shot.

She stood on her knees in the sand and
crawled over to him. The wolf within had quickly dissipated and
Alex remained. He was completely unconscious. She wiped what she
could of the blood from his face and chest. It left mostly a bright
red stain on his skin. A small needle with light blue feathers
stuck out from his arm. She ripped it out and started slapping his
face to awaken him.

“Alex?” she cried.

“He’ll be out for a while,” John’s
voice yelled from the distance. “I heard all the commotion and
thought it might be worth checking out.”

He hurried over.

“What did you do to him?” she
gasped.

“For at least two hours.”

She sighed and stroked his
chest.

“How can you be so forgiving? He just
tried to eat you?” John reminded her.

“It wasn’t him. He can’t control what
the wolf wants. He can’t kill me anyway.”

“Why didn’t you do some of your magic
and make him get off of you?”

“It doesn’t work that way. My father
controls death and pain. I can’t hurt a wolf, and in return they
can’t kill us. It’s why we have so many wolves that love us. We are
the only ones who can’t be killed by them.”

“That’s a little discriminatory, don’t
you think?”

Selene stood up from Alex. She got
right in John’s face and said, “Those sneaky bloodsuckers deserve
nothing but death and pain. They try and control us and they do
control wolves. They are the most conniving and controlling beings
that have ever walked this earth. How can you even say
that?”

“You’re right,” he admitted and lowered
his head, ashamed.

“Can you drag him to the car? I’ll
clean him up there,” she said.

She paced herself, walking back to the
car. She wanted to get away from what had happened. It was never
pleasant watching a wolf feed, but, if she had to witness it, then
she would rather it were Alex.

A ring sounded from John’s left jacket
pocket. Selene looked back at him briefly and kept
walking.

“Hello?” he answered.

“Did he take the bait?” Ram quietly
asked on the line.

“Yes sir,” John looked back for Selene.
She was stepping into the car. When the door slammed he said, “He
ate the guy that you sent for him and almost tore into
Selene.”

“You should have let him. She would
have been fine. A little mangled but, still fine.”

“Anything else, sir?”

“That’s it for now. They seem to have
built up a rapport with you. Good work.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Take them back to the plane. We will
be there shortly.”

“Yes sir.”

John clicked his phone off and kicked
Alex in the side. His limp body lifted from the sand briefly and
plunked back down. John heaved him up into a fireman’s lift and
carried him back across the sand to the black car where Selene was
waiting.

Chapter 25