The Rise (25 page)

There was no hesitation. I came forward with a speed uncommon in this world or any, and sank my fangs deep into the silvered skin of the girl’s neck. And it tasted like sunshine. And it felt like coming home.

Alexa

After the meeting in the sitting room everyone slowly began to disperse. Victoria announced that she and Simon were going to “see the sights,” and they set out together. Patterson had once again slipped away without me noticing, and Gavin, too. I knew that I should go look for Patterson so that we could talk, but right now, I just wanted to be alone for a little bit.

Everyone else I assumed returned to whatever rooms they had been designated, except Sasha. She was still sitting on the plush bench, looking up at me through dark lashes and crystal blue eyes. “I could show you around, if you want,” she offered.

I was about to decline, but Kayden beat me to the punch. “She doesn’t,” he said, his voice plain.

Sasha shot him a look of hatred before turning back to me. “I’m pretty sure she can speak for herself,” she snapped.

Sheesh, I thought, Does it ever end? I tried to appear grateful at Sasha’s offer, but I was pretty sure I was fresh out of bullshit. “Look,” I said. “It’s really nice of you to offer, but I’ve got a lot on my mind right now, so maybe some other time.”

Sasha shrugged and stood, her long blue dress that matched the striking color of her eyes rippling like ocean waves all the way down to where it reached the floor. When she was gone I took a deep breath and turned to Kayden. I opened my mouth to say something, but then he was gone, too, leaving the room in that fluid manner of his, not so much as stirring the air as he passed by me, not sparing a glance at me, either.

I stood in the middle of the room and looked around me helplessly, as though I had lost something. I stared out of the clear windows that looked out onto the exotic gardens, the sun streaming in through them in thick rays teeming with dust mites. I felt the same way I was; alone. It was such an empty, nothing-filled feeling that I wondered if maybe I wasn’t dead already; if this existence was just my penance for the crimes and bad choices of some past life that my soul could not remember, some time and place long before the beginning of history. It had to be. In some cosmic way I must have seriously pissed off the Fates, murdered their children or something. Why else would I be faced with such awful things? Why else would I be made to suffer so?

Sweet. Here we go again. I had not taken you as such a quitter, Warrior.

My hands clenched into fists. “I’m not
quitting,
” I said, out loud. Hearing my own voice in the silence of the room was unsettling, but I couldn’t care less at the moment. “I’m just…
philosophizing
. I have a right to do that. How much do you think I can take before—”

“Alexa?”

My eyes went wide and I spun around. Standing in the doorway to the sitting room was Tommy, his eyebrows drawn together in concern. “Who are you talking to?” he asked hesitantly, his sky blue eyes darting around the room.

I sighed. “Myself,” I muttered, looking down at the boots on my feet.

Tommy was silent for a moment, and I peeked up at him through my lashes, embarrassed. “Okay,” he said slowly, “Would you take a walk with me?”

I almost said no, but remembering how I’d felt just a moment ago, when I’d been left all by myself, I nodded. “Okay,” I said.

Tommy smiled then, just one side of his mouth lifting in a ghost of his characteristic smirk. His pale hair was messy like usual. But unlike usual, it didn’t looked like he had spent hours trying to make it that way. I noticed the shadows under his eyes then, the dark circles that said he hadn’t slept well. He was wearing dress pants and a light blue button-up shirt, but he hadn’t bothered to tuck it in like he always did. His hands were shoved into his pockets, his wide shoulders just the slightest bit too tense. He pulled his right hand out of his pocket and held it out to me.

I stepped forward and took his hand, and his fingers were warm and strong in mine. For a moment I thought about what Kayden would think if he were to come in and see us this way, how he would react, but I shoved the thoughts away. Wherever Kayden was, it wasn’t here. I could feel the distance between us the same as I could feel the grip of Tommy’s fingers. I would not run after Kayden, as much as I wanted to. I was too damned tired of running.

“He doesn’t hate you,” said Tommy, as he led me down one of the glass tube hallways connecting the cottages.

I looked up at him, wondering if he had somehow read my thoughts. He tilted his head at me, his mouth still pulled up in that weak version of a smirk. “It’s written all over your face,” he said, pushing a door set into the glass that led to the outside. He held it open for me as I passed through. “It’s just got to be hard for him, you know? Sitting by and watching everything that’s happening and completely helpless to do anything about it.” He paused, closing the door behind him and glancing around at the city before him. “I’ll give him this, he’s remarkably stoic. I’m not sure how I would do if I was in his position, and by his face you wouldn’t even know any of it is affecting him.”

Tommy pulled me forward again and led me down a red dirt path that winded off to the north. The city was the same as it had been before, almost too much to take in. But unlike yesterday, the spectacular sights that it offered did not make me feel a sense of wonder. The Fae people, with their long hair and tattooed wings who stared at us as we passed, slipped by me like the trees beside a highway, barely noticed and of no concern. The Pixie’s that frolicked between the bright flowers blooming along the path were nothing more than butterflies, beautiful, but no longer worth examining.

Sometimes, when I was a little girl, I would dream of a land such as this, wishing that I could be like the heroes in the stories I read, travelling to exotic places and mingling with fabled creatures. I could remember longing for some great quest, wondering if such things were even possible any more.

Now, as I walked the red pathways of the Outlands, my hand clutched in a Vampire’s hand, surrounded by and faced with the very things that had seemed so enchanting on late nights when sleep wouldn’t find me and I’d sat under my covers with a flashlight and a book fantastic of wonders unfolded before me, I thought about how naïve I had been. It was like some sardonic, twisted joke, having been given the things that as a child I’d yearned for, only to find out that the price of admission was too high. Way too high.

“Where are we going?” I asked, suddenly wanting very much just to sit down.

 “It’s not much further,” Tommy said.

We continued on down the path, which led off into a line of trees that bordered a row of tiny cottages. Little brown men with pinched faces waddled by, carrying little wooden mallets and other tools to wherever they were going. Tommy took me through the patch of trees, and I stopped when we came to a large blue lake.

I stared at the lake’s surface, not the brown or dark blue water I’d seen in lakes in the human world, but
blue
; blue like summer skies and tinted crystals and Tommy’s eyes. It shimmered lightly in the sunlight, reflecting the suns glow like millions of diamonds tossed into the air just above its surface. Red maples dotted the lakes perimeter, their scarlet leaves drifting lazily down to the water and floating there, like drops of blood on a blue plate. The shore was a pale white mixture of sand and something like dirt, but not quite.

“Pretty, right?” Tommy asked.

I looked up at him in surprise. I had forgotten he was even there, though his hand still held mine. “Yes,” I said. “It’s beautiful. Is there a giant demon under its surface that comes out at night and devours small children?”

This made Tommy laugh. “Um, I don’t think so. What would make you think that?”

I shrugged and sank down to the sandy ground, crossing my legs underneath me. After a moment of eyeing his clothes, Tommy sat down beside me. “I guess,” I said, “because the more beautiful something is in this messed up world, the more dangerous and deadly it usually turns out to be.”

The humor had left Tommy’s tone. He spoke now with the grave voice of a tortured soul. “I think you made the right choice,” he said.

I looked over at him, my eyes wide and my mouth hanging agape. I struggled with the words that seemed to be stuck in my throat, fought against the sudden burning of unshed tears in my eyes. “How could you think that, Tommy?” I asked, my head bent forward, my eyes studying the scars on my small hands. “Knowing everything you know, how could you
think
that?”

Tommy’s arm went around my shoulder, and on its own my head rested there. His words blew out on a deep sigh. “Because I know that doing the right thing isn’t always easy. Sometimes, I think you have to do the wrong thing, because it is the only choice you have left that you can live with.”

I tilted my head up to look at him. He was staring out over the lake as if looking at something very far away. His forearms rested on his raised knees, his hands, the hands of a fighter, scarred and discolored from past injuries, dangled at the ends of them. I rubbed my face against the soft fabric of his shirt, as if drying the tears that hadn’t fallen from my eyes. “That sounds just like something my sister said to me once,” I said. “A long time ago.”

Tommy peered down at me through thick, fair lashes. “What happened?”

Now I was staring out over the water, remembering that long ago day. “We had this dog. Well, it wasn’t
our
dog. My Mother never really let us keep any pets because we moved around so much, but when I was about ten years old, I think, we lived in this small town in Kansas, out on a rural country road in the middle of nowhere. There was this dog that would come by the house sometimes. Nelly would feed it and we would play with it out in the yard when we didn’t think our Mother was watching.” I paused for a moment, the memory somehow more painful now than it had ever been. “It got sick. Rabies, I think. It went after Nelly. I killed it. It was one of the first lives I ever took.”

“Well, that’s not so bad,” Tommy said. “You were just protecting your sister.”

“Yeah, but me killing the poor animal wasn’t really what Nelly was talking about when she said sometimes we have to do bad things. She was talking about the
way
I killed it. She knew, even back then, what I was. She knew I enjoyed it. That I would do it again and again. She always knew. It was like her way of preparing me. Giving me a…a license to kill, permission to go about my nature.”

Tommy said nothing to this, and the only sounds were bugs skimming over the surface of the lake and the swish of the red maples’ branches swaying in the wind. I felt the words tumbling out of my mouth before I could stop them. “And she still loved me,” I said. “When I knew nothing else, when I hated myself for the horrible things I would think about doing, Nelly still loved me. She…she saw
goodness
in me, I think. Even with all the darkness, Nelly made me believe that there was some part of me that was really, truly
good
.”

Now a single tear sprung from my eye, and I made no attempt to wipe it away. I could feel that it was the last tear I had left in me, maybe the last tear I would ever cry, and I tried to memorize the feel of it rolling down my cheek. It reached Tommy’s shirt and dried up there. As if he felt it through the fabric of his shirt, his hand came up and stroked the braid in my hair.

“Oh, Alexa,” he sighed. I smiled a little despite my mood. It was nice to have someone call me by my name. “I know you don’t want to believe me, but I don’t think all is lost. I think Nelly is just trapped inside herself right now, and she just needs you. The same way you’ve always needed her.”