Broken (31 page)

It was too much. I collapsed onto all fours,
hardly noticing the burning pain from my damaged palms, and let the
wracking sobs take over.

I probably would've stayed there all night if
not for the howling. It'd been going for several seconds before it
pulled me back from the mental abyss I'd been so eagerly
approaching.

I looked around blankly for several more
heartbeats before I finally managed to place the noise. Wolves.
There weren't supposed to be any wolves in the area, but there
wasn't any ignoring my ears.

I numbly pulled myself back up, and began
stumbling back towards the party, only to stop as another howl
echoed down through the canyon.

It was between me and everyone else. I turned
and started into a shuffling run. Maybe the wolf would be attracted
to the noise and light. Maybe I'd be able to get far enough away it
wouldn't smell me.

I'd only been moving for about a minute
before another howl sent chills running down my spine. It sounded
like a different wolf, and it was closer than the first one. I
tried to run faster, but all that time studiously avoiding exercise
was working against me. I topped a slight rise and then tripped as
the ground wasn't where I expected it to be.

My jacket saved me from picking up any really
serious scrapes this time, but just before I finished tumbling to a
stop I slammed my head into a crescent-shaped rock. My vision swam
in and out of focus, but I struggled to my feet, only to nearly
fall again as my right ankle all but collapsed under me.

They were definitely closer now. They'd
stopped howling, but I could still hear them.

I somehow found myself on my back again,
looking up at the biggest wolf I'd ever seen. Somehow tv had given
me the impression that a wolf shouldn't be much bigger than a
German Shepard. These guys were roughly the size of a small pony,
one nearly black, the other more of a gray color, both with
yellowish eyes, and lips pulled back to show teeth the size of my
fingers.

Most of my jeans had been torn away from my
right calf, which was bleeding fairly profusely, but I didn't feel
any pain. It was like my mind had finally torn loose from the
moorings that usually held it in contact with reality. I was going
to die, ripped to shreds by the same impossible animals that had
killed the hikers a few months ago, but I just couldn't bring
myself to care.

Nobody would even miss me.

The black wolf was inching towards me now,
growling low in its throat. I could see its haunches tense up, and
then it was airborne, hurtling towards me almost faster than I
could follow.

Only it didn't hit me. A patch of night had
somehow interposed itself between me and the wolf. My vision still
wasn't up to making out fine details, and everything was moving too
quickly to follow. The growling seemed to be in three parts now,
which didn't make any sense because the patch of night was vaguely
man-shaped, if impossibly big.

There was a yelp as one of the wolves was
tossed into the side of the canyon with enough force that I could
feel it from where I was laying. A shower of sparks lit up the
night as the second wolf dodged away from my defender, and then
impossibly the first wolf was back and darting in as I heard jaws
snap shut on something.

It seemed as though the black shadow
staggered back, nearly falling under the combined weight of its two
opponents. A second later another yelp was cut short as one of the
wolves fell away to lie motionless on the ground.

My head was throbbing so bad I blacked out
for a moment, and missed the end of the fight. When I opened my
eyes back up, the indistinct shadow was moving smoothly towards me.
I opened my mouth to thank him, and then felt as though my world
had been pulled out from underneath me.

The shadow went from my savior, to a
nightmarish being. It was easily eight feet tall, covered in thick
fur, and had bloody claws as long as my hands tipping the ends of
its fingers.

My vision was still swimming enough that I
almost couldn't believe what I was seeing. Even so, there was no
way to ignore the bloodstained mouth as it got closer. I had a
moment to realize I was still going to die all alone, and then the
blackness came for me.

Chapter 21

I woke up expecting to see pale blue eyes
burning a hole through me. Haunting eyes set above terrible fangs.
Instead I found myself lying atop a gigantic bed in a room I didn't
recognize.

The sheer shock at still being alive
prevented my mind from working very well. It took several minutes
before all of the other relatively inconsequential details started
filtering in. My hands were bandaged, as was my elbow and right
calf. My dirty, ripped jeans and shirt had been replaced with clean
clothes that were only a little too small.

That last fact should have alarmed me more
than it did. Somehow being stripped down by a stranger paled in
comparison to a near death hallucination involving wolves and a
monster straight out of a science fiction movie.

The bedroom was possibly the nicest room I'd
ever been in. A movie star or millionaire would have had a hard
time topping this place for sheer decadence. The walls were paneled
in some kind of rare, doubtlessly expensive imported hardwood.

The bookcases that covered the majority of
the wall space seemed to be made out of the same kind of wood, and
were filled with more books than I'd seen in the local bookstore
the one time I'd convinced Britney to stop by on our way home after
school. They were all hardbound, with leather bindings and engraved
covers.

There was a stereo system off in one corner,
hooked up to a laptop and some kind of portable music player. I had
to look around the room twice before I finally spotted the speakers
to the system. They were built into the walls and ceiling, and
based on their number and varying sizes I had a sneaking suspicion
they'd produce nearly as much volume as the monsters professional
DJ's brought to dances. Based on the amount of money involved in
setting up such a system in the first place, they probably cranked
all that out without even the slightest hint of distortion.

As impressive as the stereo no doubt was, it
was all of those shelves filled with books that finally pulled me
off of the bed and onto the incredibly lush, maroon carpet.
Emerson, Ayn Rand, Shakespeare, and Tolstoy were all present.
Whoever lived here was either incredibly well read, or a complete
poser who bought books just for show.

Almost scared to find out which it was, I
reached over and pulled out the copy of Mary Shelley's
Frankenstein, and opened it up to find a well-cared-for book that'd
still obviously been read several times.

I carefully slid the book back into its spot
and then noticed the faintest glimmers of light coming from an open
doorway off to my right. It was an art gallery. One covered in
pictures that were eerily familiar, all with a circular signature
at the bottom right hand corner. They were mostly of mundane kinds
of things, landscapes, or people, but there were overtones that
seemed to caress a hidden chord inside my soul. Everything was done
in drab, painfully boring colors, overlaid with incredibly vibrant,
hues that were almost unreal in their perfection.

It wasn't until I'd moved around a corner and
entered what looked like a new phase for the painter that I figured
out why the paintings looked so familiar despite the fact that I'd
never seen any of the places or people depicted. The realization
hit with such force that it distracted me from the familiarity of
the signature.

The new pieces were all breathtaking. The
drab colors were gone, leaving scenes that seemed made up of
multi-hued strands of light. It was like waking up and having
someone tell you they'd been reading your mind. The pieces weren't
of specific places or events from my dreams, but they were an exact
match for how they'd looked and felt.

I felt my hands start to shake. It was like
I'd had too much forced on me too quickly. I wanted to just
collapse and let unconsciousness overcome me, but something pulled
me onward towards the next series of pictures, and then the next
after that. I wanted to stop. Each piece seemed to open up another
fragment of my soul, revealing a new pain that I'd kept hidden for
the last few months.

The last picture was next to a door, which I
opened almost without realizing I was doing so. The organized
confusion of a true artist met my gaze. I'd seen it with my mom,
when she was so driven to complete a shot that she couldn't be
bothered to clean up after herself. She left just enough structure
to the mess to find needed tools, but didn't waste any effort on
anything that wouldn't help her with her great aim.

Brushes were scattered everywhere, old and
new canvases stacked in the corners of the studio, and flecks of
paint seemed to have found their way onto almost every visible
surface. The rich smell of paint was nearly overpowering, but I
noticed it only in passing as I made a beeline towards the easel
that dominated the center of the space.

The painting was still wet, right down to the
signature which had been done in the palest green. The scene was
from the point of view of someone looking into a bedroom window,
darker than most of the later stuff I'd just looked at. The
centerpiece, done in a dimmer light than what I remembered from my
dreams, was the sleeping figure. She was delicate looking. A tiny
figure, a being of light temporarily clothed in flesh, one who
seemed almost at the point of breaking out of her mortal husk.

She was so breathtakingly beautiful it was
several seconds before I noticed the other, nearly-unformed details
of the room. They were so indistinct it took me a full minute to
place them. Once I did, my eyes darted back to the sleeping figure,
the gorgeous one whose features I now recognized as Cindi's. Only
it couldn't be Cindi because the room was mine, the one here in
Sanctuary.

My pulse racing, I refused to look at the
signature again. I now knew what it was, but if I ignored it maybe
I could ignore the ramifications of everything I'd just learned.
The room was swimming as my battered psyche finally took one blow
too many, but I fought the attack with everything I had left. I
couldn't afford to be found here collapsed on the floor. I had to
get away before he realized I was awake.

My shoes were at the foot of the bed; I
grabbed them, but didn't put them on. I needed to be quiet, more
now than ever. I crept to the other end of the suite, passing a
curious collection of items ranging from a mundane, if
expensive-looking, desk, to an intricately-tooled broadsword, black
with age, and sized as though made for a giant.

I finally found the exit and was halfway down
the hall when I heard voices for the first time. While it didn't
sound like anyone was out and out yelling, they weren't the calm
voices of friendly conversation. I quickly reversed direction, and
found an external door less than a minute later. The voices had
faded away to nearly nothing as I'd gotten further away from them,
but all of a sudden they peaked into a full-blown yelling match,
punctuated with an incredible crash that sent a tremor through the
entire house.

Any thoughts I'd had about trying to find a
phone and calling 911 vanished as full flight instinct took a hold.
A few seconds later I was outside and running. The moon was so
obscured by clouds it provided only minimal light, but even the
poor visibility couldn't convince me to slow my flight through the
near jungle waiting outside the house.

I could barely make out the stone path that
led through the garden, but I stumbled along it as quickly as I
could with my sprained ankle, deciding between branches in the path
completely at random.

I'd only been running for a few seconds, when
lightning tore its first gash in the night sky and opened up the
way for a monsoon-like rainstorm. Within a few seconds the cold
rain was falling so hard that I couldn't see even a few feet ahead
of me. I started shivering instantly. As much as my body had been
through in the last few hours, I needed to find shelter before I
got chilled.

The next lightning strike was so close it lit
the entire sky up. The telltale flash of glass up ahead was just
enough to guide me to a door that was nearly hidden by the rampant
foliage.

I pulled the door open with less effort than
expected, and slipped inside. The heady fragrance of flowers told
me immediately what I'd stumbled across. "As if there weren't
enough greenery outside, he's got to have an entire greenhouse
too."

The abrupt lessening of the rain assaulting
the glass roof brought back my sense of urgency. Nobody could
possibly find me while the most intense rainstorm since Noah had
sealed up the ark was going on, but I couldn't stay here once it
stopped. I slipped my battered shoes onto my abused feet, and
turned to leave just as the door opened of its own accord.

I fell back in amazement as he stepped into
the pool of light that'd materialized as the clouds parted. The
jeans were mundane, perfect, but completely normal for all that
they were snug in all the right places and loose everywhere else.
The shirt, unbuttoned in his haste to follow me, was also perfectly
normal, entirely believable. Everything else however was too
surreal to really grasp. The sculpted stomach and chest were
exactly like I'd secretly imagined they would be, but my gaze was
pulled instead up to the massive bandage covering most of Alec's
shoulder. The bandage alone should have told me I hadn't been
hallucinating, but the fragments of memory didn't coalesce until I
saw his eyes. The amazing, pale blue eyes were the final, poetic
piece of evidence threatening to shred my sanity.

I'd never really liked Alec, but I never
suspected he was an actual monster.