Descendant (3 page)

I looked up at the man holding me. “What? Why not?” I couldn’t imagine what could be gained from letting that thing live. The click of another clip of ammunition being loaded echoed through the air. “It looks like he’s trying to kill it to me,” I added defiantly.

“That gun he’s using? It’s not even going to faze her, and he knows it.” He shook his head. “He just wants to scare her away, not kill her,” said the man quietly. There was no mistaking the irritation in his voice now. “At least that seems to be working,” he added under his breath, tilting his head in the direction of the confrontation.

The creature was crouching submissively now, backing up slowly and tossing its head in irritation with each bul et that hit. It still wasn’t attempting to dodge them, though. Not that it real y needed to though, since they were just bouncing harmlessly off anyway.

“And… there she goes,” said the man.

I watched as the creature gave one last snarl before hurdling off into the woods.

“Wouldn’t have expected her to give up that easily but—ah well .” He shifted my weight a bit and walked toward the other two.

It was kind of awkward being carried around by this stranger, but I didn’t exactly feel up to supporting my own weight at the moment, what with the recent near-drowning experience and all . So I settled for my role as baggage, and took this opportunity to get a good look my carrier for the first time.

He didn’t look much older than myself; if I had to put a number on it I would’ve guessed he was seventeen or eighteen at the oldest. His eyes, wide and child-like, were a deep chocolaty brown and easily the most attention-grabbing of his features. His dark hair, which was cropped short against his head, glistened from the reflection of the water droplets that clung to it.

“Like what you see?” He said suddenly, glancing down at me with a smile that caused me to blush. His light brown complexion was enhanced by that good-natured smile which, despite the dreary situation, sent a flood of warmth over me, and I instantly felt like I could trust this man. He had saved my life, after all .

“Thank you, by the way,” I said. My voice sounded a lot weaker than I’d expected.

“Don’t mention it,” said the good-natured man without looking at me. We were approaching the other two now, and I realized at once that we’d walked into the middle of and I realized at once that we’d walked into the middle of an argument.

“She’s the enemy, Kael!” said the tiny blonde woman in a shril voice. “Or at least, she’s our enemy—but maybe you still haven’t decided whose side you’re on?”

“Watch it, Vanessa,” said Kael.

I automatically turned as he spoke, but my gaze didn’t stay on him for long. His light blue eyes were narrowed into a fierce glare that made him appear downright dangerous.

“You know very well were my loyalty lies,” continued Kael in his harsh tone as I averted my eyes. “I think I’ve proven that more than enough to satisfy most people.”

“Except when it comes to—”

“No one’s saying you haven’t,” interjected my savior.

“I am, Will !” The woman shouted.

I felt Will recoil slightly. “Vanessa I…”

“My God Will ! You always take his side!”

“That’s not—”

“She almost killed another human, and we—no he— just let her get away! There were three of us! Three against one!

What are we going to tell the others?” Vanessa’s high-pitched voice sounded a lot like my Mom’s when she was angry.

Will ’s chest rose and fell with a deep breath. “We’ll tell them we had other things to worry about,” he replied in a calm voice. “Which is true.”

I felt incredibly uncomfortable all of a sudden as three sets of eyes fixed on me.

“How bad is it?” Vanessa asked, her voice abruptly shifting to a more gentle tone—one I much preferred over her squeaky angry one.

“Her wounds are already healing,” Will replied quietly.

I’d been trying to avoid looking at my mangled arm anymore than I had to, but Will ’s words ignited my curiosity.

So I took a deep breath and looked down.

I gasped. It was the only noise I could manage to get out.

My arm was still there, and what was more— it was completely in one piece. Aside from a few dried up squiggles, there was hardly even any blood. Besides that, the only proof I’d been attacked at all lay in the long, ridged scar that ran from my wrist all the way up past my elbow—but even that was faint, like the scar on my forehead from stitches I’d had nearly ten years ago. And it was getting harder to see every second. I stared open-mouthed at it for several long moments before glancing back up at Will .

“…Hey. What the heck is going on here?” Will didn’t answer right away, so I looked frantically to Vanessa. She averted her eyes, and when I glanced back at Will he did the same.

Blood pounded behind my ears. “Hel o? Is anybody going to answer me?”

“That’s kind of a difficult question.” I was surprised by the voice, which still sounded harsh but not entirely unkind. Kael didn’t look away when I lifted my eyes to him.

“I can handle the answer, I promise,” I said, frowning slightly.

Kael hesitated, and the other two still didn’t bother to speak up. This was getting real y annoying.

I squirmed my way out of Will ’s arms and planted both feet hard on the ground. Unfortunately, my legs weren’t willing to cooperate just yet, and I ended up having to grab Will ’s shoulder to steady my self. The simple act of standing seemed to take an unreasonable amount of energy.

“I don’t think now is the best time,” Kael said, his eyes staring vacantly off into the distance. He sounded bored.

“Oh real y? Well what would be a good time for you, then?” I didn’t bother trying to keep the acidity out of my voice.

He turned to me then, his eyes very serious as they met mine. “I’d prefer never, actual y,” he said. “I hope we don’t ever have to see each other again.”

I glared at him. "…Well , I assure you our feelings are mutual," I all but spat. What was this guy’s problem, anyway?

Kael laughed a humorless laugh, and Vanessa cleared her throat and shot him a nasty look before turning to me.

"Um…how are you feeling, Alex?" she asked, her voice wavering slightly.

"You can see for yourself,” I said, holding out my arm. The scar was almost gone at this point. “I'm f-f-f-" Why was I stuttering?

“I’m fi-fi-” I tried again.

"Alex?" I heard Will ’s muffled voice say my name, but all of a sudden I was too tired to care about answering.

My eyes started to water, begging me to close them. I tried to ignore the burning, tried to stay focused on the people around me. But no matter how hard I stared they just got blurrier, and the noises—the wind thrashing across the lake, cars passing on the distant road—grew faint, until I was surrounded by complete silence.

And then everything went dark.

“My God,” I said aloud to nobody in particular. “That was the strangest dream I’ve ever had.” I sat up slowly, running a hand through my bed-worn hair and blinking my eyes open.

I was in my room. Safe, in my room. It had all been a dream —a very vivid dream, for sure—but just a dream. I turned my head to my left, inching the covers off my arm. I held my breath as I examined it, but let it out a second later as I realized it was perfectly whole. Not even a scratch. But why would there be? It was only a dream. I gazed out the window just to the left of my bed. I couldn’t see the lake through the trees.

I sighed and took a few good stretches before throwing my covers off. The sound of footsteps coming down the hall caught my attention just as I was about to step onto the bare wooden floor. My mom appeared in the doorway a few seconds later, her arms folded across her chest.

“You’re up,” she said. The smile she wore was perfectly pleasant. It was bright, cheery. It wasn’t like her smile at all .

This couldn’t be good.

“So, are you going to explain to me why you were passed out on our front porch when I got home from work last night?

Or maybe we should save that conversation for after you’ve taken something for that kill er headache I’m sure you have?

I hear cold showers are good for hangovers, too.”

I stared blankly at her for several moments before I realized just what I was being accused of. “Whoa. What? Mom…are you serious?”

“This is very serious, Alex.”

“Mom—come on! I didn’t…I’ve never…I’m only sixteen Mom! I would never…”

“I know how old my daughter is, thank you very much.”

“Mom, you can’t seriously be accusing me of this! I don’t drink! You know me!”

My mom bit her lip, as though she were actual y considering my words. But then she shook her head.

“You know you’re right—I’m jumping to conclusions.”

Sarcasm was one gift I got from Mom. Her voice was dripping with it. “So then, Alexandra Louise Layton, please tell me the real reason you were passed out on our front porch last night?”

Oh no. She was using my full name—which meant there was no way I was going to get out of this one unscathed.

But how to minimize the damage?

Of course, it occurred to me then that I didn’t have even the beginnings of a good excuse.

“Well ? Are you going to talk?”

“If only I knew what to say…”

“What was that, young lady?”

“Nothing,” I said, turning over excuses in my mind.

My mom cleared her throat expectantly.

“Look, Mom—I think I may have been sleepwalking,” I said quickly. Yeah, it was lame. But it was the first excuse that came to mind. “I had a real y bad nightmare… a real y, real y bad nightmare, and I remember passing out—in my dream I mean—but I don’t know how I got on the porch, I mean… Didn’t Dad use to have problems with sleepwalking? I’m pretty sure it’s hereditary, I should probably—”

“Right,” Mom interrupted, still wearing that sickeningly sweet smile. “You’re grounded. Indefinitely. Maybe for life.”

My unjust sentence dealt, she started to turn away, but hesitated. “Alex, I know it’s been a rough couple of weeks —but we’ve taught you better than that. You know alcohol is not the answer.”

Yes I do mom, yes I do.

I sighed, shaking my head at her retreating back, but didn’t argue. I knew that, right now at least, it wouldn’t do me any good. I’d talk to her later, after she’d—hopefully—calmed down. Besides, I needed to work out what had happened for myself. My eyes drifted to my left arm. My perfectly healthy, injury free left arm. Suddenly, the idea that I’d inherited my father’s sleepwalking problem didn’t seem like too farfetched an idea. It made more sense than anything else. But still …

“Oh, and Alex—“ my mom’s voice interrupted. “You need to go apologize to your sister. You were supposed to drive her to soccer practice, since I was working a double-shift.

Remember?”

“Oh…right.” Woops.

“Don’t forget,” she said as she turned and walked off down the hall .

I closed the door soundlessly behind her, walked over to my window and drew the curtains shut. Suddenly, I felt like crawling back into bed.

I didn’t go back to sleep, but I did spend several hours lying on the floor, staring at the ceiling. And if there hadn’t been a light knocking on my door just then, I probably would’ve spent the rest of the day there.

“Come in,” I called hoarsely.

The door opened and my little sister floated in. And yes I do mean float, because my sister didn’t walk anywhere—she floated, and every step was deliberate and fell silently. It probably had something to do with the ten years of dance lessons she took. Or maybe she just got all of the grace genes our parents had to offer. I know I definitely didn’t get any of them.

If my sister and I didn’t share the same last name most people probably wouldn’t even believe we were related. My thirteen-year-old sister was, in a word, gorgeous. While I was clearly my Irish father’s child, with the shockingly red hair to prove it, she was practical y a carbon copy of a younger version of my mother. Her eyes, normal y wide and expecting, were a brilliant blue that made my green ones look dul by comparison, and her perfectly flawless skin was natural y tan—it looked especial y so when she stood next to my alabaster white and freckled self. Besides that, my sister constantly looked like she’d just stepped off a runway —with every hair in place, and every outfit perfectly coordinated and accessorized. As for me…wel , let’s just say was decidedly anti-fashion. I lived my life in well -worn jeans, flip-flops, and t-shirts. Every now and then I’d throw on a necklace, maybe a pair of earrings just to change things up.

Despite our differences in appearances and otherwise, however, my sister had always been—and probably always would be—my best friend. Our parents had been too busy with their jobs to worry too much about raising us, so the task of bringing up Lora had fallen largely to me. I’d be lying if I said it was a chore I’d always enjoyed, because trust me — Lora could be a real pain in the you-know-what. She was loud, she was messy, she broke things like it was her job, and I’d spent the better part of my sixteen years trying to keep her out of trouble.

But as little sisters went, I guess she could’ve been a lot worse.

“How long are you grounded for?” Lora asked with a frown, closing the door behind her. She fluttered across the room and drew back the curtains to shine some light into the dismall place that was my room.

“Indefinitely,” I replied, also frowning.

“You know that means like a week, right?” She offered me a half-hearted smile. “This is Mom we’re talking about.” She had a point—not unlike myself, my mom had a quick temper, but her anger usual y subsided pretty quickly.

But she did have a thing for grudges.

“Sooo…” Lora began, twirling a finger in her dark hair as she walked over and plopped herself down on the bed beside me. “Thanks for bailing on me yesterday.”

“Yeah…sorry about practice,” I said.

Lora shrugged. “It wasn’t that big of a deal—when I couldn’t find you anywhere, I just called Madison’s parents and asked them to swing by here and pick me up. I was staying the night with them anyway.”

“Oh, well that’s good then.”

“I was worried though, when I couldn’t find you,” Lora said.

“And then Mom calls me at Maddy’s at like eleven ‘o’ clock last night, telling me she got home from work and found you laying in the porch swing…” She paused, as if waiting for me to correct her, to tell her none of it was true. When I didn’t, she continued in a rush, sounding frustrated. “She said you were unconscious. She—we—were real y scared.” She looked at me expectantly.

“Yeah…” What was I suppose to say? I didn’t have an explanation to give her. I still didn’t have one to give myself, come to think of it.

“Alex...?” Lora began, fidgeting with the ruffled trim of the “Alex...?” Lora began, fidgeting with the ruffled trim of the sundress she was wearing. “Were you…were you drinking?”

“Why does everybody think that?” I practical y shouted.

“I don’t think that,” Lora said, jumping back.

“Mom does.”

“That’s only because Miss Cartwright left a bunch of rude messages on our answering machine, saying she was going to cal the cops if we didn’t keep the noise down. So Mom assumed—”

“What?” Miss Cartwright was our elderly, slightly senile next-door neighbor. And it was perfectly plausible that she had imagined any noise she’d heard. A sinking feeling began to form in the pit of my stomach anyway. “What kind of noise?”

“Um… I don’t know Alex, she didn’t specify…” Lora looked at me curiously. “What does it matter, anyway?”

“It doesn’t.” No— it didn’t matter. As long as the noise in question didn’t sound like gunfire. Or like a fight between a gun-toting man and some mythical creature. Now that I thought about it, it had been a real y noisy nightmare.

“What’s wrong?” I met Lora’s confused gaze and sighed. I wanted to tell her everything that was going trough my head —I truly, desperately did. But I real y didn’t want my little sister thinking I was insane.

“I’ve just got a lot on my mind,” I replied lamely.

Lora didn’t look the least bit convinced. Thankfully though, she wasn’t the type to push people into talking when they didn’t want to. She said nothing, just stood up with a worried look on her face and turned toward the door. She’d only taken a few steps, however, before she stopped and turned back around, reaching into a side pocket on her dress as she did so.

“Oh yeah, I almost forgot…” Her hand emerged from the pocket, holding something that glinted in the rays of sun beaming in through the window. She held out her hand to me, and I noticed a strange humming noise coming from it.

“This is the main reason I came in here,” Lora said.

I didn’t take my eyes off her hand.

“I wanted to give this back to you. Sorry I didn’t ask if I could borrow it, but you were kind of missing in action, you know?” Her hand unfolded to reveal the silver necklace my grandmother had given me on my last birthday. I’d never worn it—it was a little too fancy for my taste. The tear-drop shaped diamond in the center of it was real, and set against a silver backing intricately shaped to resemble vines. She stepped toward me, trying to give it to me. As she did the humming grew louder, like it was some kind of reverse metal detector homing in on potential treasure.

Sunlight bounced off the diamond, reflecting into my eyes with a brightness that was almost sinister. I stumbled back until I bumped against my bed.

“What is your problem?” Lora asked.

“…Why is it humming?”

“What?”

“It never did that before.”

“Alex, what are you talking about?” She looked terrified. “It’s not humming.” She glanced over her shoulder, as if thinking about making a run for it. Apparently she decided against it though, because she took another step toward me instead.

“Are you okay?” she asked in an urgent whisper.

I closed my eyes and gave my head a little shake, trying to focus on what she was saying.

“Alex?”

“…Sorry.” I mumbled. “I guess I’m still just a little tired…” I took a deep breath, and tried to force a smile—or at least a normal expression. “Give it here,” I said, reaching out my hand reluctantly. The humming was so loud now that it was difficult to concentrate on anything else, and it was starting to give me a headache.

Lora hesitated, then dropped the necklace into my outstretched hand.

It made contact with my palm for about two seconds before I flung it. The charm had been hot—white hot. My unburnt hand flew to my mouth; the scent of my own burning flesh was fil ing my nostrils and it made me want to gag. I did a frantic survey of the room and saw that I’d manage to throw the necklace all the way to the far corner of my room. It was still humming, but at least it was barely audible now.

“Alex! Calm down…”

I tried. I took deep breath after deep breath, closed my eyes and thought every happy, comforting thought I could think of. Those thoughts might’ve made a difference too, except at that moment I unfolded my clenched fist to examine my burned palm. But there was nothing to examine.

It was happening again.

I knew I’d been burned, burned so badly it should’ve left some kind of mark. It wasn’t even red. My eyes darted from my palm, to my sister, and back to my palm again.

“Alex…?” Lora began.

My hand fumbled for the bedpost. So much for my little sister not thinking I’m insane.