Eden (25 page)

30

We hurried through the dirty kitchen and stumbled down the stairway to the basement.  The electricity to the school had long been disconnected, so we were completely enveloped in darkness.  Strolls and Howie grabbed some flashlights from their backpacks to light the way.  We could hear the sounds of the melee taking place above us; for once I was rooting for Staggert.  Coming to the foot of the stairs, Strolls swung the flashlight around the room.  Other than the huge furnace and electrical equipment, the basement appeared to be a huge empty open space – a dead end.

“Where could they be holding Eden?” I whispered in frustration.

“There’s a door over there,” Kyle said pointing beyond the equipment.

Heading across the basement, we could read the sign above the door – Maintenance.  What met us on the other side of the door was shocking to say the least.

In the flickering candle light we could see sitting behind the desk an old and ancient man, his face was wrinkled and withered beyond anything I have ever seen before, and he literally looked like a walking corpse.

“Diego de Espinosa, I presume,” Strolls said in introduction.

“I see you made it past my flock,” Espinosa wheezed.  It sounded like an effort for him even to talk.

I would have never pictured Espinosa like this, I had pictured him as a hugely powerful leech, the most powerful man in the world; but sitting here before me, he was just the oldest, most feeble man in the world.

“Finally,” he whispered, looking up, as if beseeching a spirit.

“Finally what?” I asked

“An end to all of this,” he smiled looking at me.  “I’ve lived far too long, young man; far longer than anyone should ever have to.  My flock has kept me alive all of these centuries.  I am like a Dark Pope to them, they won’t let me die.”

“Where is Eden?” I wanted to know.

“The girl is in there,” he said motioning to the janitor’s closet.  “Thank God you got here in time; I had been stalling them as long as I could with my talk about rituals and ceremonies.  I think if I wouldn’t have allowed them to drink tonight, they would have taken her anyway.”

I didn’t know what to say, I had expected to have to fight for Eden’s freedom, but it didn’t seem the case now.  It almost seemed as if Espinosa would have been reluctant to kill Eden, even so that he could live.  For a leech, he didn’t seem so bad.

“I thought you were supposed to be young and powerful,” I stammered, not knowing what to say, “Why do you look so old?”

“True, the Deva blood keeps us young and strong way beyond our years,” Espinosa replied almost wistfully, “but six hundred years is way too long for anybody to bear.  At this point the blood has lost all its potency for me; it does nothing for me other than keep me alive.”

I didn’t know what to say, he looked every one of his six hundred years and it sounded almost like he was anticipating his death; instead I just opened the closet door.

Lying on the floor was Eden.

She seemed to be sleeping or unconscious but when the light of Strolls flashlight fell upon her, her eyes snapped open.

“Thomas,” she croaked through chapped lips, “you came for me.”

“Of course I did,” I replied helping her to her feet.  I couldn’t believe how fragile she seemed in my arms, she clung to me like a child.

“We’d better get out of here,” Strolls advised.

“Just one second,” Eden said turning to Espinosa, “I believe that I owe you something.”  Eden walked behind Espinosa’s chair, placing her hands on his frail shoulders.

“Thank you, my dear,” he smiled up at her,” I was afraid that you had forgotten.”

It took a second for me to realize what was taking place before me.

“Finally,” the old man beamed, “after all these centuries, I’ll soon be walking with Jesus.”

“Go in peace, my friend,” she whispered into his ear as she quickly cracked his neck.  His body slumped onto the desk.

“We really need to get gone,” Strolls stressed, “There could still be an army of leeches up there waiting to tear us apart.”

“Alright,” Eden replied, “Let’s get out of here.”

We gathered up our flame throwers again and started for the stairs.  Eden seemed to be gaining some strength; at least she could support herself without my assistance now.  We made our way silently up the staircase and Strolls listened at the door.

“It seems pretty quiet,” he whispered, cracking open the door to take a peek out.

The cafeteria was in ruins.  There were tables thrown everywhere and broken and battered chairs littered the floor.  Everything seemed to be burning or smoldering.  It looked like a bomb had exploded.  Strolls stepped into the kitchen, allowing the others to exit the stairway.  Peering into the cafeteria, I could see a collection of dark silhouettes shambling about, sifting through the debris.  As the smoke cleared, I could make out the figures of Staggert and his crew.

“Yo, what up, Cream Puff?” I could hear him call to me.

A million questions ran through my mind, where had he come from?

“How did you…” I stammered.

“All I knew was your old lady was missing,” Staggert laughed, “and I always look out for my buds.  I wouldn’t expect you to ask for my help, so me and my gang just followed you guys here.”

“But you had flame throwers,” I pointed out. “Did you know what these creatures were?”

“Hell no,” Staggart laughed, “I just saw you and Special Ed over there dolling out the arsenal and I thought maybe you guys were in some deep ‘ish.  I figured me and my boys better weapon up and help you guys out.  I had no idea you were messing with these Count Choculas.”

We all laughed at that; Staggert sure had a way with words.  The laughter seemed much louder than it should have been; we all looked around at each other realizing that it was no longer us doing the laughing.  Looking up we saw a leech standing looking down at us from what remained of the roof.  Suddenly, he seemed to vanish, I heard patter of his footfalls as he landed between Eden and me.

“Thank you for delivering this tasty morsel to me,” he laughed, pushing me aside.  “You are so weak right now; I think I could take you myself.”

“Yeah, but can you take this?” I asked him, pressing the muzzle of my flame thrower against the back of his head.

Looking beyond him, I could see Eden moving out of the way.  Before the leech could move, I pulled the trigger, engulfing his head in flames.  His lifeless carcass fell to the floor.  The rest of our group drifted over to the smoking body, looking down as if entranced by the dancing tendrils of smoke.

“Let’s get the eff out of here,” Drake said suddenly, breaking the spell.

31

I found it hard to believe as we left the old school that the sun hadn’t completely fallen.  It had seemed like we had been running through there all night; when in reality it had only been about an hour.  I felt relieved that I hadn’t missed my curfew.  Can you believe it? Here I had just battled an army of the undead for the woman that I loved and I was worried about being grounded?  I need to get my priorities straight.

Howie dropped us all off in the Benny’s parking lot.  I wondered if I would see everyone at school the next day.  Was tomorrow a school day?  I couldn’t even remember what day of the week it was.  My friends were no help, with muffled words of “see ya” and “catch ya later” it sounded like they had no clue either.  Finally alone, Eden and I made our way down the street, hand-in-hand.

“Thank you, Thomas,” she whispered.

“What were you thinking?” I finally asked her.

“I never thought there would be so many,” Eden confessed, “I figured I could handle two or three, even four leeches with no problem.  I’ve never heard of so many of them in one place before and I thought I was gone for sure when I saw the army that Espinosa commanded.”

“But he didn’t command them,” I pointed out.

“I know that now,” she admitted.

“Deep down, I thought there would be no way I could have saved you,” I admitted, “and I thought that it was going to be a suicide mission to try.”

“I’m glad that you did,” she said, stopping to kiss me tenderly, as she unlocked the front door to her house.

“So am I,” I smiled following her inside.

It was almost nine when I left her on her doorstep.  Tomorrow, I found out later, was Saturday and I couldn’t wait to see her again.  I felt exhausted as I waved goodbye to Eden and made my way to my own house.

“Welcome home,” my mother muttered from the living room as I made my way upstairs.

I never thought I would ever hear those simple words again.

Entering my room, I saw my computer screen was still shining the “READ ME” icon.  I placed it back into the “my documents” folder and replaced my shortcuts back onto my desktop.  It soon looked as if I had never changed a thing.  Maybe someday I would go back and add to my manuscript, but not tonight.  Tonight I felt dead on my feet; whether it was because of the battle we had fought at the school or due to the vigorous activities that took place at Eden’s afterwards, I wasn’t sure.  All I knew was that as soon as my body hit the bed, I was sound asleep.

I woke up the next morning at my usual time of eleven, usual for the weekend anyway.  I felt like I had slept like a log.  I was energized and feeling a bit guilty.  Guilty because Eden hadn’t needed to sleep at all and as a result had spent the night after her captivity all alone in her house.  I wished I could have been there with her.  The first thing that I did after waking up was pick up my cell and give her a call.

“Good morning, my hero,” she gushed.

“Good morning, my princess,” I returned.  Are you feeling sick to your stomach over all this love talk yet?  “What are you doing today?”

“Anything you want to,” she laughed.

“Anything?” I pushed.

“Anything,” she returned seductively.

I understood her meaning and my body began in heat up in anticipation.

“Let me grab a shower and I’ll be right over to claim my reward,” I laughed.

“Ok, see you then,” she said hanging up the phone.

Needless to say, it was the fastest shower I had ever taken in my life.  Without so much as a good morning to my parents, I was down the stairs and out the door on my way to Eden’s.  I didn’t even have to knock on the front door before it was thrown wide open and Eden reached out, practically dragging me into her house; I was her willing prisoner.

We spent most of the early afternoon holding each other, just happy to be together again after so close a call.  I never would have thought that I would fear for the safety of an immortal before.  It seemed ridiculous, but it was true; to me Eden was as fragile as a newborn babe and I wanted to be near her and with her always, to protect her for the rest of my life.

I called my friends to make sure that they were all feeling alright today.  They assured me that everything was fine with them and urged me to enjoy this weekend alone with Eden.  We would have plenty of time to discuss what had happened on Monday.  They understood how much I needed this alone time with Eden.  Could they have guessed at how far our relationship had gone recently?

“How are your friends?” Eden asked me with concern after I hung up my phone.

“They’re doing great,” I told her, “They want us to have some quality time together this weekend.”

“Well, aren’t they sweet,” she replied.

“No, my darling,” I countered leaning over to kiss her, “you’re the one that is sweet.”

With all the excitement of last night, it wasn’t until late in the afternoon that we realized that Eden had missed her first game.  There was a nasty message from Rosa on Eden’s answering machine that we had only just gotten around to listening to.  It sounded like Eden was off the team.

“Oops,” Eden said to me, “I don’t suppose I could get note excusing me.”

“Yeah,” I laughed, “Please excuse Eden for missing the game last night.  She was kidnapped by a group of psychotic killers that wanted to sacrifice her and drink her blood.”

“Do you think they would buy it?” she asked me giggling between her fingers.

“Somehow I’m leaning towards no,” I laughed back.

“I’m sorry that you lost your place on the squad, I know how important it was to you,” I said turning serious.

“It’s no big deal,” she assured me, “I only wanted to try it out, but I didn’t really enjoy it anyway.  I was just trying to do the things that I thought ordinary high-schoolers like to do.”

“I can think of something that this ordinary high-schooler likes to do,” I replied flashing a devilish grin at her.

“Well far be it for me to deny my hero anything,” she said, leaning over and throwing her arms around me.

We spent the later part of the evening just watching movies on her couch, cuddled close together.  I no longer felt self-conscious or shy being so close to a girl so wonderful and beautiful.  I felt at peace with my arms around her shoulder and her head leaning on mine.  There was a certain comfort in knowing that no matter what, Eden and I would always be together.

The rest of the weekend seemed to fly by.  Finally, it seemed like we had no worries, secrets or insecurities, nothing to keep us from enjoying our time together.  This must be what a healthy normal relationship must be like, I thought to myself.  I finally felt secure and confident in our relationship and I looked forward to each new day and the experiences that they would bring, I could face anything with Eden at my side.