Falling into Forever (29 page)
“Did his bite feel ridiculous?”
“No,” Alexandra shook her head and wrapped her arms around her shaking body.
“The beast is part man and part wolf,” Kraven tried to explain. “He phases by necessity; but even when he looks like a man, his soul is that of a beast. It governs his entire being.”
“Why did he want me?” Alexandra asked, clutching her necklace tightly in her fingers.
“The filthy dog does not think for himself,” Kraven spat the words. “He simply does what his master commands him to do. As for his own needs, the beast only desires to feed.”
Alexandra stared out the windshield at the foggy shroud surrounding the car. “The journal,” she mumbled to herself.
“What did you say?” Kraven asked, grabbing her shoulder.
“I stole . . .” She paused. “I mean I
borrowed
a book from my grandmother's house. It is a journal that her brother kept in the Army. It's full of crazy things that he saw in some cave. He kept saying he saw a devil, and that he knew where he lived.”
“The beast wants the book,” Kraven said definitively, shoving the car keys into the ignition. “He probably has been promised you after he brings his master the book.”
Alexandra gulped and hugged her knees to her chest. “Where is Callahan?” she asked, looking out the window into the fog. “Did you leave him alone out there with that thing?”
“It was his idea for me to take you to the hospital for some help.”
“It wasn't his idea for me to run away, though,” she pointed out.
“No,” sighed Kraven. “I took you here to the airport because I want to protect you.”
“If I have somehow dragged Callahan into this mess, then I'll drag him out of it,” Alexandra declared, staring into Kraven's dark eyes.
“I will do whatever you ask of me, Alexandra,” Kraven told her with a note of jealousy in his voice. He turned the key in the ignition.
“Tell me one thing,” Alexandra said as Kraven revved the idling engine. “How do I know this isn't all a dream, or that I am going crazy?”
“You are not like other people, Alexandra.”
“What do you mean?”
“You have already discovered one of your gifts,” he said, stretching his palm up toward her eyes.
“This doesn't happen in real life,” Alexandra muttered.
“Cast away your fear, Alexandra,” Kraven said. “There are truths in the world beyond the walls of your school and your lifeâtruths that are incomprehensible to you right now. But in time, you will come to accept and understand.”
“My life is never going to be the same,” she said ruefully. Her stomach twisted into a thousand tiny knots. On the floorboard, her toe kicked the clear plastic bag. “Would you excuse me?” she asked Kraven, her fingers already fumbling with the door handle.
Nodding, he stepped from the idling car and followed the lights of the lifting jet planes above him while Alexandra shed her hospital gown. While dressing her bruised and battered body with her stained and tattered uniform, one word danced through her head:
destiny
, she thought to herself, her dragon medallion rising up and down with the heaving of her chest.
In the shadows of the cemetery, the wolf was restless. With every passing minute, the night grew shorter. Under the cover of the foggy mist enshrouding the tombstones, he stalked over to the cemetery wall. The beast sniffed the air. The girl's scent lingered lightly, but the smell of new prey tempted him.
Leaping over the cemetery wall, he crept past the girl's car and into the driveway. The scent grew stronger as it trailed toward the steps of the house. Inside on the sofa, Taylor yawned and stretched her arms.
“Alexandra has been acting really weird since we got back from our trip,” she said to Callahan as he hovered on the sofa next to her, his elbows to his knees, holding his chin in careful thought. “I can't figure it out,” Taylor told him, shaking her head. “Hey, Ben, would you mind getting my pack of cigarettes from your mom's car?”
“No problem,” Benjamin said, leaning against the fireplace mantle.
Fumbling with keys in his pocket, he stepped across the living room to the parquet foyer. “Did you hear that?” he asked aloud, his hand frozen on the door knob. He rested his ear flat against the smooth, wooden door.
“Stop playing around,” said Taylor, rolling her eyes at him.
A viscous snarl echoed through the thin glass as the beast hurled itself against the window behind her. Taylor screamed madly, and Benjamin jumped back from the door.
“What the hell is that!” Benjamin shouted.
The window shook inside its frame as the beast on the porch lunged again.
Peeking from behind the curtains, Callahan examined the pacing creature. Its body was covered by matted, brown fur, caked with dried mud and brown blood. Its body was strong but too lean, as if it had not eaten a satisfying meal in a long while.
The beast lifted his nose from the porch planks and met Callahan's eyes through the thin, clear glass. Barring his sharp teeth, the wolf growled, his paws scratching at the wood beneath him.
“Filthy beast,” said Callahan, scowling while he closed the curtain. Yanking Taylor from the sofa into his arms, he shouted to Benjamin, “Hurry, Ben. Follow me quickly.”
Benjamin obeyed and followed in stunned silence while Callahan, with some difficulty, carried Taylor up the staircase in his arms. Racing past the second floor bedrooms, they stumbled up the narrow attic steps.
A yelp escaped Callahan's lips, his bruised ankle aggravated by the rush. “Don't drop me, please,” Taylor whispered, clinging to his neck. “I'm not that heavy,” she said.
“Hush, my dear,” he told her softly, his cape fluttering behind him in Benjamin's face.
Ben swiped the flowing black cloth from his eyes and mumbled, “And I thought things were crazy in California.”
They locked themselves inside the pitch-black attic.
On the porch below them, the creature reared the weight of his body to his hind legs and stretched his paws forward, throwing himself against the window. Catching his breath, his tongue dangled from side to side over his razor-sharp teeth. His black eyes followed a crack that was creeping across the glass. Pacing backward across the porch, he allowed himself room to gather speed and ran full gallop toward the window, his body heaving against the weakened glass.
The window shattered on the sofa, and the canine landed on his paws inside the house. Bits of clear glass stuck in his fur; and as he shook his brown body, the shards scattered across the room. He smelled the bodies: they cowered in the dark above him.
Taylor started to squeal in terror, so Callahan shoved his sweating palm over her mouth.
“I can't see anything in here,” complained Benjamin, kicking boxes piled in a corner. “Don't you have pistol, a sword, something?” he asked Callahan, as his foot trampled a sleeping bag spread across the floor.
“Geez!” he exclaimed, certain that he had felt the outline of a body inside the bag. “I don't want to know. I really, really, really don't want to know.”
Their eyes grew adjusted to the dark. Leaning against a heavy wooden dresser, Callahan let go of Taylor's mouth, and she wiped her lips with the back of her hand. “Push that in front of the door,” she suggested pointing to the dresser as she hobbled toward a cloudy, round window. Swiping at the thick cobwebs, she strained to see, through decades of dirt, to the street far below. She couldn't see anything moving outside. Through the walls, a car horn pierced the night.
In the foyer downstairs, the beast placed a heavy paw on the bottom step of the staircase and sniffed the smooth, wooden boards. But the approach of a car pricked his ears toward the gaping window. Agitated, he growled and approached the broken glass as the curtains fluttered in the soft breeze.
The scent outside told him that the girl had returned. With a careful leap, he landed on the porch to welcome her. A car purred, closer, hidden inside the fog. A pair of headlights swept across his black eyes, and the car stopped at the curb behind Alexandra's Jeep.
“This isn't a dream,” Alexandra gulped under her breath when the headlights illuminated the porch. The beast's eyes glinted back at her through the windshield.
“I can't believe I'm doing this,” she told herself, snatching a pair of handcuffs holstered in the belt around Kraven's waist. Throwing open the car door, she stumbled to the street.
“I can't let you do this,” he said, his voice trailing behind her as she moved away.
With a glance back at the porch, she ran toward the sidewalk across the street. Her heart raced, because she knew that the beast was watching her. She stood above the gutter, where just hours earlier he had dragged her.
“Come and get me!” she shouted.
The wolf burst from the porch and into the air. He landed and leapt forward wildly toward the street. His paws grasped for traction in the muddy yard. Ravenous for her flesh, the beast ignored the sound of tires squealing inside the fog.
Soaring through the air, his eyes locked on Alexandra's neck. Savoring the girl's flesh, he drew his lips back from his fangs.
With his body almost on top of her, he closed his eyes and sucked her scent into his nostrils. Alexandra stood motionless as the beast flew toward her, but in the corner of her eye, she could see a pair of headlights beaming brightly through the fog. In the glow of their yellow beams, she realized that the beast looked haggard and starved. He appeared as if he would kill her just to have the taste of fresh blood in his mouth.
“Not today!” she shouted, throwing her arms out to catch him in her grasp.
He fell upon her, tackling her to the ground.
The stench of his wet fur and his foul, humid breath made Alexandra's eyes water when she locked her arms around his head. “I'll kill you,” she shouted, her arms tense with fury while she strangled his neck.
Die
, she thought. Her arms constricted around the frothing beast.
The wolf's paws tore at her arms, but those arms were locked tightly around his throat.
Her heartbeat pounded inside her skull.
A low growl erupted from the beast's muzzle, his breath sputtering in short gasps.
“I'll kill you!” she screamed.
But the creature broke away from her grasp and stumbled backward, hesitating for a moment as if to catch his breath.
Suddenly the squeal of tires screeched through the fog.
Pricking his ears, the wolf turned just in time to see the grill of the patrol car before it smashed into his ribs and catapulted him to the hood of the vehicle. Dropping from the hood, the beast rolled limply to the damp pavement.
“That's what you get!” Alexandra shouted. She rushed into the street and bent over a bleeding old man.
A warm, red glow crept across his chest as the first rays of dawn crawled over the eastern horizon. She could see his long, gray hair and pale, scarred skin. He spat blood at Alexandra's feet as he lay helpless on the street, his skin turning black and blue before her eyes.
Leaping from the car, Kraven put his foot on top of the man's chest. As he rolled the man over on his belly, Alexandra slammed the handcuffs around the injured creature's wrists.
The captive's eyes bulged from his sallow skin as his naked body writhed under Kraven's heavy boot.
Standing at the shattered living room window, Callahan laughed to view the scene, a broad smile breaking across his rugged face. “That's my girl,” he said.
The early morning sun was burning off the night's fog. Benjamin stooped over the engine in Alexandra's Jeep. “Try it now,” he yelled at her, wiping his oil-stained fingers across his khaki pants.
As she turned the key in the ignition, the engine roared to life. Alexandra breathed a sigh of relief. Sitting in the seat next to her, Taylor watched Benjamin carefully in the rearview mirror. “He was really worried about you last night, you know,” she said, nudging Alexandra.
“Who? Ben?” asked Alexandra. “I'm sure,” she said, rolling her eyes until they landed on Kraven's solemn face.
Sitting guard on Callahan's porch swing, he rocked back and forth slowly. He was listening intently for warning of any movement by the beast-man, who was securely bound and gagged in the attic.
“Your boyfriend looks a little intense, Alex,” Taylor said, her eyes lingering on the tall, handsome figure swaying on the porch swing.
“He's not my boyfriend,” Alexandra insisted.
“Greetings,” Callahan called, his lean body strolling along the sidewalk with the grace of a tightrope walker.
Reaching the idling Jeep, he propped his leg up on the back bumper. “You're a mechanic as well?” he asked Benjamin, as the teen stood upright to look at his teacher.
“I guess we all have our talents,” Benjamin answered, meeting his eyes before glancing at the girls sitting inside the Jeep.
Patting the boy's shoulder, Callahan laughed from deep in his chest. “Good news, ladies and gentleman,” he said cheerfully, shoving his cell phone into his pants pocket. “Collinsworth has cancelled classes for today; I just got the call.”
“Sweet!” Taylor shouted.
“Apparently last night's storm wreaked a fair amount of havoc on campus,” Callahan explained. “The power is still out there,” he explained, nodding his chin in the direction of the campus, beyond the cemetery.
Rising from the porch swing, Kraven approached the Jeep. “And what of young Officer Marion?” he questioned Callahan.
“No worries,” Callahan assured him. “I left him inside his car behind a dumpster at the gas station down the street. He'll have a headache when he comes around, but he'll be none the worse for wear. And his shift will nearly be over.”
“If he only knew how deeply his cooperation was appreciated,” said Kraven.
