Rouge (30 page)

In her pain and anger,
Hunter thrust her fist into the mirror and was surprised when the glass shattered,
leaving a web of cracks on the frame. She didn’t even think about what Melissa
might say when she saw it, nor did she register the pain in her hand as hot
blood began to trickle from a deep gash in her knuckles.

Hunter slid down the wall
onto the cold tiles and buried her head in her hands. There, she cried harder
than she’d ever cried in her life. Miss Smart was the only person - besides
Joshua - with whom she’d been able to share her secret. In the short time she
had known her, Miss Smart had become a friend. And in the last few days, she
confided in her more so than even Joshua. She was the closest thing Hunter ever
had to a mother.

Miss Smart regarded her with
such gratitude for saving her life.
And for what? To die a week later?

Her thoughts whirled. She
felt as though she were going crazy. How many more people had to die at her
hands? How long would this last?

Then Hunter remembered her
mother’s words.
Be strong Hunter. Never lose faith in yourself, for when
there is nothing else, there is always faith to cling onto.

Her mother was right. She
needed to focus on what was good in her life and have faith that things would
turn around.
Get up off the ground Hunter. Move on,
she ordered herself.

She moved mechanically out
of the bathroom and back downstairs where Eli and Jack were talking in hushed
tones to each other. They looked up at her, Eli with pain and love in his eyes
and Jack with dark shadows across his face.

“Hunter, are you-”

“Can we get out of here?”
she interrupted Eli.

He shut his mouth and
nodded, reaching out to take her hand. That’s when he saw the blood.

“What did you...?”

“I broke your mirror,” she
said in what would have been a sheepish manner, but instead she sounded hollow.
“Sorry.”

Jack’s eyebrows shot up.

“It’s fine,” Eli assured
her. “Come on, I’ll get that cleaned up.”

The two of them moved into
the kitchen and Eli gently put her hands under the cool water from the tap. She
winced and watched the blood wash down the plug hole like red wine. Then she
looked up at Jack, who sat at the bench directly opposite the sink. His deep
brown eyes were pained. No longer did he look at her in amusement or with awe,
as if he knew her secret. Maybe he did, but right now she didn’t care. Miss
Smart was dead. Nothing could take that back.

Hunter let her head flop and
burst into tears. Her hands shook as she took them from under the water and
held her palms over her eyes. Jack stood to comfort her, but Eli was already
there with his arms wrapped around her, pulling her into a hug. She cried
against his shoulder and couldn’t see whether Jack and Eli were looking at each
other or simply standing there in shock.

“I’m going to bandage your
hand Hunter,” Eli whispered gently against her head.

She nodded, sniffing, and
let him wrap up her wound. He looked into her eyes to see if she was okay, and
she gave him the smallest of smiles. Satisfied, he squeezed her uninjured hand
and returned her smile.

“Where do you want to go?”
he whispered, brushing the tears from her wet cheeks.

“Weren’t we going to the
Aquarium?”

“Wait, I’ll get my coat,”
said Jack, swinging off the bench.

“No Jack.” Hunter stopped
him dead in his tracks. “Please, I... I need time alone with Eli.”

Jack froze with his back to
them. An awkward moment passed in which Eli looked guiltily at the floor and
Hunter kept her gaze steady on him. As much as she hated being so harsh, she
didn’t think she could handle being around him any longer. His presence just
added to the list of things she had to fret about. Eli was her only sanctuary.

Jack slowly turned. His
expression was soft, understanding, and he smiled. “Sure,” he said and walked
towards the stairs. “See you later.”

Eli seemed satisfied that
his friend wasn’t hurt at being left alone and began gathering her things and
his, plus some money for the day. But no matter how hard Hunter tried, she
couldn’t ignore the darkness that clouded Jack’s eyes. It was like a black part
of his soul had leaked, visible only to those who looked closely. Why couldn’t
Eli see that?

Eli wrapped his fingers
through Hunter’s and they walked towards the door. They squinted in the burning
sun and hailed a taxi. Once inside, Eli gave directions for a place downtown.
Settling against his chest, Hunter felt her cares fall away with each breath
she took.

“I’m so sorry Hunter,” he
muttered into her hair, rubbing her back gently. “I know how much you liked
Miss Smart.”

Hunter didn’t answer as pain
bit into her heart, but being in Eli’s arms made her grasp on sanity just a
little tighter.

Weaving through morning traffic, their
taxi passed Lower Manhattan to a shipping dock not far away from the Brooklyn
Bridge. There, a few yards down, was an old abandoned warehouse that had been
transformed into an aquarium, or an ‘orphanage for sea life’ as Eli liked to
call it. He took her through the back way past the great garage loading doors,
and soon they were inside.

The aquarium was beautiful.
Rows upon rows of different sized glass tanks were set up along the walls of
the warehouse. Some were lit beautifully with colorful plant life, and others
dark and sinister like the very depths of the ocean. Eli showed her the rare
fish they’d saved from extinction and the cleaning room that smelled like rot
and made him laugh at the look of disgust on her face. They reached the end of
the long room - actually, room was too small a word for the magnificent space -
to a large meter-high circular tank. Eli knelt beside it and, after rolling up
his sleeves, pulled out a turtle about the size of his hand.

“This is Murphy,” he said
and sat the turtle on his lap. It flapped about and hid inside its shell.
Hunter bent beside Eli and touched the deep scratches on Murphy’s murky shell.
“We rescued him a year ago from a fishing net on the other side of the city.
His foot had been chewed off by larger fish, and his shell was badly scratched
from boat rudders and the walls of the harbor.” Eli’s voice thickened in anger,
as though the very thought of what Murphy went through was torture to him.
Hunter looked into his bright green eyes and felt his passion, craving a desire
such as this. She’d never seen anyone so driven to save something so helpless,
and she loved him more by the minute. “Murphy would have died, had he not had
this shell to protect him.” Eli’s eyes lit up, as though they were trying to
tell her something. “And he’s got the battle scars to prove it, don’t you
Murph
?”

Hunter smiled as the turtle
peered very briefly out from under the protection of his shell. The shape of
his mouth made it seem as though he were smiling, and his round eyes shimmered.
Eli let the turtle gently back into the water, and he disappeared into the
rocks, camouflaged against the underwater environment.

“Come on, there’s one more
stop on my magical marine tour,” he grinned and took her hand again. They
passed through another door into a wide open room where the biggest tank Hunter
had ever seen loomed before them, bright blue like the sky with sunlight
crinkling in the ripples of the water from a skylight above them. Inside the
tank were two dolphins, one small and pale pink and the other larger with a
long scar down its belly. They swam playfully in circles, grinning at Eli and
Hunter who stepped up to the glass. They made loud clicking noises and splashed
about, happy for some company.

“This is Halle and her
daughter, Rose. We rescued Halle a few months ago when she was found beached
and pregnant. Our vet and a good friend of mine had to remove Rose, or both she
and Halle would’ve died. We were lucky that one of them survived, let alone the
pair. Halle is still healing, but Rose is healthy.”

“They’re beautiful,” Hunter
marveled. She’d completely forgotten about the horrible news she’d received
that morning, and Eli was to thank for that. She slipped her hand into his. “I
could stand here and watch them all day.”

Eli looked down at her with
glimmering green eyes like pale emeralds and his smile flashed in the
reflection of sunlight off the clear water.

“How do you do it? How do
you have such a heart for this when others couldn’t give a shit?”

Eli watched the dolphins as
though their dancing motions helped him think. “I once read a quote that said
‘Often, the greater our ignorance about something, the greater our resistance
to change’. People don’t see the horrible things that others do to animals
simply because they can’t hear or feel or see their pain. Or they just ignore
it. And ignoring that suffering only means they are stuck, that they resist
change. I’m just doing something about it.”

Hunter wrapped her uninjured
hand around his neck and pushed her mouth against his. The dolphins clicked
loudly in the background. Eli smiled against her lips.

“You don’t understand how
amazing you are Eli,” she said softly, tracing gentle lines down his face, from
the corner of his eyebrow along the ridge of his cheekbone down to the dip of
his lips. His eyes were closed.

The fire inside of her
blazed, but it wasn’t menacing, merely content. She didn’t want to get back to
reality, because she knew this day wouldn’t last. Soon she would be hearing
from Joshua, who must have seen the news by now. He’d be worried something
happened to her after she left last night. Then there was the funeral. She
couldn’t bear the thought of it.

Tears began to form in
Hunter’s eyes, so she turned away from Eli and brushed them away.

“Are you okay?” He rested a
hand on her shoulder and his fingers brushed the skin of her neck. He paused.
“You feel a bit hot.”

Hunter backed up
immediately. “What?”

“You just feel a little
warm. I’m sure it’s fine.”

She checked the fire, but
felt nothing. No burning through her veins. Her skin was normal, her heart rate
only a little faster than usual, but that could be because of the making out.
What’s
wrong with me?

“I think I need some fresh
air,” she muttered and ran from the dolphin room.

“Hunter!” Eli called, his
footsteps and hers echoing through the warehouse as she ran to the front door
they’d come through. She couldn’t feel the heat at all, but she didn’t want to
take any chances. After all, she didn’t feel the fire creep up on her last time
until she was setting Eli’s sheets on fire.

The sun still shone outside
and it near blinded her as she burst into the open street, the calm harbor to
her right and a line of buildings to her left. Eli wasn’t far behind her and
when he caught her by the arm, she made to turn around, to explain that she was
just feeling sick thinking about Miss Smart. But she didn’t want to lie to him
again.

Which was why it was almost
a relief when the sound of sirens silenced them both. She and Eli turned back
to the street where, above the line of buildings not a block away, rising smoke
was climbing into the calm New York sky.

Eli called out to Hunter as she took off
running and was by her side in seconds. They ran along the pathway and turned
down Gibson Street. The road was blocked, a crowd forming around a burning
restaurant she couldn’t see the name of, for flames surrounded it, snaking out
of the windows and bending toward the onlookers, as though teasing them.
Firemen and police officials blocked the crowd a clear distance away. From
inside the building, someone was screaming.

Hunter pushed through the
crowd and tried to pretend there were no butterflies in her stomach. She
thought of Miss Smart, poor Miss Smart, who was granted only a few more days to
live, and this time she felt no fear. This time, she knew it was up to her.

“Hunter!” Eli called,
grasping her hand and then slipping away. People grunted at her as she weaved
towards the barricade, and when she reached it, she came face to face with the
door of the restaurant. Only an orange and white striped barrier stood in her
way.

“Is there anyone still in
the building?” she asked an elderly man dressed in a chef uniform, leaning
against the barrier beside her, rubbing his hands together anxiously.

He didn’t glance at her.
“The uh...
th
-the w-waitress... and a few of
th
-the customers-”

Adrenaline filled her. She
knew what she had to do. But then Eli called her name. As if in slow motion,
Hunter turned and saw him squeezing his way toward her, scared and panicked,
desperate to reach her. In a split second, she knew that it was time to make a
decision. If she ran inside the building to rescue whoever was left alive, she
wouldn’t be able to lie to Eli any longer. People would see her. The Agents
might see her.

But if she didn’t use the
power she was given, then what else was it good for? Who else could save them?