Shattered (7 page)

~A Visit~

The next day at school, Laura sat idly beside her friend Kel y. They were in second period science class, and the teacher was doing attendance. As names were being cal ed out, fol owed by answers of

“Yes” or “Here” by the students, Kel y was tel ing Laura about a new boy she had met. But Laura was only listening with half a mind. Mostly, she was thinking about what happened yesterday. About
everything
that happened yesterday.

From learning about the dream world, to

experiencing its wonders with Logan, to that strangely quiet drive home – al the events swirled in her head. Mostly, though, her thoughts kept wandering back to what happened at the very end. After she saw that mysterious man, and Logan pul ed them out of the dream world so very quickly. There was definitely something there… something he wasn’t tel ing her.

“Miss Cubus?”

Laura looked up, and saw that her teacher was looking right at her. Everyone else in the class was staring at her, too. Suddenly she realized that the teacher had said her name three or four times without it registering, and blushed.

“Yes?” she asked meekly.

“I’ve been told by the secretary that you’ve been requested in the principal’s office.”

“Real y?” Laura was confused. She’d never been in trouble before. What could this be about? “Do you know why?”

Her teacher frowned. “They don’t tel me why, Miss Cubus, and I don’t concern myself with it either way. Get going, now, so you can be back before you miss al of today’s lecture.”

“Yes, Mrs. Donnel ey.” Laura looked at Kel y before she left, who shrugged at her, and then walked out the classroom into the hal .

As she walked towards the office, questions popped into her head. What was this about? Could it be something to do with the detention she’d received in math? No, that had already been dealt with. Maybe it was something to do with what happened with Brady? She hoped not. She knew Logan wouldn’t say anything, but could one of those guys have told on him? She might be in trouble, then. Deciding not to take any chances, Laura decided she would peek through the glass panel doors of the office before walking in. If any of the guys from Brady’s group were there, she would turn away and go straight back to class. She didn’t want to deal with them, now.

As she got closer to the office doors, she pressed herself against a wal and looked around the corner. She immediately recognized Principal Cole leaning against the counter, talking to two men. Their attention was diverted off to the side, so their heads were turned. But Laura could have recognized one of them from anywhere. It was the man from the dream. Laura’s vision blurred, and she became dizzy. She pul ed back so she wouldn’t be seen, and leaned heavily against the wal .
The same man from the
dream
. She was certain of it; he wore the same dark clothes, had the same milky pale skin.

She became acutely aware of her heart pounding loudly in her chest. Her breaths had become short; ragged. And adrenaline pumped through her veins. Her entire body was signaling
danger, danger
to her. She didn’t know what to do. Slowly, panic started to set in. What was that man doing here? How did he get here? She started to walk away. Slowly, at first, but then her pace quickened, until she broke out in a run. She had to find Logan. He would know what to do.

But she didn’t know where he was. She knew he’d be in class – she just didn’t know which one. She ran through the hal s. How many classrooms were there?

Dozens, at least. But she knew the teachers, knew what subjects were being taught in which rooms for students in her grade. But she didn’t know Logan’s schedule.

Picking at random, she flung the doors open to one classroom, interrupting the teacher mid-sentence. Everybody stared at her. She quickly scanned the faces, and, on not seeing Logan, ran back out.

She burst into another class. Logan wasn’t there either. The teacher yel ed, and fol owed her into the hal way as she backed out. Laura ran on, leaving the cries of obscenity behind. Another classroom. Quickly, she opened the doors and scanned the faces. Logan wasn’t there.

Desperate, she ran to another class. Stil , Logan was not there.
Dammit
,
but he was taking the same
subjects as her
! Al the students in her grade were, everybody was taught by the same teachers, so he had to be in one of these classrooms.

She ran into another room. No Logan. Another room. Stil , no Logan. The man’s presence in the office was weighing heavily on her. She was getting more and more scared. She ran, as fast as her legs could carry her, into a room at the far end of the hal . She was already panting, and her hair was a disheveled mess. She had to catch her breath before looking up. When she did – she saw that everybody was gaping at her.

“Laura?”

It was Logan’s voice. Logan’s voice, from the back. She rushed over to him, not caring what anyone saw or said. He stood from his desk, and she jumped up to embrace him in a tight hug.

“Laura, what’s wrong?” He sounded concerned.

“I saw him,” she said quickly, the words rushing out.

“Saw who?”

“They cal ed for me in the office. Two men. One…”

She gulped. “…one was the man I saw yesterday.”

~On the Run~

If it were possible, Laura would have said Logan turned even paler than usual. Suddenly, the confident young man she knew looked very frightened.

“Are you sure?” he asked her.

“Yes!” she practical y screamed. “Would I come here like this, in the middle of class, if I wasn’t?”

Everybody was stil looking. The teacher started making her way over. “Miss,” the teacher began, but Laura ignored it. She had eyes only for Logan.

“You’re right,” he nodded. “We have to go.” And, taking her hand, he led her into the hal .

“Logan, wait,” she said outside the classroom.

“Where are we going?”

“We have to get away,” he answered, continuing down the hal . His hand gripping hers gave her strength, made her feel stronger. Less scared.

“I don’t understand.”

“I’l tel you. Later. But right now, we need to get out of the school.” The hal forked into two, and he looked down both ways, seeming uncharacteristical y unsure of himself. Final y, settling on a direction, he led her that way.

They came up to an exit door, and he opened it for her. Before she stepped through, though, he stopped her.

“Your bag,” he said, “where is it?”

“I left it in my other class.”

“There’s no time to get it, now,” he mumbled to himself. “Do you have anything important in there?”

“Notebooks, school notes, that type of thing.”

“What about your cel phone?”

“It’s in my pocket.”

Logan nodded. “Good.” And he ran out the school with her trailing. Outside, Laura realized where he was headed: towards the parking lot, where he presumably had his car.

Sure enough, Laura picked it out, standing in that same far corner as before. Logan was at a dead-run, now, and Laura struggled to keep up. He got to the car way before her, and was already in the driver’s seat with the engine on when Laura opened the door. As soon as Laura clicked on her seatbelt, he gunned the engine, and sped out of the lot. When they were on the road, he started checking his back mirror every few seconds. Obsessively. There was an obvious tension he was feeling, and the silence that stretched between them didn’t help.

“What do you keep looking for?” Laura asked suddenly.

“If they’re coming,” he replied distractedly.

“The men from the office?” Laura asked. Logan nodded quickly in reply. “But how would they even know that we left?”

“Trust me. They know.”

There was such conviction in his words, that Laura started looking over her shoulder, too. Everything seemed fine at first – there weren’t many cars on the road this close to the school at this hour – and nobody appeared to be coming after them. Just as Laura started to relax slightly, a black car appeared far behind them. Laura squinted her eyes. It appeared to be getting larger, getting closer to them, very quickly.

“Logan, the black car,” Laura said.

“I see it.” His face was the picture of concentration. Laura looked back again. And was shocked to see the black car almost right behind them. The windows were tinted, so she couldn’t see inside, but she could make out the model. They were being chased by a black Cadil ac.

“Hold on,” Logan muttered, and hit the accelerator. Hard.

Laura cried out at the sudden acceleration, and flew back against her seat. Logan was doing fifty, sixty, seventy miles on the smal road. Parked cars flashed by the sides, and Logan swerved left and right to pass other vehicles on the road. Laura gripped the bottom of her seat so tightly she thought she’d never be able to let go.

Laura knew this stretch of road, knew that it would narrow into one lane each way quickly. And she saw a car not far in front of them. There was no way to pass it in this section. Looking back, Laura saw that the Cadil ac was stil on their tail.

Suddenly Logan switched into the oncoming lane. A yel ow school bus came hurtling towards them. It sounded its horn, loudly, urgently. Laura could see a smal gap on her right, where the car that had been in front of them slowed down. The bus kept coming, the horn got louder as it came closer, and Laura screamed as they were about to hit it.

At the last moment, Logan veered back into the right lane, just in front of that car. The bus passed by, the reverberations from its passing shaking the Volvo. Laura’s breath caught. She stared at Logan in amazement, but he didn’t look the least bit anxious. At least, not anxious about driving. Al he did was keep checking the mirror, continuing to monitor the progression of the black car.

Laura saw an intersection far ahead of them. With a stale green light. She gripped her seat tighter as Logan sped up. He was going to try to make it. As they raced closer, Laura watched in horror as the light turned amber. They were too far to make it. But Logan didn’t let up, didn’t slow down. If anything, he went even faster.

The light turned red, and time slowed for Laura. She watched, paralyzed, as the cars lined up at the light started inching forward, ever so slowly, in the perpendicular direction. And Logan kept going. The other cars started accelerating too, moving further into the intersection. Laura felt their car going faster. The gap between them and the intersection closed. Cars were coming from left and right. And Logan wasn’t slowing down. He was going to go through.

Laura shut her eyes and prayed for nothing to happen. Just at that moment, the loud blare of angry horns from al directions sounded. She felt the vibrations of cars passing in front and behind them, heard the swerving of tires, and was sure she was going to die.

Suddenly, al was quiet. The sound of horns was coming from behind them. She opened her eyes. They were driving on the other side of the crossing. They had made it!

An ear-shattering crash sounded from behind her. She spun around, looking out the back window of the Volvo. And, back in the distance of the intersection, she saw the black Cadil ac smashed against the side of an orange truck.

She looked to Logan, who let up on the

accelerator. Slightly. He stared straight ahead, now. And he was tense. His jaw was tense, his posture was tense; everything about him was tense.

“Logan, we made it,” she said, “they got hit.”

“Not for long,” he answered. But then she saw him relax. Just a little.

“Logan, you have to tel me what’s going on. Who were those people?”

“I didn’t want to bring you into this,” he answered.

“You have to tel me!”

“It wasn’t meant to be like this.”

“Logan, you have to tel me!”

“I’m sorry, Maria.” He said that in the barest whisper, so quiet that Laura thought she misheard the words.

“What? Logan, what is going on, tel me!” Laura felt herself on the verge of tears. She was scared, emotional y drained. Terrified, real y. And uncertain.

“Who are you?”

He looked at her. His eyes were red, too. “I’m sorry, Laura. You deserve to know the truth. And you wil . I’m going to tel you everything.”

~Revelations~

They sped down the freeway, away from the city where Laura had grown up. Where she met al her friends, where she had her first crush. Where she got her first kiss. Where her family stil was – her mother and father, her younger sister, her big loving dog. They sped away, and Laura looked sadly out the window. She wasn’t sure if she was ever going to be back.

When Logan said he was going to tel her everything, he meant it. Laura stil wasn’t sure how to take what she had just learned.

“Where do you want me to start?” he asked her.

“Start with who you are,” she replied. “Tell me who
you are. I barely know a thing about you.”

He sighed, and looked forward at the road. When
he spoke, he didn’t look at her once. “I’m not like
you, Laura,” he began. “Not entirely. I’m not…

human.”

“What?” she exclaimed. “What do you mean?”

“I’m something else,” he said sadly.

“Are there others like you?”

“Yes, there are.”

“Those men chasing us… are they like you?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me.”

He sighed again. “If I do, you’ll want to run from
me. You’ll want to run and hide forever. But you
can’t, now. I wish I could let you go, Laura. I wish I let
you go before. But if you go now, they’ll find you. No
matter who you’re with, no matter where you go, they
will find you. And I can’t let them do that.”

“Logan.” She reached over to take his hand in
hers. She held it tight. “You can tell me.”

He paused for a long moment, and took a deep
breath. “There’s folklore about me. About… things
like me. Legends and stories that are told to scare
children into behaving. Tales about things that go
bump in the night.”

“Would I know them?”

“I’m sure you would.” He tried to pull his hand
away, but she wouldn’t let him. His skin was ice cold
silk.

“Tell me. I’m not afraid.”

She felt afraid, now. She was afraid she would never see her family again. Afraid she would never come home again. Afraid of what her parents might think when they found out she ran away.

“The dream world I showed you,” he said, “is
restricted to those of my kind. We’re the only ones
who have direct access to it, who can go there at will.
Humans… they can only drift in and out without
realizing it.

“But I discovered that I had the ability to draw
humans in. To explore their dreams, together with
them. Like I did with you.

“When I learned I could do it, I thought I was
unique. I thought I was one of a kind. But it turned
out that every one of my kind could do it. Everyone
could draw humans in like that. Except… it’s
prohibited. By ancient creed, we’re forbidden from
doing that.”

“When I brought you in, I thought we were safe. I
haven’t had contact with any of… my elders… for a
very long time. I had hoped most had thought me
dead, or dying. Or had long forgotten about me. I
still don’t know how we drew their attention.

“It shouldn’t have even worked that way. We
entered
your
dream. They couldn’t have been
watching. They know the rules, too. They abide by
them better than I do. For them, the creed stands
above all else. Above their own lives. They weren’t
allowed to be there, either. But they were – or at
least, one of them was – and they saw us.

“And for that, I’m sorry, Laura. I’m sorry for
dragging you into all this. I’m sorry for my
carelessness. I know I should have never done it,
should never have shown you what I did. Believe
me, I fought the urge as much as I could.

“But there was something about you… something
that tugged at me and begged me to show you.
Maybe I was imagining things. Maybe I wanted to
believe that you needed to see that world. Maybe I
needed
to believe it. But it was my own shortcoming,
my deficiency that put us in this situation. And for
that, I’m truly sorry.”

She looked over at him. She pul ed her hand away when he told her the truth, and hadn’t moved it back since. He looked hurt when she did that. But he drove on, looking straight ahead.

“And what is ‘your kind,’ exactly, Logan?” she
asked.

“My kind.” He laughed softly. “Those who are like
me, of course. Those who the stories are written
about, and legends are twisted from. We are a
separate race, Laura, removed from humanity long
ago. Each of us is given… abilities… that transcend
that what a regular human can do. But it goes both
ways. We have weaknesses unique to us. Some of
them, I’m sure, you can even laugh at.”

“I won’t laugh,” she promised him. “Just tell me the
truth.”

“That’s what I said I’d do, isn’t it?” He sighed
again. She could see he was struggling to form the
words. “I’ll start with the physical. We’re usually taller
than your kind. By a head or more, at least. I’d
actually be considered fairly short.” He laughed, but
it was an oddly forced laugh.

“Our skin is also much lighter. ‘Elven skin,’ some
call it, but that gives it unnecessary embellishment.”

“It shines, though,” she said gently. “Sometimes,
I’ve seen yours absolutely radiate in the light.”

“That’s when you should have stayed away. We’re
most dangerous, then.”

“Tell me,” she pressed. “Tell me why you say
that.”

“We’re stronger than humans. More agile, too.
Our bones are nearly unbreakable, but they’re
unbelievably light. It gives us a certain… grace.
Our balance is better because of it. I’m what, nearly
a foot taller than you? And yet I can guarantee that I
weigh less than you do.

“Our vision is also better. When I look at your
face, I can see every imperfection that makes you so
unique. Every flaw that makes you so beautiful.”

“You… find me beautiful?” she stumbled, amazed.

“Of course I do, Laura. Of course I do.”

Her heart fluttered.

Maybe she was developing feelings for him. It was the only thing that would explain her sitting here. If she were sane, if she had any shred of common sense, she would be clawing at the door, desperate to escape. She would be cal ing the police, tel ing them she’d been abducted, and have fifteen cruisers chasing them down the highway already. But instead she just sat there in silence.

“We’re here,” Logan announced. It was the first time he spoke since she pul ed her hand away, nearly an hour ago.

She looked across at him. He stil looked straight ahead, and despite having parked the car, kept his hands on the wheel. His shoulder slumped, and he looked tired. Maybe as tired as
she
felt. But she knew it wasn’t a physical weariness that touched him. It was an emotional one.

She studied his face. His skin looked so smooth, so delicate. So white. His dark eyes made a perfect contrast, as did his pitch-black hair, which was styled up so exorbitantly. She realized for the first time that he had near-perfect cheekbones, not too high and not too low, and that his nose and jaw were both strong and handsome.
He
was handsome. But he was also something else.

“You’re a vampire,” she whispered.

He cringed. “I hate that name. Hate that title. And it’s not who I am. It might be a smal part of what I must do to survive, but… it’s not me.”

A vampire. He had told her that’s what human folklore would cal him. A bloodsucker, a monster, a predator, a
killer
. And he was sitting right beside her, close enough for her to reach out and touch.

“You feed on human blood.” She should be terrified, saying that. She should be terrified, sitting so close to him. She should be terrified, except that… she wasn’t. Al she felt was a cool, dark calm.

“Yes,” he admitted. “Every time, I try to fight it, but…

I can’t. Morals and ethics mean nothing when you’re starving. We battle depression between feedings. The longer we go without blood, the less confident we get. The less graceful we get, the less powerful we get. We become shel s of our former selves, and we become obsessive about finding food. My only solace is how infrequently I need to feed.”

“How often
do
you do it?” she asked.

“Twice a year, only.”

“And…” she gulped, “…when was the last time you fed?”

Despite himself, he smiled. “Less than a week ago.”

Al of a sudden, al of it clicked into place for Laura. Al of a sudden, everything made sense. His arrival here. The unusual murder. The animal warning. And his transformation after.

“
You’re
the animal,” she breathed. And for the first time in his presence, she felt a shiver run down her spine.

He nodded. “I am, aren’t I? And you’re the only one who knows. Usual y I don’t leave my prey like that, for people to find after, but I was careless.”

“The hitman,” Laura continued. “You’re the one who kil ed him!”

“Yes. You see, I try to balance things out in choosing my targets. The man had a body list at least twenty long on him. A contract kil er, he would have struck soon had I not acted. And then some time again, thereafter. It’s a smal solace I can take in thinking I might have prevent some deaths.”

Laura understood. She understood what he meant. She identified with him.

“Logan,” she asked suddenly. A question had occurred to her, one that she wanted to know the answer to. “Are your kind born that way, or can they be transformed?”

“Both,” he answered.

“And you, then?”

“I was born a human.”

Everything clicked again. She understood his struggle, understood his morals. Understood why he tried to fight something that came so natural y. She had one last question, though.

“How old are you?”

In reply, Logan smiled sadly, and turned his head. For the first time in what seemed like eons, their eyes met. “Do you want to know my age, or how long ago I was born?”

“What’s the difference?”

“We stop aging once we’re transformed.”

“Tel me both.”

“My
human
age,” he said, “is eighteen years old.”

“And how long ago were you born?”

“I was brought into this planet four hundred and twenty-nine years ago.”

Too much blood rushed to Laura’s head, and she passed out.