The Light of the World (14 page)

The wall shoots open and she storms off the
elevator. He looks back at me, "You're rude Rayne. Really
rude."

He drags me off the elevator and I notice his
sister sitting at a chair with their uncle.

The uncle looks at me then Wyatt. He shakes his
head.

Wyatt ignores the obvious warning and pulls me
up the stairs.

Of course what does he care, it isn’t his neck
out on the line. It's mine.

I try to tug my hand from his but his grip isn’t
relenting.

He drags me across the foyer and up the second
set of stairs. I start to struggle but he flips me over his
shoulders and carries me to the room.

"Put me down."

He doesn’t speak. He places me in the room I
showered and changed in, and he closes the door. I hear a key
clanking in the lock.

"Try to rest Rayne." His voice is muffled from
the other side.

I put my hand against the door and slump onto
the floor. Tears don’t fall. I'm not willing to be weak anymore.
I'm not willing to let him be more important than me.

I feel myself fading from the lack of food and
water. I'm exhausted and scared.

'Don’t be sad.'

I look around the room. No one is there with
me.

"Whose here?" I whisper.

'If I show myself to you, you must stay calm.
Swear it'

I nod, "I swear." I continue to hunt the
darkening room. The whisper is different than the dead who whisper
to me.

I see a sparkle of light. It's faint and I can
only see it if I focus hard. It gets brighter. My eyes do the thing
they do and suddenly I can see her. She is a beautiful girl in a
long flowing white dress. She is distorted and ephemeral in her
movements. She is there and then she isn’t. She sparkles with life
or light that is beyond what I live and breathe. Her long red hair
is shiny and sparkles with the same dusting of faerie magic as the
rest of her.

"Are you a faerie?"

She smiles but her movements seem delayed and
imprecise. Her giggle fills the air but her mouth has long since
stopped the giggle. She puts a finger to her lips and floats to me.
Her gown flows around her and moves with the air or maybe her
disposition. It is as much a part of her as my skin is of me. I
have a hard time seeing where it stops and she starts. She is
horror movie creepy but I feel no fear.

"
I am your mother's friend."

"What are you?"

She floats around me and never seems to be able
to sit still.

"
I have no time Rayne. The evil in the house
prevents me from being here completely. If they come, they will
catch my essence and destroy it. You must get away. You must run
from them
."

"How can I? I'm dangerous and I don’t know
enough about myself. I killed a man. Willow told me about needing
the sins of bad humans to survive but she only told me what she
knew. She was told by my mother to keep me safe and help me control
it. She was to keep me from hurting myself or anyone else. She knew
I would collect the debt of the world. That’s what she called
it."

Her light fades, but her voice is strong, "JUST
RUN RAYNE! FIND LILLITH! FIND THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD AND FIND
YOUR FREEDOM!"

Where her entrance was jerky and inconstant, her
departure is swift and frightening. She is sucked backwards
rapidly, as she screams and then she is gone and I am alone. Alone
in the dark. I now see this is the theme of my life. I've always
been alone in the dark in some way or another. I blink and look at
the wall she got sucked out of. I wait for the delayed terror I
should be feeling.

I am not shocked or afraid. Everything else
that’s happened in the past couple of days has either stripped
common sense from me or weathered my sensitivity. My responses are
not what they used to be. I stand and look around the room. I miss
my old self.

I lift one of the windows and feel the instant
cold wind attack. It's a blustery day on the ocean and the wind
finds the open window without delay.

I push the screen and it falls out onto the
shingled roof. It scrapes its way down the shingles and falls down
onto the grass below. Every scrape and sound is magnified by the
wind and the fact I am trying to sneak out.

I close the window and sit on the bed. Surely he
will come after a noise like that one.

I sit and wait. My hands fidget. I love
fidgeting. Pretty woman or no pretty woman, fidgeting rocks.

I tap my foot and count to one hundred. He
doesn’t come. I count to two hundred and nothing. I am standing up
to peek out the window, when I hear the key. I sit back down and
look out a different window.

"You hungry?" I turn to see a tray of food.

I want to eat it, but I saw Flowers in the
Attic. I look for cookies with sugar dusted on them but it's a huge
bowl of soup. It looks like tomato. I can smell the basil in it. My
mouth is watering. I could drool like a dog. Not just any dog
either. Like a bullmastiff.

He places it on the bureau. There are huge
fluffy white rolls and butter and an assortment of squares.

"Would you prefer to eat downstairs with
us?"

I shake my head and walk to the tray. I lift the
spoon and smell it. It's amazing. They must have a professional
cook to go with their mansion.

I hold the spoon up to him.

He frowns and opens his mouth. He swallows the
soup. I butter a roll and offer him a bite. He takes a bite and
chews it. I might as well have offered him cardboard to eat, by the
look on his face.

I pour a cup of the tea in the teapot and pass
him the china mug. He sips from it and passes it back.

"You may go." My words are soft.

He looks broken in some way. I've insulted his
mother and her food and for that I must suffer through the
heartbroken look on his face. Lucky for me, I don’t believe he has
a heart.

He remains where he is. Watching me.

"You cannot love something like me
remember?"

He winces, it's subtle and only because my eyes
are doing their thing, can I see it.

I butter the rest of the bun and the other side.
Hunger pains are nearly crippling me.

He runs a single finger down my arm. I shiver
from it. He leans in and kisses my cheek. I turn and let him have
me. He kisses and pulls and wraps himself around me. He encompasses
me completely. I feel the strangest feeling. It's not like with
other guys. When I kiss them I feel something filling me. With him
I feel like my body is trying to pull but he is an empty hole. So I
pull but the wind just whistles through him.

His fingers are greedy and his lips needy. He is
sucking and pulling and tracing and my body is going crazy. He is
stirring everything up but he can't fulfill the feelings I am
having. I'm getting nothing from him.

He pulls me back and looks at me, "Stop it." He
is smiling but I can see he's annoyed.

I shake my head, "What?"

"Stop trying to eat me. I can't kiss you and
hold the control. I can't do both. You have to do some too."

I push him away, "I can't do this. I'm sorry.
I'm just starved. I shouldn’t have kissed you. I don’t want
that."

He flinches again and walks to the door.

He stands at the door and looks at me, "How many
times do I have to apologize?"

I shake my head, "I think it will always be one
more time and even that will never be enough."

He nods once and walks from the room. He turns
the key and suddenly my food feels like prison food. While he was
here it was a meal. Now it is survival. I try not to enjoy it too
much, but I am past the point of hungry and it tastes
remarkable.

I don’t slide down a lot of drainpipes.
Rebellious teenager has never been my thing. I never snuck out. I
never did anything until I asked to go to college. My idea of
rebellious was eating fudge cookies and sometimes whole chocolate
bars. I was a binge eater not a rebel. Willow was strict and I've
always been a chocoholic.

I roll my eyes at myself. My fingers bite into
the metal that crinkles and tries to announce my escape. I've
crawled along the roof to the far side of the house where the
garage is. I totally assumed that there weren’t many windows here
and I could jump down without them seeing.

Dangling from the drainpipe is an experience all
its own. I make it half way down the first story and jump. My legs
and feet sting from the landing. I think about the swords and pole
arms and my skin tingles.

I run. I'm not much of a runner but I run
anyway. Just like fleeing from the restaurant, I am wheezing and
huffing after a short amount of time. I manage to run though.

"Rayne?" His voice has never struck panic in me
the way it does now. My feet dig in and my lungs expand in a hope
to escape. My legs burn but I run. My instincts tell me to run to
the sea. I veer to the left and push past the branches and
bushes.

"RAYNE!" I can hear the panic in his voice. I
can feel it.

I know he's fast. I know he's trained his whole
life to chase 'things' like me. I push myself and run hard. I can
hear him in the trees. I can hear him right on my tail. I can see
the water. I dig in for the last bit of energy and my legs push
harder. I make the beach and crash onto the rocks. Everything
aches. I get up and run for the sandy spot on the beach. I run into
the waves and dive into the water. I swim. Swimming in shoes and
clothes is a bad plan. I look back and watch him. He doesn’t enter
the water. He runs a hand through his hair and looks for an idea. I
can see him thinking. I bob in the waves and watch. He false starts
several times and makes it look like he'll come in the water, but
he doesn’t. He pulls his phone from his pocket.

He flashes his cocky grin at me and I swim
out.

He points as he hangs up the phone and shouts at
me, "Be right there baby."

I fight against the waves and make my way out
into the sea. The salt water is in my mouth and making me gag but I
push on. A light comes from below. My heart races seeing it. I
start to swim back to shore but it looks like the girl in the room.
I pause and wait. Of course the moment I decide it could be
something good my bitchy common sense side snarks at me.
'What
if Siren's are real and she lured me out so she could kill me?'
The voice in my head is telling me to panic.

I hear a boat. I look up to see a man in Wyatt's
boat.

I look at Wyatt. He puts his hands out and
screams at me to stay calm or get in the boat or a combination of
that. I look down at the light and see a woman just like the red
head in my room.

Her hand reaches for me. She smiles and her
light makes me feel warm in the freezing cold ocean water. I look
at the boat and decide I need to trust my mother.

I don’t know my mother at all but, Willow was
her friend and she never hurt me. Willow would never hurt me.

I look at Wyatt on the shore and know he would
hurt me again in a heartbeat.

I reach my hand for her and she pulls me under.
I can hear the boat and Wyatt's screams for a second. They die off
as she pulls me down fast and silence fills my mind. It's not alone
though. The fear I will die at the bottom of the ocean is bouncing
around in there as well.

Her ghostly fingers are cold. Cold as the sea.
She stops and looks at me. My cheeks are puffed out and I'm
starting to struggle with the loss of air.

'Breathe Rayne'

I shake my head. She nods. She has the same
beautiful face as the other girl but blonde hair that floats all
around us. It is so light that it feels like it's lighting up the
dark ocean but I think it's my eyes.

I start to choke and feel faint. She smiles at
me and laughs,
'breathe'.

I shake my head and grip my throat. I'm clawing
at my chest, which feels like it's about to explode.

Just as the light is leaving my eyes and my
vision has become pinholes, my mouth opens and wondrous feeling
fills me. I breathe. The water is air. I don’t know how but it
feels miraculous.

She giggles and holds her long slim fingers up
to her face,
'Angels can breathe on every corner of the
earth'.

I inhale the water but it feels more like I have
something that pulls the air from the water. I don’t feel liquid
entering my body. I still taste the salt though. It makes me
shiver.

She pulls me along the shore and when we get to
a spot where I can see lights on the shore she brings me to the
surface.

'Find the light of the earth Rayne. Find it
and find your freedom'

I nod and swim to shore. My teeth are chattering
and my body is aching. I'm not in very good shape for the child of
angels. The floating creepy lady in white waves a hand at me and is
gone again. I pull my soaked and bedraggled body to shore. I crawl
on all fours and when I stand I am exhausted. I can feel the heat
tingling in my body. I know I need to do what Willow told me to do,
when we were in the garden. I just don’t know where to find a
really bad man to suck dry.

I am covered in sand and seawater. I can hear
traffic and see the lights of Newport Bridge. I know where I am.
I've been here before. Willow brought me and we stayed with hippie
friends. Yeah hippies… I was a gullible kid.

My hair feels like a clump. The rat's nest is so
bad that I can't drag my fingers through and pick it at all. I walk
along the seawall of Newport and pass the light blue Inn I stayed
at, with Willow. We slept there one night. The people were kind and
I got to see dolphins. It was my first time. They came into the bay
and right up to the blue house. Willow cried.

I am alone. I want to cry but I'm tired of the
taste of salt.

I walk to a small white house that looks like my
old house and sneak across the street quickly. I slip into the
backyard and walk cautiously to the backdoor. I try the door and
sigh when it opens. It's dark and I'm praying the dark windows mean
no one is home. I open the door and look around.