Undertow (22 page)

“You guys would be collateral damage. I get it,” I said, strongly questioning the sanity of MJ and Ana joining the fight. “You guys shouldn’t be part of this. I think you two should just bow out.”

He held up a hand to stop me. “Shut up now. Please. You’re our friend. You aren’t going through this alone. Plus, I think Elizabeth wants something from you – maybe from all of us. Between your dreams and Raef and Kian being there when she died? Yeah – she wants something from us all, or at least F
ate does.”

“It would be nice to know what exactly that was, don’t you think? Couldn’t she, I don’t know, ELABORATE?” I asked, frustrated.

“She probably did in the diary. When we find it, we’ll know,” said MJ, cracking the cap off the water bottle.

“What if she didn’t have a diary? I don’t keep a stupid diary.  What makes everyone think she had a diary?”

“Dalca said she should’ve and Kian said he saw her writing in it,” said MJ, taking another drink.

“Well, what if it was like, a flipping grocery list or something!” 

“You know, you need to learn how to relax. You might need to look into yoga or something,” said MJ, trying to look serious. “Negativity is bad for your health. Of course, so are soul-suckers.” His face started to crack a smile.

“No kidding? Perhaps yoga could cure that problem as well?” I said, trying to be cross, but a determined smile crept onto my face.

MJ walked over to me and held my hand, giving it a squeeze as if it could fill me with his confidence, “We’re going to win.”

“How can you be so
sure?” I asked, trying to draw from his strength.

“Because I believe nothing is just chance. I think we were all flung together for a reason. And I think that type of crazy destiny is bound to give us a hand.”

He was right. My failing faith in our motley crew was not what Elizabeth would have wanted and was a liability to us.  From what Raef said, she embodied confidence, bravery and authority.  She’d expect a granddaughter to embody no less, even at 17.  If I was to be of any help to my friends, I needed to act like Elizabeth.

“You’re absolutely right. If we are going down, it will be in a blaze of glory,” I said, doing my best to sound confident. It was a new state of being for me and would take getting used to. Like breaking in new jeans that cling too tight and leave rib lines on your body after you wear them for too long. Eventually they break in and become your favorite pair, but it takes a while.

“Damn straight! We are gonna ride this sucker ‘til the wheels fall off!” said MJ, enthusiastically. I smiled broadly, feeling silly for my negativity in the face of brave, selfless friends.

“I’m sorry I pushed for information about Ana,” I said, feeling a bit ashamed.

“No worries. If I had blabbed and she found out, I would just have blamed you and she would have beaten the crap out of ya,” said MJ, winking.

“So much for protecting me!” I protested.

“I protect you against the Mortis. Ana however is a whole different type of scary when she’s pissed.”

“Gee, thanks,” I laughed.

Suddenly MJ started fishing for his cell phone in his pocket. He flipped it open and answered it. He seemed frustrated with the caller. “Now? Really? It’s just that I’m. . . Yeah, but . . .” he sighed heavily. “Fine. I’ll be there in five minutes. Yes, I know Dad . . .Yup, five minutes. OKAY . . . Bye.”

He snapped the phone sh
ut and swore, aggravated and turned to me.

“Eila. My dad is having a cow that I didn’t do inventory this morning. I completely forgot, being here with you guys. I have to go, but I won’t be long. And Kian’s here,” he added truly apologetic.

I nodded, slightly nervous that we were down yet another guard, but relieved MJ would be close.

He must have read my mind,
“I’m just down the street. Call me if you need anything and I’ll come right back, pissed parent or not. Okay?”

“Go ahead, MJ. We’ll be alright.”

He headed for the screen door and looked back one more time. “I’ll be back soon. I promise,” he said and headed out.

I watched the white, screen door lazily bounce in its frame and suddenly felt uneasy. I quickly latched the screen and shut the oak door as well, dead-bolting it. 

“They can’t get in without my say so,” I said, trying to convince myself of the safety of the house, but just to be sure, I rechecked the dead-bolt.

I looked around the kitchen and suddenly the first floor seemed very lonely. I headed out of the kitchen and toward the stairs to find Kian and Ana.

As I approached the landing I could hear the heated voices of the two of them upstairs. I couldn’t quite make out the entirety of what they were saying. I stood there, at the bottom of the grand staircase, debating what to do.

Should I head up the stairs quietly and try to hear what they’re saying? Should I run up and sound like an elephant so they know I’m here?

Finally I just decided that straight forward was the best approach, so I simply yelled up the stairs, “Hey guys? Anyone want some tea?”

The arguing from upstairs stopped. It was dead silent for a moment then I heard footsteps. Kian appeared at the top of the staircase and made his way quickly down to the landing.

“I’m going outside to check the barn and carriage shed. Maybe she hid the diary out there, where she figured no one would bother looking. Text me if you find something.”

He pushed out the front door and stalked around the side of the house and down the hill to where the barn’s roof was barely visible.

Man, he was pissed, but he was controlling it.

While the barn was on our property, it felt miles away since Ana and I were completely alone. I realized then that Kian had no clue MJ was gone as well.

“ANA!” I yelled.

Ana appeared at the top of the stairs. “Now what?” she asked, visibly raw from her argument with Kian.

“Kian just left to check out the barn,” I said, thumbing towards the door.

“Thank goodness for small blessings,” she replied, icily.

“You don’t understand. MJ isn’t here either. He’s at work. His father called in full meltdown mode about inventory! Kian didn’t realize he was gone.”

For the first time since I met her, Ana’s brave façade slipped slightly, “So, it’s just us? In the house?”

I nodded, “Just us.”

16

She shifted her weigh
t
and took a deep breath. “It’s fine. It’s daytime and neither of them are far away. We’ll be fine. We’re not going to freak out and start calling them back. We can handle this.” 

I tried to draw off her confidence. It seemed to work, on a near microscopic level at least. My house used to feel so safe to me. Well, until I found out about my real family tree.

“Right. We’ll be fine. I’ll just lock up and then we can keep looking,” I said, dead-bolting the front door. I kept chanting, “
We’ll be fine”
over and over in my head.

“Kian and I started looking in the back bedroom up here, but didn’t find anything,” said Ana.

“Well, we might as well check my room. There are some nooks and crannies in there too,” I said, starting up the stairs but stopping when I heard the shrill whistle of the kettle.

“Oh. I forgot the tea. Be right back,” I said to Ana, heading back into the kitchen. I gathered up a tray and a couple teacups, small kettle and some crackers. Ana saw me with the tray as I approached the stairs, trying to balance the heavy load. She looked at me and sighed, no doubt sure I was going to drop everything.

“Here, let me help you,” she said, picking up the kettle from the tray. We started up the stairs in silence until she finally cleared her throat. “Did the house come with all this furniture? It looks old,” she asked walking up the stairs beside me.

“Most of this stuff came with the house. Some of it is a bit too, elaborate, I guess, for me.  My bed, though, is awesome,” I said, truly pleased with the spectacular 4-poster bed.

“You mean the one Raef built? Can’t wait to see it,” said Ana. She looked at me out of the corner of her eye. “I bet Raef would like to see it again too.”

“What?” I asked, embarrassed.

“Please. You know what I mean.”

“Raef and I are just friends.” Well, at least from his standpoint. I however
wanted something more. A lot more. My cheeks were a bit too hot as we reached the landing.

“Yeah, right,” said Ana, knowingly. I suspected she had more abilities than she let on. Maybe some sort of psychic dowsing.

“We’re friends. Besides, the priority is to keep us all safe, and mixing business with pleasure might endanger you guys.”

I led Ana down the hall and to my bedroom door, opening it for her. She stopped and looked at me, “Life’s short, even when you are not being hunted. Know what I’m saying?”

I nodded, stunned. And confused. Ana had a bad experience with Kian and she was encouraging me to live a little with Raef? She walked into my room while I was left standing in the doorway, trying to make sense of her mind.

“Nice digs,” she said, looking around the room.  Her eyes fell on the ornate bed. “And really nice bed. Plenty of room to maneuver. Well done, Raef,” she said, grinning.

I turned to her, making sure she was in fact Ana, the petulant pixie, and not some doppelganger. “Have you been smoking something?”

“No,” said Ana with a laugh.

“Okay, don’t get me wrong, but you ain’t exactly all warm and fuzzy in regards to Kian and Raef. What’s up?” I put the tray down on my desk and she placed the kettle next to it. She leaned back against the desk, her hands in her pockets.

“Truth?” she asked. I nodded. “I’m thinking that I better Carpe Diem while I can and you should do the same.”

“While you can?” I asked, suspecting I already knew the answer.

“I just don’t think we’ll be the team to score the winning touchdown, and the game clock is running is all.” 

I had no response. I knew she was probably right and bold enough to say it. While MJ had a good point about Elizabeth and destiny, the fact was Elizabeth died at the hands of Jacob Rysse and she was only a few years older than me. 

I also knew that if we were going to lose anyway, it was senseless for Ana to be part of the team. I wasn’t even sure what she could bring to the fight besides trying to read my dream. Heck, I wasn’t sure there was anything I would bring to the fight either. I felt like a liability.

“Ana. I appreciate your help but you don’t need to risk your life for me.  Why don’t you step out of this? It’s okay,” I said, truthfully. If we couldn’t win then staying in the game was suicide for the players.  And senseless to continue on with me, especially when they weren’t the targets in the first place.

I felt old.

As if I just blew through my teenhood and had been slammed into adulthood. I wasn’t ready for it. I didn’t want it, but had no choice. My life felt surreal. How on earth did I go from being Eila Walker, invisible Kansas girl, to Eila Walker, natural born killer and public enemy number one of the Mortis?

I had lived my whole life believing in one type of world, where monsters stayed in fairytales and legends are only resurrected by Hollywood. Now I had been
dropkicked into the real world, where nothing’s impossible. I guessed ignorance could be bliss, because my reality really sucked.

“While it has crossed my mind to bolt, you grew on me. You’re my friend and so is MJ. I’m not leaving either of you to fight without me,” said Ana, walking along the length of my bureau to my stereo. “And arguing that you don’t like Mr. Abercrombie is pointless, especially with me.”

My face blossomed once again, but she ignored my embarrassment. “Got tunes?” she asked, looking at me. 

I handed her my iPhone and she docked it between the speakers. She touched the screen to scan over to my music library and flipped through the songs with a toss of her finger. “Your music is, uh, interesting,” she said, the compliment hiding a distaste for my acoustic preferences.

She flicked on some
Citizen Cop
e and started nodding her head slightly to the beat. “Not half bad,” she said, letting the thrumming guitar fill the room.

I watched her, as her hand trailed over my jewelry and hap
hazard knick-nacks on my bureau; an old photo of my parents, Mae and me laughing at dinner in a restaurant, a photo of me at the lake in my old bikini, my scar barely visible.

They were brief snapshots of my life as it used to be, so far from me now. My life, which was no longer my own, was now driven and ruled by a new understanding and permanent career assignment.

How could I live like this? I was drafted into a war I didn’t understand and never knew existed. And my tour of duty would never end. My world was a new form of prison with only two options: fight or die.

On a very real level, the old Eila was already dead. The loss of her, of me, was difficult to accept and I could feel a tear trace my face. I quickly wiped it away, not wanting Ana to see. I took a deep breath and decided to shelve my former-self’s wake for a later date.

It was too much to take on right now. One day at a time would keep me safe. One day at a time might just keep us all alive. I walked over to my closet and pulled open the heavy, protesting door. Ana watched me.

“Are we playing dress-up, because I’m not a good choice for that game,” she asked dryly.

“Me neither,” I said, my hanging clothes ranging from jeans and sweats to tees and tanks. Not a single dress or skirt to be found. “When I was putting stuff in here I noticed a trap door way up high in the corner, but I was too wigged out by the possibility of spiders to mess with it. I think I can climb up onto the shelf here and be able to reach it,” I said, heading over to my desk and dragging back a chair for height.

“You’re afraid of spiders, but not the two killers that hang with us?” asked Ana, her hands on her hips.

I stopped in front of her, the chair grasped firmly in my hand. “Dude. They’re SPIDERS,” I said, looking at her. She laughed as I continued on to the closet with my chair.

“I hope Mothra isn’t up there as well,” taunted Ana, snickering.

“Shut up,” I said, acting pissed. I tried to fit the chair inside the closet, but my mountain of boxes was blocking any access. “Terrific,” I said sarcastically. “Looks like we need to move a bunch of junk to get in here.”

Together, Ana and I started hauling out boxes. The music continued to play through my giant catalog. I glanced at Ana, pushing a box across the room.

“So what’s the deal with you and Kian?” I couldn’t believe I asked. It was as if the edit button in my brain failed.

She stopped pushing and looked at me, surprised.

“Sorry,” I said quickly. “Sooo not my business.”

I set to pulling out another box, but the silence behind me was deafening. I was afraid to look at her.  Any ground we just gained as friends was probably gone.  When she spoke I nearly jumped out of my skin.

“We were an item last year,” she said plainly.

I couldn’t believe she told me. My stupid edit button failed again, “What happened?”

“I met him when school let out for summer break.  He had come into town to buy this antique car and it broke down. The shop I worked at was the only one open and I happened to be there. That’s how we met and from there we just slowly got to know each other,” said Ana, sitting on the box she had moved. I felt frozen in place, afraid if I took a single step she would realize she was opening up about Kian.

“Anyway, when he came by that night, the attraction to him was potent. I had never, in my life, felt that kind of electrical draw towards anyone. He felt it as well, though I only learned that later. It took me about a month before I found out he wasn’t human, but by then I knew he wouldn’t hurt me. After that, we became inseparable.  He had bought the
Cerberus
and planned on staying. That yacht holds many memories.”

I snapped my mouth shut, which had been hanging open in amazement. “Did you two . . .?” I asked, floored.

Ana looked offended, “Please! I’m not that wild.  Not to mention, he wasn’t keen on the idea since he was worried I might be hurt. I guess their kind of . . . well you know, can get pretty rough and that is all he had been exposed to for over a century. He was worried that old habits would die hard and so would I.”

She just shook her head, “Sometimes it’s hard for me to remember that he’s not really twenty years old. I mean, physically he is, but mentally he has had more experiences that any other human man on the face of the planet. He has lived, like, FOUR lifetimes. The same goes for Raef. He looks like a teen, but his maturity is way beyond that.  That kind of experience, especially intimate, makes me nervous, you know?  What if I don’t meet his expectations? But on the other hand, he never expected me to be experienced at all.”

She shrugged her shoulders, “I guess, in the end, it’s better to experience your first time with someone like him, than with one of the morons from high school who are solely hormone-driven.” 

My stomach tightened thinking of such “moments” with Raef, but she was so right. “So what happened?  You two seem to not be very chummy now,” I asked.

“My Dad.  Kian was not a fan of my father. He was a good guy, but he had a tendency to drink a bit too much and he wasn’t a friendly drunk, if you know what I mean. But he was my
Dad
. He was all I had. Kian begged me to move out and live with him on the yacht. He had almost convinced me when I got a call from my Dad’s fishing boat in late summer that he had suffered a massive heart attack.  They had airlifted him back to Boston and Kian drove me up to see him, but he was in a coma.  I pleaded with Kian to save him, but he refused. He said that it wouldn’t work because he was too weak. His heart had stopped repeatedly and he wouldn’t be healed. That he may end up turning.”

Ana was getting upset, “I know it was bullshit. He could have saved my Dad, but he didn’t want to. He thought he wasn’t worth saving because he had gotten physical when he was drunk, but he was still my FATHER. Kian should have tried. Instead, he let him die!” Ana clenched her hands. “I told hi
m to leave and never come back. That he was a murderer. He was desperate for me to understand, but I couldn’t forgive him.”

My head was spinning and I sat down on a box next to her. “Oh Ana. I’m so sorry, I didn’t know.”

“It’s okay,” she replied, looking at her hands.

“What do you mean Kian could have ‘saved’ him?”

“Mortis can both take and give life-forces. Because they store life-forces inside themselves, they can also give some of what they have stolen. When they give, they heal. They can heal just about any injury on anyone, but
supposedly
they cannot fix someone whose heart has stopped, even if it has been restarted. That, and it cannot cure a genetic disease. Because my father’s heart had stopped and then been restarted, Kian feared that if he shared a stolen life-force with my father, his weakened body may become infected and cause him to turn. To become a Mortis. Kian said that whoever you were as a human becomes amplified once you are turned and my Dad had a temper.”

“So, he would have become a killer?” I asked, the hairs rising on my arms. Ana nodded. “And you didn’t believe him?”

“No. I believed he could heal him and that, even if he did turn, he could be helped and shown how to live a life in peace with humans, like Kian. But Kian said it didn’t work that way. But I knew he just wanted him dead. My father had hurt me in the past and Kian wanted vengeance.”

I didn’t know what to say. I felt for her. To love someone so completely then feel so terribly betrayed. And yet, I saw Kian’s side. He loved Ana and didn’t want to see her continue to be hurt by her father. Perhaps her father could have been saved or maybe the truth was he was destined to die anyway.  How could one ever know?  More importantly, did it matter?