Wake of Darkness (7 page)

“And he’s
just now
causing a
problem?”

“Not exactly,” Alexander explained.
“He has been pursuing her for decades.” He glanced at Jim and then back to her.
“Sophie, what you must understand is that time means something entirely
different to us than to humans. In your world—or rather the one you have been
living in—a century is an unimaginable length of time to hold a grudge. In
ours, it is a mere pittance of time.”

“’Cause, when you live forever…”
interrupted Laney.

“Precisely,” Alexander said, and
Sophie nodded in understanding. He watched her carefully for any sign of panic;
any sign of shock or fear.

Jim nudged her with his elbow. “Makes
you feel a little like Alice in the rabbit hole, huh?” he joked.

Sophie loosed a hysterical little
chuckle and shook her head in disbelief. Zoey smiled sympathetically at her.

“We shall discuss further
arrangements at a later time, but we will be moving on soon after we make
contact with the other one here,” continued Alexander. “And you are welcome
to…”

“The other one?” Sophie
interrupted, looking quickly from Alexander to Jim, searching for an answer.

Jim turned to her. “Laney thinks
there’s another one of us somewhere close, but she’s not really sure. We’ll
leave after we deal with him or her.”

Sophie nodded numbly, attempting to
absorb it all.

Alexander felt an inexplicable urge
to comfort Sophie as he watched her. She seemed in better control of herself
than before, as she processed everything she'd just learned.

                        
Chapter 7

The family’s patriarch looked down
at Sophie. “You must do what you believe best, but we would highly recommend
that you remain here with our family. We are sorry to have brought you into
this situation, but please understand that we believe you are safest here. Jacques
and the others will not pass you by simply because you are not with us. You are
one
of us, you know us, and that is all the justification he needs to
strike. He will come here looking for our family; we have been in the area for
too long already and if we leave you behind, it would be disastrous for you. We
offer you a home and a family with those who understand you and who share the
same life you do. I sincerely hope that you will accept it.”

To Sophie, who had been known to
jokingly call herself the perpetual foster kid, the temptation was great. She
could have a place to belong, but as she contemplated it, her attention was
pulled to Laney. She sat Indian-style on the floor, chanting to herself.

“Safety, safety, safety. Safe in
the nest. The eggs will break. Crack, crack, crack.” Her lips barely moved. Her
closed eyes suddenly popped open. “Yes, Sophie, you have to stay.”

Sophie watched her in baffled
silence.

Jim chuckled under his breath. “Laney
is…uh…
interesting
,” he whispered conspiratorially. “She’s pretty weird,
actually. You’ll get used to her.”

With that, Laney jumped up and was
suddenly planting a sisterly kiss on Jim’s cheek.

Sophie shook her head hoping to
regain her concentration. “My safety?” she asked, turning to face Dante.

“Once we become aware of our
nature, we begin to naturally rely on our talents; we utilize them to a greater
extent than before. That makes us easier to find—we stand out more you might
say,” Dante explained. “You have just recently shown up on their radar, for
lack of a better metaphor, and to make matters worse, they will know that you
are associated with us. There are members of their kind, who actively seek our
family out in an effort to eliminate us, but none of our kind are safe from
them—our existence is the only threat to the lifestyle they prefer to lead.”

Sophie drew in a ragged breath and
glared at him. Dante seemed unaware of her sudden change in temper, but
Sophie’s mind had connected the dots faster than she’d realized.

He was the leader of the family. He’d
dragged her into this mess, and now she had no hope of being free of it. Even
with the crap fest that her life usually was, no one was ever trying to kill
her. Now she’d been assured of a premature death for just having known this
hodge-podge of a family.

Laney flashed to Sophie’s side,
holding her hand up, palm out, toward Sophie. Alexander took a step closer to
her, placing himself more between her and Dante while nonchalantly removing his
wrist watch and pretending to wind it. He watched her out of the corner of his
eye as she struggled against the unexpected anger that shook her limbs. Zoey
stood slowly, keeping an eye on Sophie.

Alexander took another subtle step
towards her; he would stop her if she gave in to the instinctual fury towards
Dante. All she wanted to do was lunge for his throat in a rage at the
circumstance she’d been dragged into. Yet, she suddenly felt heavy, like she
was made of lead. An uncomfortable but weak sensation came from the general
direction of where Laney stood, as if something were trying to push her
backwards.

“Sophie, please calm down,” Dante
pled soothingly. “It is for your own good that we have introduced you to our
life.”

She gritted her teeth against the unseen
force that held her back, and then exhaled a sigh of frustration through her
nose and slowly unclenched her fists. She exhaled carefully. After regaining
some measure of self-control, she looked at the assembly around her. Once the
fog of her anger cleared and she was able to think about things logically again,
she had to admit to herself that she
did
feel completely safe there. The
thought of spending the night alone in her dorm room was a little more
unsettling than spending it here among these people, since her attacker was
still on the loose.

"Can I sleep on it?" she
asked.

Dante nodded.

Laney’s lips suddenly burst into a
smile. “Jim can take you home,” she cheerfully volunteered.

Jim grinned at Laney and then at Sophie.
Nothing kept those two down, apparently.

“Let’s do it,” he answered before
Sophie had a chance to object.

Alexander’s eyes shifted quickly to
Jim as he replaced his watch on his wrist. “The old-fashioned way,” his deep,
intimidating voice commanded before he turned and strode out of the room.

Sophie stared after him in wonder.

“Aw, alright,” Jim grumbled.

She made a mental note to remember
to ask what the difference was between the “old-fashioned way” and whatever Jim
had in mind for transportation. She was inclined to assume that it had
something to do with the method that had gotten her there in the first place. He
grinned down at her. She couldn’t have been too far off.

Nevertheless, Sophie sighed with
relief that Alexander wasn’t taking her anywhere.

Jim chuckled, shook his head and
looked from Sophie to where Alexander had been standing.

She grimaced when she'd realized he
caught that thought. She wasn’t used to being transparent.
And, she
still couldn’t hear any thought that passed through the minds of the family who
lived there. As she followed Jim towards the back door, she wondered idly to
herself how they blocked her out.

“We’ll teach you!” Laney called as
she danced herself into a handstand and grinned at her new-found friend.

Sophie glanced over her shoulder
incredulously at Laney and at Zoey who clearly didn’t seem to think there was
anything odd about Laney’s behavior, before she followed Jim silently to his
huge red Dodge pick-up truck. Climbing in, she folded her hands awkwardly in
her lap as he backed the truck into the road.

“Um…so, what’s with Laney?” she
asked carefully once they were on their way, hoping they’d be out of earshot of
the house.

As they traveled further from the
Victorian structure, she felt an empty dread creep into her soul, a coldness
that she couldn’t explain. She almost desperately wanted to go back—pulled like
a magnet to the residence.

Jim chuckled again.

He does that a lot
, she
thought. But, no matter how much taunting she received from him, Sophie
couldn’t deny that this man and his family were the family that made sense to
her. It would be nice to have a big brother who poked fun at her. She really
didn't have anything to sleep on.

 Jim shrugged. “Honestly, we don’t
really know what’s up with Laney,” he answered, talking to her as if they were
old friends, steering the huge truck easily through the tiny on-campus streets.
“She’s like this weird little wonder child or somethin’, but she’s got an old
soul, I guess you could say.”

“You love her.”

He looked at her and smiled an
endearingly crooked grin. “Who doesn’t love their little sister?”  

So, that’s what it was like: a
brother-sister thing
, she thought, sorting things out. He didn’t respond.

“How about Zoey?” She asked
cautiously.

“Ah,” he replied. “She’s different.
She doesn’t say much, but when she does, you'd better listen.”

Sophie nodded. They continued in
silence until they reached her building, but thankfully, it was a comfortable
silence. As soon as he cut the engine, Jim looked around them, inspecting
everything down to the very shadows for anything unusual.

He came around to the passenger
side of the truck and hustled her indoors as quickly as possible, keeping a
hand on the small of her back. Once inside, he maintained his vigilance,
quickly double-checking all of the dark corners in the hallways.

Sophie would get in so much trouble
if one of the resident assistants found out she had a guy up there, but tonight
she didn’t care. That fate was much safer than not having Jim check her place
out, hoping that nothing was waiting for her inside. How quickly her priorities
had shifted. Ascending the stairs, she let them both into her room.

He held his hand out to her. “Lemme
see your phone.”

She silently handed her cell phone
over to him. His fingers moved over the keys quickly before he handed it back
to her. She raised an eyebrow and looked at him for an explanation.

“I programmed our phone numbers into
your cell,” he explained. “Call us if y’ need anything or if you change your
mind before tomorrow morning. You’ve got mine, Zoey’s, Laney’s, Dante’s and
Alexander’s in there.”

She unconsciously grimaced at the
mention of Alexander’s name.

“You know, you should really let up
on Alex,” he said all of a sudden, “or…
Alexander
. Don’t let him hear you
call him Alex. He doesn’t like it.”

“What are you talking about?” She
was puzzled, but his mind was silent to her.

Jim sighed and then he smiled. “He
really likes you, is all,” he supplied, his tone softening into brotherly
affection.

“Yeah,
right
,” she mumbled,
toying with her phone absentmindedly. It hardly seemed possible, and she was fairly
sure that she didn’t want him to think of her like that.

“You might be surprised, kiddo,”
was his response.

She frowned. “But he’s so…”
Irritating,
angry, disgruntled, grumpy
… The words shot through her head before she
could make them stop. She looked at Jim warily.

He frowned. “You
really
don't know what you’re talking about,” he warned in a calm voice, coming to Alexander’s
defense. He spoke with the kind of calmness that shot more of a warning through
her body than any shouting could have done. 

“Sorry,” she muttered.

He shrugged. “I’ll be back in the morning
to get you,” he said, sure that she would make the decision to join their
family.

Sophie simply nodded.

“We’ll be around, you know, keeping
an eye on everything,” he said, looking meaningfully towards the window before
opening the door to leave.

“Thanks, Jim,” she replied, looking
down at her hands. “And,” she added quickly as he stepped out, “it’s really
good to meet you.”

“You too, kiddo,” he replied and
stepped through the doorway, closing the door silently.

Sophie sighed when she was finally
alone, and probably—hopefully—safe. It felt like her legs were made of lead as
she walked slowly to her window and gazed out at the courtyard below. The night
was settling around the buildings and there, on a bench below her window, sat
Alexander, looking extremely bored. She hadn’t expected to see him there. As she
watched, Jim walked up to him and Alexander rose in greeting. Sophie could tell
they were discussing her; they glanced up in her direction a couple of times as
she watched. Jim seemed to be cheerful, but Alexander just appeared to be
annoyed. He couldn't possibly like her—Jim had to be wrong.

She reluctantly pulled herself away
from the window and walked in slow, aimless circuits around her room, looking
at everything without really seeing any of it. As if she could sense his
presence, she knew Alexander would stay there all night. That knowledge
comforted her to an extent. Surely she was safe—but hadn’t she been assured of
her safety this morning? That fact kept the nervous energy kindled in her
blood, coursing through her veins.