Shadow Land

Waking Up in a Dark Alley

“How does he do things like that?!” Damien yelled, punching the wall in anger.

Darrel and Alycia cringed back, scared of what he would to.

Damien turned his mad man glare on Darrel who carefully searched for a weapon to protect himself with.

“How could you have let him escape like that? I thought you said that nobody could escape your gift!”Damien screamed.

“I…I…N-Nobody should be able to…”Darrel stuttered.

“And you!” Damien yelled, turning on Alycia who resisted the urge to turn into the light leopard out of fear, “I thought I told you to watch him! To make sure that he couldn’t possible escape our grasp! What part of covert controlling did you not understand?”

“I…” She started.

Damien was not ready to stop his rant, “Now he’s running off doing God knows what and we have no idea where he is! What’s to stop him from joining Miranda?”

Alycia breathed deeply to clam herself, “Sir, I know for a fact that he doesn’t know about her. Relax, we can still catch him before he leaves the town.”

Damien stopped his rant and stared absentmindedly at the wall, “Yes, we can. Darrel, get as many people as you can to set up a perimeter. And then I want you, Alycia, and a few other to patrol the streets to see if you can capture him”

Darrel straightened up, “Yes sir.”

Alycia sighed slightly, straightening up a little and grudgingly saluting, “Yes sir.”

Jessica sat up and immediately groaned, her hand pressed against her head. She had had migraines before but nothing like this. Her head actually throbbednot in the in-time-with-your-blood sort of way, but she could actually feel her brain hitting her skull to a tune. And her vision was throbbing with it, zooming in and out of the wall in front of her.

Wait, wall? She stared at the bricks, realizing that she had nothing like that in her bedroom. Where was she? The last thing she remembered was the party at her house. But that was night and now everything was the dull gray of morning.

On the other side of the alley way, Alexander groaned, carefully pulling himself into sitting position. Jessica stared at him. She could hearhis heart beat! And it was pretty faint, too, but slowly getting stronger. She could see every detail, every individual hair on his head; even the fibers of his shirt were completely visible to her.

But it was the heart beat she was focused on. It was so enticing, so rich, and so pure. It was the key to something wonderful that she had to have. Forgetting all previous pain, Jessica gracefully stood up. It wasn’t really standing as gently gliding upright.

She felt a stinging pain in her mouth as she neared the crumpled figure on the ground, licking her lips and a dreamy look in her eye.

“No!” Alexander cried when he saw her, throwing his hands over his head even though he knew it wouldn’t matter,“Don’t! You bite me and we both go up in flames!”

Jessica stopped and stared at him, her eyes slowly focusing on where she was again, “What? I wasn’t going to bite you! I’m not into that sort of thing.”

Alexander lowered his arms and leaned his head against the wall, sighing. Jessica stared at his exposed neck; she was able to see the infinitesimal movement of his skin that indicated his heart beat in his jugular.

“Omigod!” She cried, her hand covering her mouth as she stumbled back to the other wall and fell back down to the ground, “I was! I wanted to bite you and…What’s wrong with me?”