Labyrinth of White - The Moon Trilogy - Book #1

Chapter eight:

Rachel looked over at Clarity. She was sitting in a chair, her eyes closed, still smiling from the slight laugh a few seconds before.

Rachel looked at Alex. He was extremely pale, the bloody bruise on his lip and cheek were showing more clearly against his ghost-white skin. She had really hit him hard. She hadn't been thinking. She had only wanted to protect Clarity. It had only been a couple days and already, she owed so much to Clarity.

Rachel was almost positive that Alex had come for her.

There had been offers in the past, research facilities wanting to study her, military bases wanting to utilize her super-human strength. Stuff like that. Of course she had turned them all down. She had no desire to be poked and prodded with needles. The Organization was probably something like this. Looking to study her.

She shuddered at the thought. She had always hated needles. Knives too.

Alex's breath was coming in rough jagged spasms. Hopefully he was okay. Otherwise they would never find out what all of this was about. Rachel reached under the bed where she had left her bag. Because of the scuffling about earlier, it took a while to find, but she finally pulled in out. She opened it and reached inside. There were several bottles, some of which even she didn't know the purpose for. The bag wasn't actually hers, because she had stolen it. She just knew that it contained some pretty handy little drugs that really came in handy quite often.

She pulled out one of the bottles. It wasn't the one that she was looking for. She put it back and pulled out another. It had an oil-like, dark greyish liquid in it. This was the one. She opened it and a hiss of pressurized air escaped. It had been a while since she'd used that bottle. She pulled a small wad of cloth out of the bag and walked over to Alex.

"What are you doing?" it was Clarity. She had watched Rachel administer a similar treatment from the bag of tricks for Mrs. Aspen, but Rachel had never explained why.

"This will help with the swelling." She said, putting the cloth to the opening of the bottle and briefly tipping it over to get some liquid on the cloth. She dabbed gently at the split lip and the nasty bruise until she was sure that enough of the stuff had gotten on the wounds for it to be effective.

She finished and put the stuff back in her bag. The bottle gently clinked against the others. In a few moments, she was again sitting on the floor, leaning against Clarity's dresser. The spot couldn't be the best one in the room, but it wasn't too bad. And Rachel had no intention of fixing something that wasn't broke.

"What if your mom comes up and sees Alex?" Rachel asked. "We'd have to tell her everything that happened, and I don't know if she'll be able to handle another shock like that." The thought came to her suddenly, and she realized that it was a pretty big problem.

"I'm not sure. I guess we'll just have to hope that my mom doesn't come up." Clarity replied.

"And what would happen if the organization sent more people?" Rachel voiced her worries. "Alex was just one person. If they sent a whole team, we wouldn't stand a chance."

"We don't know anything for sure. We'll just have to hope for the best, and if worse comes to worse, we'll just have to try our hardest to survive." Clarity sounded tired. When Rachel didn't say anything, Clarity closed her eyes again. A heavy silence fell over the room. Rachel found her thoughts wandering. She thought of how she had lied to Clarity about her age. She was actually a lot older than she had said. Closer to 100 than 19, if she could remember right. For all she knew, she was even older than that. She had been surprised that Clarity hadn't caught on right away. She seemed to know quite a bit about the old legends of vampires and the like, and most of them said vampires lived for a very long time.