6
PACIFIC
It was dusk on Wednesday evening when I left the city walls and approached my car at the lodge. My family had thought it ridiculous that I was going to drive to California. They thought it was a waste of time, but I insisted that I would need a dependable form of transportation that was human-appropriate once I arrived to face this strange kin.
As I drove, I thought what a strange thing it was for my family to know where I was again. They knew where I was headed and that I was coming back to them. They could call my cell phone! Much had changed in the last seventy-two hours.
I was fixating on the elders' underwhelmed reaction to Mark Winter's existence. Either they had been lying to us, and they knew all along there were others out there, or they had realized it was a plausible truth. But they certainly hadn't been surprised when I told them what I had seen. They weren't afraid of him either. They sent me to this creature apparently without concern. Perhaps he was not the threat I imagined.
But as my tires rolled to a stop in Monterey, California, on Thursday afternoon, I thought, They sent me. What if they saw the danger this strange young man presented, and instead of risking a member of the family they cared about, they sent me because I was expendable? Maybe they were hoping to send me away forever. Maybe I was sitting at a stop light off the Pacific Coast Highway in California, about to face something they hadn't wanted anyone else to face. Maybe this was the end I had been seeking.
Realizing how close I was to Mark Winter, alone and possibly vulnerable, my thoughts began to race, my nerves surfacing. What was I driving toward?
As I rolled through the intersection in heavy traffic, I tried to calm myself down and focus. Though I didn't know the limitations of my ever-developing powers, I did know that the more emotional I was, the harder it was to use them. I needed to be calm for this meeting. That was easier said than done.
I had focused on only two things in my life outside the city walls: learning to pass for a human and finding a way to destroy my kind. The latter had always meant more to me. I had traveled, searched through academic and historical documents, stalked caves and pyramids and ruins in an attempt to find art or language that spoke of the mythological creatures of that particular culture, all to answer one question: How could you kill them?
How did the Australian Aborigines believe the Mokoi could be destroyed? Did the Romanians believe wooden stakes and holy water could kill their vampires? Could werewolves really be killed with a silver bullet through the heart? Did it only take finding the right spot on Achilles' body to kill him? Did the Mayans and Aztecs believe that dismemberment would kill anyone or anything? Did the heart have to burn, or did it have to be eaten? Could modern day tales, pulled from the pages of Twilight or Harry Potter, have truth in them? Were the witches in Salem actually witches, and were they really killed by hanging?
This is all I wanted to know-how we could be destroyed. So why, as I weaved through the streets of Monterey into Pacific Grove and a greying fog, was I afraid for my life? I had been on a highbrow suicide mission for three years, never explicitly trying to kill myself, but testing theories with enough fervor that I had grisly scars all over my body, and covering my arms-something no other Survivor could claim. Why, then, was I afraid to die at the hands of this other? I had always sought mortality.
I stopped at the far end of Lighthouse Avenue, Pacific Grove's main street, and realized that I wasn't afraid of dying. I was afraid for my life. There was quite a distinction.
Realistically, this other wouldn't be able to kill me. But he could torture me, and though I never knew instances of other Survivors having felt pain, I knew I certainly could. I had felt it with every wound-self-inflicted and otherwise-that had left a scar. And he could capture me. And, if he did, I would lose my freedom, the very thing I cherished above all else. It was the threat of losing my freedom that was the final straw that made me leave my family, the reason I allowed myself to go at all. I understood, now, that this stupid boy could ruin my life. He could wave his hand casually and set me on fire, leave me hanging and bound, midair. He could create a literal hell for me, and I'd have no idea how to stop him.
I could sense his presence so strongly that it sounded like a fire truck siren was blaring inside my car, the same strangely-pitched humming I had heard with my family. Only it was louder.
He wasn't alone.
I sighed. I suppose it had been foolish of me to imagine that he would be. I had had romantic visions of him as a wanderer, of someone who had run from his family or had no family at all. I had thought him to be like me. But I was all wrong. He wasn't alone at all, and, so, he wasn't like me.
I followed the road that hugged the coast, passing the Asilomar Beach, and eventually turned left on one of the small streets that went inland. A beautiful home, large and elegant, sat on the crest of a rise overlooking the ocean, and I knew instantly that it was his-or that it was theirs. I pulled my car to the side of the road across from the house. I would walk up the long driveway.
The buzzing had become more pronounced. I sensed they were feeling anticipation. There was some hostility, too, and some fear, but mostly ambivalence. They didn't know what to think. The most important was the anticipation: It meant they had seen me coming, and so at least one of them could track in the special way I could or possibly even see the future. Maybe both.
I sat there for a few minutes trying to get my head clear and work up the guts to go in. I closed my eyes and hunched over, resting my head against the steering wheel. Behind me, I heard a car and a crescendo of the off-key buzzing. I sat up just in time to see a sleek onyx Maserati Gran Turismo S turn into the driveway of the house.
The driver's door swung open. A stiff, black Gucci boot was set firmly on the ground, and then another. Then he emerged from the car.
He was taller than Mark or me, and his shoulders were broader. His hair was a deep chocolate color and blew messily in the sea air. He smoothed it out of his face and slung the door closed behind him.
I had never seen anyone like him. He was easily more beautiful than I was, his skin a paler, creamy, aged ivory color. Its texture was like velvet. He turned his head in my direction, looking directly at me for only a split second. The movement was odd and so fast that it was obviously inhuman, but whatever he saw looking at me or my car incited a reaction in him. Of course, looking at him was inciting a reaction in me, too. Something I couldn't read flashed in his eyes, which made me nervous. Was that hate? Fear? Attraction? He quickly made his way into the house, spinning his car keys on his finger the whole way, and never looking back at me.
I couldn't stall any longer. I got out of my car.
I turned to the ocean. If I had a running start, I could jump into it from where I was.
Instead, I smoothed my skirt and tugged at my jacket sleeves to make sure they covered my arms, tucked my hair behind my ears, and went up the drive past the black Maserati and a glistening cypress green Bentley convertible and up to the glass faáade of the long house. My breathing was shallow, and I tried in vain to slow it. I wanted to present a calm front. As I broached the front steps, I looked down one last time. Deep breath. I raised my hand to the doorbell, but before I could press it, the door opened.
Mark Winter stood before me in that same roughed-up motorcycle jacket-Burberry Prorsum, I now recognized-he wore in Nashville. I realized it was something of a signature. "You can't take a warning, can you?" he said with a sigh and with far less hostility than he'd shown before. There was a hint of sarcasm in his voice-he was talking like we were friends, almost joking. And, suddenly, I couldn't remember what I had been afraid of.
But I quickly turned to the creature standing next to him, the driver of the Maserati I'd seen only minutes before. Up close, I could see he had golden-green eyes. They met mine and transfixed me. His arms were crossed on his chest-likely a deterring signal to me, but I ignored it. He cocked his head to the side to look at me and grinned deviously. I couldn't tell at all what he was feeling, but I didn't care. I just liked what I was feeling.
My breathing sped up, and I'm sure he could tell. I never even blinked; I would not miss a moment of looking at this face. As several moments of silence passed, he raised one thick eyebrow at me, making his whole face crease endearingly. A few loose strands of hair fell forward into his eyes, and he slicked them back. I smiled at him, hypnotized.
Mark sighed. "If we could get back to this," he said, waving his hand between the two of us, "at a later time, that would be excellent." I finally broke the gaze. Get back to what? I wondered.
"Are you coming?" a female voice called from inside.
"Yes," Mark answered, spinning on his heels. "By the way, Sadie, this is my brother, Everett. Everett, Sadie." Everett parted his thin, peony lips as if to speak but closed them and turned to walk inside.