Purpose (32 page)

Tristan’s eyes burst into flames. He
growled—a terrifying, heart-stopping resonance—and crouched as if
preparing to lunge.

And Owen flew across the kitchen.

“
Tristan! NO!
” he roared.

“Julia, go!” Rina ordered and the strange
woman disappeared.

My vision grayed out as I collapsed to the
floor.

The next thing I knew, Mom and Rina carried
me into the back bedroom, to the only surviving bed. Their hands
felt like iced braces as they held me tightly because I writhed
uncontrollably. They lay me on the bed and my back arched against
the hard, scraping sensation of the sheets and my clothes.

“
Mom, what’s happening
?” I screamed,
the sound deafening to my own ears.

“It’s okay, honey, it’s okay,” she
soothed.

Rina placed her hands on me, one on the
burning Amadis mark and one on my forehead, and closed her eyes. I
felt her energy flow into me and it calmed my nerves enough so I
could lie still on the bed. The Amadis mark still felt white-hot,
blistering and sending throbbing heat throughout my body. Mom took
my hand and I gripped hers tightly.

“It’s happening so fast,” Mom said to Rina,
unusual concern filling her voice.

“She can handle it.” Rina remained calm as
she kept her hands on me. “We just need to keep her temperature
moderated. We need some ice.”

Mom pulled away from me.

“Don’t leave me!” I cried.

“I’ll be right back, honey.”

She returned in a second with towels, ice and
water. She slipped an ice cube into my mouth and rubbed water on my
face with her hand. The cold on my skin and in my mouth contrasted
sharply with the heat in the rest of my body, making me shudder.
She placed a cool, wet towel over my forehead and eyes. It was
comforting.

I slipped in and out of consciousness. Every
time I blacked out, the ice-man’s face watched me again, and every
time I came to, Mom and Rina sat right by my side, their hands
directly on my skin. I felt new energy flowing through every cell
of my body, twisting and turning and swirling through my veins and
nerves.

“Something’s terribly wrong,” Mom said to
Rina one time when I came to. She sounded anxious, but relatively
calm considering the statement. She looked at me, saw my eyes open
and didn’t say anything more. I blacked out again.

“Where’s Tristan?” I asked another time.

“He’s with Owen, honey,” Mom said.

“Why isn’t he here? I
need
him.” I
blacked out again before hearing her answer.

“Mom?”

“I’m here, honey,” she answered.

“Tristan?”

“He can’t be here,” she said. “I’m sorry,
honey.”

I struggled against something holding me to
the bed. I couldn’t feel any straps or bindings, but I couldn’t
move either. I thought maybe the dead weight of my own body held me
down.

“Did he
leave
again?” I asked.

She didn’t answer me for a long moment. “No,
honey, not exactly.”

What does
that
mean?
I didn’t
have a chance to ask, though. I slipped out of consciousness
again.

“I think I’ve got him contained for now, but
I don’t know how long it’ll hold,” Owen said from the doorway
another time.

“Who? What’s going on?” I asked. Panic rose
in my mind. I heard the bedroom door close.

Mom’s face moved over me. “Shh. Nothing for
you to worry about.”

“How are you feeling, Alexis?” Rina
asked.

“I don’t know. Scared.” I tried to take an
assessment, but I couldn’t feel much. Every part of me just felt
heavy and deadened, like my body had died but forgot to tell my
brain. “Kind of numb, actually.”

“Do you feel hot or cold?”

“No, nothing. Nothing at all. Am I okay? I
feel almost
dead
.”

I could hear and talk and see, and I could
sense
something was wrong. It seemed as though I had no
sense of touch anymore, no feeling. I consciously focused on trying
to lift my hand but if it even twitched, I felt nothing.
Am I
paralyzed?
I wondered if and how such a thing could have
happened.

“I think your body is just resting, preparing
for the next wave,” Rina said.

I blacked out again.

When I came to, I first noticed the variety
of intense smells. Freesia, lemon and vanilla first. Mom’s natural
scent. Then orange blossoms and fresh rain. Rina. From farther away
came pine and sea air—Owen. And then mangos, papayas, lime and
sage. I smiled inside, knowing Tristan was still here. The smells
of coconuts, salt water and stale sex also lingered on the air.

Next, I noticed all the sounds. The blood and
energy pounding and whirring through my head came loudest. I could
hear the whispers of fabric rubbing against itself and two
heartbeats, besides my own, in the room. From the background came a
low, rumbling growl, like a faraway train, and heavy breathing from
somewhere else. And from even farther away, I could hear the waves
on the beach.

I briefly opened my eyes. The dim light in
the room made me think it was day time and the shades were drawn.
Then it became painfully bright, as if a strobe light hit my face.
For one surreal moment, I thought someone had taken a picture with
a flash to commemorate this horror I suffered. I squeezed my eyes
shut. The reverse images of Mom and Rina’s heads glowed on the
backs of my eyelids.

The sense of touch and feeling came last. My
skin burned, everything against it feeling arctic, even the air. I
felt each thread of wet terrycloth and each droplet of cold water
on my arms, around my neck, across my face and forehead as Mom
sponged me. Rina’s hands felt like blocks of ice on my chest. Her
breath felt cool on my face.

The energy traveling through my body earlier
began to build and separate at the same time. My muscles felt on
fire and the nerves twitched under my skin. Electricity charged
through my veins, currents jumping from cell to cell. The gradual
coming on of my senses escalated to a high crescendo,
everything—the smells, the sounds, the touches—intensifying to an
unbearable level. My ears rang and throbbed. My heart pounded. My
breathing became shallow. My body trembled from the onslaught.

“Something’s happening,” I gasped.

Every single muscle, every tissue fiber
tensed at once, pulling at each other in opposite directions. My
body convulsed, every muscle pulled taut. Lightning shot through my
veins and I felt as though I was being electrocuted from
within.

An angry, moaning sound ripped through the
room. It came from me.

Rina’s icy hands pressed harder and I thought
my skin would freeze and crack under them.

Then I felt the two streams of power—fire and
ice—flow up through my limbs and course through my body, both
rushing to my chest. Two angry rivers raging toward each other.
Agonizing pain exploded through my chest cavity as the two
energetic powers crashed against each other. I screamed with the
pain. My back arched uncontrollably, throwing Rina back. The two
forces twisted and pushed at each other, tearing through my lungs,
ribs and muscles as if splintering them into pieces. A warmth
surrounded my heart, like a shield, while the energies clashed
ferociously. The Amadis mark seared and blistered painfully.

“Oh, my God, it hurts so much,” I cried.
“Make it stop!”

“What’s happening?” Mom gasped.

“It seems the two forces are battling,” Rina
answered. She sounded like she stood at the other end of a long
tunnel. “We have to let this happen. There is nothing we can
do.”

And then the bedroom vanished.

Perhaps I passed out again. I didn’t know
what happened. I just knew I was no longer there. Not in mind and
spirit anyway.

I felt a sense of both familiarity and
disorientation at my new surroundings.
Where am I?
I sat up
and found myself in that strange meadow again, surrounded by
mountains, and the lake in front of me. But the place looked and
felt different once again. Not a warm, happy place, nor
steel-blue-gray and desolate. I slowly rose to my feet as I focused
on the tree with the constantly falling leaves.

But only half of it possessed actual leaves.
Golden petals filled the branches on the right. They sparkled and
glinted as some fluttered to the ground. The branches on the left
half, however, were barren of any leaves, any life. Instead, that
half looked as if an ice storm had come through, wrapping every
branch and twig in a coating of crystal. Snowflakes floated to the
ground, as if falling from those branches.

My vision pulled out and I realized I aligned
perfectly with the center line splitting the tree between ice and
gold. And I realized the whole world was split in half. To my
right, the tall grass waved in a warm breeze that caressed my right
leg, right arm, right half of my face. Green pines covered the
mountain and the sun shone in the sky, reflecting off the lake.
Flowers bloomed and turned their faces toward the sun. Birds
chirped from their hiding places in the tree branches and I heard
soft footsteps of wildlife on the forest floor.

To my left, snow blanketed the field and the
trees on the side of the mountain. The left side of the lake had
the pseudo-transparent look of water frozen solid. A lone white
wolf sat near the base of the tree, watching me carefully, though I
didn’t feel afraid and it didn’t look concerned. The left half of
my own body felt cold, but not uncomfortable. In fact, there was
nothing chilling at all about any of the scene. It was a beautiful,
wintry landscape, just as lovely as the other side, but in a
different way.

I considered the strangeness of my
environment.
How did I get here? What am I doing here?

“You need to decide,” said a familiar,
accented voice. Unlike last time, when it had sounded flat, it now
resonated across the field like soothing music. I peered to my
right and saw Rina and Mom standing far off, near the base of the
mountain.

“Decide what?” I asked. I didn’t yell, not
feeling the need to, although they were several hundred yards away.
I somehow knew they would hear me even if I whispered.

“Which way you want to go,” said another
voice, this one unfamiliar. A male voice with a different kind of
accent. With surprise, my head twisted to my left. A man, perhaps
in his late twenties, stood almost directly across from Mom and
Rina, at the base of his mountain. His hair and goatee were
snow-white and his eyes ice-blue, the same face I’d seen earlier in
my mind. But now it came attached to a body, clothed in black
slacks and a tight-fitting black shirt that emphasized his powerful
build. He smiled, but his teeth now looked bright but normal, not
icicles as I’d imagined. In fact, the beauty of his smile stunned
me. “You can come with us….”

“Or with us,” Mom said from the other
side.

“Well, that’s a no-brainer,” I muttered. I
took a step to the right, toward Mom and Rina. As if in response,
the warm, yellow tone of the right side shifted more to the left,
taking over part of the winter scene…increasing its area.

“Such a quick decision for an intelligent
person such as yourself, Alexis,” the man said, halting me in
mid-stride as I started to take another step. “There is much for
you over here, too. Isn’t it beautiful?”

He swept his hand through the air and the
snow sparkled as if he’d just scattered diamonds over it. I shifted
my weight and when my foot finally came down, it landed back to the
left. The wintry side regained the ground it had lost from my first
step.

“You can rule the world,” the man said. He
waved his hand again and, like the slideshow of my earlier dreams,
pictures hung in the air between him and me, but these were
different—pictures of palaces and wealth and servants catering to
me…and to Tristan and Dorian. I moved another step toward that side
to get a better look. The scenes changed to even more people
following us, worshipping us, then to Tristan and me standing at
the top of stone steps, waving at a crowd of people that stretched
farther than the eye could see.

“Power or love, Alexis?” Rina called from the
other side. I turned toward her and Mom. They waved their hands and
more pictures hung in the air, of Dorian and Tristan, of Mom, Rina
and Owen. They moved their hands again and warmth flowed over me.
Again, the decision came easy. I had little use for power, but I
needed love. I took several steps in their direction.

“You can have it all over here,” the man
called out. “Power, love, wealth…everything you ever wanted.
Everything.”

I glanced over there, his side much smaller
now after the steps I’d taken to the right.

“Lies, Alexis,” Rina said. “Remember that
they deceive. They do not know love.”

The man shrugged. “But isn’t this what you
want?”

More pictures appeared, all filled with
Tristan, Dorian and me, involved in different activities, all of us
looking blissfully happy.

“Only with us can you all be together, can
you have it all,” the man said. “Otherwise, you lose.”

He snapped his hand back, as if snatching
something from the air. A small boy suddenly appeared in the crook
of his left arm. Dorian.

“No!” I started running toward them, feeling
the cold side taking over the warmth, creeping closer to Mom and
Rina. Every step pushed a ripple of frozen ground into their space,
like a loose carpet being pushed back with the force of my feet.
But I didn’t care. He had my son.

“Dorian is safe, Alexis!” Mom yelled. “He’s
with us. He’s safe. Don’t believe their deception.”

“They lie, too, Alexis,” the man said. “They
can’t give you everything you want.”

“We give life and love,” Rina countered.

“We give power and wealth and everything the
heart desires,” the man said.