Rapture (Elfin Series) (27 page)

Finally, she managed to voluntarily move her arms and pushed her hair back from her face.  Still unsteady on her feet, she looked over her shoulder and raised big brown eyes to my face.  They were dilated still, but seemed a little clearer.  She stared into my eyes as she spoke once more, “Are you safe?” 

I couldn’t pretend I didn’t know what she was asking, as I looked into those eyes and saw the tears stream down her pale face.  Her voice was shaky, and the small hand that held the hair back from her face was trembling. 

Although I could tell she was standing a bit straighter, I was still supporting most of her weight.  Sighing, I resigned myself to the trouble I was about to get myself into. 

“Yes, Skye.” I leaned down, holding her eyes with my own. “I promise you, I am safe.” 

She gasped as she heard my answer, and to my astonishment, immediately broke into loud sobs as she crumpled into my chest.  I sank down to the tile floor and held her close to my chest as she cried. 

The steaming hot water of the shower pulsed down on us and washed her tears down the drain, along with the last of my resolve to stay away from her.

ONE - MY REALITY

Skye

I woke up to the same cold, empty loneliness I’d been waking up to for years.  As I slowly opened my eyes, I stretched a bit to test how severe my inevitable hangover was.  Tentatively I turned my head, and my whole body protested the small movement.  Even my eyeballs hurt as I rolled to my side and pulled the comforter up and over my head. 

My fingers registered the foreign soft texture of the blankets before my head did, and my eyes flew open as I took in the clean scent of the sheets.  I sat up as quickly as I could without getting sick and looked around at my surroundings. “What the…?”

I was lying in a large bed with a fluffy white comforter - a far cry from the usual scratchy blanketed twin bed I was used to - in what was probably the nicest hotel room I’d ever seen.  And I was alone.

“Hello?” I called out vaguely remembering my savior from the night before.  I looked down and cringed when I realized I was dressed only in my bra and panties, and again I wished I could remember what had transpired the evening before.

Sighing, I brought my knees to my chest and took deep breaths as a wave of nausea washed over me.  I tried to recall who had helped me last night and what I’d done.  I knew I’d gone to a party with my friend Janelle and her boyfriend Rex, and had then proceeded to drink away my sorrow and fears. 

It was a crazy party with a lot of drugs, a lot of alcohol and a lot of guys groping the goods.  I racked my brain as I tried to recall who I’d hooked up with, which would have led to me being in a hotel room partially undressed.  The situation was not something that was ‘par for the course’ for me.  Typically I just drank myself into oblivion and then ended up back at the house, courtesy of Janelle and Rex.  Hookups were not my thing; they took at least a small amount of trust, and trust was just something I didn’t do. 

Looking around again, my mind took in my surroundings.  I surmised that I must have been in one of the nicer hotels in the uptown area.  It was certainly not a ‘by the hour’ type of establishment. 

“Nope,” I told myself, “this was not a random hookup with any of the normal losers.  No one I know could afford this place.” 

Feeling somewhat better on that front, I sank back into the comfy blankets and closed my eyes again.  As exhausted as I was, I couldn’t fall back asleep.  My mind kept playing one thing from the previous night back to me, much like a scratched CD that skipped over and over.

“I promise you, I am safe.”  I contemplated those six words as a tear slid down my cheek.

At seventeen years old, I couldn’t remember a time when I did feel safe. As I lay snuggled up in bed, I allowed the thoughts I usually tucked away to invade my head. 

Sometime right before my eighth birthday, my family was killed and I was placed into protective care.  When the police found me hiding in the bushes at a park a few streets away from my childhood home, I had no memory of the event.  Although I’d been almost eight when it happened, I couldn’t recall my relationship with my parents, or even what they looked like.  The psychiatrists I met with chalked it up to post traumatic stress disorder. As the years went on, still nothing came back to me, and I had no one around to remind me of what I’d lost.  There were no pictures, no friends; it was as if they’d never existed.  As if I’d come from nowhere. 

Through the years I was told nobody wanted to adopt me because the events of my parents’ deaths had been so gruesome.  It was as if everyone was scared of me, as if I were cursed. .  So I ended up living in group homes and the occasional psych ward for the next eight years.  These homes ranged from somewhat pleasant to downright horrifying depending on who was running it, and I learned quickly to keep my head down and do what I was told. 

As a young child I never understood why other kids were adopted out and nobody wanted me.   The police who found me the night of my parent’s deaths would visit me occasionally and tell me to stay strong and how one day I would live a normal life.  They were sweet to check up on me so often but they would never give me any information about that night.  So I was a good girl and did what I was told to do.  I stayed strong and waited for the day when I would have a new life.

I made very few friends throughout the years in my group homes, because most kids who came in were either quickly picked up for fostering or were claimed by unknown relatives eager to raise their loved one’s child.  I met Janelle two years ago when her single mother had died of an OD, and she’d been placed into care because nobody wanted to claim her.  Janelle said she had relatives who lived across the country, but her mother had run away as a teen and cut ties with them. She told me she was all too happy to spend the next year in a group home, because it was a much cleaner environment than what she’d been used to growing up. 

Janelle was good at being tough. With her stick straight, dirty blonde hair and waifish-thin figure she already looked like a street urchin, and at seventeen she was the only other teen in the home.  We were put on yard duty together when she’d first arrived, and after raking leaves together in silence for an hour she finally started to ask me questions about myself and the home.  We raked and bagged leaves the entire afternoon and discussed school and boys, friends and enemies and plans for our futures.  She was the first friend I could ever recall having, and I was in awe of her.  Although only a little more than a year older than me, she was worlds ahead of me in street knowledge.  Before Janelle, I’d always kept myself wrapped in a tight ball, never speaking to others and only coming and going from the home, to school, and back. 

Janelle snuck me out to my first party, gave me my first drink, and introduced me to her friends - most of whom were several years older and wiser than she was.  If she was sad about losing her mom, she never really mentioned it.  She did stay away from drugs, and was very angry the one time I took a hit off of some stoner’s weed.  That night was the first time I’d seen the red glowing eyes, so I was all too happy to steer clear of drugs after that little episode. 

When Janelle turned 18 a year ago, she was released into the “free” world to live her life. She started shacking up with Rex, her much older and somewhat-sketchy boyfriend.  She stopped by a couple times a week to visit me, and kept asking me to come live with them…so one day a few weeks after my 17
th
birthday, I walked out of the group home and didn’t go back.  Nobody even looked for me.  I’m pretty sure if I were to be picked up by the police they would run a check and send me back, but typically the cops ignored me.  That was six months ago. 

When I first left I tried to keep up with school, but late nights of partying with Janelle quickly led to indisposed mornings leaned over a toilet or sleeping off a hangover. 

Lying here in this hotel room, shame began to wash over me with thoughts of what I’d become: a virtually homeless, high school dropout who had a pretty severe addiction to drinking. 

This is the reality of my life. 

I rolled onto my stomach and pulled a soft plump pillow over my head, as more tears began to stream down my face.

Xander

I was amazed I could actually hear her crying before I made it back to the room.  The night before, after she’d collapsed into my arms in the shower, I held her until the water turned too cold to bear.  She’d been pretty much unaware of anything by that point, so I wrapped her in a towel and carried her to the bed. 

It took all of my self-discipline to strip the sexy jeans from her body and put her under the covers.  She’d grown up to be so beautiful – a porcelain doll, with flowing locks of chestnut hair and pale skin just like her parents.  She’d been beautiful as a child too. 

I could remember her sweet laugh on the days when we would run around and play tag, and she would yell at me to give her piggy back rides.  I’d been watching her for almost two years from afar.  It was all I was allowed to do; watch from afar.  No speaking, no touching… nothing but just watching.  She wasn’t allowed to know about me until it was time.  

I watched silently as she found herself tumbling deeper and deeper into the party scene her friends so enjoyed.  At first it seemed like typical teen fun, but more and more she seemed to be on a mission to see how quickly she could find oblivion. 

When she first left the group home to live with her friend I was concerned, and tried to talk Rioden into picking her up and bringing her home.  He wouldn’t hear of it.  He said she would be safer away from us until her eighteenth birthday, when any magic covering her would be washed away.  He refused to see the danger she was to herself, so I stepped up my surveillance of her; sometimes only sleeping a few hours during the day so I wouldn’t miss her movements.    

Several times in the last few months I’d been forced to step in and save her from an unknown threat.  At one party, some weasel with his shaggy hair and leather jacket started to make the moves on her, and she’d been so wasted she couldn’t fend him off.  What had started out as a drunken make-out session quickly turned into him trying to get in her pants, and she’d only been able to offer mild resistance.  The weasel had been pretty messed up himself, so I was able to quickly knock him over the head and thwart his attempt. I left them both laying there and watched as Skye’s friend Janelle found her; calling to Rex to pick Skye up and carry her to the car. 

I had to give Janelle credit - she took care of Skye - when she wasn’t completely wasted herself.  Last night though, was a
bad
night.  I’d watched from afar as Skye did shot after shot of some purple-looking drink.  The same shaggy-haired weasel was there again, with his arm slung over her shoulders, handing her a new drink each time she downed the one before it. 

As I watched her through the large crowd, I saw her suddenly stiffen and lower the drink from her lips.  The weasel was whispering in her ear and trying to raise her hand to get her to drink, but Skye’s eyes were wide as saucers; she seemed to be staring at something out across the eastern corner of the back yard.  Fear was etched all over her lovely face, and it was that terror which made my own senses heighten to the point where I became aware of a menacing presence. 
Something
was lurking in the shadows and it was coming from the east, where Skye was staring. 

Bound by oath, I stalked the predator who seemed to be watching Skye, all the while worried about what she would do once I was no longer keeping an eye on her.  When I returned to the party an hour later, Skye was nowhere to be found.  Panic gripped me until I saw the same weasel working on a different unsuspecting female. However, as quickly as the fear had eased once I realized Skye was not the object of his attentions, it boiled back to life when I saw Janelle was still there. 

I worked my way around the house, quickly expanding the perimeter as I went, searching for any clues as to where she’d gone off to.  I was relieved when I found a plastic shot cup like the one she’d been drinking out of, about one hundred feet into the woods to the west of the house.  I scanned the area, using my enhanced hearing and eyesight to look for her, and hoped she’d wandered off into the woods before passing out.

It took about thirty minutes before I finally found her. Skye had passed out completely; she lay face down on the ground, close to a creek.  She’d obviously run through the creek, as her shoes and the lower portion of her pants were soaked. Her body shook from the cold, early November air, and she wore only wet jeans and a small shirt.

Watching her lying on the ground, curled in a ball and shaking, I couldn’t stand it anymore. I decided I had to help her.  There was no way Janelle would search this far in the dark woods to find her, and there were definitely worse things in these parts than the shaggy-haired weasel.

I took her back to my hotel room, got her cleaned up and in bed, and then sat in the chair next to her and watched her sleep.  I came to terms with the fact that by going against Rioden’s plans, the anger he’d unleash on me would be awful.  He would tell me I’d put her at an unnecessary risk, but I could finally argue against his points.  The demon I’d chased and killed last night before proved my case.  She was already at risk and without immediate Guardian help, she would prob
ably be gone within a week.