Rouge (6 page)

Joshua didn’t know how it
happened, but somehow his hands started to freeze in temperature. He met Liz’s
droopy eyes and there was the smallest of frowns on her face. He whispered
words of comfort to her and put his hand on her forehead. Liz let out a breath
of release at his touch.

“You need to push,
Elizabeth!” the doctor urged.

Her screams of agony made
Joshua sob. He stood beside her and watched, hating himself for not being able
to take her pain, wishing he were a doctor or a magician so he could make it
all disappear.

“Promise me… you’ll look
after… my baby Joshua,” Liz heaved. Her grip was so tight that Joshua’s hand
was tingling. “Give her… this.” She placed in his hands a necklace crafted from
volcanic minerals. Liz made it a few months ago, molding the tiny metal shape
into the Chinese symbol for fire.

He nodded, clenching his
teeth together. He looked at the doctor, who gazed sadly back. Liz was either
succumbing to the drugs, or…

“Lizzie, please!”

“Mr. Harrison, the baby is
crowning,” said the doctor.

“I don’t care!” he screamed,
throwing his hand down on the tray of instruments so they scattered across the
floor. One of the nurses jumped back in surprise. “I don’t care!”

An anger of such strong
proportions surged through him and he was afraid he might do something crazy,
but Liz squeezed his hand and caught his gaze. The fear was suddenly flushed
away like water down a drain.

“Joshua, please.” Her eyes
were, in a single moment, more piercing than the light of the sun. They were
alight with a glorious blaze, a fire so bright that he was momentarily stunned.
“Love her,” she said. “Love her for me.”

Without waiting for a reply,
Liz arched her back and clenched her teeth as she pushed with all her might.
Her eyes were rolling around in her head, her face pale like snow. The
screaming was so loud that Joshua had to look away. That’s when he saw the
puddle of blood on the floor at his feet. It surrounded them. The nurses were
almost slipping on it.
So much blood…

And then he heard it. The
most beautiful sound in the world.

The baby was crying.

“You did it Liz,” Joshua
beamed. “You did it! Hang in there!”

“It’s a girl,” someone said.

A girl.

The baby was carried away
and the doctors began to fuss over the blood on the floor. They started
injecting Liz with other chemicals, but her eyes were drooping shut.

“What’s happening?” he
screamed at the doctor.

The pale, frightened look on
all their faces was enough to answer his question.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Harrison-”

“No,” he growled in a deep,
terrifying voice. “Not good enough.” Joshua curled his fist, rage consuming
him, until Liz brought him back in her soft, lifeless voice.

“Joshua…” It was barely a
breath. She managed to roll her head and meet Joshua’s eyes. She even managed
to smile.

“Protect her… Joshua.
Protect my Hunter.”

Joshua held onto Liz,
ignoring the finality in her tone. He refused to believe what he knew was about
to happen.
The doctors will heal her, they’ll make it all okay.

“I promise,” he muttered,
tears spilling from his eyes. “Liz, I p-promise.”

“Thank you…”

Her hand slipped from his. A
long lock of red hair fell over her face. And the breath left Liz’s mouth in a
loud, finished sigh.

–
P
ART
2
–

THE
DARKNESS

e
i g h t e
e
n
  
y e a r s
 
l a t e r

The screen went blank. Hunter stared at
it, her mouth dropping open, her blood boiling. She waited, hoping, praying that
the computer would miraculously spring to life again. But it remained blank
like her truly oppressive chance at being accepted into Hamilton College.

“You’ve got to be
kidding
me,” she hissed. “Joshua!”

Hunter turned away from the
shadow of her cherry-red hair and burning golden eyes in the black computer
screen – afraid she might shove her fist through it in anger – and stormed to
the door of the study, muttering curses as she went.

The apartment was quiet, no
television in the background. She assumed Joshua was upstairs in his bedroom,
so she stalked past their mirage of photos hanging on the rich maroon walls to
his door.

“Joshua!” she shouted,
pounding against the frame. “The computer died again!”

Soft footsteps came to the
door and when it opened, Joshua Harrison appeared before her wearing a slim
black suit and tie that hadn’t been fixed yet. He was freshly shaven, his black
hair slicked back perfectly as always, and his pale blue eyes glowed like the
waters of the Caribbean.

“How do I look?”

She smiled, stepped inside
the bedroom and snatched the navy tie in her hand.

“For a forty-year-old
bachelor, you look dashing,” she said courteously.

He ignored her jibe.
“Dashing enough for a university benefit party?”

“Please,” she snorted. “Anyone
with half a brain and a smart suit is dashing enough for your boring
gatherings.” Joshua smiled wider and she glanced up through thick eyelashes at
his inclined chin. There was a small spot of dried blood where he’d cut himself
shaving, just below the line of his jaw. She rolled her eyes. “You know, you’re
not going to get any action if you can’t even groom yourself.”

Joshua’s face went pink.
“It’s a new shaver.” Hunter laughed at that. “And anyway, I don’t attend the
benefits to ‘score’, as you would say. I do it for my reputation.”

Hunter straightened the tie
and smoothed his shoulders. “Yeah, sure you do.”

He sighed and shook his arms
deeper into the suit. “What did you say was wrong with the computer?”

“It shut down. I was in the
middle of my application for Hamilton.”

Joshua gave her a confused
sideways glance as he buckled his watch. “Hamilton? I thought we agreed on
Columbia?”

She turned away so he
couldn’t see her eyes burn. “No,
you
agreed on Columbia. You know, just
because you lecture there, it doesn’t guarantee me a spot. Besides, I seem to
recall this being
my
life we’re pledging, so maybe I should make the
decision.”

“And what is it you plan on
studying at
Hamilton
?” He hissed the name as though it were a pesky
cold.

That, Hunter wasn’t sure of
yet. The only thing she really excelled at in school was science – thanks to
Joshua’s great influence – but even that didn’t excite her. In fact, Hunter
didn’t have much in her life worth excitement. She watched a lot of TV and
movies because she didn’t have friends at school, dreamed of buying a classic
Chevrolet Camaro or maybe even a Firebird, and enjoyed almost any kind of
coffee she could get her hands on.

But as for life and the
‘Grand Plan’, her paper was empty.

Maybe that’s why she found
she couldn’t answer Joshua’s question. Instead, she turned to his mirror and
pretended to fix her hair.

“Well,” he continued, “you
can have a chat to some of the professors tonight and see what they think about
your future, okay?” Joshua flicked his wrist and glanced at the black Cartier
watch. “The cab will be here in five, go and get dressed.”

Hunter looked down at her
skin-tight, knee-length black halter dress and simple strappy heels and then
back up at Joshua.

“I am dressed,” she said.

He froze in the middle of
smoothing his gelled hair in his reflection, shot her a smile and nodded.
“Right. Of course.”

Hunter knew he was lying.
Normally she wouldn’t put up with the abuse, but tonight was different.
Tonight, she would do anything she could to make herself look respectable. Not
for her own reputation, but for his. Hers would definitely not be saved, even
if she went to the benefit dressed as a nun.

Tonight was the annual
benefit party for the lecturers at Colombia University. It was a very formal
event, in which men and women of Joshua’s league would clink their glasses
together, cackle about calculators, chalkboards and the new iPad installments
and pretend to be drunk just for something to gossip about on a Monday. Hunter
had been once. Aside from the kick-ass food, she hated it. It was
too
formal.
All talk and no action with a bunch of dreary people waffling on about their
dreary jobs.

Hunter was attending
tonight’s event purely and simply for Joshua. He was receiving an award for his
most recent findings on an expedition in the mountains of Nepal, the proceeds
of which were contributed to the new science building at the university. The
award meant a lot to Joshua, and therefore Hunter felt it was right she
attended; for moral support and to prove to him how proud she was. And tonight,
no one was more proud than she, aside from Joshua himself.

Hunter shimmied her dress
back down her legs where it had ridden up and slid her purse under her arm.
“I’m gonna grab my coat.”

“Hurry up, okay?”

Hunter clacked in her heels
down the marble stairs into the downstairs level. The living room was a
spacious area of the house with a floor-to-ceiling window portraying a fabulous
view of the city and a very modern set up of boxy couches, a glossy table and a
television on a classy brick wall over a fireplace. The kitchen was
unnecessarily large, with charcoal bench tops, pasty white cupboards and an
island in the middle covered in take-out boxes. Joshua never cooked for her
anymore for two reasons: one, because he couldn’t cook to save his life and
two, because Hunter always came home from work with bags of leftover Chinese
food to last them both a week.

Joshua liked to keep things
very neat and professional – a quirk that never seemed to stick with Hunter.

Carpeted in deep brown and
layered in maroon and gold, Hunter’s bedroom was exactly the right shade for
her, with exactly the right amount of mess.  Her clothes were flung on the
armchair by the window and at the end of the bed, her school books lay spread
across the carpet along with her scarlet and black work uniform.

Hunter threw things
carelessly across the room as she searched for a coat. The dress she wore slid
higher up her thighs and she cursed, yanked it back down and wished she had
more options for formal occasions. Normally Hunter didn’t care much for what
she wore or what people thought about her, but Joshua needed her, and for that,
she would try to look her best. That meant nothing too casual. The LBD was all
she had.

“There you are,” she muttered
to herself as she snatched her knee-length gray trench coat from the hanger in
her wardrobe and caught her reflection in the mirror on the closet door. Her
hair looked straggly, so she raked her fingers through it and strung it up in a
messy ponytail. The bronze-colored necklace her mother had left for her glowed
against her pale skin. It wasn’t very long, the chain fine and sparkling very
close to her throat. The symbol was Chinese, and after a little research,
Hunter had discovered it was the symbol of fire.

“Ironic, isn’t it Mom?”
Hunter said to her appearance in the mirror as she held on tightly to the
necklace. “Presenting me with a necklace that would remind me every day of how
you died.”

Regardless of its meaning,
Hunter still wore it out of respect for her mother. Over the years she had come
to love it and rarely took it off. It was as though her mother had left a part
of her on the earth to be with Hunter always.

“Hunter!” came Joshua’s
sharp voice from the kitchen and she snapped out of her daydream, releasing the
necklace and hurrying back.

The wind and winter snow
howled outside as Hunter, led carefully by Joshua’s steady arm, skipped down
the apartment building steps. Cold droplets of melted ice dripped down the back
of her neck as she passed under the veranda and ducked into the taxi parked on
the curb. The snow whirled around them, and Hunter brushed flakes out of her
own hair and off Joshua’s suit in the backseat of the taxi. Her nails had
already turned a pale purple.

As they were taken deeper
into traffic, Hunter found herself marveling at the sight of the city. Cloaked
in white, it was a stark contrast to the bright city lights and looming black
skyscrapers. Hunter loved New York, especially when the atmosphere was so
buoyant after the hype of Christmas.

“So are you nervous?” she
asked, turning to Joshua who was resting his elbow on the window, his clenched
fist under his chin.

“A little. But I’m glad
you’re coming. It’ll help to look into the crowd and see your face.”

“Well you won’t miss me.”
She twirled a lock of her red hair, grinning, and saw something that looked
like pain flash in his eyes. It had been and gone before she could place it.
“Are you alright?”