Shadow Born: Book 1 of the Shadow-Borne Chronicles (42 page)

Once the bellhop had everything in order and loaded on the elevator Silas turned to regard Alec.
 

“You sure you’re okay?” he asked looking closely at the young man.

Alec nodded.
 
Silas understood that Alec was lying, but he didn’t say anything.

“Do I need to change clothes before we leave?” Alec changed the subject before Silas asked him anything else.

“Can you move freely in those clothes?”
 
Alec nodded again.
 
“Then you should be fine.
 
I won’t lie.
 
It’s a trek to where we are going.
 
You ready?”

Alec took another deep breath, and stepped into the elevator to go meet the one man that might be able to give him some of the answers he was looking for.
 
After that…well he’d deal with everything else when he got back to Jordan.

Alec stared out the window of the car, watching the scenery as Silas drove.
 
Alec was surprised that Silas was driving himself for a change, but he didn’t say anything.
 
Actually, he hadn’t said much since he’d had his anxiety attack, or whatever it had been.
 
Kind of made sense that Silas was driving if Jacob was as reclusive as Silas had led Alec to believe.
 

“You okay?” Silas asked, breaking into Alec’s thoughts.

“Yeah…I’m fine,” Alec lied.

“You don’t sound fine,” Silas said finally.

Alec was quiet for a bit.

“Does it really matter, considering the council might just kill me anyway?”

Silas frowned.

“Feeling sorry for yourself?
 
That’s not the Alec I know.
 
The Alec I know is a fighter and doesn’t let anything bother him,” Silas said accusingly.
 
“The Alec I know never lets anything bother him and fights no matter what the circumstances.”

“Yeah, well maybe you don’t know everything about me,” Alec snapped.

Silas shook his head.
 

“I know that you took up for a woman and tried to save her life after she opened fire on you because you knew she wasn’t acting of her own accord.
 
I know that you tried to save a hostage taker who threatened the lives of others because he’d been manipulated.
 
And I also saw you stand up to a vampire much, much older than you when he called you an abomination.
 
That
is the Alec I know.”

Alec’s face turned red and burned with shame.
 
Silas was right.
 
He was acting like a spoiled child.
 
Had he changed that much? Just because he’d found out the date of his hearing he was suddenly going to act sullen and withdrawn?
 
Silas was right.
 
That wasn’t him.
 
He dealt with problems; he didn’t go around feeling sorry for himself.

“I’m sorry,” Alec said quietly.
 
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

Without looking at the young man, Silas put his hand on his shoulder and squeezed.
 

“You’ve been through a lot Alec.
 
You have the right to feel upset and mad.”
 
Silas let that sink in for a moment.

“Young vampires feel things very strongly.
 
Strong emotions can be hard to deal with at times.
 
Just don’t let them overwhelm you.
 
You are in control.
 
Not your emotions,” Silas said and put his hand back on the steering wheel of the car.

“I know,” Alec began, not knowing how to put his feelings into words.
 
“My life has never been normal.
 
I just want to be normal like everyone else,” he finished lamely.

“Normal?” Silas laughed.
 
“Whose life is
normal
around here?
 
I’m a vampire that’s thousands of years old.
 
I’ve seen kingdoms rise and fall.
 
I’ve seen the birth and death of generations.”
 
He shook his head.
 
“Is that
normal
?”

Alec thought about it for a moment.
 

“I guess it’s not completely normal,” he said smiling despite himself.

Silas did laugh then.

“Alec, normal is subjective.
 
Normal for a common, ordinary human is not being able to jump from a fourth story fire escape without injuries.
 
For you it’s completely normal.
 
Some people have the voice of an angel when they sing; some can paint so realistically it brings a tear to your eye.
 
You…you can do extraordinary things that no other person on the face of the planet can do.
 
That’s normal.
 
You should be proud of who you are.
 
I know I’m proud of you.”

Alec lowered his eyes to the floorboard feeling ashamed again.

“What do I do if the council decides to end my life?” Alec asked.
 
Silas could tell he was afraid it would come to that.
 
Who wouldn’t be scared in the same circumstances?
 
He’d been trying to keep Alec busy to take his mind of the impending meeting.

“The council member in me says give in to what the council says.
 
But,” and his voice became fierce, “the man in me says you kill anyone that tries to take your life if that’s their course of action.”
 

Silas’s hands were gripping the steering wheel so tight his knuckles were white.

“That’s off the record of course,” Silas finally added.

Alec laughed feeling a little better.
 
“Of course.”

They drove on for a while longer, Alec actually now enjoying the beauty of the countryside, or what he could see of it in the moonlit dark.
 
He’d never seen the ocean so he was completely blown away when it finally came into view.
 
All he could do was stare at the beautiful silver water and the waves as the moon shone gently down on it.
 
It was breathtaking.

After about another hour of driving, taking regular roads, then gravel, then dirt, they finally ended up at the edge of a forested bluff overlooking the ocean to their left.
 

“This is where we start walking,” Silas said turning the car off and unbuckling his seat belt.
 

Alec followed him out of the car and to the trunk, where Silas unlocked it.
 
Inside were the refrigeration units that Alec had seen earlier.
 
They weren’t overly large, but one would have been almost too much for a human to carry; and Alec counted four, two for each of them.
 
Alec just wondered how far he would need to carry them.

“Normally, Jacob’s supply is delivered by helicopter.
 
They fly in, lower the order and leave.
 
Since we are meeting him, I thought this might be the better way of doing it.
 
Besides, I wanted to be outside for a while.
 
I need the break.”
 
Silas smiled at Alec.

Alec completely understood.
 
With everything going on, it was nice to be out of it all where only the two of them mattered.
 
No drama, no attempts on his life, he hoped, and no one to run from.
 
Alec actually felt freer than he had in a while.

Silas grabbed two of the refrigeration units out of the trunk, the other two were for Alec.
 
It took a couple of tries for Alec to burn blood but then he was lifting the other two heavy units from the car.
 
In that moment he realized something.
 
What Silas said was true; this was
normal
for him.
 

“I’m not going to lie Alec.
 
The path ahead is not easy.
 
We are taking the shortest route to Jacob’s, but it’s a long trail and there are obstacles.”
 
Silas grinned at him.
 
“I’m quite certain that you are up to the task or I wouldn’t have chosen this route.”

Alec grinned too but something occurred to him.

“How am I going to see in the dark?
 
I can only see you right now because of the trunk light but after that…” he let the sentence die off.

Silas chuckled.
 
“Has Marcus not shown you how to see in the dark?
 
I know you two have been training.”

Alec blushed.

“No, he didn’t train me in that particular aspect of being a vampire.
 
He only trained me how to hear things from afar.”

Silas thought for a moment.

“Okay, what you want to do is open the irises of your eyes.
 
You don’t want to open them too far.
 
But there is enough light out there for your eyes to work by.”

Alec looked confused for a moment wondering what he was talking about.

“You have the light of the stars for one thing.”
 
Silas watched Alec process the information.
 
“And when it’s completely dark with no light, you can use the heat of a person’s body to see by.”

“Really?” Alec asked incredulously.

“Yes,” Silas said chuckling.

Alec concentrated and tried.
 
Nothing.
 
He tried again.
 
Again, nothing.
 
He just wasn’t sure what to do.

“I can’t seem to make it work,” he said frustrated.

Silas thought for a moment.
 
What seemed to work for Alec? Silas closed the trunk of the car, shutting off the light, and pulled something from behind him.

“Okay Alec, I have a knife in my hand and I’m going to throw it at you.”
 
Silas sounded very casual but Alec knew he wasn’t joking.
 
He licked his lips nervously.

“Wait, give me a minute…” Alec saw Silas cock his arm back.
 
Then with a quick flick, he threw a knife directly at Alec’s head.
 
Without warning, his world burst into light.
 
He could see everything; the trees, the road, the leaves blowing in the wind.
 
Without thinking he grabbed the knife out of the air, a mere inch from his left eye.
 
He could see Silas grinning from ear to ear.

“What did you do that for?” Alec asked, annoyed.

Silas laughed.
 
“I read Doctor Schubert’s report.
 
When threatened you act on instinct.
 
Can you still see?”

Alec looked around. It was weird to be honest.
 
The colors were completely different.
 
Everything seemed to be bathed in silver light, but he could see as easily as he did during the daytime.
 
He looked up at the stars, the source of the light and had to squint and throw his hand up against the glare.

“Yeah, I can see,” he said blinking tears out of his eyes.

“Good.
 
You ready?”

Alec nodded.

“Can I have my knife back, please?” Silas asked holding out his hand.

Alec handed the knife back to him and Silas secreted it away somewhere on his person.

“Ready?” Silas asked, and picked up two of the heavy refrigeration units.

Alec easily picked up the other two.
 

“Of, course.”

Silas started off into the night with Alec following closely behind him.
 
Alec was amazed at the quality of his vision using only starlight as a source for light.
 
Silas had started out slowly at first, to give Alec time to adjust and make sure he could keep up but after a few minutes he began speeding up.
 
After a while Alec was leaping fallen logs and chasms, dodging around huge mounds of earth and ducking the whipping branches that sped past.
 
He was enjoying himself immensely.
 
He almost felt guilty about his abilities and the fact that he enjoyed them but he reminded himself that no one had to die for him to be able to do the things he did.
 
Well, no one but Clarissa, but that hadn’t been his fault.

Once they came across a black bear foraging with her cubs.
 
She sniffed the air searching for their scent and stood up on her hind legs and roared.
 
Without missing a beat, Silas jumped over her head, followed by Alec and they quickly left the mother and the cubs behind.
 

After a while, Silas began to slow and finally he stopped.
 
Neither he nor Alec was panting for air.
 
Silas looked around, found what he was searching for and motioned with his head that Alec was to follow.
 
In the distance Alec could hear falling water and realized they must be close to a waterfall.
 

A few more yards of walking and Silas pushed through a dense set of branches.
 
When Alec passed through them he stopped and his breath caught in his throat.
 
They stood at the edge of a deep gorge on the opposite side of where the falls emptied through the split and into the river below.
 
What had taken Alec’s breath away was the beauty of the falls under the stars.
 
The water looked like molten silver and shone brilliantly as it passed over the lip of the gorge to plummet the hundreds of feet to the river below.
 
It was one of the most beautiful things that Alec had seen.
 
He was certain, however, that this was not the reason that Silas had stopped.

Before them a rockslide had taken out a part of the narrow lip of the gorge they were standing on and a huge chasm lay between them and the opposite side.