The End of Never (2 page)

1
Awake

I'm going to fall
, she thought.
Please don't let me fall.

With her auburn bangs swinging across her forehead, Alexandra Peyton struggled to pull herself up to the top step of the shaking aluminum ladder. Her legs teetered as she stood upright and balanced herself on a red plastic platform the same height and width as her size seven black patent leather Mary Jane shoes.

“Did I mention I'm afraid of heights?” she announced as she slid a deep yellow band of metal measuring tape from its silver dispenser.

“He'll catch you, lass!” the dark-haired Irishman shouted up at her as he gestured to the man standing patiently beneath the ladder. “Let's hurry now,” he said, holding a blue pen to a yellow notepad. “The sun is up now, and our friend needs to put those things away before the neighbors notice.”

“I'm trying, Callahan,” she stammered, conscious of the rising heat under her collar and thankful for the shade of the cypress curtain hiding her history teacher's backyard from the neighborhood.

Alexandra breathed deeply and extended her right arm into the air while she pulled more of the measuring tape from its dispenser. Beneath her, a raven-haired man stood silently, his head bowed. Two wings stretched majestically from his back. The seventeen-year-old Alexandra, still at the top of the ladder, shook her head from side to side, memorizing the details of him in her mind. She studied the color of his wings. They were the color of red, wet clay. It would not be accurate to say that they were scarlet or brick. Instead, the shade was like a deep sunburn that had faded into tan, like the faces of weathered sailors. The wings were webbed intricately under his taut skin, in places where bulging muscle and tendons rippled and flexed.

She leaned closer to the ladder, careful to hold her balance. She peered at his hair. It was black and fine, like a bat's.

“Ten feet,” she shouted to Callahan. He nodded his head up and down and recorded the measurement in his notebook.

“Are you sure? Absolutely?” her teacher shouted up at her.

Alexandra rolled her eyes and dabbed away the sweat on her collar with the back of her left hand.
Really?
she thought, perturbed at his insistence on an exact measurement.
You get up here, then!
Her hand clutched at the medallion dangling from her neck.

The medallion swung side to side like a pendulum as she stretched the yellow measuring tape the length of the wingspan once more and scrutinized the bold, black numbers on the sharp metal band. “Ten feet,” she repeated as a yellow jacket buzzed by her right ear.

The tape retracted with a loud snap as the bug circled her head and dove for her nose. When she swatted wildly at it, her legs jiggled the ladder. The platform swayed beneath her feet and finally fell away.
Here we go again
, she thought, as she kicked at the air.

The winged man knew it would happen. He waited for it. She was clumsy and needed him; he had watched her too long not to know that.

As the beautiful girl fell toward him from the sky, he plucked her from the air with his long, steady arms. She opened her eyes and winked. “Thank you, Kraven,” she murmured as he gently set her feet on the ground.

Don't put me down yet
, she thought as she stood next to him, her heart racing.
Maybe I fell on purpose, just so he would have to rescue me!

Trying to clear the thoughts racing through her mind, Alexandra shook her head. She liked how it felt to be held in his arms. Kraven set his hands squarely on the tops of her shoulders, and his azure eyes stared into the green pools twinkling above her cheeks. Wrapping his wings around her, he placed his left cheek against her freckled, blushing face.

That terrible creature!
she thought, and trembled at the memory of the captured wolf-beast who lay asleep above their heads in Callahan's attic. Kraven held her closer.

Like a cave
, she thought, as she huddled beneath his wings.
Dark but warm. So warm. He smells like a campfire—a wild, raging fire that you can't stand too close to, for too long.

Alexandra coughed, gasping for air as she pushed away from the man's chest. His red wings dropped to his sides. She squinted in the bright morning light and fell to her knees. Crawling away from his feet, she felt as if she were emerging from the mouth of a cave. She grasped at the grass, her lungs searching for fresh air.

His chest was bare to the curious eyes of Alexandra and Callahan. In their battle against the wolf now captive in the attic, Kraven's shirt had been shredded and had had to be discarded. For the first time, they were able to see the black scar that trailed from his waist, just above his right hip to the tip of his left shoulder.

His face betrayed no concern at Alexandra's embarrassed stare at his body. A smile spread across his chiseled face and he narrowed his black eyebrows. A lock of raven hair spilled across his high forehead as his brow wrinkled in concentration.

She will remember
, he thought. A flash of an auburn-haired girl with wildflowers in her braids charged through his memory.

“May I?” Callahan interrupted.

Kraven nodded and let Callahan stroke the fine wisps of black hair that grew from the pair of red wings.

“You can fly?” Callahan asked, and Kraven again nodded.

“Wonderful,” Callahan said joyously. “Now put those away before anyone sees.”

The wings melted into Kraven's back. Two jagged scars pulsed between his shoulder blades, and for a moment, the man shuddered.

Alexandra and Callahan held their breath until Kraven met their gaping stares with his smiling eyes, a twinkle crinkling the edges of his cheeks. “Are we done now?” he asked with a satisfied huff of amused laughter.

In the yard next door, the growl of a dog floated over the wooden privacy fence and through the wall of cypresses toward the trio. Alexandra's shoulders tensed and she glanced up toward the third floor of Callahan's towering Victorian house. Under the gabled roof, she knew that the stifling attic imprisoned a creature that wanted her dead.

“Don't worry, Miss Peyton,” Callahan whispered in her ear as he followed her gaze to the roof. “We have the situation under control,” he told her and winked.

From the neighboring yard to their backs, the bark of the dog grew louder as a police siren wailed in the distance.

Trouble
, Kraven thought, his back stiffening.

Another siren joined the first. “They are heading to Collinsworth, do you think?” Callahan questioned Alexandra, as the sirens rang closer in their ears.

Collinsworth Academy lay a few hundred yards away from the history teacher's rented home. Between his house and the school was a cemetery, located at the southern border of the school's property.

“Perhaps you should go home, Alexandra,” Callahan said as the trio listened to the blaring sirens in the distance. “There is nothing for you to worry about with Kraven here as your bodyguard—although I think you know how to take care of yourself. Excuse me, won't you?” Callahan disappeared through the wooden screen door of the back porch, a loud slam following him into the house.

Alexandra glanced shyly at Kraven as a cell phone hummed in the pocket of her blue-and-green plaid skirt, part of the daily uniform required for Collinsworth attendance.

“Mom,” she read aloud from the call screen. “Oh boy,” she sighed, and she let the call go to voicemail.

When the phone stopped ringing, a photo of her bulldog, Jack, came on the screen.
He is going to be so mad at me
, she thought, frowning with guilt at the moping brown-and-white face cocked to the side, a giant, red Christmas bow stuck to his forehead.

The screen door cracked again and Callahan emerged. Throwing a white undershirt at Kraven, he laid Alexandra's school bag across her shoulder and ushered the pair toward a gate in the wooden fence that closed in the backyard.

Parked at the curb on the street of the towering Victorian was Alexandra's rusty Jeep, waiting for her patiently. “I made sure you have enough gas to get home,” Callahan informed her and kicked an empty plastic gas can in the driveway.

“I don't trust myself to drive right now. My nerves!” Alexandra said, throwing the keys to Kraven as she climbed in the passenger seat and pulled her seatbelt around her chest.

“I'm sure you remember where I live,” she said, smiling anxiously and waving goodbye to Callahan as Kraven turned the key in the ignition.

I am still alive, and she is reborn
, Kraven thought as he revved the engine. The warped hoses and loose belts strained beneath the hood. They would be lucky to get down the street without breaking down.

Sitting cross-legged in the passenger seat of her beat-up Jeep, Alexandra pinched her lips. They felt dry, parched from thirst.

Her mother was calling again.
What she does not know won't hurt her
, Alexandra thought, staring down at the cell phone screen.

2
Heat

The fingerprint-smudged glass doors of the bustling hospital emergency room slid apart for the woman in the gray pantsuit as she stepped outside into the muggy Miami morning. Thawing out from a chilly night in the tenth-floor quarantine ward, the sleep-weary woman, Angela Peyton, wobbled on her four-inch heels as her head swam in the tropical heat.

A wailing ambulance siren roused her senses as she leaned against a cement pillar and unbuttoned the collar of her white silk blouse. Wiping beads of sweat from the top of her lip, she stumbled backward from the curb while a mustard-yellow taxi cab sped toward her, shrieks of pain pouring from the open windows.

In the sticky and tattered back seat, the left ankle of a six-foot-tall platinum blonde was perched up on the seat, swelled to the size of an orange. She screeched like a lost kitten. The driver lunged over the speed bumps as if the driveway was a ski-slalom course. The wounded blonde's equally statuesque red-headed friend scrounged a wrinkled twenty-dollar bill from inside her bra.

Lurching to a stop in front of the emergency room, the pale-skinned, bearded driver yelled at the girls as the back door of his cab flew open. They stumbled to the pavement. “You getting out now, crazy witches,” he shouted. His English had much improved over the time he lived in warm Miami, far away from the Russian tundra.

The woman in the gray pantsuit overheard the commotion and decided any cab was a good cab in the strangling heat. As she approached the idling mustard-yellow car, the smell of stale cigarettes and French fries assaulted her nose and her empty stomach heaved.

“Vamoose, girlies!” the heavily breathing driver shouted as he pocketed the sweaty twenty-dollar bill in his pants.

“Pig!” the redhead hurled back at the driver as she shouldered her friend's weight and helped her toward the emergency room doors. Passing the somberly dressed woman in the gray pantsuit, the redhead, her white mini-skirt stained with booze and ketchup from the previous evening, rolled her eyes to the sky.

“I wouldn't get in there if I were you,” she hissed in warning to the woman in the pantsuit. “He drives like an animal and smells like one, too.”

“Shut up, Maxine,” the blonde advised, her seven-inch heels dangling limply from her trembling hand, which was wrapped around her friend's neck. “It's your fault we're here.”

Maxine ripped the blonde girl's arm from around her neck and planted her hands on her hips. “I'm not the one who fell off the bar, Tonya.”

“You dared me,” Tonya shouted back.

Tonya threw the first punch, as the auburn-haired woman in the pantsuit sidestepped the fight sequence.

“Wait!” she shouted at the taxi driver. “I need a ride.” Her bangs were curling in tiny, damp ringlets across her forehead.

The Russian driver studied her lithe figure and nodded his head in approval as the woman slid through the open passenger door and into the back seat.

“Vare to, Madame?” he asked, meeting her tired eyes in the rearview mirror.

“Coffee,” she sighed and removed her suit jacket.

“Yah,” he said, nodding. He floored the accelerator. A breeze sailed through his open window, causing his toupee to flap like a bird's nest over his glistening scalp. “You are a doctor?” the driver inquired, his black eyes scrutinizing her pale arms, short chestnut hair, and long neck through the rearview mirror.

“No,” she explained. “I'm a scientist.”

“Ah,” he said, nodding his head as he glimpsed her blouse over his shoulder.

“Any coffee shop will do,” the woman told him. She nuzzled her jacket against her chest. “Is that one just up there?” she asked, pointing past his nose to a café on the corner ahead of them.

“Yah,” the driver agreed and eased to the curb. She rummaged through her purse for a ten-dollar bill. “Keep the change,” she said as she slipped the man the bill, her body cringing as his palm lingered atop her manicured fingers.

She felt his eyes search her as she escaped from the stifling cab to the sidewalk in front of a tattoo parlor. Across the street, the frothy whitecaps of low, lazy waves grazed the surface of the Atlantic Ocean before they broke on the sandy shoreline. Angela Peyton closed her eyes and greedily sucked in the briny ocean air.

At the curb, a loud honk echoed from the cab, the driver waiting impatiently for his break in traffic. “Sucka,” the Russian shouted as he cut in front of a black Porsche, his voice as harsh as his pale, pockmarked skin.

Angela relaxed her tense shoulders as the cab's taillights disappeared in the morning traffic.
Coffee
, she thought to herself as the scent of the bold, brewing lifesaver wafted toward her nose from the café entrance. The aroma lifted her to her tiptoes and pulled her past the imposing poster of a flying dragon behind the glass of the tattoo parlor's front window.

Inside the café, a towering cup of their thickest dark roast wobbled in her hands as she plucked the morning edition of the
Miami Herald
from a stack on the floor by the cash register. Students posing in flip-flops and sunglasses crowded the cramped tables with shiny laptops, the click of their fingers over the keyboards rattling her ears. Heading outside, she plopped into a metal bistro chair and swallowed her liquid breakfast as sleek convertibles that would cost her at least a year's salary raced past the sidewalk.