The Sentinel (2 page)

‘If you need to run, you run. No one knows about this, no one. Don’t look back, don’t take anyone with you, just run if you have to.’ That’s all he said and despite me badgering him for more information, he never said anything else. Had Silas gone delusional? What would I need to run from? But then Mr Curtis had said that someone had tried to kill me by rigging explosives to the coach tyres. But who would want to kill me and why were hundreds of Guardians in charge of my protection? Was any of that even real? The doctors at the hospital, the ones with the grass green eyes, had said a bang on the head could cause hallucinations. It was easier to believe in hallucinations than super strength beings and murderers.

Quinn stirring inside caught my attention through the window but he slept on. I sighed as my eyes shifted to my reflection in the glass.

I was quite unremarkable in many ways. My hair was a rather boring shade of brown, my nose, I always felt, was a bit too big for my face. I was thin, but not in a willowy and graceful way, in fact I was quite short. I had a strange birthmark on the inside of my left elbow; it looked like a small pair of wings. I always wore long sleeved tops to cover it up as much as I could. The only part of my body I liked was my eyes. They were big but what I liked best about them was I could never put a colour to them. Where other people would say they had blue eyes or brown, I could never decide. Some days they looked grey, some they definitely looked blue, some days I’d say with absolute conviction they were green, but the next I was leaning towards hazel, or maybe a bluey green. I loved the uniqueness of my eyes, but that was definitely the only unique thing about me. Which just made what happened that night of the crash even more unbelievable.

Although certainly not unique, I’ve always thought of myself as a bit of a freak, a bit of an outcast. I have never been one of the really cool kids, or really clever or really sporty. I am distinctly average. I think my friends, well my classmates, will look at our class photo, years from now, when they find it covered in dust at the back of the cupboard, and after laughing at their younger selves, they might pick out their friends and laugh at them too. And then their eyes might drift to me, standing second from the left on the third row and they’d say, ‘who was that, what was her name, was it Eve something, Eve Jones that was it.’ Then their eyes would slide away from mine to find a much more interesting memory. As far as my class mates are concerned, I’m just Eve, nice, plain old Eve. But that’s what I want them to think. I would hate them to know any different.

It had become glaringly obvious to me very early on that I was different to the other children. I hated it. I had stopped talking to my friends about my weekends many years ago, when my experiences stood stark apart from theirs. Now I have to pretend that my weekends are normal. I make up tales of shopping, going to the cinema, going to London to the theatre. How I long for those tales to be true.

I go to school, get good grades, run for the school cross country team, and read my books and play on my computer whenever I have any spare time. But that is where the similarities end. Where my friends spend the warmer weekends and school holidays, camping with family and riding their bikes through the woods, I have spent most of my spare time learning to shoot a multitude of frightening weapons, to fence with swords so sharp that the slightest slip would be fatal for me or my opponent. I can speak three different languages, fluently. Where my friends are learning how to play the flute or piano after school, I have learnt hand to hand combat and have become a black belt in three different martial art disciplines. Where my friends have just started to learn to drive, I had already accomplished this by the time I was thirteen. Now looking back, it kind of feels to me that I was perhaps in training for something, though I’ve never figured out what.

The only saving grace in my training was Seth was present for all of it, his Dad apparently as keen for him to learn how to kill someone as much as my Dad was for me to learn it. Seth took to the training like a duck to water, like he had been born to fight. The bruises on my body and the way I spent most of my younger years aching, were a clear indication, at least to me, that I wasn’t really built for such brutality.

As I looked out into the dark garden, my heart started pounding angrily. With the coach crash, the training, in trying to make sense of my life, ‘freak’ didn’t even come close to describing me. The Guardians had made me an outcast. With the training they had forced me apart from my friends. But what was worse was I’ve never been told what it was all for. Knowing I was different was one thing, but not knowing why was the ultimate insult.

In the last few days I had seen the Guardians everywhere, parked outside my house, following me to the shops, over the park when I walked Quinn and so many of them at school, all silently watching me, or watching over me. Their very presence was a painful reminder of this other world that I wasn’t allowed to know about, but somehow integral to. It annoyed me so much that they think I’m stupid enough not to notice them. Though I was more annoyed with myself that for the last seventeen years I hadn’t. It struck me now that the grass green eyes was the marker of these Guardians, but there had been so many of them surrounding me, that it had long since become the norm, though clearly not just for me, for everyone.

It angered me that they held me in such reverence. How could they be so callous to let nearly sixty people die, just to preserve this stupid secret, to preserve me? Their continual watch was oppressive, almost claustrophobic.

I heard Quinn bark inside and I cursed inwardly that the bark would draw the attention of my Dad again. I scrabbled back inside glaring at him treacherously but he was standing near the door, his heckles raised. He growled then barked again.

I coughed. The air was so dry in here.

Quinn barked again and I felt my blood turn to ice in my veins. Something was wrong. Was someone here?

I grabbed my baseball bat and stood in the darkness behind the door. Running was not an option from the third floor.

Quinn was pacing in front of the door whimpering, as I coughed again. Why was it so hard to breathe?

Suddenly I noticed the tendrils of smoke trickling through the crack at the bottom of the door and realised what Quinn had been so upset about.

I opened the door and ran out onto the landing. The roaring sound that filled my ears was almost deafening. Flames covered the stairs, licking up the walls in a frenzy to consume the whole house. As I looked on in horror, at the photos that were bubbling and curling up in the heat and the carpet melting just a few feet from where I stood, Quinn tugged on my pyjama top, gently but forcibly pulling me back into the bedroom. I was too shocked to even put up a fight. Our only escape route had been cut off.

I closed the door behind me and silence descended on the room. The door was thick and heavy, but it would only stop the fire for a few minutes and the smoke was already consuming me, making it difficult to breathe. Quinn whimpered as he paced the room. I ran to the window, but as I looked out I knew that jumping from the loft window, three storeys up, would be almost certainly fatal.

But at least standing next to the window, I could breathe cool, clean air, though the heat of the room was intense. I knew I only had minutes left before me and my beloved pet was burnt alive. What of my parents, my aunt and uncle, had they managed to escape but couldn’t get to me? I turned to get Quinn to the window so he could breathe too, but through the smoke I couldn’t see him. His whimpering was coming from the far side of the room.

‘Quinn! Come on, here boy.’ I knelt trying to see his shadow in the gloom.

Quinn’s whimpering suddenly stopped and I wondered if this was the end, if the smoke had already consumed my dog and I would soon succumb too. I suddenly decided that I wasn’t going to sit here and die, I would try to escape, and if I died trying that was going to be better than dying whilst doing nothing.

I stood and as I cast desperately around for Quinn one last time, a shape appeared from the haze and I realised with a new sick horror, that I wasn’t alone.

There was a man in the room with me, a young man I had never seen before. The bedroom door was still closed so where the hell had he come from? He moved towards me. I backed away from him, willing to take on the fire rather than comprehend where this man had come from and for what reason. He grabbed my arm to stop me from running back out the bedroom and I instinctively fought him off. I had spent my life learning martial arts and when it mattered most, my body reacted without thinking. He clearly knew martial arts too, as he easily deflected my first few punches. I didn’t have time to get into a proper fight. Desperately I kicked him in the shins and as he staggered back I flew out onto the landing.

The fire had reached the top of the stairs now.

‘Eve, please, I’m trying to help,’ said the man from my room, approaching me slowly like you might approach a wild animal. ‘Don’t be afraid.’ His voice was croaky, like he hadn’t spoken for some time. His eyes were so familiar, deep pools of melted chocolate. I’d never seen him before, I would have remembered someone so beautiful, but somehow I knew that face. A distant memory clawed at my mind, but it was gone a second later.

I backed against the wall as he came closer and he reached out tentatively to take my arm. The stench of petrol hit my nose and I knew with horrifying clarity that this was no accident.

‘Quinn!’ yelled a voice from below and the man with me looked down through the flames.

‘Eli, I’ve got her. What the hell’s going on?’

I stared at the man in shock. Quinn. This was Quinn?

‘Quinn?’ He looked back at me. ‘You’re…my dog?’ Even with the heat almost burning my skin, with mere minutes left before I died, I was still embarrassed about voicing my insanity out loud. He was tall, with shaggy blond hair, the exact colour of my dog’s fur. The brown eyes were so familiar because I had stared into them for the last seventeen years.

The man nodded, reluctantly. ‘Yes, I’ll explain everything later, but now we need to get you out of here.’

I shrunk back against the wall. ‘You’re my dog?!’

Suddenly the air spat out another man at our side. He was huge and towered over Quinn, ferociously. Muscles seemingly screamed from every part of him. He had the grass green eyes of the Guardians but they were fiercely angry filled with hate. Uncle Silas’s warning came back to haunt me, ‘not everyone with green eyes is safe’. For reasons I didn’t know, I didn’t trust this man.

‘Eli, thank god!’ muttered Quinn. ‘Where’s David and Marie?’

My parents. Eli didn’t say anything but the look that he gave Quinn sent ice to my heart. Something was very wrong.

Had Eli started the fire? Was he here to kill me? There was a smell of petrol about him too.

‘My parents, are they here, we need to help them,’ I said.

‘There’s no one here Eve, only you and Quinn.’

‘But…’

Without another word Eli grabbed me up into his arms and marched back into the bedroom.

‘I’ll come back for you in a second,’ he said to Quinn as he walked purposefully to the window.

‘Don’t worry about me, I can just fly down.’

‘I think seeing you naked once you’ve shifted is one shock too many for her tonight.’

Eli knelt and gracefully stepped out onto the roof and without hesitating he leapt off into the darkness.

I screamed, knowing we were both plummeting to our deaths, and braced myself for the impact that never came.

Seconds later I felt the man’s hold lessen and I was placed on the floor. I stood in horror as he leapt back up in the air, landing easily on the roof. He ducked back through the window again to get Quinn.

Blood tearing through my veins I eyed the secret gate at the back of the garden. Eli couldn’t be trusted. My dog that had spent every night since I was little lying on my bed was actually a man. I felt sick and I knew it was time to run.

Without looking back I fled. I hit the button behind the bird house and tore through the gate that flew open. Silas had seen this coming and I thanked him silently for the precautions he had put in place.

‘NO!’ I heard Eli roar behind me.

I hit the other button to release the second gate, grabbed the keys and was out on the street a second later. I jumped into the car, started the engine, slammed it into first and flooring the accelerator I shot up the road.

To my immense surprise, by the time I had reached the end of the road, a silver Land Rover was closing the gap between us. I looked in my rear view mirror and saw Eli leap onto the side of the Land Rover like he was windsurfing. The silver car didn’t even slow down as Eli opened the door and climbed into the passenger seat.

I pushed the car to go faster. As I approached the traffic lights at the end of the road, the red light threatened me to stop, but I shifted the car into fifth gear and sped through them. The car behind me didn’t stop either, easily keeping up with my renewed speed. I turned left into a smaller side road and then turned right and right again to head back onto the main road, in an attempt to shake them off, but they were so close they didn’t lose sight of me for a second. Speeding along the dark and empty streets, the silver car was suddenly joined by a police car, blue lights flashing furiously as it drew level with me.

How could I explain this to the police? ‘Hi officer. The man chasing me in the car behind has super strength, I think he started the fire in my house to kill me and for reasons I don’t understand, this is the second attempt on my life in the last week. There’s also a shape shifter in on this madness and he’s slept on my bed for the last seventeen years. If you can find them there are Guardians somewhere who are here to protect me. I’m sure they’ll explain everything to you, or maybe not as they certainly won’t tell me anything.’

I hesitated for a moment. Was Eli one of my Guardians? He had rescued me from the fire. But his eyes had been filled with so much anger. And then there was Quinn, my dog, definitely not a Guardian, he wasn’t big enough nor did he have the grass green eyes. Eli knew him, were they in on this together? Silas had always looked at Quinn with hatred and suspicion. Had he known that he wasn’t really a dog at all? I looked across at the policeman who was waving at me to pull over, but as we drove the street lights lit up the grass green eyes of the officer and I knew he was one of them too. I slowed a bit; if he was a Guardian he was here to protect me, to save me from Eli. I looked back towards the policeman and was thrown by the look of furious hatred from him. The police were with Eli, they wanted me dead.