Descendant (6 page)

I shuddered as thoughts of yesterday dropped involuntarily into my head. For a moment I considered telling them about the paw prints I’d found, but just then I looked up to meet my mom’s gaze—which, for some reason, looked angry. I decided to keep quiet.

The two firemen left when the highway patroll officer arrived a few seconds later. He asked Mom and me several questions—most of which I let Mom answer while I watched what was left of the Toyota being loaded onto a tow truck.

My eyes lingered on the driver’s side door. I barely knew the guy, but I couldn’t help but worry about what might’ve happened to Kael. I didn’t get the chance to worry about him for too long, however, because at that moment I felt a hand on my shoulder.

“C’mon, Alex,” my mom said. “Let’s get out of their way so they can finish cleaning up here,” she said. I nodded slowly and, with one last look at Kael’s car, turned and followed her back to the house.

clock news first, but it was just a short story— so I stayed up until the eleven ‘o’ clock news, hoping for more. But at eleven they just repeated that same, vague story. In their defense, I guess they didn’t have a lot of details to work with. The cause of the wreck was still under investigation, according to the anchorwoman, and there were still no victims to report. Dead or alive, Kael was apparently long gone. I frowned at the T.V. as the news anchors told me goodnight. I hadn’t real y expected otherwise, but I still felt a bit disappointed that they didn’t have more to report.

I didn’t get up from the couch when the news ended. My arm was draped over the armrest, and my index finger was the only part of me that moved as it slid across the remote.

Channel surfing was about the only thing I had the energy to do. I don’t know if it was the wreck, or everything else I had on my mind final y getting to me, but for some reason I’d been feeling like this all day—so exhausted I could barely move.

My eyes flickered to the clock above the entertainment center. Five past midnight, according to the glaring red display. Mom would be home from her late shift at the hospital in a few hours. Maybe I could just go to sleep here and she could carry me to my bed when she got home?

That seemed like a good idea. My eyes were wandering in and out of focus now. I’d dropped the remote and hadn’t bothered to pick it up, and the T.V. had come to rest on a channel showing what looked like an old western movie. I watched it, in between resting my eyes, for a few minutes before turning and burying my face in the couch cushions.

I was drifting uneasily between sleep and consciousness when a quiet tapping noise caused my eyes to open again.

At first I thought it was the T.V., so I felt around the floor until I found where the remote had fall en, then pushed the mute button and, with a sleepy groan, turned back into the cushions. But a few seconds later, I heard the tapping noise again. Annoyed, I lifted my head and blinked my eyes into focus, staring down the hall that led to my sister’s room. I could see a light shining from underneath her door.

“Lora!” I shouted. “Be quiet, I’m trying to sleep!” I listened for her response, but the house stayed quiet. Assuming the silence meant she must’ve heard me, I slumped back into the cushions and closed my eyes.

Then the tapping came again, this time louder than before. I sat up, glaring toward Lora’s room. I was mumbling curse words under my breath when the tapping sounded yet again. Much to my annoyance, I was almost fully awake now, and with the clarity that brought to my senses I realized the noise wasn’t coming from Lora’s room at all .

Our dining room, which was adjacent to the living room, had sliding glass doors that led to the back porch, and that was were I suspiciously focused my attention on. Sure enough, a second later several more taps on the glass pane confirmed it—someone was knocking on our back door.

At twelve-thirty in the morning.

“Who in the heck…”

Tap, tap, tap…

I was tired. Nauseous. And the last thing I wanted to do was get up off that couch.

TAP, TAP, TAP.

“I’m coming!” I flung my blanket off, causing a sharp spasm of pain to shoot through my arm, and stood up and stalked over to the door. I guess I should’ve been frightened. I mean, it could have been a burglar, a serial kill er, who knew? But at the moment, I was too tired, too sick, too annoyed at having been so rudely awoken that I didn’t much care who was outside the door.

I did grab the poker laying by the fireplace, but the motive behind that wasn’t real y self-defense—I just real y wanted to hit whoever had disturbed my sleep. Regardless of the motivation behind picking it up, however, as soon as I flipped on the back porch light, it dropped to the floor with a clang! And I was too shocked to even move to pick it up.

“Alex?” my sister’s voice quickly ended my paralysis. “What was that?”

I heard her door open, and panic flooded over me.

“Nothing!” I shouted back. “It was just… Apol o knocked something over!”

Apol o was our dog. Our dog who was currently outside, Apol o was our dog. Our dog who was currently outside, and had been for the past several hours. Hopefully Lora didn’t know that. And hopefully, Lora would just stay in her room—the last thing I wanted was her getting mixed up in all this any way, shape or form.

“You know Mom doesn’t like him sleeping in the house…”

Lora called back after a few seconds of hesitation.

“Right, I was just going to put him outside!” I called back, amazed that my lie had worked out so perfectly. I slid the glass door open and, as an after thought, reached down and grabbed the dropped poker on my way through.

“You!” I said in an angry whisper to the man standing before me.

“Were you expecting someone else?” Kael asked, eying the poker I was brandishing with a look of amusement.

For a second I was too busy staring into his eyes to reply; maybe it was just the way the moonlight was shining off of them, but they seemed to be glowing. A slight shiver ran down my spine as I glared at him. I gave my head a hard shake back into focus.

“I wasn’t expecting anyone—it’s twelve-thirty in the morning!” I said, straining to keep my voice down.

“I told you I’d be seeing you soon, didn’t I?”

“Yeah, but I didn’t expect you this soon—and did it real y have to be right now? I was trying to sleep!”

“I can’t help it your mother works night shifts,” he said with a shrug.

My eyes widened. “My mother…oh. If she knew you were here… you would be in so much trouble, you know that?” I said, jabbing him in the chest with the poker for emphasis.

“Are you going to tell her I was here?” he asked as he grabbed my weapon and pushed it away.

I bit my lip. “Well …no,” I had to admit.

“Guess I’m safe then,” he said dryly.

“Whatever,” I said, roll ing my eyes. “Look—why are you here, anyway? And why did you follow me earlier today?

And what did you and my mom talk about this morning?

She wouldn’t tell me, and it’s been bugging me all day.” The questions came pouring out like water from a dam that had just been released. I had plenty more to fire at him too, but just then the scream of a distant siren reminded me of one question that took priority over all the others: “Wait… you’re here? And you’re okay!”

“What?”

“Your car— that wreck— I thought…”

“Oh, that,” he said with a look of sudden understanding.

“Yeah, I’m fine.”

“What happened?” I asked.

He frowned, and was quiet for a long time.

“Well ?” I final y pressured.

He let out an aggravated sigh. “It’s not real y important but… remember how I told you to stay away from Sera?”

I nodded slowly. “Yeah but…what does Sera have to do with any of this?”

“Well …” he looked at me expectantly.

I stared at him blankly for a moment, somewhat annoyed that he couldn’t just answer me—but then a sudden realization hit me.

“Wait—what?” Are you saying the wreck was somehow her fault?”

“Oh wow—you’re not as dumb as I thought.”

It took ever once of personal restraint I had to ignore the jab. “That doesn’t make any sense,” I said impatiently. “My mom and me were at the road like a minute after it happened—and there was no you when we got there, and definitely no Sera.”

“Right.” He didn’t elaborate.

I could feel my temper flaring. “Right? Is that all you’re going to say? I mean, don’t beat around the bush or anything—it’s not like I need sleep.”

“There are more important things than sleep at the moment,” he said.

“For you, maybe—but I feel like crap, so sleep is kind of high on my priority list right now. So how about you just tell me what happened to Sera and then go away?”

“Why do you care what happened to her?”

I was surprised by the question. “…I just want to know if she’s okay,” I said.

“She’s fine,” he said shortly.

“Oh…wel , that’s good then,” I said in a carefull voice.

He said nothing to that, just folded his arms across his chest and gazed skyward, a thoughtful look on his face. “To be fair, I guess I kind of had it coming,” he said after a few moments of silence.

“What?”

“I did the same thing to her a few weeks ago,” he said, bringing his gaze back down to meet mine. “So I guess it’s kind of a running joke between us now—making each other wreck our cars.”

Surely he was kidding.

“That’s…probably the worst joke I’ve ever heard,” I said, my eyes widening slightly.

“Maybe,” he said with a shrug.

“Definitely.” This man was insane. Why was I still standing here talking to him? I should’ve ran inside and barricaded the door shut behind me. For some reason though, I couldn’t move. His gaze was fixed on me now, and it was haunting—I wanted to stare forever and look away at the same time. His eyes were supposed to be pale blue, I remembered, but in the moonlight they looked almost completely white. It was mesmerizing.

And I didn’t like it one bit.

Standing next to him I felt powerless. Something told me I was going to have to listen to what he had to say whether I liked it or not, and that if I ran away from him now I would regret it forever. So I didn’t move. Instead, I took a deep breath and tried to forget about his morbid attempt at humor.

“We’re getting off track,” I said.

“Yeah…” He looked distracted all of a sudden. “We should probably wait for Vanessa though, before we say anything else.”

He was real y testing my patience. “Fine. Okay. When is Vanessa getting—” My words fell short as the sound of footsteps filled the night air. I gave Kael a skeptical look.

“…Is that her?”

He nodded, his eyes still scanning the yard.

“How can you tell ? I don’t see anybody.”

He turned to me then, and I saw that he wore a skeptical look identical to my own. “But you can hear her?”

“Of course I can,” I said. “I’m not deaf.”

He started to say something, but then just nodded instead.

The footsteps were growing louder now, and he turned back to watching the distance. I followed his example, feeling even more confused by the second; those footsteps were awfully loud for the tiny person I remembered as Vanessa.

“Where is she?” I asked. The footsteps were so loud at this point that they might as well have belonged to someone walking right beside me—even though Vanessa, or anyone else for that matter, had yet to appear. I was getting impatient, and while Kael stood completely still beside me I wandered up and down the porch, searching the yard for signs of life. The footsteps grew louder still , but now they were being drowned by the sound of the siren I’d heard earlier, which also seemed to be getting louder.

“There,” Kael said suddenly, causing me to jump. He nodded toward the trees. My gaze followed and, sure enough, a second later a figure emerged from the shadows and swiftly made its way across the yard.

In the light of the three-fourths moon, Vanessa’s pale blonde hair shimmered as it fanned out behind her. Like Kael, her eyes seemed to glow in the moonlight, although not nearly as brightly. She smiled warmly at me as she approached.

“How are you, Alex?” she asked in a quiet voice.

“…Fine,” I lied.

“That’s good,” she replied, the concerned look on her face telling me she didn’t believe I was fine at all .

“Is everything taken care of?” Kael asked, looking anxiously back toward the trees.

“Yes.” Vanessa didn’t take her eyes off me as she spoke.

“Will stayed behind with Eli to help him keep an eye out. But as of right now, we’re in the clear.”

“Good,” Kael said.

Vanessa nodded, and turned to him for the first time. “Have you…?” she trailed off purposely.

He shook his head. “Not yet. I—we— heard you coming. So I decided to wait for you.”

Vanessa made a face. “Because you want me to do all the talking?” she said as she folded her arms across her chest.

“Precisely.”

A sudden flush of red in her cheeks lit up Vanessa’s otherwise pale complexion. “Okay, so first you wreck my car—”

“Not my fault.”

“And then you insist on coming along even though—”

“I was bored.”

“And then you run off and leave me in the middle of the forest—”

“I can’t help it you’re slow.”

“I swear Kael, sometimes you—”

I felt a little awkward standing between them and their bickering, so I wandered over to the side of the porch and did my best to drown them out. It wasn’t hard finding something else to hold my attention, either: the sound of something else to hold my attention, either: the sound of sirens I’d noticed almost five minutes earlier was still in the air, close enough now that every wail caused a sharp pain to shoot through my ears. I pressed my hands against the sides of my head and turned toward the direction the noise seemed to be coming from. But my hands fell almost instantly to my sides as I did so, because blocking out that earsplitting noise was suddenly the least of my worries.