The Ylem (13 page)
Ruidoso, New Mexico
CALEB
Damnit
. This was our second day in
this place and we still hadn’t found the Benandanti. Patience
wasn’t one of my strengths. I often jumped into stuff without
thinking. A bad old habit from my human years that I’d kept with
me. Time wasn’t something I had in tons back then. That ‘life is
short’ mantra that’d been branded in my head had been responsible
for my impulsive nature. Still was. Even if the life I led now
defied that on its full extension. Lack of time, of years, wasn’t a
problem anymore.
But that hadn’t changed anything. And it
played against me in this new life, especially in this mission
where every move and every second counted.
“This is so boring,” Nick sighed next to me.
“I'm almost wishing for the Benandanti to come and find us. That
would spice up things a bit.” He kicked a small rock, sending it
against a tree.
“What, wishing for your death?” I asked him,
watching a dragonfly buzzing around. My patience was slipping away
little by little, and hearing Nick’s complaint only worsened
it.
“No, just bored as hell.”
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. We
were keeping our post in a thick wall of trees that surrounded one
side of an upscale neighborhood, listening to scattered
conversations, trying to spot something that would give off the
Benandanti’s location.
Our eyes weren’t the only ones that held
great sharpness. All of our senses were fully developed. And
hearing came up as the most acute one. We could be six miles away
from our target and still hear it. It required a lot of focus at
that distance, though, and it sucked up all of our energy
sometimes. Searching in a sea of voices that stretched out over
several houses could have fried our brains. That’s why we’d chosen
to close the distance and had come straight into the
neighborhood.
Massimo and Ben were on the other side of
town, doing the same wearisome thing, and still with no results.
Not finding the Benandanti was a source of anxiety. We couldn’t let
him, or her, find us before we did. It would mean our end right
there.
They were, in fact, our worst nightmare.
What we did have to our advantage, however,
was our untraceable scent. No one, not even the loser pack living
here, could smell us. A gift we’d been conveniently given by our
father, Balthazar. If those losers' noses couldn’t catch us, they
couldn’t inform the Benandanti of our arrival, which gave us a lot
more time to wander around. We just needed to be on our guard and
stay out of the public eye.
Gavran, on the other hand, was in charge of
finding the Keeper. But I didn’t know how that was going for him.
He hated being interrupted while on search mode. We had to wait for
him to contact us.
“Oh, you have to hear this,” Nick suddenly
said with a grin. “Look for the house where the dog is
barking.”
I reached out and listened. “They’re going to
kick out the dog from the house?” I arched my eyebrow.
“Not ‘they,’ her. The little fella peed on
her new, expensive shoes, so she’s freaking out.” He laughed.
“Talk about overreacting.”
“It’s a woman. What would you expect?”
The late morning sun glowed fiercely in the
skies. Golden light seeped through the canopy of leaves above,
touching the earth as if with sheer long fingers. Though the air
was cooler than the steamy one outside this shadowy shelter, the
dark clothes covering my body were soaking up the warmth. My shirt
was glued to my lower back, damp with the sweat dotting my skin.
The chirp of crickets in the background brought to my mind visions
of jungles.
This is a freaking sauna
.
I peeled off my shirt.
“What are you doing?”
“I'm hot,” I told him, stuffing half of the
shirt in the back pocket of my jeans. The rest was dangling,
brushing my thigh.
“Say that to a girl,” Nick snorted. “All
those bare muscles don’t work with me.”
I glared at him.
“What?” he shrugged. “They don’t. And that
pretty face of yours doesn’t either, so stop that sexy dirty look
of yours. You’re wasting it.”
I stepped closer to him. “If you don’t shut
the hell up,” I said slowly. “I’ll make you eat the dirt under your
feet and then make you swallow it along with your words.” I wasn’t
in the mood for jokes. The high temperature had only kicked my
temper up a notch.
“Great. I'm hungry,” he said with a
smirk.
Perfect.
I punched him in the stomach. “There. You
won’t be hungry anymore.”
He staggered back, letting out a big gulp of
air and pressed his hands against his abdomen. “Asshole,” he
breathed, laughing through the pain.
“You asked for it.” I leaned against a tree,
satisfaction pulling up the corners of my mouth into a smile. “I
solved your problem, didn’t I?”
“Wrong,” he said, finally straightening
himself up from his hunched posture and squaring his shoulders.
“I'm always hungry. We’re
always
hungry,” he added. “And
don’t tell me the smell of eggs and bacon doesn’t bring your
appetite to boiling point.”
He had to point that out, didn’t he?
The smell was actually intoxicating. It
coiled up into the air in warm, rich scents that watered my mouth.
It was a Sunday and a lot of families were having a late breakfast.
I could hear the steam hissing through tea kettles, the sizzle of
sausages against metal, the rustle of cereal boxes, the clinking
against china and, most of all, the scraping of chairs being
brought together around tables—parents and offspring coming
together to share a meal. Something I didn’t know of. My breakfasts
used to be cold sandwiches in parks, often in the company of
pigeons—a lot of them one-legged.
I’d never known the warmth of sharing a meal
with people who loved me, in a place I could call home. Loneliness
had been my only companion back in the days.
“Do you ever wonder what is it like?” Nick
said in a whisper, lost in thought.
I looked at him. “Wonder what?”
“Having a house, a warm meal—A Mom…” He
sighed, longing lacing his words. “Or having a pain in the ass
little sister.” He gave a small smile.
I lowered my eyes. Nick was the same as me.
Though we were from different places, different continents, we had
the same lonesome past. We understood each other. That’s why when
he’d found me roaming in a dark alley, jobless, a quick offer to
join him had been made.
We were part of a big family now, and we had
a goal. But that little corner in our minds, where our mirthless
past was locked in, opened up old feelings sometimes. It didn’t let
us walk our path freely, as if we had a permanent pebble stuck in
our shoes.
“I once had the chance to be with a family,”
I said, suddenly reminded of that short period of time. I didn’t
like to talk about it. The memory hurt. “It was just for less than
a month. I was in New York back then.”
Nick turned to look at me, losing his faraway
gaze.
“They offered me to work for them. I had to
clean the apartment, do the laundry, care for bedrooms, and even
cook sometimes— a maid, of sorts.”
He chuckled.
I shot him a glare.
“Okay, okay,” he pressed his hand against his
stomach, as if fearing another punch. “Sorry. Go on.” Then, as if
he couldn’t let it pass, he added, “But you have to admit it’s dead
funny.”
I gave a soft shake of my head. “It was like
winning the lottery for me. Aside from earning good bucks, I had a
room, warm food—I just couldn’t believe how much trust they were
putting on a sixteen-year-old stranger.” I crossed my arms over my
bare chest. “But the best part was the little girl. She was an only
child, so having me there was like an early Christmas for her. I
was her new puppet. She loved to play Hide-and-Seek with me—I found
her once hiding inside the dryer—and she was a little chubby so…” I
snorted a laugh.
Nick was smiling, as if he was picturing the
whole scene. “How old was she?”
“Eight,” I told him with deep affection,
warmth blossoming inside my chest. “She was like the little sister
I never had.”
A heavy pause followed, both of us deep into
the clouds of our minds. Images of the little brunette girl smiled
at me. That beautiful sparkle in her eyes glowing like two little
stars over a green and brown ocean.
“So, what happened?” Nick asked, pulling up
his haunted blue eyes to mine. “If you enjoyed so much being there
with them, why did you leave?”
“For the exact same reason. They made me feel
as if I was part of the family, and I knew that one day or another
everything was going to end. I mean, how much could’ve that
lasted?” I shrugged, scrapping my bare skin against the tree bark.
“I knew the fall was going to be hard if I didn’t get away fast,
and they wanted me to—” I trailed off. “Nick?”
He wasn’t looking at me anymore, nor
listening. His nostrils were flared, open in anticipation, and his
nails had sharpened, deadly as knives. He was staring through
narrowed eyes at the girl jogging on the walkway, brushing past the
edge of the tree line. White cords fell down from her ears,
swinging around her neck. She was listening to music—an easy
prey.
Silence fell upon us. The crush of her shoes
against gravel the only sound touching our enhanced ears.
“It looks we found ourselves a meal,” Nick
said, breathing heavily. His sturdy chest moved up and down beneath
his black shirt.
I shoved my hand to his forearm, imprisoning
him there as hard as I could. “Don’t.” I warned through my teeth.
“The last thing we need is to draw attention to ourselves with a
missing girl.”
“It won’t.” He tried to pull away.
I restrained him harder, my veins jumping
from the exertion. “Think with a cold head, Nick.”
“I'm thinking, Caleb.” His mood was
darkening. His muscles beefing-up. “That girl is planning to run
away. I heard her talking on the phone minutes ago. She fights a
lot with her parents—and she just had a fight with them. No one
will suspect.” He jerked away his arm from my grip.
And before I could react, he’d launched
himself on the girl. I heard the crack of her neck. I heard the
thump of her limp body being tossed onto the ground. Then, the rich
scent of warm blood swirled in the air.
KALISTA
The serene current of blue water reappeared
in front of me. I began to track the sound, searching for the
crystal waterfall. Tiny butterfly-like flowers shimmered around
rocks, bejeweling the emerald ground with a rainbow of colors. The
sound of water grew stronger, playing a beautiful melody, singing
to my soul. Fog floated in the air, gradually fading as I walked
through, and bringing to light the same magnificent cascade falling
like pixie dust on beautiful sapphire crystal water.
I sat down on the same large flattened rock,
with its smoky, see-through surface, and the soothing melody slowly
transformed into a nebulous humming. The pixie dust floated to the
edges, as if a magic ball about to announce something. There, in
the captivating depths, the silver orb reemerged, radiating a
mystifying light. My eyes were riveted to its splendor.
The humming sound transformed into a hazy
melodious voice. “Kalista...”
I stood up and stared at the depths, waiting
to hear the beautiful voice again. “Come, come to me…”
I put my feet into the cold water without
thinking. I walked down slowly, readjusting to the abrupt
temperature shift, until I was neck deep in water. I pulled myself
down and looked for the luminous orb, but my eyes only saw a pale
blur moving afar. I pushed the water aside with my hands wide open
and, as I got closer, I saw a hand waiting, stretched toward me. I
reached it, and from the cloudy water, Tristan’s angelic face
appeared. He smiled at me with surreal silver eyes, like those I’d
seen next to me in the snow. His beautiful dark hair floated like
silk in a soft breeze, fusing with the deep sapphire.
I pushed my hand through the water to touch
his, but when our fingers were about to meet, something jerked him
down. His face stretched in agony and disappeared. I sank deeper
and deeper, trying to find him, screaming like a ghost into the
dark…
“Tristan!” I called horrified, sitting up
with a jerk. My heart pounded in my ears. I pressed my hands
against my head, trying to rid my mind of the frightening dream.
The electric dots in my fingertips felt sharper than ever.
Realizing I was in my warm, dry bed, my
breath steadied. The luminous red numbers on my desk clock
announced it was time for lunch. I got up, still disoriented, and
shoved the curtains open. An electric shock jolted my fingers.
I was so sick of this static thing.
It was a beautiful day outside. Some clouds
floated in the sky, but not enough to cover the bright, golden sun.
A shower didn’t appeal much to me, so I decided to go down still in
my pajamas. My dad was watching the Food Network in the living
room, something about a chef making flat oven-baked bread topped
with onions, herbs and other unidentified foodstuff. I was actually
proud I’d recognized the onions. Herbs were generally green, so
that wasn’t a challenge.
“What is that? A pizza?” I asked, settling
down on the leather sofa and pulling my knees to my chest.
“Well, good morning, or should I say,” he
twisted his wrist to glimpse at his watch. “Good afternoon?”
“I know it’s late, but I was really
tired.”
“You still look tired.”
“I think I slept too much. I had this weird
nightmare…I don’t know.” I shook my head, confused. It was the
first time I’d dreamt about Tristan.