Caged (18 page)

“I’m glad to know that you esteem me so highly that you would trust the word of a traitor over that of your self-professed ‘friend’.”

And with that he slammed the door behind him. I assumed it was for the last time.

21

My eyes burned fiercely, yet no tears quenched them. I was beyond crying, falling straight into a sadness so penetrating that it numbed me. I remained where I lay contemplating what had just occurred. The loss of a relationship, however strange it might have been, was gut wrenching. I’d had so few in my life that I wasn’t in a position to squander them.

I was homeschooled and did virtually nothing outside of that. My parents chaperoned everything I did and never really encouraged me to make friends. I would say that I’d always had acquaintances, but never really anyone who was closer than that. I never had sleepovers, went to the movies, stayed up all night on the phone talking about boys, or dated.

I lived with my parents while I was an undergrad at Dartmouth College. Aside from classroom interaction, I really didn’t know anyone on campus or do any of the typical “college” things like get knock-down drunk only to do the walk of shame the next morning, eat pizza at four a.m. because you could, or saran wrap someone’s toilet. It was always strange to me because of their willingness to take me all over the world so that I could “see” everything, but at the same time wouldn’t let me live a normal life while at home. I missed out on the things that helped a person to shape their sense of self and their place in the world. No amount of shopping in Paris could make up for that.

Dating was never a problem. My parents wouldn’t allow it when I was in my teens, and quite frankly, it was a non-issue. There weren’t exactly throngs of teenage boys hanging around my house waiting to ask me out. I didn’t have much interest in the opposite sex until college. However, when I was there it didn’t seem like too many people were jumping at the chance to date the blind girl. It was hard to know how to fit in when so much about social interaction was based on the visual realm: how you dress, what you looked like, your hair, your makeup, your affectations, and your expressions all silently spoke volumes about you. I had never known what my style was, though my mother would allegedly take me to all the right stores and have the cutest girl there dress me. I never knew what I looked like, though my parents would constantly assure me that I looked fine. They weren’t especially helpful.

The first and only time I really took a shot at dating was during my sophomore year when I met a guy in my organic chemistry class. I was sitting in the back, trying desperately to make sense of the Fisher projections the professor was going on about, when the boy next to me leaned into my ear and said “Are you following this shit, because I’m starting to think that I need to change my major”. I giggled but didn’t reply, assuming it was rhetorical. He leaned in again to introduce himself. His name was Kevin.

I never lifted my hand from my Braille, but returned the introduction, and so began a two-month flirting extravaganza. We’d make snide remarks through class and he’d walk me to Calculus directly afterward. I learned that he was the captain of the soccer team which was apparently impressive because of his sophomore status. He was from New Jersey and had a strange but endearing accent. He was sweet to me when nobody else was.

One time while gathering our books up after class, he asked if I wanted to go “ta da bar”, and I eagerly agreed. I’d heard girls in the hall talk about how gorgeous he was, that he’d had an incredible body and that they wanted to do some very interesting, not to mention anatomically questionable, things to him. I thought I was so lucky that he wanted to go out with me.

Apparently he thought that too.

After our date (which I thought was amazing), he was supposed to take me home. Apparently he had other plans in mind. He took me out to a parking lot next to a local hiking area. He informed me that no other guy would take someone like me out and that I owed him a favor for such an act of generosity. When I declined and demanded that he take me home, he didn’t take it very well, to say the least. I ended up alone and frightened in a parking lot with a rapidly swelling cheekbone, listening to the gravel fly out from the wheels of his fleeing car.

It was hours before I was spotted by a passing police car. He was so kind and tried to take me home, but whenever his footsteps got close enough to me I’d start screaming uncontrollably. He settled for calling my parents who came and got me. Reports were later filed and because of my parents influence on campus, the soccer team was shortly thereafter looking for a new captain.

I never dated again.

I must have fallen asleep because I was dreaming of floating through the forest looking up at the canopy of trees above. I played with the silver band on my hand as the light shone down through the slits between the leaves, warming my face. I slid it off and on repeatedly, watching as the sun’s rays bounced off the metallic surface, catching in the well-worn grooves of the nearly faded engravings. My attention was distracted as I felt my body lowered slowly and nestled into a bed of grass.

A man appeared out of nowhere, hovering above me, his eyes a green so bright that cut emerald paled in comparison. He leaned in slowly, closing the distance between our faces as if to kiss me. He reached behind me and drew his hand slowly through my hair so gently that it tickled. He did it over and over, lulling me to sleep. Just as I reached the edge of slumber he reached back one last time and grabbed a fistful of that hair and yanked it back so harshly that my head extended beyond its physiological limits. I screamed and struggled to look at my captor. When his face slowly rounded my chin to come over me and reach my eyes, I was staring into two pools of forest-black and a face so feral I wasn’t sure anything could contain him…

My eyes shot open to see those same dark eyes looking down at me. They were very, very real. Sean loomed over me and I stiffened under his gaze. I wasn’t sure how long it took before I felt the weight of his hand at my throat.
God, I can be so stupid. Eric had been right about everything else. Why did I fall for Sean’s innocent and wounded routine earlier? If I hadn’t, I could be far away from here by now. Eric would have protected me.

My pulse quickened with his erratic breathing, his hand continually flexing over my throat tighter and tighter. I was going to die by those hands. The hands of someone I cared about. Or thought I did.

I closed my eyes and prayed for death to come quickly, but instead it waited for me in the distance, never moving closer or farther away. I supposed that there was something sort of poetic about the situation, and that I should find comfort in the fact that I would soon see my parents again, and be around the only ones who ever loved me.

I reopened my eyes presumably for the last time. His were only inches from my face and I could feel the warmth of his breath on my neck and chin. It was rhythmic and soothing though fear still predominated my state. I tried to let it lull me into my subconscious, hoping that it would lessen the pain of what was inevitably about to occur. Just as I let it take me away, he abruptly stopped.

”It’s been so long,” he said so softly that it was barely a whisper on the air. The way he said it with eyes closed and face soft, I started to wonder exactly what “it” was and exactly how long “it” had been. When he appeared to be coming out of whatever memory lane he’d been down, his eyes opened.

He quickly froze.

“Your eyes,” he said, pulling away from me. “It’s true.”

His grip lessened for a fraction of a second and I tried to sit up to see what in God’s name he was talking about. I struggled my way up against his weight to see my reflection in the mirror across the room. Even with only the light of the moon shining through the windows, what I saw was undeniable. The face looking back at me was my own, except for the scarlet, blood-red eyes staring back at me.

Sean truly hadn’t known.

Shit.

When I brought my focus back to Sean he had regained his all-business face. I didn’t take it as a good sign. I screamed as loudly as I could but it was in vain; nobody lived in the surrounding buildings and passersby would never hear me through the street noise. His hand quickly found my throat again and tightened around it, slowly cutting off all sound. Along with my air.

22

“Shut up,” he whispered in my ear. I didn’t have a lot of other options, given how his tightening fist was re-calibrating my vocal cords. “I need to think.”

Thinking was better than killing in my book, so I laid still and let him. He was breathing frantically while he extended his fingers to release some of the pressure on my neck. I didn’t dare move. He looked so torn, fighting an internal battle that had nothing to do with the physical one in process. I closed my eyes and just concentrated on the sound of our breathing, and the feel of his energy. I tried to emit the most calming force I could, willing it to be effective.

“I didn’t want to believe it,” he said through gritted teeth. “I had to be sure. I couldn’t risk it.” He paused for a moment inhaling deeply, then slowly releasing it before he spoke again. “I have to tell them,” he said sounding pained and exhausted. “I have to tell the Elders.”

He abruptly released me, standing up to leave. I scrambled inelegantly to my feet and followed after him as he reached for the door.

“You’re going to tell them?” I asked, panic straining my voice. “They’ll want me dead. Why don’t you kill me now and get it over with?” I asked, feigning bravery.

“I need to see how they want to proceed. This is unprecedented, Ruby. The normal protocol doesn’t seem applicable. You haven’t killed anyone since your Change…I need to see if there are options. See if it’s possible to let you live,” he said, appearing flustered.

He looked down at the floor for several seconds and said nothing. His silence was maddening. The entire situation was frying my brain, so I tried to backtrack my thoughts to make some sense of everything that had occurred in the last twenty-four hours. Before I got very far, a hand crashed through my plaster wall, snapping me out of my cerebral ramblings.

“DAMMIT!” he yelled, while blood rolled off his knuckles onto the hardwood floor. I reflexively moved towards him to try to help in some way. “Do not touch me” was the thanks I got for my effort.

“I don’t want to kill you Ruby,” he said, his voice strained, his words concise. “I need you to know that. There are things about me I haven’t explained yet and it took everything I had just now not to finish you off,” he whispered shamefully. His mannerisms, expression and eyes were back to the Sean I knew; like a switch to another personality. “I need to leave.
Now
,” he said softly as he walked out of the bedroom. “I have to get away from you.”

I wanted to follow but glued my feet to the floor, honoring his earlier request to stay away.

“I know you’re not a danger, Ruby…not if you can contain the wolf,” he said, pausing in the hall. “I’ll do what I can for you.”

“Where are you going?” I asked, slowly moving to the bedroom door.

“The Elders are in Milano, Italy, near the border of Switzerland. I must go and speak to them in person,” he replied with a look of distaste. Something about the word “Elders” sounded offensive when he said it. “I will be back with…instructions…in a few days.”

He turned to look at me and gave me a ghost of a smile that faded quickly. I couldn’t fight my need to comfort him, as ridiculous as that seemed in the moment, and I slowly approached him hoping I wouldn’t set him off again.

He said nothing as I moved closer, finally coming to rest with our toes nearly touching. I had no idea what to say, but I couldn’t leave things the way they were even under the circumstances. I looked down at my feet searching for words, feeling awkward and inappropriate. Telling him that I was still the same “person”, the same girl he saved, seemed a good place to start, but I mostly wanted to tell him “thank you”.

I felt his right hand slide along my cheek lifting my face up to his gaze. The green eyes I knew from a rescue long past stared kindly into mine. He drew tiny circles with his thumbs along my cheekbone and I pressed the weight of my head into his hand, seeking comfort. His left hand came to join me on the other cheek and picked up the same pattern of circular stroking. The coldness I’d felt deep in my bones still left from the fighting that night was slowly rubbed away, a warming sensation replacing it. I’d never known that human touch could feel so welcome. He lowered his face down to my ear at a tentative pace. His thumbs stopped, and along with the rest of his hand, cupped my face. His breath was heavy on my ear and the silence in the room was deafening. My nerve endings were alight with tingling, burning and other foreign sensations making me want to jump out of my skin and crawl back into it over and over again. He opened his mouth, lips brushing my earlobe and a fire shot through me from top to bottom. My face flushed. My breathing quickened.

“Don’t go anywhere,” he whispered in my ear, pausing to rest his nose against my temple. My vocal function was lost amidst the other nerve signals being processed by my brain, so the warning given didn’t absorb immediately. I focused hard to push my words out, but before I could, he briskly walked to the apartment door and slid out, closing it softly behind him, leaving me confused and alone. Again.