Cherishing Destiny (A Dangerous Destiny) (6 page)

She had been dreaming of Sara and Ryan too.  I need to get
out of here and find them, she told herself. 
I hope they’re okay. Sara should
be safe, but Ryan might be looking for me right this minute.

Sara was like a second mother to Destiny, and for years, she
was her only mother.  And, then there was Ryan.  Her relationship with Ryan
was… well...complicated. 
Yeah, that’s it, complicated.
  She felt a
twinge of guilt when she thought of the last time she had spoken to Ryan.  They
argued, and she knew that she was being unreasonable, but she just hadn’t been
able to back down or to apologize.  She hoped that she would get that chance
soon.  Sara and Ryan were her family and for better or worse, she loved them.

Sara was around fifty now and even though she was starting
to look a little older, circumstances had kept her young looking.  Ryan, on the
other hand, was a year older than Sara but, he was a
Were
and he did not
age as quickly as a human would.  He still looked twenty-nine or so even though
he was more than fifty.  She did the math in her head. 
Yeah, fifty-one.

Ryan never acted fifty a day in his life, she thought. 
He’s just a gigantic sexy puppy.  Ryan’s
Were
species was the wolf, and
whenever Destiny wanted to push his buttons, she called him a puppy.  Ryan had
always been the center of Destiny’s world, growing up, and now she ached to see
him give her his big, flashy grin.  She figured she had another 36 or so hours
before she could try to get up and around.

Her eyelids were heavy again, and she let them drift
closed.  She let darkness enfold her and take her back into a deep healing
sleep.

eight

Aurora woke to choking gray smoke, burning her eyes and
gagging her.  She held her breath to avoid taking in any more of the noxious
fumes.  She didn’t actually need to breathe anyway.  She only needed the air to
talk, so she stayed silent and tried to see through the smoke. 

As near as she could tell, the floor of her bedroom had
dropped into a wide hallway on the main floor.  It was still slanted at a crazy
angle and everywhere she looked there was only wreckage.  She did not think
that much of the house was still standing. 

She moved a chunk of her headboard from her path and tried
to see a way out of the rubble.  She spotted legs sticking out from under the
mattress that went with the headboard.  She lifted it out of the way and found
Sara, still unconscious, but stirring and moaning. 

She pulled Sara up by her arms and let her upper body drape
over her own shoulder.  She lifted her, vaguely aware that the effort it was
taking was greater than it should have been.  Sara was a small woman, and
Aurora was still much stronger than a human, but she felt a weakness that she
was unaccustomed to and could not explain. 

As she tried to wade through the wreckage to find a way
out, Alex came from somewhere behind her and grabbed her arm.  He was not
speaking either, but Sara was starting to cough.  There was so much smoke. 
Alex gently pulled Sara from Aurora’s shoulder and into his arms. 

Aurora thought that she could hear flames crackling behind
the smoke toward the rear of the house.  Alex indicated the opposite direction,
using his chin to point.  Aurora tried to clear as much debris from his path as
she could so that he would not have to let go of Sara.  She finally found an opening
to the outside that used to be a dining room window.  She stumbled outside still
enveloped in thick smoke and kept going to try and get clear of the cloud.  She
stumbled and fell when she caught her bare toe on the edge of the driveway. 
Her legs kept going a few steps, trying to regain her balance before she
finally flew forward face first and landed on her belly at least fifteen feet
beyond the place where she stubbed her toe. 

She lifted her face from the pavement, spitting loose bits
of dusty cement out of her mouth and cursing.  She might be an elegant lady
when she wanted to be, but she knew the choicest curse words in at least sixteen
languages.

She rubbed at the smoky tears running from her eyes.  She could
barely see.  It was no wonder that she had tripped.  She blinked her vision
clear and sat up on the ground.  It wasn’t until then that she realized it was
daytime, and she was sitting in sunlight, smoke filtered sunlight but still sunlight. 
She was not feeling any effects, no pain, well, no pain from the sunlight
anyway.  She panicked expecting to burst into flames at any moment. She lunged
to her feet and ran back toward the house, bowling into Alex and Sara in the
thick smoke.  She went flying again, and Alex was frantically back-peddling in
an effort not to drop Sara. He tripped over Aurora, who was face down on the
ground again, only this time she was on the lawn.  At least the grass and dirt
is better than the cement, was the thought that flashed through her head. Her
mind was racing as she desperately tried to think of what to do. She thought
that maybe the smoke was protecting them for the moment, but with the house in
flames and more than half collapsed anyway, she could not think of a place to
run. 

Alex had to let go of Sara as he rolled off of Aurora’s
legs and tried to stand. Aurora was spitting sod from her mouth and still
urgently trying to think where to go. 
Maybe the garage
, she thought,
but she couldn’t tell if it was still standing in the murk.  She no more than
finished that thought when the breeze shifted and blew them clear of the smoke.

Alex recognized the danger immediately, and in a horrified
attempt to save Aurora, he dived back on top of her and tried to shield her
from the light, with his own body. 

Aurora felt the full weight of Alex come crashing onto her
back, and her face thumped into the turf a second time.  
Damn it! 
She
turned her face to the side and spit out more dirt. She was so confused!  She
tried to think back to the escape from the house, and she wondered if somehow
she truly was dead.  She didn’t feel dead, but since she had no heartbeat, how
was she actually going to be able to tell. Her thoughts were chaotic and
irrational.  Then suddenly she was fully aware of her own hand close to her
face. She had instinctively put her hands out to try and cushion her fall.  Now
her hand was palm down on the grass in front of her face, not protected by Alex
who was crushing her still.  She could see a golden beam touching the back of
her hand and felt the warmth of the sunlight on her skin.  It had already been
several seconds, and she was not burning.  From the feel of him on top of her,
neither was Alex.

Alex realized that the sun was shining on his face, and he
tilted his head up and squinted to look at it.  He thought he remembered
something from what seemed like a million years ago about not staring into the
sun.  He turned away and saw a big spot in his vision.  He closed his eyes and
looked at the spot on the back of his eyelids.

When he opened them again and looked at Aurora, he felt
like he was in some kind of shock, and he knew that he was grinning like an
idiot.  He could see that her face was dirty, and she was trying to turn her
head to look at him, but her neck wouldn’t move that far.

“Geptth offfth,” she sputtered.

He realized he was smashing her, and he rolled to the side.
She pushed herself up to her hands and knees, not raising her head, but looking
at the ground, her hair hanging down covering the sides of her face.  He saw
her start to tremble violently, and he thought she was sobbing.  Then he heard
her laughing in a way that he had not thought her capable of in a long time.  His
ear to ear grin returned and was even wider if that was possible.   

Sara stirred on the ground next to him. Her eyes opened to
look into his smiling face.  She heard somebody laughing and a wan smile came
to her lips.

“Are we dead?” she asked Alex, still smiling.

“Well,” he said. “That’s an excellent question.  Let me
think about it.  You are definitely not dead, and yesterday I would have told
you that, technically, I am dead.  Today I am not so sure.”

Sara blinked at him and looked confused. “Huh?”

He just kissed her forehead and joined Aurora in her
laughter.

Nine

Aurora had a damp cloth in her hand and was wiping blood
off Sara’s face when Alex came back into the lean-to shed in the walnut
grove.  

“Where did you find water?” he asked her.

“In a bird bath.” She shrugged. “Did you find a phone or
anyone else?”

“I went to see if I could get into any of the cars that had
emergency phones in them.  The garage was mostly collapsed, but I did get a phone
out of the Rover, which was only half crushed.”  He looked at her with his
mouth in a grim line. “Aurora, there are no phone signals, and I don’t mean
that they are too busy or that there aren’t enough bars.  There are literally
no signals”

“What does that mean, Alex?” She started to catch his worry.

“I’m not quite sure, but I think what happened here may be
bigger than I first thought.  I’m not so sure that this was an isolated earthquake.”

Neither of them had mentioned the light in the sky yet, and
she was a little afraid to go there.  Alex had proposed the earthquake theory
when they had finally found some shelter to bring Sara to. He told her to stay
with Sara while he tried to find anyone else still alive and maybe a phone to
call for help for Sara who was unconscious again.  There should have been at
least three more staff members around somewhere with maybe one or two out for
the night. 

“Did you find anyone else?”

“Old Nate was in the collapsed garage.”

“And?” She pressed.

Alex just looked at her sadly and shook his head.

She stared down at the rag in her hands without actually
seeing it.  Suddenly she snapped her attention back to Alex.  “What about a
land line?” she asked hopefully.

He shook his head again. “I thought of that too.  The only true
hard line we had was the alarm, and I was able to check that line at the
garage.  It’s totally dead.”

He took a deep breath and caught Aurora’s gaze. “Look, I
don’t want to frighten you but I also found a radio, like a CB, but there was
only some kind of crazy screeching interference on every channel, not even static. 
I think I may need to walk to town to get help for Sara.

Aurora suddenly looked nervous, and she cleared her throat,
which she never did.

“What is it?” he asked. “Just tell me.”

“Well, I didn’t want to scare you either, but speaking of
helping Sara… I tried to heal her, Alex and well, look for yourself.”

Aurora brushed Sara’s hair off of her forehead, exposing
what looked to have been a nasty gash at her scalp line.  It was closed and no
longer bleeding but still looked pretty awful. He frowned at the ugly wound.

“That’s not all.  Look at this.”  Aurora was still wearing
her bathrobe, but it was hard to tell that it had once been white.  She pushed
up her sleeves and held up her arms to show him the scrapes where she had fallen
on the driveway.  Her forearms and elbows had been bleeding pretty badly when
she first fell about two hours ago.  Now there were still some scrapes, they
were not too serious, and a lot of pink new skin, healing skin. 

Aurora was healing pretty quickly, but Alex knew exactly
what she was getting at.  As a Vampire, scraping her arms and elbows should
have been nothing to Aurora.  Those kinds of wounds should have healed almost
instantly.  At this rate, it would be another couple of hours before all signs
of her fall were gone.  It was the same with Sara.  Aurora used her own blood
and applied it to Sara’s gash, and it should also have healed in minutes at the
most. 

Alex didn’t know what to say.  He didn’t want to tell
Aurora that he was experiencing the same thing.  He was still feeling bits of
glass working themselves out of his feet where he had cut them last night.  He
could also tell that he was not as strong as he had been and then there was the
sunlight.  It should have been burning them when it touched their skin, but it
was warm and pleasant actually.  And, when the sun was up, Vampires usually
find it difficult to stay awake.  He was not the least bit sleepy, and it was
probably around 11AM.

“Look, I don’t know what’s going on around here, but I
think Sara needs help.”

Just then Sara stirred.  Her eyes opened and seemed to take
a moment to focus.  Aurora immediately returned to fussing over her, wiping her
forehead with the cloth she still held. 

“What’s going on?” She tried to sit up, but Aurora put a
hand on her shoulder and kept her down.

“Don’t try to get up yet,” she said.

Sara was more than a little intimidated.  Aurora never really
spoke to her except for an occasional request and now she was sponging her head
while sitting in a shed, wearing a dirty bathrobe.
Oh, this is surreal, she
thought.  
Her head hurt and she explored her skull finding a bump on the
back of her head.  It didn’t seem too serious but, when she mentioned it,
Aurora immediately insisted on checking it too. 

“I really think that I am okay,” she insisted.