Innocently Evil (A Kitty Bloom Novel) (5 page)

T
here were thousands of questions filling my mind at each thought and there was just too much I needed answered, too much for me to take in. I couldn’t understand why my mum had never told me any of this, especially since so much of it concerned her. I never complained that strongly when she had brought up Ninetta. I may have often been distant, but I never ignored her. Had she wanted to tell me, I would have listened. What was she hiding? I was beginning to wonder if there was anyone anywhere in my life that I could trust. Was everyone hiding something from me, even the dead, even myself?

Cantrelle watched as I digested her words, seeing me shake my head at thoughts that couldn’t be answered and putting my head in my hands when there just seemed to be too much to deal with. She moved my cup of tea a little closer to me and I looked up at her.
“Let me ask you, dear,” she said slyly. “Have you done anything out of character recently?”

Immediately I went to say ‘no’,
partly feeling a little defensive due to my previous ignorance, but then I remembered about being alone with Max. I had found it hard to leave him when he said not to, when usually I would have listened to my gut and run away from him. I thought about running away from Sam, when I was usually more understanding and practical than that. Even if I hadn’t believed him, I would have stayed to hear him out. I began to wonder whether my running from Sam, now had more to do with what he actually was, then what he was trying to tell me.

I looked up at Sam and admired his
innocent, violet eyes and handsome baby-boy features, features too beautiful to be on someone who’d been dead for almost seventy years. Suddenly, things started to make a little more sense. “I ran from you because of what you are, didn’t I,” I asked Sam.

He opened his mouth as
though he was about to try to explain, but Cantrelle beat him to it. “Of course you did, Kitty,” Cantrelle beamed, as though she was proud of me. “Your natural instinct has changed. Your body now craves evil. Lilith’s blood is overpowering and all consuming. You no longer have a choice as to which side you choose.”

“That’s not tr
ue!” Sam yelled and stood up abruptly, then slammed his fists down on the table. The cups on the table rattled as they tried to rebalance themselves, creating circular puddles of pale brown collared liquid as the tea swished around inside them. “Everyone has a choice, Kitty,” said Sam, as he walked around the table towards me. “And that’s why I’m here with you. To protect you until you make the right decision.”

I looked up at him confused. How could I possibly make a decision, let alone the right one, when everything, including my own body, was working against me?
Besides, who knew what the right decision was? Clearly, Ninetta, my grandmother, my family, had made her decision and had chosen to open herself to the evil inside of her. So, did that mean she made the right decision? Good and evil had never held much substance to me. Life had always just been life, so how was I supposed to choose? Good and evil were just sides anyway, weren’t they, just sides with beliefs opposite to each other and who was I to decide which beliefs should be valued?

My mind was spinning by the time the strong determination in Sam’s eyes finally made sense to me. He wanted me to choose his side.
“And what’s the right decision, Sam,” I said, standing up to face him. “The decision you agree with I suppose? Where is
my
choice there, Sam? What if I don’t want to be on a stupid side? What if I just want to be me? What if I just want to be left alone?”

I was so angry and confused at everything and everyone. All this new knowledge was giving me a headache and
I felt trapped no matter which way I turned. I stared Sam down even though I could feel hot tears creeping down my cheeks and blurring up my vision. The whole situation was beginning to sicken me. I never wanted any of this and there seemed to be no way out of it. Cantrelle and Sam’s silence was enough to show me that. I’d never be left alone from now on. I was now beginning to understand Mum’s constant need for moving.

Sam stepped forward, unfortunately not deterred by my steely, although tear-smudged, glare and put a hand on my cheek. He rubbed away another newly formed tear with his thumb and looked down at me reflecting all the pain in his eyes that he must have seen in mine.
“I am here for you, Kitty,” he said softly. “I will always be until you make your decision whatever it may be. It will then be you who’ll decide whether you still want me around or not.” Sam’s hand suddenly jerked away from my face and he hissed in pain.

“You cannot have her either,” said Cantrelle, from
where she now stood next to us.               I hadn’t even heard her stand up. I looked down at Sam’s arm, at where Cantrelle held it, and saw that her claws were imbedded up to her fingertips in his skin. “Let him go!” I screamed at her, grabbing her arm, but found myself unable to move her.

“Not until
you know what he is,” she snarled and pushed me away. She raised her other hand and drove her claws deep into his chest. Sam groaned, grabbed her arm with his free hand and pulled her hand out of his chest. A hunk of skin came away still clutched between her claws and Cantrelle gave another gleeful cackle. “Show her,” she said.

As Cantrelle moved to take another stab at Sam, he bowed his head and an electric, white force emanating from somewhere inside him, seemed to envelope his body.
It hit Cantrelle and sent her flying backwards into the side of a cupboard. I watched as she slid down to the floor grinning and cackling as she stared at Sam. I followed her gaze and saw a white, hot glow begin to fill out the space behind Sam’s back. I didn’t understand what was happening. His gruesome red wounds began to heal over until there was nothing left to prove he’d been hurt at all except for his bloodied shirt. In an instant, Sam raised his head and looked at me and the white light around him disappeared in a flash. And I found myself looking at an—angel. Quite a unique thing for someone who didn’t even believe in God.

I felt such an overwhelming urge to run away as I looked at him. I was now beginning to understand that my body, because of Lilith’s bloo
d, was both afraid of and anxious to avoid anything in the universe that may be good. Unfortunately, it seemed as though Cantrelle had been right and that my once reliable instincts now preferred putting my body in danger, in the hopes of enticing the evil side. I was certain that if I didn’t learn to fight this dangerous tendency soon, I wouldn’t have much of a life left to try to protect. I didn’t want to become a monster’s dinner, let alone become a monster myself, so it was either stay and deal with the angel or run away screaming and die. I was pretty sure I knew what my choice was going to be.

As I looked at Sam I
realized that he wasn’t exactly what I’d pictured an angel to look like. Even though I’d never given that much thought to it, I’d always envisioned a beautiful being with white wings, a halo, a white robe and possibly a harp. Sam scored only two out of five. He was beautiful and he had wings. Although not purely white, but tinged with the golds of his hair color, his feathered wings were folded up neatly behind each shoulder blade. I couldn’t help but look him up and down. With his black biker boots, jeans, white t-shirt and black leather jacket, he just didn’t seem to match the true form of an angel.

Sam gave me an odd, but sincere smile and bowed his head again. The white, electric force enveloped his body once more and
in an instant his wings were gone. When all was back to normal he looked up at me, staring deep into my eyes, and gave me an almost pained look. I was pretty sure he was waiting for me to reject him, to run away, and I almost had.

“Do you see,” said Cantrelle as she struggled
to lift herself from the floor. “He isn’t what you want and never will be. I’m surprised you managed to stop yourself from fleeing just at the sight of him.”

“So am I,” said Sam, as he nervously ran his fingers through his shaggy, golden fringe.

“I don’t believe in God,” I blurted out, not really understanding why.

Sam raised an eyebrow at me and gave me a reassuring smile.

“I mean, how can I believe in angels if I don’t believe in God,” I said again, trying to clarify myself.

“The same way
you now believe in monsters,” Sam said as he stretched out a hand to Cantrelle who was still sitting on the floor. She frowned up at him, obviously not impressed with his help or his pity, but took his hand anyway. Sam pulled her up until she was firmly back on her feet and then she tossed his hand away and brushed herself off.

“When I died,” Sam
said, turning to face me again, “I didn’t believe in God. And to tell you the truth, I’m not sure I actually believe in Him now. I’ve never seen him, never met any other angels. The only thing I understood after I died is that I had to protect you. The day before you were born, I woke up in my grave, completely healed and desperate to find you. When I did, I knew I was never allowed to leave you, not until you had made your choice. So, I really don’t care if you believe in God or not. I don’t even care if you believe in angels. All you have to understand is that I’m here for you. I always have been and I’m never going to let anything happen to you that you don’t want to happen.”

I stared at Sam, my eyes wide and mouth open.
“Okay,” I mumbled, for lack of a better answer.

Four:
Dream Stalker

Sam and I had left Cantrelle screaming in her kitchen over ten minutes ago. She’d been disappointed that I hadn’t rejected Sam as she had initially foreseen and once I’d accepted that Sam was going to stick by me no matter what, the screaming started. Desperate to get us out of there, Sam had dragged me out the door and into the darkness without another word. I thought it was pretty safe to assume that we wouldn’t be eager to see Cantrelle again anytime soon.

We’d been walking in silence now for quite a while. Every so often, I’d glance up at him from the corner of my eye trying to steal another look at what he truly was. But, in the end
, I never saw anything more than an extraordinarily handsome, young man in biker boots and a leather jacket. As soon as Sam noticed me looking he’d turn his head to look at me and I’d look away, ashamed at myself for thinking I’d see his wings again. The more time I spent with him, the more I didn’t feel like running. I no longer felt like teasing him or being aggressively flirtatious, and my instincts no longer told me to head for the hills. It was like I was beginning to appreciate who he really was and how much he seemed to genuinely care for me, even though I hadn’t known him for more than a couple of hours.

I looked back down at my feet as we continued to walk. In some ways it scared me to think that he had always been in my life, hiding in some dark corner, watching me grow as the years went by. In other ways, it made me feel like there was one person out there who actually knew me, who cared enough about me to put themselves in
harm’s way before letting anything happen to me. Someone who believed in me and believed that I would make it through this screwed up problem of mine and make the right decision. I hadn’t felt like someone cared this much about me for a long time. My mum, though probably loving me in her own way, never seemed to try to get to know me. But, Sam was different. He’d seen who I really was, what I liked and what I didn’t like, and everything that helped to make me, me. No one had ever known me like that.

I glanced up at Sam again, unable to stop myself. His face was serious, like he was thinking something through, but his eyes were focused on the darkness of the alleyway in front of us.
Instantly his face changed and he looked down at me with a weary smile. This time, I didn’t look away. I smiled back at him and slipped my arm through his, grabbing his hand in mine. At the feel of my palm on his, his fingers closed tight around my hand as though nothing would make him let go. I felt strangely content with my hand wrapped in his, as though my world, collapsing around me as it was, was finally making sense. His company was now such a comfort to me, like a tall, well-muscled security blanket, that I couldn’t comprehend any thoughts of running away and leaving him. In fact, I never wanted to leave him again; my life wouldn’t be the same without him. Or so my heart was beginning to believe. 

Something light and wet hit my cheek and I glanced up at the sky. Raindrops
pitter-pattered on the cobblestone path around us, and made musical notes as they landed upon tile roofs. I grinned back at Sam, his golden locks now dark and damp from the rain, and he gave me a cheeky look back. I held his hand tighter as he picked up the pace until we were jogging down the alleyway.

Although we ran down alley after alley, there was just no escaping the rain. By the time Sam pulled me to a stop under a nearby awning we were both
strangely exhilarated and soaked through. My hair had fallen out of its messy bun a couple of alleys ago and was stuck slick to my face and my neck, hanging heavy down my back and dripping droplets onto my already drenched leather jacket. Water dripped down Sam’s face from his soaking wet hair and fell off his chin. We were both breathing heavily after the run, and from the chill of the night and the freezing rain our breath was turning to steam.