Rachel Caine & Kristin Cast & Claudia Gray & Nancy Holder & Tanith Lee & Richelle Mead & Cynthia Leitich Smith & P. C. Cast (7 page)

“Hey! Hey! Shit!” yelled a familiar male voice.

“You!” I scrambled backward through a pool of my amber blood, and was amazed when I felt only adrenaline and not one bit of pain from coming into such close contact with the concrete. “I've gone completely insane and it's all your fault! Turn me back!” He reached out and grabbed my flailing hands to pull me up and I was smothered by a rush of calming autumn air. My eyes opened super wide and fixed on him.

“You okay?” He cocked his head to the side and stared back.

“I—I think I'm bleeding.” Pressing my hand against the back of my head, I came in contact with damp tangled hair. No wound, no pain, just really nappy wet strands. “Well, I thought—”

His smile was slow and a little sarcastic. Actually it was almost a smirk. He shook his head. “What you thought is not even close to the truth.”

“Huh?” I said, brilliant. Okay, the guy was so majorly hot it was making it hard for me to think. Tall and blonde and delicious. A complete Justin Hartley look-alike.
Yummmm.

“Alek.” He stepped back just a little and extended his perfect hand. “My name is Alek, and I need you to trust me.”

Not knowing what else to do, and feeling completely, utterly overwhelmed, I stuck out my hand for him to shake, and added my best attempt at a hair flip. “I'm Jenna,” I said, while the leaves danced around my feet.

“Jenna, you must come with me.” He was looking at me with his incredible green eyes.

“Uh, no, I have to—”

He covered my hand with his. He felt warm and strong and the only real thing that had touched me since I'd fallen into this nightmare.

“You have to come with me,” he repeated. “Trust me. I'll tell you everything on the way.”

Now, I know the whole “don't go places with strangers” thing, but you have to realize that in the middle of all of this unreality, this guy made sense. I know it sounds bizarre, but he just felt right, and I knew I should trust him. Like I knew that he had been there waiting for me.

All right, yes. I can't say it didn't help that he was so darn sexy.

“Fine, I'll come with you, but only because I'm probably dreaming,” I said.

He smiled, then motioned for me to follow him. I scurried to keep up with his long strides while I tried to untangle my hair and watch his cute butt at the same time.
You could bounce a quarter off of that thing! Oh my God. I sound like my mother. Talk about gross.
I almost ran into him when he came to an abrupt halt beside a florescent green car. “What is that?”

“A '76 Chevy Caprice,” he said, opening the door for me.

“It looks like a giant green popsicle.” I slid in onto the white leather seat, distracted by the vintage-ness of the old muscle car, while he went around and got in on the driver's side. I was just getting ready to open my mouth and tell him I had a thing for old cars too, when he leaned over and grabbed my arm.

Looking into my face, he said, “And you're not dreaming. You're dead.”

“Dead!” I tried to pull back from him. “What the hell?” My heart felt like it was going to pound out of my chest. Instead of letting me go, Alek pressed his body close to mine and wrapped me in his arms.

“Trust me. Let me show you,” he said.

Like his voice was a drug, my body seemed to dissolve into him and I gasped as, still in his arms, I began to float above his Jell-O-colored car. White specks of light surrounded me. I looked up at Alek, who was drifting with me. His eyes glowed the red of a rising autumn moon.

Just like his eyes had been before . . . at the bus stop.
Slowly, I began to remember as we floated through time back to the moment we'd first met.

He spoke, his voice whispering in my ear. “I was sent here to save you.” His words were like mist. “Look down. Remember. . . .”

I looked below us and saw everything. There I was, dressed in my LBD and my mom's hot but uncomfortable shoes, pouting and sullenly complaining to myself while I waited for the bus. There sat the three people crammed on the tiny bench, and then there was Alek, appearing from nowhere. I glanced questioningly at the Alek who floated with his arms around me. His eyes still burned hunter red, and they stilled the questions on my lips.

I looked down again and saw myself point Mr. Pepper at Alek's face. At those eyes that were just as red then as they were now. I could see myself yelling something, and at the same time I stepped back. It was then that mom's gorgeous stiletto heel missed the curb, and horrified, I saw my arms windmilling as I fell backward, hitting my head on the concrete with a sickening thud.

And that was it. I didn't move as the people at the bus stop surrounded me, obviously not knowing what to do. Through the middle of them walked Alek, but he was like a shadow in darkness. No one seemed to see him at all as he bent over my still body and whispered, “Your death was a gift, given by the ancients through me. You have been chosen. I am your teacher.” Then he bent and covered my dead lips with his.

Okay, it was happening, but it wasn't. People were running around down there—literally walking
through
him while he kissed me. And even though they couldn't see him I could feel him. What he did to my dead body, I could now feel happening in my hovering soul as I drank in the exchange of death with life. I should have been terrified. I should have screamed or passed out or flailed against him. Instead I closed my eyes and let my soul absorb what I had seen. I accepted his gift and knew my world would never be the same.

When I opened my eyes, I was back in the car pressed against Alek's chest. There were no sounds coming from inside of his muscular body, no breath, no heart thumping. I pulled back and stared at him.

“Are you even alive?”

My head felt funny, all kinda hummy and strange.

“I'm as alive as are you,” he said. “You've just been changed. We're different. They used to call us vampires.”

“Vampires?” I squeaked. “I have to drink blood?” I almost gagged just thinking about it.

He laughed softly. “It's not blood we drink—it's energy.”

“Oh, God! We suck down electricity?” I frantically tried to remember who that chick was on old
Angel
reruns who zapped things with her electrically charged hands.

His strong arms were still around my waist and I wondered how they stayed so warm if he was dead. If
we
were dead. His smile was still in his eyes when he said, “No, it's not like that, either. You'll see.”

His mouth was close to my ear.
Kiss me . . . kiss me again. . . .
His smiled widened and I felt my face burn with a blush. Could he read my mind?

“So we kinda match!” I blurted.
What?
As he chuckled at my dorkiness I pulled away and positioned myself back on my side of the car. This was depressing. With all this new power I could feel inside of me, I was still the same lame eighteen-year-old with no game.

“What was that?” Still smiling, Alek pulled his keys from his pocket and turned on the car, but for a moment I could swear disappointment flashed across his face.
Would he really
have kissed me again if I hadn't gone all superdork on him and then vaulted to the other side of the car?

“Yeah, umm, we match.” I tried to stay as perky as I had been when I ruined the moment. “We're both strong, fearless creatures of night sent here to . . . do . . . stuff. What exactly do we do?”

“We all have different abilities.” He cleared his throat in preparation, and I wondered how many times he had had this conversation. “I can affect time. That's how I got you to the bus stop, since you were taking too long getting there on your own, and that's also why you woke up today . . . again. Guess you could call that part a side effect. But, I'm not too sure what your ability is, but you'll figure it out pretty soon. It's the same for each of us, but different. You have to discover your own way. I was sent from below—”

“Hell?” I interrupted. “You came from Hell?”

“No. Or at least not your idea of Hell. Look, I was sent here to help you serve up vengeance on some and to save others.”

“Like you saved me?”

“Well, kind of.” He sighed and cleared his throat. “There are these ancient monsters whose spirits have been locked in the Underworld, and occasionally they find some way to escape. If they do, their only goals are to find a body and create the same chaos they did centuries ago. I'm the first of my kind, our kind, that were made to find these creatures and send them back. So, we're more like—”

“Monster-slaying superheroes?!”
Holy shit! What am I? A toddler?

He laughed. “I guess you could call it that. I know where to take you, and we'll just wing it from there.” He put the car in gear and started driving down the street.

Wing it?
That didn't sound very reassuring.

I stared out the window, trying to make myself teleport or move things with my mind, when I noticed the reflection of my eyes. They were flashing from their normal plain brown to brilliant amber. That was good, right? I kept looking out the window and tried to concentrate. We passed a crowd of people leaving a late night movie when it happened again.

“Oh my God! That's it! I just thought it was part of me going crazy, but really it was my hidden superpower.” I giddily turned to Alek, expecting him to know what I was talking about.

“What was your hidden power?”

“I can see stuff.” It was just like with my mom, the weird vanilla smoke I'd seen around her. I leaned over Alek and pointed out the window to a cluster of people. “Like, I know that the girl in the pink cardigan and those really cute fuzzy boots is completely and totally in love, because I can see hot pink misty ribbons floating off of her. Oh, oh, and look at him.” I pointed to a guy standing on the corner holding a WILL WORK FOR FOOD sign. “The smoke stuff around him is all brown and nasty. Hey! He has cancer.” I paused, thinking hard, and suddenly
knew.
“He has lung cancer. He's gonna die. Soon.” I shivered, not sure how I felt about my new superpower. Plopping myself back in my seat, I stared out the window and watched rainbows of smoke dance off
people and twist through the autumn air, and
knew
things I simply shouldn't.

“That's good, you're learning already. There'll be more to come, though.”

I closed my eyes and drew a long, shaky breath.
You're okay . . . you're okay. . . .

“We're here.” Alek turned off the car, and when I opened my eyes I half-expected to see creepy boat docks or a dark alley. Instead, we were in the middle of suburbia parked in front of a brick house identical to the ones on either side of it.

“You're kidding. This is the monster hideout where I'm supposed to fight crime?” Alek was already out of the car, and I hurried to catch up with him, following his longer legs up the driveway and past a very familiar SUV. “Hey!” He spun around and motioned for me to be quiet.

I lowered my voice, and spoke urgently. “But this is Paul's nerdy old Isuzu. He's dating my mom. Look, it has to be his SUV.” I pointed at the window. “He has like fifty tacky evergreen air fresheners hanging from the rearview mirror because he smokes in his car and doesn't want my mom to notice.” Obviously Alek didn't care, because he kept walking until he reached the side door and I had to scramble again to keep up.

“We're going in.”

“What? Hell no! Didn't you just hear me? This is Paul's house and there's no way I'm going in there. Your monster radar is all wrong. Besides, he's on a date with my mom, and look, the lights aren't even on. They're probably not here, or
worse. Ew. They might be—” Alek pressed one hand over my mouth and used the other to guide mine to the door.