Wake of darkness, p.20
Wake of Darkness, page 20
She nodded toward the open door and after a moment, Laney caught on to what was going on. She stepped out, and Sophie followed her. Alexander was immediately, and eagerly, leading the way inside. Sophie smiled as she watched him. Walking inside, the beautiful hardwood floors and light silk draperies greeted them. It was obvious that the rooms had been freshly cleaned.
“Downstairs,” Alexander began as Dante and Catherina disappeared off to the left. Sophie looked around, taking it all in. “Dante and Catherina’s room is there,” he said, gesturing in their direction.
Jim and Zoey disappeared in an instant; they’d lived there before, too. Alexander turned on a heel and led the way through the downstairs part of the house, showing Sophie and Laney the paneled library; the pale grey dining room with its white silk curtains and antique table; the kitchen with state-of-the-art stainless appliances and its wall of wide windows; the two sitting rooms, one with a Baby Grand in the corner. He was inspecting it all.
“Follow me,” he commanded to Sophie and Laney, leading the way up the stairs to the second floor.
Laney giggled at his formality behind his back and Sophie shook her head in disapproval. Laney’s smile faded as quickly as it appeared. She looked at her sister apologetically. Sophie wrapped her arm around her shoulders and hugged her as they continued on after Alexander.
Time passed as everyone got settled in. They each explored the house, unpacked, but predictably Sophie soon found herself at Alexander's door.
“Enter,” he replied to her knock.
She opened the door and found him sorting through the books and papers he had brought along with him from Texas. He glanced up and smiled at her.
“May I help you?” he asked with a gleam in his eye. He turned back to the desk in the corner.
She slowly approached him and gently slid herself between the piece of furniture and his body. She sat on the desk and grasped his shirt, slightly rumpled from their trip. She pulled him closer. He set the books in his hands down on the desk and grasped her by the waist, pulling her forward.
“I don’t know,” she replied playfully, her face inches from his, “maybe you can.”
She pulled him closer and kissed him, feeling the desire rise in her core as her heart accelerated. It was something she’d wanted to do in the airport, when he called every woman they’d encountered “ma’am;” when he held the door open for her; when they had been inches from one another on the plane, when he nearly drove her crazy in the car, the electricity between them impossible to ignore.
He kissed her neck as she ran her fingers through his hair and sighed.
“Ahem,” Jim interrupted.
“Ah!” She exclaimed, dropping her hands in frustration. “Damn it.”
Alexander chuckled softly in her ear, sending more chills down her spine, and pulled her still closer.
Jim snickered. “Get a room,” he said.
“Hello!” Sophie replied, gesturing to the room they were in.
“You know what I mean,” Jim replied.
“What can we do for you, Jim?” Alexander asked with a sarcastic smile, still refusing to remove himself from between her legs.
Jim rolled his eyes. “I need the key to the garage.”
“The garage?” Sophie asked incredulously, looking to Alexander for an explanation.
“Do you remember your thought on the way in about our ‘preoccupation’ with speed?” Alexander asked her enigmatically.
“Yeah…?”
He took her hand and smiled as he pulled her down from the desktop and into his arms. “Come with me.”
They were there before she knew what had happened. She was used to jumping, but not when he suddenly grabbed her hand without warning and she instantaneously found herself in a new place. It would take some getting used to. Jim appeared almost immediately after them.
“You could warn me before you do that next time,” Jim grumbled.
“Ha!” Sophie exclaimed sarcastically.
Alexander turned his head. He looked over his shoulder replied, “Yes, but tell me: where is the fun in that?”
Jim rolled his eyes.
Sophie looked around and suddenly realized that they were in the garage, a cavernous building with gleaming vehicles lined side-by-side along its length. It had obviously been added onto the back of the house much later.
Jim clapped his hands and rubbed his palms against one another. “You got it!” was all he said before lumbering over to a huge red Hummer H2 truck.
“It is literally bulletproofed,” Alexander said.
Jim climbed into the cab. Sophie chuckled in disbelief. Alexander turned to her to explain.
“Our enemies are far more real here; bulletproofing makes sense.” Then he shrugged. “And he drives like a madman.”
Sophie released a mirthful laugh, and turned to look around as her eyes rested on a shining gun metal silver sedan. That has to be yours, she thought.
“It is,” Alexander replied softly, smiling at her.
It was sleek, undoubtedly expensive, and hinted at excessive horsepower. He smiled at her as Jim let out a long, slow whistle.
Sophie turned and looked at Jim with one eyebrow raised.
“That’s a nice car,” he said, admiringly, walking over to stroke the hood gently.
Sophie grinned and shook her head. Men and their cars, I’ll never understand.
“It’s a customized Audi A8! What is there to understand?” Jim asked.
She shook her head and laughed quietly at her new big brother. ‘Nice’ was an understatement. Of course she knew what it was.
“How?” Jim asked quickly.
Her smile disappeared. “Uh…” she stammered, caught off guard, “um…a…foster brother was into cars,” she answered awkwardly.
She swiftly looked away. She tried never to think about Danny, and forced her thoughts away from her memories of him entirely, though his face stubbornly broke through the barriers she defensively threw up in her mind.
Alexander watched her, his eyebrows furrowed in worry; he saw the pain behind the memory that flashed in her brain. The heat of shame, embarrassment, and fear coursed through his mind as they swam through her veins, but he didn’t push the issue.
She blinked quickly. Now’s not the time.
Alexander cleared his throat. “Sophie, here is yours,” he said, gesturing to another car and changing the subject all at once. “I believe you know how to drive a standard transmission?”
“Are you kidding me? I love driving stick,” she whispered, but this was too much. She wasn’t expecting to turn around and find a midnight blue, tinted windowed Mercedes convertible staring back at her.
“You won’t be able to walk everywhere any longer. You need some wheels under you.”
“I can’t accept this,” she replied and then grimaced through a smile. “But…argh! I want to! It’s so pretty!” She crooned, lovingly stroked the hood.
“Of course you can accept it,” he said. “It’s a gift. I thought you would like it.”
“Like it?” She replied, “It’s just…so…wow! Thank you.”
He smiled and caught her as she propelled herself into his arms, hugging him tightly around the neck. He laughed in his sensual way, right beside her ear, making the hair on the back of her neck stand on end.
"It is a selfish gift," he admitted. "Our family is getting large enough to necessitate more transportation. We can’t all fit into one car and this makes it easier."
She pulled back and looked deeply into his eyes. “Thank you,” she whispered. "It's not selfish at all."
Laney suddenly popped into the garage, and feeding off of the excitability in the room, she began bouncing up and down.
“Wow!” Laney exclaimed. “Is that yours, Sophie?”
“Apparently,” she replied still a little shocked, as Alexander dropped the keys into her hand.
“Nice wheels, Jim,” Laney continued and bounded over to inspect his new ride. “Where’s mine?”
Jim chuckled. “You can borrow mine until you get to pick something out.”
She clapped her hands gleefully.
Zoey strode into the room gracefully. Alexander nodded at her in greeting.
“Thanks for arranging it,” Zoey said quietly and sauntered over to a Ducati motorcycle that looked like it was made of quicksilver. Sophie watched the graceful, old-fashioned redhead incredulously, but then figured to each her own.
Alexander looked down at Sophie and smile. “It is a bit faster, perhaps, than what you are used to,” he warned, only half-seriously.
She laughed. Well, she’d been traveling on foot of late, so yeah, this was sure to be something quite different…
“Let's take it for a test drive," she replied, walking over to the driver’s side and sliding inside.
“We will be back after awhile. Lock up for us, Jim, if you please,” he said before climbing into the passenger side, ignoring Jim’s smirk.
He pointed to a button on the console before her. Pressing it, the garage door lifted suddenly.
“Oh,” she gasped, “cool.”
She pushed the clutch in, and pressing on the gas; the car lunged forward.
“Easy, tiger,” Alexander said with a laugh behind his words.
“Sorry,” she replied. “It’s been a while since I’ve handled a clutch.”
It all came back to her quickly enough, and they were soon speeding through the streets of New Orleans, heading for the freeway as she followed his directions. The top was down and the wind was blowing her hair out behind her. She felt like Grace Kelly as she drove along. Shifting smoothly between gears, she felt the engine surge well beyond the speed limit. It didn’t take long before she heard the sounds of sirens behind her.
Oh, hell, she thought.
Alexander chuckled as she gently brought the car to a stop on the right shoulder of the freeway. She watched in the rearview mirror as the police car parked behind her.
Get out of it, Alexander thought quickly, touching her hand that rested on the steering wheel.
Huh?
The ticket: Get out of it, he repeated with a devilish smile.
Money and morals, huh? She thought sarcastically. He grinned.
“Miss? License, registration, and insurance,” he officer requested without looking at her.
Here goes nothing. “Here you are, officer,” she replied, handing him the paperwork and pulling her sunglasses off of her face, leveling her eyes at him in an attempt to look alluring. She bit her bottom lip coyly.
“Uh…um,” he stammered, having locked eyes with her. “Do, uh…um…do you know how fa…fast you were going?”
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” she replied in her best coy voice, “I just wasn’t paying any attention.” She shamelessly gripped the stick shift as Alexander repressed a chuckle. “I guess I’m just not used to the power,” she added innocently. “It’s brand new,” she shrugged innocently. “My first time out.”
She smiled at his unspoken response and Alexander pretended not to notice. Don't overdo it, he thought.
“Uh…” the officer stuttered, handing her paperwork back to her slowly, “um…yeah…uh, just…uh…watch it next time, okay miss?”
“Of course officer,” she replied. I’m actually getting away with this? “I’m so sorry.” Another smile.
He turned abruptly to walk back to his cruiser and nearly stumbled as he tried to look at her over his shoulder without her noticing. Sophie put her sunglasses back on before looking over at Alexander.
“I told you,” he said smugly.
“You did,” she agreed with a shrug. She started the engine and pulled gingerly away from the cruiser, hoping not to attract more of the officer’s attention. She still didn’t know how it’d worked, but it had.
Alexander laughed at her. “There are several reasons why that worked, the two most important being that you are gorgeous and you’re psychic. You can convince anyone—well, humans—of anything. Aside from his conscious thoughts—which you used to your advantage quite well if I may say so—you are also aware of his subconscious thoughts even if you were not actively listening to them,” he answered.
“You think I’m gorgeous?” She asked coyly.
He smiled in answer as she took the first exit ramp, heading back home.
"You also have a lot to learn," he reminded her.
She certainly couldn't argue with that.
*
The sun began to sink below the horizon. The breeze started to stir the leaves as the air cooled for the night. Sophie was lost in her thoughts, but she was still aware enough of her surroundings to tell when he walked in the room.
“I have a question for you—if you don’t mind.”
She nodded.
He hesitated, before drawing in a breath. “The young man you thought about in the garage, who is he? Today was not the first time I’ve seen him in your thoughts.”
She sighed and felt her heart drop. She’d known she wouldn’t be able to dodge this question for long, not with the intimacy she shared with him which guaranteed their synced minds…She sank into one of the chairs in the living room. He followed her lead and crouched down in front of her, holding her gaze even as she looked down, trying to avoid it. He watched her with pleading eyes.
She didn’t speak and she didn’t tell him out loud; she simply let herself remember. It was easier, somehow, than putting it all into words. She knew he’d get the full story that way, without any editing.
The face flashed into her head again; it wasn’t a menacing face. Danny was kind of baby-faced…which was a large part of his danger. You didn’t know not to trust him, and she’d only been thirteen or so—just a couple of years younger than Laney.
He had dark hair on top of his sweet looking face, but if the second you looked into his eyes you’d know that he couldn’t be trusted; there was a coldness there that seemed out of place with the rest of his face, as if he lacked feelings, as if he lacked a soul.
Sophie remembered the time she’d been out in the garage at one of the numerous foster homes she’d stayed at: they lived on a small farm. She was looking for something high up on a shelf, but she couldn’t reach it.
She watched Alexander's face as his expression changed, effected by her emotions, but suddenly, she didn’t see him any longer. It was as if he wasn’t there anymore. She looked beyond him and back into the past.
The door creaks open. I am on my tip toes, reaching for something, and Danny comes in, his hands in his pockets. He wears an amused and condescending look on his face. He is seventeen and makes me a little nervous, but he’s always been nice—he likes to tell me about cars. His thoughts have never betrayed anything malicious towards me, though. I don’t know to be afraid of him, but there’s something about him that makes me nervous.
Maybe that was the most traumatic part of the whole thing: it hadn’t been premeditated. What he’d done was absolutely spur-of-the-moment there in that dark, hot garage.
He comes up behind me and presses himself against my back.
“Lemme get that for you,” he says, too close to me, his breath on my neck.
He reaches up and grasps whatever it is that I’ve been reaching for. I can’t remember what it was. I try to turn around, but he is pressing so close to me, towering over me, that it is nearly impossible to move. I finally turn around and his thoughts flood me with disgusting images and desires…things thirteen-year-old girls should never know about. He pushed me to the ground and pushed himself on top of me.
Sophie shuddered, coming back to reality for a minute. Alexander’s hands were clinched in fists before her; the veins on his neck bulging in his fury. His eyes were black. She’d never seen him like that. She slowly reached down and placed her hand on one of his and he exhaled heavily.
“What happened?” he managed to ask through clinched teeth.
“Nothing good,” she replied with a resigned shrug.
She didn’t want to go back there anymore than she already had, but she had to. He had to know.
“My foster mother found me out there, a few hours later, in the shed. My clothes were all torn up. She had to throw a tarp around my shoulders to get me in the house,” she explained. “I’ll always remember how scratchy it was, and how ashamed I was. The blood had run down my legs, but of course by the time I'd made it to a doctor, they couldn't tell where the trauma had been. He didn't leave any physical scars.”
She remembered everything, of course, and as her mind ran through the memories, she watched his face become grimmer, his eyes become darker.
