With Everything I Am

by Kristen Ashley

Callum narrowed his gaze on him and growled, “She bloody better be.”

  Mac glanced to the side. “Ryon, see to it, our best men.”

  “But, Mac, we can’t –” Ryon began and Callum watched his father’s eyes narrow.

  “See to it,” Mac ordered.

  “We’re at war!” Ryon hissed. “We need every brother we have. We can’t afford –”

  Mac cut Ryon off by repeating, “See to it.”

  Callum watched his brethren shift and glance at each other.

  Then their gazes moved back to him with dawning realization.

  Callum had the same thought they did and he felt his body grow tight.

  He looked back to Mac and asked with extreme unease, “She’s my queen?”

  He watched his father nod and anguish tore through him but he didn’t allow it to show, instead, he lifted his chin.

  “When?” he demanded to know.

  “It matters not,” Mac replied.

  “You’re my father and you’re my king, it fucking matters that you’re soon to die,” Callum ground out.

  Mac didn’t answer.

  Callum leaned forward. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I have my reasons,” Mac responded.

  Jesus but Mac could be mysterious and in the three hundred fifty years of his life it never failed to piss Callum off.

  “Mac –” Callum began but his father lifted his hand and placed it on Callum’s shoulder.

  “We’re at war and this war will not end under my reign. You and she,” he glanced down at the girl before his eyes moved back to his son. “Will lead our people to peace.”

  Callum didn’t know what he was feeling because there was too much to feel.

  What he did know was that he didn’t like any of it.

  His eyes leveled on his father’s and he promised, “If they bring you down, it’ll be a fucking bloody peace and only on my fucking terms.”

  Mac leaned close as his fingers tightened on Callum’s arm.

  Then he whispered in his son’s ear, “I’m counting on that.”

  Chapter One

  Clear

  Sonia Arlington walked through her store and switched off the many Christmas lights decorating the space.

  She loved Christmas.

  She couldn’t help it. Her mother and father had both loved Christmas. They made it so special that the ones she remembered made the season one she always looked forward to even though her parents died during it.

  She adjusted her fluffy, white scarf around her neck, pulled the white knit cap down over her ears and transferred her dove gray suede gloves to one hand, pulling the strap of her matching stylish suede handbag more securely over her shoulder.

  She took one last look at her shop, called Clear because everything she sold in it was either clear, silver, gray or white. Everything. Furniture, clothing (though the clothes were never clear, of course), candles, jewelry, knickknacks, everything.

  She loved her shop almost as much as Christmas.

  Yuri wondered (aloud and often) why she bothered to work. He thought she was crazy, considering she had her father and mother’s millions of dollars “festering” (his word) in different accounts.

  Sonia couldn’t imagine not working. What on earth would she do if she didn’t work?

  She knew what Yuri wanted her to do.

  She loved Yuri but she still wrinkled her nose at the thought, pressed the code into the alarm panel and quickly exited, locking the three locks to the front door.

  Then she turned toward home.

  It was four blocks away. She was wearing dove gray suede, stiletto-heeled boots and it had snowed that day. She walked the oft-not-shoveled sidewalks with a grace akin to a model on a catwalk.

  This, her father would have said (if he’d lived to see her wearing heels and, of course, walking through the snow in them), was one of her special abilities.

  She had many. All of which, her father told her, time and time (and time) again, were exceptional.

  She was, her father told her, gifted.

  Extremely gifted.

  And for this, he explained, time and time (and time) again, she should be proud.

  Very proud.

  But, even so, she could never tell anyone about them.

  Never.

  Anyone.

  So she hadn’t.

  As she crossed the street from the first block to the second, she felt it.

  And smelled it.

  These, too, were part of her gifts.

  She sensed things. Strange things. Eyes on her. A presence. Mostly benign but recently (and upsettingly) there were some that seemed menacing. And she smelled things. Lots of things. Things others didn’t smell.

  It was out there. She sensed its presence, smelled its smell. It was benign. It was even pleasant (immensely so), attractive (that was immensely so too) and it was familiar.

  Very familiar.

  She sifted through her memory banks but she couldn’t find it.

  Whatever it was, she knew it wouldn’t hurt her.

  In fact, she had the strange, strong desire to seek it out, to turn to it – even to run to it.

  Even though this urge was powerful (and surprising, she’d never felt anything like that before), she didn’t let on she sensed it. To do so would let it know she could feel it, which she could not do.

  Her father had told her, repeatedly, she was special, exceptional and gifted. But without him telling her that for the last thirty-one years and knowing no one around her shared her “special” talents, she’d settled into the knowledge that she wasn’t special, exceptional and gifted. Instead, she was just strange.

  Even bizarre.

  Definitely weird.

  And that was not a nice thing to know about yourself.

  The presence was moving with her, tracking her and she ignored it as she did the many others she’d felt throughout her life (or, more precisely, since her parents’ deaths) as she carried on home. Then she saw her little farmhouse on its corner and smiled to herself. The sight of her home and the peace she always felt when she saw it allowed her to be able to set the alarmingly alluring sensation firmly aside.

  Gregor (and Yuri), had both gone nuts when she bought her farmhouse. Well, not nuts, they were too polished to go nuts, but they definitely disapproved. Firstly, because, even though a rather nice (if colorful) residential area of the city had sprung up around it, it was a simple farmhouse. Sonia Arlington (as they told her repeatedly), did not reside in something as common as a farmhouse.

  Secondly, because when she bought it, it was a wreck.

  Luckily, Sonia was loaded. Therefore, she’d had it fixed up.

  She walked up the steps and unlocked her door. The alarm beeped when she entered and she punched in the code. She dropped her purse on the chest in the entryway and, through the dark, she went directly to the plugs that would turn on her Christmas lights. Then she plugged them in, all of them and there were many, on both floors.

  As she did so, the inside and outside of her farmhouse lit up and she didn’t have to look at it to know it was perfect. Just as if it had been decorated for a magazine (which, it had, her house was always photographed for the city’s monthly magazine, every year at Christmas, twice it had even made the cover).

  Sonia would have preferred to decorate herself but, even though in her early years at her house she’d tried, she’d never had a flair for it and it always turned out wonky.

  Her mother had had a flair for it. Cherise Arlington was the Master Christmas Decorator. Therefore, Sonia could not abide her own wonky efforts.

  So she hired designers every year to come and decorate her house.

  And it was always beautiful.

  She walked straight back out the front door and down to her white picket fence to get her mail from the box that was fitted to the gatepost.

  “Hey Miz Arlington!” she heard called from her side.

  She turned to see the Lanigans getting into their min
i-van, their two young boys, Jed and Jake, both standing outside and waving at her.

  She’d known they were there, of course. She’d heard their feet in the snow Jay Lanigan had not (and would not, because it was football season and Jay Lanigan didn’t do much of anything during football season) shoveled from their drive. She’d also smelled the scent of their skin and hair. But as they were several doors down, she didn’t turn to them. To do so might expose her secret and Sonia guarded against that every second of her life.

  “Hey there!” she called back, feigning surprise and waving then she saw Joanne Lanigan round the hood of the van. “Ready for Christmas, Jo?” she called.

  “If you’re ready for Christmas, I’ll shoot you!” Jo yelled back with a smile in her shout. “It’s weeks away.”

  Sonia was ready in September. That was how much she loved Christmas. She planned for it all year.

  “A few more things to do,” Sonia lied.

  “Right,” Jo shouted. “We got your card today. The first one every year.”

  Sonia shrugged even though they couldn’t see her however she could see them, clear as day. Her night vision, another gift, was perfect. “I’m organized and don’t have a full-time job, two boys and a husband who disappears when it’s football season!” Sonia replied loudly.

  “Hey! I heard that!” Jay shouted from the other side of the van.

  “Good!” Jo replied. “Then maybe you’ll notice the neighbors see me taking out the stinking trash from September to January. Yeesh!”

  Sonia chuckled to herself as she pulled her mail out of the box, turned to her neighbors and called, “Be safe, Jay, it’s supposed to snow again.”

  “Always!” Jay called back, not affronted by Sonia’s comment.

  He wouldn’t be. Sonia was a great neighbor. She watched their house when they were away including walking their completely out-of-control dogs, which was why no one but Sonia would watch their house (or dogs). She regularly babysat the boys. She threw fantastic barbeques during the summer. And she had a catered Christmas party that was so spectacular, the entire neighborhood waited with bated breath to receive their invitation and turned out for it. They did this even if they were invalid. She knew this because another of Sonia’s neighbors had broken one leg and the other ankle falling off the ladder while fixing Christmas lights to his house and he’d still rented a wheelchair and wheeled himself to her place for her party.

  Sonia waved the Lanigans away and then turned to her house.

  The picket fence surrounding her property and the porch that ran two sides of the house and had a white railing were dripping with greenery, clear lights sparkling in their bows, white poinsettias affixed to the points of the drapes. Two little white sleighs filled with white poinsettias and lined with twinkling lights sat at angles pointing in at the top of the stairs. Single candles shown in every window on all sides. More greenery, lights and poinsettias were draped around the faux widow’s walk on the roof. A tall, wide, fabulous real fir tree, dressed to perfection and lit with an abundance of glimmering lights, stood in the window.

  She sighed at the sight, as she did every day from the minute it was decorated. Always returning home, turning the lights on then walking back out to get her mail so she could witness it and let the season shine down on her.

  With regret, she reentered her house, took off her hat and gloves and carefully placed them tidily in the chest by the door. She hung her scarf on the hooks at the other side of her entryway with her coat.

  She walked into her house, shuffling the post (mainly catalogues) in her fingers.

  The inside of her house was decorated in a way that Gregor and Yuri approved but she’d done it only so they’d be quiet about it.

  It wasn’t comfortable, countrified, farmhouse splendor.

  Once you stepped through the wide entryway, the whole of the downstairs was one room, the walls torn down to make it open plan. Left and right were seating areas, fireplaces on each side, their mantels festooned with Christmas cheer. The back left was a dining room with another fireplace, ditto the Christmas festooning. The kitchen was behind the right area. No festooning in the kitchen but she did have Christmas kitchen towels and pot holders and red and green plastic ended pancake turners (which she never used as she didn’t eat pancakes) sticking out of her utensil crock. The red one had a turner the shape of a bell and the green one had a turner the shape of a snowman.

  The walls all around were painted in coordinating tranquil light colors of seafoam (left seating area), green (right seating area) and blue (dining room and kitchen). The kitchen was state-of-the-art. The furniture was sleek, modern and, most especially, expensive and elegant. The minimal décor was carefully chosen to augment the furniture and paint.

  It looked almost like her store Clear but with subtle hints of color.

  Sonia loved Clear.

  She detested her décor.

  But she detested Gregor and Yuri complaining even more so she’d given in, which was once in enumerable times in her life that she’d done so since Gregor had become her guardian after her mother and father died.

  She went to the kitchen and threw the mail on the counter. Without taking off her high-heeled boots, she poached a piece of fish, boiled some brown rice and steamed some vegetables.

  She ate it standing up at her counter, thinking it tasted of nothing.

  Bland and well, just bland.

  Sonia loved food. Too much. In her teens, she’d started to put on weight, Gregor had noticed and commented, often.

  This was a problem. Considering, even as active as she was as a child, she’d always been slightly plump. And even as careful as she was now, and she was obsessively careful with diet and exercise, she was curvy and nothing she did shifted a centimeter off her bottom or her breasts, no matter what it was. And Sonia had tried everything.

  Therefore, for Gregor and her own peace of mind (because Gregor could shatter it, something he did with great regularity) she was careful with her food and, once she became an adult, her drink.

  She stood at her counter eating and flipping through catalogues, carefully folding down corners if she saw something she wanted to buy for Christmas for a friend, a neighbor or one of her shop girls. Next year, of course, as her Christmas shopping was well since done and wrapped for this year.

  Once she was done eating, she tidied everything away and went to her office upstairs to check her e-mail and her Facebook page. She didn’t change her status. She never did. She had few friends on Facebook because she had few friends at all. This was because she knew was weird, not because people didn’t like her.

  Then, as it was Friday and the cleaning lady came on Fridays and the house seemed fresh and lovely (and because she always did it on Fridays), she drew herself a bath.

  Fridays meant facial, manicure and pedicure.

  Every Friday.

  Without fail.

  Unless, of course, she had an appointment at a spa to have this done on a Saturday, which she also did, once a month.

  This was because Sonia didn’t have friends who she went out to drinks with (very often) and Sonia didn’t date (anymore).

  To get close to anyone, spend more than a small amount of time with them, meant they’d notice her gifts.

  No matter how careful she could be, she’d always slip up. Friends or boyfriends had noticed in the past and it had been uncomfortable (to say the least).

  So, Sonia Arlington spent most of her time alone.

  Considering she was social, very social, this meant that Sonia Arlington spent most of her time lonesome.

  As the bath was filling, she took off her clothes and put them away. She rubbed an exfoliating mask on her face and shaved her legs.

  As her mostly-white, very clean bathroom filled with the fragrance of lavender coming from the salts in the bath, Sonia carefully body brushed every inch of her skin, even her back, with a handled brush. She settled in the bath and went through her extensive regime of different face masks, sh
ampooing and deep conditioning her hair as she relaxed.

  After, she alighted from the bath, toweled off briskly and donned her robe. Then she gave herself a manicure and pedicure.

  All of this was done with practiced ease and precision.

  When finished, she went to her medicine cabinet and pulled out the injection.

  She had an extremely rare blood disorder inherited from her father. Every night of her life (and Gregor had done it until she was eleven when he patiently taught her how to do it herself), she took the injection.

  She hated them but as her father told her, again, many a time, she could die without them.

  She’d once, as a rebellion during her early teens, stopped taking them. This she hid from Gregor. He would have been livid if he’d known. He was very careful with her injections and was just as adamant as her father that she take them every day without fail.

  When she didn’t, it was a mistake.

  Two days after she stopped, while she was in bed asleep, she woke having the strange, terrifying sensation she was coming out of her skin.

  Seriously.

  As if, at any second, her tingling skin would split and she’d boil straight out of it, her blood felt that hot. She could feel it, every last cell of blood, boiling through her veins.

  She’d crawled to the bathroom, so immense was the pain, to give herself the injection and, like now, as the needle pierced the flesh of her right buttock, she felt the injection invade.

  There was no other way to put it. Just like the boiling of blood cells she’d felt that awful night, the injection invaded. Searing through her system, down to the ends of her toes, up, around and down to her fingertips, up through her scalp and out, even to the ends of her hair.

  But this sensation only lasted minutes. Unlike that night where she’d fought it for hours before giving in.

  As usual, when the burn ended, she clutched the basin, took deep breaths and gave her system several long moments to settle. The she disposed of the needle in a small sharps container and walked to her bedroom.

  Gregor nor Yuri, although he’d very, very (very) much like to, had ever seen her bedroom.

  This was because it was not sleek, modern and elegant.