by L K Walker
Her dejection cleared. She understood why he’d pulled away. The feeling had been nagging at her for a while, but she’d chosen to ignore it, too caught up in happiness to allow it to affect her.
Nate looked around wildly in every possible direction, waiting for the seether to appear. He stripped himself of his shirt and jammed it in the back of his shorts to free his hands.
Ari allowed the feelings she had locked away to re-emerge. The two divergent emotions enveloped her immediately. One she wanted so badly, and she grabbed at Nate's hand so as not to lose it. The warmth of his palm held hers. Then Ari turned toward the direction of the seether. She couldn't see him, but she could map his progress by the grapevine leaves whirling into the air as if a mighty breeze was tearing down the row. Ari prepared herself, widening her stance. He moved at a lightning pace and wasn't slowing.
The seether rounded the vines, just missing the end post, and headed straight at her. At some stage, Nate had let go of her hand and moved in front of her. In an attempt to fend the seether off, Ari pathetically raised her arms. The seether dodged Nate. He grabbed her extended wrist as he shot past at speed. Her feet lifted off the ground. Terror, gripped her throat. She cried out. A second later, the movement came to an abrupt halt, and her feet were once again touching the ground. Short lived, as her knees buckled under her own weight, and she collapsed.
Ari twisted around to locate the noise coming from behind her. Nate had the seether pinned beneath him and was landing blow after blow. The seether managed to shove him aside, giving him a window to strike back. He smashed Nate in the chest. The sentinel jerked backwards. He grunted. The blows they exchanged were fierce.
“Leave him alone,” Ari cried out, cringing at the sound of each bone-crunching hit.
Like normal people, the two of them grunted or cried out in pain when they were struck. Ari could do nothing but watch as the seether landed a swift set of blows. Nate's nose cracked. Although not sure how she could help, she struggled to her feet, and inched her way forward, hoping some remarkable idea would reveal itself, but it was useless—she was useless.
“Run,” Nate commanded, without looking at her.
Ari hesitated for a second, not wanting to leave Nate to fight the battle alone. The seether threw Nate against a post at the end of a row of vines as if he was a rag doll. There was nothing she could do.
“Run.” This time he did look up, his eyes pleading with her. Blood dribbled from his nose. “Please, run.” She took off around the lake.
Ari cursed her dress. It was impractical, as were the delicate shoes. Hopping as she ran, she plucked the sandals off her feet, one after the other, and flung them aside. The handbag nearly met the same fate, but then she remembered it held the car keys. Instead, to stop it bouncing around, she tucked it under her arm like a rugby ball. When she glanced back, neither Nate nor the seether were in sight. How badly could the seether hurt Nate? The thought spurred her forward.
When she finally reached the car, she stood, static, berating her actions. How could she have run away and left Nate to fight alone? Surely, she could have been of some help?
“I’m not bloody running,” she mumbled to herself. She unlocked the boot of the car and yanked it open with both hands. As soon as her left hand took the weight of the lid, pain shot through it. She could see the hand mark left by the seether where he had grabbed her. Faint bruising covered the area, a sharp reminder of what he could do. She quickened her efforts. Rooting around under the carpet in the boot, she found the long tyre-iron. The metal was cold in her hand.
She slammed the boot closed, threw the keys and the handbag into the passenger-side foot well and took off back to where she had last seen Nate. Her breathing was heavy and her thighs screamed from exertion as she pushed her body to move faster, scared she would be too late. As she rounded a tree in the garden, she saw Nate walking casually towards her, shirtless, blood trailing down his face and chest, clasping her cast-off shoes in one hand. He looked exhausted.
thirteen
When he heard Ari's footfalls coming towards him, Nate slowly looked up. His relief was evident as a tender smile crept onto his face. She didn't break her stride until only a couple of metres divided them and, only then did she pause because she worried that he might have more injuries than were visible.
“Your nose.” It was no longer straight and was the source of a thick red waterfall pouring down onto his chest.
“I’m okay, it will heal,” he said, although when he touched it, his face twisted into a grimace.
He stepped closer and leaned down to retrieve the tyre-iron from Ari's hand. “Were you coming to my rescue?”
“Something like that.” She tried to shrug it off.
Nate’s eyes went to the seether's handprint on her left wrist. He gently raised up her arm and looked at the damage.
Ari pulled her arm away, and let it drop to her side. “It's nothing. It looks worse than it is. I’m not the one covered in blood.”
Moving his hand to her waist, he coaxed her in closer, his lips caressing her forehead.
“I don't want to lose you. If he tries it again, and I tell you to run, please don't come back,” he whispered in her ear.
Before she could argue, he added, “not under any circumstances.” The words were chilling.
“What if he starts beating you?”
“If I think I am going to lose, and you are not there then, at least, I will have the option of running.”
Ari felt a little better. Maybe running wasn’t such a bad idea.
Nate pulled out his shirt, still tucked into the back of his shorts, and dipped it in the lake water, then used it to wipe away most of the blood on his chest. Ari took the shirt from him, refreshed it in the lake and cleaned the mess from his face, careful not to touch his nose.
“Does it hurt ... does it hurt the same as it would for me?”
“We are stronger and hardier than most humans, and we heal faster, but we do break the same,” he said, gesturing to his nose. “And it still bloody hurts. I might have to make a quick trip to the A and E to get it lined back up.”
*****
“Won't they know you’re different?” Ari asked as they pulled into the hospital car park.
“Only if they look at my cells under a microscope and, maybe, not even then. That is not something they usually do for a broken nose.”
“Umm, how do you ...?” Ari searched for a way to word the question politely. “Are your kids like you? I mean, like, reproduction…with your wife…was it—normal?” Ari blushed. She felt like a little kid again, talking to her parents about the ins and outs of sex.
Nate laughed “Normal? Yes. Although, I would like to think better than most.” He flashed a cheeky grin and winked. “If you mean the propulsion thing—no they didn’t have it. It must be a recessive gene. I’m not sure about the rest. I never had a chance to find out.”
The waiting room had a definite hospital smell, a clean, ammonia tang that bites at the nose. Clean but not fresh. Trashy magazines littered about on the hard plastic seats were outdated and overused, the beauty of the women adorning their covers magnified by quit smoking posters on the walls showing grotesque body parts, said to be the result of smoking.
Ari fidgeted on the seat next to Nate, trying to get comfy. She slowly slid herself down the hard plastic chair, in the hope of finding a new bone in her bottom to take her body weight. Unable to find any relief from the discomfort, she dragged herself back up, letting out a sigh as she did.
Twice now, a nurse had headed towards them, clipboard in hand. And twice, Ari had risen from her seat to greet her, only to have a bloodier mess than Nate choose that moment to be wheeled into the waiting room. It was a Saturday, a sports day, and there seemed to be an endless stream of associated damage. Ari's patience was dwindling at a very quick rate. Nate needed some attention before the bone healed on its own.
“Ouch, look at the leg on that man!” Nate gave her a nudge and pointed
in the direction of the automatic doors. A couple of nurses ran up to help the thick-set man who was clearly in agony. “Looks pretty painful don't you think?” The guy had half of his shin sticking out at what Ari would later describe as a right angle, although perhaps it hadn't been quite that extreme, but his screams sure made it sound that way. The poor guy looked grey, every bump of the stretcher he was brought in on, made him squeal.
“It looks a whole lot more painful than a broken nose.” Nate didn't need to point it out. Ari had cringed when she saw the man’s injury. Then, she realised, Nate was using the misery of others to reassure her that his injury was minor by comparison. “I'm fine, so stop worrying.” He rubbed her thigh.
“I'm not worried.”
He raised his eyebrows in reply.
“Okay, I get your point,” she muttered, her tone impatient, holding her hands up in surrender. She reckoned she should be allowed to worry about him After all, he had been harmed while defending her.
“I'll stop fussing.”
Finally, Nate’s name was called. A young nurse came to usher them through the locking doors, which separated the public from the inner workings of the main hospital. Her heavy breasts were constricted in her dark blue uniform and a gold watch, pinned to one of them, swung like a pendulum as she walked. She looked pleased when Nate rose from his seat.
He turned to Ari. “You can wait here if you want. I'm not sure this is going to be all that pleasant.”
Ari took one look at the smiling nurse. “Sorry sunshine, I'm coming with you.” Ari thought she glimpsed a flash of disappointment crack the nurse’s smile.
The nurse escorted them through to a treatment room. The decorator hadn't been very inventive and the colour scheme was white on white. Soon to be red on white if Nate's nose started bleeding again. They had to wait another five minutes before the doctor came into the room.
“Perhaps the waiting room would have been a good place to wait, after all.” Ari watched the doctor give Nate a local anaesthetic. Then, he performed what he described as a 'manual realignment'.
Bone on bone. The grating noise produced by the procedure was hideous; nearly as bad as the sound when it broke. Ari took Nate's hand to provide him support. But he was the one who seemed unfazed by the process, while Ari's stomach threatened to revolt.
Apparently happy with his handiwork, the doctor prescribed Nate some pain medication and sent him on his way. In contrast with the time they’d sat waiting to be seen, the time for treatment was short. Ari would have been a little angry if her nauseated stomach wasn't craving fresh air. As soon as they broke free of the automatic doors, she drank the air into her lungs, pleased when it eased some of the queasiness.
fourteen
“Stop looking at me like that. I can hardly feel a thing.” Nate's protest would have had more strength if his eyes weren't turning blacker by the minute. “I hope you didn't have nursing down as your first career choice?”
“Trust me, it wouldn't even make the top ten,” Ari replied.
“The world may be a little safer for that,” Nate joked.
“It was painful to watch.”
“I was more worried you would crush my hand in your vice-like grip. You’re stronger than you look,” he teased. “It has been an interesting first date, don’t you think?”
“It was definitely unforgettable.” The fact that he had called it a date hadn't gone unnoticed. It gave her a little courage. She slid her hand into his, running her fingers over his palm before threading them between his knuckles. “I was really enjoying myself, right up until we were rudely interrupted.” Nate had been bare-chested throughout the whole ordeal making the memory of events bearable. Ari’s mind drifted back, recalling the feeling of his lips on hers, the pain when he had torn himself away, and the image of him stripping his shirt off. She looked over at him, still bare-skinned above the waist. Her gaze drifted slowly down along his chest before lazily rambling back up to catch Nate's eyes watching her.
“I'm going to need a new shirt,” he said, smirking. She'd been well and truly busted. I really must get some decent sunglasses so he can’t see me perving.
“Where do you get your clothes from? Have you got a house or something round here?” Ari asked.
“That would make life a lot easier, but no, I don’t have a home in Christchurch, I have a functional credit card.”
“Where do you want to go shopping?” Ari asked, fumbling in her small purse for the keys.
“Preferably, somewhere they won't look at me too strangely when I walk in without a shirt.”
“And two black eyes” Ari added.
“Really? Both eyes?”
An outlet mall was close by. School kids often used it as their local hang out. So Nate wouldn't be the worst dressed one there, nor would he be wearing the least amount of clothing. Ari led him to the sports shop, which seemed the best place to stock up on shirts.
“Are you going to try those on?” Ari found Nate with an armful of clothes heading for the counter.
Nate held the shirt from the top of the pile against his body. “It will fit.” It was a nondescript black T-shirt. When she looked through the pile, they were all the same. All dark coloured T-shirts; no writing, no art work and no labels.
“There are some cool shirts over there.” She pointed to the expensive, labelled racks lining the wall. “Did you want to have a look through those?”
“I stopped trying to keep up with fashion a long time ago. A plain T-shirt has never gone out of style.”
They exited the shop fifteen minutes after they had gone in. Three bags loaded with clothes hung from Nate's hands. When asked about his finances, he’d simply said he’d made enough money in the past to not have to worry about the present. Ari wanted to know more. She gave him a confused look, which prompted his confession. There was nothing sinister, simply some very long term investments that had paid off.
Nate led Ari to a bench seat in the centre of the mall. He pulled out the black shirt, ripped off its tag and slipped it on over his head, being careful not to touch his nose. The shirt fit snuggly. Label or not, he looked good.
“You need to go on your holiday to Thailand.”
“When did you decide that?”
“The long hours spent at the hospital gave me a chance to think. The seether will not hold off because I’m with you. He will keep coming and, if he does, he might get lucky.”
“I don’t think it'd be a great idea to go now.” She looked at her feet. “Not unless you're coming too?” She played with a small stone beneath her foot.
“It will have to be only you and Nevaeh,” Nate replied.
Disappointed he had blown off her poor attempt at an invite, Ari argued, “But what if the seether comes after me again? I wouldn’t be able to fight him off. I'd have more than a broken nose by the end of it.”
“He is not going to find you,” Nate reassured her, although his tone wasn't as affirmative as it could have been.
“But everyone knows we're going on holiday. Nevaeh and I have been going on about it for months now. It wouldn't take much investigating for him to find that out.”
“He has never been much of a people person and that is grossly understating it.” He screwed up his face. “Let's say he does not make a good first impression, does he? I imagine you remember your first time.”
“Couldn't forget if I wanted to.” She broke into a sweat when the memory of the seether's shadow in the garden came to mind. Then, she recalled his face, at the church, and the threatening emotions surrounding the memory dissipated a little. “He's not exactly ugly, though. If he smiled ...”
Nate was appalled. His eyes widened, matching his mouth. “You honestly think he is good looking?”
Ari backtracked, trying to claw her way back out of the hole. “No, it's not that. It’s just…I imagine, if he put on a smile, he could sweet talk a few people into giving him what he wanted.” Ari nervously shuffled her weight from one foot to the other, focussi
ng her interest on the small pebble again. She could feel his eyes on her and didn't want to meet them.
“Well, I cannot imagine him hanging out at the local movie theatre to make friends with some of your school mates. He looks at least thirty. The chances of him finding out where you’re going are pretty slim. But, given that you think he may have some charm...” The last sentence was very pointed.
“I didn't mean it that way.” She could see he was seriously offended by her comment, maybe even jealous. “What about the church? All my friends were there. He could have heard something,” Ari reasoned, attempting to divert his attention.
“Okay,” he relented. “It might be wise to take some precautions. I will change your destination. No one else gets to know. Just me.”
Ari felt a shiver run up her spine. Although an overseas trip excited her, she was racked with nerves at the thought of holidaying in a foreign country—and that was when she knew where she was going and had prepared for it. The idea of an unknown destination, without any forewarning, was terrifying.
“You're not even going to tell me where I'm going, are you?” Ari could tell by how he had enunciated the ‘just me.’
“Do you not like surprises?” He moved on without waiting for her answer. “I will use the time you are in hiding to seek out the other sentinel and see if I can get some more information from her.”
“Holidaying not hiding,” Ari protested, sparks of jealousy taunting her thoughts. He would be heading off to see another woman, one who was much better suited to him than she was. One of his own. And, from what Ari had so far learnt about sentinels, she would be drop-dead gorgeous. If Nate picked up on Ari's suspicions he didn't acknowledge it, merely continued with his plan.
“This is the only way I can get you out of his range. Once you are out of the country, finding you will be like finding a needle in a pine forest.”
“But he's already found me a couple of times. How can you be so sure he won't do it again? Can't I just come along with you?”
