Awakened Alpha

by Chloe Vincent

  His grief, Gwen thought. Samuel is embarrassed by his own grief.

  “He’s lucky to have you,” Gwen said.

  “Thank you, miss.” Arthur nodded curtly and sat down by the bed. She didn’t miss the way his face changed when he looked at Samuel, almost as if he were looking at his own son.

  “Well, I have to get back to work now,” Gwen said, ambling to the door. “But I’m sure I’ll see you again. I’m going to be visiting him again.”

  “I look forward to it,” Arthur said with a nod.

  Gwen nodded back and left, sighing a little as she hurried out of the ICU and back to Phys. Rehab., feeling as if some new momentous part of her life was just beginning.

  5

  Sam

  “I’ve decided what my favorite movie is,” Sam said. He was in his pool which he’d painstakingly reconstructed with some concentration. “It’s not Commando. Not that I don’t love Commando. I think it’s The Matrix.”

  Gwen was visiting again. This was the fifth time by Sam’s count. He was getting to look forward to her visits with so much anticipation that it almost made him forget the pain of being trapped alone in the void in the empty little scenes he could construct for himself. He could make people appear and he had tried it several times. His mind could conjure them up to keep him company, only it was never quite right. He had made up an Arthur and he had tried to make a Gabriel (one of his long-dead pride mates). Arthur looked okay and he could smile like Arthur but he moved awkwardly and never looked Sam in the eye. Where Sam was trapped in this curse, whether it was his own head or somewhere else, he couldn’t make people there. He could mostly just make things. So he made his pool and the comfiest floatie he could imagine and put himself in trunks, floating there under the sun as Gwen played her music and talked about rock concerts she had gone to. Gwen talked about all kinds of things. Sam could never guess what she would talk about next.

  His biggest frustration now was that he couldn’t talk to Gwen directly. And she couldn’t hear his answers to questions. It had taken him days to decide that The Matrix was his favorite movie. But now she couldn’t hear him.

  She had also read his diary. He had mostly been mortified when she had told him she was going to. But then he had heard her alternately crying or laughing depending on what she was reading. At such times, he was actually relieved to be stuck in the void.

  I’ve seen Arcade Fire a couple of times. I wonder what music you like? Oh wait, what am I saying? You mention Nine Inch Nails a couple times in your journal. I would never have guessed that! I like them. That’s good angst music. Are you a grunge guy?

  “Oh my God,” Sam murmured, smiling sheepishly and clapping a hand to his face. There was a picture of Kurt Cobain taped to a page of his journal. He wondered how she had missed that.

  Oh my God! Look at this! I swear, I hadn’t seen this before. You little 90s boy. You’ve got Kurt in here. That’s so funny! Okay, hold on…

  Just then Nirvana’s Unplugged album began to play and Sam grinned, blushing behind his hands. If he ever did wake up, this woman was going to know an awful lot about him. He didn’t want to think about that yet. It was fine for now, in the relative safety of the void. He was trapped there and he was almost entirely alone but at least he didn’t have to deal with all that feelings stuff when Gwen was weeping because of something he’d written in his journal about missing the way his best friend, Gabriel, had made pancakes on Saturdays or how Luke was obsessed with playing Monopoly or how Emilio was into sculpting.

  And yet…he wanted to speak to Gwen too. As long as it wasn’t embarrassing. It was hard to picture. He wasn’t much of a talker when there was actually a person standing in front of him.

  More than anything he wanted to see her face. He imagined she was beautiful. He loved the sound of her voice; how it was rich and a little bit throaty and the way she easily laughed as if her default was a good day. She saw beauty everywhere. He could tell that quickly in the way she chattered about his plants and what the light looked like coming in from the window.

  She sure sounded beautiful.

  I have to admit, I’m very curious about the whole guardian thing. Your job is so important. I mean you write in your diary about fighting like vampires and dark wizards and…you act like it’s no big deal. It’s… It’s amazing, Sam. I wonder how many times you’ve saved the world? My life feels so small by comparison.

  Sam yelped in surprise and jerked so that he fell off his floatie and into the water. It didn’t feel quite like water. It was his imagination of water but he felt wet enough and he swam to the edge of the pool and climbed out, looking around at nothing.

  “Your life seems small?” Sam said, finding himself genuinely angry. “You help people to walk, Gwen! How is that small? You make people’s lives better every single day! You come here to visit me and you don’t even know me! I…” He sighed heavily, running a hand through his soaked hair that instantly dried when he wished it dry. “I wish you could hear me.”

  I wish I could hear you.

  He perked up at that. Gwen had not been visiting him long, but he felt a special place in his heart for her already. He made himself dry and put himself in jeans and a t-shirt and went inside to his big, empty house to go pace around in the rooms that were big and had never been properly filled.

  “You’d hate my house,” he said into the void. He sighed and spun on his heel. Wasn’t there a big fern in the corner by the front window? Arthur had bought it. One of his go-to games to pass the time in the void was to try to accurately reimagine his house. He had never spent much time on the place in life. Arthur had been responsible for any bit of homeliness in Sam’s big mid-century modern place in the hills overlooking Hollywood. He had bought it because he had fought near it once with his pride and Gabriel had liked it and once daydreamed about buying it. The pride had been quite wealthy due to old family money and strong investments. If Gabriel had lived a little longer, he would have bought the place and maybe they all would be living there together. Now all the pride’s money belonged to Sam since their families had long died off. He hardly knew what to do with it other than to just keep investing and give chunks of it away to good causes.

  But he had bought the house for sentimentality. Which was funny, because nothing about the big, empty rooms with pricey mid-century pieces here and there screamed “sentimental.”

  I wish you had a picture of your house in here…

  “Ha!” Sam laughed and wondered if there was a bit of magic at work here. Or perhaps they were connecting on a psychic level, just a tiny bit.

  “You don’t want to see a picture,” Sam said. He went the front window and tried to remember what kind of flowers Arthur had planted in the front. There had been bougainvillea on the little stone wall by the drive. That, he was sure of. “It’s a nice house, and it’s empty and…you’d probably think it was soulless. Or something kind of poetic.”

  I’ll bet your place is really spartan because you’re like a monkish kind of warrior and that Arthur is the one buying plants and throwpillows and things.

  His mouth dropped open, and he heard her laugh like a bell.

  “You’ve really got my number,” he muttered. “Should I be worried?”

  Wake up. She was whispering now. She was also touching him. He felt a hand holding his, and he looked down at his own hand that was unchanged. But he could feel her touch at the same time. A warm, soft hand was holding his cold hand that lay on the bed in the hospital. Sam… I really wish you would wake up. She was crying, and he wished he could comfort her. Not that I don’t love visiting you. But…I know it might sound crazy, it’s just… I feel like I’ve gotten to know you. No, I won’t say that. It’s just from reading your diary and talking to Arthur… I don’t know you, not really. But I’d like to know you. I feel like we’d be friends if you woke up. You write that you’re shy in your diary. Maybe I would talk too much for someone like you…

  “No,” Sam whispered. He closed his eyes
and reveled in the touch of her hand, praying she wouldn’t move it. Only nurses and doctors touched him and that sort of touch was only cold and clinical. Arthur had squeezed his shoulder a couple of times and that had been a while ago. It wouldn’t have occurred to him that Sam needed something like that. “You talk just the right amount,” he said softly. “I love to listen to you talk. And I hate it when you go.”

  Wake up.

  Sam felt a lump in his throat. He could hear how she meant it. Even if she only liked him in a friendly way, that was more than fine. Even if he only woke up to speak to her once before she moved on because the stranger she had been visiting was okay now, that would be fine. He wanted to see her once. Speak to her and see how she moved and what her hand looked like when it was holding his. Just once…

  “I can’t,” he whispered.

  I googled curses, you know? She sniffed and her voice was shaky. I was trying to figure out how to fix this, but I… I can’t find anything. I don’t know enough about magic. I have to think Arthur has tried to find an answer. He’s implied it. There’s got to be a way. What if you’re just like…Snow White? He heard her laughing. They called you Sleeping Beauty but maybe it was a poison apple that did this, right? I wish it was that simple.

  “I’d do anything to wake up right now,” Sam said. He chuckled and rubbed his eyes. “Believe me, Gwen. I wouldn’t even be able to help you if I could. I can do magic but I have no idea what he cursed me with.”

  She was still holding his hand. He could feel it. And now he raised his hand to his lips, wishing for a closer connection to this woman who had been comforting him just to be kind.

  I have to go… She sounded really sad and he hated to hear her sounding like that. Gwen was so cheerful usually. He didn’t like to think that the closer she got to him, the sadder she was. Not when she was doing all this out of the goodness of her heart.

  “Gwen!” Sam said, shutting his eyes again, a lump in his throat. “Hear me, please. Somehow, for God’s sake, just hear me? You have made this so much better. It was hell before you were here. And nothing about you is small. Do you hear me?”

  Oh… I… He felt her squeezing his hand. I have to go.

  She let go of his hand and he dropped his head, sinking to the floor of his big empty living room with the spartan decor, as she had called it. She was leaving. He knew she would be back. But every single time she came to see him, it hurt more when she left - and the hours inbetween felt somehow like miniature eternities.

  6

  Delilah

  “Come oooon,” Delilah whined at her Oracle device, frowning down at the touchscreen display which was giving her no new information since the last time she had asked it what had caused Sam Foster’s coma. The Oracle said only that it had been caused by a curse from a dark wizard but came up with a question mark when she tried to push for details.

  She sipped a mocha, sitting slumped on a bench in the courtyard near the ICU, wearing dark glasses just in case Gwen spotted her. At least the journal gambit had worked. Gwen had followed the Post-It directions like a champ.

  “I’m so tired of this hospital already,” Delilah mumbled.

  Delilah had never liked hospitals in general. She had been in enough tough spots in her life on Earth to have warranted multiple visits to hospitals (and to various witches with healing powers) and she had always hated places that seemed too full of frail, sick human beings. What kind of saint actually decided to work in one? Yikes.

  They smelled funny too. But Delilah tried not to think about that. There was already too much to think about.

  This mission was somehow going both well and badly.

  Sam and Gwen seemed genuinely interested in each other at the very least. Yet they had never spoken. Which Delilah considered a pretty impressive feat. It was this damn coma that was getting in the way.

  Sam needed to wake up and pronto.

  She couldn’t come up with much information on the wizard either. Only that he was likely hiding out somewhere in Los Angeles. Going on a fishing expedition for a dark wizard to undo the coma sounded… Well, to Delilah it sounded like a lot of fun but she already knew Katz would say it was too intrusive. But the only other person who had been there when Sam had been cursed was Sam. He must have some kind of useful information. If they knew what the curse was, perhaps it could be broken with a little luck.

  But that would require talking to Sam which might be difficult since he was comatose and all.

  “I wonder if I can get into his head,” Delilah said to herself. “Katz would know…”

  Yes, Katz… She needed to talk to Katz. Not that it was a chore. Any excuse to see Katz was fine in her opinion anyway. Sometimes Katz would come around if she called for him. He was her supervisor more than anything and probably far, far above that really but he also liked her well enough and wanted to be helpful to her missions.

  Delilah pretended to talk into her Oracle device like a phone because Katz would hear her from the Angelic Dimension if she just called for him. “Hey, Katz. Katz! Are you busy? I have a question.”

  She sighed heavily and sat back on the bench with her head resting on the hardwood, her legs stretched out in front of her. He might take a while. She sipped her mocha and found herself nearly nodding off as visitors around her talked quietly and drank coffee.

  “Katz!” She shouted this time and forgot to use the Oracle as a phone and people looked over at her. “C’mon, man…”

  She had almost fallen asleep again when Katz appeared beside her, already holding a coffee.

  “Hello there, Delilah.” He cast her his usual toothy grin and she bit back a reflexive smile, hiding behind her sunglasses and sipping her mocha. “Do we have a problem?”

  “Yeah!” Delilah burst out laughing incredulously. “Yeah, we have a problem! The guy is still in a coma!”

  Katz nodded and heaved a long-suffering sigh but Delilah was pretty sure she was being teased. “That does put you in a bit of a pickle.”

  “A bit of a pickle?” Delilah said with a snort. “Katz, this mission should be going great. She visits him all the time. She’s practically in love with him already just reading his diary and Oracle says he feels a close bond with her. But they can’t seal the deal and truly be together if he’s unconscious!”

  “Well,” I can’t wake him up,” Katz stated, nodding. “There are limits here, Delilah. That would be too-”

  “Too invasive,” Delilah said, rolling her eyes. “Yeah, I guessed you were going to say that.”

  “May have I sip of that mocha?” Katz nodded at her coffee and Delilah narrowed her eyes. The guy spent all his days in the Angelic Dimension where he had access to literally everything including coffee that was better than anything you could possibly get on Earth. He was only doing it to tease her, she knew. Her lips twitched when she spotted the mark of her lipstick on the rim of the cup lid and saw Katz touch his mouth to it. “Pretty good,” Katz said, winking.

  “Ah…mm.” Delilah sputtered and looked away and he handed her the cup back. She took a deep breath and attempted to focus on her mission. “If I just knew the spell that put him under, maybe I could find someone who could break it or knows something.” She glared at him. “That is information that Oracle should have.”

  Katz only hissed and shrugged helplessly. “You know how Oracle is.”

  Delilah snorted and shook her head. “That’s all I get? I get ‘you know how Oracle is’?”

  “Well…” Katz crossed his arms and looked at her expectantly. “Do you have any suggestions?”

  “I’m glad you asked,” Delilah said, batting her eyes. “Yes, I do. But you’re not going to like it.”

  “Oh boy.”

  “I want to go inside Sam’s head,” Delilah said, taking a long swallow of her mocha. “I know there must be a way to do it. And I don’t think it would be invasive. He won’t know who I am. I’ll just tell him I’m a dream. That way, I can ask him what the spell was or at least what he remembers
about getting cursed. Maybe he can even show me the memory.”

  Katz seemed tense. He shifted on the bench in the pretty courtyard with the trickling fountain and the Japanese Maple tree. His arms were crossed, his shoulders hunched up, and he stared straight ahead. She couldn’t read his expression.

  “I don’t know,” he said flatly.

  “Dude…” She glared at him and he cracked a smile again.

  “Did you call me dude?”

  “Yes.” She cleared her throat. “Dude. Do you honestly think it’s remotely fair that I’m supposed to get these two to fall in love and I have to just wait for one of them wake up from a magic coma? Katz, it’s a curse from an evil dark wizard. There’s no telling how powerful it is. Are we just supposed to stumble into the cure? He’s never going to wake up himself. I could be here for years. And the only people who know what the curse was are Sam and the wizard. And I don’t even have information on the wizard, nor am I allowed to go shake him down even if I did. We need to help Sam but Sam needs to help us help him and I don’t see another way.”

  Katz squinted at her and said, “You sound like you care a lot, Delilah.”

  She scowled back at him and said, “Shut up.”

  “You’re right, too,” Katz said and now she perked up in interest. “Of course, you’re right. They’ve given you an impossible mission to complete without some unorthodox assistance. But I’ll need to consult the Council of Three.” His expression darkened, his brow furrowing. “Might even need to butter up Gavrill with some of those Bordeaux chocolates he likes from the reformed vampire’s place next to Evelyn’s Seafood Company.”