Protector

by Messenger, Tressa

  This place has been her refuge for so long, and now it has been taken from her. Anna-Marie hates feeling so weak, but the thought remains that no one is safe, especially after all of the research she has been doing lately about all of the mysterious disappearances and animal attacks. To top off her fear, there has been another report of a disappearance since the night in the alley, probably that poor person the cannibal killed in the alley, which makes three since Dylan’s death. It all makes sense now, even if it is unbelievable.

  Anna-Marie pushes the vision of him from her mind as another chill runs through her. She has to pull it together for Dylan. He is the only thing that matters to her.

  “Hey, Dylan! How was your week?” She pauses, “Mine was long, but good.”

  As Anna-Marie looks around to make sure no one is in hearing range so she can tell him about her latest research, she notices an unfamiliar man standing in front of a new grave a couple of plots down. He looks so lost and out of place. It was obviously recent.

  It’s such a shame when a death occurs. She thinks to herself.

  Anna-Marie tries hard to direct her attention back to her conversation with Dylan, but she is too curious about the man standing so broad in front of the fresh grave. Not because he is attractive, because well, he is. It’s hard not to notice such a unique looking man, which is a shock on its own that she even noticed his good looks, especially while here with Dylan. This makes her feel guilty. She looks back at the grave in front of her and tries to clear her racing mind, but her curiosity wins. She looks back at the man and realizes that it’s also not because he is in mourning that has her so curious, because she has seen people mourn here many times before. It’s because she has never had another person grieve so close to her before with completely raw grief. She is all too familiar with the emotions and curious about his grieving process.

  For so long she has felt broken and alone. She never felt like anyone understood. Everyone says they are concerned, but none of them actually want to deal with her grief. They just want her to pick up and move on as if it never happened. As if Dylan never even existed. It’s an impossible task to expect of her and to save the people closest to her from her burdens. It has driven her into almost complete isolation. She knows others can see it, too, no matter how hard she has tried to hide it.

  All of a sudden the man looks up in her direction. Before she can look away he locks her in with his big dark almond eyes. She is caught in his gaze like a deer in headlights and is unable to break the spell.

  “Hi. I’m sorry. I wasn’t prying, I swear,” Anna-Marie says once she is able to breathe. She is mortified at her intrusion.

  “Oh no, it’s okay, really. To be honest, I really don’t know how to do this. We just buried her and it still doesn’t seem real.”

  “I’m so sorry to hear that. To be completely honest, it never does seem real no matter how long it’s been.” Anna-Marie wants so badly to ask how it happened, to see if it was the mysterious animal attacks, but, oh God, that would be insensitive.

  Instead she says, “I think everyone grieves differently, in their own way. I think it really depends on the relationship and what happened,” Anna-Marie says, then holds her breath hoping he will elaborate on what happened.

  “Well, Catherine was my girlfriend and she died of cancer, so it was expected.”

  Anna-Marie feels a mix of relief and disappointment to hear how she died.

  “I’m sorry to hear that. It’s never easy when someone you love dies. Everyone tells us we just have to go on like that person never existed. They never understand.” Anna-Marie looks away, shocked with the resentment she feels for this revelation. She has always felt the anger, but has never voiced it before. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.”

  “That’s okay. You should never apologize for speaking the truth or for your feelings. If people don’t like it, screw them. My name is Alessandro, Alessandro Pierre, by the way.”

  Alessandro takes a few steps in her direction until he is close enough to shake her hand, while still keeping his distance.

  “Hi, Alessandro! I’m Anna-Marie Hager. It’s nice to meet you. It looks like we are going to be neighbors.”

  Anna-Marie shifts her chin towards the grave in front of her. “This is Dylan Williams. He was my boyfriend and best friend. He was killed by some kind of wild animal.”

  “That’s horrible.”

  “Yeah, it was. I was the one who found him. I’ve had nightmares since. To be honest, this is the only place I have felt safe. Well, until-”

  “Until what?”

  “Oh, nothing.”

  Shit! She isn’t talking about it, he thinks to himself.

  “Hey, this may sound forward but if you’re not too busy, I was wondering if we could go for a drink somewhere and talk?” Alessandro got his charm from his father and hoped it wouldn’t fail him now. If he has to, he will use his power of persuasion but that will only be his last resort.

  Anna-Marie chews on her bottom lip not knowing what to say.

  Shit, Ales, act fast, he scolds himself.

  “I’m sorry, I just don’t think anyone else can understand. I figured you would.”

  Anna-Marie thinks about the past nine months. She has felt so alone in her grief this whole time. It would be wrong to make someone else feel like that when she could possibly help, right?

  Anna-Marie looks Alessandro over. He seems innocent enough in his loose fitting, but not baggy, blue jeans topped with a black T-shirt and his long wavy black hair is slicked back into a low ponytail at the base of his neck. His almond eyes flash and smile with sincerity.

  “Sure, I would like that.”

  Anna-Marie turns her attention back to Dylan and gives his name a kiss before leaving with her new friend. Alessandro is shocked by the gesture.

  “Do you drink coffee?” Anna-Marie asks Alessandro as they enter the same coffee shop he followed her into the week before.

  “To be honest, I never really drank it before but it smells great.”

  Anna-Marie looks at him strangely, “Oh, I’m sorry, I figured everyone drinks coffee. We can go somewhere else if you’d like.” Anna-Marie pauses for a minute thinking about the first couple of months after Dylan died. She turns to face him again with a serious expression.

  “I’ve tried hard not to turn to alcohol for my grieving. I drank myself delirious in the beginning, but they are right when they say it makes your reality so much worse in the morning. I strongly advise you not to go in that direction. Believe me, if you don’t want to kill yourself now, it will make it very appealing.”

  “No, this is fine.” He scans the menu on the wall real quick, “I can get tea.”

  “Oh, well good. They have great tea here. I think I will, too.”

  Once they have their teas, they sit at a round table in the back of the room away from everyone else so they can speak in private.

  “So, Alessandro, how are you doing with your loss?”

  “Good, I guess. Like I said, I really don’t know what to feel.”

  “What was she like?”

  He is normally quick on his feet but he knew he had to develop a story about this stranger, Catherine. He has been working on his story for the past couple of days. He knows she was a real girl who had died of cancer at a young age a few days ago, although, he didn’t know her personally. He thinks back on this girl’s last few days of her sad lonely life.

  He stalked the hospital all week for the perfect candidate so he could lock in his story of grief. He knew he could easily come up with the story, but he needed a body, plus the emotions had to come from somewhere deeper. The only person he has ever loved and lost was his mother. Her loss was taken very hard by all who knew and loved her, especially by him, so he used the emotions he felt from her and transformed them in his story about Catherine.

  The whole week he never saw one person visit this girl, other than doctors and nurses. He overheard two nurses talking one day, they said she was a h
omeless drug addict who collapsed on the street. That’s how she ended up there and dying from cancer without a soul in the world to care about her. That’s when he knew she was the one. He even paid for her burial.

  He smiles and looks at Anna-Marie as memories of his mother flood his mind. “Catherine was a beautiful woman. Everyone loved her.” Flashes of his mother begin to cut through him like a knife, slicing his heart wide open.

  Anna-Marie just sits quietly watching his raw pain, letting him know he can continue. She is embarrassed to admit, even to herself, that all she can do is stare at this man, this stranger, even in his time of grief. His vulnerability is making him even more attractive. He has sharp features, but not so much so that he looks imposing. His dark olive skin fits perfectly with his almost black wavy hair and big almond eyes.

  She looks from his eyes down to his full plump lips. He smiles a crooked smile when he notices her stare but continues to talk, pretending he didn’t notice.

  “She was from Italy. We met there when I went to Rome on vacation.” He thinks about the stories of when his parents met. He hates to exaggerate his mothers past, but he has to make it fit with his grief for this stranger who he was supposed to love, “It was love at first sight.”

  Alessandro’s mom was a beautiful simple country girl who happened to have fallen in love with a vampire of the Brotherhood when they were stationed in Rome, Italy. Of course she didn’t know Marquis’ secret at first, but once she fell in love with him it didn’t seem to matter.

  It was a devastating time for the world as a whole. It was 1948, and the Brotherhood was in Europe fighting the largest group of Rogue the world has ever experienced. They tried so hard to stay out of the fight, and had actually managed to for a long time, but after a few years of pure carnage, they had no other choice. The human militaries were being wiped out more and more every day.

  The world knows this time as a great evil and the most devastating time Europe has ever known. What the world doesn’t know is the leader was none other than a Mix Rogue, a mere puppet for the Rogue. The so-called war was a cover-up for a very dark evil in which the human world could never understand.

  The Rogue was taking over Europe. They created the biggest army of Rogue and Mix Rogue through that time that has ever been noted in their history.

  The human militaries fought hard but failed because they didn’t have the knowledge or strength to defeat the Rogue. Marquis couldn’t let this go on any further. He deployed a massive army from every Brotherhood order from all over the world. There has never been another moment in time when there was so many Brotherhood and Protectors together at once. The order lost a lot of members during that time, of both Brotherhoods and Protectors, but in the end they were victorious.

  Meeting the beautiful Gemma was the last thing Marquis ever wanted, or expected, but he couldn’t deny it.

  He met her a few days after going back to Rome from Germany. She was a vender on the street selling vibrant materials with her parents and younger brother. When she spoke to him it was like listening to an angel. She was a painfully beautiful woman with dark wavy hair that reached the small of her back and dark almond eyes that could rip your heart out with one bat of her long dark eye lashes. His fate was sealed at first sight.

  The very first thing Marquis said to her as soon as their eyes met was, “Vous avez volé mon coeur!”

  She looked at him confused with her big almond eyes, “Pardon?”

  “I said you’ve stolen my heart.”

  “I did no such thing,” she protested in broken English.

  “Oh, yes, you have.”

  “But how can that be? I don’t even know you.”

  “No, but my heart knows you.”

  She looked away blushing and Marquis was done for.

  Marquis kept the Brotherhood in Italy after that day to be close to her. She finally agreed to marry him within months of courting her. They had Alessandro many years later in 1962. Marquis always hoped she would change her mind especially after having Alessandro, but she never did. She wanted so badly to bring Alessandro to Italy so he could meet her family, but she never got the chance. Because his mother chose not to become immortal, they lost her many years ago.

  “She was a very beautiful, strong willed, Italian-bred woman who was cheated out of having a long happy life.”

  “She sounds very nice.”

  “Yeah, she was great.”

  “I always loved Italy,” Anna-Marie says with envy trying to lighten the subject. “I have always felt like everything Italian calls to me.”

  “Oh, have you been?”

  “No, not yet, but I’m hoping to one day. We had planned to go next year, but with everything that has happened, I don’t know when I will be able to.”

  “Well, you should definitely go someday.”

  “Maybe one day I will.”

  “So tell me about Dylan.”

  “Let’s see, I had known him all my life. We grew up together in a small town about two hours north from here called Oriental. We were best friends since elementary school and we started dating when we were sixteen.”

  Anna-Marie stops to remember those days of innocence. She has reflected on them many times in the past nine months, but she has never talked about it to anyone, until now.

  “Wow, that’s a long time to date someone. You’re what, twenty-two?”

  Anna-Marie laughs, “No, I’m actually thirty.”

  “Seriously? That’s even longer then I thought.”

  “Well, with Dylan it was easy. He always had a way of pulling you in and making you never want to leave. We moved here after high school to go to college.”

  “Oh, so you both went to the University of Wilmington?”

  “Yep, it was my dream since I was a child. I was a track star in high school and received a scholarship to run track for Wilmington, as well as a few other colleges. When I got the notice it was like fate telling me for sure, that is where I was supposed to go. I think Dylan only agreed to go there too to make me happy.”

  “Well, that was very cool of him.”

  “Yeah, he was always good like that.”

  Anna-Marie now wishes that they wouldn’t have come here. She could have just as easily continued to waitress at the marina and gone to Pamlico Community College for her two-year degree, then transfer somewhere local for her Bachelors degree. At least then Dylan would still be here. But she has loved Wilmington since she was a kid, when her parents took her to Wrightsville Beach for the first time and continued to take her, and even Dylan sometimes, every summer since. The city has always been fascinating and comforting all at once, but not anymore.

  There are memories of Dylan all over. Most of them being good, like the glistening downtown waterfront where they would take walks on warm humid nights. Some nights they would even drive to the other side of the river to the park and play a few games of basketball. Every Sunday they would walk downtown and buy fresh produce and ice cream from the street vendors. The bubbling fountain along the waterfront houses hundreds, if not thousands, of their coins. There’s not a time since they were children that they have ever passed it and not made a wish.

  But since that horrible night when her world fell apart, this place is no longer comforting, only lonely and sad. The memories of that night trump all of the magical ones.

  She has thought about moving away a few times. She knows a fresh start would do her good, but she can’t imagine leaving Dylan behind right now; maybe one day, just not now. The thought of even going away for an extended amount of time, like a weekend, is unfathomable.

  They sit quietly sipping their tea, both seeming lost in their own thoughts.

  “So, Anna-Marie, what is it that you do?” Alessandro finally asks.

  “I am a columnist for the Coastal Sun newspaper.”

  Dammit! Alessandro thinks to himself. He was not expecting that.

  “So umm, what kind of columns do you write?”

  “Pretty much anythin
g really. I’ve been there since I was an intern in college so my boss seems to think I’m competent enough to write a good column about whatever subject I so choose. Sometimes I’m not so sure, but it doesn’t hurt that she is my best friend as well,” she says with a smile. “But, I absolutely hate politics, so I refuse to even broach the subject and religion is too controversial for me. I find myself arguing with it more than anything.”

  “That’s pretty awesome that you have free range of your choosing.”

  “Yeah, it is. How about you?”

  “I work in security.”

  “Oh, really? Where do you work?”

  “I own my own business downtown. I have a couple of guys that work for me. We get contracted out.”

  “Oh, that is cool. I bet that is interesting work.”

  “Yeah, it can definitely be a challenge.”

  Alessandro glances out the window. Dammit! It’s starting to get dark out. I have to get back to the manor before the others go out, Alessandro thinks to himself.

  “Well, Anna-Marie, I hate to do it but it is starting to get late and I have a meeting to get to. It was very nice to meet you.” Surprisingly, he really meant it. She has been nothing but a pain in the butt and he was convinced she was absolutely insane, until now.

  Anna-Marie looks out the window for the first time as well, “Wow, yeah it is. I didn’t even notice it was getting dark out.”

  Anna-Marie avoids being outside at night as much as possible since the night in the alley. She chews her lower lip as fear rises in her because they had left his car at the cemetery to drive here together.

  Alessandro sees the distress on her face and knows exactly what the problem is. She’s afraid.

  “Hey, if you want, I can take a cab back to get my car so you don’t have to drive back to the cemetery if it is out of your way.”