by Marta Szemik
“No. The cabin, our home—it will burn. The laboratory will be reduced to ashes.” My eyes welled up.
His eyes widened. “Did you have a premonition?”
I nodded. “Our home will be gone.”
“That’s impossible. No one knows about the cabin. Will it get struck by lightning? Will I leave the stove on?” he asked in disbelief.
“I don’t know.” Tears streamed down my cheeks, and I fell to the platform.
“Then how?” he whispered.
“I had the dream before, except I didn’t recognize the cabin until now. And I don’t know when.” I started hyperventilating. It felt as if I was sucking air through a straw.
“Who’s going to burn it?” He knelt in front of me.
“I don’t know!” I threw my hands up.
“Sarah, think back to your vision. There must be a clue,” he pleaded, holding my shoulders.
“I didn’t see anyone in the vision . . . No, no, no . . .” I didn’t remember them in my vision, but when I’d dreamt of the burning cabin, I’d seen brightly glowing, orange eyes; the memory of them had tormented me for years. I saw them in the center of every flower, in any oval shape nature could create. They were always there.
“Seeker demons?” William saw the fear on my face. “Are they the same ones that chased us in Pinedale?”
I nodded.
William wiped the wet streaks from my face. “When? How long do we have?”
His voice didn’t shake, like mine did. “Less than three weeks. It’s not exact, but I’ve been shown less than three weeks.”
“We’ll move everything to the basement,” William said firmly. He unhooked the back harness so he could pace around the platform.
“We could stop them. We know they’re coming. We can stop them,” I begged. “They can’t destroy our home!”
“Have you ever tried to change a premonition?” he asked.
“Yes. It didn’t work.” I slouched.
William began chewing on his thumb and finally let out a long breath. “We have to assume you can’t change what you’ve seen. We can only minimize the damage. Do you know how many are coming? How do they know about this place?”
I closed my eyes trying to remember the vision, but the answers to William’s questions weren’t there.
“I don’t know. I can’t concentrate,” I admitted with frustration. “I can only see things when I’m relaxed.”
“Sarah.” He took hold of my shoulders again. “You have to try. You’re the only one who can help us now.”
“Take me to the next platform,” I demanded, concentrating on the energy I’d collected from the crown of the forest.
The click of a hook echoed in my ears. William turned us to face the rising sun. We zipped through a tunnel of trees, moving faster than before. The sun’s rays warmed my body, soaked into my bones. I could feel and hear the heat build-up from the friction of the hook on the zip-line, and I saw orange circles. My lungs filled with the warm air as I let my head rest back on William’s shoulder and gazed at the bright sky above us. The circles slowly turned into ovals. A grid, similar to that on a calendar, appeared in my mind. Concentrating, I saw the squares slowly fill with digits. 1, 2, 3 . . . I counted each one as a number was assigned to it.
“The seeker demons . . . they’ll be here in nineteen days, just before sunset. Just before it rains,” I said in a voice like a robot.
“That’s amazing,” William said as we jumped to the platform. He unhooked the harness and faced me. “Don’t worry, we’ll be safe. Now that we know they’re coming, we can use them.” He rubbed his hands together.
“You’re planning to fight them?” I asked in disbelief, yet a moment ago, I’d felt brave enough to entertain the same idea. Learning about the new me was beginning to take its toll. I bounced from one extreme to another—one moment human, the next vampire—as I tried to master the world of a half-breed.
“Not exactly,” William amended. He chewed his thumb again. “You’ve gained incredible strength and intuition. I have, too. In the next two weeks, we’ll have even more control. They won’t even know we’re here. We’ll follow them like ghosts, invisible shadows.” He mimed a stealthy jump from one side of the platform to the other, and I couldn’t help smiling. “Maybe they can lead us to the underworld, and our parents.”
This was a side of him I had not seen. This was a much braver William, a man more dangerous than I thought. He was not the same William who’d taken every precaution to avoid the demons.
“You’re kidding, right? They’re going to burn down our home, and we’re going to watch them do it?” He moved to pace again, but I blocked his way. “You can’t do this!”
“Think about it. How else are we going to find the road to the underworld?”
“I don’t know!” I wailed. “I’m not the underworld expert.”
“Neither am I, but I have a feeling this is our chance. Remember what Castall said?”
“You have to let Sarah go to find her,” I supplied.
“I hate the idea of you going to the underworld, but I think I have to let you go, for you to find your true self, to allow both of your halves to coexist.”
A strong wind picked up the pollen and swirled it into funnels.
William was right: this was our only chance. The danger of the unknown appealed to me more every minute. A quiet voice called out to me, joining whispers from my darkest dreams, dreams that already predicted I would end up underground.
“Aren’t they going to sense us?” I asked.
William hesitated before he spoke, then he perked up as if he got a fresh injection of adrenaline into his heart. “We’ll keep a safe distance and cover our scent.”
I wasn’t convinced and heard a jitter in his voice.
William stared toward the horizon, while my mind turned over suspicions. We must have missed something. It didn’t make sense—the orchids protected us; their fragrance acted as a shield to disguise us, make us invisible. How would the demons find us? No one knew about the cabin. No one knew we were here.
William jumped up as if he’d been burnt. “Where’s the stuff from the chest?”
“Downstairs, in my room.”
“Let’s go.”
We hurried down the tree and toward our home, finally stopping in the underground apartment. After we returned to the porch, backpack in hand, William pulled out the chest and dumped everything out on the table.
“Sarah, look through the papers. Is anything missing?”
I knelt beside him. “I’m . . . I’m not sure.” I scanned the scattered contents while and carefully moved things aside. “I never looked through everything.”
“What did you see the first time?”
“Helen’s letter, grad pictures . . .” I flipped papers and journals. “Log books, a birth certificate . . . the ruby ring I have in the night table . . . Helen’s photos from when she was younger . . .” I stopped. Where was the photograph of Helen sitting on the porch that had so mesmerized me?
“What’s wrong?” William asked.
My hands trembled as I shuffled through the papers again. “Helen’s photo of the cabin is missing. It must have fallen on the floor at my store, the first time I saw you.”
“That’s how they’ll find us, then.” He slumped into one of the chairs and dropped the papers he still held in his hands.
Our fate was sealed. I slid from my knees to sit slouched on the porch, staring absently at a knot in the wooden plank. My lip quivered. This is all my fault.
William lifted me to the other patio chair. He took my hands between his and rubbed them.
How could I be the reason for the destruction of this magical home? I didn’t have to cry to show my guilt. My heart gave everything away.
“You couldn’t have known,” William whispered. “Things happen for a reason. We’ll brave the future together. We’
ll brave our future together. They will not hurt you.”
My hands warmed. His touch did not send any pains toward my heart, not this time. He only meant to comfort me, nothing more.
“Perhaps that’s our fate. They have to find us so we can get our parents. I will not let them harm you,” he repeated firmly.
William was right. Self-pity would not help us. I refused to go back to the lonely and solitary life I’d once known. Over my dead body. Hope fuelled me that the side I already embraced would help me fight.
William lifted his chin. “Over my dead body.”
He wasn’t reading my mind. We were so in tune with each other we felt what the other was thinking. We read the patterns of our thoughts on our faces.
And we had nineteen days in which to prepare—to train and mix new serums, before this haven was lost to us, forever.
* * *
“Again.” William’s eyes focused on me.
Leaping higher than before, I landed a third of the way up the ceiba tree in one spring. I smiled. My abilities improved each day. I inhaled, intoxicating my body with the orchid pollen that whizzed through my lungs quicker with each breath. My legs sprang again, and I almost reached the base of the tree house.
“Nice.” William joined me and fastened the harness.
Zipping through the canopy became a necessity. I borrowed the life of the jungle to increase my strength. As I discovered the more powerful muscles in my body, William collected more pollen. He combined its various species for our experimentation. Some mixtures made our sight as acute as a cougar’s. Others made my hearing as sensitive as a bat’s. A combination of some increased the strength of the muscles in my limbs without increasing their weight, allowing me to climb the highest trees with ease, yet be light enough to jump from one frail branch to another without breaking it. We worked so intuitively together we became one another’s shadow.
Even with the sense of urgency hanging over us, we found time to relax. We spent the nights downstairs in Willow and Atram’s room. When I walked in the first time, the love they had shared here was still present.
“One of them plays the guitar?” I pointed to the instrument propped in the corner.
“Yes, my father. Would you like to listen?”
From then on, I listened to William playing every night before we said good night. He’d written songs, a mixture of soft classical, rock, and jazz. I listened raptly to each hypnotizing melody, watching his fingers performing a dance across the strings, never wanting his songs to end. When he didn’t play, we’d share stories of our childhoods.
Finishing each other’s sentences soon became second nature. We recognized frustration and pain in each other’s face, humour and happiness in each other’s eyes. Somewhere between, I saw the lust we could not act on. But for the first time, I found balance between my two halves.
During training, the mixtures strengthened our vampire side. We preyed on animals, fed on them, absorbed their strength. Biting into a racing heart that still pulsed was like biting into a ripened watermelon—blood squirted and ran down my face. William taught me how to fight, how to deceive an opponent, how to predict their next move.
On a later afternoon we sat at the base of a tree, relaxing after a hunt.
“Open your hands,” he said one day, holding his hands behind him.
I smiled, cupping my palms in front of me. “Have you found a new orchid?” I should have thought to read his eyes, study his face.
“Close your eyes.”
Although I detected a hint of nervousness in his voice, I did what he asked.
Tiny, hairy legs dribbled over my flesh a moment later. I knew the eerie tickling too well and flung the spider to the ground. “Are you crazy?” I shrieked, skipping from one foot to another, in case the thing didn’t have the sense to run away. Finally spent, I leaned my back against a tree, panting, hoping the tarantula had vacated into the underbrush. “How could you have—”
I stopped in mid-sentence. My eyes rolled back until they closed. “There are three of them . . . three pairs of orange, glowing eyes . . . They have a plan. They’re on a mission. Three seekers will be here.” I opened my eyes and stared into space. “Two of them by the burning cabin, the third one . . .” I swung my head slowly from side to side. “I can’t see him. He will be here, though.”
Watching us, I think. I didn’t get a chance to voice that before William had my palm in his hand, rubbing where the insect had touched my skin.
“I’m sorry I did that.” He smoothed my hair behind my ears and smiled sheepishly. “I wasn’t sure if it would work, using your fear to foresee their next move.”
I trembled, looking at nooks and holes where the spider could be hiding. My head whipped up, a retort on my lips, but then I relaxed. “I’m not sure I can concentrate on the fear. Everything is telling me to block it.”
“Just remember it’s something you can do—if you can control your fear.”
I nodded. If this was a way to foresee what the seekers were up to, I was willing to try.
William figured I couldn’t have my visions unless I felt one of two extremes—tranquil and calm or fearful and pumped with the adrenaline surge of perceived danger. But no matter how much I tried to feel fear, knowing William was by my side minimized it a hundredfold, negating my ability. Our only hope was to expect the orange glow in the seekers’ eyes to scare me—or for a spider to appear out of nowhere in my palm. I preferred the orange eyes. Helen had always compared me to and elephant afraid of a mouse.
On the third to last evening before the seekers’ anticipated arrival, we sat on the porch, drinking virgin Bloody Marys. A light breeze flickered the candles in the two chandeliers.
“Let’s wait in the basement until they’re gone,” I said. My voice broke. I didn’t want to leave. Surely we could rebuild our haven.
“You know we can’t do that. We have to follow them to find the entrance to the underworld,” William reminded me again, as patiently as the first ten times.
The frost around my spine refused to melt. “What if we get rid of our vampire side? They’ll stop seeking us and hunting us. They won’t be able to trace us! Then we could stay here. Just like Helen said. She was right; we should have listened to her.” My hands shook.
William knelt in front of me. “Sarah, calm down—you’ll go into shock. Helen didn’t know they’d use our family against us. If we don’t find them first, they will find us. We have to strike first. Do you want to find them as a weak human or as a strong half-breed?”
“You’re making this too difficult to dispute.” I crossed my arms.
He unfolded them and took my hands in his. “We can always go back to the research, once our family is safe and the curse is lifted.” William’s brows arched persuasively, and he leaned in closer. “And I’ll always be with you. You must know that.”
Burning heat radiated from his body, settling on mine. Being around him was beginning to tear my insides. I couldn’t act on my desires and had to control my lust. My hunger drained my energy.
“I know,” I whispered, then drew a quick breath as a sharp pain pinched the middle of my chest.
“What’s the matter?”
“It’s a promise you can’t keep.” Sadness overwhelmed me.
His brows drew down. “I don’t understand.”
“I can’t explain it.” I pressed my fist to my chest and looked down at the floor. “It would just be too good to be true, to always be together.”
“I promise I will never leave you,” he said solemnly, tipping my chin up with his finger.
Never say never.
“My heart would not beat the same way without you,” he cooed.
William sat by my side and leaned toward me. My senses awoke, screaming for more, but I knew I couldn’t. It would only lead to pain.
“All better?” He looked into my eyes, knowing what the rhythm of my heart was saying.
“Yes, I’m sorry. I just—”
“P
anicked. It’s okay. You’re still part human. It’s one of the many reasons why I love you.”
I gasped, then held my breath.
William’s words flowed into me like the air I needed in my lungs, spreading through my veins to fuel oxygen into my blood. How could I fight that? The way he spoke would make the Wicked Witch of the West melt.
“I love you too.”
William embraced me until the zap pushed us apart.
A screech jerked our heads up. A large bird circled overhead.
“I didn’t know falcons inhabited the Amazon,” I pinched my brows.
“They don’t.” William laughed.
My gaze found his. “What are you not telling me?”
He grinned. “Do you recognize that falcon?”
I studied the bird for several moments. “Mira and Xander’s falcon?”
“I think so.”
The falcon weaved between the tree crowns. It’s shadow froated on the ground just in front.
“What would it be doing here?”
“Your friends are checking up on us. They shouldn’t have worried; I sent letters.” William’s forehead creased.
“They’re looking for me?” I perked up. Xander’s morning jogging routine didn’t seem too annoying anymore, nor Mira’s constant calls. I wished my friends were here to help us.
“I think so.”
“Will they be upset we left without saying anything.”
“I’m sure they will. Not with you, but me. I wasn’t supposed to kidnap you.” He arranged the memorabilia back into the chest.
“You didn’t. You saved me,” I argued.
“Try explaining that to shapeshifters. I think it’s time to visit the emerald lake.” He stood up, sniffing the air as if he were trying to find a specific scent.
“Now?” I asked. “It’s almost night time.”
“Exactly. It’s the best time to swim in the lake.” William smiled mysteriously, and I felt my pulse speed up and my stomach tingle. He nodded toward my drink. “Finish up. I’ll get the towels.”
“I don’t have a bathing suit,” I said as he got up to leave.
He laughed. “You won’t need one.”
Minutes later, fronds and leaves brushed against my arms and legs as we walked along a well-worn path through the jungle. By the time we reached the pond, the only illumination came from the light bugs dancing in front of the night sky. The underbrush had been cut back at the end of the path, and a bench carved out of a fallen tree stood to one side in the cleared area. A swath of large plants blocked the passage to the pond.
