by Jan Coffey
Lauren did not look at them. She didn’t trust Tyler Somers enough to take her eyes off him for a moment.
“You’re a hero to all of us. You’re the reason we’ve been blessed with a second chance at immortality. You’re the cause of us coming back to the surface from underground. We will finally be able to join the ones who went ahead of us with our prophet Michael.”
“You can’t lay your guilt on me. You will not murder more people and say it was because of me,” Lauren said sharply. “I had nothing to do with you people back then. And I’ll have nothing to do with you now.”
“But you have everything to do with us,” Ty argued. “Like a prophet carrying the Ark of the Covenant…like the Baptizer, pointing the way to Him…like Serapis Bey, holding open the door to Paradise…you have accomplished the divine task God gave you.”
“That’s a lie!”
“It is truth, sister,” the cult leader said forcefully. “You delivered up to us our new messiah. After twenty-two years, the universe is once again aligned. The path is open. And you alone have given us the Chosen One to lead us to our destiny.”
Lauren was trembling violently, trying to comprehend what the man was saying. After all these years, she still could not forgive herself for not doing more—for not acting sooner. All the children that had been in that camp! All those young people…dead! She edged away and shook her head.
“No! You’re wrong. I simply took away a child. She’s not part of this.”
“What a child she was,” he said solemnly. “What a woman she has become.”
“She will not go along with any of your madness.”
“Come with us, Lauren!” Ty walked toward her. “You’re old and at the end of your days. Come and rest in the arms of your daughter. Come and find the bliss of immortality.”
“No!” She had to warn Kelly. She had to get to her before these people did.
Shoving away his outstretched hands, Lauren tried to run through the people by the door.
“As you wish,” she heard him say.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw the arm of one of the ministers flash upward as she shoved at those blocking her way. She never felt any pain when the blow struck her skull, but was surprised when the world exploded in a brilliant flash of reds and yellows…before everything around her went black.
Chapter 8
The first rays of dawn had barely lightened the eastern sky when Ian heard the creak of the hardwood floor right outside his bedroom door. He was awake immediately, his mind clear.
He’d left the window open, and a cool breeze made a low whistle as it found its way under his closed door. His gaze fixed on the door handle as he slid his hand under the pillow. His fingers slipped with practiced familiarity around the handle of his pistol.
Last night, he hadn’t bothered to try the lock again. He hadn’t tried to jam the wooden chair up against the door, either.
There was another creak. Time seemed to stand still. His senses were keenly alert. The smell of lilac and pine traveled on the breeze.
A dozen thoughts went through his mind, but the look exchanged between Dave and Marisa Meadows was the one that stuck. The floorboard outside squeaked again, and he moved his pistol from beneath the pillow, sliding it under the blanket so that it was pointed at the door. The door handle turned, and he undid the safety catch.
The door began to open. Ian’s finger tensed on the trigger. He held his breath as the breeze came through stronger, causing the curtains in the room to flap gently.
The door swung open and a small face appeared around the edge.
The relief came like a bucket of cold water. He let out the breath he’d been holding. His entire body relaxed, and he flipped on the safety as he pushed the gun back under the pillow.
“Cookie Monster?” Jade whispered from the doorway.
This was the nicest name anyone had called him in many years. But he had no shirt on and was sleeping in his boxers. If he didn’t say anything, maybe she’d think he was asleep and go back to Kelly. That would be the best thing for all of them.
“Ian!” she whispered in a more insistent tone.
“Yes, Jade,” he responded, giving up and lifting his head from the pillow.
“Are you asleep?” she whispered in her quieter voice again.
He looked at the small clock next to the bed. “Why would I be sleeping at five twenty-five on a Saturday morning?”
“You’re awake,” she decided for him, immediately pushing open the door and coming in.
He noticed the pile of books tucked under her arm, and he almost panicked when, without being asked, she started climbing onto the bed.
“Wait…wait. I’m getting up.” He looked around the bed for his pants.
“But I want to cuddle and read in bed,” she said in a very cute little whine.
“No, that wouldn’t be…” He found and grabbed a pair of shorts he’d put out and dragged them under the sheet. Hurriedly, he pulled them on. “We’ll read in the chair in the hallway.”
“But I’m cold,” she argued, rubbing one bare foot on the other.
“We’ll grab a blanket.” Jumping out of bed, he straightened the sheets and quilt over the pillow. There was no way he was going to move his pistol while a little girl with eagle eyes was watching.
“You have really hairy legs,” Jade noted in a grave tone, pointing them out to him.
“Thanks.” He grabbed a T-shirt from the top drawer and pulled it on.
“You can use my mom’s razor to shave your legs, if you want,” she offered, walking around the room and watching everything he did with obvious fascination. “But you should probably ask first. I can’t touch those things now. But she said when I get older, I can. Of course, first I have to get lots of hair on my legs, like you.”
Ian wondered if all three-and-a-half-year-olds were this talkative at five in the morning.
“In the hall,” he ordered, turning her around and starting her gently toward the door when she became curious about his shaving bag and the other belongings he’d left on the dresser.
“I’m cold,” she whispered again before leaving the room.
Stopping, he closed his window and then pulled the door to his bedroom shut behind them. A window was partially open in the sitting area at the top of the stairs. He closed that one, too.
“Better?”
She shook her head from side to side and dropped her books on the table. Ian watched her run through the open door across the hall. Enough morning light was coming in from the skylights and the windows that he had a good view of the entire apartment. The open space, the white walls, the oversized pictures decorating those walls. At the far end, he spotted a pair of twin beds. He guessed the body with the sheet twisted around it had to be Kelly’s. Jade grabbed something that looked like a small blanket from the other bed and tiptoed back.
“She’s really sleepy because I was up a lot last night,” Jade explained to him in a very mature tone when she was back in the hall.
“Some people consider now nighttime, too.”
“I didn’t wake her up. I woke you up this time,” she said in a logical tone. She pointed to the rocking chair. “Sit.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He sat down.
“I’m not a ma’am, silly.” She started climbing on the chair, too.
“What’re you doing?” he asked, expecting her to sit in the chair next to his.
“Getting comfortable.” She climbed on his lap, nestled against his chest, and tried to spread the blanket on herself. “Help me.”
Like an obedient servant, he tucked the well-worn yellow blanket around her.
“Book, please.” She stretched a regal hand toward the table.
Ian took the top one. “Will this one do?”
“Perfect,” she said with a comfortable sigh, leaning into him and waiting for him to start.
She was perfect, Ian thought. This activity was perfect. The moments he and Kelly had spent alone together las
t night—even their awkward kiss—was perfect. Well, nearly perfect.
Ian had never known Kelly’s husband. He had no idea what kind of husband he’d been to Kelly or what kind of father he might had been to Jade if he were still alive. But he still felt sorry for the man to have missed this.
His cheek brushed against Jade’s silky curls. When she looked up at him, Ian opened the book and started reading.
~~~~
The nightmare was the same one she’d had so many times before. The place was one she’d visited a hundred times in her dreams. As always, Kelly couldn’t shake herself out of it.
She was back at the Mission. She was just a girl. Father Mike was waiting for her. She had to go to him. She didn’t want to go, but she had to go.
The sun outside was bright white and hot. She felt the push and she was inside. The narrow hallway leading to his quarters was dark and cool. Not nice cool, but stale and dank. She felt queasy, as always.
Kelly tried to remember what she’d done wrong this time. She was always in trouble. Always being punished for being bad. But she couldn’t remember what she’d done this time.
She squinted upon entering the dark room. She held her breath, hating the familiar smell. It was like a cellar. She thought she could see things crawling in the dark corners.
“Come in, my child,” he called to her in his soft, spider web voice. Every time Kelly heard it, a chill went through her, making the hair stand up on her neck.
She didn’t want to take a step forward or back. She knew the crawling things had squirmed around behind her, cutting off her escape. She didn’t want to go to the voice, either. She looked down. It was so dark, she couldn’t see her feet.
“Come closer, child.”
A match scratched and flared. The flame touched the wick, and a candle sputtered and lit.
She was not in the Father’s quarters. She saw the baptismal font. Liquid the color of blood was bubbling in it. Another candle lit. She saw a cup filled with the blood being held out to her. Kelly shook her head, but her feet were rooted to the ground. She couldn’t leave. She stared at the hand as it came closer. Long, thin fingers. White and wrinkled in the candlelight. It was Father’s hand.
“What are you frightened of, Kelly?” he asked. His voice drew her in, held her in its silky strands. “Be a good girl and join me. Join us.”
More candles flared to life around her. More and more, until the chapel was filled. The room came to life with undulating waves of tiny white flames.
Kelly looked at the lines of people standing behind the leaders. She knew the faces. The other children she shared rooms with. The people who worked at the Mission’s office. The men and women who lived in separate buildings. They were old and young and pregnant. All of them holding their candles, their eyes staring.
She looked back at the Father. The woman was standing right at his shoulder. Sister Jill Frost, so pretty. She was the woman Kelly knew was her mother.
“You’re one of us,” Jill said in her singsong voice. Her green eyes flashed brilliantly above the glow of the candle.
“Come with us, Kelly.” Father’s outstretched hand raised the cup toward her. “Take this.”
Everyone was holding a cup.
Kelly knew what was going to happen. They were all going to die. Tears rushed into her eyes. She opened her mouth to warn them—to tell them the truth. Her heart was drumming so loud. No, she realized, it was their hearts beating. The sound of it was drowning out her voice.
“Kelly…”
It took all her strength, but she pushed the hand away. Stunned, she saw it withdraw. She followed the movement with her eyes, distrusting her victory.
The Father’s hand moved slowly, deliberately, to someone sitting beside him. Kelly watched him smile as the cup pressed against the person’s lips.
She looked down at the face. It was Jade.
~~~~
Her eyes opened with a start. The skylight. The white ceilings. The pictures on the wall. Kelly blinked a couple of times to make certain she was really awake. Her pillow was damp. She still had tears on her cheeks. Her breaths were short and quick, as if she’d been running.
The old nightmare…but different now. The queasiness she always felt whenever she woke up from it was a hundred times worse today. Never before had Jade been part of the nightmare. Cold dread washed through her when she rolled over and looked at her daughter’s bed.
Jade was gone.
Reality and dream collided in the next painful second, ripping through her like a chainsaw. Kelly tore the sheets aside and was beside the bed in an instant, her eyes searching the room in panic. No lights were on in the apartment. The bedside clock showed five forty-five. Too early for her to be up. The door of her apartment was open. Jade would not go anywhere unless she’d awakened Kelly.
“Jade,” she called as she rushed toward the open door.
The two sets of eyes lifted in tandem off the pages of the book as she skidded to a stop. The two stared at her, their concern showing in their faces. Kelly backed up a step, holding onto the doorjamb to steady her suddenly rubbery knees. The rush of relief made her almost light-headed, but she fought the urge to snatch her daughter up in her arms.
“Good morning, Mommy,” Jade said brightly.
She smiled weakly at them, distrusting her voice. She also had to blink to make sure she was awake and that her eyes weren’t deceiving her. The two presented such a portrait in contrasts. Jade, a little bundle of yellow blanket, tucked against the man’s chest. The look of sheer bliss on her daughter’s face was one Kelly rarely saw. And Ian Campbell, unshaven, his hair spiked up in every direction, was holding on to Jade as if she was the most precious package in the world. She fought unsuccessfully against a tremble in her chin and the tears welling up in her eyes.
“You okay?” he asked.
Kelly nodded. “Sorry. Just woke up. I didn’t know where she was.”
“Uh oh, time for a Band-Aid,” Jade whispered to Ian before pushing away the books and the blanket and getting down from his lap. She ran past Kelly and disappeared inside the apartment.
“I don’t have much experience at this stuff,” he said, putting the books on the small table by the rocking chair. “But she showed up at my bedroom door, ready to be read to. If I hadn’t gotten out of bed and come out here quick, I think she would have climbed in there with me and thought nothing of it. Sitting on the rocking chair was the only compromise she’d settled for.”
He was blushing. Kelly understood his concern about how this might look to someone else.
“I haven’t done a background check on you yet, Mr. Campbell.” She paused and leaned against the doorway. “But for some reason, my daughter seems to trust you.”
“I think we’ve moved past trust,” he said in a lower voice. “She said she likes me.”
“Yeah…because you’re a pushover. What time did she wake you up?”
He didn’t get a chance to answer, because Jade rushed back out, carrying a large box of Band-Aids.
“Where does it hurt, Mommy?”
Kelly crouched down before her daughter and looked into her serious face and bright green eyes.
“Nothing hurts any more, my love,” she said, giving Jade a bear hug.
The child wriggled free after a moment. “Then we should put one on, so it won’t come back,” she said with authority, taking one with a flowered pattern out of the box for her.
“See? No cuts or bruises.” Kelly showed her hands and fingers.
“It won’t hurt much.” With marked single-mindedness, she opened the Band-Aid, peeled the backing strips and put it on her mother’s forehead, covering the old scar.
Kelly couldn’t help but smile as she touched Jade’s handiwork.
“See. I told you it’d feel better.” She turned to Ian. “Want one?”
“No, I’m doing great,” he said, trying not to show his amusement. He looked up at Kelly. “How many boxes of these things do you go through
every week?”
She pushed up to her feet. “I’ve lost count. I buy them in cases.”
When his gaze turned tender, Kelly realized what she’d said and how he’d taken it…and something melted in her.
“I’m hungry.” Jade’s announcement and the tug on her arm drew Kelly’s attention back to her daughter. “I’ll make toast.”
Without waiting for an answer, the little girl disappeared inside the apartment.
Ian got to his feet and stretched. He seemed to fill the little sitting area. There was something very intimate about seeing him before his shower and shave, dressed in old shorts and a T-shirt. He looked big and warm enough to tempt Kelly to want to cuddle with him herself. She looked down at his bare muscular legs and felt the tingles crawl down her belly.
“So does she get up this early every morning?”
Kelly knew he’d caught her looking at him by the amused expression on his face, and she felt her face burn. Now he was looking at her.
“A little later, usually. Six…six-thirty.” Kelly’s voice didn’t seem to be hers. She’d gone suddenly hoarse. She crossed her arms over her chest, immediately conscious of how thin the silk pajama pants and shirt were. She didn’t have to look down to know the tips of her breasts must be poking through. And her face…and hair. It was too embarrassing to even think how scary she must look.
“She had a restless night,” Kelly finally managed to finish her thoughts.
“Come and have toast,” Jade called out, coming back to the doorway and motioning to Ian.
He ran a hand over his stubbly chin. “I have to shower and shave. I’ll see you downstairs for breakfast.”
“I said toast, not breakfast,” she told him, as if he should know there’s a huge difference.
“Wilson doesn’t serve breakfast until seven. Jade and I have a kitchenette,” Kelly explained. “It’s good for a bowl of cereal and toast whenever she wants a late night or early morning snack. You’re welcome to join us…unless you want to get back to bed. I’m sorry, I never even apologized for Jade waking you up.”
