by Gina Shafer
Karina spins so her front is facing mine, her face even with mine. Her eyes are bright, the dark rings gone. I reach my fingers up to glide across her cheek.
“You’re so beautiful,” I whisper. I get the feeling I had once, a long time ago, the one where I’m just too lucky to have this happiness in the middle of all this death and destruction. My relationship with my son is becoming more and more real with each passing day, and right now I’m staring into the most beautiful blue eyes I’ve ever seen, with flecks of gold and rust.
“Shut up.” She smiles, and then surprises me by kissing my lips, hard. I breathe her in through my nose as her tongue glides across my bottom lip. I reach around her waist to pull her closer, and she moves so that I’m almost lying on top of her.
“We have to get ready,” she says around my lips, but I can’t stop. I kiss her deeper, grinding my hips against her. She opens her legs slightly and I slip inside the groove there, pressing myself closer to her. She gasps when she feels me, and I grind my hips once more, causing her to tilt her head back and moan.
“Elijah…” She breathes my name like a prayer and I have no intention of stopping unless she asks me to. I move my hands over her breasts, letting out a groan when I feel her nipples poke through the thin pale blue sweater she has on. I’m about to lose it, she feels so good.
Karina’s hand starts to move slowly from my shoulder down to my waist, stopping just before she reaches my waistband. She swirls her fingers around the skin there, teasing me. My skin breaks out in goose bumps, and then I feel her reach inside and wrap her fingers around my length. I groan loudly and she eats it up, kissing me harder, gripping me harder. She starts to move her hand, up and down slowly, and she glides her thumb across my tip, smearing the wetness across my sensitive skin. I want inside her. Now.
“Dad! You coming?” I hear Soren yell from the bottom of the stairs, and I drop my head against Karina’s shoulder. I try to stifle a chuckle, but I’m unsuccessful when I feel Karina shaking with laughter underneath me.
“Yeah, we’ll be down in a minute,” I call back, laughter still evident on my voice.
“When we get back…” she says, as she slides out from underneath me.
“If I can make it that long.” I smile and watch her walk from the room, closing the door softly behind her. Damn it.
As soon as Karina and I file downstairs, the light mood we both had upstairs melts away like ice on a hot day.
Now, we are all piled in a large black SUV, the same type the Sicarri usually provides us. Scarlett and Willow stayed behind, and I think Willow was slightly upset at that. Truth is, none of us felt comfortable enough leaving Scarlett behind by herself, but we needed all of our men with us on this one. Willow was the only answer. As we were leaving, I could see Willow staring from the window, her wet nose pressed up against the glass. She hates missing out on a fight.
When we’re finally about a mile out from the hanger, we stop the car. We had decided on the drive that Soren would stake the place out, considering he’s the quickest of all of us. At the last minute, Lincoln decides to go with him. I feel uneasy about that, but everything happens so fast that they’re gone before I get a chance to question it.
Five minutes pass,
Ten minutes.
Twelve minutes.
Finally, I hear the static of my radio kick on, followed by Soren speaking softly into the microphone.
“It’s clear. There’s no one here yet. We’re either early or late,” he says. His words fill me with both relief and anxiety, but our team moves forward anyway.
As we approach the back of the airplane hangar, it looks deserted. It’s just as Soren and Lincoln said. There are no demons surrounding the back or the front. We park the car once we’re a block away and stealthily walk to the compound. When we finally reach the back door, a shiver of doubt runs down my back. This shouldn’t be this easy. Where are the demons? I slide my gaze to Karina, validated by the look on her face. Something about this situation isn’t right, but Soren and Lincoln are already kicking the door to the hangar in, and there’s no chance to voice my opinions. Karina steps to my side, her swords glinting in the moonlight. Xo follows from behind, along with Micha, who’s carrying a grenade in his hand, ready to pull the pin at any moment. Marcel leads the group, in front of Soren and Lincoln. His shotgun is cocked and ready to shoot.
We’re met with silence and darkness. Maybe they’re not here? I peer into the darkness as we walk in formation through the building.
The quiet of the room is interrupted by a loud clapping sound coming from the back of the room. Lights blind us all, causing us to reach up and cover our eyes before they adjust. My elbow blocks some of the brightness as I peer past the dark fabric of my jacket.
A man—no… a demon stands in the far corner of the empty building. His face is unrecognizable to me in the distance. He’s guarded by two other demons on each side of him.
It has to be Abe.
As we draw closer, I become more certain of who he is. I’ve seen him before. I’ve fought him before. I should have killed him back then, I think to myself as we come to a stop in front of him. He’s different than I remember. His brown hair is peppered with white, his long face droops heavier than the last time I saw him. I’m reminded that demons can age in the bodies they occupy if they choose.
I’m confused. He’s smiling like he’s been expecting us.
“Took you all long enough.” He laughs, his heavy brows lift over his eyes, so dark brown they seem black across the distance.
“How’d you know we would be here?” Marcel asks as he swings his head around to take in the space. There’s no place for demons to hide, unless they’ve surrounded the outside, in which case we’ve unknowingly walked into a trap. Was all of this planned before we even arrived? Did they know we were coming? I glance over my shoulder at the open door we used to enter, desperately wanting to grab everyone and get the hell out of here.
“I have my ways.” He laughs again, moving his eyes over me. “Elijah… it’s good to see you up and moving about.” My eyes screw up at his words. Was he around those twenty years? No doubt he was keeping tabs on me.
“You’ll have to clue me in as to how you finally awoke,” he says, twirling his fingers in the air like we’re old friends.
“You don’t know?” I ask, curious. All he does is smile at me, the same evil smile he’s had trained on his face since we arrived. He frowns, and I feel a surge of pleasure run through me when I realize this bothers him. I woke and he has no idea why. Maybe I can use this, use his confusion, his anger.
Karina is seething next to me and I can feel the energy rolling off her in waves. She’s having a hard time idly chatting with a demon. I don’t blame her.
“Why don’t you have more backup, Abe?” Marcel asks, turning our attention to him.
“I don’t need it, not this time,” he mutters. So he does have a plan. It’s physically painful holding myself back from tearing his throat out with my bare hands. I would love nothing more than to kill the man who caused so much destruction in my life.
“For now…” he continues, “I only wish to speak with you all.” I can’t help it; this time I’m the one smiling. I let out a tiny chuckle and Abe looks to me inquisitively.
“Do you think we will let you leave here, freely?” I ask. He’s delusional if he thinks I will let him walk out with his head still attached to his body.
“I have valuable information for you, Elijah, about Vara. I’m willing to give it at no cost if your men stand down and let us live how we wish. Let me rule with no opposition and I will spare all your lives.” He slides his eyes to Soren and then back to me. “After all, we are family,” he adds. I see Karina tense from the corner of my eye, and I glance quickly to Soren. He doesn’t look back at me, which is odd, but I ignore it and move my gaze back to Abe.
“Vara is gone. We don’t need to know anything more about her,” I spit out, angry that my wife could have ever betra
yed us over the scum in front of me.
“Are you sure about that, Elijah? Even if she sacrificed herself for you?” he asks. His eyes shine with mirth in their sockets. He has something over me; I can feel him dangling it over my head like a mouse over a snake. Fuck.
“What the hell are you talking about?” I ask, fully understanding that I’m taking his bait, but unable to stop myself.
“You weren’t asleep the whole time, Elijah,” Abe announces.
I’m floored; I have no memory of this. “Go on” I spit out. I feel Marcel step closer to me, surely to stop me from doing anything stupid.
“You want to hear this… now?” Abe chuckles and his eyes flick to Karina and then Soren. “Of course you do.”
“Just out with it Abe,” Marcel demands. Abe is toying with me. A small part of me wonders why Soren has been so quiet; he hasn’t said a word since we walked in. This must be a lot for him, meeting his mother’s father, king of the demons. His grandfather, for all intents and purposes. I wish I was closer to him, but Marcel, Lincoln, and Micha separate us.
“Vara came to me, a few years after you were taken. We were planning on killing you, after we finally gave up on getting any information out of you. You were very resistant; you would rather give your life than divulge any of the Sicarri’s secrets. A true brother, but unfortunately of no use to us. My daughter, ruled by her emotions as she is, asked me to spare your life. To put you to sleep, stop you from aging. That she would turn Soren to our side, put him inside your body, the body of a true warrior. I liked the idea enough, but my dear daughter tricked me. After the spell was completed, she refused to turn Soren, said she would rather kill herself. Now, unfortunately, once a spell is completed, it cannot be reversed. Vara knew that. We haven’t seen her since, but I supposed she went off and got herself killed so none of our own could take her body.” Abe pauses for a moment, and his body stiffens when he sees me reach for my dagger. The blade shines against his eyes in the light above us.
“Where did you get that?” I see a flash of fear across his face, quick, almost like a lightning strike as he stares directly at the blade in my hands.
“Vara left it for me,” I say, confused by his reaction.
“Dad,” Soren calls out softly from my left.
I hear it before I see it. The soft squelch of steel piercing flesh, the trickle of blood onto the cement floor. Lincoln is standing in front of Soren, a knife in his hand sticking out from the middle of my son’s chest.
Soren.
We all take a step back as we take in the situation. My head is screaming at me. Why am I not charging forward? Why aren’t we killing Lincoln? But our shock roots us to the ground beneath our feet. I catch movement from the corner of my eye, and turn to see Abe fleeing through the door behind him, gone in a flash.
What the fuck just happened?
My feet finally move, and I rush to Soren, catching his body as Lincoln removes his knife from his limp body. His mouth is full of blood, and I hear him gurgle the red-hot liquid deep in the back of his throat. This is not happening. Not my son. Lincoln escapes as the others gather around Soren’s lifeless body in my arms and I want to scream at them “Go! They’re getting away!” But my tongue won’t move, my mouth wont open. I can only stare at my son, my beautiful son. His eyes are blank, without the depths they once had. I let out a roar that rips my body in half, before falling to the ground next to my dead son. The world around me goes black and I let the darkness consume me.
This can’t be happening. I should have killed Lincoln when I had the chance.
I’ll never understand time. I’ve come to accept that fact. It is constantly changing, yet the rules stay the same. Time is this intangible and steadfast thing that rules our lives, and the complexity of it confuses even the most genius of brains. Seconds are always the same amount of numbers. It takes less time to change a light bulb than it does to stab someone in the heart. To kill a daughter, a mother, a father, a grandmother… a son.
It only takes a split second to take away someone’s reason for living.
So, how long do you wait before the devastation of losing your child cascades into an acceptable amount of pain to finally become fractionally livable?
Right now, I’m stuck in this perpetual cycle of wanting to die and being unable to move for fear that the pain of it will split me in half. My skin feels cold. My body feels cold. My heart feels cold.
My mind feels blank. It feels blank, but it’s not. There are constant words swimming through my head like schools of fish migrating through the ocean that is my thoughts. They swim in tragically beautiful swirls of formations that I cannot understand. Words. Words. Words. Words.
I can’t make sense of them. Sometimes they are so dark that it feels like I’m standing in the middle of hell with the devil staring me in the face. The worst part is that I don’t even bat at eye at the bastard. I just spit in his face and dare him to do his worst. After all, what could be worse than the hell I’m already in?
Soren is dead.
I’ve let that sentence flow through me so many times that I feel detached from it now. Soren is dead. The words aren’t that hard. They ebb and flow like any other. When the thought is abstract, it doesn’t hurt so much. Only when I start to think about all the things that go along with that sentence do I feel like pieces of me are falling off and landing into the abyss of agony that comes so close to engulfing me.
My beautiful son, my little boy, the only family I had, and the man I had only just begun to know, he is dead. And the unfairness, the injustice… the shame of that rocks me to my core.
I’m not sure what it is inside me that makes me… me. My soul, my heart, my brain, whatever little piece that completes the puzzle of who I am, whatever it is… it feels broken. Burned. Tattered. Torn beyond all repair. And all I have left is one question.
Why?
Why him, why me, why us?
It’s hurts more than anything that I’ll never have the answer.
Days run into each other, and every day Karina tries to get me to eat, to speak… to live. She comes with tray after tray of food and slams it down in front of me, telling me to eat or I’ll waste away. I don’t care. Food doesn’t appeal to me. Nothing appeals to me. Karina cares for me like a mother would for her sick child, and I’m completely aware of how selfish that makes me, but I can’t stop it.
We’ve been back at the house for weeks, I think. I’m not really sure. Time means less than nothing to me anymore. Since we’ve been back I’ve blamed everyone, including myself, for Soren’s death. I’ve lashed out, a lot. But not a single person leaves, not a single person lashes back. I’m in a house full of people who refuse to give me what I want, what I need. They refuse to kill me. Willow is the only one who understands. She lies by my side, unmoving, and sometimes I think she’s hoping someone would come along and kill her too.
“Elijah! I’m coming up with your breakfast!” I hear Karina yell from downstairs, and that effectively snaps me back into reality. I’m standing near the edge of my bed, staring at the dust motes coming in through the light of the window. I’m not even sure how long I’ve been standing here, but my legs feel weak, so that leads me to believe that it’s been longer than it should be.
“You’re going to have to eat something soon,” Karina says after she softly kicks open my door and walks in carrying another tray of food. Pancakes. Who the fuck wants pancakes after their child dies?
“I’m not hungry.” I grunt. I fall back down on the mattress, wrapping the sheets tightly around me.
“Elijah…” she begins as she steps closer to the bed.
“I’m not hungry, Karina,” I interrupt. My voice is harsh and it stops her in her tracks.
“Okay, fine, you’re not hungry, but you’re going to listen to what I have to say,” she huffs out and crosses the rest of the distance to sit down on the bottom corner of the bed.
“Elijah…” she begins again, but I turn over, trying to ignore her. I�
�m being rude… I know this. I’m also being immature. To be honest, I have no idea how to act, how to live... how to exist.
“Elijah, look at me.” The tremble in her voice makes me turn to look her in the eyes.
“I’m sorry,” she begins. When she notices I don’t turn away, she keeps going, flustered to get the words out before I deny her again. I feel awful for it, but I stay silent and let her go on.
“I’m so sorry for what happened. I know that doesn’t even begin to make it okay. I know it will never be okay.” I close my eyes and listen to her voice.
“I’m also sorry that none of us acted quick enough that day. We let you down. We should have all gone after Abe, after… Lincoln.” She stutters over their names and I wonder if she feels the same tremor that rolls through my body at the mention of the two demons.
“We were all just so shocked, we never expected…” She stops for a moment, and I just barely hear her near silent sobs. She’s crying. She hasn’t cried once since we returned through the house, but she is now. Damn it.
“I’m just sorry, Elijah. But you have to know how hard this has been for all of us…” I almost open my eyes again to see her face, but I’m afraid of what I’ll see… what I’ll feel if I do. “I’ll be back later with lunch,” she says, the emotion in her voice now under control. I flinch when I hear the door shut, though she closed it lightly.
I finally open my eyes again and roll over in bed, still thinking of Karina’s words when I hear a sound. I look up, past my blankets and through the window for the crow cawing outside. Its call is loud and pierces my ears, causing my face to turn up slightly. It seems so close, but I don’t know where it’s coming from. It sounds like its right overhead. I drag myself from the softness of my bed to get a better look, coming to stand in front of the window. And then I see it.
It makes eye contact with me, tilting its head so I can see the shine of its dark eye even through the glass. It’s perched on the edge of the fence, cawing. Watching. It’s right near the old lemon tree that Soren used to play near. The same place we buried him when we made it back to the house. I can still see the outline of fresh dirt. I denied the burning ceremony for him, my emotions too exposed to watch the body of my only child burn. As soon as I move my gaze back to the bird, I refuse to look away from it, though it seems like it’s waiting for me to. So here I am, caught in a stare-down with a fucking bird. It caws once more and I bite back a growl that damn near demands to rip from my throat. It’s mocking me, that damn bird. When its wings flap again, my vision blurs and I see Soren standing under that lemon tree.
