by I D Johnson
“We can definitely make that happen,” Aaron nodded. “We’ll start with your GED, of course.”
Elliott nodded, glad to see he had his boss’s support. “Okay. Sounds good. I’ll, uh, head out to OKC then—if now’s a good time to go?”
“Now’s the perfect time to go.”
Elliott turned to leave, but before he’d taken a few steps he turned back. “I just wanted to say… thanks for believing in me, man. I don’t have a lot of friends—don’t care to have a lot of ’em. But you, you’re different. You see right through my bullshit but don’t seem to mind it either. Thanks for taking a chance on me.”
Aaron smiled and shrugged. “You’re not so bad. You definitely keep us entertained. I mean, I’m not saying I’m ready to move in with you or anything, but I think I’ll let you stick around for a while.”
Elliott laughed and patted Aaron on the back before turning to head out the door. Being not so bad was kind of good, and he’d take that over the other names he’d been called any day of the week.
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, 1986
Elliott stood on the sidewalk outside of the shitty little falling down house he’d grown up in and marveled that it was still standing. This was a part of Oklahoma City most people didn’t come to unless they had to, and he didn’t see a lot of people on the streets in the middle of the day. He looked around and then slowly approached the house.
It didn’t look like anyone lived here. As a matter of fact, he’d be shocked to know anyone had lived here since his mom had moved out, which he’d discovered through some conversations with Guardians who operated out of the area, had been in the late ‘70s, though no one knew exactly for sure when. She’d continued her string of male visitors and eventually married some man who beat the shit out of her and put her in the hospital for several months. When that was over, apparently, she’d gone back to her old ways until this Mark Butcher guy showed up a few years back and took her to Atoka to live with him on his farm. He hoped she’d found some peace out there before she finally took too many prescription pain pills and passed away in her sleep.
The front post was still missing its top half, and as a result the whole left side of the porch was hanging down such that Elliott had to duck to keep from hitting his head on it. He knocked on the door but wasn’t surprised that no one answered. Getting through the locked door was no big deal, and in a few seconds, he found himself standing forty years in the past.
Everything looked basically the same. The same abysmal floral couch sat in the same place on the horrible orange carpet. There were ceiling tiles littered all over the place, and even more trash and garbage than he remembered everywhere his eye fell, as if squatters had been using the place, but other than that, he could’ve expected to hear his mom in the bedroom or see little Jimmy come flying around the corner from the kitchen.
The last thought brought a tear to his eye, and he tried to push it aside, but that’s why he’d come. It wasn’t for her, not really. Sure, he wondered what his life might’ve been like with a mother who loved her children more than she hated herself, but more than that, he wanted to come back here and stand in the place where his baby brother had been alive, where they’d fought together against the rest of the world.
Silently, he moved to the back bedroom, the one he’d shared with his brother. It was even more of a mess than the front of the house. The two mattresses were covered in all kinds of stains he didn’t want to know about and more liquor bottles covered the floor than his mother would’ve managed to amass in a month. But something near the foot of the bed caught his eye, and he moved forward to pick it up. There, on the ground, next to his bed, was a Tonka truck with only three wheels. The tears began to stream down his face now, as he cried, not for his mother or his brother or the father he never met, but for the little boy who’d done everything he could to save everyone else and had failed miserably, losing himself in the process.
After a few minutes, Elliott wiped his tears on the back of his hand and tossed the truck onto the bed. Just like this place, it had been his once, but not anymore. It was his time to let go of the past. He might never repair the relationships he’d damaged with Peggy, Nancy, or his children, but as he walked away, he knew he and little Elliott Sanderson were good.
Elliott walked out the front door, ducked under the collapsing porch, and never looked back.
When he returned to headquarters a few days later, a small package was waiting for him. Aaron handed it over and left him alone in his office for a few minutes to discover what was inside.
The envelope had his name on it but no address, and Elliott wondered how in the world it had been delivered, but then, he had learned by now not to question the strange and mysterious ways in which LIGHTS operated. Ripping the envelope open, he extracted a short note written on a scrap of paper, and another object fell into his hand. He glanced down at his palm to see a small golden ring with a pink flower on top, the ring his mother used to wear. The note said, “Your ma wanted you to have this. Said it was her ma’s. Take care, Mark Butcher.”
That was the man she’d moved to Atoka with, he realized. Why she’d want the ring sent to him, he had no idea, but he refused to let any tears slide down his cheeks as he looked down at the piece of jewelry in his hand. He tossed the note and envelope into the trashcan and thought about doing the same with the ring. But since it had belonged to his grandmother as well, a woman he couldn’t remember ever meeting, he decided he may as well hold on to it and dropped it into his pocket until he could find someplace to store it and forget it even existed, much as he hoped to do with the memories of the woman who’d worn it the majority of her life.
Chapter 15
Tulsa, Oklahoma, 1996
It wasn’t often Elliott’s work brought him back home to Tulsa, but when it did, just being there made him want to spend as much of his free time in a bar as possible, for old time’s sake. Of course, the lounge in the respectable hotel where they were staying was nothing like the digs he’d spent his seedier years hanging out in, and the sound of chatter and pop music was a far cry from the clink of pool balls and country tunes he’d been accustom to.
The rest of the team was upstairs, and he couldn’t blame them. It’d been a difficult hunt. Aaron had only brought him, Hannah, and Christian since they were technically only there to consult, but they’d gotten roped into the chase, which had been just that, and after running about ten miles through the streets of downtown Tulsa before Aaron finally caught the bloodsucker and ended him, everyone was tired.
Elliott spent about an hour running interference after that. There was a lot to go back and clean up, and he still wasn’t sure he’d caught everyone. Now that the Internet was a popular place to post pictures and stories, Christian was even busier than before, monitoring activity and taking down posts from people who were on to them. Every time a story leaked that Elliott “should’ve” caught with his interference, the tech guy was sure to let him know. He might be immortal, but he wasn’t a god, and at the end of the day, with all the cameras and other surveillance equipment out there in the world these days, he was going to miss something from time to time.
He had questioned why Christian was even there, but ever since he invented this tiny piece of equipment called the Intelligence Assistance Communicator a couple of years ago, the tech guy seemed to go everywhere with Aaron, adjusting the computer chips and making sure they all worked properly. He was also responsible for installing all of them. It had been one of the most uncomfortable experiences of Elliott’s life, sitting in that chair, letting Christian cut a small incision in his eyeball and drop a computer chip inside of his eye. But once it was over, the results had been astounding, and he almost would’ve thought Christian was some sort of a genius if he didn’t know better.
Now, they could all talk to each other through their brains. They could pull up each other’s visuals, record footage and share it, look up information, basically anything a computer could do--he had it all
right there in his eyeball. Sometimes it was annoying, like when someone forgot to turn it off before going to the bathroom, but it definitely made coordinating hunts a lot more efficient. Since Vampires had telepathy, they’d always been a step ahead of them when it came to communicating. Now, they were even-steven—maybe a little ahead. And that made Christian worth having around—almost.
All thoughts of the annoying Guardian flew right out of Elliott’s mind, along with every other thought he might’ve had, when he looked up and saw her. His heart began to pound, his stomach tightened, and something told him, from that moment on, his life would never be the same.
Long strawberry blonde hair cascaded down her back, and her eyes were green like the leaves in the spring. She had a smattering of freckles across her nose and a body that announced she was a young college girl. Dressed in tight black faux leather pants and a silver shirt with black trim, with a pair of Doc Martins, she was the most gorgeous woman he’d ever seen in his whole life. And she was staring at him, too.
Elliott set his glass down and closed the gap between them, not caring that some other asshole was chatting her up. “Hi,” he said locking eyes with her.
“Uh, hi,” she stammered, clearly taken by surprise. “How’s it going?”
“Great. Now. How are you?” He knew the grin on his face was sappy, but he didn’t care. He felt the connection with this girl instantaneously, and he knew more than anything in the world he needed to know her.
“I’m fine,” she said. Turning to the other guy who had been talking to her, she said, “I’ll talk to you later,” and turned her attention to the burly man with the dark curly hair who’d just demanded her attention. “Are you here alone?” she asked.
“Yeah, I’m just in town on business. You?”
“Well, my friend is here somewhere. She was talking to a guy.” She looked around. “I think they went somewhere together. She’ll be back. I think.”
“Why don’t I buy you a drink while we wait?”
Her eyes widened slightly, like she wasn’t sure whether or not it was a good idea, but then her face relaxed. “Okay, yeah. Sure.”
Elliott led her to an empty table where they’d have a little more privacy, signaling for the waitress as he went. She ordered a Sour Apple Pucker, which he did his best not to crinkle his nose at, and he ordered another whiskey.
“So, what’s your name?” he asked as they waited for their drinks. A 311 song came on, and once again he tried not to cringe. What was with the music these days?
“Oh, I love this song,” she said, looking up like it was coming out of the sky. “My name is Amanda. What’s yours?”
“Elliott,” he replied, ignoring her comment about the song. “You from around here?”
“I go to school at the University of Tulsa. My friend Sarah and I come here sometimes on the weekends. She likes one of the bellhops, and a lot of times she’ll wait in here for his shift to end. Then, they’ll sneak into one of the empty rooms and do it before we head back to campus. I guess that’s where they are now.” Her cheeks turned a little pink when she mentioned the sexual activity, but when her drink arrived, she hid it behind her first sip.
“And you just wait out here?”
“Yeah. Usually I can get some guy to buy me a drink or two.” She took another sip. “I mean… not that….”
“No, it’s fine. I’ll be some guy if it means I get to talk to you.”
She blushed again. “So what do you do?”
“I work for a security company,” he replied quickly. It was his standard cover up story.
“Oh, that’s cool. So you’re here on business?” He nodded. “Where do you live?”
“Kansas City.”
“That’s kinda far away.”
He shrugged. “It depends on how fast you drive.”
She giggled, and it was the cutest thing he’d ever heard in his whole life. She finished her drink and he ordered another one, not even caring that the idea that she was drinking Jolly Rancher juice made his stomach slightly queasy. “What are you studying?” he asked.
“Actually, I’m pre-med,” she replied.
“Get out of town! That’s amazing. I have a really good friend who’s a doctor. That shit’s hard. Good for you.”
She beamed, clearly proud of her chosen profession. “Thank you,” she said. “It’s a lot of hard work, but it’s totally worth it to me. I’ll finish up my undergraduate next year, and then the real work begins.”
“I am very impressed, Miss Amanda,” he said with a large smile he was completely unwilling to attribute to the booze. “You know, you have a habit of turning a little pink when someone gives you a compliment.”
“I guess that depends on who it is giving the compliment,” she said, still a few shades closer to red than her normal skin tone. “I mean… when it’s a handsome stranger….”
Elliott liked the sound of that, and he hadn’t even done a single thing to manipulate her thinking.
They continued to chat for an hour or so before Amanda reached across the table and took his hand. The next thing he knew, she was sitting next to him in the booth, and he couldn’t keep his lips off of hers. Things were moving fast, but that was okay with him. Like a moth to a candle’s flame, his heart had homed in on her, and for once in his life, nothing else seemed to matter.
“You know, I have a room upstairs,” he whispered quietly into her ear. “We don’t even have to look for an empty one.”
Her melodic giggle rang out one more time as she stroked his chest. “Lead the way.”
He didn’t need to be told twice.
Elliott had been with his share of women, but nothing he had ever experienced compared to being with Amanda. Not only was she beautiful, he felt a connection to her like nothing he’d ever known. Each kiss, every sensual trail of her fingers down his body, every moan and sigh, he knew they were becoming one, and he had no doubt in his mind that this was meant to be.
Sometime around 3:00 AM, she finally nodded off, and for once, Elliott was thankful he didn’t have to sleep. He held her, loving the feel of her head on his chest, the rise and fall of her breasts against his body as she inhaled and exhaled. For once in his life, he felt truly alive. He ran his hand through her hair and gently caressed the smooth skin of her back. If he could stay just like this for the rest of his life, he would be perfectly happy.
A few hours later, a beeping sound emanated from the pocket of her pants, and Elliott realized she must have had an alarm set on her cell phone. She moaned and rolled over as he slipped out of bed to shut it off. When he turned back around, wide green eyes were staring at him. She slowly smiled and tried to smooth back her hair, leaving it even messier and more beautiful than it had been before.
“Hey there,” he said, slipping back into bed beside her. “Looks like it’s time for you to get up.”
“Yeah. Sorry I fell asleep.”
“No, that’s okay.” They’d spent a few hours chatting before she dozed off, and he felt like he knew everything there was to know about her now, but that wouldn’t stop him from talking to her for the next forty or fifty years, give or take a decade.
“That alarm means I have an hour until my chemistry class.”
Elliott hadn’t even thought about it being a school night. “I guess that means you need to get back to campus then, huh?” Luckily, it wasn’t too far away.
“I do. When do you leave? Today?”
He nodded. “Yeah, but listen. I was thinking… what if I don’t go?”
“What?” Her eyes widened as she turned to stare at him. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, what if I stay here? What if I stay in Tulsa with you? And we do this. Together. Forever?”
“Elliott….” She was laughing, and he thought maybe she was under the impression he was out of his mind.
“Hear me out, Amanda. I want to be with you. I don’t really care about anything else.”
“But your job….”
“
Is just a job. I can do lots of jobs. I can do the same job here.” He didn’t think he’d have any problem finding Vampires to hunt down or Hunters to protect in Tulsa. Aaron might try to kill him for leaving the team, but that wasn’t possible, so he would handle that later.
“Elliott, I loved being with you. You are unlike anyone I’ve ever met before. But I can’t ask you to give up everything for me.”
“You’re not asking me, Amanda. I’m telling you I want to.” He looked into her eyes and could see that she was feeling the same way he was. “Look, I don’t just love being with you. I love you. I know it’s crazy to say that after a few hours, but I’ve never been surer of anything in my whole life.”
Her eyebrows arched, and she continued to stare at him, though the smile never left her lips. “Well, I think I might love you, too,” she admitted.
“Yeah?” Elliott pulled her over and kissed her, causing her to drop the sheet she had draped around her, and she didn’t seem to mind that she was going to miss her chem class as he dragged her backward onto the bed and made love to her again.
When they were finished, he propped himself up on one elbow and gazed down at her, gently rubbing his thumb against her shoulder. She was everything he’d ever wanted in another person, and the idea that he hadn’t been completely honest with her was eating him up inside. He didn’t want to start this relationship off on the wrong foot, the way he had his first marriage. Doing so had been as toxic to his relationship with Nancy as the cancer that was now eating away at his ex-wife’s lungs.
“I have to go,” Amanda said, quietly. “I’ve already missed one class.”
“No, okay. I understand.” He scooted back a little bit, and she leaned up and kissed him one last time before she slid out of the bed and started pulling on her clothes.
She was mostly dressed when he said, “Listen, Amanda, there’s something I need to tell you.”
