Authors: Nicole Williams
John tapped his foot impatiently, and the tone in his voice matched. “They’re waiting.”
I took my first step down, the cool air intensifying as I entered the darkness, and then another. The door slammed shut and John was behind me, one step higher.
“Can you see alright?” he asked.
The darkness would have been Mortally blinding, but I could see everything around us with my Immortal eyes. From the dark stone stairs winding down as if into the depths of the world, to his hand that laid uninvited on the side of my arm. I could hear faint whispers of what were most likely spoken in normal voices below us, but the most frightening thing around me was what I sensed: a heavy cloud of evil combined with a fog of destiny. I shuddered with more force than necessary, hoping to shake his hand free of my arm.
It worked.
“We haven’t got all day . . . and William and Patrick are waiting for you,” John said, when my feet wouldn’t move from the second step.
That was all I needed reminded of. William (forget the Patrick part) was waiting for me. The sooner I got this whole ordeal over with, the sooner we’d be together; putting dozens of miles between us and this place. I took the next step of many more to come, each one putting me deeper into this dark world that seemed to call me with an air of expectancy.
One hundred-and-seventy-seven steps later, I set my foot down on the stone floor of our destination. My mouth gaped as I took a good look around the cavernous room we’d entered, and it was just that—a cave. The walls were rough, and in the streams of candlelight, resembled crooked fingers tempting one towards them. The uneven ceiling must have reached nearly one hundred feet in places. This place was dark, dank, and vile . . . it looked, smelled, and felt all these things. I was aware of the trembling my body was trying to release, but my mind kept these signs of distress trapped safely within me; not daring to show my dread.
I was aware of the long, rectangular table set before us, behind which sat seven chairs containing six men, but I couldn’t focus on this image, because I was drawn to what was behind them.
In the center of the room, where the cragged ceiling was at its highest point, laid a waist-high, solid stone platform which gleamed in its onyx splendor. It was set upon a pillar of stairs leading up from all four directions.
There was one bright ray of light in this entire mass of a room, and it was the bright beam that shown down upon the platform. I had a strong feeling then that I’d seen this all before . . . I’d seen
myself
in this room before. I couldn’t take my eyes from the table looming like the sword of an executioner in front of me. It was calling to me with siren-like persuasion, willing it be that our fates would one day intertwine.
When the next tremor of terror tore though me, it made a very physical appearance when I trembled like a lone leaf in the dead of winter.
“Gentlemen,” John’s voice rocketed through the room. I blinked, and this small mercy allowed me the escape I needed to remove my hypnotic stare from the platform. “May I introduce, Miss Bryn Dawson.”
My eyes came to rest on the six men in front of me. John’s Alliance’s Council, minus the one who was standing before them, introducing me.
“Bryn, may I introduce—”
These men before me well-suited the room we were in. Their dark eyes were filled with supremacy, and their faces were blank; actually, more stone cold as opposed to blank. A blank face would have been friendlier than the faces that stared back at me now.
“Julius, Lourdes, Ezra, Draco, Simon, and Lucius.” Each head nodded at me when John said their names. Such old, antiquated name; names I’d heard studying ancient histories and civilizations.
“The floor is yours, Gentlemen.” John bowed, and then swept around to the right side of the long table, seating himself in the last open chair beside Lucius.
My mouth ran dry, and the pungent smell of sulfur and must dizzied me.
“You can relax, Miss Dawson,” Draco’s voice dripped with as much authority as John’s. Given his seat at the center of the table, I assumed he was the Chancellor. “I assure you, we mean you no harm.” The flicker in his eyes did little to reassure me of this, but his voice was as pleasant as the sound of my car’s engine. He looked like the kind of man that could have played the lead in a Victorian-era movie, unmistakable good looks and an aura of refinement. “We wish to ask you several questions to help us get to know you a little better.”
I nodded my head and resisted the temptation to bite my lower lip. Though it had always been a welcome comfort in times of stress, I was determined I would not let these men perceive an ounce of the dread that sweltered in my body.
A small-framed, middle-aged looking man with bright red hair, and lips so thin they were virtually non-existent, spoke next; Julius. “How are you taking to the life of Immortality so far, Miss Dawson?”
There were so many possible responses to this: it’s great, or, it’s totally freaking me out, or, thanks for leaving everyone to believe I drowned, or, I’ve been reunited with the one I will spend the rest of forever with.
I settled for, “The transformation’s gone well so far. I’m learning new things about this life everyday.” The cragged walls threw my voice at varying angles around the room, making it sound stronger than it was.
“How do you like Townsend Manor?” Julius inquired, his uneven, trilling voice reminding me of the sound my bike would make when I used to put playing cards in the spokes.
Again, a myriad of responses were possible for this, but in holding to what I knew of John, and that these men reminded me of him . . . I kept my answers as concise and impersonal as I could. “I like it.”
Julius let the echo of my answer quiet before he addressed me again. “Have you found it difficult to cut off all ties to your Mortal life—to be dead to your family and friends?”
The answer to this question should have saddened me, but it didn’t. I’d rediscovered the last good thing remaining in my Mortal life, when I’d passed over into Immortality. “No, there’s little to miss.”
Draco opened up a thick manila folder set before him and thumbed through its contents. “We’ve seen that from your file . . .”
I could guess what the contents were within the folder he was gazing over as if looking for some recipe in a cookbook, not going through the events and sorrows of one’s life.
“Bryn Michelle Dawson, age nineteen,” Draco began, reading off the top sheet in the folder that was thicker than my Calculus textbook. “Born and raised in Santa Cruz, only child, valedictorian of your high school, accepted to several Ivy Leagues, enrolled in Stanford until transferring to OSU this past year, conference champ in tennis and the 200 meter, no criminal record—”
It was a strange feeling having my life story read off in the few breaths it took to read the solitary paragraph that held the nineteen years of my life.
“It appears you had a string of medical misfortunes,” Draco said, pulling me from my morose memories of my Mortality. He pulled several sheets out and read from them. “You’ve been in and out of hospitals since you were barely a toddler. Age four—admitted for second-degree burns on chest and stomach.” Draco looked up at me, expecting a response.
I played through my reply in my mind before I answered, willing it to sound even and unemotional. “That’s right. I burnt myself with a boiling pot of water when I was making dinner.”
“You were making dinner when you were
four
?” Draco’s dubious tone was familiar—it was the same tone the nurses had used with me when I was admitted that night for my burns.
Like every other night of my childhood, Dad was working late, Mom was away on a business trip, my nanny Lucy was chatting on the phone with her boyfriend . . . and it was dinner time. Thankfully, the scars had healed, Mom gave her two week notice and became a stay-at-home-mom, and I stuck to microwave dinners after that.
“That’s right,” I answered, trying to sound as matter-of-fact as I had sixteen years ago in the hospital.
“Three years later”—Draco flipped to the next page—“admitted for smoke inhalation. More run-in’s making dinner?” He looked up at me, and I heard several muffled chuckles.
“Not, exactly,” I replied, having to work to make sure my eyes didn’t narrow. “Our neighbor’s house was on fire and her cat was still inside.” I shrugged. I’d saved Mrs. Maddox’s cat from being burned alive and only suffered a couple days in the hospital and a few scratches on my face—a small price to pay by my calculations, even though the cat died three weeks later of apparent “old age”.
“Cracked pelvis at the age of eleven.” Before Draco’s eyes had a chance to look up to me for my response, I broke into it, familiar with the pattern.
“My little cousin ran into the street at the same time a car came around the corner. They didn’t see him—it was dark—so I pushed him out of the way, and the car hit me instead.” Again, the outcomes of my best intentions never turned out as planned. Ethan suffered a concussion and had to get twenty-two stitches when his head slammed into the curb after I’d pushed him out of the way. In comparison, I’d practically gotten off easy—a run-in with a minivan and one cracked hip.
Draco’s expression changed, as if he was surprised by the stories behind the medical records. To someone who didn’t know the less than ideal outcomes from these events, I might have sounded like some do-gooder . . . but I wasn’t that. No matter what I’d done in my Mortal life, it felt like I never belonged. The world never seemed to want or welcome me. I was an alien in a foreign land. I hoped with all my Immortal strength this vex would not have crossed over into Immortality with me.
“And most recently, a hospitalization for a near-fatal bullet wound.” Draco was no longer reading off the white pages of my dark history, but looking hard into my eyes. “Although we’re aware of the events leading up to this, as well as the outcome.”
Despite being Immortal, my scars somehow managed to throb with pain.
“Your Mortal life was not good to you, was it?”
I was near tears, but I couldn’t let them fall. I couldn’t let these men be a part of my pain. “Not, exactly,” I whispered, breaking Draco’s stare.
Ezra burst in next; huge in stature, complemented by hands that looked like they could crush through steel. “After all these bleeding-heart stories of trying to save Mortals . . . or their pets,”—Ezra smiled at John; his teeth looking as if they would give steel a crunching as well—“are you sure she’s an Inheritor? She’s got the makings of a Guardian written all over her Mortal file.” He finished, tapping my folder with his first.
John, who’d remained silent throughout Draco’s inquisition, turned to me. “Why don’t we ask her? What are you Bryn?”
I answered immediately, the lie easy to speak when I knew the reason I told it—to keep
him
safe, “An Inheritor, of course.” The strength in my voice had returned since we were no longer discussing the painful pieces of my past.
“How do you know?” John pressed, licking his lips and leaning forward in his seat.
“Because it was an Inheritor that freed me from the Mortal life I never belonged in. I belong
here
,” I said with conviction, because it was true. I belonged wherever the one who’d saved me was, and if he departed to the molten core of the earth, I’d follow him there too.
“Very good, most introspective,” Draco complimented, before turning to John and exchanging a look that made me uncomfortable. If John was the would-be buyer in purchasing me, Draco was the seller. I definitely felt like I was standing on the auction block.
“Mr. Winters is your professor, isn’t that right?” Simon, similar is his appearance to John; tall, handsome, copper-brown hair, and while the color of his eyes was the same as John’s, they did not register the emotion that made me cringe whenever John’s fell upon me.
“That’s correct,” I replied, regulating my heartbeat so the increase couldn’t be detected when I talked about him.
Lucius broke in. “John tells us that Professor Winters and you spent some time together while you were still a Mortal and before he Immortalized you—”
“Immortalized her on his own,” Simon muttered under his breathe, sounding both furious and jealous.
Lucius continued, “Do you know why he would go to such extreme measures to save you?”
This was one of the questions I was dreading. Painful as it was, I could sit and respond to the pitiful pieces of my former life all day, but I didn’t want to talk about him. I didn’t trust that my physical or mental constraints could keep him protected. I took in a long breath of the unnecessary air, determined I would say or show nothing that would compromise him.
“He’s selfless,” I answered simply, having to work hard to keep my two word response unemotional.
“More like
stupid
,” Ezra sneered under his breath.
“Isn’t selflessness part of the Immortal way?” I shot back, my rebuff intended for Ezra, but it was Draco that responded.
“There’s a fine lie between selflessness and self-preservation, Bryn. Professor Winter’s crossed that line.” Then Draco’s somber expression flattened, and a smile curled up one side of his mouth. “But there’s no need to cry over spilled Mortality . . . Professor Winter’s gift is quite exceptional and will come in handy again, I’m sure.”
“I think we’ve ascertained the selflessness of Professor Winters,” John said, sounding bored. “I’d like to know how you’d explain his obvious intensity towards you. Whenever I come around you two, I can feel the anger rolling from him,” John finished, revealing that William’s strong emotions had not only been felt by me.