The End of Never Page 5

  The door had been left unlocked, the alarm unarmed, as if Krystal considered herself immortal. Close on Taylor’s quickened heels, Benjamin followed her to the marble foyer. A grand staircase rose above his head, suggesting that they could look upstairs. But the smell of smoke pulled the two teens straight ahead to the kitchen. The French doors to the patio stood wide open as smoke billowed into the house.

  Shrieking, Taylor stumbled clumsily toward the pool, which faced the BBQ pit. Passed out on the cement patio, Krystal lay half naked and snoring on the ground, a flimsy bathrobe covering her assets and her hand dangling in the blue water.

  “I’ll call 911,” Benjamin stammered as he retreated back into the house for a phone. A cordless handset rested by a Chinese take-out menu on the granite kitchen counter, and Benjamin grabbed it, hitting the keys in a panic.

  Around the cement patio, the perfectly manicured Bermuda lawn was ablaze in fiery, random patches. Taylor nudged her stepmother with her crutch for signs of breathing; when she ascertained the woman was still alive, Taylor turned her blonde head to the grill and realized that the dresses had been ruined.

  A ball of fury rose inside the girl’s gut. “I’ll kill you!” she screamed and threw aside her crutches. Kneeling to the ground, she pushed with all her strength against the unconscious body of her stepmother until the woman slid head first into the pool.

  “I already told you!” Benjamin was saying frantically to the dispatcher. “We’re at Fifty Sawyer Lane.” He rushed outside through the smoke. “I don’t know the zip code. It’s my friend’s house. Hurry. Please.” His eyes bulged from his head when he suddenly recognized Krystal’s body flailing underneath a ripple of waves in the sky-blue pool.

  “Taylor!” he shouted. “Help her.”

  Taylor kicked her toe against an empty vodka bottle and smiled smugly. “No, she needs to sober up.”

  Groggy and confused, Krystal grasped for Benjamin’s hand, which he had extended to her from the edge of the pool. Gasping for air, she spat and coughed furiously as he pulled her from the water.

  “You stupid witch!” Taylor screeched as her stepmother shrank behind Benjamin’s shoulder. A fire engine siren blared in the near distance. “Why did you burn my mother’s clothes?” Taylor lunged at the dripping woman and knocked her to the ground.

  “Get away from me,” Krystal cried, black mascara dripping down her cheeks. “I’ll call the cops.”

  Grabbing Taylor by the arms, Benjamin held her hands behind her back. “Stop,” he hissed in her ear.

  Three firefighters rushed through the open French doors to the patio, a massive yellow hose tight under their arms. Water rained on the grass, soaking Taylor and Benjamin to their skin before they could escape the blast.

  In seconds, the firefighters had controlled the burning lawn, but the flames of hate between the women still smoldered. A balding, brown-mustached police officer burst onto the patio from inside the smoke-filled mansion.

  Wet and trembling, Taylor noticed the smirk spread across her stepmother’s face as the police officer approached from behind. Benjamin nudged Taylor’s shoulder, but Taylor narrowed her intense blue eyes on Krystal’s silicone-filled chest.

  “Jimmy is going to be so mad,” Krystal purred. “Good thing he loves me more than you.”

  Taylor focused on viewing the puffy, pouting lips of her stepmother as they receded around her sharp, bleached teeth. A roar gurgled up from Taylor’s throat. Pushing off with her one good ankle, she flew at her stepmother. Krystal rocked back on her heels as Taylor clenched her right fist tight, as hard as a rock, and jabbed at the woman’s nose.

  Blood dripped down Krystal’s skimpy robe as tears of pain and anger welled in her eyes. “You’re going to pay for that,” she threatened as the policeman jumped between the two women.

  Coincidentally, at that moment, in an icy hotel conference room in Miami Beach, Jim Woodward thought of calling home to check in on his girls. He decided not to, reasoning that they couldn’t have gotten into much trouble. He tapped his ballpoint pen on the laminate table top. Then again, he considered, maybe he should call at the next break. Twisting restlessly in the hard, plastic chair, Jim felt a sweat break out underneath his collar.

  At Fifty Sawyer Lane, Taylor squished her long legs into the back of a black Atlanta police car as Benjamin handed a pair of crutches to the mustached police officer. “Call Alexandra!” Taylor shouted at him as the officer shut the door on her face.

  Krystal sneered at her stepdaughter from behind the glass window of the oak front door.

  “That’s what you get for messing with the Onion Queen,” she hissed.

  6

  Confessions

  A shy grin tugged at the corners of Alexandra’s puckered mouth. At first she thought she and Kraven were lucky to be alive, but then she decided that luck had nothing to do with it. We saved each other, she mused.

  The beautiful stranger at her side held his arm around her lean hips while she matched him, stride for stride, to the city park across the street from her apartment building. Her bulldog, Jack, raced ahead of the pair, down the cement pathway, his stubby legs pounding furiously to get at a squawking pigeon picking bread crumbs by a trash can.

  Stalking his territory, a brown-and-black mutt with the slim build and sharp teeth of a wild fox growled at the passing couple as they followed Jack toward a playground. The stray dog wanted them to know the trash can belonged to him and he snapped at the approach of the intruders.

  Kraven kept his eyes on the dog, but Alexandra did not see the low, snarling beast until he growled. Jack’s head snapped away from the pigeon as the bird soared into the air. With his head down, he started to charge the mutt, as if a mighty ram to the stomach would teach the dog not to mess with his lady.

  Pulling Alexandra’s hips close, Kraven shielded her behind his body. His blue eyes met the black eyes of the growling mutt. Whimpering, the frightened animal retreated swiftly from the girl and her bodyguard toward a grove of trees a hundred yards down the pathway.

  Alexandra’s heart raced. The shapeshifter locked in Callahan’s attic was wounded, possibly mortally. She breathed in and out deeply. I am safe, she thought to herself, for now. The old man cannot turn into a wolf while he is injured. That’s what Callahan promised. And even if he does heal, I’ll be more than happy to remind him that the only reason he is alive is because he’s more useful to me alive than dead. I’ve got questions—lots of questions—and it is time I got some answers.

  Alexandra tucked her long brown bangs behind her ears and whispered to Kraven. “Sit with me,” she said softly and nudged him toward a soft spot of grass beside the playground. She glanced at the metal swing set and yellow plastic slide looming over the ground. I’m not too old, she thought. A small boy with shaggy, pumpkin-colored hair giggled as he swung toward the blue sky. Sitting on a bench nearby, his mother clapped and beamed.

  What once was lost now is found. The weight of secrecy dropped Alexandra to the ground, her body reclining backward in the grass. Staring up to the cloudless sky, she felt a ticklish tingle in her toes as a wet tongue lapped her feet.

  “Stop it, Jack,” she said, sitting up as her bulldog rolled on his back in the grass beside her.

  A shadow loomed overhead, blocking out the sun. It was Kraven. “Please sit,” she pleaded to Kraven and patted the ground with her hand.

  Too young to die, the raven-haired immortal thought, kneeling to the grass. Too old to live.

  “Relax,” Alexandra said, biting her thumbnail as she blushed. Kraven copied the casual crisscrossing of Alexandra’s legs and sat beside her, their knees touching lightly. He kept his blue eyes locked on her pink, freckled cheeks.

  Jack rose from his back to sniff around the nearby trash can. “Hello, doggie-woggie,” a child’s voice sang in the air. The pumpkin-haired boy jumped out of the swing and rushed to Jack.

  “No,” his mother shouted. But the boy had already grabbed Jack by the tail. The dog whimpere
d and licked the boy’s hand.

  “Come here, Jack,” Alexandra called and waved the bulldog to her.

  “He might lick you,” she advised the toddler as he followed the dog to Alexandra’s lap.

  His panicked mother, with her hand on his shoulder, guided the boy back to the swing set. “Sorry,” she mumbled, with a confused look on her face. “We didn’t mean to disturb you,” she said, backing away from the couple in the grass.

  Alexandra frowned. “No problem,” she said softly and turned to Kraven. His adoring eyes had never left her face.

  Raising his palm to her chin, he stared into her green eyes. His touch stung, his fingertips pricking her skin like a burn from the tip of a match.

  “Who would have left that picture under my door?” she asked, brushing away his fingers from her face. “The shapeshifter is locked away, tied up and bleeding in Callahan’s attic, so what else is after me?” Alexandra held out her arms and examined the scratches from her attack. The shapeshifter had wanted to kill her, but why? What have I done? she wondered to herself. When did the universe decide to unravel around me?

  Destiny. The word echoed through her head and she stared at Kraven. His lips did not move, but she knew he had spoken to her.

  He wrapped his hands tightly around her wrists and bowed his head. The fiery touch of his palms made Alexandra gasp. Gradually the warmth dulled and spread to her chest and skull.

  Kraven spoke to her, his words melting into her flesh and soaking into her mind. He could not speak his story aloud, and only Alexandra needed to hear it:

  I am a monster, an abomination of all that is natural and right. One thousand years have passed since my mother bore me to a king. He rejoiced at my birth and built a castle for my mother near the bend of a mighty river. But my brave father had enemies jealous of his vast lands. From end to end, our forests and fields stretched a great many days’ journey.

  A coward struck my father in the back with an arrow while my father hunted. This happened when I was a small boy. So my mother ruled until I grew old enough. But as I became a man, I met a woman—a beautiful, auburn-haired maiden, the daughter of my kingdom’s mapmaker. The morning of our wedding day, a long-distant cousin, a filthy man who had been jealous of my father and his lands, swooped upon my castle, Kilhaven, with his black magic and evil sorcery.

  He brought a dragon. This was a mighty, towering beast straight from hell, meant to destroy me and my home. I defeated him at the cost of losing my bride. She tried to run, but the dragon killed her. So with sword and fury, I slew the dragon and my demon cousin in revenge. But my princess, Iselin, was already lost and my revenge did not bring her back.

  To make sure that the dragon would never return, I ate his flesh and drank from his veins. I consumed him. In doing so, I became the dragon; the blood of the dragon ran through my body. I became the evil that lived within the beast.

  For one thousand years, I have walked this earth. Good and evil have clashed for centuries within my flesh, but I hoped that one day, I would find my Iselin returned to life.

  “You are Iselin,” Kraven said out loud as he released his grip of Alexandra’s trembling wrists.

  Alexandra gasped. Tears welled in her eyes. “But I am Alexandra Peyton,” she whispered in protest. “I’m seventeen years old. How can I be anyone else?”

  Their knees touched and Kraven cupped her blushing cheek in his palm. Attracted and at the same time repelled, Alexandra stared into his face as the fiery touch of his hand spread warmth through her body. The heat felt lovely, but also sickened her.

  A warm breeze blew his raven hair from his shoulders and across his face. She brushed the strands back with her fingers. When he clenched his jaw, she noticed the cleft mark in his chin. But of all his strong features, it was the deep blue of his eyes that she could not let go of. Their piercing gaze dug into her skull. Mesmerized, she listened to his voice, low and unwavering, as he spoke to her without moving his lips.

  You are afraid, Alexandra, but you must believe me. You are Iselin. You have her beauty, her voice, the gait of her walk. You can believe that I am a monster. Then also believe that you are an angel.

  Her reply flew from her head before she could hold her words back: I believe you, Kraven.

  His hand tensed on her cheek and Alexandra realized he had heard her. The girl’s heart fluttered, and she tried again: Are you really a monster? Have you ever hurt anyone? Alexandra felt her skin burning and thought: I am on fire.

  No, you are transcending, he replied.

  Her eyes popped open. Kraven still held her chin in his palm and she gently cupped his hand inside of her own.

  “Show me who you are,” she whispered aloud and squeezed his palm. “Show me your soul.”

  A wildfire ran up her arms and into her chest. Pain seared her heart and the heat sunk into her gut. Her legs tingled; puddles of sweat broke across her skin. Diving into his skull, she braced herself to see his past.

  Suddenly, she was Kraven. Darkness surrounded her. The dripping of water echoed through the pit. She was in a cave. Rock and sallow bone crunched beneath her bare feet. A hazy light loomed in the distance. As she stumbled toward the glow, a voice called out.

  The voice came from a man at the mouth of cave. He wore an army uniform and he trembled with cold as a light dusting of snowflakes fell on his shoulders. The man stared at her, wide-eyed. In the corner of her eyes, she glimpsed a pair of red wings rising from her back. The soldier fell to his knees and raised his arms above his face. She retreated into the cave, the soldier still kneeling. Her wings melted into her back.

  Jack crawled into Alexandra’s lap and nestled his head against her thigh, drowsy from the muggy morning heat. Kraven’s palms dropped from her grip and a spasm shook her body.

  She gasped for air, her chest panting in freedom. In her lap, Jack wiggled and snored.

  On the playground, the shouts of the pumpkin-haired boy rang through the air. “Momma, look!” he said, plunging down the slide.

  “That was my uncle?” Alexandra asked Kraven, with her green eyes wide open.

  “Yes,” Kraven spoke. “He thought I was the devil, as I suppose anyone would.”

  “I do not,” Alexandra said softly. “How did you not go crazy, though, living in a cave for a thousand years?”

  A smirk spread across his handsome face. “No, I did not live there until later,” he told her. “I went there later only to hide, with the hope to die if I should find a way to kill myself. After walking the earth for a millennium, I had seen everyone and everything in the world. I was tired. I may be a liar, a scoundrel, and a cheat, but I am also a student and scholar. After a thousand years, I lost hope of ever finding any peace. What I mean by that is I lost hope of ever finding you. I tried to retreat to a cave in the heart of a dark forest at the edges of the land my father conquered when he ruled a thousand years ago. I hoped that doing so would keep me far from the burdens of civilization. I was wrong. Men like war. Men like to kill other men for what they have. Your uncle found my cave because he was soldier. He found me because of destiny.”

  Alexandra felt as if a mudslide had washed over her shoulders and into her face. If she could only spit out the gravel binding her tongue, she could ask the first of a thousand questions to this unbelievable creature sitting in front of her.

  Peeking into her mind, Kraven pulled the question from her lips before she could form the words. “Yes, I am cursed,” he said, “but not by immortality. Dragon blood made me this way, but the true curse of my life is my insatiable craving for the only thing I ever wanted as a mortal man. Until now, I was never able to claim what I wanted, even as an immortal. You will lift the curse, Alexandra. You will save me.”

  Rubbing Jack’s spotted belly, Alexandra let her eyes linger on the boy on the playground. “How can you be so sure?” she said. The question drifted to Kraven over the light breeze.

  His fingers reached for the medallion dangling from the leather cord around Alexandra’s
neck. Etched into the bronze was a creature with the tail and wings of a dragon. The creature pictured spat a plume of fire, but from the head of a man. “This medallion was meant for you,” Kraven said. “Just as I am.”

  Inside the pocket of her cut-off jean shorts, her cell phone buzzed. Alexandra ignored the ring until it stopped and rang again.

  She glanced at the call screen and then at Kraven. A blush spread across her cheeks. “Hello,” she stammered into the phone.

  At that moment, a police car was backing out the Woodward’s driveway, with Taylor fuming, cuffed in the back seat.

  Benjamin climbed into the driver’s seat of his mother’s BMW. “Alex,” he said calmly into his cell phone, “we have a problem.”

  Alexandra rolled her eyes. “What did Taylor do now?” she asked, giggling. “Drown her stepmother?”

  Silence.

  “Hello?” Alexandra asked. “Ben?”

  “Taylor’s on her way to jail,” he admitted.

  “Oh swell,” Alexandra sighed as she nudged Jack from her lap. Her legs wobbled beneath her as she stood and planted a hand on her hip. “What are we going to do?”

  Benjamin grinned. “We’ll figure something out. You want to come over to my house? I’m rolling up in the driveway now. With luck, Mom is asleep. Being pregnant has turned her into a whole different person. She likes to bake these days: apple pie, brownies, carrot cake, so there’s lots to eat. She’s turned into some kind of Suzie Homemaker all of a sudden. She even asks if I need help with my math homework.” He stopped, realizing that he was rambling because she made him nervous—a good type of excited queasiness, the kind of feeling he got in his stomach when he saw perfect, ten-foot waves breaking offshore under a pink and gold sunrise.

  Alexandra winked at Kraven. “I would,” she said hesitating, “but my Jeep . . . ”

  “I forgot,” Benjamin said before the girl could offer a polite excuse for not driving to the other side of the city. “You don’t need to come over, Alex. Can I . . . ”