"Chloe?" I had answered the phone seeing that it was my mom calling.
"Hi, mom, are you okay?" I could feel the fear radiating from her voice through the phone.
"Chloe, normally I would say yes, but there is a man here who wants to talk to you and kind of has me tied to a chair." A tiny laugh shuttered through the phone. My blood ran cold.
"Mom, where are you? Are you hurt? Do whatever they ask you to do! Don't worry about me! You are going to be fine! I promise!" The phone was taken from her and I could here her shouts to me in the background. I hoped Alek hadn't heard me. I walked to the window and saw him about ten rooftops away keeping watch, listening to his iPod.
"Chloe King, Uniter of the Mai. I would love to meet you, and I'm sincerely sorry that it has to be on these terms. I have your mother with me, and we'd absolutely be overjoyed if you'd meet us. There is no reason she needs to be harmed if you come willingly and alone." I grimaced.
"Where?" I tried to say it in my perkiest voice so that, Alek, if he came up on my roof would not be able to hear the fear and hardness of my voice. He gave me an address and hung up.
I climbed up through my window onto the roof. I smiled at Alek now sitting there, and sat down next to him but all I could think of was my mom a few miles away and what could be happening to her. Alek smiled back and for once I was so glad that he wasn't an empath.
"Hey, Chloe." He smiled.
"Hi, Alek, I was actually wondering if you could go on a cocoa run. I'm not ready to sleep yet but I don't want any caffeine. I can give you money if you'll do that for me?" I batted my eyelashes and put on my most innocent smile, while biting my lip.
He looked surprised for a moment and then winked. "Um, sure, but go inside and lock your window and turn off your lights. I'll only be a few minutes." And he was gone. I smiled in triumph before sobering up again. I turned off all of the lights, grabbed a few weapons and hid them all over my body strategically, closed my window, and started leaping off across rooftops. When I reached the address I jumped to the street and quickly realized it was Brian's home.
Oh no! What if they've got Brian and his dad! I ran forward and snuck around back. I jumped to a second story balcony and peeked through the window. It was Brian's room and it was dark. I opened the French doors and walked in silently. Suddenly the light flipped on and I blinked twice and saw Brian standing there with a smirk.
"Just couldn't stay away, Chloe?" He teased with me. "You know, I have a front door, and my dad doesn't care when girls come and go." I smirked at him.
"Brian, is there someone here? I mean, bad people, and a woman. A woman named Meredith?" He smiled and stepped forward.
"Yes, Chloe, there are."
"What? Brian you've got to get out of here! They'll kill you!" He sighed dramatically and closed the distance between us.
"Chloe, you would kill me too. Now tell me," and his hand came up from his pocket. "does this smell like chloroform to you?" I gasped as the rag covered my face and I fell limp into Brian's arms as my conscious mind fell into black.
Sometime later I woke up bound, blind, and gagged. I nodded my limp head up and down to make sure that I could still move. Someone ripped off the blindfold and gag and I found myself looking at my mom across from me. She smiled reassuringly and then grimaced as someone grabbed me by the top of my head.
"Hello, darling." A man I had never met before looked down at me. I spit at him. He slapped me. Brian walked into the room.
"Hey, dad." He smiled and sat in a cushy looking leather chair and stared at me. "Chloe." I sneered at him.
"Chloe, darling," Brian's dad spoke. "I'm going to tell you a story. It's about a Mai girl from the Ukraine. You see when she was very young she was separated from her real parents during the beginning of the country. She was put in an orphanage and then adopted out. Her new parents took her home to San Francisco and raised her as a human. Her real parents were both Mai, as is required to create a Mai. Little did she know that her real mother ran away from her father to run the Pride in San Francisco in order to find her lost daughter and reunite with her. Then they found out that she was the Uniter and decided that some secrets are best kept as secrets. Well, her real father felt betrayed and so he as well moved to San Francisco and betrayed the Mai to become the Leader of the Order. He fell for a human girl and the Order gave him the antidote for the kiss of the Mai. He was so happy. But then they married and had a child, a boy. And she became more and more sick. She finally began to feel better after a while and things went back to normal. One day he found out his wife had been cheating. He was angry. Angrier than he had ever been in his entire life! So he kissed her long and hard and left her antidoteless. No one ever discovered what it was that had killed her." He paused and looked at Brian, who had tears in his eyes. "Their little boy was human and one day he fell for a Mai girl, in fact, he fell for the Uniter. His father explained to him everything about the Mai and what could happen and what that race had done to his mother. And now, that Uniter will die eight more times because of what she is." He pulled a gun from his back and shot me through the stomach. I cried out. My mom passed out crying.
"You're my real father? And," I grunted in pain. "Valentina, she's…my mother?" My father shook his head evilly as I bled out everywhere.
"No, Valentina took over after my…your mother. After I killed your mother of course." I tensed against the pain and reached for the pocket on the inside of the back of my jeans where I had placed a knife. I cut the ropes behind me, and in a flash I threw the medium sized knife straight into the heart of my father.
Brian stood angrily as I leaned over in pain to unbind my legs. "You're race will not take both of my parents without a price." I felt the cocked gun against my head and froze.
In the next instant my mom woke from her faint and yelled "Chloe!" Brian looked at her and I found my chance. I kicked straight at Brian and his finger pulled the trigger. The bullet grazed my head and my neck and back and I felt fragments of bone break off. There was blood everywhere. Before I could pass out, I grabbed the gun from Brian and shot him in his side, his knee, and his shoulder, enough to decapitate him. I threw one of my knives across the floor to my mom so she could cut herself free. Brian lay writhing on the floor and I could feel too much blood pounding out of me. I dropped to my knees clenching my stomach with one hand and my head and neck with the other. Everything was in slow motion through my eyes. I dropped the gun and a bloody hand grabbed it. I looked up to see the barrel of the gun at my forehead and the evil face of my father staring at me, before I saw a heel clad foot kick it up, snatch it out of the air and shoot my father through the head. When I looked up it was my mom, my real mom, not my biological mom, but the one who'd raised me nearly my entire life. I dropped dead to the ground but looked up.
"Mom, call Alek. I love you." And I was gone.
The next thing I could feel was pressure on my stomach and my head, neck, and back. I was running, or rather being carried while someone else ran. I flinched at a bump and the person looked down as they ran across a rooftop. Alek.
I saw a light above me and it looked warm and healthy and inviting and I wanted it. I closed my eyes to get closer…
"NO, CHLOE! You stay with me!" I moaned in protest. I just wanted to be somewhere that didn't hurt so bad, and wasn't so cold. He jumped to the ground and then we were in a building and climbing stairs fast. I could hear Alek's labored breathing.
I closed my eyes again to see that light. Wow, it was beautiful and glowing and…
"CHLOE!" I flinched in pain as he shook me awake. I heard splintering wood, like a door giving way. I was set on a hard surface, like a table. I heard Jasmine and Valentina come in with medical supplies. Alec and Jasmine cried openly as Valentina worked over me. Alek began helping her. When I could feel strength in my limbs, I swatted away their hands.
"Just let me die. It's easier and I'll come back to life." I sighed and closed my eyes, but they kept working. There was the light again, I reached out to touch it. It sucked me in. I screamed in pure agony. I felt like I was touching the sun. I could feel my bones remolding and regenerating and the bullet in my body was being torched into nothing. I couldn't stand the fire in my body, the skin searing back together. They were right the second time dying is so much more painful then the first. And then my mind ripped open. I felt memories all the way from the Ukraine pouring into my head. It was all so painful. Everything hurt and I screamed in agony for what felt like days. Eventually the pain dulled to a throb that pulled only a moan from my lips.
I woke up.
Valentina, my mother, Jasmine, and Alec were all standing over me. I smiled, but no one else did. I tried to sit up and then moaned because the bruises were still there throbbing painfully. I lay back down carefully and hissed in pain because even though the outside of my body was fixed the inside tissue was still healing everywhere. My head was roaring in pain and the first thing I said was, "Ibuprofen?"
My mom smiled and grabbed a bottle from the counter and a glass of water. I drank the entire thing.
I let Alek carry me to the couch, and then he walked back toward his room. Jasmine and Valentina talked to my mom about what all she saw, and when she couldn't fill in the blanks from when she was passed out, I told them. The leader of the Order was dead, Brian was dead, and I had died.
Surprisingly, I didn't get chewed out. Maybe because they had more information. Or because they knew that it was my mother that I had gone to save, and they couldn't reprimand me for that.
Later, after I had rested and eaten a bit, I got up and headed to Alek's room. He was sitting out on his balcony letting his feet hang over. It was several hundred feet to the ground, but he didn't seem to care. He sat there shirtless staring at the city. I walked up quietly behind him and grabbed his shoulders. He jumped in surprise.
I giggled. "If I was an assassin, you'd be dead right now." I whispered into his ear and he shivered. "If you're cold maybe you should put a shirt on."
He almost smirked and retorted, but it didn't reach his eyes. "Chloe, why would you do that to me?" I knew he wasn't talking about what I'd just done from the depressed look in his eyes.
I sighed. "It was my mom. It's what I do for those I care about. If you were in the same position I would've done the same, lost a life and all." He spun off of the balcony and pushed me into the wall of the building.
"Chloe, I almost died with you. When I realized you'd tricked me and I had no way of knowing where you were. The only reason I did find out was because when you were dying you asked your mom to call me. When you screamed in agony for all of the time you were dying my heart was ripped out, broken, and shredded until it was just this mushy pile of nothing! You broke me, Chloe. You know how? Because when I first pushed you up against that wall in school, once I'd realized you were Mai, I was in love with you already. Had been for a long time, but I didn't know that I could be! And my job is to protect you, and I can't even do that. I can't protect you. Do you know how much it hurts for me to admit that to you? That as important as you are to me and to our race, I can't protect you from yourself?" There were tears in his eyes. "I love you, Chloe King. Now and always. But, I need to be able to know you're okay. Because I don't know if I'll live through what happened tonight again."
I was about to say that I didn't know if I would either to lighten the mood, but I couldn't. "I love you, too, Alek Petrov, always have, always will." I smiled and pressed my lips into his. He pushed me back into the wall, but the kiss itself was not passionate or teenage. It was loving, beautiful, and old as time.