One more chapter to go after this!

Uncaging Alice

Chapter 25

I could have run forever and gone so far on my feet with just my speed as a vampire, but I need to slow down, and I needed to think. I ran through the busy streets of the city and stopped inside a train station.

Standing just inside the entrance to the main lobby, a couple passed me, arguing quietly.

"I wish your mother would have said she was coming here for your birthday before we got our tickets to her place." The woman said angrily, pulling a suitcase along behind her.

"Just get a refund!" The man replied, frustrated.

"That line is ridiculously long, I'm not standing in it for a few bucks!" The woman tossed the two tickets toward the trash can next to the door, only one of the tickets making it in.

After they exited the building, I picked up the ticket that lay on the floor, only looking to see which train to get onto, not even caring about the destination. The signs above the tunnels shooting off from the lobby told me exactly where to go to find this train.

Walking through the many people that filled the lobby, I made my way to a tunnel just off to the left, passing people sitting on benches, waiting for relatives or friends to arrive. Some people even sat on the floor against the wall, mostly reading or waiting, but on the way to my tunnel I heard a child sniffling and a responding "shh, it'll be okay."

Down against the wall, a woman was sitting with a little girl on her lap, rubbing her arms and trying to get her to stop crying. "Daddy won't hurt us anymore," the woman whispered. Besides the girl, I was the only one who heard. "You'll see, we'll go live with grandma and everything will get better."

The girl continued to cry quietly and sniffle. A twinge of sadness flowed through me. Moving from where I stood about fifteen feet away from them, I crouched down and looked at the little girl. "Hey, now... why are you crying?" I said in my softest voice possible.

She looked at me, sniffling again. When she remained quiet, I thought maybe my eyes were scaring her. But then she squeaked, "I'm cold."

"Oh, no!" I frowned. I had already noticed that she only had just a t shirt on along with her jeans. "What happened to your coat?"

The girl wiped at her eyes with a tiny hand. "My daddy wouldn't let me have it when we were leaving."

"Sh." The older woman, her mother, said, looking embarrassed.

"Well, here." I stood just long enough to pull off my coat and fit it over the little girl's back, pulling it around her like a blanket. "This will keep you nice and warm until you can get your coat back." I smiled at her.

"Oh, no, we couldn't." The mother said, flustered. "You'll freeze."

"It's okay." I answered. "The cold doesn't bother me, and I would rather your daughter not catch a cold or worse." I smiled one last time at the girl, who looked awed, and continued to my train tunnel. Behind me I heard a "thank you!" and a "she was pretty, mommy."

Finally getting to the correct train, I found a seat in the nearly empty car and sat at the window. Now it all started to hit me. Nicki was gone... I had thought she was my friend for years but what friend would let me carry guild for so long over something I didn't even do? The gentle and kind Raoul I had come to know had killed her because she had hurt me.

All I could think of were the times I would pass the closed door of Raoul's book-filled study to hear him reading aloud and giving the characters in the book funny voices. I knew he always knew I was there because I would always end up laughing, and thinking about it now, maybe he did that just for me... because I rarely laughed any other time. I would always remember Raoul that way.

But now, here I was, alone again. Sitting on a train to who knows where, wondering what I'll do next. I looked around to see only about four other people in the same train car as me, and knew we had been moving for at least thirty minutes now.

I went to touch my bracelet and realized I had forgotten to put it on. Maybe that was a good thing. I no longer needed it, I knew who I was, and maybe the more I could leave behind, the better. I never want to go back, I thought. I never want to lose control over myself the way Nicki did. I didn't want to just roam for the rest of my life. I wanted to find that man... and I wanted to find that family I had seen a few times in my visions. Maybe that's where I would finally fit in.

The train screeched as it came to a stop, the passing of time escaping me, and I stood with the rest of the passengers, to see where I had ended up.