Chapter Four~

I couldn't seem to stand still. My legs and arms trembled and twitched as I tried to calm myself. What would she look like? I asked myself, wondering if she had changed greatly or only somewhat in the years that I was absent from her life. I wondered, too, if she would still recognize me; true in appearance I had not changed much, but my demeanor, my attitude, and the way that I saw the world had changed. So many questions and so few answers lead me to pace the room franticly. Though it had only been a few minutes since I had gotten home I continually watched the clock, looking up at it every couple of seconds. What if she had already come and gone, finding that I was not here and thinking that I didn't want to help her? What if everything was the same between us? What if everything was different?

My feet walked back and forth across my room, so much that I began to feel the floor sink beneath where I had made my path. I turned away walking to the other side of the room and standing by the door, my back to the open window. I traced my fingers along the small dark wood of the walls. It was old wood; I could feel the brittleness of it even if no one else could. I sighed; would she ever come?

Finally I felt a gust of wind slap across my back, chilling the parts of my arms that were exposed from my T-shirt and sending the small dark hairs up to their ends. I turned around fiercely, though in my head I knew what I would see when I turned around. Outside, against the darkness of the night, I saw her Golden Hawk perched on one of the branches of the chestnut just beyond my window. She sat there, staring me down with mythical golden eyes that shimmered like lit lanterns in the darkness. I couldn't help but bow my head at her grace and power. Before me stood the Golden Hawk, all but extinct to the world, and a sight that so few got to see anymore. She cried out in her form, a Hawk's roar that was just as commanding as any large predators' would be. The cry was sweet to my ears, and questioning in its tone. I answered it: "Come in."

She released her clenched claws evenly, and billowing her wings up she released herself from the branch, sending its leaves up and down as they missed her presence there. The grace of her body as it slid in through the open glass was indescribable, and I watched as she flew straight to the floor below. Still in her Hawk's form she looked up at me, I wondered if she was afraid to reveal her true self to me, and if that was why she delayed so long while still in this form. Her eyes were wild and pure as we stared at each other. I wondered what she could have been thinking when she was like this, the emotions that I would easily be able to read on her human face were undetectable to me while she was like this. Did she still see the old me, or someone new? Was she happy to see me, or had she only come because she was in trouble and needed my help?

A few seconds later she began to change. Her golden feathers began to glow in a hazed light that illuminated her like an angel, and for a few fleeting seconds she was hidden from my sight. I knew though that her limbs were starting to form again, and in her veins traveled the glowing golden liquid of her species. It took her only a moment before she truly became Danica again, and it was my turn to look her over now. Tall, slender legs as I remembered them were hidden by tight blue jeans. Against her torso was a white tank top, a tank top just tight enough to reveal the beautiful curves of her hips and just low enough to silhouette the line of cleavage from her breasts. Her face was the same, sweet but mesmerizing with cream colored skin and golden hair that still hung long down to her lower back and hid the golden feathers on her neck. I remembered long ago when I could hardly bring myself to touch those feathers and now all I longed for was to feel them again. She looked up at me with large eyes, and even though she wore tall boots I was still taller then her. "You look wonderful!" I choked, hoping that she wouldn't sense my apprehension.

She smiled. My heart almost caved into itself, and my throat closed up, and I wanted more then anything to take her in my arms. "Thank you, Zane," she hesitated, her voice light as though she found it hard as well to control her senses now that we were both in the same room again. "It is still Zane?" she questioned bitterly, her voice getting higher as though she had relaxed to my presence. "Or is it Alex?"

She was angry, and all of my hope burned away like ashes in a fire. "Danica, you have every right to be angry with me!" I pressed taking a step closer to her but only to have her take a step away in return, I wanted more then anything to take her in my arms and have every part of every moment we had been apart erased and forgotten from memory.

"Angry!?" she yelled, her voice so loud that I worried it would wake Simon and Diane from their sleep. "You left in the dead of the night Zane, not a word, or gesture of goodbye, only a cryptic letter telling me to go on with my life, but that you would always love me to spite your absence." She took a breath, I wanted to interrupt her but the sound of her voice was to precious to me even if she was screaming. "No goodbye, Zane, after everything that happened to us, and we finally had the chance for happiness and you just disappear. Did you ever really love me?"

My blood boiled. "Leaving you was the hardest thing that I've ever had to do, but it was the best for both of us in the end. You don't know how many letters I tore up that night, or how many times I turned around after leaving, eagerly wanting to go back to your side but-"

"But what?" she interrupted, the sting of her voice piercing me like a weapon. She waited for me to speak but there was nothing that I could say that would satisfy her. There was a silence between us that was driving us both mad, and I watched helplessly as a tear fell from her eye. "You have no idea what it was like without you, what its still like without you." I opened my mouth to speak but before I could she brought her finger up to my lips refusing to let me part them. It was the first time I had felt her touch in over five-hundred-years. I closed my eyes to it, breathed it as though it were the anecdote to every pain and ailment that I had ever felt. "Don't," she said, forcing my eyes to open to her words again. "Don't tell me that you have suffered as well," she paused taking her finger away from my lips. "You made the choice Zane, and because of it you have altered all of our destinies."

She turned away from me and walked past me as she made her way to the other side of the room. I was left with my back to her, and my eyes out the window where I saw Zachary standing. His form was vigilant, as he eagerly waited for her, unmoving, unspeaking, and unresponsive as I looked at him and he to me. "Why have you come?" I questioned, turning around to face her. She stood against the door, her hands folded over her chest as she held herself comfortingly.

She bit her lip, as if afraid to tell me, but the silence quickly became a worse enemy then the truth and her lips parted to speak. "Have you ever heard of Midnight?" she asked me, her voice laden with tears.

I had to think back in my memory before I remembered that Midnight was a compound of Vampires who lived and worked the slave trade of humans into their culture. "I have," I answered quickly.

"A few months ago, Zachary, some friends and I raided their compound, and successfully freed most of the slaves that they were holding captive. We went in masked, so that Jaguar and Jeshickah- the rulers there would not see our faces." She paused again, and she looked as though she was living inside the memory. I longed to give her peace from it. "But as we made our escape, we were ambushed, and in the fight I was unmasked and Jeshickah recognized me. She branded me with this..." Danica lifted up the edge of her white tank top and toward the side of her waste I saw a large indentation and gash that I recognized to be from a knife being plunged deep within her.

I couldn't stop myself; I went to her side and put my hand on the wound. Feeling the scar and torn flesh across her skin sent surges of lust through me and our eyes met suddenly as I knew she felt the same thing. Her hands rose to my shoulders and mine up to her cheeks. Her warm skin was like fire against my hands and I longed to be closer, deeper, inside her completely. Our faces were barely centimeters away from each other and I felt her hands pull my shoulders closer ever so slightly. My lips could almost feel hers on them and I leaned in, desperate for just one touch...

"We can't!" she pulled away, turning her face around and stepping beside me until she was back at the window again. I had to take a deep breath to control myself; my hands were trembling with the feel of her still on them. "Anyway," she continued as I tried to gain control by the doorway. "I was recognized, and now Jeshickah is after me, and I fear that she will not rest until I'm dead. She has sent assassins after us twice now, and both times Zachary and I barely escaped with our lives."

"Why do you need me, though?" I questioned, turning around to face her again. "Zachary seems like an able body kind of guy, and he is a Cobriana; so he must have some kind of fighting skills."

She smiled, a hopeful smile, and I felt that things had calmed down between us. We had argued, ashamed and afraid of the past but now we spoke as friends and two people who had once been companions, and not enemies. "Zachary is able bodied. He's strong like you; you and he are a lot alike; I think you will get along famously. But Zachary was not trained as you were, or any of the older generation was. He was never trained for war."

"And you're saying that I was."

"Yes," she took a step toward me. "Your duty as one of the princes of the Serpiente commanded certain duties, and learning to fight in all styles and situations is one of those duties. Zachary longs to protect me, but you are the only one who can."

"So you want me to protect you from Jeshickah and her thugs, right?"

"Yes!"

I was quiet. I sighed, and lifted my eyebrows. I hadn't fought in any combat style for years, and I didn't even know if I still could. "Danica, it's been so long since those days."

"I know," she pressed, taking another step closer to me until she was as close as she was before. "What you knew then, you know now. I have faith in you, Zane."

Faith? After all of this and everything that I had done to her, she still hade faith in me? I could see the desperation in her eyes, and I knew that I was her last hope. I knew that she did not doubt my skill, but I did. "What would you have me do?" My voice was light, as hers was in the beginning of our conversation.

"Zachary has arranged a plane ride to Europe, back to the old lands, Zane. We just have to stay there until Jeshickah loses our trail, or loses interest. Then you can leave and go back to your new life here."

What if I don't want to leave you again?

I agreed. There was hardly anything here to keep me, hardly anything when the alternative was she.

She smiled, and we embraced, her voice becoming a laugh as her long slender arms wrapped me in her warmth. I almost lost control for a moment again, but she pulled away and I watched her go to the window. She waved her arm out, and I imaged she was gesturing to Zachary who was still standing out front. "What are you doing?" I asked.

"I told him that you agreed to help me and he's going to get my things."

"How long has he been with you?" I said sometime later as we both sat on my bed. Our conversation quiet and playful; we did have a few hundred years to catch up on.

"Zachary has been with me since Irene's death," she hesitated, and I countered that the subject was hard for her to talk about and hard for me to listen to. "It happened in the invasion," was all that she said. I knew what she spoke off. The invasion of the human race into our sacred land had happened only a few short years after I left. I know that a Great War ensued, a war that forced all of the shapshifting kinds to join together, even if they themselves were at war, they had to join to combat the enemy. This allegiance did not work, and the forces of the men from the north were too great, and most of our population was killed. Those that survived left those lands forever, never to return. Our kingdoms were lost as well, mine, Danica's, everything. I swallowed hard, not wanting to hear or think anymore about it.

"Who is this?" She asked me, pulling from my bed side table a photograph taken a year ago that featured my friend Brian Tyake and myself standing in front of my car.

"Brian," I said matter-of-factly. "He's a friend."

Our conversation continued, and I watched as Danica laid her head against my pillow as we talked. Soon she became quiet and I knew that she had fallen asleep. Her exhausted eyes heavy and gently closed. Her slim body curled up slightly as she drifted further and further into what I hoped was a good dream. I wanted more then anything to crawl in beside her, wrap my arms around her waist and sleep with her next to me again. The loss of her body next to mine as I slept was a pain that still I hadn't recovered from. "You are still so beautiful!" I whispered, my voice prophetic as it wished that she could hear me and understand. I wanted it to be ok for us to be together again, though in my mind I could find no reason why we couldn't now. Something pulled at my heart though, a warning that was as spiteful and painful now as it was then: "Your presence, so near to her, will kill her one day, and on that day there will be nothing that you can do to save her, or yourself." It was Vasili's words that still put dread in my heart and kept me from the one thing that I wanted most. The one thing that I had always wanted.

I reached my hand out to her face. A long strand of golden hair had fallen there whilst she slept, and I wanted to pull it away but before I reached my hand out I stopped, Vasili's words in my head again.

Your presence, so near to her, will kill her one day!

kill her one day!

kill her!