The Kind

Chapter Eleven

She had begged him not to teleport them again, to stay where they were on the beach. He told her it was too dangerous, that they could be followed at any moment. He told her to close her eyes and carried them to another beach, miles away. When she opened them again, only one thing had changed: the dawn had become dusk – the endless night continued.
She pushed away from his body, not enough to break the embrace, just enough to look up at his face. He was there: wounded, hurt, but there. Touch was the only certainty – leaving it meant the possibility of being left behind all over again.
“It won’t happen again,” he breathed, responding to her unspoken fear. “We’re together now, and we’re going to stay that way, I promise.”
The words just made her fists close tighter on his shirt, as if somehow she could hold him in place with just her hands, keep him from vanishing. He flinched as her fingers closed on his arm.
“You’re hurt!” she screamed and pulled away the sleeve to look closer. Her grabbed her hand and stopped her.
“It’s fine,” he said. “It’s ok. It’s not deep.”
Sarah looked again, and though it was still bleeding, it didn’t look too serious. A piece of tattered sleeved served as a makeshift bandage. When she finished tying it she tried to find his eyes.
“Is it over? Is she…”
“No. She’s still alive.”
Pain mixed with an unexpected relief at the thought that the man she loved hadn’t killed to protect her.
“So what do we do now?” It was this question that terrified her more than any other. More than anything she wanted to return to the life she had known before. It seemed truly simple by comparison.
“We leave,” he said, plainly. “We go somewhere they will never find us…”
“You know we can’t!” In her heart, Sarah was a fighter, and unwanted though it was that instinct was coming to bare. “No matter where we go, they will find us! We have to stop it now!”
Silas stared at her, unable to speak. Finally he closed his eyes. “You can’t fight her. I… I can’t lose you.”
Sarah took his head in her hands and gently coxed him to look at her. “Then let me help you. If we fight together, you won’t lose me.”

They walked the new beach in silence. In his heart, Silas wanted to share her belief that they were strong enough together to fight and win, but he didn’t. He thought about the fight, about how much Viralynn’s powers had grown since he’d known her. She was more dangerous than ever, that much was clear. Meanwhile, Sarah said nothing, but kept one arm firmly locked around him, as though he were a boat without which she would sink and be lost. In her mind, she replayed the strange events that had seen her whisked away.
“Why would she save me? I thought she was ordered to kill me?”
Pain stole across his face, pain that had nothing to do with the cut on his arm or the bruises he wore. The sound of the waves seemed to grow in the tense silence.
“What happened between you two?”
Silas searched for the words, for anything that would tell him what to say next. When was enough? When did he stop destroying everything she had come to believe? How much more could she accept?
“We were, together,” he said finally. “That much you know. What you don’t know is the Kind do not marry. It’s a religious binding, and we are forbidden to believe in God.”
He looked up at the sky, at the pale darkness in the setting light. He tried to remember what it felt like to be free, for the brief time he had lived as a normal human. A cluster of flat rocks to their right presented themselves and he wearily lowed himself onto one.
“There is a lot you have to understand. The Kind are not immortal, or all-powerful. One-on-one they are extremely dangerous, but they have limits. One of their most severe limits that Kind children are rare. It is the reason why they are so afraid of is being discovered, and the reason she went after you first: no witnesses.” Sarah shuddered, and Silas put his hand over hers.
“She’s scared of me?” 
“Terrified,” he replied. “If the world learns what they are, that they exist, it would be the end of them forever.”
“No, that’s not possible… I mean, all the armies in the world couldn’t…”
“They… we… could never fight an army on our own. Even united there are too few of us.”
“So what does that have to do with you and Viralynn?”
“She was my… partner. We were assigned to one another.”
“Assigned for what? Work, missions?”
“Whatever was needed. Information gathering, money collection, but also… breeding.”
Sarah’s eyes widened until it seemed as though the colour in them would be lost. Then she turned to face a spot behind the rocks and vomited.

Sarah sat on the beach and watched the sun rising. She had not slept all night, either night, she thought absently. Silas was somewhere along the shore. She had made him swear not to teleport away, but hours later she still didn’t feel like talking to him. She wasn’t sure if she ever would again. At first, she had let excitement rule her decisions, rushing at the chance to explore a fantastic new world with him at her side. But the dream was shattered now, and that new world was dark and horrible. Somehow she had become the willing accomplice to the theft of her own life. She didn’t know what to feel, so she stared at the sun and tried very hard to feel nothing at all.