Chapter Forty-Seven

Alexander drove only a mile and a half before parking outside a small airport with only one runway. He lifted her from the car to carry her in his arms again. He left the keys dangling in the ignition and the doors unlocked.

He opened a spiked wrought-iron gate with a keycard, and then carried her inside, toward the long hangar building.

“I think I’d rather walk now,” she said.

“As you like.” Alexander set her down.

“Where are you really taking me?”

“I have a place down in Mexico,” he said. “Near the beach. Good spot to lay low for a while, let your trail get cold. Let them run out of steam.”

“For how long?”

“Weeks. Months. It’s the only safe choice.” He opened a small door at the end of the hangar with the keycard.

“I can’t do that. My dad…”

“He’s going to be fine. I told you.”

“But I have to let him know I’m okay. And Seth. Well, maybe not Seth, but at least my dad.”

“You can send him a postcard,” Alexander said. “Tell him you’re in Chicago, or Seattle. I can have somebody mail it for you. But that’s it. You’ve got Homeland Security all over you right now.”

“Okay…” Jenny started walking again. He waited to walk alongside her.

“It’ll be nice,” he said. “You like the beach, right?”

“There’s too many people.”

“Not at my place. There’s nobody we don’t invite.”

He led her inside the hangar, toward one of several small aircraft. “This is us.”

Jenny stared at it. “What is that?”

“A Cessna Corvalis. A little banged up, but it’ll get us there.”

“I didn’t mean…we’re taking a plane? To Mexico?” She took her hand back from him. “Who’s going to fly it?”

He smirked and opened the plane’s right-hand door. “Come on. I’ll give you a boost.” He held out his hand.

“You’re kidding,” she said.

“What? These things are easy,” he said. “You should have seen my first plane. Didn’t even have an enclosed cockpit. Pilot’s chair was just a splintery board.”

“How old are you?”

“In this lifetime, or adding them all up?”

“Do you remember other lives?” Jenny asked. “Besides Greece?”

“I remember them all.” He pointed inside the plane. “We have to go. You’re the one in a rush, not me. Nobody’s looking for me, not on this side of the border.”

“Okay.” Jenny looked at him carefully. It made sense that the Tommy guy could give a whole crowd a panic, and clearly Alexander’s power lay in another direction. He had come to save her. He didn’t seemed concerned about Seth at all—but Jenny wasn’t too concerned, either. He seemed to be doing pretty well for himself.

She knew from her dreams that Alexander had been good to her in the past, and that he understood her. It was thrilling to discover another person she could touch, but it also meant she had no real power over him. If he was taking her into a trap, it wouldn’t be easy to escape him. Especially when all her major bones felt like broken glass.

“We have a good doctor there,” Alexander said. “He’ll take care of your injuries.”

“I usually heal up pretty good,” Jenny said. “Never needed a doctor.”

“You took a pretty bad beating.”

“When will you bring me back home?” she asked.

“When it’s safe.”

“Who decides when it’s safe?”

“You and me.” He smiled. “Jenny, you can trust me. We’ve known each other a long time, and you know that.” He touched her cheek again. She did like how that felt, but it was completely different from Seth. Seth’s touch soothed and calmed her. Alexander’s made her feel electrified and powerful.

“Okay.” She took his hand from her cheek and grasped it tight. “Help me up.”

He boosted her up into the cockpit and closed the door.

While the hangar door lifted in front of her, Jenny studied the interior of the plane. It was snug in here, almost like a car. Her palms sweated and her guts knotted up. She had never been in an airplane before, and the idea scared her now.

Alexander climbed into the seat to her left and closed the door.

“I think I saw some OxyContin in here.” Alexander opened a console between the seats and handed her a brown pill bottle.

“What are these?” Jenny asked.

“Painkillers.”

“Oh, awesome.” Jenny unscrewed the cap and tapped one of the red pills into her palm. She swallowed it, hesitated a moment, then took a second one. “Why do you have these?”

“I don’t know.” He started up the plane and eased it out the hangar door. “I share this plane with a few different friends. Somebody must have left it.”

Jenny leaned back in her seat and watched out the window as the plane crawled to the runway. The night was already too unreal, too scary—her dad, then Seth, then the riot…and now flying away with someone from her dreams.

“What’s it like?” Jenny asked.

“Mexico?”

“Flying.”

“It’s great. You’ll like it.” He took her hand for a moment, and she felt his power flow into her, as if he were intentionally pushing it. She grew much more confident, like she could do anything. And get away with it, too.

“Fuck it,” she said. “Let’s fly away to Mexico.”

“That’s my girl.” Alexander talked briefly with the control tower over his headset.

He steered it onto the runway, then held the brakes while firing up the engines. The craft rumbled around her, and Jenny clenched the armrests tight.

Then the plane surged forward along the runway, rapidly picking up speed, and Jenny felt pushed back into her seat. She was trembling, and her breaths came short and fast.

The plane jostled her up and down as it shot along the runway, and her teeth chattered together. Then the wheels left the ground and the ride became smooth, though it felt dangerously steep to her. Jenny’s heart kicked as she watched the ground drop away below. There was nothing holding them up now. It was like magic.

She watched out the window as the lights of Charleston dropped away on one side. She could see a lot of flickering blue lights there, and a column of National Guard unpacking from their trucks, but they were soon too small and distant to discern.

“Can we really just go to Mexico?” Jenny asked. “Don’t we have to show our passports or something?”

“That is the law,” Alexander said. “But there are plenty of ways around it, usually involving cash. Or a new black Denali, like the one I just left somebody as a gift.”

“Flying isn’t so bad.” Jenny gazed out over the moonlit ocean. “I think I liked the lift-off part, too.”

“It’s a perfect night for flying,” he said. “The Gulf’s calm, the moon’s out…”

She looked at him. “What else do you remember about the past?”

“What do you want to know?”

“Do you remember me?”

“I remember you more than anything. Hundreds of lifetimes together. We’re always drawn back to each other. Our powers do that.” He touched her arm through a huge gash the mob had torn in her sleeve, and she felt the dark sizzle of electricity between them. “We make each other stronger.”

“But Seth is my opposite,” Jenny said. She was feeling a little confused. Maybe the pain drugs were already kicking in. “Right? That’s how we always thought of it.”

“He is. And opposites create a powerful charge between them. But our connection is greater. Our powers are complementary.”

“What does that mean?”

“You enhance me. And I enhance you. We can only become the greatest, most godlike versions of ourselves when we’re together. And I sensed you had been born, somewhere, but I couldn’t find you until you flared up bright as the sun a few weeks ago. Then I knew where you were, and I came to find you.”

“To increase your power?”

“I have loved you across many lives.” He pulled his hand back, and she already missed his electrifying touch. “But we only just met, this time around. And you don’t have my curse of remembering.”

“You think it’s a curse?”

“Every lifetime has its share of suffering.” Alexander looked out the windshield at the galaxies of stars. “Forgetting is a gift.”

Jenny wasn’t sure what to say. She tried not to think of ancient Athens and the diseased bodies heaped everywhere, the smoldering funeral pyres outside the temples. The smell of misery and death. After a while, she asked, “What about me and Seth?”

“You’ve spent a few lifetimes together, just recently, but your oldest and deepest relationship is with me.” He laughed. “Well, that’s getting a little weird for the first hour of conversation. You asked, though.”

“I did ask.” Jenny bit her lip. “You sent me to destroy Athens.”

“It was a war. A long time ago.”

“And to kill Pericles.”

Alexander laughed and brushed his fingers along the back of her head, through her hair, and she felt that dark sizzle of energy again. Again, she felt disappointed when he drew his hand back.

“My strategy was foolish,” Alexander said. “Empire is always systemic, Jenny, but we pin it on individual men, all the blame and revulsion and glory. I made that mistake, too. His death only brought us Cleon and many more years of war.”

“But if that was Seth, then the Jenny pox wouldn’t have hurt him.”

“The Jenny pox?” He grinned, lighting up his dark, magnetic eyes. “You are so cute this lifetime.”

“But I’m right. And history says he died of the plague.”

“Or, just possibly, somebody poisoned him and made it look like plague. Pretty believable, when everyone else is dying of it, especially if you get the body to the pyre fast enough. Somebody who wanted to clear the road for another politician. Someone ruthless and clever.”

“Ashleigh?” Jenny asked. “Ashleigh killed Seth to make way for Cleon?”

“That’s where I’m putting my bet. Sounds like her, doesn’t it?”

“It does.”

“Of course, it’s all ancient history now,” Alexander said. “But the more you use your gift, the more you’ll remember.”

“It’s not a gift,” Jenny whispered. “And I don’t want to use it.”

It was colder inside the aircraft, now that they were thousands of feet in the air. Jenny folded her arms around herself. It was strange and scary how he’d stepped out from her dreams and into the world like this. Part of her felt safe and comfortable with him, even crazily attracted to him, but she didn’t know if she could trust that part. He seemed dangerous, with all his knowledge of the past.

And even if he’d been good to her twenty-five centuries ago, she didn’t know anything about what kind of person he’d become since then.

“How did you know to come protect me tonight?” she asked.

“I came to Fallen Oak to find you, but I then saw the fear-giver in town, and spied on him.” Alexander paused a moment, as if thinking something over. “He’s in league with my opposite, Esmeralda.”

“What’s the opposite of making zombies?”

He laughed. “She can only listen to the dead. I command them.”

“Why aren’t you interested in her? If she’s your opposite?”

“For one thing, she always hates me,” Alexander said. “She’s a part of their faction.”

“What faction?”

“The love-charmer, the fear-giver,” Alexander said. “Your enemies and mine. I came here for you only, Jenny. I have no interest in her.”

“Is anybody else on our side?” Jenny asked. “And what are the sides, anyway? Why do we have to fight?”

“We’ve always fought,” Alexander said. “That’s why we need to be together now, while you’re in danger. Your power and mine will be at their peak, if we need them.”

“I don’t ever want to use mine again,” Jenny said. “I can’t do any good for anyone. I’m just a monster.”

“You’re my beautiful monster.” Alexander gave her a smile. His eyes reflected the stars and the black night sky. “And I love you for what you are.”

Jenny looked deep into the night, into the vast darkness of the unknown.

 

 

THE END