Life With The Boy Next Door - Lissie (brene brown rising strong .TXT) 📗

her.


When she eventually reopened her eyes, there was a shallow slice opening up her forehead across the middle, and someone was cleaning the dried, congealed blood off. Alice groaned and groggily searched the face floating above her own. The woman was in her early thirties, with cropped blonde hair and concerned brown eyes.
“You were shanked on the way in here. Don’t worry about it, they do it to us all, to mark us. You’ll heal up just fine. My name’s Mandy. I’ve been here for the past fourteen years” she told her, trying to smile.
Alice sat up slowly, her head pounding viciously.
“Where’s here, Mandy? And I’m Alice” she murmured.
Mandy shrugged.
“No one knows, Alice. The Lost Society bring those of us who don’t do what they want and lock us up for who knows how long. Maybe until we die. What’s your story?” she asked patiently.
Alice sighed heavily.
“I am married to a werewolf. My son is something that I don’t know what. They want me to kill him, but I can’t and now they’re going to find him and kill Aron themselves! What’s your tale?” she said quietly, sniffing and wiping away her brand new tears.
Mandy patted her back.
“When I was sixteen, I was a victim of a vampire attack. I never knew his name, but he raped me and two weeks later, I gave birth to a little boy with black eyes and a hunger for blood. I raised him on my own for one year and then left with the Lost Society team. And try not to worry too much about your Aron. They said the same thing with my boy Taylor, and they did find him, but not until he was fifteen. They tried to kill him, but by that stage, he was too strong for them. Trust me, Alice, by the time they get to Aron, he’ll be able to slaughter all of them, top to toe. No matter what he is” she answered, smiling properly for the first time.
Alice blinked up at her, past the veil of tears.
“Why do they take so long? Don’t they learn?” demanded, flicking a curl behind her ear.
Mandy grinned wryly at her.
“Nope. Apparently not. They think they know everything, but they know next to nothing. They don’t really know what the kids are capable of, even when they’re babies. I mean, when I had my baby, I couldn’t feed him properly because he sucked blood. Your baby might be even worse than that, but nobody knows for sure. He’s not a werewolf, like his father?” she checked, finishing up cleaning Alice’s cut.
Alice shook her head.
“No. He has my eyes, he’s not a werewolf” she said definitively.
Mandy raised her eyebrows.
“All right then” she muttered, turning away and sitting down.
Without saying anything else, Alice gingerly felt the number carved into her forehead. She paled further when she traced the number ‘112’. The singular digits were all linked together, to form one long sloping laceration. There were more than a hundred of them in the institution, and none of them had ever gotten out.


Back home in New Hampshire, Vale answered the doorbell, carrying Aron in his arms. Annabelle and Jared were there in front of him, the former rocking back and forth nervously on her heels. They both stared at the baby.
“Is that…?” Annabelle asked shakily.
Cale nodded.
“Yeah, this is Aron. He’s your grandson” he told them.
He shifted Aron off of his shoulder and turned him round to face them. At the sound of words being spoken, he had opened his eyes, and now he was staring, wide eyed, at his grandparents. Jared gazed back at the boy, then all of a sudden his pupils dilated and shifted. Annabelle’s soon followed suit. Quickly, Cale turned Aron back to him and placed his hand firmly against the back of his head. He gently stroked the soft black hair and smiled benignly at his parents-in-law.
“So, what brought you over here?” he asked pleasantly.
Jared blinked and shook his head, as if to rid it of some terrifying, uncomfortable memory.
“We came to see Alice. We didn’t know what to expect with the baby” he said, sounding vaguely disoriented.
Cale arched an eyebrow.
“Alice isn’t here. Were you expecting something much different to what you see before you now?” he replied, his tone slightly acidic.
Annabelle shot him a falsely bright smile and shrugged her delicate shoulders.
“I wasn’t really sure, to be honest, Cale. I knew something wasn’t right, but I didn’t know what the child would look like. He looks quite normal” she said, staring fixedly at the back of Aron’s head.
She pulled her hand out from behind her back, and in it glinted a tiny silver pistol. She carefully cocked it and pointed the muzzle at Aron’s skull.
Cale looked right into Jared’s eyes and saw the anger and fear warring behind his gaze. Very slowly, he grasped Aron and moved him back and away again, to face the adults.
Aron’s irises, grey as storm clouds, began to rotate around the dark pupils and one of his tiny hands gripped his father’s finger. Cale concentrated, scowling faintly.
“You are not going to shoot Aron. You will leave right now and you will not ever come back” he ordered, his voice blank but forceful.
Slowly and out of her own control, Annabelle lowered the little gun and turned her back on the house. Jared followed her and as soon as they were both out of his sight, Cale took his son back inside the house. He shut the door.


Epilogue

Fifteen years later, Alice again woke up, opening her eyes and meeting an equally familiar and unfamiliar gaze. That was the only unusual part of her morning. The room was still dimly lit, the high windows letting in only thin slats of dawn light.
Alice glanced over to her right and saw Mandy, now forty six, hunched up in a corner, her brown eyes wide with absolute fear. She sat up properly in her bed, then swung her legs over the edge of the mattress. Mandy was mouthing unintelligibly at her and shaking her head, but she was too preoccupied with the boy standing before her, taller than she’d thought he would be.
The boy wore black jeans, a tight black t-shirt without a jacket even though the temperature in the room was freezing, and heavy looking black combat boots. He had his father’s black hair, but it was curly like his mother’s, and his mother’s translucent grey eyes. His mouth was set in a semi permanent smirk, his eyebrows arched.
Alice had to suppress a sigh. He was even more perfect than his father, and she had dreamed of what he looked like for years. She took a deep breath in.
“Aron” she breathed it out.
He looked suspiciously at her, oddly intrigued by the tone in her voice. He reached a hand up and ran it backwards through his thick hair. It was the colour of spilt ink; his eyes looked foggy by comparison.
“Hey, Mom” he said casually, his voice deep and rough sounding.
“Happy birthday” Alice whispered clearly, smiling faintly up at him.
She stood and moved to stand in front of him, her head reaching only to his chest.
Aron laughed derisively and rolled his eyes.
“Thanks” he muttered, staring back at her.
Alice cocked her head to one side and gazed into his face, drinking in the sight of him, after fifteen years apart. Her son turned fifteen today, and he had come to find her. She reached out for him and he stayed stock still, letting her gently touch his face and jaw. She had never been able to touch him, to hug her boy. There was something showing in his eyes that she couldn’t quite identify. She lay her palm against his cheek, and he absently leant his face into her hand, closing his eyes for a few moments.
“What can you do, baby? What are you?” Alice asked quietly, forgetting all about Mandy and their imprisonment.
Aron smiled then, a cold expression, and took a step back.
“Because you are my mother, I won’t show you my Control. I Control minds, Mom. But I am a Storm Child. See these eyes? That’s your doing. Storm Children only ever have grey eyes. I have none of Dad’s werewolf gene. I found you easily enough though, I must admit. They didn’t hide you very well” he said easily, his natural arrogance shining through.
Alice took her hand away from his face and narrowed her eyes at him instead.
“Did they come for you?” she asked cautiously.
Aron nodded and shrugged.
“Not to much effect, though. You needn’t worry for me, Mom. I can take care of myself. They’re all dead. Every single one of those conniving, interfering women. All dead” he said, looking and sounding as if it were nothing abnormal to him to have murdered so many.
Alice raised her eyebrows at him. He was colder than she’d thought he’d be.
“How…how is your father?” she asked, losing all control and holding out hope for Cale’s life.
Aron shrugged again, inspecting his nails with careless scrutiny.
“He’s dead, too, Mom. Don’t worry about him. I dealt with him for what he did to you almost as soon as I could talk. I love you, you see. I couldn’t let him carry on after what he did, even if what he did resulted in me” he replied cavalierly.
Alice choked and fell backward onto her bed. She looked back at Mandy, who stared at her with horror.
“Alice, he has to leave. He has to get out of here! He’ll be the end of everyone and everything! I understand them now! I understand it all! He’s evil! Destruction personified! You should have killed him when you had the chance!” Mandy shrieked.
She was cut off instantly after Aron casually lifted a hand and snapped his fingers at her. Alice was temporarily blinded when a flaming golden white lightning bolt spiked down through the ceiling above their heads and burnt Mandy where she sat, still huddled up in her corner. When her vision returned, she gaped in terror at the blackened, charred remains of her one and only friend. Then she looked up at her son.
Aron looked less than shocked. His irises started to spin and instinctively, she glanced away towards the farthest wall. Aron chuckled coldly at her reaction. He walked round to stand in front of her again and tipped her head up with two fingers beneath her chin.
“No, you shouldn’t have killed me, Mom, and I’m glad you didn’t. I’m glad that you loved me too much to end my life before it had even begun. And for that, I’m going to reward you. I’ll let you live, even when I’ve killed everybody else on the planet” he told her, his voice calm and even kind.
Alice slowly backed up from him, but he just walked after her, unwilling to let her leave him a second time. Not after he found her again.
Aron lunged for her and caught her, spun on his heel and pulled her after him into the spinning gold vortex thundering in the now obliterated centre of the bedroom.


Less than a day after Alice met her son again, they stood together, utterly alone, on the edge of the destruction Aron left in his wake, wherever he went. He protected her, but he cared about no one else in the world, so he had no doubts about destroying all of it, country by country.
Right now, they stood in the middle of Scotland, burning debris scattered all about them. Alice stared in frightened wonderment at the disaster surrounding her on all sides. She clung