Paragon

⊰❉⊱ 39 ⊰❉⊱

The winding roads up the mountains into Aiko's village gave me a moment to consider our position. Our future. Or whatever was left of it once Paragon took too much interest.

I had never heard of any immortal that escaped their notice and lived off the grid. But then again, I hadn't met huge numbers of immortals. We don't gather, we don't befriend and we certainly don't get attached. That was common sense... especially not to a mortal. A brief passing of less than a century on this earth.

I scanned the trees as they blurred past.

The rain had stopped and the night had taken over on the roads. Not that I needed the visibility. What I needed was some clarity. Some idea of what the hell I was going to do when the elite group of immortals looked a little too closely at my flight plans. My passenger that had appeared at every airport at my side.

I gripped the wheel pushing the car to its full potential up the corners.

Those bright green eyes. The engine growled. That easy smile. The road winded. The small smile when she saw through the lies and disguises. Another turn. The heat of her lips when she hit me in full force. I exhaled.

Quinn you really did complicate things...

It was so easy to simply end the soulless mortals in London. To play the part of the civil servant and clean up what could be cleaned up within my means. Now I had to detail the rogue immortal that had come after us. One I had worked with barely days before in Mumbai. They will want everything. No detail left unchecked. Quinn would be raised as a question.

Yet what would I say to that... A mortal companion. Easy prey. An entertainment in this grey scale of endless immortality. Why was the truth so dangerous? That she was more to me than they could even understand anymore. She was worth the risks, the danger of exposing existence, that she ran my cold blood faster than anything had since it beat hot...

I slowed the car by the thick shrubbery and drove a few metres deeper until I could conceal it completely. I stepped out into the cold night and shut the door slowly. It clicked locked.

Then I made the brief run to the edges of the village. I didn't bother with the main streets around the houses. I slipped back along the tree lines to the back of Aiko's abode. It was still quiet. I was sure the old woman would still be simmering over my phone call keeping her up at such hours. But I knew Quinn would be awake. Wanting answers.

I never favoured excuses anyway.

I hooked my hand silently onto the window sill and slipped into the room as if it had merely been minutes. The bedroom was empty. I strode across the dark wood floor letting my senses expand out around me. Two heartbeats inside the house. She was still here.

The hallway was almost silent.

There was a scratching. A small sound that mortal ears wouldn't notice until they were but feet away. I closed in on the source and found her back to me. A pencil in her hand and an old piece of Aiko's parchment in her hand. I closed in without a sound. A voyeur to her creative experiment before the low table.

It wasn't hard to make no sound. We didn't need to breathe for hours if necessary. But the drawing had stolen it anyway. It was my eyes. The dark and brooding translation of them anyway. She was no doubt talented but I didn't know the extend until now. My pupils were dark, my brow was low and it was a predator's stare if ever I had seen one.

Maybe this was what she saw in me now.

Wordlessly I moved beside her shoulder to kneel. Her answering shout in surprise and the dark line the pencil etched into the paper almost made me grin–if not for the circumstance. She held her pencil like a dagger before me.