Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
𝐖𝐇𝐄𝐍 𝐀𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐍𝐀 𝐖𝐎𝐊𝐄 𝐔𝐏 𝐒𝐇𝐄 𝐖𝐀𝐒 𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐅𝐔𝐒𝐄𝐃. Her thoughts were hazy, still twisted up in dreams and nightmares; it took her longer than it should have to realize where she was. This room was too bland to belong anywhere but in a hotel. The bedside lamps, bolted to the tables, were a dead giveaway, as were the long drapes made from the same fabric as the bedspread, and the generic watercolor prints on the walls.
The girl tried to remember how she got here, but nothing came at first Athena recalled the sleek black car, the glass in the windows darker than that on a limousine. The engine was almost silent, though they'd raced across the black freeways at more than twice the legal speed.
And she remembered Alice sitting with her in the dark leather backseat.
Thank God she called her parents during that haze. Which of course were angry and didn't let that slip up without an argument. It was mostly the fact that she warned them too late. Let's only say that both of them were very, very flustered and angry at their daughter.
And somehow, during the long night, her head had ended up against Alice's granite neck. The human's closeness didn't seem to bother her at all, and her cool, hard skin was oddly comforting to Athena. The front of her thin cotton shirt was cold, and damp with the tears that streamed from her eyes until, red.
It was rare for her to cry like this, but if she did that meant she had a good reason to do so.
Sleep had evaded the girl without her realizing it; her eyes strained open even though the night finally ended and dawn broke over a low peak somewhere in California. The gray light, streaking across the cloudless sky, stung her sensitive eyes.
But she couldn't close them; when she did, the images that flashed all too vividly, like still slides behind her lids, were unbearable.
Edward's brutal snarl, teeth bared - Rosalie's resentful glare - the keen-eyed scrutiny of the tracker - and mostly the dead look in Edward's eyes after he kissed her the last time... Athena couldn't stand to see them. So she fought against her weariness and the sun rose higher.
The human was still awake when they came through a shallow mountain pass and the sun, behind them now, reflected off the tiled rooftops. She didn't have enough emotion left to be surprised that they'd made a three-day journey in one. She stared blankly at the wide, flat expanse laid out in front of her.
It only had been... eight months since she'd visited Los Angeles - the palm trees, the scrubby creosote, the haphazard lines of the intersecting freeways, the green swaths of golf courses and turquoise splotches of swimming pools, all submerged in a thin smog.
The shadows of the palm trees slanted across the freeway - defined, sharper, paler than they should be. Nothing could hide in these shadows. The bright, open freeway seemed benign enough. But Athena felt no relief, no sense of safeness.
