Revealed

Chapter Ten

My stomach lurched horribly. I'd been there, Zander's hand warm on my arm as he pulled me behind him. I'd expected to transcend upwards, but we continued on the way down. Then there was a door, so simple and innocent that it hardly seemed capable of being the entry way to another world, capable of hiding something that shouldn't be existing.

I could feel the difference instantly. My stomach twisted, I had to double over, feeling light headed and dizzy. Everything felt heavier here, oppressive.  A bit of a warning would have been nice.

"Come on, we need to get you inside before anyone sees us." I felt sick, and I needed time to adjust, but nevertheless, I did as he said, automatically bowing my head, hair falling over my face. There was no wind here, no rain, no sun. It was bland, it was nothing. The sky was a consistent grey, no variance in colour, and no clouds at all.

The houses, however, we anything but boring. A quirky mix of old and new that shouldn't have worked, but somehow managed to look chic. Houses with high ceilings and ornate porches, separated from the rest with lavish iron gates. Then tall stacks of apartments, reaching towards the sky, slightly ageing and made of concrete grey that mirrored the landscape above.

At first, it seemed that we were heading in their direction, but took a left at the last minute and turning down another road. It was clearly a new complex, houses dotted around in randomised locations, dull shades of green grass growing in between them, some houses still in the process of being built.

With all the monotony of the colour, I was acutely aware of my blazing hair, flicking it out of my way self-consciously.

"We're on the top floor, walk on my left."

He pulled out a set of keys, fumbling around before finding the right one. Inside we were greeted by silence. The lack of noise set me on edge, almost like there was no life. I wasn't going to be fooled. We walked up the stairs quickly, Zander's body hiding mine as I brushed against the wall next to the stairs.

A black wooden door opened and closed, we were inside his apartment and my heart rate started to descend back down to normal. His space was eerily similar to the one back home. Simple and minimalist, plain walls and dark furniture, black marble counters in the kitchen and soft sofas in the living room, open plan but with a secluded bathroom and bedroom. Perhaps what I found the most odd was the large flat screen TV taking up a generous space of one of the walls.

"I expected it to be different." And by different, I meant that I would have thought that it would have been like stepping back in time.

"Yeah, well, it probably would have been, but once we found out that we needed blood to keep us alive, we had to go back to your world, even if only for a little while. Whatever you have, we have, though for us, it might take a little longer to make things like that work. We waited for years to get decent mobile phone connection over here."

"Huh." Who would have thought? I knew that I was being prejudiced, but I didn't know what else to think. "How long am I going to be staying here for?"

"For along as it's safe. I need to get some answers first, then I can work on fixing this."

I'm glad that he had some sense of what he was doing, because I still had no idea what was going on. He still hadn't told me anything about who could be behind the attacks, and I didn't know how far we'd have to go to stop them. They had a gun, Zander had a gun. I don't know anyone who had a gun in this country just for show, and it wasn't a hunting gun, that was for sure. The more time I spent with him, the more I was beginning to find out. His background was darker than I thought. Perhaps I wouldn't have got with him if I had remembered. Or maybe he was different back then? How could someone change so fast?