The Last of the Pure

Nineteen

I started this chapter at about 2 am, thinking I'd finish within the hour like I do on most, but it is now after 5 and I've just finished! I think it's the best yet though and I hope you feel the same!  I hope my insomiatic devotion warrants some kind of recognition! Perhaps a vote or a comment or a lovely inbox message? I do love those!

I'm going to bed now. 

Sweet dreams and please enjoy thoroughly. 

-M

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I didn’t mean to fall asleep, but with as weak as I was feeling and as exhausted as my body was, it wasn’t something I could help. I spent hours fighting, leaning up against the cold wall and staring out the window for as long as I could bear, before it finally consumed me.

I jerked awake after being out for what felt like hours, but I couldn’t be sure. It was too dark in the basement to get a good look at my watch hanging from the pipe in front of me.

I looked around for what had pulled me from my slumber, backing impossibly closer to the wall I was leaning on. I could hear something, but I couldn’t be sure what it was. A soft rustling was all I could make out before a warm hand covered my mouth.

I gasped in surprise, angry with myself for becoming such an easy victim.

“I’m not going to hurt you, Alexandra,” a voice whispered, the warm breath that accompanied fanning over my face as I searched for the eyes it belonged to.

My eyes focused, meeting a pair of warm, brown ones that were eerily familiar. I nodded, hoping to be released, but the hand stayed in place.

“I’m going to let go, but I need you to be as quiet as you possibly can,” they said in a much softer whisper than I could have ever imagined producing.

The voice was familiar as well, but not quite the same as the eyes. Like a faint memory rather than anything. As my eyes adjusted more I could make out bits and pieces of a face that belonged to a man. Dark hair and round features becoming clearer in the darkness of the room.

I nodded, keeping my breathing soft when the hand retracted and I watched as the figured moved from in front of me to the medieval clasp around my ankle.

They seemed to have a key and within seconds I was unlatched, untangled, and being scooped from the floor and cradled in the stranger’s arms like a small child.

“I need you to freeze, if you can,” he said. “I’m going to get you out of here.”

I nodded, before pointing to the pole my watch was hanging on.  He moved with me in his arms, reaching down to pull the watch from the spot it’d been hanging for days, surveying it with a  small smile before placing it across my stomach.

I closed my eyes, searching for the currents and grabbing on with everything I had left. I used the four hour hold I’d maintained the days before as a mental pep talk and managed to get a firm grasp on the time moving around us.

He rushed up the stairs, leaving the door hanging open behind us and creeping through the building with soft, fast-paced steps. I wanted to warn him about the padlock on the door, but it was already unlocked when we reached it and he pulled it open, running a few yards from the house through the stilled wilderness.

The cool, fresh air of the night hit me like a thousand rays of sunshine. It’d never been more relieved to feel goose bumps rise across my flesh in my entire life.

When we’d reached the beginning of a wooded forest, I was set on my feet, feeling unsteady at first. The man held my shoulders, looking me straight in the face with a stern expression.