Fire

Car Ride Revelations

Trent shot me an apologetic look, and I noticed his knuckles were white on the steering wheel, “I’ll try to explain everything once I get you somewhere safe.”

                I nodded, fingers gripping the edge of my seat tightly as we whipped down the street at alarming speeds, “Where are we going?”

                “Safe house,” he glanced down into his side view mirror and his shoulders seemed to relax a little, “I have someone that I suspect you’ll really want to meet.”

                I stared at him, completely puzzled, “I don’t…who are you? What do you want?”

                Trent smiled, “I want to help you. I’ve been sent by someone who has a vested interest in making sure you don’t come to any harm.”

                “The person you want me to meet,” I said slowly, “who?”

                Trent said, “How much do you know about your mother?”

                A pang of shock went through me, “I don’t…she left when I was a kid. What are you saying?”

                Trent’s face was sympathetic, “she left you for a very very good reason.”

                I glared at him, suddenly feeling irrationally angry, “how would you know anything about it? Who the hell are you?”

                “I work for her,” he said simply, “your mother.”

                It felt like someone had punched me in the stomach. All the air left me and I couldn’t speak, even though I had a million questions crowding up, one after the other.

                Trent seemed to understand what I was feeling, because he said, “I’m sorry to spring that on you like that. I wasn’t sure of a better way to say it. Please don’t be angry with me, or your mother. She’s regretted leaving you behind with that human every day since that day.”

                The way he said “human” shocked me. Like it was dirty, and worse, like a human was some kind of alien life form. Like he wasn’t human. But I didn’t even dwell on this for very long, my mind was in turmoil. All I could think about was…my mother.

                “Why did she?” I said, fury trembling at the edges of my voice, “what was her awesome reason for leaving me behind with him?”

                Trent frowned, “your mother…lived on the edge. Leaving her people behind and marrying your father left her open to danger, but she did it anyways. She did love him…” he paused, “at one time. But eventually the danger became too great. She had to go face it, and she couldn’t drag you into all of it with her. You would have been killed, you would have been hunted.”

                “By who?”

                He sighed, “I was hoping to save this until you’d met my people, until your mother could talk to you, but I understand if you need answers right away,” his long index finger tapped the steering wheel, he seemed to be considering how to say something, “that boy that chased you back there, did he tell you who he was?”

                “He said his name was Asher,” I folded my arms over my chest, trying to ignore the goosebumps crawling over my arms, “he said…he said I wasn’t human.”

                Trent grimaced, “he’s a total moron.”

                The expression, and the word “moron” coming from him were somehow funny in spite of how serious everything was. I muffled a hysterical giggled behind the sleeve of my sweatshirt. Luckily Trent didn’t seem to notice.