Chapter 5

Chapter Five:
During the night I woke up to a cold breeze flitting through the house. I thought it was strange, because we hadn’t opened any windows. The back door was shut tight. I furrowed my brow and stood up, groped through my purse for the small flashlight that I carried with me, then shone it around the house. First I double checked the windows. Then, as I was stepping over the others to check the front door, I realized something that made my heart contract with fear.
Reba wasn’t there.
Panicked, I moved into the hall, and I felt my stomach drop in dread as I saw the front door hanging open. I didn’t have to look around the house to know that that was where Reba had gone. Not caring that I had no shoes and it was freezing outside, I ran through the door and out into the frigid night. The darkness was stifling and when I cried her name the shouts were lost to the wind. I went further and further and still didn’t see her, so I headed toward the house across from the coffee shop. It was the only place she would have gone.
I ran down the sidewalk beside the empty street and fell to the cement as a sharp pain stabbed into my foot. When I looked to check, the glass from a shattered beer bottle had cut into the sole of my foot. At this point, the frightening house was closer than my house so I tentatively stood up and limped the rest of the way. It was painful and difficult, but after a few minutes, I was gingerly stepping up the stairs to the wraparound porch and the heavy wooden door. It was hanging open.
I pushed on the door and grew weak as it swung wide. Reba was laying motionless on the ground in the large foyer. I dropped to my knees and shook her. She wouldn’t wake up, so I checked her pulse. She was alive, and didn’t look injured. But seeing her there, laying on the ground, reminded me of my past in Seattle. It was a part of my past that I had suppressed and tried to forget, but it was brought forcefully back to my mind now.
“She fainted,” someone said. When I looked up, I saw that it was an older man, probably in his forties, with long brown hair pulled back into a ponytail and a few days’ worth of stubble on his face. He looked tired; beyond lethargic, it was a tiredness that went deeper, as though he was tired of life itself.
“What happened?” I asked with tears in my eyes. I could hear that my voice was hysterical, but I didn’t care.
“What’s-” Felix’s voice appeared from a hallway upstairs. He stopped at the top of the landing when he saw me. “Cleo,” he said, sounding surprised.
Another figure followed him from the hallway, paused at the landing, then suddenly he was hurrying down the stairs. It was the man who had been here the first time I came. The older one put an arm out to bar his way.
“She is injured!” the mannequin man protested.
“Let me help her,” Felix offered, coming down the stairs.
“Don’t touch me!” I yelled at him, cradling Reba. He stopped on the stairs and the three of them stared.
“What the hell is wrong with you people?” I was aware when my voice was suddenly quiet and broken, but I didn’t care. I just wanted Reba to wake up.
There was a long, quiet moment when no one knew what to do. Suddenly, the door burst open again and in stormed Dante and Gabriel.
“Djibaaji!” Dante cried. His face spelled out fury like I hadn’t seen from him, and his knuckles were white clutching the silver top of his cane. Spotting me on the floor, Gabriel knelt and gently took Reba from me to check on her vitals. I huddled into a ball without her. A moment later I felt someone wrap their arms around me- I assumed it was Dante- and I collapsed against him. I hadn’t realized I was crying, but the fabric of his suit was wet.
“She’s alive and breathing, at least,” Gabriel said quietly.
“I already told Cleo,” the older man said, advancing with his hands held out to him like a dangerous animal. “She just fainted. She was a little surprised by what she saw, that's all.”
Gabriel furrowed his brow at the man, standing up. “If she had only passed out she would have woken up by now. Something knocked her unconscious.”
The other man cast a nervous glance up toward the shadowy hallway upstairs. As if taking a hint, Gabriel moved to converse quietly with the three that were standing there. I got the impression that he was asking them questions about Reba to see if she had suffered any injury, but I didn't really care to listen. I just stayed there with Dante, who was making comforting sounds as if I were a child. “It's alright, Cleo,” he said in a low, gentle voice. Then, with an even, calm tone, he asked, “What happened to your foot?”
I looked down at my foot. It was covered in blood and had pooled in a small puddle on the floor. The pain had become a constant stinging sensation from the moment the glass had entered my skin, and I had forgotten about it in the passion of the moment. “I stepped on some glass on the way over,” I answered, trying to wipe away some of the dampness from my face. He pulled a handkerchief from a pocket- an actual cloth one, which briefly surprised me- and handed it over.
“Cain, do you have a first aid kit?” Dante asked the older man on the stairs. His tone was even, carefully controlled.
“Yes,” Cain answered with a furrowed brow. He descended the stairs and moved under the bridge to the large room beyond, where he disappeared into darkness. A moment later, he returned with a small blue box that had a big red cross on the top. He moved to help Dante with it, but Dante snatched the box away from him, prompting Cain to move back to the stairs where he continued talking to Gabriel. Cain and Gabriel both looked frustrated, Felix was silently watching the two of them, and the dark one was watching Dante.
Dante carefully extracted a few things from the medical kit. “Let me see your foot,” he requested. I angled my body so that I could set my dirty foot in his lap- which in any other circumstance I might feel embarrassed about- and he put a steadying hand over the top. “This is going to hurt,” he told me apologetically. I felt him inspect the shard of glass, and after a moment he pulled it out quickly. I bit down hard on my lip, but didn't make a noise. I saw him get out an alcohol wipe to clean the wound- which stung horribly, but I still didn't let myself groan or cry- and after it was clean he wrapped a bandage around it. “Good girl,” he said with an attempt at a smile.
“Owwww...” I finally allowed myself a long, drawn out word of complaint. His smile briefly flickered in his eyes, then he stood up and walked over to the group on the stairs. Resigned to the idea that I probably wasn't going to hear what they were saying, I lay down on the floor and tried to think of something other than the pain. Like Reba. She was still passed out on the floor next to me, and I wondered if that was normal.
I looked over to the stairs as voices raised. Dante was a good actor- after all his calm dealing with me, he was furious again. The conversation Gabriel had been conducting with Cain had escalated. Suddenly Dante stood back and grabbed his cane as though he were going to break it in half- but instead of breaking it, he pulled on the handle and a gleaming sword came out of the base. He drew the weapon with a flourish and the others went silent, as shocked as I was. The dark one glanced over at me, and I realized I had sat up when Dante drew the sword. “We warned you,” Dante said.
Gabriel was the first one to move. He put his hand on Dante's shoulder and glanced over toward Reba and myself. “Now is not the time,” he said.
Dante followed his gaze, then dropped his eyes to the floor, as if he was suddenly ashamed. He slowly slid the sword back into its cane scabbard, and looked up at Cain, Felix, and the other one whose name was too difficult for me to remember. I could tell that there was communication in that look, but I couldn't see from this angle.
“Come on, Dante,” Gabriel said. He moved away from the stairs and gently lifted Reba off the ground. Without another word, he took her out the door. I didn't know where he was taking her, but somehow I trusted him. And I wasn't in a state to be worrying about what he might do.
There was a tense moment where Dante hesitated, then he moved to me and swept me up from the floor into his arms. I took another look at the house as he carried me out, and I noticed something on the opposite end of the bridge upstairs. It was a figure that almost appeared human, but it was misshapen somehow. I wasn't sure how long it had been there, but I hadn't noticed it there on previous visits to the house.
The trip home was silent. I clutched myself as tightly to Dante as I could, frozen, tired, and in pain. I felt guilty that he had to haul me all that way just because I had been too stupid to put on a pair of shoes before I ran out the door, but he didn't seem to mind. His face was stoical the entire way, but it was an easy silence, and held none of the tense anger that had been there before.
It felt like forever before we reached the house. When finally we did, he moved up the steps toward the door. “Dante,” I said, stopping him. “I... don't want to go inside yet...” It felt strange to return home after such an unusual experience. What had just happened was so unreal to me that I wasn't sure I'd believe it if I returned to normal life. Besides that, I was still unnerved from the memory of Reba's body on the floor, so much like myself two years ago.
Dante hesitated, then carried me back to the cement steps and gently set me down. Then he took off his jacket and positioned it around my shoulders.
Something moved in the darkness in front of the house, and I might have jumped were I not suddenly so exhausted. As the shadow came closer to the house, I saw that it was Gabriel. He gave a questioning look to Dante, and Dante gestured for him to go away. Gabriel had probably been waiting for them to return together. But on the motion from Dante, he turned without hesitation and made his way out of the neighborhood.
When Gabriel was out of sight, Dante sat beside me on the step and we remained silent for several minutes. I was shivering and exhausted and in terrible pain, but I didn't want to go into the house.
The wind only continued to pick up and in the dim light of the waxing moon, I could see the vague shapes of storm clouds being blown in. It looked like it would probably rain tomorrow. Apart from the wind and the clouds, everything was still. The leaves of trees shuddered with every gust that blew, and somewhere a few houses down a dog barked.
“Dante,” I finally managed to ask. He looked at me and we locked gazes for a moment. I mused on the fact that those crystalline blue eyes of his seemed to hold so many things. When we first met, they were smoldering and lustful; when he had burst into the house tonight, they had been fierce and held a torrent within their small orbs; now, as he looked at me, I saw only concern and gentle care. There was not lust, but a tentative love, as any parent might hold for the hurt child of a stranger.
Finally I broke the exchange and looked down to the cold cement. “What's going on?”
He sighed and didn't answer for a long time, to the point that I almost wondered if he wouldn't answer at all. “You don't want to know that, Cleo,” he told me.
I was willing to argue that point in my mind, but I didn't say anything. He moved to plant a kiss on my forehead, then picked me up again. “Time for bed, Cleo,” he said, then he carried me inside and laid me down where I had been sleeping before. I was out before he even put me down.