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Chapter 10 -- Savior
I was awakened to his gentle caress. A wave of warmth washed over me as I felt his skin touch my own. I was exhausted, both physically and mentally.
Physically because what I experienced the night before was something no writer could ever write about, no painter could ever paint. It was a feeling of connection transcending all known boundaries; mentally because I was haunted by my past and by my present. I felt like an unwilling participant in some great cosmic game, and I didn't know the rules. I had killed a man in self defense, yet his death has left a void in at least one person's heart. A void that could never be filled, a void I created. I also felt that I needed to guard what I had with life. If anything were to ever happen to Chris...
"You're awake," his sweet soft voice came from above me.
"I'm awake," I smiled.
"It's amazing. Your skin is so soft, so gentle. Yet nothing we know can penetrate it."
I felt extremely self-conscious all of a sudden. I withdrew from his touch.
"I'm gonna go brush my teeth."
"Don't do this, Adam." I felt his hand on my shoulder. Of course, it had no real power to stop me, but I stopped just the same.
"Don't do what?"
"Feel awkward around me. Please." He moved close and put his arms around me. "I love you, Adam. I love you! You don't have to hide anymore. You can be who you are, I will never judge you. How can I make you understand I will never stop loving you -- no matter what?"
I bit my lower lip and put my hand on his. "I'm sorry, Chris, I don't mean to be a jerk. It's just... I spent so much time hiding who I am; my mind can't comprehend how someone can love someone like me.
"Yes, you are different. Yes, you're not like other people. But so what?! Why do you need to be ashamed of it? I love you for who YOU are. I accept you for who YOU are! I want so desperately for you to feel free with me."
"I will. I promise. You just have to give me a little time, I..." I never got a chance to finish. He spun me around and planted his lips on mine in one of our most passionate kisses. "I will wait for you forever, Adam. Forever."
I started trembling again as he held me in his arms.
"Come on -- let's go."
"Where?"
He didn't answer; he just took my hand and led me to the bathroom.
"You do your business, and I'll turn on the water." He whispered in my ear, "I don't want to be apart from you for even a second."
He wanted us to take a shower together. I was thrilled and mortified at the same time. I went to relieve myself as he turned on the water. The room started filling up with steam, and I let myself relax under its calming effect. I could afford to relax. Christian instilled a sense of security and comfort within me I never knew existed. For the first time I allowed my guard to go down a bit, not thinking about every move, every word, ahead of time.
"Come on! The water's great!"
I took a deep breath and braced myself. I had nothing to fear. After last night, after that wonderful experience, I knew I could share myself with him this way. The water felt good against my bare feet. He closed the curtain behind me and looked into my eyes as he took my hands in his.
"Dude... what's your last name?"
An uncontrollable burst of laughter came to me then. We'd spent so much time together, had gotten so close, yet I'd never told him what my last name was. Hey, it's not like I knew his.
"It's Mather," I told him, still battling with the last of the giggles.
"Mine is Oliver."
"Christian Oliver. I like it." I smiled shyly as my head went down again. I was still a little embarrassed standing naked in front of him.
He put his hand under my chin and lifted my head up.
"You're not the only one who's nervous, Mather." He smiled his beautiful smile. "At the beginning I was scared of the way I felt about you. But I'm not anymore. I can't really explain it, but I feel like all I need in this world is you."
I felt the tears coming up again but managed to suppress them for the time being. I took a long breath to calm myself down.
"Are you all right? I hope I didn't say anything..."
"You didn't. You say all the right things. You do all the right things. That's what scares me, Chris. This is so much of a one eighty for me I can barely comprehend it. You are so good to me, you accept me. I'm not used to that."
He took me into his embrace then and we stayed like that under the torrent of hot water for a few minutes. Flashes of last night came rushing to my head. I could see the lights surrounding us. It was like holding him broke some barrier between us that normal people never break.
"I will never leave you, Adam. Nobody will ever drag me away from you. I will take care of you. I WILL make you happy!"
"You already have, Chris. All I want out of this life right now is to make you happy in return."
He plugged the bath and lowered me down so my back was on his chest. And there we stayed for another hour in complete bliss, as I felt every muscle in my body melt away.
The knock on the door found both of us with only our towels on. Chris looked carefully through the peep hole to see who was on the other side.
"It's one of them, the one without the tattoos."
"Eva?"
"Yeah, I think so?"
"Will you guys let me in already?" Her voice came for the other side of the door.
I nodded my approval at Chris, and he proceeded to usher Eva inside. She looked down almost immediately after seeing us with only towels to cover our shame.
"Jesus, guys, would you put some clothes on?"
"What do you want, Eva?" Chris had his usual disposition when it came to the wonder twins.
"Shut the door."
She moved farther into the room and sat on one of the chairs. I had put on some clothes in the meantime and stepped out of the bathroom.
"There's a huge hole in the wall..."
"Yes, Eva, we noticed," Chris retorted angrily.
"I thought you'd like to know the guy from yesterday isn't dead. The one who got electrocuted I mean."
The news did lift a load off my heart. The last thing I wanted was another body on my conscience.
"He survived?" I had to hear it again.
"Yes, his friends took him to the hospital. He has some burns on his body, but otherwise he's okay."
"Did you know the sapphire could do this?" Chris interrupted.
"I have no idea what that thing does, Chris."
"Well, what do you know dear Eva?" he said in his most mocking tone. She made a little face but didn't acknowledge it any further.
"I am telling you all I can, guys."
"Bullshit! It's obvious you and your freak sister know a lot more than you're telling! There are guys out there trying to kidnap Adam. Some other guys are trying to kill him! And what do you do? You spread some money around and hand out cryptic messages."
She took a deep breath as if trying to relax. Chris was getting to her.
"You have to understand that Evelyn and I don't work alone. We are part of a group of people dedicated to preventing the powers that be from doing anymore harm to anymore innocent people."
"Like your brother?" I jumped in.
"They have my brother. The Temple has him; you are our only link to The Temple, and our only chance of ever seeing him again."
"What's the plan then? How do you expect us to help you if you're not telling us anything?" Chris shouted.
She took another deep breath and closed her eyes.
"There are two groups out there, groups of... special people."
"People like me?"
"In a way. They are all what you would call... supernatural. They all have the same special origin. But they don't all agree on some... key issues. So they split into two groups. There is The Temple, and there is The Tower."
"The Tower is trying to kill me?" I said barely above a whisper.
"Yes, so that The Temple won't have you. They only recently discovered your existence. That's why The Temple decided to collect you. You're too valuable for them to let The Tower kill you."
"Valuable? I was told I was a disgrace and a failure! I was sent to live alone the rest of my life in solitude! If I'm so valuable, how come they didn't "collect" me when I was born?"
She looked at me silently; maybe trying to figure out if she should answer my questions.
"From what I could gather... your mom... she kept you a secret from your dad. Only when she realized she couldn't handle you anymore did she tell your dad about your existence. But Temple rules are very strict. You have to be born there. Raised there. You were too old. So I guess they decided to try and see if they could make up for lost time. So they took you to one of their facilities in Austria. But when you..."
"When I betrayed them and revealed my powers to someone else, they realized I was not suited to join them."
I saw a tear on her left cheek, and I didn't know why she was so moved by MY story. She wiped it away and buried her face in the palms of her hands.
"But still... they don't want you dead. But you can't go to them, Adam. They are not your friends. They will lock you up and do terrible things to you. They don't consider you one of them anymore."
"And you are... a friend?" Chris spoke at last.
"Well... the closest thing you've got to one. Like Evelyn said -- we need you. We'll protect you, but when the time comes, you have to help us save our brother."
"Why are we only meeting you? Where are all those other guys who are in your merry little group?" Chris' tone was a bit softer, but he was still very much on his guard.
"Secrecy is very important in our line of work. We were chosen to be your contacts. There is nothing we can do now but make sure no one finds you. The woman from yesterday didn't have the chance to report in, and we made sure to destroy any evidence of the guy who got electrocuted. You're safe in L.A. for now, but that could easily change. You have to be ready to move on a moment's notice. In case of an emergency, I can..."
The ring of her cell phone cut her off. She quickly answered.
"Yeah. What? Evelyn, calm down! What do you mean he's... Evelyn! Where? For how fucking long?! Evelyn?"
She closed her cell phone with a look of terror in her eyes.
"What happened?" A wave of fear overtook me. Was this it? Did they capture Evelyn and were their way to me? Were they gonna take me away from Chris?!"
She got up from the chair, her face white as a ghost.
"You have to help him, Adam," she whispered.
"Help? Help who? What's going on" Chris was nervous as well.
"Aaron... he's... he's part of the group. He was working undercover inside The Tower. They got to him. They got..."
"Eva? What's going on?!" I didn't know what they wanted me to do, and my fear had only gotten worse.
"They threw him inside a frozen lake in northern Canada. He can hold his..." she was crying heavily now. "He can hold his breath but he'll freeze to death! He hasn't got much time!"
"Canada? How the fuck do you expect us to get to fucking Canada?! This is not our problem, Adam!"
"Please! Please you have to help him! I can take you there! That's what I do -- I can move around the world. If I try hard enough I can take someone with me! That's what I do, Adam! You have to come with me!"
She was hysterical and she started shaking me violently.
"Please!"
"Adam, no! This could be a trap! She could be trying to kidnap you!"
"I'm not! I swear! I'll take you back, Adam, but you've gotta save him! You're the only one who can break through the ice in such a short time! Please!"
Time stopped. All I could hear was the sound of my heartbeats. If I refused, an innocent man would die. Another death would be on my hands. I couldn't let it happen.
"Do It. Take me there."
"Adam, no!!!"
"I have to do this, Chris. If I don't I'll never forgive myself."
I quickly stepped towards him and took him into my arms, being careful not to hold him too strongly.
"We have to go!"
"Adam... don't do this!" His face was covered with tears. It was one of the most painful sights I had to bear in my life. I will never forget that face.
"I WILL be back. I love you!" I gave him one last kiss, knowing it could very well be the last time I saw him.
"Let's go."
Eva nodded, her face white and filled with fear. She took some deep breaths and took my hands.
"This might feel a little weird." She said with a shaky voice.
And weird it felt. It started with a small tremor traveling up my spine. Soon another followed, then another. Soon the tremors started going the other way, colliding with the ones going up. My whole body began to shake, violently and my eyesight became blurry at best. I began to feel cold winds at the back of my neck, but I had no idea where they were coming from. Soon I realized I could no longer see Chris, or anything else for that matter. Until the second I saw the sky. It was grey, a deep, dark grey. The wind had gotten stronger, and the long sleeved shirt I was wearing provided no protection against the freezing cold.
"Evelyn!" Eva's scream shook me from my dazed state, and I saw Evelyn run towards her sister with a heavy coat. Eva quickly donned it.
"I'm freezing!" I could already feel my bones ache from the cold.
"You can take it, Adam; You gotta hurry!"
Evelyn said nothing and just stared me down. Eva took me by the hand and we both ran after Evelyn to a large frozen body of water. The wind was so strong we had to shout just to be heard. I had never experienced such intense cold in my life, and I wasn't sure if Eva's confidence in my body was justified. Evelyn was beside herself. Tears were continuously running down her cheeks, smearing all the black mascara she had around her eyes.
"He's over here!"
We stopped about 25 feet from the shoreline. He was there. A man. A handsome man with brown hair. Between us was a thick layer of ice, and hard as he tried to break it with his fists, it did not budge. He was going to drown, or freeze to death, if I didn't do something fast. I closed my eyes and willed the cold away. It didn't help much, but I had no more time to dwell on my own discomfort.
"Do something, you bastard!" Evelyn lunged at me and started hitting me with her fists. "Fucking do something!"
I stepped a little to the side. I didn't want to accidentally hit the man. I took a deep breath and smashed my fists against the ice with all I had. It was as if it was made of paper. My entire hand was now immersed in the cold water. I made several more holes in the ice, until it was big enough for the man. He swam towards it with what I guessed was his last strength and grabbed my hand. When I pulled him out I could see his face was completely blue. Another minute and he would have been dead.
"Aaron!" Evelyn ran towards him and we both dragged him out of the lake. We laid him down on the cold ground.
"Aaron? Aaron can you hear me?!"
"Hey, slippers. You came..."
"We have to get him out of here!" Eva shouted towards Evelyn.
"The lodge!" Evelyn shouted back, and before I knew it, I felt the tremors along my spine again. I closed my eyes and prepared for another weird trip. The cold gradually subsided, and my body began to relax. The wind became softer and softer until it simply vanished. In its stead came comforting warmth. I had no idea where it was coming from, but I let myself bask in its soft touch. I was now lying on a wooden floor. I could hear small creaks as I moved, and a blazing fire now burned before my eyes. I was in some kind of cabin. The walls were all made out of stacked up logs, and the only thing in the room besides the fireplace was what appeared to be a bear rug, a moose head hanging on the wall, and a large couch.
Evelyn had taken off all of Aaron's clothes, and I could not help but stare at his naked form. He was about 5 feet, 5 inches tall, smooth, except for a thin line of hair from his bellybutton to his... his stuff. Color was slowly beginning to return to his face now.
"I thought I was a goner." He smiled as Evelyn held his hand to her face. She bent down to kiss him. I had no idea they were involved. Evelyn didn't seem like the type.
Eva laid her hand on my shoulder. "Thank you." Evelyn nodded her head towards me but offered no actual words. A part of me hoped that she would no longer hate me. I guess I was desperate for the approval of everyone around me.
"Is that him?"
"Yes, this is Adam. Adam this is Aaron." Eva introduced us as Aaron sat up and presented his hand to me. I hesitantly shook it.
"I owe you my life, man." He collapsed back onto the wooden floor. He was still very weak.
"How did you know where I was?"
"Kerry told me."
"You gotta love that little dwarf."
Evelyn laughed softly at his as she patted Aaron's hair.
"Where are we, Eva?"
"This is one of our safe houses. I can't tell you its exact location. Come near the fire, you need to warm up."
Eva and I moved close to Evelyn and Aaron. My body had by now forgotten all about the cold. I was still amazed at how resilient it was.
"I'll go get him some clothes," Eva said as she got up and went through a door to our right.
"I heard a lot of things about you, Adam. I'm glad we finally meet."
I didn't know what to say so I just smiled shyly.
"How did they make you?"
"Oh, slippers, let's not talk about it right now. I just wanna be with you. I haven't seen you for so long. Oh don't cry! It's okay... we're safe now."
"Don't you ever do that to me again!" She lay beside him and rested her head on his bare chest. I no longer felt comfortable watching, so I decided to get up and see what Eva was doing.
I stepped through the door to find Eva going through some closets, probably trying to find some clothes for our naked friend.
"I don't know how we can ever repay you for this, but we will; I swear."
"I just want a normal life, Eva. For once... just a normal life."
She looked at me and smiled.
"We all do, Adam. We all want what was taken from us."
"Is Aaron going to be okay?
"Thanks to you. We'll move him to our headquarters where he'll be safe."
"So who's worse? The Temple or the Tower?"
"Oh... I don't know. Both of them. We'll do whatever it takes to get what they want."
"How do they differ then? What is their big difference in philosophy that made them two separate groups?"
"I don't know much. It's something that happened about a millennium ago. It's centered on the subject of God. That's pretty much all I know."
"Are you part of The Temple, too?"
"God, no. Evelyn and I used to be just regular people. That all changed."
"What happened?"
"Well... They don't usually intervene with lives of... let's call them mortals. But once in a while, when they think they have a breach..."
"You found out about them?"
She wiped a tear from her cheek. "I really have to get Aaron these clothes. I'll send you back to the hotel after that."
With that she left the room. I sat on the large bed that was present there and closed my eyes. A voice inside of me told me this was just the beginning. The Temple people were not going to give up until they found me, and The Tower members still had me in their crosshairs. I had to tread carefully. Saving Aaron gave me one of the most wonderful feelings I ever felt in my life. I had saved a life that would otherwise have been snuffed out. I brought joy to someone's eyes. I made a difference. I mattered. It's not bad at all... being someone's savior.
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