What Lies Beneath

It was a cold, dark night. The witching hour had just begun. Streets were quiet and still. Barely any movement seen or heard. There was a full moon tonight. Shining bright and fearless amidst a sky so black its darkness was like a magnificent satin cloak blanketing the night. What stars could be seen sparkled defiantly against the darkness. Their light, a mere shadow of things to come.

I sat on the hood of my 1967 Chevy Corvette. Waiting. My contact was late...again. I didn't mind the quiet really. It gave me a chance to sift through my thoughts; work out the puzzles that sometimes distracted me. I couldn't afford to be distracted. Especially not tonight.

The sound of a car engine revving in the distance suddenly broke through the silence of the night. I looked towards where I had heard the sound. Nothing but dark streets. Hmm...I could still hear it; a deep, dark rumbling growl just out of my line of sight. I tilted my head to listen closer. Interesting. If I didn't know any better I'd think that was a Ford Mustang GT350R...and it was about to make an entrance. There was only one person I knew who owned a car like that; one person who shouldn't know where I'd be tonight.

Still looking in the direction of the sound, I slowly slid off the hood of my car and turned fully to look down the darkened street. Even knowing what was coming, I still felt a brief kick in the pit of my stomach at the sight of familiar headlights breaking the darkness surrounding me as they slowly approached; the sound of the engine growing louder with each ticking second. I took a single step away from my car and braced myself.

Sliding to a stop beside me, the car's engines seemed to growl softly at me before going completely silent. I waited. My reflection in the driver side window showed nothing but a blank expression. No emotions. Nothing to indicate that my heart was now racing a hundred miles a minute. Why? Why was he here? The question ricocheted through my brain as I stood there...waiting.

The sound of a soft click broke the silence, seconds before the darkly tinted window begun its slow descent. I shifted positions slightly as the car's occupant came into view. Dark, mahogany skin stretching tight against high cheekbones only highlighted an already strong jawline. Dark winged brows arched sharply over eyes framed by full black lashes. Thick, rich black hair completed what was already a sinfully delicious looking face. My heart skipped a beat. A deep sigh passed through full, darkly tinted lips moments before he turned his head to look at me.

The dark, blood red eyes always caught me off guard no matter how many times I'd seen them. His look was piercing.

'What are you doing here?" I asked.

He stared at me silently before reaching for the car keys. I watched as he opened the opened the car door and stepped out to stand in front of me. I looked up but refused to step back. He was tall. Very tall. The black leather jacket he wore hugged shoulders so wide and broad, you wanted to curl into them and feel those strong arms surround you. It was tempting. So tempting. He leaned back against the car and slowly folded his arms. He had yet to say anything. I hated that about him.

"What are you doing here Max?" I asked again.

I was growing impatient. My contact was late. I needed to get this business taken care of tonight. I didn't need any distractions. Especially not this kind.

"I should be asking you that question." he responded instead.

I narrowed my eyes briefly at him and clenched my fists, loosening them almost immediately when his eyes dropped to look down. I fought the urge to move as he slowly brought his eyes back up to mine and tilted his head to the side. An eyebrow went up in silent question. I forgot to breathe.

"Journey."

One word. My name. My real name. I hadn't heard it in so long I blinked in surprise. No-one called me that any more. No-one.

"That's not my name anymore." I answered, "I haven't been that person for a very long time."

He looked at me with those piercing blood red eyes, nostrils flaring slightly.

"Journey,"

"No!" I snapped. "Don't call me that!"

The sharp tone of my voice caught me off guard and I stepped back in surprise at myself. I never allowed my emotions to show. Never! I looked down at the ground and took a deep breath. Letting it out slowly I released the tension that had been building ever since I'd heard the engine of his car. This was not the way this night was supposed to go. And where the hell was my contact!

"He's not coming."

That single sentence brought my head up real fast.

"What did you say?" I asked.

" I said he's not coming." He repeated.

"Who's not coming?" I asked, not quite believing what I was hearing.

"Your contact." He replied.

"What are you talking about?" I stalled.

My mind was running. What did he know about this meeting tonight? More importantly how did he know about it. I hadn't seen Max in almost ten years! Ten years! How did he find me? What did he know? How much did he know?

"I know everything."

I slowly closed my eyes. I really hated when he did that. I was the only person who's mind he couldn't read but it really didn't make a difference because he knew me so well he didn't need to read my mind to know what I was thinking.

"I hate it when you do that." I said in response.

"I know." he replied.

Sighing softly I turned to look back in the direction he had driven in from. It was dark. Dark like me. Like the darkness inside me I'd spent years running from, hiding from. I sighed again and looked back at Max. He still leaned against his car with his arms folded. Waiting. Waiting on me.

"Why are you here Max?" I asked

"I came for you Journey." he replied.

"Why?" I asked.

"Because its time for you to come home." he replied.

Home. Such a foreign word to a nomad like me. I couldn't help but to smile a little. I had no home. I had no family.

Suddenly Max stood straight, dropping his arms to his side as he glared at me. Puzzled, I frowned at his new stance.

" I AM your family!" he practically growled at me.

Nostrils flaring in response, my heart began beating heavily in my chest again. The searing heat from his penetrating gaze bore straight to my core and I felt rooted to the ground, unable to move. An owl hooted in the far distance and the air took on a eery chill. I shivered uncontrollably in response to it. The involuntary movement seemed to snap him back into control and he immediately took his jacket off and draped it across my shoulders. The warmth from his jacket carried with it his scent and they both enveloped me with long forgotten memories.

"I'm not ready" I heard myself whisper, refusing to look at him.

"Yes." he responded. "You are!"

I wanted to growl at him in frustration. He was right after all. It wasn't that I wasn't ready to go back to my past. It was that I didn't want to go back. I didn't want to go back to the life I had. I was happy now...sort of. I was content...meh. I had found my purpose in life finally and I didn't want to give that up...mostly. I needed to find answers....definately.

I looked at Max, suddenly curious.

"How did you know I'd be here?"

He shrugged and looked away.

"I always know where you are Journey." he replied. He looked back at me then. "You're my wife. I will always know where you are."

Wife. Hearing that word again after so long made my heart ache. I stared at him in silence unable to respond. Ten years was a long time. I had no explanation. No justification. At least none that would make sense to him. He said he knew everything but I very much doubted he did. Heck even I didn't know everything. But I needed to. I needed to know and now I never would. My contact wasn't coming.

"Why are you here Max?" I asked again. This time I wanted the real answer. The answer he was keeping from me.

He looked at me in silence for a few minutes before sighing and leaning back against his car once again. He folded his arms. Another deep sigh.

"Your father...is dead," he finally responded, "and your stepmother is in jail for his murder."

"Wait, what!" my shock was not feigned. How could I not have known my father was dead! That news should have reached me. And my stepmother? in jail?

"What do you mean he's dead?!" I demanded. "my father is not dead! I would have known!"

"I'm sorry Journey,"

He reached for me but I stepped back, not wanting to be touched in that moment. I could see his hesitation to let me stand on my own. I glared back at him, refusing to show any signs of the pain I could already feel ripping away at my insides. I would not cry! I kept telling myself that over and over and over again. I would not cry.

"How?"

One question. I wanted to know.

He looked at me before responding.

"Silver blade. It was a single stab wound..."

"But how?" I interrupted

"...through the heart" he continued.

I reared back again in shock.

"What?" my brain wasn't processing what he was saying

"It was dipped in poison laced with holy water and garlic essence." he continued.

I gasped.

"Your stepmother knew." he finished softly.

My legs felt suddenly weak and I slumped back against the side of my car. Pulling the sides of his jacket closer around me, I stood there in shocked silence absorbing what I had just learnt. My father...the last of his kind...was dead.

Silence draped us in those next few minutes as we both became lost in our thoughts. I couldn't wrap my mind around the fact that my father was gone. I had yet to complete our mission. The mission he had sent me on ten years ago. The mission no-one else knew about. Not even Max. Ten whole years of my life gone...and now so was he. Max! I snapped to attention and straightened up from my car.

"Wait...how did you know I was meeting someone tonight?" I demanded. "How did you even know where we would be meeting?"

No-one knew I was meeting anyone tonight and with the exception of my father, no-one even knew where I was or had been all these years. It was one of the stipulations he had insisted on when he'd sent me away. So how did Max find me?

The man in question narrowed his eyes as he glared at me before responding.

"The night your father died he'd given me a little black book. He told me to hold on to it for safe keeping; that it would be the key to answering all the questions I'd been asking him for years." he paused to rub a hand over his face. "At the time I didn't know what to make of that statement but my chance to ask him about it never came....he was gone a few hours later."

He unfolded his arms and tucked his thumbs into the side pockets of the jeans he was wearing. He continued speaking

"The first chance I got I opened it. Turned out to be a journal." those red blood eyes locked in on me. "His journal, detailing everything."

I could hear the emphasis he placed on the word 'everything'.

"Dates. Times. Locations. Names..." he paused. "Everything"

I slowly closed my eyes and raised my head to the night sky.

Silence.

In that moment the silence was so deafening I could hear each breath he took.

Slow.

Measured.

Even.

I sighed and opened my eyes to look back at him again. His gaze was fixed on me still. Unwavering in its intensity and focus. I took a deep breath...held it...and then slowly exhaled.

"And so you came to find me." it wasn't a question and we both knew it.

"You should have told me." he said softly. "I could have helped you"

"I couldn't tell you." I replied sadly "my father made sure of that"

"Yes.." he sighed. 'he wrote about it in his journal."

I sighed as I ran a head over my locks. I turned away from him then to stare off into the distance. I heard the gravel crunch under what I assumed to be boots as I felt him move towards me. He started speaking again.

"He also mentioned the name of your contact here in this city and that you were to meet this person tonight."

I didn't respond. I couldn't. He was standing right behind me. I could feel him breathing on the back of my neck; hear the intake of breath as he inhaled my scent. The move was an instinctive one on my part; almost without conscious thought, I tilted my head to the side exposing my uncovered throat. I felt, rather than heard, his immediate response to my action. He stepped in closer to my body. His hands slid around my waist slowly...gently. A whisper of air brushed against my throat. His arms tightened around me. Soft lips brushed my skin. I sighed.

Pulling me into his body, he hugged me tighter and rested his head against mine.

"Its over now" he whispered in my ear

I could feel what felt to be tears tickling the corners of my eyes.

"With your father gone and your stepmother in jail, the hold they had on you is now gone"

The words flowed over me as he quietly spoke. Their meaning not yet fully grasped.

"I spoke to your contact tonight," he continued as he held me. "He told me he'd found a little black book identical to the one your father had. "

I frowned, leaning slightly away to turn and look back at him.

"Really?" I asked surprised. I only knew of the one book my father had had in his possession. Its secrets had held me prisoner for years.

"Oh yes." I could hear a smug tone in his voice now that hadn't been there before. "and this one came with a lock"

" A what?" I turned in his arms to look up at him. He wore a smirk on his face and had a twinkle in his eyes, His eyes never twinkled! "What do you mean a lock" I asked pointedly.

" I mean a lock." he smiled down at me. "Your contact was a little reluctant to part with the book of course but I was able to...persuade him so to speak."

I rolled my eyes at that statement. Max was not someone people wanted to cross on a good day. If my contact had thought to withold information in hopes of a payout, it would not have ended well for him. Hmmm...There had been another black book. Interesting. Hopefully it held the information I had been searching for all these years. Max now had that book. I didn't need to know the details .

Letting go of me, Max turned and walked back to his car. I waited. He was back moments later, a little black book in his hand. He held it out to me and I slowly reached out and took it. For a few moments I just stared at it. I wondered if it could be the key to the mystery I had been sent to solve by my father, After ten years of searching, I was suddenly frightened at the thought of what I would find.

A touch on my shoulder brought me back to the present. It was Max. I looked at the book in my hand and then at him. He reached into his back pocket and held his hand out to me, palm facing up. I glanced down to find a tiny key in his hand. Surprised, I looked back at him.

"Where did you...?" I began

He shook his head. No questions.

Nervously I took the key and searched for the lock he'd said was on the book. Found it! With a deep breath I slowly inserted it into the lock. It fit! Slowly turning the key I heard the click of the locking mechanism disengage seconds before the lock popped open. With hands trembling nervously I released the lock and opened the book. On the very first page lay a black and white photo of a woman. She was smiling at the camera. I recognized that smile. It was my mother.

I looked at Max. Confused. How did my contact get a book with a picture of my mother in it in his possession? There were no pictures of her left. They'd all been destroyed by my stepmother. I looked back down at the picture. Maybe not all of them. Hmm. I turned the page. There were notes written.

'My dearest daughter, if you are reading this diary then it means I am no longer with you. As much as I would have loved to watch you grow into the beautful young woman I know you will become, I am afraid fate might have other plans. For this reason I have decided to take certain steps to ensure that you are taken care of when I am gone. I loved your father very much but if he ever found out about my plans he would move heaven and earth to stop me and to keep from you what is rightfully yours. I have entrusted the safe keeping of my diary to a loyal friend who will hold it until you have come of age. "

I continued reading, absorbing information and details written in my mothers handwriting. So many answers to questions I'd kept to myself, after she had disappeared, were now being revealed. It was overwhelming. And then I gasped.

"What is it?" Max asked.

He had been so silent this entire time I'd somehow managed to forget he was there. With me. Again.

"Journey whats wrong?" he asked again.

I couldn't speak. My voice had left me. I handed him the book instead, still open to the page I had just read. I watched as his eyes followed the words on the page and waited for the moment he would see what I had seen. I watched closely as his eyebrows started to rise the more he read. Suddenly his entire body went still. He slowly lowered his hand with book in tow and looked at me in shock. I could only nod my confirmation of what he'd just read.

My father may have been what most, in our world, would call a hybrid and the last of his kind, but my mother was apparently not as human as I had been led to believe. In fact she wasn't human at all. If what my mother wrote in her diary was true, then it meant that not only was she Pure Blood, descended directly from our current line of royalty, then I, as her only child and living blood relative, was Pure Blood as well.

It was a bloodline that could only be passed down from mother to daughter. A bloodline that carried with it an inheritance. An inheritance she had made sure to note in her journal, worth over fifty million dollars. An inheritance I was eligible to receive on my eighteenth birthday with one clause. I would only have access to a portion of the inheritance. Full access would only be granted on the day of my wedding, should I chose to marry, and only if the groom was by own choosing.

Max had been my choice for a groom despite my father's many attempts to see me wed to others of his choosing.

Max and I had wed...ten years ago.

Ten years! The significance of the timing of my wedding and the mission my father had sent me on soon after, and my inheritance, hit me all at once and my legs, already shaky, finally gave out on me.

I would have hit the ground hard if not for Max. He caught me as I went down and then...he held me. Held me as the floodgates opened and I cried. Cried for the mother I had lost. Cried for the years I had lost not being with the man I loved. Cried for the years I had wasted chasing an illusion. Cried for the years I'd spent believing I was less than worthy.

The darkness inside me had a name; had an identity. I felt whole again. I felt like I finally belonged. I was home. I was Pure Blood.