I look around me, but see nothing except blurry views of the houses we are so flashily passing by. I squint my eyes, since the effect of the air is too much for my lids to prevent, and suddenly, we've stopped. My heart beats uncontrollably in its tight space in response to the immediate halt.
"Here's the car." Says Nicklaus as he helps me climb down in my trembling state. "You promise, remember?" He adds as if he's known that I'm about to ask him what in the heaven's name just happened.
I nod, and hop into the car, whose passenger seat's door Nicklaus is holding for me. He crosses the front of the bonnet, and enter, turning on the engine and start moving.
On the way, I shift on the seat to look at him closely. "Can I ask you a question? It's not about anything too inhuman you do?"
"Too inhuman?" He mirrors my word. He caught me there. Sharp Nicklaus, I see.
"Your eyes, why do they change?" I ask one of the less important question that's a part of his inhuman doings. I hope he'd answer this simple one, so I think it is.
"It takes diversities, many diversities. Sometimes it can be through emotions. Sadden moments are different from delight ones, and same goes for the varieties. Sometimes, intentions too as well. You'd have to study the ancient book to know fully well." He finishes explaining. I want to ask him about the ancient book as he's called it, but decided not to press further. I should be thankful that he's answered me for the first time.
Raising my gaze again with another question that's came up, I start. "You said you don't do the girlfriend thing, what's the meaning? Does it mean you'd never want to fall in love with someone, even if it's for an amounted period of time?"
Nicklaus smirks, facing ahead the windscreen of the car, his knuckles holding the wheels floppily. "I don't know how to make you understand, at least not now, but you surely will later. I have my reason. They always get hurt."
"If so, why save me? Why be with me, without wanting to? Why show up at all?" I am disordered, unknown of his reasons. But then, I remember agreeing not to ask for any disclosure for now.
"I can't explain the effect, Rayne. As I had told you, you are bewitching to me. I have no answer to this as well." He says and glance sharply me before he returns his eyes to the street. I groan on the inside, unsatisfied that he has no answers to these questions. I feel frustrated for an unexplainable reason.
"Fine, no more question for tonight." He smirks as I change my position to a more comfortable one. Soon, my house shows up amongst the others and I watch Shade's house as Nicklaus stops the engine on the street. She should be at home now, if she didn't part another destination. Mentions my inner voice of a somnambulant creature.
Natural blue orbs of Nicklaus stares into my silver grey ones, locked into a comfortable silence, none of us not knowing what to say. Well, I couldn't be sure for him.
"Well, at least now, I am certain that you're not just an ordinary human. You are not a killer. You are not a bad person. You are not the villian, but a guy with some immerse powers. Whatever you are, I believe you aren't made to do bad." I muster the courage to read him in a guessing mode.
"Not when you know the whole truth. When you do, we'd know if really you can and will stay, or would leave in fear." He leans across his seat to mine, past my body and open the car-door for me. I climb down onto the walkway, and check the car, which I'm assuming to be Royce.
"Rayne." He calls before I can turn towards the wooden fenced gate to enter into the house. "Sleep tight." He adds, and I nod in comply.
"You too. Night."
Finishing with those said words, I enter the gate, able to see, because of the outdoorsy light bulb, pass by the shadowy fountain in the dark and to the front door, luckily, there's light at this part of the house too. I enter the key into the lock, and open it as I hear the tires wheel at a distance from me, before someone's voice call my name.
"Rayne." Sharply, I'm quick to check the figure, but calm on seeing Carl at the gate. I smile at him even though he can't see it and walk over to me.
"Hey, what are you doing here at this time?" I ask. I can not presume that he's visiting a nearby house at almost almost eleven in the deep of a moonless night.
"Actually, I came to check up on you. I was here around seven but met no one, so I thought I'd come back again. So here I am. Plus, I have something to tell you." He tells me, with each steps he takes to meet up with me. "But it can wait, who was that that dropped you off?"
"A friend." I answer sharply, leaving no idea for Carl to guess it could be Nicklaus. From my time with seeing the way they react when knowing that the other was near, or with me, they'd fight, I had better learn not to disclose one to the other. I don't want Nicklaus issue to start the next conversation we'll be having.
"I see." Carl watches the street straight down, as if he'd notice something. "Should we enter, or what?"
Oh, I hadn't come into realization of that.
"The roof? I'd like to take in more of this cool air." I smile a crook smile which Carl returns tenderly.
"Good with me."
"There's a ladder just at the side of the house." With the help of my finger, I point to the location. Carl chuckles deeply, and shakes his head.
"I don't need a ladder." He says, just before he runs towards the building, and with expert and quick hands, he's able to climb the structures, and sharply, he's at the top of the house, preparing to take a seat. I stay fixated, gaping in unexpectancy of what he's just done. Perhaps, I think too lowly for him as well as I had done for Nicklaus.
"You coming?"
"Sure, but not that way. That way is discriminating." I tell him and take the ladder instead. Getting to the top, he helps me up and I take a sit next to him. For some minutes, we stay in tactiturn, enjoying the breeze.
"I should have told you this; I can't find the book any more." I pass a sorry look to him.
"How? Since when?" He's rather busy on feasting on another expression that says he's not worried about the book at all.
"Since the other night, at the bar, in your estate. After I was threatened by Lydia, telling me to leave Nicklaus alone." I laugh privately to myself. I remember then when I was still angry at Nicklaus, and wouldn't even care if he doesn't want me, but now, the tables have been turned.
I add, and opt for the truth. "When I got home, I found my bed, soaked with a shark's blood, and its same blood, scripted a bold word DRAIN. Shade says she saw Lydia that same night across the street. The book was gone as well in the process."
Carl looks at me in disbelieve, most likely shocked that I'd keep this much from him, but what did he expect me to do?
"And you couldn't have told me any sooner?"
"It didn't seem like it was necessary." The word has jumbled out before I can get a hold of it.
"But now it is necessary?" He questions back, his voice raised. I keep mute.
"I couldn't have just came to you like that. I'm sorry." I say, and he sighs heavily.
"Whatever that lady's turned to, it's worst. I bet she has plans to really making your life a hell." He breaths, pausing. "You never read anything inside that book, did you?" His eyes are on me.
I shake my head. "No."
Carl breaths out. "The book is like an enlightenment, scripted to help in making us know what had happened." He exhales again, pausing just briefly. "As the story had portrayed; the ancestors of those with the warm tanned skin, horns, wolf marks at their chest, big and beasty, and with crimson eyes on their lens are loathe by the ancestors of those with red burning eyes like scarlet, whitish skin, and compellers...and vice versa. Till date, they never get along. Their history is complicated and ununderstable, especially by mortals. The ones with scarlet eyes are filled with...this...so much hatred." He pauses, squint his eyes so his forehead wrinkles in...disgust?
He regains his normal demeanor, and continue. "They are so cruel, and have killed so many people in order to maintain their own survival. For this particular reason, we...the other ones with the horns made as vow to fight against them, and ensure that they don't destroy all what nature has created. The reason why they are a generation of the guardian is dense. No one knows why."
Carl breaths out again. I manage to keep mute, my mind shut, subconscious on silence while he talks. I want to keep in as much details I can. This fact is alluring, and feels real before my thinking.
"The last creatures, those with the fiery eyes, beast very large, and pours fire from its throat are almost— and sometimes regarded— inexistent. They don't come out much. Even if the last two creatures sees them, they wouldn't know, because they keep hideous. Not on land as the others, but in the sky with powers so great that they can create Godzillas. A prophecy once state that there will be a time when these three creatures will have a fight, one that will bring them so much apart from they were. Only to gain the... ring... just within the cave." He finishes with chuckling.
"That was..." I halt, not knowing what to say that will fit in. This new, explanatory story of what Larry has shown me gets me wheeled. I don't even know what to think about it. Could it be true?