Chapter 2
1123 Words
The woman’s voice was a sharp contrast to the mechanical roar of the city. It had a melodic quality that pricked at Cassius’s dulled senses, pulling him back from the precipice of unconsciousness. He felt her hands; warm, soft, and terrifyingly fragile press against his shoulders.
"Sir? Sir, I need you to look at me. Are you hurt?"
Cassius forced his eyes open. The crimson haze had retreated, leaving his irises a deep, haunting grey. He looked up at the girl. She had a face that belonged in a locket; bright, wide eyes and a look of genuine concern that he found utterly foreign. She was dressed in strange, thin blue garments that crinkled when she moved.
"Touch me not," Cassius rasped. His voice sounded like dry earth shifting over stone. The vowels were elongated, the consonants sharp and archaic. "Thy hands... they burn."
The girl blinked, her brow furrowing in confusion. "I’m just checking your pulse. You’re freezing. Are you on something? You look like you’ve walked through a war zone."
Cassius managed to push himself upright against the cold brick of the alley. His mind was a chaotic storm. 2024. Six hundred years. Seven? The math was a jagged blade in his mind. The wife he had failed to protect, the life he had led in the shadow of the Pyrenees—all of it was dust.
"I know not of your wars," he murmured, his gaze fixed on a flashing sign across the street. "I know only that the sun has died and been replaced by these... wretched lanterns."
"Okay, you’re definitely concussed or in shock," the girl said, her voice shifting into a professional, authoritative tone. "I’m a nurse. My name is Chloe. There’s a clinic two blocks from here, but you look like you need the ER. Can you stand?"
Cassius looked at her, his paranoia flaring like a torch. He saw the pulse jumping in her neck. It was a rhythmic, tempting drumbeat. He could kill her in a heartbeat. He could drain her and vanish into the shadows. But there was a light in her eyes; a spark of selfless intent that stayed his hand. It reminded him of a kindness he hadn't seen since the world was quiet and green.
"I require no house of healing," he said, clutching his chest. "The malady I bear... 'tis not one for your kind to mend."
"Look, 'thou' or 'thee' or whatever, you’re bleeding from the mouth and you’re white as a sheet," Chloe insisted, ignoring his warning. she reached for a small, glowing device in her pocket. "I’m calling an ambulance."
"No!" Cassius hissed. He moved with a speed that made her gasp, his hand snapping out to catch her wrist. He didn't squeeze, but the sheer coldness of his skin made her shiver. "I pray thee, do not summon the guards. I seek only the silence. I seek... to understand where the time has fled."
Chloe stayed frozen, her heart hammering against her ribs. She should have been terrified. Any sane woman would have screamed and run. But she saw the way his hands trembled. She saw the sheer, unadulterated terror in his ancient eyes. He looked like a king who had lost his kingdom and realized he was standing in the ruins.
"There are no guards," she said softly, her voice trembling slightly. "Just doctors. But if you won't go... I can't just leave you here in an alley. It's May in Boston, but it's still cold enough to catch pneumonia."
Cassius let go of her wrist, his strength failing again. The blood he had taken from the man in the basement was being consumed rapidly by the sheer effort of staying conscious in this sensory nightmare.
"The year," he whispered, looking up at the towering glass monoliths. "Tell me truly. Is it truly the year of our Lord, two thousand and twenty-four?"
Chloe nodded slowly. "Yes. May 14th, 2024."
A low, broken sound escaped Cassius’s throat—half-sob, half-growl. He leaned his head back against the brick and closed his eyes. The weight of the centuries finally crashed down on him.
"Then I am a ghost," he decayed. "A relic of a world that has been forgotten by God."
"You're not a ghost," Chloe said, though she felt a chill that had nothing to do with the wind. She reached into her bag and pulled out a bottle of water. "Drink this. I’m going to stay with you until you can walk. I'm Chloe, by the way. I think I mentioned that, but you seem a little... out of it."
Cassius didn't take the water. He watched her, his paranoid mind searching for the trap. Why would a creature of light stay with a creature of shadow?
"Why dost thou tarry?" he asked. "I am a stranger. A monster in the dark."
Chloe gave a small, weary smile. It was the smile of someone who spent twelve hours a day looking at the broken and the hurting. "I'm a nurse, stranger. We don't leave people in alleys. It's against the rules."
She sat down on a plastic crate a few feet away, her presence a strange, stabilizing anchor in the chaos. For the first time in centuries, Cassius didn't feel the urge to hunt. He felt a flicker of something far more dangerous.
Curiosity.
But as he watched her, a sharp, piercing sound erupted from the street a siren, wailing like a banshee. Cassius bolted upright, his fangs beginning to ache as his fight-or-flight instinct took over.
"The demons!" he cried out, his eyes darting frantically. "They come for me!"
"It’s just a police car!" Chloe shouted over the noise, reaching out to steady him.
But Cassius was already moving. He scrambled toward the back of the alley, his movements jagged and desperate. He climbed a chain-link fence with unnatural grace, disappearing into the darkness of a construction site.
"Wait!" Chloe called out, running to the fence. "You’re hurt! Come back!"
She stared into the shadows, but he was gone. She looked down at the ground where he had been sitting. A small, heavy object lay in the dirt. She picked it up. It was a coin, thick and made of solid gold, stamped with a seal that looked like it belonged in a museum, a medieval crest from a city called Carcassonne.
Chloe tucked the coin into her pocket, her heart racing. She had a feeling that her boring life of double shifts and hospital cafeterias was about to change forever.
- Writer
