Double Moon

  I blinked slowly. Finally, I managed to open my eyes and wake up after so many failed attempts.

  I tried to focus my blurred vision and the first thing I saw was a pair of deep blue eyes, straight out of my dreams, framed by an angelic face, bending over me and giving me his best smile. For a moment I thought I was going to faint.

  Erik was back. My Erik, the love of my life, was here in body and spirit. I saw it in his eyes, in the clearness of his gaze.

  “Hello, my love.”

  His voice sounded like heavenly music in my ears.

  “Hi,” I croaked thickly. I cleared my throat with a slight cough.

  “How do you feel?”

  “Like I’ve been run over by a truck.” He laughed, but it sounded hollow. It was clear that this was no time for jokes.

  “You’ll feel much better soon,” he frowned, knitting his brows. “You’re very strong. I still don’t understand how you were able to hold out. Rudolf couldn’t erase your memories, it was amazing,” he added as an afterthought.

  “You do know that I don’t understand anything?” I felt lousy, as if I was high. It was a really unpleasant feeling. The last thing my head needed now was riddles. “By the way, you seem to have your memory back. How did that happen?”

  “We'll talk about that later.” He leaned closer and kissed me gently on the lips.

  I felt his energy surging through my body and I came back to life. My heart pounded wildly again. I tasted his sweet lips for a few fleeting seconds. “We have to get out of here.” He pushed away the blankets that covered my body and put my feet on the ground gently. “Do you think you can walk?”

  I nodded. I felt extremely weak. My muscles were shaking, but I managed to stay upright. He put an arm around my waist and I leaned against him. The backlash that swept through me took my breath away. It reminded me of the trip to the lake the year before. I felt as reassured and comfortable as I did then. Blood quickly rose to my cheeks and I blushed, as usual.

  “Come on. Luke’s waiting for us outside.”

  I looked around, trying to identify the place. Where were we? Was it a hospital? A laboratory? A spaceship? The white walls gleamed under the cold fluorescent lights as we made our way. There was a deathly silence all around us, giving me the creeps.

  “Where are we?” I ventured to ask, as I held onto Erik’s neck.

  “We’re in one of our special bases.”

  We moved quickly. Erik explained everything without going into too much detail. I smiled to myself. There was no doubt. He was back, him and his whole overprotective aura.

  I never thought I'd be as happy as I was then.

  “So you have a base in Vancouver?”

  ”We're not in Vancouver.”

  “We aren’t?” I blurted with a touch of hysteria in my voice.

  “We're in Iceland.”

  I stood with my mouth open, unable to say anything.

  I’d traveled, or rather they’d dragged me, to the other side of the world and I hadn’t even been aware of it. What else had happened to me while I’d been dead to the world?

  The blush in my cheeks disappeared and left my face ashen. Erik picked me up when he saw my knees buckling. I was about to faint. I rested my head on his chest, breathing hard. Anxiety stopped me from enjoying the closeness of his body, but I breathed in the scent of his skin and I could feel my muscles starting to relax.

  The freezing wind whipped my face when we went outside. The sky was a strange amber color. Before me lay an inhospitable landscape, uninhabited and surreal. I looked around at the uneven ground formed by a vast expanse of solidified lava covered with a layer of faded green moss, more like a thick carpet, old and worn, than dry grass on rock.

  For a moment I forgot why I was there and I got carried away by the feeling that I was in a fairy tale, full of magic and fantasy; it only needed elves and goblins all over the place. The theory that I’d somehow been drugged took form in my addled brain.

  “Is she okay? Have they...?” Luke's voice rang out a few yards from me. I noticed how it cracked at the end and prevented him from finishing his question.

  “No, she's just tired and lost. Go and get the car; I’ll try to keep her from blacking out again.”

  I clung to him, digging my nails into his skin. I didn’t want him to let me go. But Erik was much stronger and he freed himself effortlessly. He sat me on the ground and put his arms back around my shoulders.

  “Stella, look at me, don’t go to sleep, honey. Don’t close your eyes, you hear me?” he repeated again and again, sounding more and more anxious.

  I raised my eyes, forcing my heavy eyelids to follow his instructions. Then a voice like thunder echoed from behind me.

  “I don’t think you asked permission to take… material from the laboratory.” The voice droned, cold and dark. Like the voice from my nightmares.

  Erik quickly slid away from me. Before I knew it, I saw him standing between me and the newcomer, the same guy I’d met at Erik’s house months before, when all this madness began. I curled up, hugging my knees. I thought I was going to witness a fierce and bitter struggle. Nothing could have been further from the truth.

  Erik stood still, tense. His face, contorted with rage, made him look like an avenging angel. He stared at his opponent, who was twice as big as him. I couldn’t help noticing how Erik's face had taken on a fierce, frightening, supernatural expression.

  I looked into his eyes and what I saw paralyzed me. They weren’t their familiar blue. A pearl gray, like molten steel, took possession of them, and gave them a dazzling coolness. I gasped and covered my mouth with both hands. Panic about what might happen didn’t stop me being totally fascinated by what I was seeing. It was a startling, surreal sight for someone like me.

  For someone so human.

  Erik's body began to sway, like a ship riding a strong tide, his face wracked with pain. Beads of sweat ran down his forehead. I had no idea what was causing it.

  I turned my gaze to the big guy and I caught a hint of a smile on his face. He felt he was winning this bizarre battle. I looked back at my angel. I couldn’t stand seeing Erik suffering like that, gutted by pain; I wanted to help him, but what could I do if I didn’t even know what was happening?

  The idea came to my mind when I saw my angel about to double up with the pain that Rudolf was inflicting on him. His legs began to give way and he fell onto the rocks, kneeling. ‘Erik, Erik, don’t give up. Hold on a little longer,’ I thought, opening my mind. Could he read my thoughts, if I allowed him to? I tried again but this time with his brother. ‘Luke, where are you? Come, come quickly, Erik needs you!’ I thought desperately and I focused again on my angel’s warped face. ‘Erik, my love, please don’t give up. Fight for us! Don’t leave me, please, fight! I love you.’

  He straightened up with difficulty and pushed against the ground to get up, with fierce determination in his eyes.

  I saw the surprise on Rudolf’s face when Luke appeared out of nowhere. He hadn’t been expecting more opponents.

  A special light pierced Luke’s eyes and transformed them in the same way as Erik’s, making them look terrifying. They held hands wordlessly.

  The wind became a hurricane. I crawled up to a streetlight and grabbed onto it with all my strength. The energy began to flow between the two brothers and covered them in a spectacular golden light. The giant who’d been about to take Erik down stared at them in disbelief and panic.

  The clouds began to scud across the sky, and the wind lifted my feet off the ground. The three of them stood motionless, as if the gathering storm was none of their business.

  Rudolf suddenly began to tremble and crumpled to the ground. The noise he made when he hit the rocks was deafening, like a heavy block of iron. Erik and Luke stared at the limp figure writhing in agony at their feet. Then, when I thought that nothing could surprise me anymore, Rudolf’s body disappeared without a trace.

  I screamed, but the wind stifled it.

>   The storm stopped as quickly as it had begun. I collapsed exhausted onto the ground. Erik raced over to me. He knelt beside me and took my pale face in his warm hands.

  “It’s over, come here,” he whispered, pressing me to his chest, rocking me gently.

  I couldn’t answer. I couldn’t put two words together. Luke parked the SUV beside us. I was confused by what had just happened, but even so I noticed its enormous, somewhat strange wheels. Erik helped me climb into the car. He sat in the back seat and kept hugging me.

  We sped away from that desolate but fascinating place, heading for Keflavik airport. A strange silence settled between us. I couldn’t speak until we were on the plane, bound for Vancouver.

  “I need to know that I'm not crazy, so if you don’t mind, can you explain what’s been going on since I was kidnapped?”

  Luke stared out of the window and although his lips curled into a faint smile, he didn’t say anything. Erik, sitting on the other side, sighed and began to tell me everything, caressing my hand, trying to reassure me in spite of what he was saying.

  Apparently I’d been the victim of some kind of abduction. Rudolf wanted to possess my mind, not just brainwash me. He wanted to try out new experiments on me. He didn’t care about my stem cells; he was more interested in being able to control the mind and thoughts of a human. The curious thing was that after three days he hadn’t gotten anywhere. According to Erik, Rudolf got desperate. After all, he was experimenting illegally on me; no-one else knew about what he was doing. My mind couldn’t have withstood the pressure. If they hadn’t pulled me out of there, that bastard would have ended up killing me or leaving me like a vegetable.

  I could see the anguish on Erik’s face as he told me what had happened.

  “So should I be feeling something weird in my head right now?”

  “No, you shouldn’t. Like I told you, he couldn’t get into your mind.” There was a kind of satisfaction in his voice, as well as a little discomfort.

  “Why couldn’t he?” I asked, not knowing if that was a good or a bad thing.

  “I don’t know, it was weird. Humans usually have minds less complex than yours,” he frowned.

  “So when I tried to contact you mentally, didn’t it work?” I knew it was stupid of me to think otherwise, but in the depths of my being I’d felt something special at that moment.

  “Yes, it worked,” he admitted, to my surprise. “And that was weird too. We’d never made a connection with a human before. It was impossible but you did it.” He turned his sea-blue gaze on me, pleased and intrigued at the same time.

  I was overwhelmed. Me; the most ordinary person in the world, had been able to do something exceptional. It was a real high to feel good about myself. For a moment I thought that that was how Beth must feel all the time. I beamed with pleasure.

  “Even I heard you screeching,” said Luke, who’d stayed out of the conversation until now. “You should learn how to control your mental volume. Screaming like a madwoman in somebody else’s head isn’t a very nice thing to do,” he added with his usual irony.

  Erik put his arm behind my head and slapped his brother on the back of the neck.

  The three of us started laughing.

  “How did you get your memory back?” I asked when we’d stopped laughing.

  “When I saw Rudolf dragging you away, something clicked in my head. I couldn’t bear to see you like that. All my memories came streaming back as if they’d never disappeared. Then Luke arrived and stopped me. I was going to attack Rudolf and set you free, but Luke convinced me there was a better way.” He saw the curiosity on my face and without me needing to ask him, he went on. “Rudolf didn’t know that I’d got my memory back one hundred percent and that was my big advantage. I pretended to have amnesia, like he expected, so I could be near you, watch over you. But I had no idea about his plans to experiment on you. I thought he’d just file a report to his superiors when you were taken prisoner, but that wasn’t the case and I couldn’t allow it. Without thinking twice, we decided to get you out of there before...” He hesitated for a second, but he quickly regained his lilting tone. “In short, we were lucky.”

  “So, is it over?”

  “Fortunately, no one knows what happened, except for Rudolf. And he can’t say anything now,” he said, a mask of pain and sadness covering his face.

  “Rudolf isn’t coming back, is he?”

  I felt a visceral fear for that man. He’d been like something out of a horror story.

  “No, Rudolf’s dead,” he replied.

  “Dead? So why did he disappear?” I asked, anxiously.

  “He didn’t disappear, they teleported him. I don’t think I told you about that part,” he smiled weakly.

  “There are quite a few things you haven’t told me.”

  “You see, every one of my species wandering around the Earth has a neurotransmitter implanted under the skin, so if something happens to us on your planet, if we die for example, it automatically sends a signal and we’re teleported to one of our bases, to avoid leaving clues for humans.”

  “I thought this madness would never end.” I exclaimed.

  Erik looked at me with clouded, dark, inscrutable eyes.

  “It’s not Rudolf that really worries me,” he said. “And, to be honest, I doubt very much that this is over.”

  I saw regret on his face. There was something else, something that wouldn’t let us love each other freely. I didn’t want to dig any deeper. I was exhausted, tired beyond belief. I closed my eyes as my angel kissed me gently on the forehead.

  If I’d learnt something in all this time, it was that there was no use in making plans; that life just happens while we worry about what is yet to come. I wasn’t going to make that mistake again. Erik was right there with me. Nothing and no one would be able to take those memories away from me. That was all that mattered. I raised my eyes searching for my little piece of heaven, my haven, and found it in my angel’s face.

  I lost myself in his eyes once more and surrendered to the joy of it.

  “Hello Mom.”

  Nicole was acting crazy, yelling at the phone.

  When she heard my voice she turned round. She ran to hug me, her tears wetting my hair.

  “Oh my God! Stella, where on Earth have you been?” she cried over and over again, stroking my hair.

  “Don’t worry, mom. I'm fine,” I said awkwardly. I felt so guilty seeing her like that!

  Erik didn’t come in. He closed the door behind me and gave me a last look of regret. I started feeling bad when he left. I’d made him promise that he wouldn’t disappear again, but being away from him made me anxious. I sought refuge in Nicole’s arms.

  “I was worried to death! Can you tell me once and for all what this is all about?!” Her anger was starting to build up, now that her relief at seeing me safe and well had passed.

  “It's complicated,” I said, knowing what was coming.

  I didn’t want to lie to her, Erik and I had made up a story closer to reality, avoiding the gory details.

  “Erik disappeared,” I began.

  “But that happened a long time ago. What does he have to do with all this?”

  “He didn’t leave me the way I thought. He had a very serious car accident. He had traumatic brain injury and one of the consequences was temporary amnesia.”

  Nicole looked at me with suspicion, squinting, as if she was trying to find me out. I tried not to get nervous. She would notice any signs of falsehood in me. She knew me too well, she was my mother. If it had been difficult to pretend everything was normal when I called her before, it wouldn’t be any easier now having her right in front of me, looking at her eyes, clouded by tears and shadowed with worry. It would be very difficult for me to keep my composure.

  “Do you remember Erik’s brother, Luke?”

  “Yes, the red-haired boy, right?”

  “Yes. Well, Luke came to the restaurant the other night while I was working, and he told me what h
ad happened to his brother. He’d been found in a Vancouver hospital after they’d been looking for him all over the state. Apparently, Erik didn’t have any ID.”

  “I still don’t understand why you were away for four days without letting me know,” she interrupted, her voice still hard. “You can be thankful that Luke called me to tell me he knew where you were and that he’d take care of you and bring you back home safe and sound.”

  “Yes, I know. It was Luke who asked me to go with him to see if Erik would get his memory back when he saw me. I didn’t think twice. I went with him to Vancouver that same afternoon,” I whispered, without looking at her.

  I began to worry that my story wasn’t as credible as I’d thought at first. I had to change my tactics.

  “I’m sorry mom. I’ve been irresponsible. I won’t do it again, I promise you.”

  “No Stella, this time you've gone too far. Since you met that guy you’ve been behaving very strangely.” Her tone of voice, both severe and apologetic, warned me that I wasn’t going to like what she was going to say next. “I don’t like the way you’ve been acting since you started seeing him. I don’t think it’s a good idea for you two to stay together.”

  The blood froze in my veins and my heart was paralyzed.

  “What?!” Her words burned in my ears.

  Nicole’s expression changed from reproachful to worried when I started shaking like a jelly.

  How could my mother ask me to do that? Did she want me to relive the torture I’d lived through months ago? I was about to faint. The ground began to move under my feet.

  “I can’t live without Erik. If he leaves, I’ll die.”

  “You’re blowing things out of proportion. You’d better go to bed; we'll talk when you've calmed down.”

  Nicole's face was red with rage and pain at what I’d said.

  This time I’d crossed the line. Her reaction was quite logical, considering my behavior in recent months. And to make matters worse, I couldn’t think of anything better to do than threaten her. I felt terrible. I felt broken inside when I saw my mother’s glazed eyes.

  I just nodded silently and went straight to my room. It wouldn’t be easy to convince Nicole to accept Erik as part of my life again. But I wasn’t going to give in. I would never give up my angel. Neither my mother’s angriest outburst nor some nutcase alien would separate me from Erik.

 

  FAREWELL

  “Fate is the one that shuffles the cards but we are the ones who play.”

  William Shakespeare