Who the hell are you? I want to scream, but in a desperate way, not an accusatory one. What is going on with my sister? Where are you taking her? What have you done to her?
When she reaches him, she slips her arm through his, and he covers her hand with his. The way she gazes up at him tells me he’s someone important to her.
He gently touches her cheek, his lips moving, but I can’t make out what he says. She nods, smiles, still in that sad way.
Someone very, very important to her.
They turn their backs to me and walk leisurely back toward the shadows filling an alleyway that opens to another street, as if they have all the time in the world. As if they have an eternity.
A lump forms in my throat.
At the edge of the shadows, before she steps into the misty dark alley, Sazahn pauses and glances over her shoulder at me one more time. Fleetingly, she brushes her fingertips to her lips, then flicks her air kiss toward me.
Feeling like my heart is breaking, I lift a shaking hand and pretend to catch it.
A smile curves her lips, and for an instant, she’s the sister I know again. My baby sister. Then her eyes flash with tiny, inhuman fiery orange-red pinpricks of light. Just the way the man’s did.
I gasp, though in horror or shock, I’m not sure.
Maybe both.
Sazahn turns away, and she and the man lean against each other as they disappear into the gaping, dark maw of the alley.
A moment later, a loud whoosh, like someone shaking out a sheet or a pair of enormous wings flapping, fills the air, but I’m too anguished to pay it any real attention. Tears ooze down my face as several realizations slam into me at once.
The first: Her eyes, and his, are not tricks of the light or my imagination.
The second: The thing I found off-putting and unsettling about her is, I realize now, the cloak of darkness surrounding her. Darkness tinged with something that feels…evil.
The third, and the one that hurts the most: I know I will never see my sister again.