get hurt,” he assured me. “That far of a fall won’t hurt me at all. It’s a vampire thing.”
“Yeah, but I’m not a vampire,” I made a point to say, even though it was obvious. ‘The fall will hurt me.”
“That’s why you’ll be on my back, so I can break the fall for you.”
I glanced back and forth between the window and him. Did I dare?
“And I promise I’ll do my best not to drop you,” he said and then gave me a smile.
I rolled my eyes at him. “Alright…I’m in.”
He went over to the window, clicked the latch open, and inched the window up, the hinges creaking and whining the entire time. After he had opened the window all the way, Laylen stuck his head out and looked down at the ground. Personally, I didn’t want to look. I mean, it wasn’t like I was afraid of heights or anything, but since I was about to jump out of a two story building, on the back of a vampire/Keeper, I thought it’d be better not to look.
Laylen ducked his head back in and turned his back to me. “Hop on.”
I had never hopped on to someone’s back before, but there was always a first time for everything, I guess. So, for the first time that I could ever remember, I hopped up piggy-back style onto someone’s back.
“You good?” Laylen asked as I moved around, trying to get comfortable.
I tightened my arms and legs around him, maybe a little too tightly. But he didn’t complain. He grabbed onto my legs and stuck his head out the window. Then with the balance of a tight-rope walker, he stood up on the window seal, giving me a full view on the glittery rock hard asphalt down below. The warm air hit my skin as I tucked my head into his back, not wanting to look.
“It’s really not that far,” he told me.
I didn’t say anything because I was too afraid to speak.
“It’ll be over in a second,” he assured me.
I shut my eyes, and then he jumped.
Chapter 5
I don’t know if any of you remember, but the few times I’ve traveled through a crystal ball, it required a very long fall down a dark tunnel. And every time I landed, I ended up hurting myself. Jumping out the window was nothing like that. It was over by the time I actually acknowledged we were falling. Laylen landed with the gracefulness of a cat, his feet hitting the asphalt with a soft thud, and I barely felt the impact.
For a moment, neither of us moved. Even the air seemed to pause, as if we’d fallen so fast, we were waiting for the rest of the world to catch up.
“You alive back there?” Laylen asked over his shoulder.
I slowly opened my eyes and looked back up at the window we’d just jumped out of. “I think so.”
He let go of my legs, and I slid off of his back. The fall must have thrown off my equilibrium or something because I felt off balance and dizzy. I started to tip sideways and Laylen caught me by the shoulder.
“What? Have you never jumped out of a window before?” He joked.
I shook my head, and we started off across the dark parking lot.
“So where exactly are we going?” I asked
“To a place that’s just up the road a little ways,” he replied.
“So we’re walking there then?” I asked, glancing up at the flickering lamppost as I walked by it.
He nodded. “It’s not very far. Plus, my car got damaged during Aislin’s and my little escape from the Death Walkers, so driving really isn’t an option.”
I looked around at the ominous-looking, graffiti-decorated buildings, the shadowed cars dotting the parking lot, and the giant garbage cans towering not too far away from us. All were perfect places for someone—or something to hide. And, okay, I know I made the choice to come out here, but now that I actually was, warnings were popping up all over in my head. And now that I thought about it, no one had ever said how high of a chance it was that Stephan and/or the Death Walkers would show up.
“Are we safe?” I asked Laylen as we reached the sidewalk that bordered the dark street.
“Hmm…Define safe,” he said, fiddling with his lip ring.
I gaped at him. “What? So we’re not safe?”
“Gemma, I already warned you it might be dangerous,” he reminded me.