Ruin - By N.M. Martinez Page 0,86

older ones to the younger ones. I don't bother arguing with him.

Alex appears suddenly with the canteens filled. “Let's go.” His voice is gruff. He cuts the words off with a snap.

Stephan turns to me quickly before I stand up, a hand reaching out across the table, “Hey, you don't have to listen to him.”

I stand and Stephan does too. “We're going.”

He lowers his head and leans back in his chair as if he had failed at some mission to keep me. Nothing more is said between us. Alex takes my hand and leads me out of the village back into the wilderness.

Twenty-five

We walk for days more without incident, though Alex never loses that desperate look to his eyes. He keeps watch, hunting small game and only very lightly sleeping at night. When we sleep, we sleep nestled close to one another and I don't bother to fight it. It's comforting to have his arms around me, and it seems to help him as much as it helps me.

“We'll be there by sunset,” Alex finally says. He looks at me and I can only nod, glad that we'll finally be somewhere. As gorgeous as the forest is, I'm already sick of it. Then I realize that whatever our destination might be, it means the end of our journey.

Alex watches me closely. He doesn't push so hard this last day, but his eyes are constantly on me. After a while I'm even sick of that.

The sun is changing colors by the time we near our destination. Alex slows slightly, possibly because of me or possibly because he doesn't want to take me further. I recognize that last thought as nothing more than wishful thinking. It's his daughter he cares about. She's the one he should care about.

Alex stops suddenly, throwing out his arm to force me to stop alongside him. I look up at him quickly, just noticing now that I've been walking with my head mostly down. He doesn't look at me. His eyes are faced forward and his entire body is rigid. With the hand in front of me, he gives me a push behind him as I catch a glimpse of a young boy and girl.

They don't look like anything special at first, though something about the boy gives me the creeps. He stands slightly in front with dark blond hair and dark eyes. The sun is at his back, so a shadow falls over his face. The boy can't be older than thirteen, but something in his expression makes him look much older. It's in the air, a challenge of some sort. Like the bristling of a dog's fur when it meets another dog it doesn't like.

“We mean no harm,” Alex says.

The boy isn't alone. There's a girl with him. She's a few inches taller than him, but her eyes are large. She doesn't look away from the boy, not even to us. Her small mouth turns down a bit as she pleads quietly with the boy. “Please. Let's just go, Michael.”

I'm not sure what's supposed to happen. The blond boy, the one the girl calls Michael, looks at me with a gaze much too steady for one so young. I take a step further behind Alex. The boy isn't a normal, average boy. It's clear that he's another entity all together. Another one with powers, but he makes even Alex nervous.

“Michael,” the girl's voice, soft and high pitched, suddenly becomes very stern. “Please. Let's go.”

The boy softens then. His eyes fall away from us, landing on her, and then in a flash, they're gone.

Alex turns around and pulls me to him. “Are you okay?” It seems a silly question to ask since he saw that the boy never touched me. He never even came near either of us.

“Yeah, I'm fine. Who was that?”

“A powerful one. Very powerful for being so young. He's dangerous.”

Alex holds me against him for a while longer without explaining more. I think of Alex's desperate looks and the way he's been pushing us this whole time and I can't help wondering if that boy was what he'd been expecting.

I ask. Alex shakes his head though. “There are others. Smaller tribes. I have never seen him before.”

Both of us are shaken then with our unexpected introduction of sorts. I hope we don't see him again or anyone like him.

Alex runs his hand through my hair, staring into my face in a way that makes me uncomfortable. I glance away and shove my hair