Into the Wild Dark

CHAPTER 29 - SUNNY

Ch. 29: Sunny's Humanity

September 9 | Day

We waited for Jack through the night. He never returned. Mal slept fitfully, curled beside me in the quiet Creole cottage. I watched her steady breathing as her rapid eye movement fluttered behind closed eyelids. I listened to the weather take a turn for the worse before dawn, and we woke up to grey skies, thunder, and lightning. Thinking to check my phone for missed calls, Jack's number wasn't in my recents.

"I'm dialing his parents to see if maybe he's at their place," I said as I breezed through the living room with my overnight bag in hand.

"I already beat you to it. They don't know where he is. I made up a story to keep them from worrying, but if he doesn't show up, I don't know what I'll tell them." She held her forehead, face mostly red-rimmed eyes and persed lips. "I wish he would've let us explain instead of walking out on us."

"Put yourself in his shoes. There's no telling what that revelation made him think. What will Darcy do when he finds out Jack is missing?" I asked.

She shrugged and let her arm flop to her side. "I don't know, but let's get back to the estate and see if he's there. He might've headed that way after cooling down since he knew we were scheduled to return this morning. We could be freaking out for nothing."

I followed her lead and loaded the car. The drive from New Orleans to Ponchatoula lasted over an hour. An hour of tense silence–more than enough time for me to sink deeper into depression. I waited for the summoning from Wallace, the inevitable dawning that I hadn't succeeded at keeping my wings.

I didn't know what to do next. I felt the strangeness in my body. A tenuous thread of survival instinct steeled along my spine. Ahead of me stretched an uncertain future, same as for everybody else. New fears emerged. I needed a place to stay. I'd have to find a job, make money, learn to take care of myself. Gone was the sheltered bubble that had kept me detached from hard-scrabble reality.

Without mother or father–family, period–as a built-in support system, I was in a worse off position than most, I realized. I lacked a formal education. I had no friends or colleagues to vouch for me. I couldn't rely on Mal. She was already taking care of her sisters. Besides, until the three of them were free, she was living on borrowed resources, like I had been.

I firmed my jaw, staring through the windshield at the scenery flying to meet us. To stand on my own two feet required know-how that I hadn't acquired during my training as a lesser angel. Survival was pass or fail. Faith, I had had aplenty in the past. But my reserves of self-belief were running low. It was easy to expect the best when life threw nothing but the best at you; an entirely different matter after you'd experienced terrible traumas.

The storm blew us into the picturesque small town, Louisiana's Strawberry Capital of the World. We zipped along its main street and turned down the private road to the antebellum mansion. Dreary rain continued its descent, apropos of my recent tumble from grace. I pressed steepled fingers to my lips and prayed Jack was behind the walls of the house.

When we walked into the Ashivant estate, however, it was Darcy Cyprian occupying a throne-like chair in the foyer. "Hi." Mal sounded strained as she came to a halt meters away from him. I arrested my step, too.

Sitting with a hand to his temple, a lock of hair falling over his face, the vampire looked up with a grin. "Hello-hello, Malice. Glad to see you hail. We have things to discuss, namely my utter shock and dismay at discovering an OASIS spy has been blending into the scenery at Jack's parents' apartment complex." His voice roughened on the last words.

"Please, I don't know what you're talking about. I'm not a spy!" Kato gasped in discomfort. Darcy had his other hand tangled around a heavy chain gripped tight to the teen's throat.