Page 13 of Last Hope
And then she opened it.
As soon as she did, music emanated from the box. There were no words to the song; it was nothing but piano melodies, playing a tune Esmeralda didn’t recognize. She closed her eyes and listened for a moment to the crescendo of keys, and she imagined the fingers that would be playing them. They were probably long fingers, rapidly caressing ivory and suddenly changing, slowing down.
She could feel the song in her bones; feel the power of it, the intensity. It was a love song. She wasn’t sure how she knew that, but it was obvious. She imagined the key notes speaking to her, whispering in her ear things about love, a couple finally joining after the wall of complications that had prevented them from being together had been torn down, at last.
She opened her eyes and smiled when she looked back down at the box, at what was inside of it; there was a picture. She pulled it out and stared at it, tears coming to her eyes. It was a picture of her parents, Antonio and herself, when she was a child, about two years old, she would have guessed.
In the picture, her father was holding her in his arms; his honey eyes seemed to sparkle, even in the photograph. The baby version of herself was gripping a lock of his light brown hair and smiling. Next to them, her mother, with fiery red hair and a ton of freckles, was glaring at Antonio, who had his arm draped around her and was throwing up a peace sign at the camera.
In the photo, Esmeralda could see it all. She could see the relationship they had with each other. The sweetness of Ignacio as he held her and smiled, as if he had everything he ever wanted in the world right by his side. The way Katheryn glared at Antonio, revealing her fiery side but there was a hint of love in there. She was looking at him with that distracted look an older sister might have given an annoying younger brother.
And Antonio, oblivious to everything around him looked exactly the same as he did now, Esmeralda thought. Everything about him was the same. His black curls fell across his forehead, on his cheeks, down his neck. His black eyes held that strange sense of humor. He was in a simple T-Shirt but there was no thick white scar around his neck.
It was strange, Ezzy thought, seeing a picture of Antonio without the scar around his neck. She had become so used to seeing it there, touching it, admiring the way it seemed to glow sometimes when he was distracted or thinking about the past…
Ezzy sat the picture down to the side as well and looked in the box again. The only other thing left in there was a silver chain. She picked it up carefully and let it unravel. Connected to the chain was a charm in the shape of a heart. She brought it up to eye level and realized that it was a locket. Smiling to herself, she worked the clasp and opened it, only to be confronted by more music.
This song was no different from the first. In fact, it was the exact same one. There were still no words, but this one had no piano playing. No, this was a different instrument, one that was just as beautiful; a violin. The melodies strung in this song weren’t fast and intense. On the contrary, this melody was slow, and it sounded sad, almost in a way. But not the type of a broken heart. The kind of sadness one felt when someone showed you something completely beautiful, only to cover it up with tapestry, behind closed doors, when you knew with an innate sort of clarity that that kind of beauty deserved to be reveled.
She looked closely at the locket, and saw there was an engraving on the inside of it, in small cursive like letters.My greatest gift is you, Katheryn.Ezzy’s heart clenched. It was a locket her father had given her mother, no doubt, and the words engraved inside brought tears to her eyes.
Carefully, she unclasped the lock and put the chain around her neck, latching it back together again. The locket bumped against her collarbone, warm and inviting. Satisfied, she closed the box and then the locket and sat a moment, staring at the picture she had put to the side.
There was a feeling in her chest that had grown over the past few minutes, one that was hard to describe. An uncomfortable palpitation, trapping the air she tried to inhale inside of a box, only releasing it after what felt like minutes, so she could suck in one tiny breath, only to be robbed of it just as quickly again.
Was this why Antonio found it hard to talk about her parents? She wondered. Because of the pain? Or was it simply because, by the mere act of looking through their things, one could figure out everything you needed to know about Katheryn and Ignacio Ortiz? She realized she didn’t need a complicated explanation about their lives from Antonio. She didn’t need him to tell her anything about them, because everything about them was in that photo and it was in that box and in that locket and in the rest of those cardboard boxes. Hell, it was even inside of that house, inside of Ezzy herself, Antonio and even in their son, Viktor.
The past hardly mattered, words hardly mattered when Ezzy could hear the melody loud and clear in her mind; the melody that told her everything. It was obvious in the picture and in the music and in those few words, engraved onto an inanimate object. Katheryn and Ignacio loved, and that was all there was to it.
8
The day was warm and the sun felt nice against her bare arms. However, this wasn’t a pleasure stroll. She wasn’t out on a Saturday, midday, for fun. For Agent Victoria Phillipe, work always came first.
Work was the one thing she could always count on to be there; a workaholic, some tended to call her. But she knew she wasn’t obsessed with her job. It was something much more, besides the thrill and the adrenaline. She felt it her need to protect people. To serve and protect was the vow she had taken, and it was a way to show her independence, to show she could care for and not be cared for. It was as simple as that.
The thin chain around her neck bounced against her collarbone in a familiar way with each step she took, and it filled her with a sense of happiness to know someone was watching over her. And it wasn’t like she needed babysitting all of the time, or at all, really; which was why she had sent Terrance on an errand while she went to Isis’s apartment.
Personally, Victoria wasn’t too fond of Isis. She was arrogant and rude and a complete danger magnet. But despite the risks and despite what Victoriafeltshe would protect Isis to the best of her ability; she refused to fail.
The walk to Isis’s was rather short and Victoria had arrived within minutes, something she was grateful for. The quicker she could get through this the better. All she was going to do was ask Isis if she wanted protection. Of course, since it was daytime Isis would be in her death sleep, but she had assumed Isis’s girlfriend would be there and it would have been easier to askherthan to deal with the vampire’s attitude.
She walked up to the apartment number that she recognized as Isis’s and raised her hand to knock, but before she could bring her fist pounding on the door she heard the sound of glass breaking. Her ears perked up in alert and she sniffed the air. She caught the scent of Isis and her girlfriend…and the scent of someone else…
And she heard a commotion begin.
Without wasting any time, she kicked the door open. It splintered in half and she burst through the door, immediately crouching on the ground to begin the change. She felt her bones expand and reform, causing her to scream in agonizing pain yet when she opened her mouth to make the noise it came out as a bark due to her mouth extending into a muzzle. The clothes ripped from her body in shreds on the floor and Victoria only had a moment to be pissed about that little fact before she followed her animal instincts and rushed to where the sounds were coming from.
She burst into a bedroom where broken glass littered the floor, sun shining in full blast, adding emphasis to a giant lump on the bed beneath thick purple drapes. But that wasn’t what she paid any mind to. Isis’s girlfriend was unconscious on the floor; an enormous serpent began to slither its way over her body. Its wide jaws gaped open and Victoria could see every detail…
The string of its saliva dripped from fang to fang like a spider web, its yellow eyes bared resemblance to that of a devil’s, slit pupils and intensity…
She attacked the damn thing, taking one giant leap into the air; she was able to grab the snake’s body in her mouth and away from the girl.
The snake made a noise that was close to a human shriek but it coiled and struggled in Victoria’s strong grasp.Piece of cake,she thought easily and she bit down hard on the things body. Poisonous blood spurted into her mouth, a weird metallic taste invading her taste buds unpleasantly. However, she ignored it and kept chewing yet the serpent kept at its attempt to break free. It wriggled around and tried to wrap its massive body around Victoria’s but she was too powerful for it. With one final bite, the thing went limp.
Satisfied, she tossed its body to the floor, and watched as it transformed into a woman. Her face was pale, her eyes wide and yellow but lifeless, one arm flung over herself in an awkward position. There was an oozing wound on her stomach where Victoria had bitten her and killed her yet she felt no remorse.
This woman was probably another one of Caesareon’s followers and had been sent by their new master to get rid of Isis and company. She was a shape changer, like Victoria, but her transformation a different one; a dangerous one.
