Cherishing Destiny (A Dangerous Destiny) by Noelle Blakely Read Free Book Online Page B

saw
her start to tremble violently, and he thought she was sobbing.  Then he heard
her laughing in a way that he had not thought her capable of in a long time.  His
ear to ear grin returned and was even wider if that was possible.   
    Sara stirred on the ground next to him. Her eyes opened to
look into his smiling face.  She heard somebody laughing and a wan smile came
to her lips.
    “Are we dead?” she asked Alex, still smiling.
    “Well,” he said. “That’s an excellent question.  Let me
think about it.  You are definitely not dead, and yesterday I would have told
you that, technically, I am dead.  Today I am not so sure.”
    Sara blinked at him and looked confused. “Huh?”
    He just kissed her forehead and joined Aurora in her
laughter.

 
    Nine
    Aurora had a damp cloth in her hand and was wiping blood
off Sara’s face when Alex came back into the lean-to shed in the walnut
grove.  
    “Where did you find water?” he asked her.
    “In a bird bath.” She shrugged. “Did you find a phone or
anyone else?”
    “I went to see if I could get into any of the cars that had
emergency phones in them.  The garage was mostly collapsed, but I did get a phone
out of the Rover, which was only half crushed.”  He looked at her with his
mouth in a grim line. “Aurora, there are no phone signals, and I don’t mean
that they are too busy or that there aren’t enough bars.  There are literally
no signals”
    “What does that mean, Alex?” She started to catch his worry.
    “I’m not quite sure, but I think what happened here may be
bigger than I first thought.  I’m not so sure that this was an isolated earthquake.”
    Neither of them had mentioned the light in the sky yet, and
she was a little afraid to go there.  Alex had proposed the earthquake theory
when they had finally found some shelter to bring Sara to. He told her to stay
with Sara while he tried to find anyone else still alive and maybe a phone to
call for help for Sara who was unconscious again.  There should have been at
least three more staff members around somewhere with maybe one or two out for
the night. 
    “Did you find anyone else?”
    “Old Nate was in the collapsed garage.”
    “And?” She pressed.
    Alex just looked at her sadly and shook his head.
    She stared down at the rag in her hands without actually
seeing it.  Suddenly she snapped her attention back to Alex.  “What about a
land line?” she asked hopefully.
    He shook his head again. “I thought of that too.  The only true
hard line we had was the alarm, and I was able to check that line at the
garage.  It’s totally dead.”
    He took a deep breath and caught Aurora’s gaze. “Look, I
don’t want to frighten you but I also found a radio, like a CB, but there was
only some kind of crazy screeching interference on every channel, not even static. 
I think I may need to walk to town to get help for Sara.
    Aurora suddenly looked nervous, and she cleared her throat,
which she never did.
    “What is it?” he asked. “Just tell me.”
    “Well, I didn’t want to scare you either, but speaking of
helping Sara… I tried to heal her, Alex and well, look for yourself.”
    Aurora brushed Sara’s hair off of her forehead, exposing
what looked to have been a nasty gash at her scalp line.  It was closed and no
longer bleeding but still looked pretty awful. He frowned at the ugly wound.
    “That’s not all.  Look at this.”  Aurora was still wearing
her bathrobe, but it was hard to tell that it had once been white.  She pushed
up her sleeves and held up her arms to show him the scrapes where she had fallen
on the driveway.  Her forearms and elbows had been bleeding pretty badly when
she first fell about two hours ago.  Now there were still some scrapes, they
were not too serious, and a lot of pink new skin, healing skin. 
    Aurora was healing pretty quickly, but Alex knew exactly
what she was getting at.  As a Vampire, scraping her arms and elbows should
have been