Revelations. Part 4

"Yes," I said. "Perfectly."

"And you can break down my barriers."

"Yes," I admitted, though that was no secret.

"The members of the Commune won't be offended if you read them, however I recommend getting to know them before you do so in depth. Their all pretty open and honest, but you're new-"

I stopped him. "I know. They don't know me, and I don't know them. I'll respect them. As long as they respect me."

"They will."

"I mean no questions," I said firmly.

He glanced over at me then returned his attention to the road again. "What are you afraid they'll find?"

"I'm not afraid of what they'll find," I said, "but about who will find me."

"Chris," he said.

"Don't call me that."

"Christiana," he corrected. "You spent three years in a coma. A coma during which your only visitor was myself. If anyone was going to come and find you, they would have done so. They knew where you were. They left you alone. They probably thought you were as good as dead."

Philip was right, and I knew it. If they, meaning the gov and Holt's operatives, the inevitable Men in Black, wanted me, they could have me. I probably was as good as dead. I probably should have died on impact. However, being me, I survived. I was left for dead on the side of the road, left for dead in a hospital room, and I was left alone for over three years. n.o.body now knew where I was going.

While these thoughts ran through my head, the logic of it all became clear. A comatose healer was useless. A comatose mind reader was useless. The most they could do was open up my head and see what dwelled inside, but that wouldn't tell them how it worked. Michael Daniels was pretty protective of me. Very few people were able to enter my room without his permission. He guarded me well without ever really guarding me. I began to feel somewhat safe. For the very first time in my life, I felt safe.

Chapter Eight.

I put my head against the window and closed my eyes as we drove on through the desert. My head still ached but the pain was subsiding gradually. I felt the desert breeze brus.h.i.+ng through my hair, blowing through the partially open window. There was the smell of water on the wind, and I smelled the freshness of the desert. I have a highly sensitive nose, so much so I could smell the dirt if I tried hard enough.

I opened my eyes when I felt the car leave the asphalt and hit gravel. A street sign flashed by and Cima Road would be forever engraved upon my mind. I watched as we drove down a long, empty stretch of dirt road. The world pa.s.sed by, and the highway disappeared as we rounded a corner and went behind some large hills. We drove at least ten miles off the highway, a trip that took about an hour, avoiding many a pothole, before the house began to loom up ahead. We crested a hill, and there it was, the Commune, sitting off to the side of the poor excuse for a road. What else could it be in the vast emptiness of the desert?

Fas.h.i.+oned after many an old farmhouse, there was a wrap-around porch with carved railings and posts. A small garden growing off to one side had what looked like tomatoes and herbs sprouting in it, though I could not fathom how anyone got those things to grow in a desert. The door and porch railings were painted a clean white while the rest of the place was cream-colored stucco. The color of the stucco was just such it made the building kind of blended into the desert beyond.

I loved it from the first moment I saw it.

Two cars sat parked outside the building; a beat up Mazda four-door and a white pickup truck. The truck's hood was up and someone was messing about beneath it. Philip pulled his bug up beside the truck and put it in park.

"That would be Jonas," he said, nodding his head towards the man beneath the truck's hood.

He got out first, and I found myself hesitating, as I remembered Philip's description of Jonas. Philip appeared in my line of sight and opened the door. I took his offered hand and got out of the car. Philip went around the front to get my one and only bag from the trunk, which is actually at the front of the car, if you don't know Beetles. The man under the hood of the truck straightened as Philip said h.e.l.lo to him.

Philip gestured to me, and I went to his side for my first introduction. "Jonas, this is Christiana."

Jonas looked exactly as Philip described him. He held out a hand to me that I took tentatively. His fingernails were pointed, yet he shook my hand gently, well aware of his nails. When he took back his hand, he reached into his back pocket and produced a red cloth, which he handed to me. I looked down at my hands to see a streak of black oil on the back of the right one then took the cloth.

"Sorry," Jonas said, taking back his towel so he could wipe his own hands. Then he tucked the cloth back into his pocket. "We're all really glad you could come and join us out here in the middle of nowhere."

I smiled at his joking tone of voice.

Jonas was five foot eight, about two hundred and some pounds of muscle and looked down at me with the most beautiful amber colored eyes I'd ever seen (and I'll go on and on about those eyes, I'm sure, so be ready for it). It was like looking into two pools of molten lava, white hot and yellow. Yet his eyes were gentle and kind, unlike his teeth, which were filed down to points just like his fingernails. When he smiled, I took a step back.

"Don't worry," he said, "I don't bite. Now Philip however...."

Philip only rolled his eyes when I looked his way.

Back to Jonas. His skin was covered in small, soft scales. I felt them when I shook his hand. It felt, to me, like the underbelly of a lizard. Scales covered his entire body, from head to toe. He had no hair anywhere, except for a layer of peach fuzz on top of his head. No eyebrows to speak of, but the ridges above his eyes were more prominent. I'd seen people like him on television, people who altered themselves to look this way. Jonas was real in every sense of the word, a human lizard, and I liked him right away.

"Where is everyone?" Philip asked, shaking me out of the daze I entered upon examining Jonas.

"Inside," the lizard man said. "Alendra, anyway. The twins are in the shed. Everyone else is out. Except me, of course."

Philip rolled his eyes once more. "Would you mind showing Christiana to her room?"

"Sure thing," Jonas said. "Come on, Chris."

When he held out his hand to me, I only said, "Don't call me Chris," through my teeth. I didn't take his hand, but he grinned and motioned for me to follow.

"Phil, Allie's in the kitchen," he told Philip, and I suddenly knew I probably couldn't keep this guy from calling me Chris if his life suddenly depended upon it. Not that it would, but still....

I followed Jonas inside the house, Philip walking behind us. He pushed past Jonas as Jonas stopped in the living room and the so-called vampire headed for the kitchen, leaving me alone with the lizard man.

"This way," Jonas said, moving off down the hallway.

I took a quick look around the living room before trotting to catch him. The living room was typical and quaint. It had an *L' shaped sofa wrapping half way around the small room. There was a coffee table made of faded, dark wood with coasters stacked on it. I took notice of the water rings on the coffee table before turning back around to the task at hand, which was finding my bedroom. What did they need coasters for if they didn't use them?

"We all have our own rooms," Jonas was saying. "Not that anyone would mind sharing, but there aren't many of us here right now. Phil says you're a mind reader, and a good one at that."

"Yes," I said as I glanced in open doors and wondered about closed ones.

When Jonas stopped before the last door on the right, I nearly collided with him as I looked at a picture on the wall of Sir Frederic Leighton's "Flaming June." I'd always liked that painting, and it caught my eye and nearly caused me to crash into the huge man before me.

"Sorry," I said quickly as I skidded to a stop.

Jonas only smiled, not showing his teeth. "This one's yours." He opened the door and stepped aside to let me in.

The room was simple. There was a bed with light blue linens. The nightstand was mahogany, and there was a chest of drawers to match. The closet doors stood open, and I saw clothes hanging inside.

I instantly dropped my bag and went to the closet. I am a girl, after all. I rifled through the clothing, surprised to discover s.h.i.+rts and jeans of all the right sizes. "How'd you guys guess my size?"

"Ah," said Jonas, "that would be Allie. Alendra. Phil described you, and Alendra went shopping. She's good at that kind of stuff."

"She must be," I said quietly, already wondering about the lycanthrope who now sat in the kitchen.

"Come on. I'll introduce you then show you the rest of the grounds."

"Okay," I said. This time, when he held out his scaled, clawed hand to me, I took it.

His grip was light and gentle. He knew he had deadly looking nails on the ends of his fingers, and he was careful about that. I ran my forefinger over the top of his hand to better feel his scales. When I went against the grain of those scales, they bit into my skin. They were hard if you went the wrong way, but still soft when rubbing the right way. Does that sound dirty to you, 'cause it does to me?

Anyway, Jonas led me to the kitchen. Alendra- I could only a.s.sume it was her because she was the only one in the room-was seated at the round kitchen table with a white coffee mug sitting before her. She stared at the steam rising from the mug and only looked up when Jonas cleared his throat.

"Hi," she said. She slowly rose from the table, every movement one of grace. "You must be Christiana." She held out a hand to me.

I dislodged my hand from Jonas's in order to shake hers. Alendra's grip was solid, and my skin seemed to tingle when she released me. "Hi," I said after a moment.

You see, Alendra left me momentarily speechless.

To say Alendra was beautiful is a complete understatement. Alendra was a G.o.ddess on earth. She had silver-colored hair streaked with tints of gold and amber that hung in waves all the way down to her waist. Her face was perfectly symmetrical. Well, her face was all around perfect. Her grey eyes were nearly colorless and had pupils so dark they seemed bottomless. She towered over me at five foot eleven, just like Jonas did, yet she was slim and had the greatest hour gla.s.s shape. The jeans she wore hugged her body. Her s.h.i.+rt did nothing less. She was striking, to say the absolute least.

Alendra waited until I finished looking to say, "We're glad to have you here. I hope you'll like it. The Commune is home to all of us, and we welcome you."

It was a planned speech. I knew simply by the cadence of her words. Alendra intimidated me and she hated me, knowledge easily acquired by just a quick glance into her mind. She didn't trust me. That's why she hated me. When I stepped away from her to follow my tour guide again, I gave Alendra my best smile as she sat back down to her coffee mug. I vowed I would try really hard to make her like me, but I doubted I would ever be able to do so.

Back to Jonas.

He took me outside and the hot desert air hit me like a fist. I hadn't really noticed, or maybe didn't care about the AC running in the house. I took a harsh breath and knew I'd need to get used to this. I now lived in the desert, and this was what life in the desert was like. In time I'd come to love the desert more than any setting I would ever come across.

Jonas held out his hand to me again and quite literally dragged me out onto the desert floor. Off to the one side of the house, I noticed a wooden shed. It was to said wooden shed he took me now.

"How come it's so far from the house?" I asked, knowing, from Philip's descriptions, this was the so-called "lab" of Humbolt and Hermione, the bovine twins.

"Well," Jonas began, "they used to experiment in the house, but the smell was overpowering. We made them move out here. You'll see what I mean." He paused and laughed. "I mean you'll smell what I mean."

"Okay," I muttered.

With that said but unexplained, Jonas knocked on the door.

The young man who answered shocked me enough to make me take more than one step back. Even more shocking than Jonas's sharp, pointed teeth. He only smiled and moved away so quickly to let us pa.s.s I barely got a glimpse of him. A glimpse was more than enough. What I did see were a pair of horns ringing up around his ears and a soft pair of brown eyes. He then disappeared into the darkness.

"Hey, Humbolt," Jonas said as he walked into the shed.

I instantly smelled what Jonas meant. I swallowed against the thick scent, thicker to me and my sensitive nose, and quickly identifying it as decaying flesh. Humbolt reappeared behind me, and I got a better look.

Humbolt was shy, to say the least. He was about an inch taller than me, which made him five foot five. His features were round and his big round eyes a nice, deep brown with a golden tint, almost as if flecked with gold. His thick, short cropped hair hung around his horns, which resembled those of a ram. His build was thick, much like his hair and much like the smell in the room, but he was not fat. I liked him instantly, just like Jonas.

Then his sister, Hermione stepped forward out of the dim light. She was backlit so I couldn't see her features very well, but she held out a hand to me. That I could easily see.

"h.e.l.lo," she said, her voice musical and sweet. "You must be Christiana. What are you doing wandering around with Jonas? He'll just get you lost."

Jonas growled from behind me. When I turned around, he smiled. "Pay no attention to her," Jonas said. "She thinks she's funny."

Hermione's next move was to stick out her tongue at Jonas, which I totally did not expect. Then she came up to me and put her hand on my shoulder. Her fingers were thick, like sausages, with large, thick nails. Her arm, I could see, was covered in a layer of light brown hair. She caught me looking.

"This must all be so interesting to you," she said.

"You have no idea," I muttered.

Hermione guided me by my shoulder over to her work table. I finally got a good look around the room. The shed was about ten feet by twenty but so cluttered with things it looked a whole lot smaller. Bare bulbs dangled from the ceiling, giving off little light. A worktable dominated the room, lit by a quality florescent. On the table was a microscope and a whole bunch of other stuff I could not identify, stuff that looked like it would be right at home on the set of Doctor Who.

Hermione began to explain. "Right now, my brother and I are working on a genetic comparison of our own DNA." She gestured with her stubby hand towards Humbolt, who leaned against a bookshelf. "As you can see, he and I are quite different, yet we are twins." Hermione was right about that. She and her brother were different. They were the same size, in height and weight. Her face looked much like his, round and beautiful, but her horns were straight, measuring about a foot and extending from just above her forehead. "We are trying to discover what it is exactly that makes us this way," she continued. "For instance, the horns. And then there's this." From behind her, she produced a genuine tail, tufted at the end like that of a cow.

I couldn't resist. "Can you swish it?"

She swished her tail so it thumped her chest. "I can swish it."

I bit my lower lip in something that might have been embarra.s.sment, but when you meet a cow person...well, you'll know what I mean if you ever do. Hermione was beautiful and intelligent, and I couldn't resist her charm. I stayed and listened to her talk for a good twenty minutes while Jonas and Humbolt joked on the other side of the shed. When she asked me questions about myself, I answered her as honestly as I could without revealing too much about my true nature. I didn't know much about me anyway, so she offered to run some tests to see what she could discover. I surprised myself by readily agreeing to this.

Then I said goodbye, as I could see Jonas getting bored and beginning to poke into things while Humbolt told him to quit it. Once again I found myself alone in the presence of the lizard man. All we did was go inside where Jonas made me a sandwich. Alendra disappeared to who knew where, and I didn't bother to pry. Philip joined us after a while and we sat and discussed what life was like out here in this desert Commune. I listened and gave my opinion, but my mind drifted elsewhere. In this house with these people I would soon consider my family, I could think of nothing else except my father, my real family, who disappeared.

Chapter Nine.

My time at the Commune would be shorter than I would have liked. It wasn't my fault, what happened there, at least not in full. I loved everyone there, including Alendra, who became a dear friend eventually. I shudder now to think of them. I considered them my family in many, many ways, and it was my betrayal that brought it all to an end. Yes, eventually they did find me, though I didn't lead them there, not directly, anyway.

Here I am, getting ahead of myself. I lived at the Commune for over a year. I spent many an hour at the movies with Cadence, always during the daylight hours and always holding her hand in the theatre since she was terrified of the dark. Starch and I became the best of friends from the moment of our initial meeting. We had an affinity for The X-Files, for obvious reasons. Philip and I had many an intellectual conversation on many a philosophical topic, as did Hermione and I, often with her shy, silent brother simply looking on. Alendra and I discovered a common ability. That we could never deny. I spent many a night in envy of Pete and Patty's symbiotic relations.h.i.+p. Anyway, I fell in love with the place, fell in love with the desert, and fell in love with the people.

Back to my favorite subject: Jonas.

Chapter Ten.

Jonas became the only person to know who and what I really could do before the final incident that led to the end of my days at the Commune. The reason he came to know was because of how he felt about me...and how I began to feel about him. Jonas, from moment one, felt something about me I cannot nor never will be able to explain. Jonas liked me. I mean, really liked me.

The proof of this came about two months after my arrival at the Commune. We were the only two at home one afternoon, and Jonas decided to drag me on a walk through the desert we'd seen together about a dozen times already. He loved it. In fact, he adored it, and since the cactus was in bloom, he loved it even more.

He held my hand and led me around. We were about a mile from the Commune, and I carried a bottle of water in my other hand. Jonas didn't drink as much water as normal people, being what he was, so the water was all for me. I was getting used to the heat- and lucky me, I don't sweat- but it still hit me hard enough to need water on long, romantic walks.

Anyway, he named off cactus blooms to me as we went along. He had plenty of time on his hands to learn and made it a point to see he was highly educated. Jonas might have been a brute force when provoked, but he was very smart. He taught himself mechanics as well as the names of all the flora and fauna of the desert.

"They're all so beautiful," I said. I dipped my nose to a perfectly formed blossom. The deep red flower gave off a lovely scent and filled my sensitive nose.