“You just don’t know how much I appreciate that—especially since you don't even know what you're supporting.”
“I do, David. I'm supporting you. Whatever you decide, I know it’s always for the best. So, you don't have to be honest with me, yet, okay. You’ve got my hundred percent backing.”
He went quiet for a very long time.
“David?”
“Still here.”
“Are you okay?”
“I've missed it.”
“Missed what?”
“Seeing you grow up.”
My bottom lip pouted. “You think I'm grown up?”
He sighed. “My love, you have no idea how different you sound each time I talk to you, and it makes me so happy to see you becoming the woman I always knew you were—deep down inside.”
“Really deep down,” I said, laughing.
“Well, the past doesn't matter now. I'm so proud of you, and I can't even begin to tell you what your support means to me.”
“Well, I love you, David. I trust you.”
“I love you, too, Ara. And I always will. No matter where I am or how long we’re apart—I will love you in this life and the next.”
“The next?” I laughed. “We don't get an afterlife.”
He cleared his throat. “With immortality, we live many lifetimes, and in that, we change our lives. That's what I meant.”
“Oh, okay.” I smiled. “Well, I look forward to thousands of lifetimes with you.”
“As do I,” he said and hung up the phone. I stared at it for a second, turning around when my council came out from an adjourned meeting. “Anything interesting happen while I wasn’t there?” I asked Mike.
He snatched the phone, then took my hand. “Yes. I'm taking you down to see the new Immortal Damned house.”
“Really?” I grinned up at him. “It’s finished?”
He nodded. “Yeah. I wanna be with you when you see it for the first time.”
After following a leaf-covered trail, we stopped by some hedges, and Mike covered my eyes. “No peeking until I say, okay?”
I nodded, placing my hands over his as we walked forward.
He guided my heels with his toes, and after about thirty paces said, “Okay. You can look now.”
“Oh, Mike.” I touched my collarbone, taking in the white rendered brick and red roof of the prettiest little home I ever saw. “It’s perfect.”
“See that?” He pointed forward. “We painted the bars on the windows white—so they’d blend in.”
I nodded, covering my smile.
“There’s plenty of sunlight, comfortable beds, toys, games—everything you asked for.”
“Bathrooms?”
“Yep. Even a few recently immortalised child-health experts to help teach the Damned how to use them—since most of these children have never seen a modern toilet or shower before.”
I couldn't take my eyes off the house, imagining how happy the children would be now, how nice it must be to live in darkness for so long, and then suddenly feel the sun’s warmth, see the grass, splash fresh water over your face.
“Come see.” He headed down the small hill toward it.
I caught up and looped my arm through his. “When can we move them in?”
He patted my arm, grinning to himself as we neared, and I heard the unfamiliar sounds of children laughing and talking nosily under the booming of a loud yet kind voice.
“Is that them? Are they in there?”
He nodded, smiling warmly, as if he knew what that meant to me. “Now, just be sure you don't get this building mixed up with the training hall.”
We stopped by an iron gate. “Mike, it may look the same—aside from the bars, but it’s at a completely different end of the grounds. I'm not stupid.”
“Yeah, but if I caught you here alone, that’d be the first excuse you'd think to give me.”
“True. So, for you to think of it, does that make me smart, or you stupid?”
“Neither—it makes me big and you small, and if I catch you here with these demons, alone, I will hurt you.”
“Liar. You wouldn’t hurt me.”
“Don’t test me, Ara-Rose. I'm at the end of my tether with you, young lady.” He gently squeezed my cheeks between his fingers, smiling, so I squiggled my tongue out through my puckered lips and licked his hand. “Er! Ara, that’s gross.”
I dried my mouth, laughing.
“Now—” He wiped his hand on his jeans then grabbed a key from his pocket and turned it in the lock. “We have a double entry. It’s important to make sure you close and lock this gate before you open the interior one. Clear?”
“Clear.”
“Uh, wait.” He placed his hand on my shoulder as I stepped inside and moved toward the second door. “I'm not letting you in there today. You can watch from back here.”
“Why?”
“They’re not ready for visitors, yet,” he said, closing the outer door.
“Oh.” The entrance was small, with a bench to the left for personal effects, a door off to the right leading somewhere else, and just enough space for about four people. I peered in through the glass screen covering the next iron door, and there, across the room, in a square of sunlight over the floorboards, sat a little boy, pressing a sail into place on a wooden boat.
“Max?”
The boy looked up; his hair was golden and clean, his face round and his cheeks coloured with pink.
“Yeah, that’s him,” Mike said warmly.
“He looks so…human.”
“Yeah.” Mike laughed. “He kinda does. Hey, see what we did with the beds; space and planet theme for the boys, and princesses for the girls.”
“Very cute,” I said, my eyes running along twelve or so small beds with squishy quilts, lining one side of the room, then over shelves full of books and toys on the other side. The keeper stood centre to it all, tall and clean-cut, his metal stick beside him like a staff. “Why does he still have that stick?”
“Because the children aren’t cured, Ara. They are still dangerous and we do still have a few issues with them. It’s why we’re only moving ten over at a time.”
“And where are the rest?”
“They're in the cells, still. But they have beds and sunlight and they’re being properly cared for. We had to take all the toys away, though, because the little buggers used them as weapons against their keepers.”