Paragon - Chapter 40: Chapter 40

The winding roads up the mountains into Aiko's village gave me a moment to consider our position. Our future. Or whatever was left of it once Paragon took too much interest.
I had never heard of any immortal that escaped their notice and lived off the grid. But then again, I hadn't met huge numbers of immortals. We don't gather, we don't befriend and we certainly don't get attached. That was common sense... especially not to a mortal. A brief passing of less than a century on this earth.
I scanned the trees as they blurred past.
The rain had stopped and the night had taken over on the roads. Not that I needed the visibility. What I needed was some clarity. Some idea of what the hell I was going to do when the elite group of immortals looked a little too closely at my flight plans. My passenger that had appeared at every airport at my side.
I gripped the wheel pushing the car to its full potential up the corners.
Those bright green eyes. The engine growled. That easy smile. The road winded. The small smile when she saw through the lies and disguises. Another turn. The heat of her lips when she hit me in full force. I exhaled.
Quinn you really did complicate things...
It was so easy to simply end the soulless mortals in London. To play the part of the civil servant and clean up what could be cleaned up within my means. Now I had to detail the rogue immortal that had come after us. One I had worked with barely days before in Mumbai. They will want everything. No detail left unchecked. Quinn would be raised as a question.
Yet what would I say to that... A mortal companion. Easy prey. An entertainment in this grey scale of endless immortality. Why was the truth so dangerous? That she was more to me than they could even understand anymore. She was worth the risks, the danger of exposing existence, that she ran my cold blood faster than anything had since it beat hot...
I slowed the car by the thick shrubbery and drove a few metres deeper until I could conceal it completely. I stepped out into the cold night and shut the door slowly. It clicked locked.
Then I made the brief run to the edges of the village. I didn't bother with the main streets around the houses. I slipped back along the tree lines to the back of Aiko's abode. It was still quiet. I was sure the old woman would still be simmering over my phone call keeping her up at such hours. But I knew Quinn would be awake. Wanting answers.
I never favoured excuses anyway.
I hooked my hand silently onto the window sill and slipped into the room as if it had merely been minutes. The bedroom was empty. I strode across the dark wood floor letting my senses expand out around me. Two heartbeats inside the house. She was still here.
The hallway was almost silent.
There was a scratching. A small sound that mortal ears wouldn't notice until they were but feet away. I closed in on the source and found her back to me. A pencil in her hand and an old piece of Aiko's parchment in her hand. I closed in without a sound. A voyeur to her creative experiment before the low table.
It wasn't hard to make no sound. We didn't need to breathe for hours if necessary. But the drawing had stolen it anyway. It was my eyes. The dark and brooding translation of them anyway. She was no doubt talented but I didn't know the extend until now. My pupils were dark, my brow was low and it was a predator's stare if ever I had seen one.
Maybe this was what she saw in me now.
Wordlessly I moved beside her shoulder to kneel. Her answering shout in surprise and the dark line the pencil etched into the paper almost made me grin–if not for the circumstance. She held her pencil like a dagger before me.
"Christ–Fletcher?!" She shouted, weapon raised high.
I eyed it with the corner of my lips cracking towards a smirk.
"You disappear on me–then stand there–in the middle of the night?" She demanded, exasperated.
"That's a very good sketch." I answered instead, looking at what once was my eyes before her hand had sharply scraped across it.
"What the hell are you doing?" She muttered, dropping it and pressing her palm into her face.
I took a careful seat beside her at the low table and watched her closely. She looked tired but alert. Like my presence was an expectation but at any second.
"I'm so sorry." I told her blatantly. It made her draw out of her hand slowly. "I didn't leave you with any idea of what was happening–to me. Or when I would..." I sighed and looked back at the dark reflection of my eyes.
"You looked so different." She noted, without fear lacing her words. It was just a fact. "Whatever you became–wasn't anything compared to what I'd seen before."
"I know." I answered hollow. "It's what I've been keeping so far from you."
"And now... Are you..?" She trailed off, scanning my face.
I met her eyes and her heart picked up between us. Was I still that monster? It was almost a bitter joke. I always was beneath a guarded surface. One she wanted to bring to light so badly.
"I found him. He's gone."
Her eyes darted between my own as she realised what the words meant. What the simple sentence meant of an immortal.
"You killed him–William?"
I nodded.
"What does that mean now?"
"It means we have a bigger problem. One that I need to deal with when we're out of the country–"
"Fletcher, I don't understand. You killed him and now we're on the run again?" She breathed.
Of course she was rightfully hesitant. Why on earth would it make sense for us to be constantly looking over our shoulder once the threat was removed. I hadn't even explained the intricacies of immortal life to her yet and I was still dragging her deeper into it.
"Quinn, you deserve so much more than what I'm giving to you." I stated as plain as day, dropping my stare. It could never be more true.
"That's not an answer either."
"But it's the truth." I pressed, glaring at the table. "All of it. My world is tangling with you more and you did not ask for this–"
"I asked to be a part of your life, Fletcher. You tried to dissuade me once before."
I levelled her and took the side of her jaw in my palm.
"Yet you could never have imagined what that meant."
"Just tell me." She said simply. "Give me the facts on where we stand right now."
I brushed my thumb along her jawline and felt her pulse increase. Then I met those bright green irises and nodded.
"The oldest immortals. The elite group that have such a tight grip on all of us. Paragon." I stated, watching her reaction as she stilled under my palm. "–they want me. They want to detail what happened to William. His actions and my own. Then they will know everything else that has occurred in my existence over the last few years... In excruciating detail." I added.
"And I'm a problem in that detail?" She summarised with a casual expression.
"Quinn I don't think you understand–"
She smiled briefly and caught my hand with a head shake. "Actually I think you need to understand, Tara Fletcher."
I flinched and frowned.
"It's practically a shake down."
"A–what?" I asked, losing all sense of the meaning.
That slow smile returned and she propped her head on her hand looking at me. "In my line of work it's a much bigger entity using known power to intimidate a smaller client. In your case its already working."
I was at a total loss.
"You're suggesting I feel threatened by an organisation that has existed for thousands of years–yes you are correct!" I hissed, darkening my eyes at her easy nature. This was hardly another law case to be taken with a pinch of salt.
"Fletcher, they only know I am your weakness if you give them that."
"Adams, if you could make sense–"
She drew her hand over my lips and made me lose my focus and words in the move. Why was she so damned relaxed?
"Stop thinking of me like I mean something to you." She deadpanned.
"But you mean everything–"
"Exactly!" She laughed, shaking her head like I was missing the most key ingredient to all of this, "–I need to become nothing to you. Another mortal that is forgotten as easily as remembered. That's how you hide your weakness with someone in power."
"Quinn I am not about to gamble your life just to keep them at bay!" I growled.
She moved her fingers until they went through my hair on both sides of my head and it made everything hard to keep in focus. She tipped her face closer and made sure my sole attention was on her–as if it were anywhere else.
"For someone that's been on this earth for a hundred years you are adorably innocent."
A low sound left my throat and she grinned before me.
"I'll put it more simply. If you really are as important to them as I think you are... You're going to need to make them believe I mean absolutely nothing to you, Fletcher. Or we may as well keep running forever. Because if there's one thing I've learnt about the powerful... it's that they do not like to share what's theirs." She finished slowly.
Just like that. As simple as breathing she had summarised what it was to be a member of Paragon. Without even truly knowing what they were. Or how they worked. Quinn Adams with less than a century of life knew more of the rules than I even fully considered.
But not just that. She knew how to beat them.