Life With The Boy Next Door

Cale watched Alice carefully during the remainder of their week long honeymoon. He observed the careful, dainty movements she made and heard with disbelief her excuses to get out of activities such as scuba diving and hiking around the island. She was never the type to back out of something like that; she was naturally fearless, but not in the normal way. She wouldn’t stand up in a fight, but she would try new things, no matter the danger entailed.
In turn, Alice watched Cale with growing wariness and fearful intensity. Was he planning to kill her? She often wondered this, but always shook off the thought. He didn’t have the courage to take a life that was so dear to him.
Her abdomen was protruding slightly now, and when she placed her palm over the bump, she could feel shifting movement under her hand. Cale never saw her sneak her hand beneath her shirt and touch the small bump of baby. Finally she was too sick of wondering how the werewolf mutation came about in Cale, and mustered up the courage to ask him.
“Cale, come here” Alice said absently, from where she sat on the sand at the top of the white beach.
He was walking silently up behind her, but her increased hearing and paranoia rendered her able to hear him whenever he approached her, no matter how slowly or quietly he was moving. She heard his sigh and then felt the shifting of sand granules as he sat down next to her, digging his feet into the sand. He shuffled sideways until he could look square at her and leaned forward, propping his chin on his hands.
“Yeah?” he replied lazily, blinking up at her through half closed eyes.
Alice barely glanced at him, fiddling with the wedding ring on her left hand. The ivory band slid round her finger as she gazed out into the silvery blue ocean.
“How are you a werewolf? Your dad isn’t, and I don’t understand where the gene came from. I have respected your privacy since we were sixteen and I found out about it, but now I want to know, because what is growing inside me right now is going to be just like you, and if he’s some sort of half breed hairy child freak, I won’t put up with it” she said coolly, her fingers falling away from her ring.
Cale raised his dark eyebrows at her and said nothing, clutching at the sand on either side of him and letting it drop between his fingers. He dropped his gaze and looked at Alice’s stomach, hidden effectively by her too big white t-shirt with Green Day on the front. He sighed again and took a deep breath in to release his story to her, the first person he’d ever told it to. Telling it to his dog didn’t count.
“I was eleven when I found out, okay? Some old woman found me wandering the streets in the middle of the night with my eyes shut. Don’t ask me what I was doing because I don’t know. All I remember was waking up, seeing the full moon hanging outside my bedroom window, and then leaving the house. The next thing I was aware of, this little old lady was smiling at me from under a street lamp. She had bright yellow eyes and sort of weathered, olivey skin. She took my hand and told me that I was one of the Decreed, a night creature. She said that we were the ones who are supposed to bring the end of the world, and that there was nothing we could do to remove that destiny from our lives. Ever since that night, I’ve been fighting it and killing the other Decreed that I meet, like that vampire a few years ago, and then his brother or whoever that other guy was. That girl you were talking to on our first full day here is something I haven’t seen before, a member of the Decreed who I haven’t come across. I kill those in the Decreed because I’m terrified of becoming just like them; I don’t want to destroy the world. I don’t want to rule it on a throne with minions sitting round my feet. I’ve been running from that old woman’s prophecy for the last eight years, Alice, and I don’t want it to come true. Nor do I want you to see that island girl again. We leave tomorrow morning, and you won’t talk to her between right now and then” Cale said in slow words, his eyes flickering from her face to the sand in his hands and back up again.
He finished on a low note and stopped talking, his hands resting in his lap and his shoulders rounded and hunched uncomfortably as he awaited her reply.
Alice at last lifted her head and ceased her long, unwavering stare at the sea. She looked instead at Cale, her pale eyes vaguely cold and unfeeling. She did believe him, no matter how extraordinarily strange and unbelievable the tale was. She had seen some strange things in her life, and Cale speaking honestly was the least of those events. He rarely told mistruths.
“I believe you” she said faintly, her hands lying still on her bent knees.
Cale waited again, sensing more was to come.
“But?” he finally prompted her, without looking at her face.
Alice sighed slightly and straightened her posture incrementally.
“I think I still need to talk to the girl. If she can give me any information I’m going to need about this child, I want to know it and I want to hear it from her. You have no extra knowledge, so you’ll be no help to me at all” she said tiredly.
She put both her hands on her belly and hauled herself to her feet. She didn’t expect Cale to rise up at the same time and grasp both her upper arms. He didn’t try to remove her hands from her tummy, but he did heave her up and toss her over his right shoulder. Alice screamed and beat his back and shoulders with her clenched fists, but he didn’t put her down. She caught a glimpse of the young island teen watching and staring at them from a few feet away. Alice fell quiet and hung limply against Cale’s back, staring back into the girl’s eyes. For the first time, she saw the red film and felt frightened of her. But she wasn’t as scared of her as she was of her husband right in that moment of time. The girl blinked twice, then turned her back on the both of them, her long white skirt flicking about her ankles.
“I told you so, Cale Vreeland. You are going to kill her one day soon. Right now, you don’t think you will, but you can’t stop it. No more than you can stop the Decreed getting what they want. Goodbye, Alice. Dream while you can, and live forever in the minds of those who love you” she murmured, the soft breeze again catching her words and sending them off.
Hearing them, Alice closed her eyes and held back her sobs. She held onto her stomach and didn’t reopen them even when Cale left her on the bed and returned to the door to keep watch and make sure she didn’t get up and try to leave.
Over the following hours before their flight back to America, he did not allow her to leave. Alice only slept, refraining from eating in the wild, vain hope that she could starve his baby out of her, kill it before it ever breathed in the air of the world.

When Alice and Cale arrived at the airport, Annabelle was there to meet them and take them home to the house that both sets of parents pitched in to help them buy. Immediately, she took hold of her daughter’s arm and steered her away toward the baggage claim area. She wanted to talk to her alone. Alice waited patiently, all her old impatience sucked out of her by Cale. She listened dutifully to her mother speak.
“Are you all right? Cassi woke up in the middle of the night on your first day away and told me that something was wrong with you. Did Cale hurt you? Are you sick or injured?” Annabelle demanded, her questions gushing forth from her in a tidal wave of aggravated parental concern.
Alice smiled benignly at her, her pulse slow and sluggish as Cale’s monster grew inside her and sapped all of her strength and free will.
“I’m fine, Mom. Just pregnant” she said softly, her eyes focused on her mother’s worried face.
Annabelle’s plucked eyebrows shot up.
“Already? How do you know so fast?” she asked, wonderment evident in her tone.
Alice just shrugged and kept walking over to where the baggage conveyor belt was. She waited, again patiently, for her suitcase to trundle by, and leaned forward to grab it. Annabelle got there first, fussing and saying that pregnant women shouldn’t lift or carry such heavy things. Alice didn’t object, merely nodded and allowed her mother to take over, which was what she did best. As she led the way out to her car, Alice kept perfect pace in time with her, as a means of being removed from Cale for at least a few blessed minutes.