Her screams ripped the still, night air. The sound resembling a mirror shattered into a thousand tiny shards. It was humid and the leaves in the treetops hissed around her in the otherwise eerie silence of the forest. Her body shook with convulsions as she gasped, her breath rattling her in chest. What was it she had been taught? Right! Face, crotch, stomach. If she could get in a position of advantage, she could thrust her palm into his nose causing him unbearable pain. Enough pain to make him lessen his hold on her, but her hands were pinned and crushed underneath her own body making it impossible for her to get free. Maybe it wasn’t impossible. Maybe she wanted to die, maybe…No! She definitely didn’t want to die. She wasn’t even sure why the thought had entered her mind. She struggled again to get her arms or even her legs loose. Thrashing her body around on the hard earth underneath her though, caused more pain than was bearable. It was no use, she could already feel the warm blood running toward her wrist from the cut on her arm. The rock, which had gouged her flesh, was still digging into the crook of her elbow. This place was a predators dream. It was secluded, and with no one around for miles, it made her screams and cries for help useless.

Her anxiety flared and resulted in horrifying images of her ravaged, broken, blood-covered body rotting away for eternity. Her family attaching ‘Missing Person’ signs to street light poles and her mom weeping over an empty grave. She had to get out of this and fast, if he really was one of them she had no chance unless she could outrun him. Years of track training had made her the fastest runner in town and she would use it to her full advantage if she could just move!

Zane’s smooth deep voice interrupted the grizzly thoughts running through her mind with a jolt.

“Now, now Charlie, don’t be like that, after all, you’re the one who followed me remember.”

She did remember…Sort of, but why? Everything about Zane screamed danger, from his ash blonde unkempt hair, which looked like he had recently rolled out of bed, to the three-day stubble on his perfect face. Surely, his muscular build would have been enough to ward away anyone who got too close, but not Charlie. Her curiosity had always gotten the better of her and this time, like so many others before, it had led her straight into trouble.

Why can’t I ever leave things alone?

The frantic beating in her chest increased as Zane continued to restrain her arms beneath his and his long legs secured hers to the hard earth underneath her. Charlie’s head reeled with conflicting thoughts as she realized she could touch her lips to Zane’s, if she tilted her head slightly to the left slightly. Her breath coming in short shallow gasps now suddenly stopped.

No! I have to stop him.

“Let me go, Zane!”

“You brought this on yourself. Now you have to deal with the consequences,” he said quietly. Calmly. Fear oozed from Charlie as if it had substance, and she cringed away from him before turning her gaze to his face once more.

 “No!” she practically growled at him. Her teeth gritted, she struggled to free herself from beneath her captor one last time.

God! Why, why, why did I have to follow him?

She didn’t need to ask the question she already knew the answer to. Her goddamn need to know everything was the reason why.

Zane rolled away from her lazily and came to rest with his hands under his head on the grass beside her. Instead of running off as she should have she sat slowly, her breathing returning to normal, her heart beat slowing to a more regular pattern.

The breeze, which blew past her clammy skin with Zane’s body now removed from her own, sent a chill to her bone as she sat and looked at herself, taking inventory of her wounds. There was nothing major, no broken bones at least. Only a few small grazes that trickled bright red−and now sticky−blood down her dirt-stained arms.

Charlie inhaled slowly and looked at Zane with a mixture of emotions, amazement, curiosity, and least of all expected lust. Now he wasn’t touching her, she started to remember.

“You’re one of them aren’t you?” she asked.

“You’re smart, how did you figure it out?”

“Well, for starters, you got into town and no one ever gets into town.” she started. “You never take off your sunglasses–not even at night–and you’ve been in town for three days, been to every restaurant in town and yet you’ve barely eaten a thing.”

“You’ve been watching closely Charlie. I’m impressed. No one else has even batted an eye but you seem to be able to fight the haze. I know how, but do you?” The curiosity in his voice lingered in the look on his face and Charlie asked herself the same question.

How did she remember? No one remembered anything they didn’t want the people of town to remember. However she did, she always did. Even now when Zane had let the full extent of his power unleash upon her, made only stronger with the flesh-to-flesh contact, she still remembered. It was painful, she could feel the force of her will crushed as her memories slowly returned, but remember she did.

Zane was right on another note as well, no one else had noticed or cared when he had so casually wandered into their small town of Tole three days ago.

Charlie had been sitting up with Eloise and Matt—her always-there-for-her housemates—reading when she saw the headlights pull up the drive of the house next door. She peeked through the curtain of the front bay window to see the tall, dark stranger getting out of the black Mercedes. The streetlights illuminated his face and she drew in a breath, which made a sound like howling wind. Eloise and Matt both turned to her shocked, wondering what was wrong.

“What is it Charlie? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine El, there’s just someone moving in next door.”

“Huh, suppose it had to get rented some time.”

Charlie was shocked by El’s lack of caring. No one ever moved into Tole…Ever! Sure, there were delivery people who came in and out all the time but never someone moving in next door in the dead of night. There hadn’t been a new town member for six years and the last had required a full town meeting. Tole isn't known for its welcoming manor after all.

After that night, much to her housemate’s annoyance and whines of ‘Just let it go Charlie’, she had followed Zane everywhere she could. What she had found out hadn’t shocked her, but it did leave a feeling of unease in her stomach. He entered the town without a meeting or even a discussion on the subject. Why didn’t anyone care that he was there, in their town and why did he seem to know everyone? Charlie had lived in Tole her whole life, why didn’t she know him? She had questions and she vowed she would find out the answers one way or another.

She returned Zane’s gaze and answered him as honestly as she could. “I don’t know. I’ve always remembered. Everyone in town knows your kind is here, yet if you don’t want them to, they don’t remember what you do or what you say,” she said, her eyes squinting in a show of pain as she remembered. “Sometimes it hurts, like when you were touching me. I felt like I had a knife lodged in my skull when I tried to remember why I followed you.”

Charlie’s heartbeat skipped when Zane’s warm hand met with the chilly skin of her face. “Like this?” he asked.

“Precisely,” she said, her voice barely a whisper. “Please don’t.”

 She pushed his hand away gently with her own and gasped, as instead of backing off the way she thought he would, he lingered with his hand in hers. The haze which encompassed her, slipped away, but how? She had no idea they could shut it off the way he did. “You can stop it? Whenever you want?”

 She hadn’t meant it to be a question but her natural curiosity had made it one and Zane obliged her with an answer.

“Of course we can. The Valguard can do whatever they want. Haven’t you realized that yet?”

He let her hand fall slowly back in her lap and propped himself up against a nearby tree. He looked so at home, at ease, and in that moment, she couldn’t help but admire him.

Huh! Valguard… At least I know what to call them now.

Charlie didn’t answer Zane’s question, instead she moved herself to sit beside the man she had been deathly afraid of only minutes before. She studied him with revered silence. She hadn’t noticed previously how tall he was. Looking at him now, she was certain he was at least a foot taller than she was, although that wasn’t very hard. She measured in at a slight five foot one and almost everyone was taller than she was. His olive skin resembled that of everyone else who lived in Tole, and she couldn’t get enough of his blonde ‘bed’ hair.

She had the sudden urge to run her fingers through it, to see what it felt like. She restrained herself but with her hand outstretched, she had already made a fool of herself. She dropped her arm awkwardly, hoping he had his eyes shut to spare her more embarrassment than was necessary.

Zane’s body left nothing but desire within her stomach, from the tight wiry muscles, which wound their way up his arms, to the hard abs she could see rippled under his t-shirt. She reached out again, this time with a purpose and let her hand hover over his sunglasses.

“May I?” she asked.

Hesitating slightly, he leaned forward to allow her the privilege of removing his glasses. Knowing the one thing, which set them apart physically from humans, was their eyes, Charlie held her breath in anticipation. She slowly removed the black sunglasses from Zane’s face. The breath she had been holding came gushing out in a show of shock and desire. His eyes were the most alluring part of his body and Charlie’s eyes had started to water before she realized how long she had been staring.

 Zane’s eyes were magical. Around the midnight, black pupil of his eye shone a glowing green iris. Looking into his eyes was like getting lost in a whole other world, a world full of wonder and excitement and magic. How could she have not noticed this before? She had seen other Valguard’s eyes. Yes, she definitely had. Most recently, it had been Mike’s.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    

Of course, she had seen his eyes plenty of times but by the time she had left his company, she barely remembered them. Mike owned the local book café in town and was about the only Valguard who never wore glasses. Charlie had only seen him earlier in the day, and although the memories of them were dim, she knew without a doubt that his eyes had nothing on Zane’s own glowing green ones.

“Your eyes glow more than most,” she stated.

“I’m not tainted like the rest of them Charlie. I haven’t been holed up in this dead-end town my whole life,” he replied, his voice smug, as if he was better than the others were.

“Tainted?”

“The Valguard here are a mere shadow of what they used to be, your humanity has rubbed off on them. They have settled here. They own houses, businesses. They even have children. It is not supposed to be within the Valguard to settle. We were born and bred to take over the world Charlie, not live with it.”

“So you won’t be staying then?” she asked.

“For a while I will,” he replied.

Charlie let out an almost audible sigh at the relief she felt about Zane sticking around for a while longer. She couldn’t comprehend why one of them had such a strong pull on her. She had always tried to stay away from the Valguard. However, the connection she felt now was frightening and exhilarating all at once. She didn’t even know Zane, this was the first conversation she’d had with him which wasn’t a tip of the hat or a nod of the head in passing. Yet she felt like they had known each other for years. She should have despised him, if not for the cuts and bruises, he had inflicted, then for the fact he had pinned her down in a blatant attempt to harm her…or kill her. She hadn’t decided which yet. Nevertheless, she couldn’t find anything in her body in that moment other than desire for the man sitting in front of her.

“So, why do I remember? You said you knew why,” she asked, her hands rubbing together in her lap in anticipation.

“Maybe you have some sort of immunity which protects you from the hazing,” he answered, and though his voice was silky smooth, it was completely apparent to Charlie that he was lying. She was going to find the underlying cause of it come hell or high water.

“What do you know? What aren’t you telling me?”

Zane let out a sigh before answering her demands.

“Well, there’s really no point in hiding it now, I might as well tell you. You were bound to find out soon anyway.”

“Find out what? What the hell is going on?” she demanded again.

“Your father is a Valguard, Charlie. Which is why the hazing has little to no effect on you, that’s why you notice more than the others, and you are the reason I am here.”

Charlie shook her head violently. She refused to accept the answer he had given her. There was no way that her father could be a Valguard. She had spent her whole life hiding from them.  She couldn’t be one of them.

“No! My father left town when I was twelve months old. He isn’t a Valguard. He can’t be,” she ended weakly. Without the need for proof, she knew that Zane had told her nothing but the truth.

“He is Charlie and he didn’t leave town. He’s still here. You know him as Mike. We know him as Mikal. He is, or was the head of the Valguard. He was the one who led us here—well not me personally but my kind certainly—and the one who let us all down when he fell in love with your mother.”

“How do you know all of this? You only just got into town, how can you possibly know anything about my family and my life?”

“Because I came here looking for you, I know everything about you and everything about your family. I know you were born on February twenty-eighth to Eva Dawson and Mikal Aiken, in your mother’s house on Oak Street, right here in the town of Tole.

I know you believe your father deserted you when you were twelve months old. However, he actually went on living in this tiny hole of a town for the last seventeen years, because he couldn’t bring himself to leave you. That's what people have told me anyway. I know that when you were five, you skinned your knee when you fell off your bike because a young Valguard who’d accidently let his glasses slip onto the bridge of his nose frightened you. I know when you turned sixteen, your hair started to turn white. Now you dye it every month to cover it up because you think it is early aging. And I know now you have turned eighteen you are going to stop the humans and the Valguard’s from tearing this world to shreds.”

“How…What?” she stumbled.

Charlie was at a loss for words. The things this stranger knew about her frightened and overwhelmed her.

“I’ve been watching you and waiting for your eighteenth birthday, the day you would become the destinata. As far as I know, you’re the only half-Valguard and that gives you an advantage. You’re the one person who can stop the destruction of the Earth when Mikal finally comes to his senses and realizes he has sat idle for too long.”

“What the hell is a destinata? And why would I want to help one or any of you for that matter? I’m just a girl, Zane, I can’t stop the destruction of the Earth. It will happen with or without me in the way.” Charlie proclaimed.

“You’re wrong. You can and will save the Earth Charlie. You have to. It won’t be for me, or for the other Valguard’s, or even the humans. It will be because you are destined to do so. It’s the solitary reason for your being. You were born for this very purpose. You are the destinata, or the chosen one in laymen’s terms. You were created to stop the humans and the Valguard from going to war and destroying this world as we know it…and you will.”

“I don’t even know what the bloody Valguard are let alone how to stop them! Why does it have to be me? Why can’t you do it since you know so much about them?” she asked.

Charlie stood angrily, almost falling over her own feet when she stomped away from where Zane was still silently leaning against the tree trunk. The smooth deep sound of his voice was so close now it startled her. As she turned and once again tripped over her own feet, warm arms greeted her, preventing her from dropping to the ground.

“Because, I’m not the destinata.” Zane replied. “You are. You were born with the best elements of both races. You have a kindness in your heart, which surmounts that of any I have been witness to. You can repel the haze because you are part Valguard. You can probably even haze others. Who knows how many traits you have inherited from either side? You are the only logical choice to stop the oncoming war between our races because you were born and are a part of both.”

Does he really think that will change my mind? So what if I am part Valguard, I’m still just an eighteen-year-old girl!

“I can’t and won’t do anything until I know what exactly a Valguard is. I have wondered my whole life why no one ever left our small town or for that matter why no one ever comes in. I’ve spent every minute of every day looking over my shoulder to see if the decisions I made were really my own or whether I had finally been hazed, as you call it. I’ve spent years trying to work out what you are, but I still have no idea. No one else in town cares. They all know your kind is here, but they overlook it as if you are just like us. Where did you come from? Why do you want the earth? Why not live with us instead of against us?” Charlie had no idea where her passion had come from, but she wanted answers and she wasn’t going to rest until she got them.

“The Valguard are humans. Evolved from humans anyway,” Zane sighed, but continued. “Centuries have passed since the first Valguard walked among the humans. My kind watched as we started slowly regressing to our former primitive selves. Maybe we had a hand in that by introducing diseases into your eco-system. Diseases intended to kill the left over ‘real humans’ off, for nothing more than so could have the run of the earth. Maybe that is why we started regressing over the years, maybe not. Either way, the Valguard slowly started to die out.  Since procreating between two Valguard only produces a human child, the only options we have left are to live within your world and create half beings such as you or let our race die off entirely. Then again, we could simply wipe out every human on the earth and have it for ourselves. There would be no humans to evolve into Valguard. We would die out slowly and alone. Therefore, you see, for both of our races to continue on, we need to be able to live peacefully together. The humans need to know of and accept the Valguard for what they are, so both can survive. If they don’t, one race or the other will attempt to start a war. We are natural enemies. It is inevitable. You are the one who is going to see one of these options happens.”

“That doesn’t really tell me anything. How exactly does one evolve?” Charlie asked. The threat of war should have been the first thing on her mind, and yet this question occurred first.

Zane’s face was thoughtful for a moment before he answered her.

“Maybe evolve is the wrong word. Created might be better. At some stage in your races history, they began to experiment upon themselves, always striving to be more. They finally succeeded. Instead of their subjects dying, they lived but they were… wrong. The human scientists spent years improving the serum which changed normal human beings into the Valguard and finally they perfected it and here we are.”

“Okay, I understand that part better, but why would the Valguard want to go to war with us if they need us to procreate more of their own?” The questions formed in her mouth on their own now. Zane’s irritation at her questions apparent, he rolled his eyes before answering her.  “I already told you this part. No Valguard other than your father has ever successfully ‘won over’ a human before. No matter how great their hazing ability, free will always wins out in the end. They would rather see the planet destroyed than to continue living a lie amongst humans. It’s only a matter of time before they become bored with their complacency here.”

Charlie thought over what Zane had said for a while before finally accepting it and moving on.

“Fine, but I want to know everything else as well.”

“Like what?” he asked.

Taking advantage of his willingness to talk to her she figuratively jumped at the chance while she had it.

“Anything, everything you can think of.”

“Okay, nobody ever comes into town because the moment they get near the border of Tole they are repelled by the haze. Nobody ever leaves for the same reason. If someone does get outside of the town, they would be outside of the haze the Valguard’s put on each individual and it would be chaos within the week. The Valguard don’t make your decisions for you, they merely sway you towards a decision that isn’t detrimental to them. No one else in town cares because we don’t want them to care. Well, the Valguard who live here permanently don’t want anyone to care. They want to live here for the moment in peace such as it is. Dropping the haze would cause fear, hysteria, and anarchy within the town. Our kind is outnumbered by a few hundred and even though we are strong, they aren’t good odds.”

“Well then why do I need to stop a war? If you are outnumbered, it won’t matter if I intervene.”

“The Valguard in Tole aren’t the only Valguard in the world Charlie, there are tens of thousands of us still living in different areas, watching, and waiting for humans to become weak enough to be taken down for good. You need to step up and show them your race isn’t weak, you need to stand between the two and get them to live peacefully or both races will die out. The Valguard will kill all the humans because it is bred into them to do it, they think themselves superior to you, and they will have no one to breed with to create half beings and keep their own race alive.”

Charlie didn’t miss the fact Zane had gone from ‘we’ to ‘them’ in a heartbeat and it was apparent to her that he wanted her to do this for the survival of his kind. Hearing his words, she knew he would exclude himself from the other Valguard to get his point across. She also knew he didn’t agree with his race killing without reason. She admired him for this. Yet she also knew she couldn’t do it. She was an eighteen year old girl, she wasn’t raised to convince two races to become one, and hadn’t the slightest clue how to do so anyway.

“I can’t. I’m sorry, I just can’t,” she said, her words occurring slower than anticipated.

Charlie ran back the way she had followed Zane in only this time he let her go without attempting to stop her. Looking back a few minutes later there was no sight of Zane. The dense forestry obscured her view, and she exhaled in relief.