Distant Lands
Rebirth

Is he messing with me?

I get up quickly and walk into the living room to replace Damon sitting on the couch, smiling.

I stand before him, “What do you mean I’ve stopped aging? You mean I can’t die?” I ask.

He laughs, “You’re not an immortal, silly human. It just means you won’t die of old age or disease. You can still get injured and die,” he says, amused.

I stare at him in utter disbelief. I don’t know how to explain how I feel right now. It’s a combination of anger and shock. How can he not see that this will affect my life forever?

“D-Damon, not getting old is a big deal where I’m from!” I can barely speak.

“So you want to grow old and die?” he narrows his eyes and tilts his head.

“I’m going back to Earth. How will I explain when I’m seventy years old and still look like this?” I point at my face.

“Just say you have good genes,” he says, laughing aloud.

Damon taking this as a joke makes me want to wring his neck. Without thinking, I jump on him and start punching him. He leans back, blocking my fists, my punches don’t seem to be affecting him, and they only seem to amuse him.

“You bastard!” I swung my fists harder.

With little effort, Damon pins me down on the couch. I continue to push against him and finish my tantrum. My anger dissipates, and my eyes well up.

“Are you done?” he asks, staring me down.

“Please tell me you’re lying! I don’t want to watch as everybody I love grows old and dies,” I say, crying.

He sighs and backs up a bit. “It was the only way to save your life. I had to make a choice. If you had died, you would have never seen your family again. They would have wondered what had happened to you, replaceing no trace of you. Is that what you prefer? I made a promise to you, little human. I promised to take you home,” he says, releasing me. He gets up and goes to his room.

I sit up on the couch, holding my head. I don’t know how to feel right now. I understand Damon did this to save my life, but it’s scary thinking that I’m now a different type of human. In a way, I am immortal. If I can avoid getting killed, who knows how long I could live.

Some people on Earth would kill or pay millions, trillions, to have something like this. People will notice that I haven’t aged as the years go by. They will begin to wonder and might try to kill me, or worse, they might experiment with me. This can't be happening. My mind refuses to believe this is true.

Damon comes running into the room.

“Pack your things!”

“What! Now what? What’s happening?”

“Just do it!”

Running into my room, I stuffed clothes and the other gifts Damon had bought me in my backpack. I run back to the living room and wait for Damon. He comes back and paces back and forth. I just look at him. He looks like he is trying to decide something.

Finally, he touches his ear and seems to be listening to something or someone talk. His eyes widen, and without saying anything, he grabs my wrist and pulls me toward the elevator doors.

“Damon! What’s going on? Where are we going?” Damon inputs something on his watch and doesn’t say anything. We go into the elevator and go up to the rooftop of the building.

“I’ll explain later,” he says. The doors open, and a gust of wind hits my face, and the clear sky is a deep blue. Damon grabs my wrist and runs towards a car. I try to keep up, but he’s too fast, and I trip with my own feet. Damon looks back at me and yanks me up, “Oh! Damon, what are you-” I mutter. He carries me over his shoulder. The car’s roof opens, and Damon carelessly drops me into the back seat.

“Stop treating me like a rag doll! Tell me, what’s going on?” I sit up. Damon ignores me, gets into the front seat, and the car’s top begins to shut. He powers up the vehicle, and it starts humming loudly at first. I realize this car is a flying car. I look for a seat belt but replace none.

“Just sit back on the seat,” Damon says.

I sit back on the seat and feel pressure holding me back. Invisible seat belts? How? The car starts to levitate in the air. The vehicle moves forward and quickly picks up speed. I hold on to the sides of the car.

Once in the air, the car’s humming quiets down and flies smoothly. Damon inputs some numbers that look like coordinates on the car’s dashboard touch screen. He finally sits back in his seat and gives a frustrated sigh—the car self-drives in the direction of the coordinates.

“I should have killed that bastard Lamia,” he says.

“You mean the one that attacked me? Why? What’s going on?”

“Ethan contacted me and said the authorities visited the ranch, they claim it was just a routine visit, but they seemed to be searching the place,” he says.

“Shit! I didn’t think anybody would believe that a vampire saw a human. Unless they found proof of some kind?” I ask. Damon thinks about it and looks at me.

“Your hand was bleeding. If the authorities found traces of your blood, they know a human is in Azure,” he says.

My adrenaline rushes through my veins, and my heart beats fast. Dammit, I feel like a wanted criminal running from the law.

“And now they are searching for me? Where are we going now?”

“To one of my secluded houses. There’s no record of them on a map. I made sure to build a safe house. In case I needed it one day.”

It makes me wonder what kind of businesses Damon is involved in to have to build himself a safe house. But that doesn’t matter right now. I have to worry about myself. I have to do whatever it takes to avoid getting caught. Damon gives a frustrated sigh, and his eyes look stressed. I begin to fear that he might be thinking that I’m not worth the trouble.

“Damon, please don’t let them replace me. Alexa told me about the last intruder and how the council killed him. He was put to death by molecular disintegration. I don’t want to get disintegrated,” I say. He turns to look at me and furrows his brows.

“Who is Alexa?”

“Your home robot, I named her Alexa.” He shakes his head.

“You’re lucky I encrypt all my devices. If I hadn’t, they would have found us already. And no, you won’t be disintegrated; that is an old practice,” he says, looking back at his car’s touch screen.

I sigh in relief and look out the window. The clouds are visible underneath the vehicle. No other cars are around, and it feels like we aren’t even moving. Suddenly, I hear a beeping sound, and I freak out.

“Relax, I’m receiving a call,” he says. He taps the screen of the car.

“Yes? Liam,” he says in a bored tone of voice.

“I’m sorry to bother you, but the authorities just left. They came to work looking for you. I just thought you should know,” Liam says.

“Thank you for letting me know. I appreciate it,” Damon says and cuts off communication.

“Why would they look for you?” I ask.

“The lamia who attacked you knows who I am.” Damon presses some options on the screen and grabs onto the controls. He starts going a breakneck speed. He makes a sudden dip downward, and I close my eyes. I get that free-fall floating sensation in my stomach. He stabilizes the vehicle, and we continue flying at a lower altitude.

We get closer to the tall trees ahead of us, and I tense up, afraid that we will crash into them. “Slow down, Damon.”

“We’re almost there,” he says.

“Yes, I know, I can see that.”

“I’m going to drop you off at the safe house."

"Wait, you're not coming with me?"

"The authorities might look for me at my place, so I need to get back quickly.”

He locates a small clearing on a hill and begins to descend downwards. The vehicle hovers five feet from the ground. The seat’s pressure releases me, and Damon looks back at me.

“Okay, Liz, the safe house is that way,” he points toward the direction of the forest.

“Keep walking straight that way. You’ll replace it, now jump off,” he opens the vehicle’s roof. I stare at him like he’s crazy.

“Jump off? Can’t you just land?” I peer over the side and look below.

Damon rolls his eyes and stands up. He pulls me up by my arm while holding on to my arm; he pushes me off of the car, I dangle for a second, and then he lets go. I land on my feet but fall backward on the sloped hill. I look up at Damon, and he points in the direction I need to go.

“Don’t forget about me!”

He then closes the roof and flies off at high speed.