It is indeed a hollow, inadequate kind of sound as the deadbolt falls into place. Elena sagged against her cheap, cool wood house door, her face pinching with trembling her entire body. The touch of his knuckles against her cheek left it tingling. It was less a touch than a burn, invisible but scalded into her flesh. She still felt it in an audible so shocking, pure instant blast of energy lit up every nerve ending and left her breathless.
She started glancing around her tiny apartment. It was representative of her life: small, battered, but scrupulously clean. An aged couch served as her bed; a tiny kitchenette tucked away in one corner, and she had piled second-hand books that served as her coffee table. It was her retreat from the world, the one arena where she safely could drop pretenses of polite indifference and simply be. Tonight, however, it had the uncanny feeling. The walls seemed thin, the single lock on the door laughably weak. His resonance was like a ghost wanders with her-the scent of his leather and the wild storm of his cologne, a memories that broke through her sacred space.
She sank into the couch and wrapped her arms around herself. He was who? She tried to rein her racing thoughts into some mock semblance of order. Obviously, a rich and powerful man. The car; the suit; the stance of total authority raging around him. A stalker? Perhaps. Definitely a man possessed by strange delusions of ownership. She tried to cling to those sensible explanations. They may be terrifying, but they belonged to a world she was altogether familiar with, a world that would comprise human perils she'd learned to avoid.
Yet her mind kept sticking at the impossible details. The way his eyes, a shade of pure, molten gold, seemed to glow in the dark. The low, guttural timber of his voice when he had claimed her. The bizarre, overwhelming instinct that had forced her to lie to a police officer to protect him. None of it made sense. It felt like a chapter from a dark fairy tale had been violently shoved into the gritty reality of her life.
A quiet cough piped in from the other room. Her mother. Pushing herself to her feet, Elena quietly opened the door to the apartment's only bedroom. In the dim light filtering through the window, she could see her mother's frail form asleep in the bed. Her breaths were slow and shallow, and even while sleeping, her lines of chronic pain carved through her face. An overwhelming, desperate love flooded through Elena and eclipsed her fear for a moment. This was the reason she fought. This was the reason she endured hours on end, creepy customers, and soul-sucking tiredness.
She gently drew the thin blanket up under her mother's shoulders. Their lives were built on cards and that man, that horrible man with the golden eyes, was the tempest roaring outside threatening to blow it all away. He identified a world of power and danger, which would demolish their delicate existence. That cold stone was her fear for herself, but the flaming, raging inferno was her fear for her mother.
In the living room, Elena knew sleep would be a futile hope. She lay on the lumpy couch, staring at the water-stained ceiling, reliving every moment of the night. Eventually, exhaustion claimed her, pulling deep into restless, feverish sleep. And she dreamed.
Running: that's how dreaming always went. Running through a moon-lit forest on four strong legs. The thrill came down to that: free and primal strength. Except tonight something was a little different: she was not alone. By her side another shadow: a glare-eating beast, bigger than anyone she'd ever imagined, its fur was midnight, its eyes were two burning gold embers in the dark. There was no fear, only a sense of completeness: she was running with the other half of her soul, a silent understanding passing between them as they moved as one through the ancient trees.
She woke with a gasp as her heart thumped, not with fear but from some odd sense of loss. The dream had felt more real than waking reality. Sitting up, the gray morning light filtered into the room. It was too early. Heavy and unrested, her lines between dreams and reality remained hopelessly blurred. Just about to start up her coffee, a sharp, confident knock echoed from her front door.
It was the not-delivery-man's hesitant rap nor that of the superintendent's stomach rumble. Crisp, authoritative, and final. The rap of a man who did not expect an answer but had one in his mind. Tomorrow had come and this is where he waited on the other side of the door.