The Watcher Novel Calvino Novels & Stories

14 ANYA The atmosphere in the dimly lit room thickened, an intoxicating blend of anticipation and desire. The air hummed with unspoken promises as I stood before him, the cold bite of the handcuffs a constant reminder of my submission. My pulse quickened, every nerve ending alive with the thrill of the unknown. The Watcher stepped away for a moment, and I felt a rush of longing as he disappeared into the shadows. When he returned, he held a sleek candle in his hands, the wax glistening ominously under the low light. The flickering flame danced atop it, casting a warm glow that illuminated the darkness surrounding us.

Calvin’s security team made it very clear that the journalist wasn’t getting anywhere near this event. And this guy? He’s not holding a camera. He’s not pretending to be part of the crowd. He’s just standing there. I blink, and suddenly, he’s gone. I tell myself I imagined it. That my brain is wired for paranoia lately, that I’m exhausted and pregnant and just seeing things. Still, my hands feel cold when I push open the gallery doors and step back inside. Calvin finds me almost immediately, like he’s got some kind of sixth sense when it comes to me being rattled. He murmurs something to the person he was talking to, then crosses the room, his hand instinctively finding the small of my back.

Gabriel rose from beside Rusk with his axe in one hand, and the other extended slightly toward Lily and Nora, not touching them, but guiding them back by presence alone. Warren lifted his rifle. Dean whispered, “That is not where voices should come from.” No one answered. The Watcher stood half-hidden by mist and branches, its long limbs pale against the dark trunks. Rain slid down the leaves around it. If water touched its skin, Evelyn could not tell. It seemed separate from the weather somehow, not immune to it, but uninterested in being acknowledged by something as ordinary as rain. The wrongness pressed down hard now. It rolled through the ravine in a thick, sickening wave. Evelyn felt i

But there was something else there too. A figure standing just beyond the gate's edge, watching us with silver eyes that caught the light like mirrors. He was tall, pale, with dark hair and a face that was beautiful in the way a poisonous flower is beautiful. When he saw me looking, he smiled. Then he was gone, vanishing into shadows like he'd never been there at all. "Did you see him?" I asked Marcus. "See who?" So only I had seen the watcher. Only I had felt the cold intelligence in those silver eyes.

He looked like a wire pulled too tight, vibrating with a force he couldn't control. Nikolai stepped inside, his gaze immediately darting from Ivan to me. He froze, his head tilting to the side in a way that made my skin crawl. It wasn't the way a man looks at a woman; it was the way a scientist looks at a new specimen. “So”, Nikolai whispered, "This is the little American girl. The one who hides Kings in her kitchen.” “Stay back, Nikolai”, Ivan growled. The warning was clear, vibrating the floorboards.

"If this is what the woman in the chair warned us about, the first sign of the thing watching from outside, I do not want to alert it that we have already noticed." Calder nodded. He went to do the work he did, the patient mapping of a stranger's movements that had become, over four years, the thing he was best at in the world. He came back two days later with less than any of us wanted and more than I had expected, given how little there was to find.

I walk towards the noises and I see Calvin shirtless with denim pants playing with a little girl. "I think we've put in enough sugar Sacha. " "But uncle, a little more. But just one spoonful, then we put it in the oven. " "Okay, it's working. " I don't know why, but this scene moves me, it could have been Mason and our child or Calvin and our child. The little girl is the first to notice my presence. "Uncle Cal, you have a visitor. " Calvin turns to me and his smile immediately disappears, he looks at me and squints his eyes as if he is having a hallucination.

The sound was seductive, piquing my curiosity, so I crept closer. Through the crack in the door, I could see Fenelle lying face-down on the bed, one hand caressing her bosoms, the other holding something as she thrust it into her back passage while arching her hips. In an instant, the heat that had just subsided surged back through me. Afraid she might catch me, I could only watch through that narrow gap as she panted in ecstasy. The sounds from inside came in fits and starts, like a lament, sounding both painful and pleasurable.

And for the first time, Calvin caught her eye and looked away quickly, as if afraid of what he might see there. Maybe the end of the world didn’t come with fire or thunder or darkness. Maybe it started quietly, with a feeling, a warning, a story that no one wanted to believe. “Could Autumn be on to something?” Calvin questioned himself. Maybe—just maybe—Calvin would start to listen.

“Do you even know where you are going? What you will do? You are fugitives from the ultimate authority, hiding in a realm where reality is a suggestion. You need a guide.” “We need nothing from you,” I said, my voice cold. “Don’t you?” He raised an eyebrow. “The Watchers will not abandon their search. Their reach is long, even here. They will send probes. Hunters. Entities that thrive on paradoxes, because consuming them is the only way they can experience novelty. You are a seven-course meal to them.” A shiver, cold and sharp, traced its way down my spine. He was painting a target on our backs that was even larger than I had imagined.