Chapter 20
Gawking at him,my eyes were glued to Van and his unwavering stare. Out of all the things I thought he might have to tell me, those three words weren’t even in the running. I thought he was going to tell me something about having known Xoah prior to this flight. Him claiming he wasn’t human was completely out of the blue.
“What do you mean, you’renothuman?”
Van’s eyebrows did a dance, one that told me he didn’t understand my initial confusion. “Is there another way to interrupt those words?” He said, challenging me.
I couldn’t accept the challenge, of course. Because he was right. His statement wasn’t hard to understand. I was just so taken aback that I was pretty speechless.
“I’m looking right at you, Van.” I affirmed, gesturing to his entire body. “You look pretty human to me.”
“That’s because I’m wearing an illusion right now.” He stated very matter of factly. Likewearing an illusionwas a normal fucking explanation. “My kind often wears a human illusion most of their existence to avoid being othered.”
My kind. He was really committing to this bit.
If he wanted a challenge, I was going to meet him there and give him one right back. “Prove it.”
“Really?” Van slacked in his seat, his legs spreading wider to exhibit his annoyance moreover.
“If you want me to believe that you’re not human, then I’m going to need to see some semblance of proof.”
After a beat, Van regained his earlier composure and leaned forward in his seat. “Fine. Name an actor.”
“What?”
“You heard me, Alistair. Name. An actor.”
The sternness in Van’s voice went straight to my dick, unnerving me from the situation at hand. I wasn’t supposed to be turned on right now, I was supposed to be getting answers.
Fine, I’d play his little game. As long as it ended in figuring out what was going on with him, I didn’t really care how we got there. We still had the entire flight to get through anyway. I mulled his words over, ready to see how he was going to deliver when I said an actor’s name. My first thought was to go to Reed, being the actor I’d been closest with, but I decided to go a different route.
“Pedro Pascal.”
Rolling his shoulders, Van said, “Watch closely.”
I was about to roll my eyes at the implication, but I watched, transfixed, as a purple light, like the color of his eyes if I didn’t know any better that they were just deep blue, flashed over his frame. Van started to change shape right before my eyes, like one second he was the Van I’d come to know, and the next he was my favorite actor. Down to every detail, Van looked exactly like Pedro Pascal. Like magic.
I shuddered in surprise in my seat, shock clearly evident all over my face. One second, Van was the bodyguard I’d been getting to know these past few months, the last man I’d slept with, and then all of the sudden he was the Chilean superstar.
“What the fuck?”
“Alistair, I’m sorry if it feels like I’m springing this on you.” Van / Pedro told me. Hearing Pedro’s voice speak Van’s words made it very real that he’d been telling me the truth.
He really wasn’t human.
“Can you please change back?” I waved my hand out in front of my face, shielding myself from the form of Pedro in front of my vision. “This is too wild of a conversation to be having with Pedro Pascal.”
The purple light lasered over his form until he was back to being the Van that I was used to seeing. His eyes were the only thing that lingered or seemed out of place, his irises glowing a very neon purple, just like the light that had caressed his body before he’d shapeshifted. So I guess his eyes really were purple and the deep blue hue was just part of his apparent illusion. Once they flashed the neon purple, they were back to the Elizabeth Taylor shade I was so accustomed to, calming me in an instant despite the weird situation I found myself in.
“What’s going on, Van?” I said, once he looked like himself again. “How the fuck are you able to do this?”
“I told you, I’m not human.” He leaned forward in his seat, balancing his elbows on his knees as he gave me a solemn stare. “Have you ever heard of the Orb species olatsma?”
Uh-lots-muh. It wasn’t a word I was particularly familiar with. I’d worked with caeboros, stellymn, petrylle, and sangamar because of my music videos. And I’d heard about and seen a fair amount of lycanthe and hjarq. I wasn’t sure about the other Orbs. There was always the chance that I’d seen more but just didn’t know the name.
I shook my head reluctantly after mulling it over. “I don’t think so.”
Van scoffed, smirking lightly. “I’m not surprised. Most of my kind prefers to use a designated human illusion to go abouttheir every day life, to blend into human society.” His eyes grew dark, a hidden truth behind them that he wasn’t quite ready to share. “It’s very unheard of for olatsma to live in their true form anymore.”
