Obumbrate (2 page)

Too bad Abigail wasn't an option.

It may have been only two weeks since Chase nearly succeeded in killing me again, but his violent attack left only a fraction of the sting Abigail's words had. By the time I noticed she had been in the hospital by my side the entire time, I had thought I was delusional. How could a mortal be in a mythical realm? She was human, or so I had assumed.

Fool me once, shame on me. Fool me twice, shame on me twice as hard.

A light cough came off from my left, my eyes spotting an unmistakable pair of Doc Martens standing next to me. "Are you coming down to lunch today?"

I shut my locker, wiggling the handle to make sure it was locked. I made sure not to look at her as I passed her to make my way down the hall. "I'd rather not, Abigail." I winced as her name passed my lips.

Abigail followed behind me, her long peasant skirt making swishing sounds against the sides of her legs. "Essallie, it's been two weeks. Enough is enough." She tried to match my stride as I walked faster until she couldn't take it. Hands grabbed at my sweater and turned me around. "So I'm a little weird, like you didn't already know. If it makes you feel better, I'll say I'm sorry."

"That's just it, Abby. I didn't." My eyes began to prickle, tears threatening to make a show. But I couldn't cry, not with several students still in the hallway with us. I shook my head. I felt like an overused bleeding heart, shocked to life too many times to count. "I can't accept your half-assed apology. You're not sorry you kept everything from me because it was 'good for me'. You're sorry you were ousted. You could have told me."

Abigail pursed her lips. I watched her lip curl upward as her trademark sneer and eye-roll made its appearance. "What did you think, Essie? That we became such fast friends because we connected so well?" She paused and tucked a stray piece of dark red hair behind her ear, deafening silence pounding between us. When she spoke, it was quiet and low. "I didn't mean it like that."

"Then tell me how you did mean it." I fought to control the volume of my voice. My fingers began to twitch as I fought the need to let my knees buckle from the quivering that ran rampant in my joints. "You know, I'm not some fragile little thing that's too delicate to hear the truth. I should have known anyone who was close to me was bound to be tired to my freakish side."

"I wanted to tell you, I really did." Abigail still spoke in a low-tone. "But it wasn't my call."

Red began to bleed into my sight, clouding my view. Every beat of my heart matched the pounding in my head. I spoke in a hiss. "Of course not. It's never your call. It's always someone else's. I'm sorry I ever trusted you, ever knew you." I rocked back on my heels and reached up to press my fingers against my temples. "God, why is every freaking person around me some kind of supernatural
freak?
" My voice cracked at the end, and I lost my hold on the scream built in the back of my throat.

It was only the two of us now, all the other students having shuffled off and away from the scene we- I was making.

"Listen-"

"No,
you
listen. I don't want to hear your sob story of how you kept me in the dark for my own protection. This isn't some stupid vampire novel where everyone keeps the squishy little human from knowing anything." Fire sparked on my fingertips, a familiar dull ache spreading through my veins. I wanted to release it, let the full force consume the hallway and both of us in it. "I can set anyone on fire in a given moment, burn forests to the ground, reduce buildings to ash! Is that why you couldn't tell me anything? Because I'm like a Molotov cocktail?"

Abigail moved to answer, but I shoved a flaming finger centimeters away from her face, silencing her with a gasp for air. "No more lies, Abigail. You're going to tell me everything, or nothing will stop me from setting you ablaze."

"It wasn't her choice, Essallie. It was mine," Kayden's voice called from the end of the hallway. I looked up to see him approach us, each step bringing his shifting silhouette into sharper focus. His dark black hair spiked on his head stood in sharp contrast to his rich tanned skin, eyes a spinning mist of hazel and black. Even dressed in an everyday get up of a windbreaker, t-shirt and jeans he looked like a dark immortal, the kind of person you'd swoon over under the bleachers and dreamt about at night. If I hadn't known better I'd have called him seductive, cunning, a mystery I'd long to find more about.

Eyes locked on Kayden, he stopped as a brilliant arc of flames erupted on my second hand, engulfing it whole. It spun into a ball and cradled in my palm as I held it in his direction. "You stay out of this. I'll pick my battle with you next,
demon.
" I gave him a piercing stare. He had been someone to trust, to tell me everything and help me navigate this new power I could barely contain. Instead, it felt like he'd thrown me to the wolves. My attention moved back to Abigail. "Who else is weird like me, like us? My brother? Thomas? Jessica?"

Abigail took a step backward, hesitation written across her face. She stole a quick glance at Kayden, who shook his head silently. 

"Oh my God. Jessica?" I hissed. "Is that why she's still in Portland? Did she even
go
to Portland?"

"I can't say."

"Dammit Abigail!"

Like flipping on a switch, fire shot from my hands. A wall of bright blue flame instantly separated them from me, my fire acting like a barricade. Abigail reacted in barely enough time; stumbling into the lockers behind, her she quickly put out the fire that started on the hem of her skirt. Kayden silently joined her, swirls of black smoke curling at his feet. 

"How am I to know anything you tell me is what's really going on? Or am I just supposed to trust you both, the demon and the sneak, both holding your own goals at heart," I hissed, backing down the hall to make for the exit to the parking lot.

"Essie, this is enough. You can't keep doing this," Kayden snapped as he stood alongside Abigail. "This is what it's like being different, you have to accept that. People live and people die. Leo was only the beginning. The sooner you accept that, the sooner we can plan."

I felt a stab at my heart as he said Leo's name aloud. He shouldn't have been allowed to speak that name, the name of that brilliant life I let die. Grief washed over me in waves that was almost too painful to hold back. The urge to let fire engulf the whole hall crossed my mind again. "Plan for what? How much more have you kept from me? I can't trust either of you, not after what happened." I turned to face Abigail, fighting the urge to cry again. "Was any of our friendship real? Or was Kayden using you to get to me from the beginning?"

Abigail turned her gaze to Kayden and started to speak. He instantly drowned her out, eyes never left my face. "By all means, get even more pissed. Blow yourself up and kill everyone here. It'll be their blood on your hands. You think Leo's death was hard, try living with the knowledge you killed hundreds."

I looked down to my blazing hands, watching the fire roll over my skin harmlessly. "You know what? I like the sound of that." I flexed my fingers, letting coils of the flame lash out at them from the blaze between us. With the pressure of my body I launched the wall straight at them. Kayden wrapped himself around Abigail as she screamed just as the fire raced around Kayden, burning him in seconds. It dawned on me that Kayden could be gone from that burst, or that Abigail could be burned to the point of deformity, maybe even death. Yet somehow, I didn't care. Every feeling I had was locked in a box within my soul, leaving me with a hollow sensation I couldn't place.

Spinning sharply on my heels, I crossed the parking lot and slid inside my car. The growing roar of the engine felt oddly satisfying, the rumble just enough to match the quakes and quivers of my body. For a second I looked back to the building, my neck tilted to see inside the doors where I had abandoned the two traitors. My car had just inched past the double glass doors when I spotted a burst of black smoke fill the hallway.

The skin on my knuckles flared white against the steering wheel as I navigated through the streets of Belfast. I was searching for something, anything to distract me from setting fire to the whole town. School was too risky, too many potential events that could trigger my anger and hurt someone innocent. Home was just as dangerous, as Jayson was bound to ask me why I was so uptight, and I didn't want to hurt him. I was barely keeping my temper in check as I drove, and I knew that at any point I could lose it and blow up the car. I needed some place quiet, somewhere the fresh air could hit my lungs and tame my thoughts with a gentle breeze.

I crossed past the same church three times over before I settled on parking. It was mid-afternoon, so no services were being held. I made sure to pull my sketchbook from my messenger bag before I left the car. Connected to the small church was an equally small graveyard, the perfect place to go for a quiet moment. After all, who's quieter than the dead?

Only the sound of my footsteps sounded around me as I rounded the headstones one by one. Most of them were faded, crumbling from age and weather, and the new ones stood out in sharp contrast. My fingertips brushed over the black marble of a new headstone naming an older woman who had died four years ago. Instantly I was enraged. Leo deserved one of these, he deserved to be buried and rest. But the stupid facade Kayden and his parents agreed to all put on made that impossible. All because no one wanted to cause a panic in the town.

Between the hospital and home I had learned there was much more to the eyes of Leo than anyone had let on. His family held a key role in gate-keeping the entrances to Charon. They decided when new entrances could be placed and who held control over them for safe passage. Leo had been the last of his blood line. Now, with him gone, the question was who would take over when his parents pass.

Finding space between two aged headstones, I found a comfortable place on the grass to sit, my sketchbook propped up on my legs for support. Slowly I turned the pages, taking cursory glances over the abstract designs. It used to be something I loved, an outlet for my frustration. Now all I saw was Leo. Images of his hands reaching for my pencil, his happy smile as he showed me Charon, it all blurred behind a wall of haze in my mind. I had it shut it out- all of it -if I was to ever function again. So much easier said than done when you've seen two violent deaths before your eyes.

My fingers found the pencil I kept in the ringed binding and before I knew it, I was drawing. Sheer impulse drove the pencil against paper, framing a beautiful almond-shaped eye with a dark iris, small arcs of light breaking through the black smudges of lead. It wasn't an eye I openly recognized. Most of my drawings were normally manga related; cartoon eyes with dramatic eyelashes and open messages displayed in their large stare. This one was human, a real life eye.

"I didn't know you enjoyed my gaze that much, Nephilim." A female voice softly purred behind me. Instantly I snapped out of my haze, like breaking through a watery surface with force. I looked around to see the graveyard had turned darker, shadows pulling towards the headstones and swirling around me. Slowly they spun upward, framing in a delicate woman I had only met once.

I waited for the initial shock of wear off before I used my voice. The Queen looked as ornate and elegant as she had the night of the circus disaster. A flowing gown of the blackest of fabrics cut with a sweetheart top swallowed her petite frame. Gloves of the same fabric were decorated with sparkling pearls and Swarovski crystals. Beautifully dressed or not, it was her pale face framed by curtains of black hair that stood out. "Your gaze?"

She glided over with inhuman grace and gently crouched down to point at the picture I had been working on. "Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that would be my eye." She stared at me with curiosity. "Do you carry the Sight, as well?"

I stared up at her face and back to the photo. Sure enough, the photo I had been instinctively scribbling had been of her eyes. Maybe I was psychic? More likely than not I had remembered her face in my subconscious when I was revisiting that night in my memories. Then again, it wouldn't be the first time I was surprise by my own hidden abilities.

I shrugged and brushed off her question. I was in no mood to deal with any kind of mind games she might try to enact on me. "Did you need something? Or do you just enjoy taking afternoon strolls in the mortal realm?"

The Queen appeared unfazed by my cold shoulder. "Kayden said you were brash. I can see he was right." She smiled. "Do you speak to him like this as well?"

"You answer my question, and I'll answer yours."

Her smile faltered by a fraction before she recovered with poised grace. "Very well, then. I came to see you. You had left in such haste after the... incident. I was worried for your well being."

Her lies lingered in the air like bitter puffs of sulfur, strong enough to taste, strong enough to gag on. "Two weeks is an awfully long time to wait. You could have just been honest and said you wanted to see if I was dead yet."

She opened her mouth slightly to speak, only to close it. Rich honey brown eyes narrowed at me. "You haven't answered my question, Nephilim."

"Essallie. It's Essallie," I corrected with a snap.

"Essallie it is, then. You haven't answered my question."

I turned my eyes back to the drawing on my lap. With a jerk of the paper, I ripped it from the sketchbook, crumbled it into a wad and chucked over my shoulder.

"Only those who smell to high heavens of bullshit and ulterior motives." I rose to my feet and faced her, heat lancing through my veins like spears ready for the fight. "Spit it out. You didn't come here to check on me. So why are you here?"

Her eyes widened in surprise as I stood there, waiting. After today's nonsense with Abigail and Kayden, I had heard enough bullshit to span my lifetime six times over. Queen or no Queen, I didn't owe her anything. If anything, she owed me her life. It had been my hands covered in Chase's blood, not hers. For sacrificing my own lifespan to a torture of burning veins so her and all her little supernatural freaks could continue on in their meaningless existence.