Persona (34 page)

The hallway is a long one and looks like it could go forever, making her stop. She is about to turn around and go back, when she picks up on a familiar cinnamon scent

Grinning at her luck, she follows the cinnamon smell to the end of the hallway. It’s not really as long as she thought, and soon enough she is standing in front of a closed door. The scent is so strong now, that it makes her persona tingle just below the surface of her skin.

Looking down at herself she makes sure she isn’t changing, and when she does, she realized she is still in the sleep clothes she got from Raven; which consists of a baggy shirt that comes to the edges of the short shorts she’s wearing.

Her legs are completely bare, as are her feet and her hair hangs limply over her shoulders and down her back. She has the irrational feeling of being naked, even though she isn’t, and it makes her wonder if she should turn around.

This feeling makes her persona begin to rise, and her vision becomes clear. Right after that, the cinnamon scent spikes and she has the weird sensation that Liam knows she is out here. It’s silent in the hall and on the other side of the door though. Sighing, and tucking her hair behind her ears and out of her face, she reaches for the door and yanks it open.

She finds herself in a largely lit room that resembles a library or maybe a den. There are book stacked shelves lining the walls, but in the center of the room, it’s arranged like a study with comfortable seating. Among them all, is Liam.

He is resting on a lounger with a book in his hands; one that she notices is Hamlet by William Shakespeare. She only has a brief moment to be slightly impressed by this, before his eyes rise to her.

The cinnamon scent spikes again as their eyes meet, and it makes her breath come too quickly. Glancing away from him, she turns to close the door softly and then lingers towards the closest book shelve. Only really pretending to scan its contents, she glances over her shoulder to Liam and finds that he is still watching her with a brow raised.

He then rakes his eyes across her body and she feels herself blush, which makes him smirk slightly in response. He lowers the book he was reading, and sits up straighter.

“Couldn’t sleep?” He asks in a whisper.

She glances away from him again, and thinks she might have made a mistake to come in here. She feels kind of uncomfortable, but in a good way.

In a way though, it’s worse than the bad way. She glances back to him over her shoulder though.

“No, not so much. You too huh?”

She tried to come off as casual, but she knows her flaming cheeks and emerald eyes are giving her away.

He does smiles at her though, and places the book on the lounger as he never takes his eyes off of her, which make her be the one to look away again.

“Yeah, I can’t really sleep lately; too worried about everyone I care about.”

She whips her head around to face him, at this, and her eyes go wide as she watches him continue to grin at her.

Blushing profusely, she glances away again and wants to smack herself silly. For a moment there, she thought he was talking about caring for her, but she knows that’s silly. He must have meant his family, right, she hopes so. Her exposed flesh feels like it’s blushing as deeply as her cheeks, and she just wants to run and hide, stupid girl feelings.

She’s really contemplating dashing out the door, when cinnamon fills her senses and makes her skin crawl. She can feel her persona pushing at her body for a release, and she picks up on an echo of Liam’s responding to hers.

The cinnamon scent gets closer, and she knows without turning, that Liam is coming towards her now.

Feeling her breath coming to quickly to stay calm, she ignores him and continues to stare blindly at the shelves before her. But then she can feel him at her back, so close that she can feel him like an electrical current trying to reach for her.

Then she feels his breath on the back of her neck as he moves even closer to her.

“I can feel you, you know.” He says softly.

With her eyes closed, she sighs at the dizzying feeling his persona is raking on her body, and totally misses what he says to her.

Opening her eyes, she stays perfectly still, afraid of what will happen if she were to look at him.

“What?”

“Your Persona, I can feel it. It makes mine feel like a bee hive buzzing around in my head.”

This almost makes her gasp out loud, because that is almost exactly like his makes her feel. She has been wondering for a while if he felt the same, and now she knows.

“I feel yours too, but it’s wrapped in cinnamon that swirls around you all the time.”

She hears him sigh behind her, and move in closer still, until she can practically feel the warmth of him.

“Really; you smell like freshly baked apple pie to me.”

She half turns around, and he keeps getting closer to her. She notices that his eyes are violet now, making her gasp at the sight of them, as he is staring at her so intently. She can feel the loose waves of her hair tighten into curls and turn auburn as it rises.

Smirking at her, he in response, his hair goes a deep brown. So slowly, he lifts his hand and caresses her hair.

“You are so beautiful, Mo.” He says in a barely audible whisper.

Gasping now, she can barely catch her breath as her chest rises and falls.

“Why do you make me feel this way?” She asks, and not entirely sure what way she means either.

“I don’t really know, but I do know that I’m tired of fighting it.” Liam says in a shaky deep voice.

He closes the distance between them then, and with an intake of breath, she meets him halfway. They’re lips crash into each other, and she places her hands into the front of his shirt pulling him closer. He wraps his hands into her hair pulling her to him, making them both gasp into the others lips.

With a speed that leaves her eve more breathless, he pushes them into the bookshelf behind her with a bang, which reverberates all the way down to her toes.

The collision makes them both moan in response, as there is no space between them now. As one they deepen the kiss, and they open up for each other. Moira feels like she’s swimming in a sea of cinnamon, and he tastes like nothing she’s ever had before, like sweet and spicy at the same time.

Her whole body is tingling with her persona, and she can feel his like static electricity across her body everywhere his body touches her own. She knows she should be afraid that his or even her teeth and nails could slide out and hurt the other; but at the moment she doesn’t care.

Distantly, she hears the door to the library open but she’s so consumed that she can’t register anything. Liam pushes closer into her, making her pull him in using her hands still wrapped in his shirt front.

When something crashes back into the door with a bang, Liam pulls away from her slightly leaving her gasping.

When his eyes go from hazy, to confused, and then to alarmed, Moira follows his eyes, and finds Marty is standing in the doorway wide eyed.

***

“Marty.” Moira says in an abashed whisper, her voice still husky from Liam kissing her a second before.

Liam can actually feel Moira pulling away from him, even before she physically moves. He shifts his attention off of the startled looking Marty, and searches Moira for what is going through her mind.

A thousand different emotions play across her face, and everyone tells him the same thing; that she feels guilty. Guilty for kissing him and for Marty witnessing it obviously and it makes Liam feel awful and stupid at the same time. He feels her pulse pick up, right before she steps out and away from him, so there is a good foot between them.

She is still watching Marty, when he finally turns his gaze to the other boy. That’s when jealously rears its ugly head, and all he wants at that moment is to rush at him and tear him from to limb for interrupting. He doesn’t though, no, he just stands there to bear witness to something he should have seen coming.

Moira is shaking now and takes half a step to Marty and this seems to take the other boy out of the shock he was in. He starts to back away turning his head from side to side, and at first he looks heart broken.

But then he takes his eyes off of Moira for a second and they land on Liam and his eyes narrow into a glare before turning from a light green to a startling deep shade of emerald.

Liam tenses and for a split second wishes the other boy would charge at him, so he could release his real feelings for the other boy. For a moment, Marty really looks like he’s going too, as his two toned dark hair becomes the blackest of black. But then he blinks, and shifts his attention to Moira.

She takes another step towards him, with tears in her eyes and an apology just on the tip of her tongue. He doesn’t give her the chance, because his features darken, and rushes out of the room.

Moira cries out then, and as Liam feels her apple scented persona reach a crescendo, she quickly runs after the other boy. She moves faster than normal and Liam knows she’ll reach him in no time at all and confess her undying whatever’s to him.

That is something Liam is not strong enough to witness, or to even try to take a stand and stop her; and so he just stands there. He wants to turn his eyes from the sight unfolding in front of him, but he can’t, much like watching a car accident and it makes him sick to his stomach.

He can feel his persona fading away from him, the closer Moira gets to Marty, and they are almost at the end of the hallway when he hears it; a sound so quiet, that he almost misses it, but he doesn’t.

It’s a scratching noise, something similar to nails on a chalkboard or maybe on glass. It doesn’t sound very far away either, and in fact, it sounds very close to Liam. He has time to figure out what’s going to happen before it does, but he doesn’t have enough time to call out or move.

The windows in the hallway are blown inward towards Moira and Marty, as bodies dressed in black come crashing in, while he stands frozen. When Marty and Moira both are hit from the side and crash into the opposite wall, Liam suddenly wakes up.

His persona floods through him faster than it ever has before, and he runs for the hallway with a yell and his nails outward.

As he runs, he notices that there are four bodies that came in through the windows and they are brandishing batons. Two of them are already attacking Marty and Moira with them, who were already stunned and surprised from being knocked into the wall. Marty doesn’t take long to figure out they are being attacked, and he is up and under his full persona hitting back at the person near him.

The other one though manages to get a couple good hits to Moira, while she is still on the ground. She blocks one swing at her, and pushes them away, and it’s a surprise to Liam that the persona actually stumbles back a bit. When she is getting to her feet though, the person is already charging her and jabs her in her middle. She cries out from it and hunches over, and this throws Liam over the edge that is almost upon them.

He is almost to Moira’s side, when the other two people notice him coming to her aid, and block the path. Liam finds this funny, like they could really stop him, because if anything it just pisses him off. With a smirk, he easily dodges them as they take a swing together at him, and before they can regain their balance he attacks.

He swipes his clawed hands at the closest person and when he drops his baton, Liam quickly punches the guy and knocks him to the ground. As the guys lays out flat, Liam picks up the fallen baton and advances on the other one.

This one, who watched the display, takes caution and they slowly circle one another in the small hallway.

He tries to not pay attention to Moira and Marty, whom he can hear still struggling with the other two men, as he puts all his focus on the one before him. With his heightened vision, Liam can see the subtle way the man before him tenses as he moves, and he knows without a doubt he’s going to pounce.

Before he even finishes the thought, the man rushes at him and swings the baton at him like a baseball bat. In a move much faster than his opponent, Liam lifts up him own baton and easily blocks the other man’s hit. The batons clang together from the force and Liam can feel it reverberating all the way down his arm, and so can the other man, so he uses it to his advantage.

He uses all his weight and pushes the man off with the baton and manages to hit him on his masked covered face.

The man falls to the ground with a yell, but Liam isn’t finished with him yet, growling, he’s about to jump the man and tear into him. Then there is a cry of pain, which draws his attention across the hall to Moira.

She is in full person now too, and looks all of a fiery Goddess with her flowing red curls whipping around her; as she gets hit in the face with a baton and knocked back into the wall. Liam lets out a low heavy based growl, and slowly turns to the man that just hit her, who is pulling back his arm to take another swing at her.

He tenses his legs and is about to rush to them, when he see’s something that makes him pause. It’s Moira.

She was kneeling on the ground, but now she turns her head up to face the man before her, and she is smiling with blood sliding out of her mouth. In a move to fast for even Liam to really see, Moira lets out a blood curdling scream and leaps off of the floor and launches herself onto the man.

They crash into the opposite wall, with her screaming and clawing into him the whole way. On the other side of them, he notices Marty also watching the fight while exchanging punches with the other man, with a look of horror on his face. He is definitely with him on that one, and he doesn’t even like the boy anymore. Liam is too shocked over what he is seeing to notice what is coming for him now; the guy he was fighting with is on his feet and rushing at him.

Liam hear him at the last second, but it doesn’t give him enough time to do anything accept turn and catch himself as they fall to the ground in a heap. The man comes up punching him as soon as they land, and Liam manages to block him after the second hit. Holding the man’s arm in one hand, Liam uses his other to punch his face in rapid succession, until he falls backwards. Liam uses this momentum to jump to his feet, and with an animal graze, he leaps at the man this time.