Rouge (14 page)

“Just tell me.”

Joshua sighed. “When your
mother went into labor with you, something went wrong. Her body wasn’t strong
enough to handle it. She lost a lot of blood during the birth and when she
pushed you out, the pain was too much. She died soon after.”

“The fire killed her, didn’t
it? The fire in her, in me?” Hunter’s eyes were suddenly fuzzy as tears spilled
over. “I killed her.”

“Hunter, please-”

“Joshua... how do I get it
out?”

“How do you what?”

“Get it OUT OF ME!!” she
screamed, making Joshua stumble back in shock.
He’s scared you’ll set him on
fire
. Hunter looked down at her hands and wondered if that were possible.
He’s
scared you’ll lose control.

“Hunter, no,” he begged. “You
have a... a special gift inside of you, you just need to harness it and-”

“Special
gift?
”
she spat, anger building inside of her
just as suddenly as in the corridor at school, boiling, threatening to explode.
Her skin itched. She was sweating profusely. It was taking over her. “This
gift
killed my father and my mother, Joshua! This
gift
is the reason I
have no parents! This gift is a slimy, alien volcanic substance inhabiting my
body like a demon. How could you have
kept
this from me? After all these
years, you knew it was growing in me and you never tried to get it out, you
never told me I could manipulate fire-”

“I didn’t know for sure,” he
muttered, but something in the way he bowed his head made her instantly doubt
the truth in his words. “I knew you were immune to it, but I had no idea of
what kind of power you possessed. You started causing strange accidents when
you were a child, but even then I couldn’t determine whether you yourself had
caused them until the other night.”

Hunter scanned the pictures
on the corkboard, raking through her memories. “Wait…” There were blurred
images of little fires that started here and there, one in an art class in
grade one, the second at Sally Henderson’s sleepover party… but never an
explosion like the one she caused today. “They were caused by
me?
But
they were so small and pathetic, how did-”

“Your emotions are stronger
now because you are feeling more deeply and more passionately. You are losing
your temper easily, you fear more, you are falling in love-”

Hunter let out a bitter
laugh. “Joshua please. Don’t bring Eli into this when we’ve only just met. It’s
not love.”

“But it’s
something,
”
he whispered in a tone that chilled her bones. “It’s the beginning of something.
I can’t take this fire away from you Hunter. It’s lived in you since the day
you were born. But I can help you master it. Liz’s last words to me where to
protect you-”

“Don’t!” Hunter found
herself falling to the ground. She clenched one of the steel tables to steady
herself. It was cold and somehow soothing. She looked up at Joshua, who was
waiting for her to explode, but she could hardly open her mouth to speak. She
wanted to cry again, to hug him, to hug
something.
“Joshua, I... I can’t
do this. I can’t
be
what I am... whatever that is. Please-” she stepped
up to him and looked into his eyes. “Take it away. Take away my abilities
before I hurt someone.”

In Joshua’s pale eyes,
Hunter found some comfort. But there was also pain and disappointment. Clearly
this didn’t go the way he wanted it to.

“I can’t Hunter,” he
replied. “It’s who you are. But you can change, you can learn to control it-”

“I don’t
want
to
learn to control it!” she screamed, shoving one of the pencil pots off the desk
so it scattered stationery across the floor. Joshua kept very still and watched
her pace in front of him. “I don’t... want to be... a murderer.”

“You’re not-”

“Just leave me alone.”
Hunter kicked the pencil pot so it soared across the room and stalked to the
door. “Don’t follow me.”

“Hunter-”

The door to the fireplace
would have slammed shut, had it not been so old and creaky. The moment room 57
was behind her she took off running, back up the stairs to their apartment and
into her bedroom. There, she gathered a bag of clothes and necessities,
snatched some of the cash she kept in her favorite children’s book and ran to
her desk. She took a scrap piece of paper and scribbled a note to Joshua, which
read these three words:

‘
I need time
.’

The moon was almost directly above her
when Hunter stepped outside the apartment building. It was very late at night,
and only the lonely were up and about. She hitched her overnight bag higher on
her shoulder, stuck her hands in her pockets and moved down the street, eager
to get away from home before Joshua raced after her.

As she stalked through the
frosty street, her energy still buzzing and fear clouding her mind, she
wondered where to go. Her first and only thought at that moment was to get some
cigarettes, which she’d forgotten to pack. So she headed in the direction of
the 24-hour mini mart. Maybe the walk would calm her down. 

Concentrating on her
breathing, Hunter watched her feet as she walked, thinking of the cigarettes
and the warm shopping mart. She turned a corner into a quiet alley that she
usually took as a shortcut. There, she found two homeless men standing around a
rusty iron barrel, trying to light a fire.

It was too late to turn back.
They were close, their attention drawn by the sound of her footsteps. She could
pretend they weren’t there and walk past them, but the alley was small. And the
hunger on their faces made her heart pound.

Despite living in New York
all her life, Hunter had never come across a situation quite like this. Though
she’d never been out this late, and usually when she came upon this alleyway it
was empty, she knew it was dumb to walk around on her own in such a dangerous
city.

The sight of the two men -
one large and beefy with dark, black skin and the other scrawny with a rugged
beard, layered in dirty clothing - sent Hunter’s emotions into hyper drive and
she found herself frozen on the spot.

The beefy guy elbowed the
skinny guy and kinked his head in her direction. Abandoning the fire, they
turned towards her.

“You got any money on you
girl?” he snarled, the whites of his eyes wide and terrifying in the dark.

Hunter turned around,
finding feeling in her legs again, but the scrawny one was right behind her. He
snatched the back of her coat and yanked her toward him.

“Let go of me!” She looked
up into his hollow face and felt a stab of fear. He was so ravenous, it was
almost animal.

“I said,” he repeated slower
and took her by the collar. She tried to pull away as a reflex, but he held her
tightly. “Where’s your money?”

The beefy one took Hunter’s
other arm and began running his hands down her body, either searching for her
cash or just for his own pleasure. Hunter felt a rippling sensation course
through her body that had nothing to do with the homeless man’s hands sliding
under her coat. She knew it was the fire.

“Please,” she begged,
turning her eyes on the beefy man and wriggling furiously. “You don’t want to
do that.”

The scrawny one laughed and
grabbed a fistful of her hair, yanking her head back. Hunter sucked in a breath
and her entire jaw shook. “Come on, sweet-cheeks. A pretty girl like you should
know better than to walk around this neighborhood by yourself.”

“Maybe she’s lonely,” said
the beefy guy and Hunter felt a stab of cold shoot at her hip, knowing it was
his fingers on her skin.

The touch sent an electric
shock through Hunter and she shoved them away, the force much stronger than a
normal girl of her age. They stumbled, but then their faces turned hungrier and
their grins widened. They advanced on her, sending her toppling against the
alley wall where she tripped on the curb and fell to the concrete. They were on
her in seconds, ripping through her clothes, a dirty gloved hand covering her
mouth, their bodies weighing down on her so she couldn’t move and all Hunter
could do was beg herself not to lose control. She could feel it now; the fire,
surging beneath her skin, boiling from her inner core. Not angry, but scared.
Terrified.

She was screaming. The men
laughed, pinning her down, bruising her skin, their hands burying themselves
under her clothes, the stench of alcohol and filthy body-odor so strong that
she started choking. Their fingers were like stiff blocks of ice on her skin.
But she wasn’t cold. Hunter was burning with so much strength that she felt as
though she could burst like a balloon-

And suddenly she exploded.
Fire blasted from her hands as if from the mouth of a dragon, brighter than the
sun and hotter than hell. She ripped her arms free and shoved the two men away
from her with all her might, the power in her body so great she wasn’t sure it
was even her body anymore. Her attackers soared across the alleyway and hit the
wall with such a force that the ground shook. Smoke steamed from their bodies
and from Hunter’s clothes. The beefy man had landed in a pile of trash and was
groaning, on the brink of passing out. The other wasn’t moving at all, lying
awkwardly on the concrete.

The fire vanished from
within her as if doused by water, and after the ten seconds it took her to pull
herself together, she stumbled to the pile of trash. The beefy man scampered to
his feet, his wide eyes completely horrified. He backed away from her and
limped towards the next street.

“
Wh
-what
are you?” he stammered. “Get away from me! Please!”

Hunter wanted to say she was
sorry, but she couldn’t find words to speak. Maybe it was because he didn’t
deserve an apology. Within moments, the beefy man had sprinted from the
alleyway, slipping on the wet concrete.

Hunter turned to the scrawny
man sprawled against the alley wall. A lump of terror lodged itself in her
throat.
Please God no,
she begged.
Don’t let him be...

Hunter saw the death in his
empty eyes and the pool of blood around his head and felt instantly sick. She
turned away to escape it, facing the wall and the spot where they had tried to
rape her, but the man’s dead face was everywhere. She looked down at her hands
and singed sleeves. She could still sense the fire within her, just as Joshua
had said, but there was no anger. Only fear for what she’d become.

Tears welled in her eyes as
she turned back to the body. Her shoulders shook and suddenly she broke down in
sobs, sinking to the snowy concrete ground, her hands reaching out for the man
in a silent plea for his life. She was sure someone would hear her wailing, but
no one came. No one.

Unable to push the fire nor
the nausea away, Hunter stumbled to her feet and turned to flee when something
small and white in the middle of the path caught her eye. She reached down and
picked up a half empty cigarette packet that must have fallen from one of their
pockets. She sobbed, shoved the smokes into the depths of her coat and ran.

Joshua paced back and forth in the kitchen.
He had no intention of going to work today. Not until he heard from Hunter. So
he vowed to stay by the phone in case she called.

He was angry at her for
leaving so suddenly in such an unstable state without telling him where she was
going. Didn’t she learn not to do that from their last argument, the one that
first brought out the fire? He couldn’t stand not knowing if she was safe or
not. She would be brewing with emotion, God knows what she might do. What if
she became reckless and impulsive and started using her powers for heroic
things like pulling people from the wreckage of burning buildings? The very
thought made him sweat and he poured himself a glass of water. If only he’d had
enough time to explain properly, to teach her how to control the flames, to
implore her to keep her powers a secret.

She has no idea of the
danger she is in if her powers become public. If
they
found out what she could do...

A shiver ran down Joshua’s spine.
It was a strange feeling, because he was never cold. Cold was his friend.

Hunter’s powers were one of
a kind. The combination of heat, fuel and oxygen creating a supernatural fire
inside her as she was formed in the womb would never occur again. That was what
scared Joshua the most. Now that Hunter’s powers were almost fully developed,
and she was unstable enough to do something drastic, what would stop them from
taking her away? What would stop them from threatening him again, from bleeding
out the secret of her powers to use for the selfishness of money and power?

Joshua knew what these
people we capable of. He’d experienced it firsthand. Hunter was not stable
enough to fight them. She was not strong enough to control the fire inside her,
let alone protect herself from the Agents. They would come for her the moment
they found out…