Sunburst (Starbright Series) (4 page)

             
“Thank you.”

             
He smiled then, big and toothy and I was so thrilled we’d found our naturalness again. I hated the in between fighting that came whenever I pushed him away or he asked too much of me too soon.

             
“I’ll call you later, alright.”

             
“Alright,” I agreed and then left him alone in his bedroom.

             
I passed Jupiter on the way out of the house. He barely lifted his eyes from his coffee and paper to acknowledge me.

             
“Thanks for not breaking down my door,” he grunted. And then he went back to his paper. That was his only comment. No reprimand? No scolding? His blasé attitude was strange.

             
But even stranger was arriving home and greeting my parents who were both wearing sleepy smiles. They were both sitting over steaming cups of coffee too and seemed to be in quiet conversation.

             
“I’m sorry,” I said immediately on impulse- in case this was a trap.

             
“For what?” My dad looked at me, his piercing blue eyes seeming to see all the way through me.

             
“For….” I was kind of at a loss. Last time I’d slept all the way through the night with a boy I had been in huge trouble. A few months ago they had been pissed that Tristan had snuck in my bedroom window and we’d fallen asleep. Now they were just shrugging it off? After I walked in the door at dawn? Had they been body snatched??? “For staying the night with Seth. We accidentally fell asleep and-“

             
“It’s alright, babe,” my mom cut me off with a tender smile. “You told us where you were going last night.”

             
“But…. but… but you were so mad when Tristan spent the night!” Was I trying to get myself in trouble?

             
My parents shared a look and then my dad said with one eyebrow raised, “We were angry when Tristan spent the night in our house, without our permission or knowledge.” And that was the tone I was expecting from the beginning. His next words shocked me though, “But Seth isn’t Tristan, Stella. You of all people should know that.”

             
My mouth unhinged; I shook my head at them. “I’m going back to bed,” I declared. “When I wake up, please try to be back to normal.”

             
They chuckled at my retreating back. And my mom said, “We’ll try.”

Chapter Four

             
“What are you doing after practice tonight?” Piper asked in an excited voice from her locker next to mine.

             
“Why?” I pulled out the books for my next two classes and stuffed them into my backpack. I was supposed to train tonight with Jupiter and Seth, but I would take any excuse to get out of it. Jupiter wanted me to work with alternative weapons and it was my worst nightmare. I didn’t want to imagine bludgeoning an enemy until the head fell off, let alone experience it- even if they were a Fallen.

             
“Lincoln’s parents are gone again, and we were thinking about having a very low key get together.”

             
Piper and Lincoln had been officially together for a few months now. They were the cutest, most confusing couple I had ever seen. Where it was clear that Piper wore the pants in the relationship, she seemed to treat Lincoln with a mixture of neglect and tough love. I adored my best friend, but she was too independent for her own good.

             
“I don’t know if I can, it’s only Thursday,” I shrugged. “Why can’t he have it tomorrow night?”

             
“Rigley wants to have a proper party tomorrow night,” she explained. “This would just be couples- you and Seth, Rigley and Tristan.”

             
I snickered. “Seth and I aren’t a couple.”

             
“Whatever, Stella,” she groaned. “You need to be, so I’m going to refer to you as one until you are. It’s easier that way.”

             
“For who? You or me?”

             
“Me, obviously.”

             
“You do what you need to do, Babe, I’m just saying, it’s probably not going to happen for a while.” Nine more years, in fact. Well, if I had anything to say about it.

             
She let out another groan and then linked arms with me so we could walk to class- slowly. There was only a month left before school was out and we were definitely feeling spring fever. Generally speaking, we were a school filled with farm kids. Either we were direct products of living on acres of fields and crops, or extended family living nearby with enough work to keep us busy through the summer and fall harvest. Occasionally, you had the odd kids whose parents raised livestock instead of corn or soybeans, but they still understood the busy seasons and what it was like to do chores before the sun was up and go straight home from school to help out until bedtime.

             
We filed into class right after the tardy bell rang and smiled sweetly at our World History teacher, Mrs. Merrit, Rigley’s mom. She just rolled her eyes at us.

             
She was actually a terrible teacher when it came to homework and tests. She was one of the most brutal. And she didn’t accept any late work unless we had a note from a doctor proving we were on our death beds. This was unfortunate for me, since I never got sick, and my parents would die before they let me lie about something like that. But, she was also our volleyball coach and Rigley’s mom, so occasionally we were given grace for the random error in punctuality.

             
Today was one of those days.

             
I slid into my desk behind Seth and across from Tristan. The tension in the air was so thick, I wanted to reach for the six-inch blade hidden under my bubbly denim skirt, but I refrained. It wouldn’t do any good to beat either of these boys up; they were still determined to act like Neanderthals.

             
Tristan shot me a smile, which I returned, but Seth didn’t even turn around. It had been three days since I spent the night with him; he had given me the cold shoulder ever since, except during training- then he was giving me the very hot, very deadly, very skilled shoulder. It was when he was kicking my ass with his damn pirate sword that I wished he would just stay distant, until I could give him what I wanted.

             
I glanced over at Tristan while he listened to the lecture on the War of 1812. His head was freshly shaved; he was rubbing his hand over it in the way he did when he was thoughtful or pissed. His skin was darkening again, now that he was out in the sun all the time practicing or helping his dad with the planting. And his bright green eyes were intent and focused forward.

             
He was striking. Sometimes I couldn’t believe just how gorgeous he was.

             
It was disconcerting to stack him up next to Seth. Seth’s looks were so classically perfect, his burning amber eyes, his flawless, golden skin and his tussled light-brown hair. He looked very much the Angel that he was.

             
But Tristan was all dark beauty and rough exterior. His muscles weren’t genetically made, but hard-earned over a childhood of manual labor and constant physical activity. His nose wasn’t exactly straight and his eyebrows were maybe a little thick, but he was Tristan- my Tristan. And I was afraid of how unwilling I was to let him go.

             
I knew what I was supposed to do…. what I was expected to do.

             
But I had to wonder if I was capable of living out this part of my destiny.

             
I didn’t love Seth.

             
I didn’t even like him as much as I liked Tristan. Tristan’s muscles weren’t the only thing that had been fought for and refined over time. My feelings for him spanned my entire life; they had developed constantly and consistently for as long as I could remember.

And while I felt something for Seth, there was part of me that thought my physical and emotional reaction to him w
as as much of a genetic complex as his godly body. Tristan had worked for our relationship. Seth had appeared in my life and expected there to be one.

That probably wasn’t fair to him, but there it was all the same- the root of my issue.

My attention was drawn back to Seth when something moved along his back. I swung my gaze to him just in time to watch the tip of a Shadow’s pointed tail whip around Seth’s back.

My breath hitched in my throat and I stared at Seth, waiting for the disgusting little demon to reappear. Shadows were exactly what they sounded like, black smoke like creatures that were actually more flesh and blood than incorporeal material. But they appeared as black, hazy smoke and could disappear
at will, floating off into different dimensions or returning to Hell in their downtime. They could also make any shape they wanted and appear as apparitions or hallucinations. Over the winter I’d mistaken one for a deer in the road one night and that’s how Seth was introduced into my life.

             
But I hadn’t seen one in a while- which was a bit disturbing. Still, it was unwelcome to watch one crawl all over my Counterpart in the middle of the day. I waited for Seth to react, to show the tension the little bastard would bring to his broad shoulders or a bit of desperation as he tried to get the shooting pain off his skin.

             
Shadows were our exact opposite.

             
Where we were made out of light, they were made out of darkness. Their touch to our skin was the harshest, most torturous kind of cold. And to them we were unbearable heat. We were purely made from Heaven and goodness. And they were spawned in the depths of Hell from only the vilest evil.

             
Their direct touch would kill a human on contact. And in huge hordes, they had the ability to take an Angel’s life. Although one couldn’t do much danger other than an annoying kind of hurt- like death by a million paper cuts kind of pain.

             
Seth must be insanely in control if he wasn’t even going to brush off the wispy little thing.

             
It reappeared around Seth’s bicep and I only saw it because I was paying such close attention. It wrapped around and around, slithering up and down Seth’s arm and across his t-shirt like a snake.

             
Still, Seth didn’t even flinch.

             
I reached forward and tried to smack the Shadow off his back, but it scurried off before I was even close. Seth
did
feel that though and shot me a
WTH
look. I stared at him, trying to figure out if he was serious or not.

He was.

             
My face scrunched up in confusion, but I shrugged it off. He turned back around and started taking more notes on the lecture. The bold Shadow came back, this time winding around and around Seth’s neck. The deathly color of the Shadow was such a contrast to the healthy glow of Seth’s skin. The Shadow
was
skin to skin now, Seth should have been feeling something- especially around his neck.

I couldn’t believe the proverbial balls on this Shadow. He was antagonizing Seth- an Angel- while me- another Angel- sat behind him and in a room full of humans!

              While there was an ongoing war over the state of this planet, there were boundaries set in place, divined by God Himself and agreed upon by Lucifer. Humanity was to be left to their own decisions. We all knew this- good, bad, even humanity understood they were masters of their own fate. They probably didn’t understand the true consequences for their decisions, still they were left to determine for themselves who would ultimately control this planet. And in order to do so, we had to follow rules.

             
While Shadows could influence, they couldn’t outright attack. And in the same vein they weren’t allowed to outright reveal themselves or come in direct contact with humans.

             
Sure, they broke the rules all the time, but to break them in front of two Angels was just downright stupid.

             
Seth still hadn’t bothered to remove the Shadow. It seemed quite content wrapped around his neck, like a scarf. This baffled me. It would only take was a little bit of internal Light to singe the pest so it would scamper off to the depths of Hell it came from.

             
I decided to help him out. I reached up- way up, because he was so tall, and readied my hand with some of my own Light. But just as I grabbed the back of Seth’s neck in a firm would-be choke hold, the stupid thing disappeared again. Seth jolted from the unexpected shot of warmth through his skin and swirled around in his chair again.

             
“What, Stella?” he asked seeming annoyed.

             
“Uh, you had something on your, uh….” I trailed off, not knowing how to explain it to him now. But why was he acting so completely oblivious to it? The few times I had been unlucky enough to come in contact with Shadows skin-to-skin, they had lacerated my skin and shot their deadly iciness straight to the marrow of my bones. The pain had been unbearable. And Seth didn’t even seem to notice! “Never mind.”

             
He shook his head at me, seeming both confused and surprised by my behavior, and then turned back around.

             
I tried really hard after that to turn my attention back to Mrs. Merritt. I mean, I
really
tried. But the damn thing kept coming back! It was like a stupid game. I would turn my gaze forward until I saw something move and then I would try to catch it before it flitted away again. I kept missing, though, and Seth kept growing more and more agitated, but there was no way for me to explain it to him in class.

             
He would understand after, though. And then he would thank me. I was doing this for him. And my own sanity.

             
Finally, near the end of class, I got the upper hand by anticipating where the Shadow was going to go next. Not that the sneaky bastard was moving in patterns, but, well, I got lucky. And in my excitement to catch the Shadow I let out a shout of victory, so loud and out of place for the middle of history class. Luckily, I caught it low and to the side that was blocked by Seth’s body, so the rest of the class didn’t see what I was doing. And then because it was my exact opposite in every way and an enemy to my entire being, my triumphant shout became a painful cry as frigid pain shot through my skin and to the center of my being. My entire body seized up and I arched my back against the intensity of the agony.

             
It hurt so badly that I fell out of my desk and onto my back on the floor. My body wrenched as I tried to open my hand and release the stupid thing, but every muscle in my body had tightened and flexed. I couldn’t pry my hands open and I couldn’t release my inner Light because I was surrounded by people who probably thought I was either crazy or having a seizure.

             
My scream became a pathetic whimper and I closed my eyes against the pain.

             
This one
hurt
- worse than all the others! I had been attacked by hundreds before and still been able to fight back. But not this one. For some reason, the pain was just too intense for me to even remember
how
to fight back, let alone do any lasting damage.