Whispers of the Damned: See Series Book 1

  Chapter Six

  The screen behind the band turned black, then a dim spotlight illuminated Draven’s guitar. It looked like it was suspended in thin air. As he began to play, the crowd roared. Their vibe hummed through me like an unexplainable surrender. We were all in a million different places when it came to the state of our minds, but in this moment, we were one. We remembered the darkest moment has its end, we remembered how it felt to be alive, invigorated by emotion.

  The drums, and then the lead and base guitars erupted, and the stage was lit with a bright light. I was completely captivated by the moment I was in. Draven’s presence incased me. I didn’t care what I did or didn’t know as I stared at him.

  His twin, Aden, was beside him. As he took over the lead guitar, I edged forward on the hood, wanting to hear Draven’s voice more clearly over the roar of the crowd. His tone was spellbinding. When he sang the lyrics ‘My soul intertwined with the divine…an angel I wish were mine,’ it was almost more than my body could take.

  Madison looped her arm though mine and pulled me toward the bed of a truck that was next to us. The people who owned the truck had rushed to the stage with everyone else. The entire crowd was rocking in perfect rhythm with the music. As Madison pulled me up, my eyes shot to center stage. I was almost certain Draven looked me in the eye. Madison put her arm around me and rocked us along with the crowd. I couldn’t believe how alive I felt listening to them play.

  Not a single fear or pain had the power to touch me.

  When the song ended, he didn’t stop to talk to his audience. They just began their next song. I recognized this song, too, but I didn’t know from where. Sure that I was hidden in this dark crowd, I moved freely to the music, something I’d normally only do when I was alone. The band played into the next song without pause. When it was over, Draven simply said, “Thank you,” then stepped back into the darkness. The crowd screamed for them to come back, but they never did.

  A lot of people were starting to leave now.

  “Is it over?” I asked Madison when we got back to my car.

  “Just a break. Most people just came to see them. The bands that played before have another set.”

  I knew that would take hours, “I’m not gonna make it through another set. This day’s been hell.”

  I sat down in the driver’s seat of my car. Madison walked over to the passenger door, opened it, and leaned in. “What are you doing?”

  “Going home. Need a ride?”

  Like a viper she reached over and grabbed my keys. “Tell you what,” she said, backing out of the door.

  I flew out of my door, prepared to fight her to get them back. I knew that look in her eye. She wasn’t going to pull a Kara and let me pretend to hide behind my infliction. She was going to walk me right up to Draven.

  I wasn’t ready.

  Madison flung her hand back as far as she could then threw my keys in the field behind us. “When you find your keys, we’ll go.”

  I could’ve ripped her to shreds! She threw them in grass that was almost two inches tall that cars were creeping across. “Seriously!” I stopped my rant there; she’d already run off. The race was on. I had to find them before she came back.

  The cars that were driving over the field she threw them in were starting to thin out. I reached in my pocket and turned up my music as loud as it would go, then stuffed my headphones in. I stared at the shadows the car lights were creating across the grass. Once I was sure they were ordinary, I began to walk cautiously forward, studying the ground.

  I tried to take advantage of the light passing cars gave but now they were too few and far to really help. I crouched lower, looking for any sign of the silver on my keys then all at once I saw the shadows across the blades of grass began to slither toward me. I held in a scream that wanted to come out and somehow found anger. “Go away,” I spat. They began to grow. I was surrounded by dark figures. My skin chilled, emotions that were not mine sickened my gut, I felt dislocated—like these beings were probing my soul searching for a way to break in and use me.

  Under my breath, I began to hum the melody that was blaring in my ears, then out of nowhere, the field I was standing in lit up and the figures instantly evaporated. A sly grin spread across my face as I glanced toward the bright headlights that were shining on me. They turned slightly, revealing the gray Hummer they belonged to. My heart started to beat violently against my chest as I saw the shadowed driver put it in park.

  He slowly opened his door and stepped out. I could see him clearly now: it was Draven. He came cautiously closer, stopping feet before me. I reached my hand in my pocket and turned the music down.

  This current between us...was ancient—like I’d never known existence without him. The tragedy was, just like with anyone you hold close, once you hit a rocky patch—have it out; you can feel the rips when you approach each other again. The threads that bind you to them either reach to fuse once more, or decide the break was necessary.

  “Are you OK?” he rasped.

  There was no good way to answer him.

  “Charlie…do you really not remember me?” he asked as his eyes, full of a painful anger, danced across my face.

  With a pained cant of my head I said. “What truth do you want?”

  His gaze drew me in as the silence pounded between us. “We can play it this way,” he said finally as he kicked his chin up.

  I shifted my weight, confused as ever. “What way?”

  “Start over,” he said like the words destroyed him.

  “Because you can see I’m messed up or because you want to?”

  I didn’t need his pity. If I hurt him—if we hurt each other, then we both deserved to deal with it when we were on even ground. When I knew who we both were.

  “I could never not want you, Charlie.” He glanced away lost in his own mind then took a step closer. “I never wanted my edges to cut you. Whatever you did, you did it because you’re righteous. You’re scared as hell right now. I’m not going to add to it. You want to roll with the ‘we’re new’ card until it doesn’t hurt to remember, I’m good with it. You want Madison to help you get there, us to step back, that’s fine too.”

  My hands flinched to reach for him, to spill it all. I don’t know how I remained silent. The pains in my head were sharp as hell as I tugged at dormant memories. Anything and everything in my life that would lead to him was absent. The real question was why. Did I want it that way to protect him? Or did something want it that way to make us weak?

  “All I have to roll with right now is how I feel,” I said. “Logic has been absent for a while.”

  He smirked like my words were ironic. “How are you feelin’, Charlie?”

  The words spilled out, refusing to be edited, “Like you’re my salvation.”

  He tensed and looked down before only lifting his eyes. “I’m not.”

  I knew what real pain felt like then, the crack in my soul made the migraine stabs seem like a sniffle

  “You’re mine,” he said gruffly, turning my entire emotional downfall on its heels. He stepped so close I could feel the heat of his body but he never touched me. “Whoever did this to you is gonna pay.”

  I broke my stare with him and moved back, swaying my head. “You don’t know what you’re saying.”

  “No,” he agreed. “I feel it like you do; I’m not scared of what’s in the void.”

  “And if it makes you forget me? Forget what you know now that I don’t?” I countered. I’m no badass, but I’m not a coward either. What I faced was unthinkable. It changed my life.

  His hand reached for my chest, just the bend of his fingers landed above my thrashing heart. “You remember,” he stepped back. “For now, this is new.”

  I started to protest, feeling more balanced the longer he stood in my personal space, but Madison approached. Her emerald stare shifted between Draven and me. My skin turned crimson, as I owned panic that promised all those I cared about we
re breaths away from a war they were not ready for.

  One slight sway of Draven’s head when Madison’s questioning eyes landed on him obliterated the bad vibes. The war would come, but tonight we were just kids leaving a concert.

  “Here,” she said handing me my keys. She shrugged off my glare. “Like I’d really throw them.”

  “Yeah,” I said turning to go to my car. I needed space to process what just happened.

  “The GPS has no signal,” Madison reminded me, trying to hasten my brilliant escape plan.

  I’d taken almost four steps before I felt Draven’s hand land on my shoulder, then slide down my waist as he turned me to face him. I drew in a breath as I absorbed his touch, the electric sensation of it.

  “Let her ride in my truck. I’ll show you how to get back.”

  I narrowed my stare on him. “Ride in your truck?” I repeated, trying to figure out how this lined up with any of the options he’d given me, or the ‘we’re new’ one I thought we picked.

  Madison started shifting in place, clearly judging what my response might be. “Sounds like a plan to me,” she said, darting toward his Hummer.

  I turned and went to my car. I needed one of those quiet moments so I could zap back in and see how the pieces fit together.

  In the driver’s seat, I turned up the music in my headphones just loud enough to cover the threat of the whispers. I couldn’t believe she’d just ditch me like that!

  The lights from the Hummer came up from behind me. I was supposed to follow him, so why was he behind me? I was looking out the driver’s side window when I heard my passenger door open. For a second, I thought Madison had realized how cold it was to make me drive back on my own, but when I turned to the passenger side, I saw Draven climbing in.

  “What’s going on?” I asked tensely, hitting ‘Pause’ on my phone as I watched him push the seat back so his legs could have more room.

  “I told you I’d tell you how to get back,” he said, with a rakish grin that surely didn’t belong to the guy who was talking all deep and dark to me minutes ago.

  What the freak am I going to do if the whispers and shadows attack me in front of him? I was horrified.

  “Yeah, but I thought you meant follow you.”

  I inhaled the addictive, familiar, aroma of his cologne as he leaned closer to fasten his belt.

  “For the record, you’re my second passenger. Third, if you count my teacher,” I said, putting the car in drive. “Let’s hope I don’t jack up our newness with my untested skills.”

  He bit his lip, trying to pin a sexy grin from morphing into place. “Yeah, this’ll work,” he said to himself. “That way,” he said, ticking his head to the left.

  I turned the wheel then crept down the gravel driveway, fighting the glare of the headlights coming from his Hummer. He reached up and moved my rearview mirror, taking the torture of the lights away. He then gently grasped my ear buds and pulled them out. His warm fingertips brushed against my skin.

  I angled my eyes at him.

  “Seeing and hearing help when you’re driving.”

  I looked in front of me at the dark road, listening for any reason to put my headphones in.

  “You don’t need them.”

  I glanced his way trying to seem like I was as chill as he was. “Making it hard to seem new when you act like that.”

  He arched one brow.

  “Reading me and stuff.”

  A delicious grin ghosted across his lips. “I can’t help how aware I am of you, never have been able to.”

  He nodded toward the road, telling me to focus. “You know there’s an outlet here to plug your phone in so you can hear your music, right?” he said, reaching for the dash to show me.

  “I do now.” A mile or so later I said. “New or not, I’d mention I saw you talking to my mom today, or listening to her talk. Was it about me?”

  His silence told me the juice of the conversation was better left unrepeated right now.

  “I heard about this car,” He said finally. “And, ah, later...that she asked you to play for her.”

  I wasn’t feeding into this topic.

  “Charlie, that’s epic.”

  “Maybe, either way, I’m messing it up.” I tightened my hands on the wheel. “What talent I have is lost in the void.”

  He pointed for me to turn again then let his hands rest on his knee. He simply couldn’t keep his fingers still as the played a silent sound.

  “Then we’ll dig it out.”

  I glanced to him, he shrugged a shoulder, then changed the familiar tone of his voice to a distant ‘getting to know you,’ one. “Good thing the guy you’re hanging with tonight can play well enough to teach you a trick or two.”

  I was good right here in the middle. New, but not.

  “Lucky break,” I said smiling.

  He didn’t fill the silence as we drove. Mostly he answered texts.

  “Popular guy,” I dryly teased.

  “Checking in at home,” he said glancing to me. “You wanna stop for waffles?”

  “It’s, like, almost one in the morning,” I said, looking at the clock on the dash.

  “Do you have to get up early?”

  “I don’t know, what time is my music lesson?” I shot back.

  “Are you hungry?” he pushed.

  I was hungry, but I knew I didn’t have any money on me. I really wasn’t even sure I had money at my house. I thought there was a good chance I had twenty stashed in my favorite jeans, but I knew if I didn’t, Kara would give me some.

  “I have to go by my house first. My sister said to tell her if I was going somewhere else. She’ll never answer her phone if she’s asleep.”

  As Draven started to text on his phone, I glanced in my rearview mirror, but I couldn’t see the headlights of his Hummer anymore.

  “Where are they?”

  “Aden had to get gas,” he said as a new text came in.

  “Are they coming? Did you tell them I had to stop at my house?”

  I saw him nod out of the corner of my eye. By the time we got to my house I felt those invisible threads between us start to fuse. I wasn’t really looking at him from the outside in; we were back in the same bubble.

  I still felt guilty as hell we were broken in the first place. That sucks—not knowing what you did.

  “I’m not mad at you,” he breathed when I turned my car off.

  Slowly I glanced to my side at him; a glint of warning was in my eyes. I needed baby steps.

  “That’s the memory hurting you, the one you let get close then push away. I’m telling you its okay to move on to another one. It doesn’t matter.”

  I canted my head to the side. As odd as his comment was, it fit perfectly into my crazy. Into the crazy Madison boldly made me realize she was aware of on the way to the concert.

  “Give me the quick and dirty version,” I said. After a sensual smile started to morph across his lips I edited myself. “The blurb.”

  “Right,” he said looking over me. “We stay here now, Aden and me. In middle school until we graduated last year Dad had us almost always in the UK. You and me, we figured out how to deal with the gaps.” He cursed as he settled a bit in his seat. “We were in the same state, a couple hours apart,” he tensed, “but you felt like you were in another world. I came up to surprise you. Aden was with me.”

  Draven reached for my arm as I squinted my eyes closed in pain. His touch helped, it grounded me and stopped anxiety from swallowing me whole.

  “You told us to go. It was shady. I wasn’t thinking supernatural things. I was thinking you found someone less complicated.”

  “When,” I demanded.

  “Thursday, figured we could hang out, get you packed to come back here.”

  The night of the party...

  “I’d been home an hour when your mom called.”

  “So this—,” I said waving between us, “this fight is raw.”

/>   “I don’t think you stepped out, Charlie.”

  I swayed my head. I may’ve voids but I never hooked up with Britain, with anyone. For this I was blameless.

  “You’re lying,” I said. “You’re mad.”

  “I’m furious,” he said easily. “Not at you.”

  “That’s not fair.”

  “It is,” he said tightly. “I don’t see things the way you do. I gotta learn to say I don’t instead of acting like I’m cool with you figuring out something’s are better left alone.”

  “I’m not reckless,” I affirmed. “I’m not weak.”

  I felt his agreement in the vibe between us.

  “How can you see me fighting with voids in my head?” I asked. “What else to do you see?”

  He swayed his head, a silent call on the play. We were shifting back to ‘we’re new.’ I trusted him. If he thought we needed a break from the topic, then we did.

  Inside, I found Kara still sitting at the table, headphones in, writing at the speed of light. I waved my hand in front of her to get her attention.

  “Are you good with me going and getting waffles?”

  “There’s food…,” she hesitated as she looked behind me, “waffles sound fun. How was the show?”

  I glanced over my shoulder to see Draven standing in the doorway.

  “Good,” I answered for the both of us.

  “Aren’t you missing someone?” Kara asked.

  “They’re behind us,” Draven said.

  “I’ll be right back,” I said, walking past her.

  As soon as I reached the front room, I heard it again: the guitar. It was even more defined than before, almost like it was reflecting how strong I was becoming. I found my twenty in my jeans and ran down the stairs. When I started to go down the last flight, I saw Draven standing in the center of the front room. I slowed my descent.

  His eyes were gazing above him and his body was rocking in perfect rhythm with the sound I was hearing. I quietly walked to his side and touched his arm, pulling him out of whatever thought he was in.

  “You hear it?” I asked as my eyes searched his for the truth.

  His eyes were hooded, balanced; yet holding every emotion. He tenderly reached his fingertips to brush a loose strand of my hair out of my face.

  “Hungry?” he asked quietly.

  I nodded stiffly. He reached his arm out and let his hand rest on my back, gently encouraging me to lead.