“A boy?” She sounded so disappointed in me, I felt embarrassed. “I thought you were smarter than that! It’s your senior year, Stella! Don’t let it be ruined because some idiot boy is too dumb not to know a good thing when it’s standing right in front of him!”
That was actually the best advice I’d gotten lately. I smiled and said, “It’s not exactly his fault. He moved.”
“Oh,” she said, drawing out the vowel sound. “It was that new kid I saw you hanging around with for a while?” I nodded. “I heard he moved. That’s too bad, but it’s no reason to forget yourself or give up on your dreams. The team needs you, Stella. And you need the team to keep you out of trouble. Not only that, if you keep skipping school the way you have, you’re not going to be able to graduate with your class. How disappointed would you be if you had to finish your senior year next summer?”
I thought about next summer. I would turn eighteen. Seth would get his soul back. I would take over the Protectorship and give up my humanity completely.
The very last thing I would care about would be my high school diploma.
I barely cared about it now.
“Very,” I said anyway. “You’re right. I need to get my act together.”
Her eyes narrowed on me suspiciously. “You’re supposed to at least put up a fight. Otherwise I’ll think you’re just telling me what I want to hear. Act like a bratty teenager or I’m going to suspend you from games and send you to the guidance counselor.”
“What I meant was, come on Coach! Stop giving me such a hard time! You know I carry the team! You can’t win anything without me! I’m the only talent you got!”
She tried not to laugh but didn’t really succeed. “Alright, that’s enough out of you.”
“So, I’m not suspended?” I asked with minimal hope. I had missed two practices in a row without explanation or a note from my parents.
“Not suspended. But I can’t let you start either. That would be a bad example for your teammates. You’re not starting tomorrow or next Tuesday.”
“Coach! Come on!” This time my emotion and outrage was real. I wasn’t starting the first game of my senior year? Boo.
“Stella, think about your actions next time you leave your team hanging. You can pine over a boy all day long, but when it’s time for practice, I expect you to be there and be present. Alright?”
Feeling sufficiently chastised, I nodded. “Alright.”
“I want to hear it.”
“I’ll leave my boy problems outside of volleyball.”
“There’s a good girl. Now get out there. You owe me fifteen suicides.”
“Coach,” I groaned. “Seriously?”
“Seriously.”
“But we have a game tomorrow!”
“Yes, but you’re not starting, remember? Now go.”
I kept my mouth shut so that I wouldn’t get more sprints added to my punishment. I probably deserved this, but nobody wanted to run ladder sprints up and down the court while the rest of the team got to take it easy with a practice full of scrimmaging. The worst part was that this was actually going to be hard. I would have to keep my Light to a minimum since I was running alone and if I started glowing, it would be super obvious.
Bleh.
I really shouldn’t have skipped school.
Practice dragged on forever. Probably because Coach tortured me the entire time. After sprints, she made me do wall-sits and after those I had to clean up after the water break. She also made me clean up after practice was over. I had to put everything away by myself, where usually the team worked together to get the gym cleaned up. Apparently she was super pissed about my lack of attendance lately.
Lesson learned.
By the time I walked to my car, I was the last one in the lot. Football practice had gotten out forty-five minutes earlier and the second Coach told the rest of my team they didn’t have to clean up, they’d all booked it.
I was alone in an empty lot, with a darkening sky all around me.
I walked to my car like a paranoid actress in a B-movie horror flick. My eyes were alert, taking in every aspect of the abandoned parking lot and my left hand clutched the handle of a small dagger I kept hidden in the pocket of my athletic bag slung over my shoulder.
A streetlamp flickered over my head and buzzed loudly, breaking up the chorus of cicadas and crickets in the tall grasses all around the parking lot. My heart started to thump loudly in my chest and echoed in my ears. A slow, crawling feeling of ants skittered over my skin from head to toe. I tightened my grip on the dagger and searched the falling darkness for a sign of something evil.
Nothing stood out to me, and I tried to convince my brain to calm down. I was just paranoid. I expected the worst, because usually the worst did happen.
Just hopefully not tonight.
With my free hand I dug around in my backpack in search of my cell phone. I wanted to call Jupiter, just to make sure he was close by. Probably, that was a mistake. Snaking my hand around back to search through the front pocket of my backpack seemed like a good idea, but in reality it was a huge distraction from my surroundings so I gave up and decided my talent with a sword would trump a distress call any day.
The streetlight, the only one in the entire parking lot, buzzed louder and louder while growing brighter and brighter. The parking lot was soon completely washed in light, but there was nothing to see except my pale blue Malibu and white gravel parking lot.
I quickened my step and was just three steps from the driver’s side door when the light suddenly burst into pieces. Glass and sparks of light sprayed from the tall post; the buzzing abruptly stopped and just as quickly as I’d been illuminated in light, I was now cloaked in heavy darkness.
The sun set rapidly in the western horizon and the stars hid behind a blanket of clouds. Shit.
The ants morphed into spiders. No, tarantulas. They tap-danced over my skin with a sickening feel that hit me right in the stomach.
Evil.
It was everywhere.
I couldn’t see it, even with my enhanced vision. I couldn’t hear it. I couldn’t even feel it. I could only sense it in my body’s reaction and the sharp intuition that drove my mind.
I dropped the athletic bag next to my front tire and pulled out the dagger. I had a set of katanas under my driver’s side seat, but first I had to open the door.
I made a large arc with my daggered hand and turned my back to my door. With my left hand I felt around for the door handle. My car was unlocked and my keys were in the ignition. I just had to get myself in the car.
I should have taken off for the skies. I should have used my Light and let my paranoia and instinct take full hold of my actions. But there were voices in my head that argued I was being silly and overly cautious. I was in the middle of town, and I couldn’t just Light up and take off.
All I had to do was get in my car and drive away.
Problem solved.
The symphony of nighttime noises stopped abruptly and left me standing in complete blackness and absolute silence. It was as though someone had dropped a glass dome over the parking lot. The only sounds that echoed in my ears were my own movements. And those felt amplified to an obscene volume with nothing else to muffle them.
Since nothing had attacked yet, I decided the quicker I got out of here, the better. I pulled open my door, scooted my athletic bag over with my foot and tossed it blindly behind me. I threw my backpack next, all while keeping my dagger pointed in front of me.
If anyone walked or drove by, they would see how absolutely ridiculous I looked, waving a deadly blade around at nothing.
But I wasn’t foolish enough to believe that nothing was out there. I felt it on the surface of my skin, in the center of my bones and in the pit of my nauseated stomach.
Some kind of great evil lurked nearby. It watched me. It waited for me.
It hungered for me.
I took a steadying breath and sat back on my seat.
I thought I would be safe in my
car. I thought I would be able to escape the Darkness that waited for me.
I was wrong.
Sitting down in the car was an equivalent to being sucked into a great, evil vortex. The Shadows waiting for me in the most obvious, but unexpected place, attacked with a vicious coldness that zapped straight to my soul.
I cried out from the immense pain but my sounds were swallowed up in the sheer volume of them.
They had been waiting for me. In my car. And now I was surrounded by them from every possible angle.
I tried to swing my dagger out but my arms were heavy and laden from pain. The cold evil settled immediately inside me, opening it’s gaping mouth and seemingly swallowing me from the inside out. I felt my soul start to tear from my body as my physical being began to succumb to the deadly pain.
Utterly black Darkness pressed against me. I thought my eyes were open, but I couldn’t tell. The searing pain, an icy cold so intense it burned every part of me, muddled my thoughts and forced me to question everything. And it wasn’t just that the Shadows attacking me blocked out any Light, it was as though they consumed it, they destroyed it completely so that there was no Light to let in. There was no sliver of starlight or artificial light or even me. There was only them. And they ate away at my body, my sanity and the power I couldn’t control right now.
Something seemed to open over my head. I could feel the power from it radiating through the car as though it could swallow us whole. I had a niggling feeling at what it could be but I dismissed the idea.
It was impossible.
And besides, the pain from the Shadows seemed to mess with my mind and blur my thoughts. I could barely remember my own name, let alone investigate evil anomalies happening just above me.
After agonizing moments of true torture that could have been years or millennia for how badly I ached, my instinct to survive finally kicked in. My brain demanded that I focus on anything other than the pain and torment and that I remember who I was and that I was capable of fighting through this.
I tried to Light up. I failed. Not even a flicker of Light came out of me. The pain was too deep, too engulfing.
I had never thought of my Light as a separate entity before. It had always been a consistent part of me. I wanted Light, I got Light. It flowed out of every pore and part of my body. There wasn’t a discussion or a decision. It just was.
However, tonight, it felt like something separate from me, or maybe something separated from me. I reached for it, but couldn’t find it. I called on it, but couldn’t hear its return answer. Something had reached inside me and wrapped its cold, evil hands around the soul of my soul and started to squeeze.
I felt it tear from my body as each seam popped open and split apart. The sensation was agonizing, horrific and so many other things. My insides froze from the cold, the kind of cold that would make body parts fall off and crystalize lungs so that no oxygen could pass through.
But it didn’t just touch the physical parts of me; it reached to all the metaphysical pieces too. My mind scrambled as the important parts of my body, the one’s that kept me alive, fragmented off into frozen targets that were about to be shattered.
My soul. My sanity. My Light. My spirit or what was left of it. My heart. My love. My hate. I felt them all drift into the car around me, paralyzed and helpless as my physical body.
I tried to scream, to bring something out of me. If I could just Light up. If I could just make a sound… I would be able to bring everything back inside and become the weapon I knew I could be.
The pressure on my Light intensified, I felt the evil squeeze and strangle it as the heavy Darkness began to suck it out of me.
I didn’t even know this was possible! I didn’t know something could take my Light from me if it had enough power!
In fact, the only thing I knew for certain, the only thing I knew that was going to happen for sure… was that I was about to die.
And in the worst way possible.
My mind and body rebelled against the idea but my Light knew the truth. Without it, I would cease to exist. It was my existence; it was everything that I was. It would be the equivalent to sucking out my soul and slicing off the head.
Just a few more seconds like this and I would breathe my last breath and depart from this world that was supposed to be mine.
That thought stirred whatever willpower I had left. I pushed against the heavy evil that laid over me. I fought for whatever small piece of my Light I still controlled. I used every ounce of strength I had and demanded my Light create Light.
A tiny, miniscule burst of something golden and bright flashed through the car. It lasted only a second before it disappeared and my pain intensified a hundredfold.
This time when I cried out, my voice ripped through the interior of the car and stung my ears. I gasped a great breath, hearing it rattle all the way through my chest.
My action and then reaction had taken everything out of me. Every single thing. I had nothing left. This was the brink of death. My last moment on Earth.
So I tried again.
I put everything that could possibly be me into this effort. I had to or it was death. I pushed and pulsed and demanded my Light come out. The effort itself might kill me, but there was no other choice.
This time the Light flickered, a soft flare of something bright and then blurred into Darkness, only to come to life again in the next instant.
I grabbed hold of what was there and sent it ablaze across my skin. It washed my body with the softest, smallest hint of what could be a greater Light.
But it was enough.
The Darkness drew back, singed by the heat of my body.
I could see now that these were not ordinary Shadows. They were much larger and much denser. Their weight pressed against me with a crushing force. They did not screech like their smaller counterparts, but growled in guttural tones. They slavered and drooled evil. Their appendages moved with a heaviness that seemed slow, but was not. They were as quick and deadly as entire legions of their smaller counterparts.
These were the big guns, demons from the very bowels of hell.
And the only way I would win this battle was to send them back there.
I drew strength from my Light, simultaneously brightening and regaining my foothold in reality. My body heated slowly, incrementally thawing all of the pieces of me that had frozen instantly.
The soft Light burned into a more substantial heat. And with every moment I reclaimed my Light, the Darkness was forced to shrink back.
That did not mean they stopped fighting, though. They pressed against what they could with combined force and I knew, I just knew, at any second I would falter and lose my footing. They would crush me; in one sweeping effort, they would wipe my life from existence.
Finally, after excruciating minutes in which I fought tooth and nail to recover my own Light, I could lift my arm. It was a weak attempt at first, a pathetic slash at whatever lay to my right.
My next attempt was firmer. My muscles were locked tight and my bones slow to move. I had to focus everything to keep my Light, so my attack couldn’t be what it needed to be. And as much Light as I’d taken back, I knew with just one wavering second, the Darkness would suck it all back and murder me.
I kept fighting though. I kept slashing out at the Shadows around me. I used everything I had to hold onto my Light. My blood heated slowly, as if it were on a stove top working to a boil. My skin glowed faintly with soft Light, but I was in the middle of a trap, surrounded by gargoyles from the pits of hell.
Lights danced in my peripheral and I worried that I had started to slip. I couldn’t see anything beyond this oppressive blackness, nothing other than the barely glowing body that would be dead in minutes.
The Lights grew steadily and quickly. Two of them. They lit up the skyline on either side of my car and landed with an earth-shaking hit.
I sucked in a breath as my focus wavered and I lost some of my hard-earned progress. My consciousness flick
ered along with my Light and I changed my fight from survival to simply staying awake.
All at once, the doors on either side of my car were wrenched off and the brightest, hottest Light filled the car. I arched into that blessed heat and let it sear my skin and rescue me from death. The massive Shadows bellowed their disapproval; then the real fighting started.
They swarmed from my car, leaving me weak and forgotten. I slumped against the seat, half on top of my backpack, half over the center console. My heart hammered in my chest and slowly my Light and strength seeped back into my body.
Overhead the Darkness swirled into a hovering vortex. It looked like something off TV. No Light touched that spot and that was the only reason I knew it was there. It was denser than the normal air filling the car and that particular spot of my roof was completely blacked out.
I watched it swirl and swirl and beckon with the worst kind of evil. Sounds came with it eventually, rushing sounds like violent winds and distant screams. There were scratching noises and great screeches I couldn’t identify. I wanted to cover my ears and never hear those noises again. I felt the cold hollowness of that place deep in the pit of my soul. I had been right before.
There was a portal to Hell in my car.
Awesome.
I scooted underneath it, careful not to touch or go near the thing. I didn’t know how it worked exactly, but I wasn’t about to test any working hypotheses. I managed to roll out of the open driver’s side. I slunk to the ground butt first and crawled away from my car, turned death trap as quickly as possible.
Outside the car, a true battled raged. I could hear the slice of sword blades and the tearing of flesh, but I couldn’t see anything beyond the mass of black air and the intermixing of super bright Light.
Two Angels fought the small army of evil. And after another moment where I regained more of my senses, I recognized the Lights.
My parents.
They were home.
And they’d saved me.
They took the Shadows with incredible skill. And with each Shadow that met its end, a separate portal to Hell would open in the sky and suck the dead creature back to the hellish grave where it belonged. It wouldn’t stay dead, of course. The thing about Shadows was that their nature would always take them back to Hell, where they would be reborn in the same way a human would die. Their souls belonged to underworld and so with their death, also came their life.