by K Fisher
Not that Hazel was ever one for slut shaming, but her mind felt particularly vulnerable after the series of events had occurred and it appeared that everything Faye brought up to her would ultimately end up questionable until she was able to find rhyme or reason behind the new world she had finally decided to fully accept.
Suddenly, the screens dimmed and Caden’s eyes snapped open. He looked towards the front of the van, meeting Tucker’s emerald eyes in the rearview mirror as he reported what he had seen. “I was able to tap into their home security system and get a peek. We are dealing with a woman, her husband, and two kids. Looks like the kids are out of the house at school and the husband is about to head to work, we’ll just be worrying about her once we get there. I sent her a few vague text messages from her sister’s phone, let’s hope she decides now is a good time to head out and meet her. Should buy us enough time to question the Guardian and see if he can be of more help.”
Hazel felt herself start to squirm in the seat and it had nothing to do with the quick turns the van was making down the scenic road. She was actually leading a league of X-Men-esque people to her old home in an attempt to summon up the spirit of her past and ask him questions about his not-so-dead sister, who was coincidentally trying to steal her power.
Great.
Laughter erupted from behind Hazel’s lips, filling the van until it sounded like an echo in her ears. At first, Faye looked like she wanted to reach out and help again, but her hand quickly fell to her side when Hazel’s eyes filled with tears that soon heightened the laughter. She wasn’t sure if the tears were from the hilarity of the craziness in her life, or her finally breaking down like she had needed to for so long. No matter the case, everyone in the van left her the hell alone as the laughter turned to sobs, and the sobs to silence.
They all remained in silence as they started down the final descent of the mountain towards the highway below, so deep in their own head that none of them saw the inhuman impact until it was too late.
The dark mass that had launched itself from the forest alongside the van hit the windshield with the force of a truck, smashing the glass inward, raining down on Tucker’s body as he was forced to yank on the wheel with surprise. The van swerved off the side of the road, starting a fast and uncontrolled descent at a heavy decline. Hazel was screaming, just catching the incoming trees in her line of sight through the broken windshield before the entire van flipped onto its side, sending it through the air before the massive trunk of a tree stopped their descent, wedging them against the side of the mountain and its large, reaching branches. There the van rested, only their slow movements and the van’s groans filled the area around them, the birds silent.
For one long, painful second, Hazel wondered if she was dead, or close to it. If the warmth at her head was part of the ringing in her ears, or if she was slowly bleeding out while she hung from her seatbelt. With a grunt, she slowly reached and unlocked the belt, falling towards the roof of the van with a thud. The van did not move an inch, smashed tightly in place. But it was still too quiet, too damn quiet.
She struggled to her feet, feeling bogged down by dizziness and fear as she tried to make sense of everything that had just happened to them. Hazel was ignoring the pain that spread through her body as she looked to the others and prayed everyone had made it through the unexplained accident alive, or at least that they were in a position where she could help them get out before they plummeted further down the mountainside.
Tucker groaned from the front seat, one bloodied thumb lifting into the air for a moment before he started to adjust his body and move around. Caden was slowly moving himself from the space near Hazel, ignoring the rest of them as he reached out towards Faye and tried to help her first. Her eyes were closed and her body was slack in her belt, long dark hair in her face and hanging between them all as drops of blood ran from the end of her locks to the floor below. Dread filled Hazel’s chest, scrambling to reach her new friend as Caden did.
Before his hand reached her, a black mist leaked through the broken and bent door of the van, sliding inside before creating a human-like mass in front of Faye and between their reach. It grabbed out for her quickly, shadowed hands on her shoulders as it pulled her down towards its body. Her entire frame phased through the seatbelt, falling forward into the arms of Nico as he easily caught her below and kept her from the hands of her friends. She let out a small sound but Hazel could not see if she was awake, the dark hair a mass in Faye’s face against Nico masking any further reaction.
Caden roared out in rage, lunging forward as he tried to gain momentum and get to Nico and Faye. Instead, his disoriented body fell towards the ground of the van. Meanwhile, Tucker was struggling to get over the broken seats in front and back to them, ignoring the shards of glass that dug into his large body with each strained pull towards the back. Hazel was on a mission of her own as well, grabbing at the darkness that was Nico as he turned towards them all with narrowed, bright brown eyes, the unconscious Faye in his embrace. But her hands swept through him, not making contact as her mind fought for some sort of way to access power, or an attack that could surely stop him.
Hazel was certain she could make contact with him, certain there was no way he was strong enough to escape three powerful people in such a closed space. Surely she could call upon the power she had used to attack Danira in the dream state. But how did she summon it before? How could she possibly use it now in the short time she had?
The moment Hazel’s hand tried to make contact with him once again, Nico dropped, body disappearing with Faye’s through the van beneath their feet and out of sight. Only one hand, raised in a taunting wave of goodbye hovered above the metal of the van ceiling before he was erased from their sight.
Caden was enraged, fists pounding into the van ceiling where they had disappeared from sight before he lunged towards the broken doors, fighting to yank one open as his eyes searched the forest floor for the evil that had taken his friend and attacked all of them. His blue eyes were wide and desperate, turning to look back at Tucker with alarm before leaving the two of them in the van and descending to the side of the hill to start searching, the panic within him appearing to increase with each moment Faye was out of their sight and in the enemy's hands.
Hazel slowly moved towards the door Caden had escaped from, her eyes scanning the forest as well, praying she’d see Caden fighting Nico, and Faye safe somewhere below, that there was no way they had all been taken down so easily and one of their teammates ripped from the safety of the group.
But Nico and Faye were long gone.
Chapter Fourteen
Aiden sat at his piano, long, eloquent fingers dancing along the keys. He couldn’t hear the music, did not know if what he played sounded the same as it had so many years ago when he was alive. Everything was muted in the spirit plane for those trapped there, a small piece of what the real world had been, a tease of what he had once had, but his fingers still remembered the exact keys. For a brief time many years ago he was able to feel the outside, able to walk and hear other voices as clear as day.
But when Hazel had left her father’s home for the final time, all his hope had gone with her. Even though he had tried to dissuade her from working with her powers and welcoming the power within her, tried to keep her from channeling her born Affinity, he still could not fight the need to be free. To be alive again.
When his very soul had been pulled from the spirit realm and plunged into the real world again, he had seen her in the office speaking to some strange woman. Aiden had been filled with a need to protect her just as he had at Danira’s tent when he first realized she had come to the place in which she had been born and raised, that she had found the one person and power she needed the most. Of course Hazel had to be in Oregon as well, it was almost as though it was all meant to be, but he refused to believe his sister was meant to have the ultimate power over the planes and hurt the one person he cared for anymore. He did not know what danger would befall
Hazel, but knew something terrible was about to happen to her during her moment of weakness in the therapist's office. Well, fake therapist. There was a guise of a spell surrounding them both, a prickling on his skin he had long ago learned to hone in on. Already Danira had her claws sunk into his Hazel. She looked as she had when she came to sell her father’s home long after leaving the first time. Breathtakingly beautiful and just as stubborn, a permanent frown crease between her forehead that had started when she was very young.
Her long brown hair was healthy and lightly curling, despite being messy and unkempt. Light, intelligent brown eyes were hyper focused on the woman before her before she closed her eyes and submitted to her words; Danger. She was about to be in danger and somehow he had been called to her.
When she had seen him there finally, Aiden knew she was aware of who he was, there was no doubt in her bright eyes. For a moment, he had been completely captured by her, entranced by the intense look she was giving him. Thankfully, he had broken free of the spell and done enough damage to awaken her spirit from the hypnosis and away from the substantial power that he knew would attack her somehow.
He hated to admit it, but when he’d seen her corporal form floating above her body, he had thought she was dead and in the same realm as himself. It was despair that racked his body first, followed by a shameful feeling that highlighted his loneliness.
Happiness.
Sick. He was so incredibly sick for thinking such things over the inclination of her death. Aiden growled, hands moving to grab for the fallboard of the piano as he hid the cursed keys from view. Pushing away from the massive instrument, he began to pace around the small space he was forced to inhabit. Without a plane jumper to give him the power to travel through the realms, he’d remain there. He was an animal in a cage and seeing the healthy glow of Hazel’s familiar face? Her freedom? He wanted a taste of that as well.
It was less than three hundred square feet of space, a room that overlapped the old reading quarters of Hazel’s adoptive father’s home. It could not be seen by the normal humans, the items inside just as they had been before he died. No matter what else resided within, it all fell silent when compared to the grand piano in the center, a piece of furniture that demanded all attention and the number one thing he had owned during his time alive.
It was the only thing that kept Aiden from losing his mind in the spirit realm long ago. The piano and Hazel, of course. Entertaining her with stories and learning had been his only opportunity to escape and over time he had felt much like the Guardian he told her he was. Seeing her after she had grown had been a shock to him, but still the same Affinity surrounding her was a pulsing in the air that called to him. There had been no doubt in his mind it was the same little girl that had grown up in her father’s home. Although she had changed her style and attempted to hide from her power more than she had as a young girl, there was no escaping the draw of her Affinity.
Aiden ceased pacing and put one hand against the shimmering wall of his jail. The substance that kept his world together looked as if it would bend at the pressure of his weight for a moment, but then it solidified further beneath his hand. Over the past few days it had started to weaken compared to how it had been before. Something was changing and stirring and it surely had to do with Dani and Hazel. His sister had his eyes on the one he had promised to protect and intended to destroy her in some way. Surely being close to Hazel and accessing her with her power was somehow breaking the energy that held the two worlds together, just as Danira had always wanted. Aiden wasn’t certain if that was her entire plan, but the fact that she hunted Hazel so relentlessly left him breathless with rage. His power, a darkness he had thought died with him, stirred below the surface, terrifying him.
But still not as much as the thought of Danira getting her evil hands on Hazel.
Hazel was his responsibility, she had been from the moment he first played his piano and caught her attention in the reading room. He could feel her power, her loneliness. It was something that spoke to the dark parts of himself that had been trapped in the spirit realm for almost a century. Despite the spirit realm portraying a happy moment in the dead one’s previous existence, Aiden had been truly shocked when his bedroom was chosen as his prison instead of the wide, open fields where his family had farmed and worked, wishing for a moment when he could go outside and enjoy the warm sun again.
It was an insight to his life before death, and not one he had wanted to be trapped in.
Aiden adjusted his tie, eyes scanning the room around him as shapes and shadows from the real room remained intact, like a shimmering room of magic within his own. When those who resided in Hazel’s father’s home moved about, he could see them clearly, as though they were in his room with him. But without Hazel’s power there, he could not travel the home, could not make contact or see if any of them could see him.
All was hopeless.
Her power had somehow reached to him during her last encounter with his dearest sister, sending his spirit out of his cage and into the spell of a dream Hazel was enduring. Once again, he had been able to help her and when he returned to his room, the walls had changed once more. He could push them, could feel the weakness in the spirit realm around him. He was growing stronger with each encounter he had with the beautiful, powerful Hazel and his malicious sister’s spells. It was clear she did not heed his warnings from when she was a child, but he could only pray this danger she faced was something she was now running from. Somehow, some way, he was going to escape that realm and go to her. He’d make sure she stayed away from the spirits that sought to destroy and use her for their own gain. Sure, Danira was still alive in a way, master of life and using the strength of others to keep herself on the human plane, but she was a spirit nonetheless. As evil and desperate as the darkest Affinity.
Affinities. He hated calling himself that, hated the word coined by those who could connect with the spirit realm. But it was what they were and always would be. It was a curse, one that had slowly eaten away at his sanity.
Dead, but never truly gone.
Still, he remembered what food tasted like, what a woman’s body felt like as it writhed in passion beneath him. Aiden remembered bee stings, the pain in his hands as he helped his father in the fields, the heat of the sun. It was all a constant taunting that he had been certain would disappear after decades of isolation in his ‘perfect’ world.
There was a shuffle behind Aiden and he whirled around, another angered growl escaping his lips the moment his eyes fell on the being that had entered his realm. Of course, this particular Affinity was one he was quite familiar with.
“Nico. To what do I owe this pleasure?”
“Maven has sent me with a few messages. I see you haven’t rearranged anything in here.” Nico responded, his voice a deep baritone as he slowly walked around the perimeter of Aiden’s room, foot kicking out to touch his piano as he passed, a twisted mass of mist following his every step.
“It has been a while since she’s sent you to speak to me. I imagine she didn’t like me interfering with her mission? Still calling her Maven, eh? Fucking her still, too?”
“What is the girl to you, Aiden? This one is just another plane jumper, more powerful maybe, but still just another Affinity. Why did you decide to interfere now?” Nico asked, light brown eyes snapping up to meet his. The gaze was intense, pulling attention away from everything else and trapping Aiden in darkness and the angry energy that poured off Nico.
Ah, so Danira didn’t know Hazel had lived there while she was growing up, it seemed, although she had hunted Hazel down, she was still struggling with some of the information that would assist with obtaining her. As long as she didn’t have trackers on Hazel already, of course.
Nico was an odd one, and although Aiden knew there was a long story as to why Nico was working for his sister and what his story was, he didn’t care. Nico was the enemy as far as he was concerned, anyone who worked for and was fooled by his sister would be
his enemy. Aiden broke the distance between the two of them, meeting the man eye-to-eye as he straightened up his back and his brows furrowed.
“Say what you want to say, Nico. Then leave me. I’m having a party later and I must get ready.” His hands opened, gesturing to the room. “Going to be a lot of fancy people joining me, and you are not invited.”
The smallest of smirks twitched at the edge of Nico’s lips before he shook his head. “Here’s the deal, Aiden. You’re dead, you have no business meddling with your sister’s plans. She assumes you mean to use the girl to escape in some way, which she views as admirable. So she comes with a deal. You stay out of things and my Maven will not only allow Hazel to live for a while longer, but will grant you the freedom gained with her plane jumping power.”
“If she’s not going to kill her, and Hazel refuses to give up her power…what then? You can’t possibly promise me that Danira won’t drain her until she’s nothing but a shell, or enslave her for her existence like she has done to you. Tell me, Nico, when do you get free from your own contract?”
There was no emotion in the man’s face, the muscles in his arms strained for a moment as his fists tightened, the only sign that he was remotely affected by the words of Aiden. “My Maven will do as she pleases, but if you interfere again, she promises she will use Hazel and take her life in front of you. She’ll not be allowed any escape or contract, and it will not be slow. It’s clear you want her, whether it’s emotional or for her power, so make this agreement and she doesn’t have to die. You get to roam the world again, the realms will be one.”