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whoever is in there with them that we suspect something. I
killed that cop back on Interstate 95; he's not the one in
here. But we have to assume that if there is a person in
there with your family, and after that phone call you had
with your mom I'm going to assume that there is someone
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in there, they know that I'm with you because he or she has
been possessed by the same creature that possessed the cop
earlier. It doesn't necessarily know that we know it's in
there. I want you to act like you're just coming home
because your mother told you to."
Her eyes got wide but she nodded.
He cleared his throat and continued, "So, you're
going to go in first and I'm going to follow right behind
you. Go in like everything is normal and try not to worry,
I'm good at this. Veli once called me a walking path of
destruction; I can take care of whatever is in there." He
tried to smile, to reassure her. He wanted to take all of the
worry out of her eyes. He wanted to kiss her until neither
one of them could think or breathe nor remember this
terrible day.
He hoped there would be time for that later.
* * * *
He was trying to make her feel better and even
though she knew that, she decided to let him. Weakly, she
smiled. "Okay."
She stuck her key in the door and turned the handle.
The wood panel opened into the front hall. The hairs on the
back of Isabelle's neck stood up straight. Every light in the
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house was on. Her father hated wasting electricity. She
could remember countless lectures growing up about
electric bills being too high and how they all had to try to
remember to turn off the lights in any room that they
weren't in. Isabelle felt Kal step into the hallway behind
her, almost silently, waiting for her to go in further.
"Call your mom, Isabelle, and act like it's any
normal day when you might be surprising them with a
visit," he whispered in her ear.
"Mom?" Isabelle called out into the house. "Are you
here? We got disconnected on the highway so I came home
right away. What's going on?" Isabelle started walking
towards the kitchen but turned suddenly towards the living
room. Her stomach lurched. Something was wrong in the
living room.
There was a strange dripping sound, almost like
water hitting the floor. She turned into the room and what
she saw was enough to stop the breath in her lungs.
All of the furniture was exactly where it was
supposed to be, her mother kept an immaculately clean
house. Everything had a place. The blue sofas were up
against the far wall, covered in plastic and undisturbed. The
china cabinet that held her mother's precious crystal
figurines was still as beautiful as always. The small, crystal
chandelier that they had inherited from her father's mother
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hung in its place.
But next to the chandelier was the true horror.
Her parents and her brother hung from their necks
from the ceiling, their blood splattered all over the room. A
slow leak of it dripped from her father's broken neck.
Realization hit her slowly. They were dead; she and
Kal wouldn't be rescuing any of them. A scream started in
her throat and she felt her pulse begin to pound. Kal
stepped into the room behind her and she heard a hissing
sound come out of his throat as he put his arms around her
to drag her out of the room. But it was too late; a power
that she had never known she possessed had taken over her
body.
"How could this happen?" she screamed, not
recognizing the sound of her own voice. Later she would
realize the same strange timbre that had earlier taken over
Kal's voice had taken over her own. "How could this
happen?" The walls around her began to shake, but she
wasn't aware that she was shaking them. Energy pulsed in
and out of her body and everything around them seemed to
shimmer.
"Isabelle!" Kal shouted her name, gripping her body
to his. They moved backwards in time, watching the room
as if they were watching life in rewind. And then suddenly
it stopped.
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Isabelle and Kal stood in a bubble, unable to move,
her breath coming in and out in puffs. Her parents sat in the
living room. Her father read in one of the large reclining
chairs. Her older brother was trying to get his attention to
discuss a possible fishing trip.
"But Dad." Her brother blew out an exasperated
breath.
"Brian!" Isabelle shouted as she tried to move to the
men but found that she couldn't and it appeared they
couldn't hear her either.
"I can't go away right now. I have a deposition next
week, and besides you should be studying for your bar
exam. I'm not going to be responsible for you failing a
second time." Her dad laughed. Footsteps came down the
hall, and her family laughed as they entered the room.
"Oh you two," Isabelle's mother began. "You're
always at each other's throats. Tony, you can take a few
days off to take Brian fishing, as you've been promising to
do since he graduated law school. Pretty soon he's not
going to want to go fishing with you, that is, if he gets any
more serious with that pretty blonde he's been taking out
regularly."
Brian groaned out loud and sat in the chair next to
his father.
"Don't start on the blonde, Mom. I'm not going to be
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settling down any time soon. Besides, how could I ever find
a woman I loved as much as my mother?"
Anything her mother was going to say was stopped
by the doorbell ringing.
"Don't get the door, Mom!" Isabelle shouted. Her
entire body had begun to shake and in Kal's arms she felt
steaming hot.
"Isabelle, take us back," Kal said quietly in her ear.
"You don't want to be here to see this happen." Kal's words
got lost in her consciousness as she screamed and struggled
frantically.
"Daddy," she yelled. "Don't let him in. Please,
Dad."
"Tony." Her mother came in the room. "There's a
man here from the police station asking questions about
Isabelle. He wants to know if we've seen her." Isabelle's
mother was flanked by a large man in a police uniform. It
wasn't the same police officer as earlier.
"What's the problem, Officer?" Her father rose from
his chair, concern showing on his brow.
"Have you seen your daughter? Do you know where
she is?" the police officer asked.
"No, but she usually checks in a couple times a day.
/>
What's the problem? Has something happened to Isabelle?"
The police officer opened his mouth as if to answer but
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suddenly stopped. His eyeballs rolled to the back of his
head and he began to twitch.
"Tony! Is he having a seizure?" Isabelle's mother
screamed as Tony and Brian rushed to him. Without any
warning and with almost inhuman strength, the still
unnamed police officer reached out and gripped her father's
neck, breaking it with one squeeze.
Isabelle screamed and collapsed in Kal's arms.
Everything in her world went blissfully black as she
wondered who was still screaming. Later she would realize
it was her mother, the last noise she would ever hear her
mother make.
* * * *
Kal grabbed her limp body and pulled it to him as
time began to catch up with itself. He had never heard
screeching sounds quite like the ones he was hearing. It
was as if the universe was pulling itself apart to return them
to their normal time. He had no idea if this was normal
when someone traveled back in time or if this was
happening because Isabelle, seemingly the reason behind
their time shift, had lost consciousness and was no longer
even unknowingly controlling their movements through
time.
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With a thump they were thrown out of the bubble
that had surrounded them and Kal fell to the floor on his
back. He had two seconds to sit up before barely catching
Isabelle in his arms. He sat up and looked around, holding
her against him as if she was a baby. Her parents had been
brutally murdered and she had just witnessed it. He wasn't
sure she would ever recover.
Suddenly Kal became aware of a presence in the
room with them. He looked up into the eyes of Isabelle's
mother. She was separated from her body, a kind of
shimmering entity above them.
"You can only see me because you are so connected
to her. But I am grateful to see you."
Her voice was barely audible to Kal. He had to
strain to hear her. It sounded more like noises the wind
made over the ocean at their home in Maine but he was
sure he had made her out correctly.
"It's been my great honor to love her, to raise her,
and to care for her. She was as much my baby as Brian was
but I give her to you where I suspect she was always
supposed to be. Take care of her, Kal."
"We won't let this stand," Kal promised her. "I'll
make sure there's retribution, someone will pay."
"Where I am now, Kal, we don't worry about such
things. But I imagine you'll do just as you are supposed to
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do. Tell her it wasn't the backyard. Tell her that she
suddenly just appeared on my kitchen table and when she
looked up at us we felt like we had known her all our
lives."
As quickly as she had appeared before them she
vanished leaving Kal, still clutching an unconscious
Isabelle in his arms, stunned on the floor. He knew they
had to run and this time there would be no stopping until he
got her safely hidden at home. Then he would figure out
what he was supposed to do about this nightmare, and he'd
have to make sure it included lots of pain to the responsible
party. He wasn't a child anymore and he wasn't going to be
hiding in the corner. It was time to take the fight to the
enemy.
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Chapter Ten
Isabelle became aware of a woman's voice speaking
gently to her. Was it her mom? She was going to have to
tell her all about the weird dream she had. No, she realized,
she didn't know whoever this woman was. Nothing that had
happened had been unreal. It had all actually taken place.
"Isabelle, can you hear me?" the voice asked again.
She didn't want to answer it; she just wanted to stay
in the blackness. She was safe in the blackness.
"Char, why isn't she waking up?" Kal hissed above
her. "It's been twelve hours, Char, shouldn't she be waking
up?"
"She's been through an ordeal, Kal, and as I keep
telling you, it's going to take time to bring her back to us."
The voice that Isabelle could now identify as
belonging to someone named Char spoke pleadingly to Kal.
Thinking about Kal brought a measure of comfort to
Isabelle. He had been real. She didn't like that sound in his
voice. He sounded despondent. Anyone else might think he
was being pushy and demanding but she could hear the
terror and the fear.
"She has to make it back, Char. You have to bring
her back to me," Kal demanded, sounding authoritative and
regal. "Bring her back to me now."
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Inside Isabelle smiled, she still couldn't open her
eyes—truthfully, she didn't want to—but hearing him and
knowing he was there, she let herself drift for a few
moments.
* * * *
"That didn't work when we were children, Kalmari,
and it certainly isn't going to work now. Stop bothering me,
go speak to Veli. He has more questions for you."
"I'm not overly concerned with what Veli wants
right now. I want to know what Isabelle did to herself and
if she's going to be okay. I've never seen power like that
before, Char. I didn't know we could do that."
His first inclination was always to boss everybody
around. He had been told, on more than one occasion, that
his father had been the same way. It was hard to think
about his father and mother. They seemed more like
phantoms than real people. Stories and fantasies did
nothing to help him during the lonely teenage nights when
so much untapped, misunderstood instinct had boiled inside
of him, creating a rage that even to this day he had to
suppress during full moons.
If he hadn't known better he would have thought he
was a werewolf. Veli couldn't explain this phenomena to
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him, saying simply that every family had its own unique
eccentricities and perhaps something happened to his
family during the moon cycle. But had it been his mother or
his father's family that had this problem? He would never
know and that drove him crazy.
It had been particularly difficult for Kal to relate to
Veli on the subject of his father. There was some unspoken
hostility between the two older men and when he had
turned sixteen he had finally mustered up enough nerve to
ask him about it. Veli had confessed that he and Kal's
father Holis had been constant rivals. Veli had won out
Abraxas' respect and trust as first warrior of the clan and
Holi
s had been resentful of it. To this day, Kal wasn't sure
that some of the hostility that Veli felt towards his late
father wasn't being redirected at him. He had assumed that
he would go through his life feeling that way—unsure,
unloved, and always just a little bit alone.
But then fate had thrown him Isabelle and he would
be damned before he let her go. He had seen too much and
experienced too much to play games with fate. If he was
supposed to feel this strongly about this woman after only
twenty-four hours then he was going to feel that way and
damn anyone or anything that got in his way.
"Why can't you heal her, Char?" Kal started pacing
the room like a caged animal. His pulse was pounding in
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his ears and unbeknownst to anyone else static had started
to build around the room. He knew it was dangerous to let
his controls down like this but he was too far gone to do
anything about it.
"You know I can't heal anyone while they are
unconscious. They have to wake up so I can ease their
suffering. I'm not a doctor. I'm a mental soother." Charma
gritted her teeth, finally sounding truly exasperated with
Kal.
"Well, do something!" he commanded using the
authoritative voice that made everyone crazy.
"Quiet, Kal, she's waking up." Charma commanded
right back as Kal quickly strode across the room to be right
up against Isabelle's side.
* * * *
Isabelle became aware of a slight buzzing in her
head. It felt strangely like she wasn't alone. There was so
much pain still to be digested. How could her family be
dead? How could she be part of some strange group that