E.V.I.E.: 13 Slayers, 13 Missions

by Lexi C. Foss

  But I was really struggling.

  It didn’t help that I had my last few classes of the day with Wyatt.

  I walked into the classroom, my gaze immediately darting to where Wyatt sat. There was a group gathered around him, all chattering excitedly about the concert tonight. I smiled as a kid from the baseball team stammered out a question about the set list and Wyatt shot him down.

  Wyatt’s ice-colored gaze met mine just then, and I froze.

  Taking a deep breath, I walked over to my desk, directly in front of his.

  “Hey, baby,” he told me, squeezing me tightly against his chest. I inhaled his spicy orange scent, trying to control my emotions so I didn’t jump all over him.

  “Hey, yourself,” I told him weakly. He raised an eyebrow, the piercing on it reflecting in the light.

  I turned my attention to the front of the room, pretending to be listening to the teacher, who’d just started talking.

  Wyatt and I usually passed notes all throughout class. But I wasn’t really interested in it today. As soon as Wyatt sent his first note over, ironically asking if I was excited about the show tonight, I told him I was behind in class and needed to concentrate.

  Wyatt sulked for the rest of class.

  He tried to get my attention in between periods. “I was thinking we could get away this weekend, have some time for just the two of us,” he told me as he hurried to catch up to me.

  “Yeah, maybe,” I answered before slipping into our next class.

  “Maybe? What the fuck, Olivia? You didn’t say ‘maybe’ to Noah last weekend or Ryan on Tuesday.”

  “Can we talk about this later?” I sighed. I hated fighting with any of them.

  “No, I want to talk about this now,” he said belligerently.

  Wyatt ran hotter than the other two. His emotions tended to run extreme, and I was used to calming him down.

  “Of course we’ll hang out this weekend. I just need to concentrate this week in class. We have midterms coming up, and I’m still in the running for that scholarship.” My excuse for why I didn’t want to talk was only half a lie. We did have mid-terms, and I was trying for a scholarship at NYU that depended one hundred percent on my grades, but that had never stopped me in the past from talking with Wyatt.

  Wyatt was sullen for the rest of the day, and my mood just seemed to get worse when Brittany winked at him as we walked by. I was grateful that I’d driven myself to school that day, I couldn’t spend another second with Wyatt without freaking out.

  They guys all had practice, clubs, or extra-curriculars, and Daniel and Rachel were still at work when I got home, so I had the house to myself.

  Getting a heating pad out for my cramps that were raging, I laid down on my bed, deciding that I would not be going to the concert tonight.

  I didn’t think I could handle seeing Brittany there and wondering if Wyatt was slipping off somewhere with her.

  I texted the guys I wasn’t feeling well, knowing they wouldn’t see the texts until right before the show anyway because of their school stuff.

  After popping a few Advil, I drifted off to a fitful nap filled with dreams where the overwhelming theme was dread.

  It was dark when I woke up. My nap had lasted far longer than I thought it would. But at least my cramps had calmed down.

  There were twenty texts waiting for me from the guys, all growing increasingly concerned when I didn’t answer.

  I immediately fired off a text in our group chat that I was fine. Looking at the time, I realized that I’d slept so long, Wyatt’s show was probably over by now.

  None of the guys were texting me back, and I didn’t want to think about the after-party Wyatt’s band always held after shows and all the girls that would be all over the guys.

  Fuck.

  I turned a movie on my TV and tried to distract myself.

  It didn’t work.

  Finally, I just fell asleep again.

  It was Rachel’s scream that woke me up. For as long as I lived, I would never forget the pure agony threaded throughout her voice. It was the sound of someone’s soul dying.

  It was the worst sound that I’d ever heard.

  I rushed out of my room and down the hall, only to see Rachel on her knees, screaming, with Daniel pacing frantically around her on a phone.

  “No, no,” he cried out in a voice filled with panic and dread.

  I ran down the stairs, chanting desperately to myself that it wasn’t the boys. It couldn’t be the boys.

  Daniel dropped the phone and covered his face with his hands, deep racking sobs emanating out of him.

  “What’s going on?” I whispered.

  But they just continued to sob.

  I heard a voice coming from the phone that Daniel had dropped to the ground. “Hello, hello? Mr. Masterson?”

  Trembling, I picked up the phone.

  “Hello?” I asked hoarsely.

  “Mrs. Masterson?”

  “This is their daughter. What’s going on?”

  There was silence on the other end.

  “Ms. Masterson, your brothers were in an accident tonight.”

  Hysteria rose in my throat.

  “An accident? Are they okay? What hospital are they at?” I started to look around for my keys, not understanding why Rachel and Daniel weren’t rushing to get to the hospital.

  “I’m sorry…there was nothing we could do. They had already passed by the time the emergency crews go there,” the voice said somberly.

  There was a buzzing sound in my ears. It felt like the room was spinning around me. I didn’t understand what he was saying.

  “But what hospital are they at?” I asked nonsensically, because the words he was saying didn’t make sense.

  “Your brothers have died, ma’am.”

  The buzzing grew louder. A piercing scream filled the air. It took me a second to realize that the scream was coming from me. The phone dropped to the ground, this time shattering.

  My screams continued.

  It felt like my soul had disconnected from my body and disappeared.

  This wasn’t happening. It wasn’t. Any second now, they were going to walk through the front door, amped up from the show and eager to see me.

  Any minute now.

  The truth began to seep slowly into my skin. True pain was like that. It took a moment to fully start to experience it.

  This pain was the kind you don’t come back from. If I survived it, I would never be the same.

  As my emotions overwhelmed me and the world began to spin and fade around me, all I could think was that I wished I had died with them.

  The funeral was held three days later. I didn’t even get to say goodbye, as the bodies were evidently too destroyed to be seen.

  I stared at the three coffins as they were lowered into the ground. The plots were side by side. They’d be able to stay as close together in death as they had in life.

  I still couldn’t believe they’d left me behind.

  I’d been in a comatose state since I’d collapsed in the entryway.

  Rachel and Daniel were dealing with their own potent, devastating grief…so they couldn’t help me.

  I’d somehow made it to my room later on in the night. I’d fallen asleep on my floor, and I hadn’t gotten up.

  If it hadn’t been for our house manager, Jared, I probably would still be lying on that floor.

  He’d forced water and some bread down my throat and convinced me that I had to attend the funeral, that it wouldn’t be fair to the boys for me to not say goodbye.

  So I stood there at the gravesite stoically, next to an inconsolable Rachel and a numb Daniel, who I suspected hadn’t stopped drinking since that night.

  Well-wishers passed by, giving us their hollow condolences. I couldn’t muster the energy to respond to them. None of these people had known Noah, Wyatt, and Daniel.

  All of these people had been graced by their light, but they didn’t really know them. Rachel and Daniel had
n’t really known them, not really.

  I was the only one who knew them.

  They didn’t know that Ryan hated everyone outside of Wyatt, Noah, and I, and that it was literally painful for him to be in social situations. They didn’t know that Wyatt dreamed his lyrics up, or that he would trace them across my skin while he was trying to perfect his songs. They didn’t know that Noah couldn’t wait to be a dad and that he had been talking about our future children since we were sixteen. They didn’t know that the boys had promised themselves to me, and I to them. They didn’t know that the boys were mine.

  It was a funny thing. I looked across the plots and saw Brittany, or whatever her name was, standing with a group of her friends, crocodile tears falling down her face. I didn’t feel anything when I saw her—not jealousy, not regret. Nothing.

  It was like the capacity to feel anything had been sucked out of my body.

  I was sure I looked strange, standing there with a blank slate for a face, no tears to be seen.

  But I didn’t care.

  I was a husk. I would just exist until I was able to be with them again.

  2

  I was wrong about the whole numbness thing. Evidently, what people said about grief coming in stages was real.

  When I got home from the funeral, after I’d been forced to pretend to eat funeral potatoes and whatever other elegant food that had been laid out by one of the Masterson’s business associates, I fled to my room, and I cried.

  I cried until I was dehydrated, until I was sure there wasn’t a drop of water left in my body.

  And then the tipping point came.

  My door flew open, and Rachel stumbled in. Her face was swollen and red. Tears were streaking down her face. Her hair was tangled and all over the place.

  “You,” she seethed, pointing at me. I scrambled up off the floor, wary of what was happening. Rachel had been nothing but kind to me since the moment I arrived. But the woman standing in front of me was nothing like the Rachel I’d come to know. “It should have been you.”

  It took me a second to realize what she was talking about. But when it did, it sent shards of pain floating through me. I didn’t know I was capable of experiencing more pain, but here it was.

  She lunged at me, her fingers curled in like she was going to strangle me.

  Daniel ran in just then and grabbed Rachel around her waist. She struggled against him, cursing at me, then at him. Inhuman shrieks filling the air.

  It broke the last will to live I had in me.

  Daniel dragged her out of my room, not even sparing me a glance. Her shrieks and cries echoed throughout the house until I heard the loud bang of their bedroom door slamming shut.

  I didn’t think then. I just ran. The sky was a greenish black that foretold the storm that would be here any minute. I stumbled barefoot down the street, the wind whipping at my hair.

  The chaos of the outdoors perfectly encompassed the chaos I was feeling within.

  There was a bridge a few blocks down. I’d been there with Noah just this past weekend. We’d commented at how the normally quiet river had transformed into raging rapids with all the rain we’d gotten lately. I made my way there, the events of the past few days flashing through my head on repeat.

  I somehow made it to the bridge just as the rain started to pour down from the heavens. I lifted my head up and let the rain fall on my face. And I screamed as loud as I could.

  “I can’t take this pain,” I murmured. Staring down at the water, an idea grew in my mind. And it grew and it grew and it grew, until it was all I could think.

  I was going to join my boys. There was nowhere they could go that I wouldn’t want to follow.

  Trembling, I hoisted myself up on the rail, and my feet dangled precariously over the raging water beneath me.

  I took a deep breath and prepared to launch myself into the murky darkness waiting for me below.

  “I’ll see you soon, my loves,” I whispered as my body started to leave the rail. I closed my eyes and welcomed the eternal silence I was about to experience.

  A pair of arms suddenly grabbed me in a steel embrace, preventing me from falling. They hauled me back over the rail and onto the bridge.

  My eyes flew open as I fell to the ground.

  “Fuck,” a deep voice muttered. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

  I looked up in shock to see a great brute of a man towering over me. He had wild brown hair, piercing blue eyes, and tan rugged skin. I probably would’ve thought that he was really good looking if I was capable of feeling any emotions beside pain. He was dressed in a leather jacket and tight black jeans. I watched as he pushed hair out of his face exasperatedly.

  “Are you fucking out of your mind?” he snarled, throwing up his arms. I just stared at him in shock over everything that had just transpired.

  “Who are you?” I finally spat out.

  “I think you owe me a thank you,” he responded, getting control over himself. He smoothed his leather jacket down, and I saw a glimpse of something that looked like a sharp wooden weapon sticking out of a holster around his waist.

  He moved his jacket and it disappeared, but whatever weapon I just saw, it was enough to warn me that this guy was probably dangerous.

  While I’d just intended to end my life by jumping off a bridge, I wasn’t interested in ending it by being the victim of a serial killer.

  I began to scoot away, looking around me for anything I could use for my own weapon.

  A smirk crossed his face. “Oh, that’s cute. You’re scoping out your surroundings just in case I attack. We can work with that.”

  “We?” I asked. “And what are you talking about…? Who are you?”

  He gave a cocky bow. “James Smith, at your service. Saver of all lives, although I must say, that was a new one.”

  “James Smith? Your parents must have been really original.”

  His smirk grew wider, as if he knew a secret that he didn’t feel like telling me.

  He leaned against the bridge behind him. My gaze flicked to the churning waters…

  And then I turned my head and threw up.

  I had almost killed myself.

  I really had almost done It.

  When I turned my head back to face James, wiping my face, he looked like he was going to throw up.

  “I must say, this is not my favorite mission,” he muttered.

  I cocked my head. What in the hell was he talking about?

  “Listen, I appreciate you stopping me from doing something really stupid, but you can go now,” I began.

  He gave me a predatory grin. “I think I need to collect my payment. Don’t you think?”

  Whoa. I scrambled off the ground, but not before grabbing a small rock I’d seen next to me.

  “Stay away.” I trembled, holding out the rock in front of me like an idiot.

  He startled me when he threw back his head and laughed. “Down girl. Let’s start over. I must be off my game with the whole having to save you from jumping off a bridge. As I said before, I’m James Smith. I’m a recruiter for E.V.I.E., and we think you’ve got a lot of potential, Olivia Masterson.”

  It took me a second, but Pretty Woman was my favorite movie and I wasn’t about to miss the way this guy had just quoted one of my favorite scenes from it.

  “Pretty Woman fan?” I asked, relaxing my guard slightly and lowering the useless rock.

  His eyes lit up. “I saw it in your file and couldn’t resist. P.S., you shouldn’t tell people that’s your favorite movie. Anyone who works for E.V.I.E. has to be a lot more badass than that.”

  I was too distracted wondering what E.V.I.E. was to properly defend Julia Roberts’ honor. “E.V.I.E.?” I asked.

  “Eliminate Vampiric Influence Everywhere,” he said succinctly.

  I blinked at him. Had he just said “vampiric,” as in vampire?

  “Ah, yes. I guess I should start more basic. Vampires are real,” he said with a face that was far too serious for the joke h
e was trying to play on me. Well, I hoped it was a joke. If it wasn’t, my serial killer suspicion was probably true.

  Although, who plays jokes on a person who just tried to jump off a bridge? On second thought, that would be a bit psychopathic too.

  “Okay, well…thanks again,” I told him, backing away, not taking my eyes off him for a second.

  He rolled his eyes. “How about I prove it to you?” he asked, his gaze barreling into me.

  “I’m not going anywhere alone with you,” I told him firmly.

  “No problem, princess. You can drive your own car. Just meet me at Rich’s in an hour. There are always a couple there on Friday nights.”

  Rich’s was a popular bar on the outskirts of town where they didn’t card at the doors. “A couple there? Like vampires?”

  He rolled his eyes like I was too stupid to function. “Rich’s. In an hour. Be there. Or not. But you’ll always regret it if you don’t.”

  And then he was gone, disappearing into the trees on the other side of the bridge, as if he had never existed at all.

  I wasn’t sure what to do with myself at that point. I’d never intended to go home tonight, and I certainly couldn’t see myself going back to face Rachel. At least not in the state she was in.

  I was just praying that my curse took pity on her grief and nothing nasty happened to her.

  But I couldn’t think about that right now.

  I stared at my surroundings. The forest was strangely quiet tonight. Maybe it was in mourning too. Everything felt a bit preternatural actually. I should have felt alone.

  But somehow, I didn’t.

  Buzzing started in my stomach. It was the same feeling that I’d always gotten around the guys, like there was a force connecting the four of us that was so strong, you could tangibly feel it.

  Shaking the feeling off, I walked off the bridge and strode towards the parking lot. There was nothing here or at the Masterson’s for me. And I obviously was feeling a bit risky with my well-being at the moment.