The Quarter Moon (Afterlife saga)

by Hudson, Stephanie

  The car stopped and I watched as the driver suddenly slumped forward and then off to the side, where he remained passed out. I looked out of the side window that now faced the main house and a figure emerged from the front steps. Draven was flanked first by his council and then some of the guards from Afterlife, some of whom I was used to seeing daily. The whole sight had me sucking in a tight breath in an attempt at holding on to my anger in place of the pain that wanted to consume me. But no matter how strong I pretended to be, tears still found their way past my barriers. They trickled down even as he reached the door and pulled it open.

  “Come on, Keira,” said a voice that wasn’t making it any easier to bear. At least before when talking with Draven, he had been in the body of a sweet family man, just doing his job. But like this…Draven’s powerful presence, his towering frame and his commanding voice, no matter how softly spoken, still caused me such a depth of agony that I just couldn’t do it!

  “Keira, get out of the car.” It wasn’t said harshly and not even with a hint of frustration, but there was something there…an underlining current lacing his words and it was only when I figured out what it was did the anger return full force.

  It was pity.

  I hated pity.

  I loathed pity.

  But coming from Draven it became so much more than something I loathed. It became a trigger. One single shot fired straight to my heart leaving nothing left for Draven to hold onto…ever again.

  I nodded to myself, knowing deep within my soul this was the end and all that was left was saying so, but to do that I first had to face my Demons, Angels and every other bastard left pulling my strings. Because this was it, I was finally done.

  I wiped my tears away angrily and got myself out of the car, ignoring Draven’s reaching hand. I stood refusing to look at him but still seeing my other life for the first time in months. The very ones who had all stood up at once and left me, all because their Master commanded it. And now here I was, like none of them expected me to be. Stood outside the fortress doors after infiltrating the lies and staring them all in the eye as though we had not once been side by side.

  Because now I was no longer part of the family Draven had knotted me into, but I was back to being the outsider looking in. The one who had once dreamed of belonging in Draven’s world…well now I knew of the pain that lay waiting there, like a poisonous snake waiting to strike when your guards were down.

  There was a piece of it in every person here and as I walked past, head held high with not an ounce of fear in my eyes, I knew what they knew. What their eyes told me, what my eyes told them. But more importantly, what their Master’s told us all from the very beginning, I just didn’t want to see it. This wasn’t the end because for me…

  There was never a beginning.

  I felt the air around me start to change and I knew this was down to the Master at my back. Most of his council lowered their heads in submission, but it was only Sophia and Vincent who weren’t affected.

  “Keira I…” Vincent started to reach out to me but I sidestepped out of his touch and turned my head away, not being able to bring myself to even look at him right now. I knew that what was happening wasn’t his fault, just as it hadn’t been anyone else’s fault who cared for me. But right now the wound was just too raw to find comfort in those that helped inflict it, no matter what their orders had been.

  I felt the pain radiating from him like an ice cold fog rising from the stone steps I walked upon. I looked straight ahead when I saw I had passed him and his sister. But I not only saw the entrance looming in front of me, but also Vincent turning away in anger from the rest of the group, thanks to the reflection in glass provided by the double doors. I must have paused for a moment as I knew that walking through those doors was the very last place I wanted to go. That’s when I felt it.

  Draven’s hand touched the small of my back to motion me on, but for me that one single touch, the first real one in so long, felt like his mark branding into my flesh. I shrieked out like I had in fact been burned and jumped out of his reach, still feeling the tingles that hummed along my veins, lighting the way for fresh pain to penetrate my heart.

  “Don’t touch me!” I screamed it at him, facing him for the first time and really taking in his face. The harsh lines told me just how deeply my words had cut him, but I didn’t care! He had no right to that hurt, no right at all. He had caused all of this and damn him if I didn’t want him to feel sliced open because of it, ‘cause God and the Devil only knew how much I really did need it right now!

  “Very well, Keira.” He said softly as he must have known how truly on the edge I really was. I could no longer stand looking in those eyes, eyes I had once been mesmerised by, happy in the knowledge that I could freely get lost in their depths. I looked to see all the shocked faces my outburst had caused and for a moment I knew what I was seeing…

  The prophecy was now lost in their eyes.

  “Inside.” Draven’s one word wrenched me from all those faces that looked to have been depending on me for something I would never know.

  I turned away, gladly complying if it meant getting away from them all. Zagan who had help control my Hell’s army now looked lost, consoling someone I once considered to be a sister. Celina locked in a surprised sympathy stood next to Takeshi, whose disappointment couldn’t be hidden under soulful eyes. The only one not here condemning me was Ragnar and I found I was glad for it as I think this would have been the last of the torture I could endure before I broke, confessing sins I never knew I had committed.

  So, I turned away from them all, not in a dignified walk, head held high as it once was but now I ran. I let everything go and ran from the faces that would forever haunt me. Those judging faces that spoke of my failure in a way I couldn’t explain.

  This was Draven’s decision not mine. He had left me, not the other way around! I should have stayed and argued this point but instead I let the coward in me rule my emotions and my actions. I heard Draven behind me shouting my name but it meant nothing. I just ran, not taking in any of my surroundings as doors and corridors all merged into one.

  I didn’t know where I was going, but for some reason my journey led me to only one door. It was at the end and stood directly in front of me like a beacon to Pandora’s Box. It was the one you knew you shouldn’t open. The one you knew you should be running from not towards, but it couldn’t be helped. It was there in front of me and I knew that all I would find behind it was the very last piece to Draven’s lies…but still I reached out for the handle and opened the door.

  “You!” Aurora looked up in surprise at the venomous word I spat out. She was sat amongst the broken room looking like a broken doll herself. It had been the same room I had first found Draven in and the only thing left in one piece looked to be the enormous bed with the strange rock wall headboard. I looked to the smashed glass doors that now led out to a crumbling balcony and saw a flash of my earlier self looking in. The agony I saw there was like no other and the word devastation didn’t even begin to touch the surface of it.

  I looked back to Aurora, who had risen from the floor and I witnessed her make her second mistake. She sniffed and wiped the tears away from her pale cheeks and asked,

  “Keira, why did you have to come back…what have you done?” This was when the bad stuff started to happen. It began with the tingling in my fingers, as a rage so profound started to seep up from the darkest place within me so that I couldn’t have controlled it if I had tried. I had no clue as to how it really happened, but one minute I was stood there taking in the destruction of the room and then I was adding to it.

  Every broken piece of furniture started to rise from the floor in slow motion. Fragments of Draven’s anger held prisoner under the spell of my own fury, but it wasn’t just pieces of wood and glass that I commanded…it was also Heaven’s unlikely Angel.

  Aurora’s frightened face was held frozen as was her body which my anger held in place. She too was suspen
ded in a time only I controlled. Her tense limbs were powerless to stop me and I knew with only one thought I could have torn them from her body like a bully would to a spider.

  Something in my head was screaming at me to stop, that this wasn’t right…this wasn’t me! But then the feeling of my heart being ripped from my body and used to paint this picture was what kept everything locked into the space I commanded. I felt the power hum through me like a current so strong I had to control the urge to not let it shake my body to pieces.

  “Keira!” Draven shouting my name entered somewhere in the shadowed corners of my mind, but this influence that had me by the fist wouldn’t let him in. It would only watch as the reason for all my pain was held as my captive and ready to be destroyed if only I would give into the need for revenge…but then that word didn’t sit right with the parts of my brain screaming to stop.

  “Keira, listen to me… try to hear my voice.” I let myself be lulled into the bliss that was someone I loved.

  “Draven?” I said his name and watched as everything I controlled dropped by a few inches. I heard him exhale as though finally getting through to me.

  “That’s it, listen to my voice now… this isn’t you, Keira…you wouldn’t harm anyone, so let her go.” On hearing him trying to save her, that determined part that wanted to hate lifted everything a little higher making Aurora scream.

  “No! Keira you have to try and hear me when I say that is not the reason I am trying to stop you from doing this. What you saw with me and her wasn’t as it seemed! Please Keira, I stop you now only because once you cross this line there is no going back…don’t you see, this is a test!” I heard everything Draven was saying and I felt the tears flowing freely down my face as I wanted so much to believe him but how could I.

  Then I asked the only thing I knew would stop the madness that raged inside me like the rivers of Hell.

  “D…ddo yyou…do you… love her?” My broken words finally made it through and only when I received his answer did I let the world fall and free them all from my pain.

  “No!” Draven said in such a way there was no possible way it was a lie, not even after everything he had done…this one word I would have laid my life down for and trusted in it to a point where I would have traded in every beat my heart had left.

  He didn’t love her…which meant what he had done to me wasn’t all so that he could be with her. The realisation crippled me with both relief and confusion. Aurora screamed as she dropped to the unforgiving floor, along with everything else in the room, but when she started to say something, Draven just snarled one word at her,

  “Go!” and then he caught me as I too crumbled to the floor.

  “It’s alright my love, I have you now…I’ve got you again.” His voice felt like tasting a pill I was addicted to. So long I had been without it and now I had no choice than to let it sweep over me like a warm blanket, only hoping it wouldn’t smother me to death.

  “Let me in.” Draven asked as he held me in his arms, pulling me closer to him and breathing me in like I too was his own curing drug. We were like two addicts who had been reunited with their poison, knowing how dangerous they were to each other but as with all drugs of choice…

  It was only the aftermath that ate away at your soul.

  “I can’t, not again.” I said sobbing in his arms knowing I couldn’t hold on to the feeling of his loving protection around me as it wasn’t real. It was all lies that no matter what words said or no matter what time lived through, one could never erase.

  “Try… just try and let go of your walls, Keira and I promise you with every vow in Heaven and Hell there is, I will keep you safe, nothing will hurt you here.” He said holding me tighter to him and I sucked in one last sob as his words alone did just as much damage as his action had.

  “You can’t promise me that.” I said turning in order to get closer to him, as I never wanted this moment to end, even if it was under these circumstances I just needed to hold on a little longer. Grip on a little tighter.

  “Why can’t I?” He asked me, his words brushing the top of my forehead. I shuddered in his arms as his touch took away the last of my energy to fight.

  “Because you can’t protect me from yourself.” This was the last thing I had the strength to say as he tore down the last of my feeble remains of the barriers I had holding him at bay. I felt his presence there take hold, flowing through me and just before the darkness he clouded my mind with overtook me, I heard his last words whispered in my ear, that I knew were words he didn’t really intend for me to hear,

  “That’s what I have been doing all this time, my love.”

  I woke up feeling groggy and it took me a moment to look back and understand why I was now waking in a room I had never seen before. Although, I must admit this was becoming a bad habit of mine. In the last four months just how many rooms I didn’t know had there been? How many different countries had I woken up in and how many views from an unknown bed had I seen?

  And all for what, just to find myself alone in the very last bed of my journey, before going home empty handed. This was when it all came thundering back to me making me groan in pain.

  “Here, take these, it should help.” Vincent’s soft voice startled me as he threw an aspirin bottle at me, landing on the big bed. I looked to the door to find him standing there, arms folded as if he had readied himself for my rejection. I sat up hissing at the pain on my stomach from the cut and also the thumping in my head from being punched…as in a lot! I popped the pill cap with one hand and grabbed the unopened bottle of water with the other. After the pills were where they needed to be, I put both down and nodded to the Angel in the doorway.

  “You can come in Vincent, I promise not to be a bitch this time.” I said shaking the sleepy fog from my head and rubbing my eyes, drawing a new hiss when I touched the bruise there.

  “I guess being the Angel in this picture I should feel remorse on my brother’s side for killing them, but one look at what they did and I can only find myself sorry I had not been there to help him.” I snorted a humourless laugh thinking back to the horrors that early morning held.

  “Yeah well get in line, if I had found a weapon Draven would have found them in pieces.” I said not knowing if this was strictly true but it sounded good at the time.

  “From what he told me you didn’t do too badly without one… what is it with you and breaking noses anyway?” He asked smiling as he came closer to sit on the bed facing me.

  “Well, Hilary was a bitch and deserved it at the time, as for the other guy…I didn’t really care for his idea of making friends.” On hearing this Vincent’s anger flashed through white, clouding the beautiful crystal blue that usually looked back at me. In sight of his growing rage I placed a hand over his tensed fist and said,

  “Hey, I’m fine…Draven got to me in time so let’s not go there… alright?” He looked down at my hand on top of his and before I could speak another word of comfort, he had me in his arms, holding me to him like he never wanted to let go.

  “I’m so sorry, Keira.” He whispered over my head as he pulled me to the crook of his neck. I felt the emotions rise up but remembering all of yesterday, I found I no longer wanted to cry. I had nothing left in me and that was the truth. No more uncontrollable rage. No more tears from an ever flowing well of pain. And no more hate for those around me who had acted like puppets in a brutal play at the expense of my heart. I was left numb.

  “What’s done is done Vincent, there is no taking it back, there is only living on past it.” I said and after another moment he pulled back to look at me. He looked to be evaluating if what I said was truly what I meant, as I gathered anything said ruled by emotions was never a good place to start when looking for that new beginning.

  “You think you can?” he asked me withholding nothing.

  “If Draven can, why can’t I?” I replied with another question.

  “Is that what you think, that Dom has been ‘living past it’?
No one lied to you when they said he was no longer living, Keira.” I shook my head in confusion at what he meant.

  “I don’t…”

  “Draven has been in Hell, Keira, just not the one you think.”

  “I…what do you…”

  “That’s quite enough, Brother.” Draven’s voice interrupted my questioning what he meant and for a moment Vincent’s eyes closed as if in discomfort. Then, without a word in parting to me, he stood and walked over to Draven who had been watching our exchange from the doorway. At the sight of him I felt my heart pinch before beating that little bit quicker. I didn’t know what it was in life that did this to us, but as soon as your soul connects on that level with another, it is then forevermore interlocked to it like no other soul on the planet.

  I had seen this man in every way possible… naked, vulnerable, angry and cold, protective, fearful, loving, devoted and hopeful. And every other hundreds of emotions out there and still it was as though I was seeing him for the first time, after being forced without his perfection in my life for too long.

  Vincent walked up to him and said,

  “You’re still not going to tell her, are you?” Draven didn’t answer him but just shook his head in a small motion to indicate what Vincent already knew. This didn’t shock me considering Draven hadn’t given me any answers so far, not even in the sight of both my anger and my heart wrenching grief. But what did shock me was what Vincent said next and shocking me even more was Draven’s reply to it.

  “Then you don’t deserve her.”

  “No, I don’t.” Draven said as simply as if he had been told this by the very Gods themselves. I didn’t think my heart could break anymore but upon hearing this I know it did. Was this what his leaving me was about? Had I just heard my reasons voiced for the first time?