Rouge

by Isabella Modra

  He wouldn’t even touch this poor-looking decoration, let alone leave the key there for Hunter to find. Then why-

  The answer struck her like a slap in the face. Miss Smart knew of her powers. Now she was dead. Jack also held her secret in the palm of his hand, and he’d been missing for a week. The only person left who knew the truth, the only person she cared about the most, was Eli.

  Hunter’s fingers closed around the key card, her heart thumping, her eyes filling with tears she couldn’t explain. Fear, perhaps. Even though she prayed to whoever was listening that her hunch was wrong, she knew what she would find inside room 23. Her hands were clammy on the handle, and she braced herself before shoving the door open and stepping inside.

  It hit her like a thousand shards of glass the moment she entered the apartment, sinking into her skin and making it shrivel. Cold. The kind of cold that dwelled in the deepest pits of the ocean, that froze inside an iceberg, the kind that washed away even the most lethal flame. The suite was a silent so deadly, Hunter could only hear her shallow breathing and the increasing pounding of her heart.

  The evidence that spread before her in a sheet of snow covering the room was more than enough to tell her that her hunch was right. It was as if the roof of the apartment had been removed, and a blanket of snow had fallen atop the furniture and the floor so that everything was white, peaceful like death.

  What kind of monster had been here?

  Hunter knew the answer as if her conscience had put together the pieces and lit it up like a Christmas tree.

  Joshua’s obsession with all things cold.

  The pale blue in his eyes.

  His fear of fire and warmth.

  Miss Smart’s shocking death caused by some strange disease to do with frozen blood cells.

  Her mother’s letter, the warning signs, the video of Joshua injecting himself with her powers…

  Hunter’s feet crunched on the snow in the doorway and suddenly all became clear.

  “Joshua is like me,” she whispered.

  A sickening feeling of dread boiled from within her and she realized it was the flame, curling in fear, bubbling with panic and rising fast. It was impossible, but it made sense.

  Joshua had a power, just like her. Only his power was her opposite. She was fire. He was ice.

  Joshua had been here. It was a trap to bring her straight to him, or straight to something worse.

  So she ran. Her heels slipped across the marble floors of the entryway into the bright living room where floor-length glass windows much like her own displayed a foggy view of the city. Everything was covered in ice. Questions burst from her mind and she prayed that Eli wasn’t there, that the snow didn’t come from who she knew in her heart it belonged to and that this was all just a dream.

  “Eli!” she screamed, crossing to the kitchen. But no reply came. Hunter flew through the living room to the bedroom door, leaving a trail of sizzling footprints. It was as if her heart had stopped in anticipation, her fear of what lay behind the bedroom door was darker than anything she’d ever experienced. Her hand shook as it rested on the handle and she pushed it slowly open.

  There he lay, sprinkled with snow, his left leg under his right and one arm across his stomach. Eli’s head rolled to one side, staring straight at her, except his eyes were firmly closed.

  Hunter’s breath caught in her throat as if choking her. Her limbs collapsed and she fell to the floor. With every mountain of courage she could muster, she crawled to his side at the foot of the master bed. She imagined this was what her teacher had looked like when the nurse had found her. Cold. Blue. Completely still.

  Shaking furiously, Hunter reached out to touch Eli’s cheek. She didn’t want to believe it. He couldn’t be dead. Not Eli. Not the one person she cared most about in this twisted world.

  The very tips of her fingers rested on his skin and she drew them back sharply, gasping. He was rock hard and freezing. Her eyes welled with tears.

  “Eli?” She rested a hand on his chest and gently shook him. “Please Eli,” she begged. “Wake up. Wake up!”

  Her quivering hands took Eli in her arms and she held him against her chest. Fighting the ice that surrounded her, Hunter summoned the warmth and felt her whole body glow with it. But something wasn’t right. The flames felt disconnected and slow, as though they too were suddenly defeated. She rocked him in her arms, whispering, tears streaming down her face and falling on Eli’s lifeless chest. Praying that the heat would somehow bring him back, she rested a hand on his cheek and felt the ice cocooned around his skin melt beneath her fingers. But the ice had already taken Eli. There was no pulse coursing through his veins, no heartbeat where it should be. No life left in him.

  With one final effort, Hunter pressed her lips to his and blew warm air inside him. His chest inflated and melted ice dripped from his body. The tuxedo slowly unfroze.

  Hunter pulled away, watching, waiting for a sign of life.

  “No E-Eli,” she sobbed deeply, her chest heaving. “N-no. Don’t. Leave. M-me. Please.”

  He remained lifeless. And the horrible truth dawned on her like a stormy cloud before the rain.

  Eli was gone.

  Because of Joshua.

  Hunter began to shiver violently, and not because of the ice. The fire was building. It bubbled, boiled and expanded inside of her. Her eyes shot open.

  And just like in the alleyway, the flames burst from her very core as though the fire had suddenly awoken from a long slumber. She let it burn through her and the cage of icy grief and brokenness that had closed around her heart. In the reflection of the glass window to her right, Hunter caught a glow amidst the pale darkness of the room and the reflection of a bright ball of flames gazed back at her.

  Gently and lovingly, Hunter lay Eli back on the puddled floor. She looked down at the sleeping man she loved and couldn’t pull herself away from him. She wanted to stay with him forever. He never left her when she needed him. She owed it to him to stay.

  “I won’t leave you here.” Her voice was unlike her own. The fire was snaking through her, consuming her. She didn’t have much longer before it took control of her completely.

  With a heart as heavy as stone, Hunter reached up to her neck and unclasped her necklace. It had been a part of Hunter all her life, and now she was giving it to Eli. With a pain deeper than any wound and no tears left to cry, Hunter tied the necklace around his neck and laid his head back softly on the snow.

  “I’ll make him pay Eli,” she whispered. “I promise.”

  Getting to her feet was like fighting against gravity, but the flames were slipping through her skin. Joshua awaited her. He was no longer her friend and guardian. He was a stranger, an enemy. He was dead to her.

  Joshua had to be close. He was probably in the building right now, walking around the dance floor, his icy eyes searching for her, waiting for her to find him.

  I’m coming for you Joshua, you sick son of a bitch. It felt right to hate him. You killed Miss Smart, kidnapped Jack and took away the only person I have ever loved more than myself; my best friend.

  You have awoken a beast.

  As if the fire now controlled her thoughts as well, the flames that flickered over and inside Hunter’s body burst across the room in one great blast of heat. She screamed in fury and the fire exploded like a nuclear bomb, burning everything within reach of her, swallowing it whole. The ice melted and the windows cracked and burst, shattering into a million pieces. Hunter’s rage grew as the fire took a hold of her heart, diminishing her grief and agony and transforming it into pure, poisonous hatred.

  She would mourn Eli soon. But right now the pain was too raw. She was broken, and so it was easy to let the fire take over.

  And for the fire, revenge was the only solution.

  – PART 5 –

  THE EMBERS THAT REMAIN

  thirty- seven

  Hunter’s dress billowed behind her, shredded from the flames that had burst from her skin and scorch
ed like burnt paper. In a fit of rage, she stalked through the hotel corridor and caught the elevator to the foyer. She received shocked looks from some of the seniors sitting on the couches and especially the staff, but everything was peripheral. None of it mattered. All that mattered was finding Joshua and unleashing all her wrath. For so long she’d worked so hard to keep the flames within her. For so long she’d thought they were a burden and an evil part of her that would never detach itself from her soul. Now, they were a weapon, a way to pay back the real villain who had been hidden from view the entire battle. The fire longed to be free, to burn through flesh and explode like the night in the alley. Only this time, Hunter wanted to kill. It soaked through to her very core.

  Where is he? Her skin glowed, her muscles tense for a fight. Her hair had fallen from the clips she’d carefully pinned earlier. She would have looked demonic, had she stopped and stared at her reflection in the windows. Hunter stalked back into the prom where the music thumped a heavy techno beat. Clare danced on the fringe of the crowd, the glistening Prom Queen crown bobbing on her head. The floor was packed with laughing students. Happy. Blissful. Completely unaware that Eli was dead.

  Hunter searched for a shadow, but Joshua wouldn’t be so careless. He would be hiding, watching her, waiting for her to strike. But fear was completely absent from Hunter. She didn’t care if she walked right into his hands, so long as she could melt them.

  The strain of keeping the flames inside of her was making her hyperventilate. They threatened to burst out of her fingers like a clogged hose, the fury and thirst for revenge almost overpowering. Students gave her shocked glances, but most of them stayed well clear of her. If she let go of control now, she would risk the entire senior class knowing what she could do and who she truly was. Hunter ran to the exit before another glance passed in her direction.

  The air outside the hotel was fresh and she breathed it in, letting it clear her thoughts. Her eyes stung, dried out and puffy. She searched the road for any sign of his car. Where did Joshua go? The apartment? The lab? What has he done with Jack?

  She ran down the red carpet steps to the corner of the main street and looked around. There were clusters of pedestrians walking this way and that, but one particular figure caught her eye. He stood to her left in the middle of the path, the dark streets shadowing his features. She squinted, hoping it was him. A car drove past, the headlights sweeping across the figure, illuminating Joshua’s face and the wicked smile he wore.

  Hunter tore after him. She ran surprisingly well in Melissa’s heels, not keeping her eyes off the man who had turned down a dark alley behind the hotel, his pace casual. By the time she turned into the alleyway herself, he was standing there waiting for her.

  The alley was dank, smelling of garbage and rain. Must these battles always take place in dirty alleyways? Déjà vu washed over her, but passed when she realized this was nothing like the time before, when she was scared and confused and powerless against the flames. She held the reigns now, and it was her choice to deliver the kill.

  A white light shone dimly down upon them, illuminating Joshua’s pale face, his smirk. The last time she saw him, Joshua was peering over her hospital bed as he drugged her, promising to take care of everything, his eyes clouded with worry and darkness. But now he looked like a new man - confident, even giddy. Perhaps that’s what killing does to someone. Madness fit Joshua well.

  What felt like minutes passed before anyone spoke. Hunter couldn’t bring herself to open her mouth, knowing if she did that flames would burst from it. She didn’t want to set anything free just yet.

  “That dress looks beautiful on you,” said Joshua conversationally as he took his hand out of his pants pocket.

  Hunter clenched her fists and breathed in deeply, but she couldn’t stop it. Her whole body was shaking with fury and an eagerness to force her anger upon him. It no longer mattered who he was. Father or friend, Joshua was nothing to her.

  “Where’s… Jack,” she hissed through teeth ground so hard together they physically hurt.

  “You’ll find out pretty soon, I expect.”

  “Oh I will,” she snarled. “Right after I burn your insides and watch them melt.”

  “Ouch. That hurt just as much as what you said to me the last time we spoke.”

  “Is that why you killed Eli?” she shouted, trying to breathe normally. She was surprised the words hadn’t made her collapse in pain and grief. “Because you’ve, what, been replaced?”

  “Seriously Hunter,” Joshua sighed. “You need to chill.”

  Before she could even move her burning fingers, Joshua’s eyes snapped to an old tin bucket next to the dumpster on his right filled with rainwater and ice. The bucket tipped at an incredible speed and the water shot straight at Hunter, hitting her in the chest. She yelped and her body was thrown against the concrete wall. Collapsing on the curb, the bitter taste of blood filled her mouth, her body soaked in water.

  Hunter looked up through her dripping hair at Joshua as he walked casually towards her, her back aching. He was grinning from ear to ear, a sight she’d hardly seen before. He was possessed, as if the thrill of hurting her was all he had to live for.

  “What happened to you?” she choked up at him.

  “I’m still me, Sweetheart.”

  Hunter’s stomach flipped with fury and she spat out a mouthful of bitter sewer water and blood in his face. “You’re insane,” she snapped. “And don’t call me ‘Sweetheart’.”

  Hunter lifted her hands and pointed them at Joshua, who looked down but didn’t have time to duck. A sea of flames burst from the palms of her hands, so hot they were no longer flames but a stream of magma that flew straight at Joshua.

  What happened next she didn’t expect. Just as the magma was about to collide with Joshua’s grinning face, his hand swept in a semi-circle and the magma turned to snow with a deafening hiss. It circled in the air as if floating in an invisible ball. Hunter was frozen in complete shock, almost entranced by the incredible sight, and then Joshua blew hard against the ball of snow. It fell on her, burying her, suffocating her. She clawed it away from her face and summoned heat into her hands again, but it had been flushed by the snow. She began to shiver uncontrollably. Her hands burst free and she pushed herself out, collapsing on the wet concrete sidewalk.

  Joshua was laughing. “You’ve got a lot to learn about your powers Hunter, and mine as well.”

  Still paralyzed at the thought of Joshua having powers - because it took her almost a week to come to terms with her own - Hunter lost her grip on the flames that had been flushed by the cold snow, and for the first time she felt scared. Courage, she urged herself and looked up from the ground at Joshua. He was holding something behind his back, and she prayed she’d never find out what it was.

  Hunter slipped to her feet, frozen on the outside but burning on the inside. She needed to get dry.

  Air flowed into her and Hunter exhaled hard. Her body burst into flames. Joshua jumped backwards and dropped whatever it was he’d been clutching to the slippery bitumen of the alley. It rolled toward the sewer grate, so small it would probably fall through, and before he could reach it, Hunter threw herself at him.

  Everything became confusing. Joshua was cold and the fire didn’t agree with that. It took all her concentration not to lose the flame, but it wasn’t coping. Joshua began to laugh hysterically as they wrestled on the alleyway floor. Hunter clawed at his face, but he continued to cackle, a sound that echoed in her head and wouldn’t go away. He was stronger than her, and in seconds he had thrown her off his body so she went sailing into the dumpster, hitting it with a deep clang.

  It was then that Hunter realized she couldn’t do it. She wasn’t prepared to battle Joshua with a power, much less a power that could overcome her flames. He was her kryptonite and she couldn’t fight him properly without a strategy. All she had was fury, and that was never enough.

  But her mistake was not believing she could run. She was weak witho
ut the heat and from being knocked around. Her real mistake was turning her back on him. As she crawled to her feet and made to run for the main road, Joshua came up behind her, snatched her by the ankle and pulled.

  “No!” she screamed as he yanked her to her feet and wrapped his frozen arm around her body. Hunter wriggled furiously, pushing the heat through her skin, but all it did was sizzle. He was as cold as a block of ice.

  “Shh,” he cooed, his grip tightening. “It will be over soon.”

  She shook her hands, trying to summon even a spark, but nothing came as Joshua lifted the object that had rolled toward the gutter and stabbed it into her neck.

  She gasped, her vision became blurry, and the last thing she remembered as every muscle in her body collapsed was Joshua’s chuckle and the terrible sensation of cold water coursing through her bloodstream, washing the heat away.

  thirty- eight

  She was drowning, clawing through the deep, cold, endless water. Panic consumed her and warmth no longer existed. Air, she thought desperately. I… need…

  “Hunter,” called a voice from the darkness. It was soft, mellow and familiar. Eli.

  She tried to speak, but a hand was wrapped around her throat, constricting her breath. She reached up slowly in the water and realized there was nothing holding her. The water was growing thicker and slowly freezing around her as if she were turning to ice. She opened her eyes but they were blurry.

  All she wanted was to call out to Eli, but nothing but a scream of bubbles fell out. She was fading, her lungs were burning in pain, her throat felt as if it was being grinded with sandpaper and her eyes were slowly closing…

  “Hunter, wake up.”

  This voice wasn’t Eli’s, and a pain so severe struck her that she gasped as if the breath was knocked out of her.

  Breath. Air.