Arianna Rose: The Awakening (Part 2)

by Martucci, Christopher

  After nearly twenty minutes of walking, Arianna’s lungs burned. Despite the burn, however, she wanted a cigarette. But she would not smoke before calling to Desmond. She crossed the clearing and stepped into the woods. Around her, barren trees reached skyward with skeletal branches, piercing the navy heavens with their blackened limbs. The crunch of fallen leaves gave her pause. She quickly scanned her surroundings, checking to see if anyone lingered near. She stilled herself and listened, every muscle frozen, for the sound of movement, human movement. When none was perceived and she was confident she was alone, she spoke Desmond’s name aloud.

  “Desmond!” she called and felt foolish for a fleeting moment.

  A section of the air before her became visible, quivering and shimmering like heat radiating off pavement on a sweltering summer day. She instinctively stepped back, away from it, and waited. She knew she should have been afraid, that anyone else would have been afraid, but felt fearless, her need for answers superseding any fear. Light burst briefly from the shimmering air, creating a phenomenon similar to a camera flash. The flare had been unexpected, her eyes hadn’t been prepared for it, and she was blinded briefly. But when the dark shapes subsided from her field of vision, Desmond stood before her.

  “Hello, Arianna,” he said in his soothing voice.

  The sight of him stole her breath. She’d forgotten how tall and broad-shouldered he was, how strong he looked. How beautiful he was. His fair skin, golden hair and brilliant blue eyes shined against the moonless night and Arianna had to remind herself to breathe.

  “Hello, Desmond,” she replied and her reason for calling to him came rushing back with her breath.

  “Is everything okay?” he asked.

  “No. Nothing is okay. Everything has changed,” she said honestly.

  Rationally, she knew her changes had not been his fault, that whatever defective DNA she possessed, or birthright she was heir to, was responsible for it all, yet could not halt the accusatory tone in her voice.

  “How can I help?” he said, unbothered by her harshness.

  “Well, you could start by answering one of the, I don’t know, thousands of questions I have for you,” she huffed.

  “Okay, shoot,” he replied.

  “When you told me that the Carl thing was a catalyst to get me and my mom out of Rockdale because someone was getting close, who did you mean? Who was following me?”

  “Howard Kane. Howard Kane was, and is, following you.”

  “Who is Howard Kane? I’ve never heard that name in my life. Why would he be following me?”

  “Because he wants you dead,” Desmond stated as matter-of-factly as he would have said it was nighttime.

  “What? Why?” Arianna spluttered. “Why would he want me dead?”

  “He knows the Sola is near, is drawn to her, to you, though he does not know your name or what you look like, and he will not stop until he finds you. He is the leader of an organization, a church filled with followers who hunt people like us.”

  “Hunt people like us,” Arianna echoed his haunting words. “Like what, like we’re game or something?”

  “Yes, just like big game. Only unlike Bengal tigers or a pride of African lions, we have supernatural powers.”

  “With our powers, how does he manage to kill anyone?”

  “He is a very skilled hunter. He and the hundreds of supporters he has get us by targeting the ones whose powers are not yet fully developed, or by surprising us. ”

  Us, she thought. Desmond used the word so casually to refer to her and the witches of the world, so nonchalantly. She still struggled with the fact that she was part of a supernatural order of beings. Not just one among them, she was their paranormal prophet, designated to unite them in their fight to exist.

  “I don’t understand, how does he find us in the first place?”

  “I don’t know how he is able to find us, but he does. He’s been waiting for your arrival. He’s been following you for months now.”

  “So he was in Rockdale, this Howard Kane,” Arianna thought out loud. “And right behind me, on my trail. Lily was left behind.” Emotion collected in her throat and constricted it. She tried to swallow against it, to speak, but her words came out in a hoarse whisper, “Was Lily one of us? Did this Howard Kane, did he kill Lily?” she asked, afraid to hear Desmond’s answer.

  Desmond was quiet, pensive, his face unreadable.

  “Did something happen to Lily?” she screamed, her voice suddenly strong.

  “I don’t know,” Desmond replied. “I left with you, remember. My mission is to protect you.”

  “So you let something happen to her,” she accused more than questioned. “You let them hurt my friend!” She lunged at him and pounded her fists against his hard chest. He did not flinch, just stood stoically, unmoving.

  “How can you just stand there? Don’t you care that a sixteen year-old girl could be hurt, or dead?”

  “Of course, I do. But my goal is to,” he began but she cut him off.

  “I know! Because your goal is to protect me; I get it! But she’s innocent! She’s never hurt anyone,” Arianna said as tears welled then spilled down her cheeks.

  “I’m so sorry, Arianna, for all of this,” Desmond tried to comfort her.

  “Good for you! Good for you that you’re sorry! ‘Cause I didn’t ask for any of this! I didn’t ask to be the Sola or whatever the hell you say I am. Life was hard enough before. Now I’m some fucking freak that’s supposed to save others like me when I can’t even save the only true friend I ever had!”

  “Arianna,” Desmond attempted.

  “No! Lily’s probably dead because of me! Just for knowing me!” she cried and took several steps backward, the need for distance between her and Desmond overwhelming.

  “You don’t know that anything has happened to your friend, Arianna,” he tried to assure her.

  “And neither do you,” she accused. “I thought you were some all-knowing warlock, but you can’t even tell me if one girl is okay!”

  “First of all, I am not an all-knowing warlock,” he said shedding his calm tone of voice for a more commanding one. “I have powers that are limited and will someday pale in comparison to the ones you will possess when the transformation is complete. And second of all, I needed to get you out of that town before Howard discovered that you’re the Sola. I didn’t have time to check in on your friend, who, by the way, may very well be a witch herself given that you felt drawn to her and protective of her. Had you ever felt that way, an inexplicable pull toward another?” he asked.

  She wanted to answer him, tell him that she felt a kinship with Lily unlike any she’d ever felt, that she felt like an older sister to Lily, but her mouth went dry, the lump in her throat burning, and all she could think to do was run, run as fast and far away as her legs would take her. And she did.

  She turned from Desmond faster than she’d ever imagined she could possibly move and began to run. With her head down, she watched her feet take turns hitting the grass then the pavement. She knew she should have felt her shoes slapping against the ground, knew that her body should have labored at the exertion, but felt as though she were weightless, as though she were flying. In her mind, she swore she heard Desmond’s pleas for her to stay, heard them whisper through her as though they were her own thoughts but spoken in his voice. She tuned them out more readily than her own thoughts, though, and concentrated on the beat of her heart, felt its energy swell and flare through her veins. But she did not feel peace in the lulling rhythm her heart produced. Instead, every possible worst-case scenario began to play out in her mind’s eye. The phantom Howard Kane, his sick followers, all of them, faceless forms in her imagination, faceless, maleficent forms. They swirled and eddied about like spectral predators prowling for and preying on the naïve, on the innocent.

  Anger surged inside her, propelled her forward, faster. Tears streamed from her eyes and blew back, dampening the sides of her hair. She balled her fists tightly as
she pumped her arms in sync with her legs. So tight was her grip that her fingernails bit into the tender skin of her palms. But she did not care. Physical pain had become irrelevant. She knew what she had to do. For the first time in her life, she felt a sense of purpose. She would go back to Rockdale and she would look for Lily. If Lily was a witch as Desmond had speculated, than she would have someone to entrust with her deepest, darkest secret, instead of a guardian hell-bent on shielding her at the expense of those she loved. Lily would have someone to unburden her secret with, too. And if she happened upon Howard Kane, she would deal with him, just as she’d dealt with the men in the alleyway behind the nightclub.

  Chapter 6

  Howard Kane had awakened days earlier from a deep sleep. In his bed, he had stirred with a start only to find that the sun had just begun its ascent, an eager ball of fire surging from the horizon line. From the window beside his bed, he had seen pure gold illuminate the skyline, melding into shades of orange, intensifying as it swelled and blended rich pinks and purples before deepening to violet as it shepherded night to day. He’d sat upright immediately, rapt. But the glorious sunrise had not been responsible for his rapture. Something far more magnificent had happened. He’d heard the sweet sound of the Lord’s voice, crystal-clear, in his head. Warmth and light had abounded within him, a heavenly peace teeming inside his heart. Even now, if he concentrated, Howard could hear God’s message echoing in his thoughts, and feel complete tranquility. He’d been given another mission. His divine instructions had been explicit. Howard was to find a man that was on fire; God had told him to find the burning man.

  In the many hours since he’d heard from the Lord, he had not slept, only rested intermittently. He had worked tirelessly on finding the burning man, on orchestrating his meeting with him. It had not taken long to find exactly whom the Lord had spoken of. In fact, he hadn’t needed the team he’d assembled to scour the Internet exclusively. A quick search of the local newspaper archives revealed exactly what he’d needed; what God had wanted. An article from the weekend edition of the Herald Falls Times indicated that two men, both hardened criminals whose releases from prison baffled Howard, had been attacked in a dark alleyway behind some hedonistic sinner’s club known as the Blue Ivy Nightclub. One had been burned to death and the other had been badly beaten and had almost died.

  As he’d read the text on the screen of his laptop computer, he’d known it was the work of the Sola, had felt her evil deeds as they were occurring, and that now he’d found the burning man who would lead him to her. Of course, the burning man had died, but his friend had lived. His survival had been the Sola’s mistake. She had undoubtedly tortured both men for her own amusement, but failing to kill them both would lead to her demise. He would make sure of it.

  Days of preparation had gone into executing Howard’s plan to make contact with the man who’d survived the Sola’s attack. The man, a Lester Vice, was recuperating at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Hospital. Fortunately, the hospital administrator, Graham Everett, was a weak man easily swayed by money. After being offered generous compensation, Graham had been more than willing to help facilitate his mission. Graham had agreed to influence scheduling decisions made by department heads so that a skeleton crew would be working on the floor the night Howard intended to visit. He’d also promised to equip Howard with a maintenance keycard that would permit him to gain access to the hospital through an employee service entrance. Disabling cameras and security guards had been left to Howard and his team.

  With as many factors as he could control being manipulated, Howard arrived at Our Lady of Perpetual Help at one o’clock in the morning. Visiting hours had ended four hours earlier. The parking lots had emptied and only staff cars remained. The lot he sought was around the back of the building near a loading bay. He directed his black SUV in to a space designated for employees only and quickly scanned the surrounding area. No one lingered near the loading bay smoking or talking on their phone as he often saw them doing during daylight hours when he’d surveyed the area. Confident he was not being watched, Howard stepped from his vehicle into the chilly autumn night. A crisp breeze stirred the dried leaves that had fallen from trees that lined the property. He pulled the hood of his jacket over his head and tightened the drawstrings around it, but not to protect him from the wind. He did it instead to conceal his features, features one could easily remember and remark on.

  His hooded coat that hid his face had been placed over of a navy jumpsuit identical to the ones worn by the custodial staff. The uniform had been a necessary guise crucial to him entering and moving through the building as inconspicuously as possible. Two of his men, dressed in similar garb, followed alongside him as he entered through the service entrance of the hospital. He swiped his keycard and the lock on the door disengaged promptly. Inside, he and his fellow Soldiers moved quickly down a long, narrow corridor careful to keep their heads low and inaccessible to the prying eyes of security cameras, to an elevator bank. The area was deserted. No one milled about, yet they still shifted anxiously until a pair of doors opened. Jeb Atwood, the man to Howard’s right, immediately produced a can from one of his jacket pockets, aimed it at the camera lens in the elevator and depressed a valve that released a thin stream of black paint. Once the lens had been sufficiently blacked out, they rode to the fourth floor where Lester Vice, the criminal who’d seen the Sola, convalesced.

  Before the elevator came to a stop at the fourth floor, a walkie-talkie at Howard’s hip crackled to life.

  “The security guards that were posted by the southern elevator bank have been disposed of,” a deep voice said.

  Howard depressed a button on the side of his device and spoke, “Excellent. We will be stepping off the elevator in approximately twenty seconds. I trust that the nurses have been busied elsewhere?”

  “Yes,” the voice replied and Howard replaced his handset to his belt just as the elevator came to a halt. The doors opened and he and his men stepped out.

  A team had arrived moments before them and had secured the area. Three nurses and two elderly security guards had been injected with hypodermic needles filled with Ativan, a high-potency, short-acting sedative drug Howard had obtained, which had been prefilled prior to the team’s arrival. After being drugged, the hospital staffers had been locked in a supply closet. The sparse number of guards and nurses had been courtesy of Graham Everett, as was the shortage of doctors on call that night. The last thing Howard wanted, the last thing anyone wanted, was for innocent people to be harmed in his process of collecting information from Lester Vice. With extraneous individuals out of the way, he could breathe easier, confident he would get exactly what he came for. Everything had been set into motion, his path made clear and uncluttered by God and His loyal servants.

  Cameras had been identified and their lenses blackened in the area surrounding Lester’s room. Two men from the team that had tranquilized the nurses and guards had stayed behind and now stood sentinel outside the closed door to Lester’s room. As Howard approached, the men nodded deferentially to him.

  “Good evening, gentlemen,” Howard said to them. “Thank you for this divine service you’ve provided. The Lord appreciates your work. I appreciate your work.”

  He watched as the men beamed at his compliment, how their eyes glistened with reverence when they lifted their heads and looked upon him. He left Jeb Atwood in charge of the three men that now protected the room. To him he said, “No one is to enter this room without my command.”

  Jeb nodded indicating his understanding and Howard slipped into Lester’s room.

  The room was dimly lit by fluorescent fixtures that cast a sickly pallor on everyone, but Howard had to suppress a gasp when he saw the sad state of the man on the gurney in front of him. Neither the bruises that covered him nor the casts that covered one of his legs and arms had generated the near-gasp. His aura, stifling and laden with sins, mortal sins, hung around him, clinging like scum on a pond. He allowed his eyes to inspect Leste
r’s bare skin. Almost every inch of his exposed skin, his face, neck and arm straight down to his fingers, had been scribbled on. Tattoos of every shape and size, some blasphemous, some pornographic, covered his flesh. He’d defaced and mutilated the body God had given him. Had he not been in need of information from the wretch before him, he would have wrestled with the urge to strike him down and rid the world of such a vile stain. But he could not indulge in such assistance. He needed Lester, despicable as he was.

  Howard moved to the foot of the bed and tapped Lester’s foot. Lester did not respond right away so Howard tapped harder. Lester’s eyelids fluttered before he opened his eyes. Howard stepped back, directly under the light fixture, and pulled his hood back from his head. When Lester’s eyes adjusted to the light, they opened wide in shock briefly before being replaced with an arrogant stare.

  Something in the way the man narrowed his beady eyes made Howard bristle, blistering with rage. How a contemptible man like Lester possessed the audacity to regard a man like himself, a man of God, with such scorn, was beyond him.

  Howard swallowed back the anger that arose within him and spoke. “I’m here to ask you some questions about the night you were attacked,” he said levelly.

  Lester’s upper lip lifted into a snarl and he spat, “I didn’t tell the cops shit and you don’t look like no cop, so why would I tell your Freddy fuckin’ Krueger ass anything? Unless I’m dreaming, then I’m in deep shit,” he said and laughed a twisted laugh. The laughter caused him to grimace immediately, his face twisting in pain. Howard couldn’t help but allow a thin smile to touch his lips.