Winter's Fury - Volume Two of The Saga of the Twelves

by Richard M. Heredia

  Without responding, Marissa glanced up at him with a large smile on her face. Her tiny, dark brown eyes sparkled in the dim glow of the lantern. She nodded and went back to taming some of Vanessa’s wild hair.

  Her approval garnered, he moved off to help the skittish girl who almost peed on herself every time she laid eyes upon one of the Loki.

  Behind him, Marissa touched the forehead of the girl on the ground with the middle finger of her left hand. “Wake, Vanessa. Come join us,” she whispered.

  The sixteen-year-olds’ eyes shot open immediately.

  Yes, there was definitely something more in Marissa now.

  The others moved back, giving her room.

  Vanessa blinked, rapid, gazing about, near to panic until she found J.J. In an instant, her face brightened. “Jay, I was just thinking about you!”

  The Filipina gathered her in her arms, crushing her in a tight embrace, which Vanessa returned just as eager.

  “Lynn and I were so scared that someone had kidnapped you.”

  Juanita’s grip loosened.

  Vanessa seemed to notice and pulled back. For a second, she didn’t move. Then it all seemed to hit her at once. “Wait a minute. Where am I?” she asked, adamant.

  J.J. looked her straight in the face. “Kidnapped.”

  ~~~~~~~<<< ᴥ >>>~~~~~~~

  ~ 46 ~

  Destiny?

  Day Five, Monday, 5:34 am…

  He cupped her chin, turning her vision from the hideous face glaring at them from the large doorway. He peered down into her eyes with a soft, gentle look of his own.

  {Now, I know what this is....}

  He upturned her head so her look became direct.

  She did not resist, in fact, she seemed to encourage the intimacy, the familiarity with which he touched her. She let her body melt into his once more, feeling warm in the pit of her stomach. He was so handsome, though he did not seem like the type of guy who flaunted it, used it to his advantage. To her, he just was what he was.

  He bent down, his shoulders hunching as he moved forward.

  She felt her hands, again upon the small of his back, push him forward even more, into her, a building pressure - a needy clutch.

  {Umm yes, this is how it's supposed to be.}

  She felt his other hand come up from the side and reach up through the roots of her hair at the nape of her neck. She shuddered with delight, for no boy had ever touched her with such a soothing, confident caress. She exhaled, whatever barriers (if there ever had been any) fell way. She knew right then, right there, she wanted him. Even with the horrid monstrosity screaming at them without making a sound, she was able to express her innermost feelings. She was no longer embarrassed.

  For some reason, the evil giant could not pass beyond the threshold of the door.

  She redirected her mind and focused on the fact that she wanted him, blotting out the manifested malice behind them.

  {It is true, I do want him… I want him to kiss me! I want his lips on mine…}

  They kissed. It was a long, slow exploratory meeting of their lips. Their tongues tasted, sharing, feeling one another for the first time. She felt her heart burst open and reveal itself, flushing her chest, her neck and her cheeks.

  {I want him!}

  And even though they had not stopped kissing, even though their bodies did not part, she heard him speak. How he was able, she would never know…

  “I am Andrew.”

  He said it over and over and over… in her mind, in her soul. All she wanted was to know even more of him.

  Andrew…

  He is Andrew…

  *****

  …the thought was still passing across her subconscious when she opened her eyes. She found him staring back at her in the semi-darkness of what little pre-dawn light penetrated this far into the store.

  He was lying down next to her. His head rested upon a pillow. His sleeping bag covered him from shoulder to foot. It was so fluffy with down it seemed he could have slept on the slopes of Mount Everest and still would not have caught a chill.

  She was lying down as well. Her head upon her pillow too, stuffed like a sausage in her sleeping bag that she had somehow managed to tangle about her legs as she slept. She had always been a wild sleeper.

  “…I am Andrew…”

  She was sure he had spoken, though his lips had not moved.

  His eyes searched her own, gazing over her face, serious, intent and unabashed. It was as if he was not content to just look at her, but he had to see her, the real her.

  “I am Andrew!”

  “I know,” she whispered to him.

  His eyes stopped moving at once and focused onto hers. “You know what?” he asked.

  “I know who you are,” she replied, which made him frown, befuddled.

  “Of course you know who I am, Anna, we’ve been like hanging out for almost a day now,” he clarified, making Marianna smile inside.

  “You keep saying your name over and over in my head, even when I’m asleep,” she explained. She brought her hands up under her chin, still laying on her side as she curled herself into a ball.

  “I do?” asked Andrew with a turn of his head.

  “Yeah.”

  Silence stretched between them as she let him consider what she had said, feeling warm and safe inside. She gazed over his angular features, the thinness of his face, the wild tussle of his hair, his bottomless brown irises.

  You are so handsome, Drew. It can’t believe I found you…

  “You dreamt about us again?” he queried into the quiet, cold air between them.

  She felt her heart tug and she nodded that he was correct. I was kissing you again – kissing you and wanting to be in your arms where I know I am safe.

  “Why do you think you do that? Dream about us, I mean.” He was resolute and not his usual playful self this morning.

  She contemplated his question. She knew there had been many, many strange things happening to her. It was impossible to answer him with anything she could call definitive, factual. All she could explain was what she felt in her heart, what her mind had been telling her since she had awakened in his arms. She felt secure for the first time since her arrival upon the Melded World.

  Destiny, she giggled inside. I don’t even care if it sounds cheesy!

  “I don’t know, but I’m sure glad that I do,” she said instead, smiling with the heat of her emotions.

  “Me too,” he ventured like a little boy who wanted to admit something, but was shy about doing so.

  He’s so sweet.

  She blinked the last of the sleep from her eyes and opened them wide, never taking her eyes from him. I want to kiss him for real. She ran her only free hand through her hair, straightening it out and moving it out of her face.

  “How is it we knew each other before we even met?” he asked of a sudden, forcing her to look him in the eyes again. She could see there was real interest from the cast of his face, his brow knotted, and the tight skin about his orbs plaintive.

  How else, my dear? It is pure and simple destiny.

  “I don’t know, you goof-ball. What matters is we did know of each other and we did meet, all else pales in comparison. Don’t you think?” She reached out toward him with the same hand she had used to fix her hair, and he reached out and grabbed a hold of it immediately. She gave him a soft squeeze after their fingers interweaved and then held on, having no intention of letting go.

  “It’s just weird, that’s all,” he added, his expression unchanged.

  She giggled in spite of herself. Andrew, you are so funny sometimes. How was it that the simplest things could evade him completely every once and a while?

  “It’s not weird, my Drew. It was just supposed to happen, and it did.”

  He glanced away, peering past her in thought, his eyes glossy and his mind elsewhere. Then, after a time, “Something out there made sure of it.” It was just above a whisper.

  She had to strain her ears to hea
r him. “I know, silly, that’s what I’ve been trying to tell you,” she whispered back in a mild tone. She rubbed one of his knuckles with the tip of her middle finger.

  His laugh was tiny. “Really?”

  “Yeah, really.” She sighed, still staring at him, feeling things in the pit of stomach flip-flop like an over-easy egg. “Aren’t you glad you met me?” she asked, being coy.

  He bobbed his head.

  She knew he had understood her humor.

  “Yes, of course, I am glad. It just all seems so heavy, you know?”

  “All this shit is ‘heavy’ Andrew?” She began counting off. “Us being yanked from our families and thrown onto a place that had not existed months ago - that is ‘heavy’. You and me being members of the Twelve Chosen to protect all mankind - that is ‘heavy’. Your best friend just happens to be the Kring-Hël, the Light of the World. And his destiny is to save us all from certain destruction - that is so ‘heavy’, it’s like gravity times three!

  “You and I, meanwhile, seem simple. Do we not? We’re just two young adults destined to be together. That might be heavy under normal circumstances, but when compared to all the others… Well… Nah, no way! It seems kinda simple to me.” She fell silent, grateful to be holding his hand as she said it.

  He was about to say something else when another thought popped into her head.

  She giggled, which brought him up short.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Nothing, I just had a funny thought. With all this talk about Anthony and the Twelve,” she replied pushing down the mirth, trying to remain somewhat quiet. The others had yet to wake up.

  “A thought about what?”

  She looked back at him and knew he was not going to let it drop.

  Ok, you asked…

  “I was thinking,” she began, more solemn. “What if it was your Gift that did all this stuff happening between us. You know, the dreams, the sense of knowing, you being able to project your name into my head. I mean, what are the chances of that?”

  His eyebrows knitted closer together with every word she uttered.

  She could tell he was no longer breathing, holding his breath inside as if the motor function had failed him. What? she thought to herself. Then, she wiggled Andrew’s hand to get his attention, but he did not move.

  “Andrew?” she probed.

  Nothing.

  “Andrew?”

  Nothing.

  “Honey, what is wrong with you!” she said with more insistency, shaking his hand more roughly than she had before.

  “You said ‘chances’,” was all he murmured. His eyes were peering far into an imagined distance.

  “Chances? What are you talking about?” She was getting concerned, pulling herself up from the air mattress, using her elbow to prop herself even higher.

  With quick movements, he mimicked the way she was laying, which made her jerk her head back in surprise. He had done it swift.

  “One of the Gifts Joaquin spoke about is the Lükk, the person who is the Harbinger of Chance. He or she is the only member of the Twelve that can bend fate according to his will. He or she acts like the final defense against something bad happening to any of us. If he or she can act quickly enough… This person possesses a mind focused enough to alter reality as we know it.” He mumbled the last sentence, but she heard it nonetheless.

  Now it was her turn to frown. “But, how does that explain what happened to us?”

  “Oh my god, it explains everything, Anna!” he blurted loud, then covered his mouth, lowering his tone, but the fervor with which he spoke was undeniable. “How would things have been if you and your family had stayed back in Holbrooke when all the shit went down? You would have been stuck in the Melded World a thousand miles from any of us - helpless and alone. The odds I was able to find your mind, through the tangle of minds existing back on Earth are too incredible to comprehend. And yet, I did. I was able to tell you my name even.” He stopped, in awe of his own words.

  That much was clear to her.

  Then, he stared at her once more. “Think of how lucky you were to run across Garfield’s path at the exact time you did, before you fell. If you had done so say fifteen minutes earlier we would have walked right passed you in the snow. We would have never known you were even there. You would have frozen to death.

  “If you had come fifteen minutes later, we would have already passed you and again you have died, by yourself curled up on the ground. You do remember the blizzard started within minutes of our arrival at the mall, right?”

  She nodded, sheepish, the facts he was piling up on her were too many to be other than the truth.

  “You wouldn’t have stood a chance out there in weather like that.” He scooted toward her on both of his elbows bringing his massive sleeping bag with him. “Don’t you see? I’m the Lükk, Marianna. I bring chance and luck, and bend it to our advantage.”

  “B-but how could you have done that? I mean we left Holbrooke more than six months ago?” was all she could bring herself to say, the implications of Andrews’s words were staggering.

  “I know, huh? But it makes perfect sense, right?”

  “Yes,” she admitted with a gulp. “It all seems so eerie. Now that I know you changed the fate of my entire family. You brought us all the way to southern California without you even knowing it! It’s downright scary.” She shivered and laid back down to cross her arms about the upper portions of her body.

  He paused to consider what she had said, some of his enthusiasm trickling from him. “When you put it that way, it does sound a little freaky.” He chuckled. “It’s like I’m some sort of super-stalker or something, huh?”

  She looked up at him from the mattress and produced a wan, half-hearted smile. “I thought it was destiny that brought us together, Andrew.” She trailed off into silence, her tone making him look down at her with mild disquiet.

  “It was, girlie. Only this destiny we are able to explain. We don’t have to chalk this up to some mysterious force or majestic being. It was me. All along - it was me.” He crossed his wrists before him, still perched upon his elbows.

  The quiet overtook them once again.

  She could hear the steady breathing of their companions all about them. There were soft snores coming from Louis and Sophie, an asymmetrical counterpoint without rhyme or reason.

  “I’m cold, Drew, do you think I could fit into your sleeping bag and cuddle with you for a while?”

  Andrew peered down again and smiled with a slight flush to his face. “Even if we don’t quite fit, I’ll find a way to stuff you in here somehow. Come.” He held out a hand to her.

  She took it at once, while he opened the sleeping bag as wide as he could. She writhed from her own with Andrew’s help, sat up and then twirled on her butt to position her feet so that she could enter Andrew’s.

  After a few seconds, it was quite plain there was more than enough room to accommodate the both of them. A few moments later, they settled. Intertwined and holding onto each other tight, Marianna leaned into her mysterious boy and kissed him…

  …Again and again and again… until they both fell asleep once more – fervid and careless of the world around them.

  ~~~~~~~<<< ᴥ >>>~~~~~~~

  ~ 47 ~

  Motherly Concerns

  Monday, November 29th, 6:22 am…

  Unable to sleep much, she was already up and washed, half-dressed for the day to come.

  Thus, Lynn Loren had not been all that surprised when she heard her cell phone squawking this early in the morning. What did make her face melt into a semi-frown was the ringtone itself. It had not been the one she was expecting. This one was the default alert, one for incoming calls that were not logged into her address book.

  This was not Vanessa calling. This was someone she did not know.

  Putting down her hairbrush, she walked to her bed. She had thrown her phone upon it before she had gone into the bathroom down the hall to wash-up. The Caller-ID showed
the number and the words “Restricted Caller” across the screen of her cell.

  A land line? she thought a tad intrigued before she swiped at glass and answered.

  “Uh, hello?”

  “Ah yes, is this Lynn?” The voice was female, older, maybe middle-aged, but that was not what got the teen’s attention.

  The woman sounded on the verge of hysteria.

  Lynn could tell she was holding back a tremendous amount of fear by the way her voice quavered.

  “Yes it is,” she replied, trying to be as polite as possible.

  “Oh, thank god!” said the lady in a rush. “Sweetie, do you remember me? I’m Holly Menendez, Vanessa’s mother. We’ve met a few times when you’ve spent the night or had come over to visit -.” She stopped to swallow hard and catch her breath. She was talking a mile a minute. “You remember right, honey?”

  “Oh, Mrs. Menendez! Yes, of course. I remember you. How are you?”

  An unseemly gasp filled the following moment, issuing from the woman on the other end of the call. “Not so good, hon.” Another paused ensued. “I’m sorry if I’m putting you on the spot, Lynn, but I have to know.”

  “Ooookaay.” It was the drawn out inquiring version of the word.

  “Would you happen to know where Vanessa might be?”

  The question shocked Lynn to the degree she pulled her cell away from her face as if she was holding the head of a rattlesnake of a sudden.

  “Hello?”

  “Wait. What do you say?” asked Lynn wanting to make sure she had heard correctly.

  “I’m sorry if there’s some big secret in the works, but I need to know where my daughter is. Would you happen to know?” She said it like she was praying.

  “Mrs. Menendez, I don’t understand. I talked with her late last night. We made plans to get up early and go the police station to ask about our friend. She said she was going straight to bed, so she wouldn’t be too tired in the morning,” answered the sixteen-year-old in one breath. “I don’t understand.”