“No I’m not human, but neither are you.”
“Yes I am!” I said indignantly, my voice a little high. How could he not see that? I was a witch, but that didn’t make me something inhuman. Did it?
“Actually, you’re some kind of half breed or hybrid. That's why you can sense others and perform magic, witch. One of your parents wasn't human. I don’t know what they were, but they weren't human. You might even be fey.”
I gulped fairies? Hee hee that could explain my small size, I thought to myself. Maybe the legendary cartoon fairy really was my cousin; two or three times removed.
“You haven’t met a fairy yet? Not surprising, their glamour, as you call it, is strong.” He replied with a suspicious smile. I could not look into his eyes without drowning.
“That doesn't answer my question,” my voice was still slightly squeaky. Breathe, just breathe.
“I’m immortal.”
Really, I laughed to myself, rolling my eyes.
“Yeah, I know that, but what kind?” I asked.
“In human terms a vampire, maybe a siren, I don’t know. My guess is a vampire, and we play mind tricks as it’s called. Our music is compelling. We are searching for a particular person. Our music is supposed to call her to us, as it seems… to have happened here,” he said slowly.
He looked sad at that thought, and I wondered what it meant.
He explained more about vampires, what was myth and wasn’t. Wow Hollywood was off on a lot of things it seemed. Forget trying to stop a vampire, much less slow it down. Nothing worked except a machine gun, flamethrower, beheading, or silver through the heart. Wood would stun one for about five seconds, then it would be extremely pissed, so wood was not an option. I guess that is why vampires were not really known, because of the low mortality rate of those who got too close.
“You’re attracted to me because, I won’t say what we refer to it as, but I called you. Those are the slightly less offensive words.” He said. Aries seemed reluctant to say them. Well, I wanted to know; I might be a virgin, but my virtue was stained. I had read a lot of trashy romance and seen my fair share of naked men, on TV.
“What are the actual terms?” I asked, clearly not giving up.
He sighed and laid his head down on the steering wheel.
“I mind fucked you. Not literally of course, but meaning I messed with your senses. I have so much control over my voice alone that you’re unable to do anything but what I wish. I don‘t like doing it. It messes with peoples’ free will. We sing, much like the mythical sirens, to enchant that one woman who's fated to become our savior. It seems to be you, for you came when I called.”
I realized that last part was true in more than one way…
“Well that’s not true, because I wanted to go sit with Michael earlier and get a drink, which had nothing to do with you. You’re not controlling me with your voice.”
He looked up from the wheel and sideways at me, as if to say, really?
“I can control it, to a degree, and actually, you’d been entranced almost two hours, and I felt you needed a break. I’m not going to make you dance to your death. That’s why your friend is upset. He feels you are; I guess, attracted to me and not him. You felt his jealousy right?” He asked staring out the front windshield. He said it like it was an offense to be attracted to me.
“I agree I’m attracted, but it’s not because of what you say.” I felt a little smug. I wasn’t insane, maybe he was, but I did not believe all this bull.
“So you’re not this foretold heroine?” He asked quietly, seeming as if in pain. Why would it upset him if I was this person he spoke of?
I wanted to be whatever made us closer, despite the absurdity of it all somehow I knew he was telling the truth. Well, hell, I guess I was in trouble.
“I’m an antique's expert and Wiccan who’s also nearly a master of three types of martial arts, and embarrassingly enough, a virgin. So if this thing is true, then maybe, yeah I could be.” I replied nonchalantly. Did I want to be this person they searched for if it meant changing my life?
He sat back and sighed. Remorse clung to him like a second skin. Damn.
“I might not be perfect for the job, but that’s not my fault. Choose someone else if I’m not good enough.” Now that had me pissed, and I started to get out. He could find another person to play super heroes with. I didn’t ask for this.
I didn’t get very far though.
He reached for me and pulled me back in before I even had the door all the way open and my foot on the ground. A shock ran from his arm to mine and made us both jump. No person on earth had ever done that. I instantly fell into a well of emotion. Hunger, weariness, confusion, pain, and some sense of humble protector were swirling deep within him. I jerked my hand away. I didn’t want to feel this. Nausea swelled up; I gagged at the onslaught of emotion. My pulse raced and my heart nearly beat its way out of my chest. Holy shit, too much, it was too much.
“Don't.” One word... he had my attention.
I coughed to clear my throat and sat back leaning my head against the headrest trying to calm myself. I couldn’t leave if I wanted to. All he had to do was touch me again. The longer we were together, the stronger this got, and the easier I could read him. I was starting to think this was all very, very bad…
I thought about the music. The songs he sang earlier. He probably needed to rejoin the band by now. I glanced at my watch and gasped. Only fifteen minutes had gone by since I walked out, impossible. Still the music is what I wanted to know about.
“You sang the lyrics to those last three songs to me didn't you?” I asked glancing sideways at him.
He didn’t reply, but I still knew the answer. The question was, when did he write them?
“Why?” he asked, barely a whisper, his eyes squeezing shut.
I waited for my answer, refusing to respond until he did. I didn’t have to wait long. He wanted answers in his own way.
“I don’t know,” he finally replied. Aries’ eyes were still closed. He sighed.
I watched him for a second. He knew the answer, I was sure, but refused to tell me.
“I didn’t even realize I was singing them until it was too late. I intended to sing our pre-planned songs. But, I don’t know; it was like something came over me, I wanted to enchant you. Deep inside I must have wanted it to be you. That’s not fair of me, but it’s the truth.”
He turned to look at me. I saw guilt and him asking with his eyes for forgiveness. Those beautiful, distracting eyes that made me want to wrap my arms around him and just hold him. Maybe drool a little too…
“Did you write those words for someone else some other time?” I asked. He knew what I really was asking.
Part of me hoped no, but if he hadn't, then it was making things a whole lot weirder; that's for sure. Man I needed some serious help. Could I forget about him and go back to my life like nothing had ever happened if I was not the one, if I didn’t push something between us?
“Yes I wrote them about three months ago actually, but not for someone else. My music has never been romantic. We had never planned to use the songs. They were mine, and I wanted them for myself only. They were personal. I felt they belonged to one other individual only, my mate if I ever found her, if I had one.”
CHAPTER SIX
I was stupefied and sinking in his emotional tide. What next? He wrote those for his mate, yet sung them to me?
His eyes were icy blue now. I realized they changed with his emotions. Oh goody I just needed more distractions. I started feeling warm, and some kind of pleasant pressure low in my stomach, down… well you know where. Apparently, I should have brought an extra pair of... never mind.
“I'm sorry you misunderstood what I meant earlier. I regret that it’s to be you only because this job, saving all of us, isn’t easy. You may die trying. Others have. There’re rules, and after five hundred years I still haven’t accepted them.” He replied leaning his head back and closing his eyes.
<
br /> I think he was just now admitting this to himself, afraid of what it would mean. Wait… five hundred years?
“So you guys are really all immortals, and your band is named after that?” I asked. I couldn’t sit here and let him wallow in his own misery, bringing me down with him.
“Yes. Angel I want you to understand none of this is my choice; I have no control over these things. What you and I feel isn’t real. Some goddess did it, so we’d protect you. Whoever is meant to be her… reincarnation.”
“I don’t understand.” Who would think that more explaining would lead to more confusion?
“You aren't meant to. I’m only meant to summon you, or whoever her reincarnation is, and then we six protect you until you alter. You become this thing intent on stopping the demons from taking over. We work for a selfish goddess; you see. She’s all and nothing. Her body is the earth, and her spirit like you and me. Humans have destroyed her for way too long. Demons will do worse, so in her mind humans are the lesser evil. However, most will perish in the not too distant future. You’re to control those changes. When she releases her fury on the world, gates will open and creatures will flood the earth.”
“I have to stop them?” I was beginning to understand somewhat. I already killed demons so taking a theoretical leap, I imagined that all of this could just be real. In a way, this reincarnation being me made a lot of sense.
“Maybe,” he whispered back.
“So how will I know?” I wanted to know more details. I should have just got up and left and wrote it off as a bad nightmare, but deep inside my soul, I knew that if I walked away now it could be far worse for me, everyone, if I was wrong. Save the world? Me? Aries had to be kidding.
“When you touch your slaying weapons, it says, meet the enemy, and…” he began.
“And what?” I asked, thinking about the box back at home I just got.
“Sleep with your mate, having his child. That’s the reason you have to be a virgin I guess. Problem is no one knows who her mate is. It refers to them as two immortal hearts twisted together, he will balance her and keep her sane. Protect her with his life, but not equal her, never equal her. She must stand alone. The act awakens her, his um; seed will make her pregnant. This child will begin the new race of humans. Population will go from billions to hundreds on the day of the apocalypse.”
“Why only hundreds?” I asked, shocked. Was it really the end of the world as we knew it?
I wasn’t blind to what was going on around me in the world. I’d heard about the increase in the weather phenomenon, the government, and military creating things to wipe out other countries. There was one theory that said, amazingly enough, that our military was causing these earthquakes. I read on the internet that some believed our officials thought if we wiped out the one country that had more people than us, than we’d be the controlling force. Say this country had billions of people. You cause an earthquake in the precise location that quadruples the deadly aftermath and take out some here some there then they would no longer be a threat would they? Or at least, a more easily handled threat.
I thought about how many people there were and how we were running low on not just food and water but space, and jumped from that thought to another. If you had enough money to save yourself what would you do? At the rate we were going, more people would have to do without. Like on continent sized levels. It was mass genocide so that the ones with the money and power could continue to live on as they already do, if not better. But what if Mother Nature knew these madmen had these plans, and was not just shocked but really pissed? What if Mother Nature was truly a goddess? Now a pissed-off goddess that refuses to let her world suffer anymore with the injustice of all of it. Would she really do this?
I remembered something else I’d seen on the net. Something about a new world order, and at the time thought, what bullshit. Yet now I realized that maybe it wasn’t, maybe all of this was just as real as what Aries was explaining, and I was the one who would be the controlling force to stop the evil plans. The one person in the entire world who could make it better and stop the human race from blowing ourselves up, or back a few hundred years. The price was too high though.
Another scary thought was, if they are literally controlling natural disasters, how much was natural and how much was planned? Was our own government sending us slowly to our deaths? I asked myself what was our government doing, or rather what wouldn’t they do… so much I needed to mentally digest.
Aries saw me having this epiphany apparently and when my steam ran out he continued.
“They’ll make the earth ready for the new race of humans. They become slaves more or less, cattle, or sheep and she the flock master. Like I said, I don't know much.” He punched his steering wheel causing me to jump. He was frustrated and confused, and really upset with himself. Why? I mean yeah I was shocked to finally open my eyes to this, but who was I gonna convince that I, we, were right?
“So, when will this all take place?” By all I didn’t just mean the goddess going ape-shit on us.
“I don’t know. There’s no date, Gaia, she goes by many names, waits for her warrior. She waits for this reincarnation to come and cleanse the world, and to keep the few that are left safe. The ones who will make Earth a better place for the next generation I assume.”
“You know quite a bit about this,” I thought aloud, despite the fact he just said different.
“When I was a child my uncle was a priest in this small village. I learned everything from him, because he said I was meant to pass on the legends. I didn’t think he meant personally though. The others in my band are the same. At the time of our deaths we were to choose either immortality or play a key in all this. To be reborn repeatedly until we became one of those hundreds for the actions of our mortal days, one of the few who would be a part of all of this.”
“So who’s this mate of hers?” I know he already said he was not sure, but he kept giving me a little more info each time I asked another question, so I thought if I kept asking, then maybe I’d get the whole story finally.
“The only thing mentioned is what I told you earlier. He must be immortal. We have a joke, the band I mean, that it’s one of us. When we were given this chance to be the guardian or messengers, we had to accept that we couldn’t procreate, mate, or make more of us. Not unless she gave us permission.
“We took that to mean that we wouldn’t be able to be this mate. We are dead, Angel. We need blood to survive. Our blood dies within a few days, and we have to get more without killing. Without the blood, our bodies shut down because we are unable to produce our own. Something about a specific virus that attacks the cells or anything in our body that harms us, such as aging. But if we kill an innocent, we will be stripped of our power. There were seven of us originally. Harden died horribly one night. He disobeyed her. Hell I didn’t think the dead could; you know, make a baby, but maybe we can, combine the right female with us and bam, goddess. I actually wonder if mating with her immortal is how she is awakened, how she begins the transformation rather.”
“Wow, so much to take in. I love this kind of stuff; it seems unreal, but like deja vu too. So until the virgin finds her mate this won’t happen?”
“I’m not sure. I think if it doesn’t happen soon though, something worse will happen, like someone causing silent planet-wide genocide.” I’d had those same thought just moments ago.
“What if she chooses the wrong man?” I asked curiously, turning towards him in my seat and peering at him from under my dark lashes.
“She can't. I assume those two will be so attracted they don’t see anyone else. They can’t think about others, and would rather die than be elsewhere. It’s how she works.” He waved his hand dismissively. He talked like he had known this goddess personally.
Aries swept his hands through his hair and pushed it back. He closed his eyes again and sighed.
“Kind of like now...” I whispered to myself.
“Hmm?” he asked, than
kfully distracted. I was so not going to admit how strong these feelings I had inside for him were.
“Nothing, I have to get back inside and tell Michael to go home. It’s late I’m sure. I need to go as well, really.” My hand inched towards the handle.
“You don’t want to though do you?” he asked peeking over at me. I think he wanted to take my hand but was afraid I was not ready for that yet. Especially after the last time he had touched me, and I nearly lost it.
His hands clenched the steering wheel, and his face tensed up.
“No.” One. Simple. Word.
Aries cursed and grimaced. He was acting like this was all his fault.
How could all this happen so fast? I asked these questions to myself. Did I believe? Did I have any choices? Did I have feelings for Aries or was he just calling me? If I did and I was this girl or warrior, was he my mate? Or was he scamming to get my naïve pants down? Undeniably, I was attracted and felt like his presence was the most important in my life. If I had to compare it, I’d say I could not breathe without him. That thought was a little creepy.
I didn’t know him, yet I felt as if I had known him all my life. Like he was ripped away, and I’d finally gotten him back. He’d always been a part of me, and now we were reunited again. The other band members didn’t do this to me, though I hadn’t met them long enough to say for sure so I really could not decide that yet.
“It’s getting chilly, let’s go inside.”
I now had to be inside the club again. Could this man make me want to rob a bank, or kill people? I felt completely defenseless, and a little scared. I looked at him nervously for a moment before I followed him inside and saw Frank, who was at the bar, just finishing up with a customer. He glanced sideways at us and grinned. I was going to have to ask him what that was about. I saw a flash of white teeth, and then he was back to working again.
“Have you seen Michael?” I yelled across the bar at him.
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