IGINS: Elementum Novel

by A. M Martin

  I bit my lip. They haven’t seen us yet, but it’s a matter of seconds before the tugging will start. I move one more step and fill it in my belly. Pulling me to Ryland. He feels it too. His relaxed body becomes hard as he looks our way.

  “Found her,” Amy says turning on her heel and leaving.

  I cross my arms tight. Squeezing myself as the tugging gets stronger. Electus. What a stupid thing? Chewing on my jaw, I wonder if we should just complete this stupid bond. Would it spot my guts from trying to rip themselves out of my body? No, that wouldn’t work. I don’t want to be bond to someone who hates me.

  “Good you’re here,” Quinn says.

  “Yep, I’m here,” I grumble looking anywhere but at Ryland’s flaming eyes.

  “You and Ryland our going to travel separately from the rest of us,” Quinn says picking up a black bag off the ground.

  I jerk, “Wait. What? Why?”

  I don’t want to be alone with him. Nope. No thank you. From his look alone he wants to roast me, and I believe he could do it.

  “Safety reasons.”

  I choke, “That’s not safety. Safe means big numbers. That’s safe.”

  “Not around here it’s not.” Ryland’s Smokey voice flows across my skin, and I step in his direction.

  I grunt, bit my lip, digging my feet into the ground. I don’t want to get closer to him. Not really. Even though my body is demanding it.

  “He hates me.” I screech looking at Quinn desperately.

  “He doesn’t hate you. Do you?” Quinn looks to Ryland with a raised eyebrow.

  Ryland’s square jaw is tight. His eyes are hard.

  He sighs and looks at me, “I don’t hate you. I hate how everything turned out.”

  “There you go.” Quinn nods handing me the bag.

  It dangles from my hand, “But.”

  “Off you go.” Quinn smiles walking back to camp.

  I watch him walk away. My heart is pounding and pounding. The pulling tugging and tugging. There is no way this is going to work.

  “Come on.” Ryland murmurs.

  I turn back towards him. He’s stalking off in the trees away from the path. I gulp sling my bag onto my back and run to catch up to him.

  This can’t be happening. He does hate me. I can feel it coming off him in wave after wave. Battering my already wounded heart. I don’t understand why I care so damn much. I shouldn’t care. I never have before. Cared that is what anyone thought of me. But knowing he hates me makes me want to curl up in a ball and cry, and that just pisses me off.

  “This doesn’t have to be hard.”

  I look over at him, “What?”

  “This. Between us. It doesn’t need to be hard.”

  I scoff kicking a rock, “You’re making it hard.”

  He stops suddenly spinning around. I stop short my breath freezing in my lungs. What’s he going to do? I shift from foot to foot. Nervous.

  He looks at me. Hate and something soft fighting in his dark gaze.

  He walks over to me slowly his arms grabbing hold of my shoulders. I squeak and try to pull away.

  “Stop, just stop.” His soft tone has me stopping, considering those flamed filled eyes.

  I gasp at his lips come down on mine. His tongue is sneaking into my mouth. I moan as it rubs against my own. My hands are coming up into his thick hair. I tilt my head as he grips my hips pulling my flush against his hard body.

  I jerk backwards, trying to pull away as the taste of blood fills my mouth, coming from his tongue. He holds me harder to him moaning. A yelp falls from my mouth to his as he bits my lip hard enough to draw blood. He sucks it into his mouth.

  A fire alights every never ending in my body. I moan and jerk in his strong hold as he breaks the kiss. My knees shake, and my legs turn to jelly.

  “What do you do?” I’m breathless staring into his face.

  “What needed to be done.” He rumbles.

  He drops me. I fall on my butt with a hard thud. Wincing from the pain, watching as Ryland stalks off to a nearby tree. His board back to me.

  To complete the bond of an Electus, you must share blood between the two. That’s what he did. He bit his tongue. My lip. Sharing blood between us. He made the bond between us. A bond I did not want.

  My hands screech the forest floor. I wrap my hands around a large rock and climb Shakely to my feet.

  I walk towards him. Rage boiling in my body. My arm cocks back, and I slam the rock on the side of his head. He scrapes his face falling down the tree out cold.

  My eyes narrow as I stare at the red on his lips. They missed up. They, he thought I was some pansy little girl. But I’m not. Not at all.

  I pull my leg back, kicking him in the belly and drop the rock. I start jogging in the opposite direction of the way Ryland was leading us.

  I sat there. I took everything everyone told me. I dealt with it. But this. No this was it. I might be stuck in this world. In their world but that doesn’t mean I must listen to them. To their rules.

  I land in a small creak with a splash and start stalking up the river.

  I was taught to survive be it here or there. I’m a survivor and will do anything to make that happen. Even if it meant hitting Ryland in the head, knocking him out cold and going off on my own. I learned enough from camp. I will survive this world with out them.

  A Peak From Avery :Wolf Rage book one

  Prologue

  Avery

  “Hey, love bugs. Break apart.”

  I blush and pull away from Evan looking over my shoulder. Jules, my best friend, stands beside her sister’s Toyota with the passenger door hanging wide open.

  “Ignore her.” Evan’s deep voice whispers in my ear.

  I shiver and smile.

  “I can’t. They’re my ride.” I stand up on my tiptoes and kiss Evan on his smooth cheek.

  “I got to go, but I’ll call you after.” I smile softly and turn away.

  I rush to the silver car and climb in the backseat, avoiding the messy floor boards. Sara squeals out of the schools parking lot.

  “Hey!” Jules screams at her sister who just laughs taking a sharp right turn on Main Street.

  “Hey, Ave. Tell me something.” Sara says.

  My eyes flick up to the review mirror seeing that devilish look in her dark brown gaze.

  I groan, “What?”

  “How in the hells did you catch all-star Evan Parker?”

  “My smile.” I answer with a mock smile upon my pink lips. She asks this every couple of weeks.

  She’s not the only one. I see the looks of hate and envy the other girls in school shower me with every day.

  Jules bursts out laughing. “Oh, yeah and it doesn’t have anything to do with that ass of yours in our dance uniforms.”

  Sara snorts taking another sharp turn, and I just shrug my slim shoulders. Yeah, that could be it.

  “I still can’t believe you guys live so far out of town,” Sara grumbles taking a left turn.

  Jules and I look at each other, at the same time in a deep voice we say, “The city is crowded, and it’s hard to breathe.” We both bust out in a fit of giggles.

  Don’t get me wrong living twenty-five minutes from town is aggravating some days, but I really do like it. The air is cleaner away from all the city smog, and it's quiet. Sometimes that’s a nice thing to have.

  “Are you going to pass?” Sara asks, taking the curvy uphill climb way to fast.

  I look to Jules out of the corner of my eyes. My smile grows bigger as I see the pout on her face.

  I turn fifteen today. I hit a milestone. I'm no longer just a teenager. I’m on the verge of adulthood and everything else. Fewer restrictions. Longer curfews. I’m ecstatic. Giddy. My dad and I are going to have dinner at my favorite Italian restaurant. I’m going to get my learners permit. I’m growing up. Jules is jealous she still has three months to go before she turns fifteen.

  “Yep.”

  “Don’t get me wrong or anything.�
�� Sara says, “How are you possibly going to take the test when the DMV closes in like ten minutes.”

  “Avery’s Dad has something going on with a worker.” Jules cackles and I reach up hitting her shoulder making her go off even more.

  “That’s not it.” My face turns beet red, “Dad’s not like that and Pam is our neighbor. She’s just a nice person.” I grumble.

  “Uh what neighbor?” Sara asks as she pulls into the long drive leading up to my one-story blue house.

  “She lives further down,” I say making sure nothing slipped out of my bag.

  Jules snorts, “More like twenty miles away.”

  “More like six.” I gripe climbing out of the car.

  "Good luck girl!" Julie yells at me as they pull out of the driveway and I skip my way through the white front door. Full of jittery excitement.

  It’s here! I can’t believe this day is finally here. I never thought I’d make it to fifteen. Time seems to go by slow when you’re waiting on something.

  I drop my gold dance duffel bag and pink book bag just inside the front door. I slip my shoes off and rip off my socks. I smile down at my green painted toenails and wiggle them in relief. My feet can finally breathe. I hate wearing shoes. It should be against the law. I could call it Avery’s law. That makes me giggle, as I skip into the light green kitchen with a goofy grin splashed across my face.

  I look at the strawberry clock hanging on the pale green wall above the table.

  5:01. Ah, I’m officially fifteen. I’m ecstatic. I squeal, bouncing on the tips of my feet.

  Grabbing a cold soda from the shiny black fridge, I chugged half of it making my way towards the backyard. Usually I can find my dad out back meditating. It soothes him. His words not mine.

  I tried it a couple of times. Meditation is so not my thing. I can never sit still long enough to accomplish anything.

  When I step out onto the back patio, I look down feeling something cold seep in-between my toes.

  I pick my foot up and grimace at the small pool of red. What in the world?

  My breathing picks up, and my heart starts pounding as I spot another puddle of red.

  “Dad?”

  At first, I didn’t know what I was seeing. Maybe my brain just couldn’t process it. I felt a wave of sickness roll over me. My heart is like a sledgehammer in my chest. My breathing becomes fast and uncontrolled. Sweat starts beading on my face.

  Red. Red everywhere. A pool of it by the grill. It’s shiny in the afternoon sun. A think line smeared across the stepping stones and grass. Like something was being dragged. The blood looks dark, black on the green grass. Black and oily. It is everywhere. My eyes widen with fright and flit from bloody spot to bloody spot. Like a can of crimson red paint exploded all over our backyard.

  I think my body knew what I saw even if my brain didn’t. Some primal part of my soul knew what my brain refused to acknowledge. I felt this dread bubble up in my belly and into my throat making me want to gag. That thing that tells me something is just not right. Something is screaming turn around and run. I step off the patio further into the yard. My mouth goes unusually dry.

  "Daddy?" My voice comes out in a childlike whisper as I slowly move about the yard. Being very careful about where I place my bare feet.

  It doesn’t make sense as my eyes flash around our yard, from one red puddle to another.

  These red pools of blood are everywhere. The dark red spots, turning the green grass black.

  "Daddy?" My voice came out a little stronger, a little louder.

  My pulse pounds painfully in my ears, and I gulp in the coppery scented air.

  I moved further into the yard. My breathing is coming out in fast panicky gasps. I avoid the red, moving around the glistening patches and continued further into the yard toward the huge willow tree that borders the edge. It was a trail of red, dark and oily. It seems like it’s leading me. I feel tears brim my eyes.

  Fear and dread overtake me. My body shakes and trembles. My muscles feel tight and strained. Tears fall from my eyes. I knew something was wrong. I could feel it deep in my bones. In the air, that felt too thick to breathe.

  I walked out towards the side of the large willow tree that stays shaded and stopped. The Red is pooled in the yard. Dark, soaking into the ground and the roots of the willow. The biggest wet patch so far.

  My swollen, blurry eyes move from the huge puddle to a grey-tinged hand that lays in it. Red splattered on the fingers. I follow the hand with my eyes, my chest hardly moving, towards the arm to the vacant blue eyes. When my brain finally registers what, my eyes are seeing. What my body knew all along. I fall to the ground and just let out a blood curling scream after scream. It feels like my heart is splitting in two. Tears and snot cover my face. I didn’t know what to do. Just scream and cry and stare. And scream some more.

  That’s the last thing I remember.

  My therapist filled in the blanks.

  Pam, my neighbor, found me at dusk laying on my stomach, my pale hand stretched out towards my fathers. My fingertips are touching the tip of his covered in dried blood. I was barely breathing and unresponsive. The Police and ambulances are called in. As the paramedics checked for my pulse, my screams started again. Their touch is sending me into blind hysterics. I was rushed to the hospital and sedated. Two days later, finding nothing physically wrong with me, I was released into the care of Green Bair Psychiatric.

  I remember little things in those first few months at Green Bair. At first, I didn’t know where I was or who I was. It was like little blips on a tv screen that my mind seemed to capture. That seemed to come in go. Sometimes in color. Other times in shades of gray.

  The small white bright room that I was in 24/7. The lights always kept on. The buzz a constant drone in my ears. The small hard bed with a thin mattress that made my body sore and achy. The ruff leather straps around my wrist and ankles. That chaffed my skin and sometimes made me bleed. The white coated people always in and out. The brightly clad nurses with them. Everything I remembered was seen and heard through a haze.

  When they slowly weaned me off the sedation medicine. I started to remember more. To soon I remembered everything.

  There was nothing left of me. I am a shell of my former self. Grief consumed me. Tore at my heart and devoured my already broken soul.

  Then the emotions came the next day, but not mine. Every feeling you could image was raging through me. I could feel not only my own but every single person in the ward. Fear. Pain. Anger. Sadness. Grief. Madness. Lust. They weren't the good kinds of emotions. These were the bone scaring kinds of feelings. It was sensory overload on my already broken mind.

  I went back to the screaming that could make a grown man piss his pants. I even started pulling my hair out. Scratching any skin, I could dig my nails in, leaving blood trails across my body. I thought maybe, I could pull the feelings out, bleed them out. Get them out of my head, out of my body. I was a mess. Mind and body. I could not function and don't know why I could feel other people’s emotions and still don't know why. I was put back on the sedation medicine and other cocktails of drugs. I was insane. But blissfully empty. Like a zombie. An emotionless drooling zombie.

  I don't know how many days or weeks passed. Time meant nothing to me in my slavering state. The world flew by without me, and I was okay with it for once in my life. I was okay with not being the center of attention. I was okay with not knowing what was going on around me.

  I was slowly weaned off the medicine to where I no longer screamed myself mute or hurt myself anymore.

  I learned very slowly how to block those emotions that kept coming to me wave after relentless wave, even my own crushing emotions got blocked and the ribbons that seem to come and go out of know where, to an extent.

  I am a void. Not letting myself experience emotions of any kind. It is marvelous.

  My dad's brother, Jeff petitioned for my release into his custody immediately after finding out about my father's brutal murder or
how my therapist Miss Theresa likes to refer to it as the incident. I was deemed functional two years later.

  Chapter One

  Avery

  I tap my long plain fingernails on the chair arm, staring out the wall of windows to the forest beyond. What I wouldn’t give to be out there. To be around the trees and smell the woody scents. To have the wind flutter across my face, through my dark hair.

  I lost the privilege, though.

  “Avery, are you listening to me?” Miss Theresa asks with a placid tone.

  I nod watching some kind of black bird take off into the blue sky.

  It was a year before I was allowed outside. That first time the nurses allowed me outside, I took off into the woods. A big no-no. I wondered around not doing anything when I found this giant boulder. I’m not talking big like the size of your hand I’m talking about it being a small mountain in its right.

  I climbed my new haven. Scuffing my hands and arms in the process. I stretched out on the warm rock laying on my back just watching the clouds come and go. It wasn’t my fault they didn’t find me until the stars were shining brightly in the night sky.