A Flare Of Hope (The Jaylior Series Book 1)

by Elodie Colt

  “That’s because the others can’t see.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You have a different sort of multi-colored heterochromia like all Roes have. This is how we distinguish between ‘regular’ people and us. We’re able to make out colors the others can’t distinguish because technically, they don’t exist in nature. At least, that’s the current status of science.”

  “What kind of colors?” I asked curiously.

  “Silver and gold—no natural colors in the original sense and also not existent except for the metals themselves. We call them ‘appion’ and ‘jaylior.’ Appion is a mix of silver and other shades, something like turquoise and blue. Jaylior is a mix of gold and something similar to orange and yellow.”

  Jaylior. The word sounded familiar. “I always thought it was just hazel,” I mused.

  “That’s the closest to jaylior, yes. Everyone else would classify them as hazel. It’s a change in the DNA and can only be recognized by another one with the same change in DNA. And you saw their eyes flashing, right?” Jimmy asked, and I nodded. “We call it the Flare. It’s a reflection that can be seen when one looks at another. We still don’t know why it occurs, but we assume it’s a function to recognize our own kind.”

  His explanation seemed adequate, but there was one thing that didn’t fit—if Shawna had the same eyes, why had I never seen the Flare in hers?

  “Um, does the Flare always occur?” I asked carefully, avoiding Shawna’s name. I didn’t want him to ask questions which would lead to that sensitive subject.

  “You can only see the Flare when you’re older than twenty depending on your body’s development.”

  That made sense. I was eighteen when Shawna died. “Okay, so I get that we have different eyes than the rest of the population. Why is that so special? Why is it a reason to kill?”

  “Because we have abilities. We’re called Roes, short for ‘New Race of Evolution.’ Not the most creative name, I know, but a lot simpler than the original definition which is as long as a paragraph. We are what you would call the next step in evolution and are more developed. We call what we can do ‘abilities’ for lack of a better term, but as we know from evolutional progress, there will come a time when they won’t just be abilities anymore, but common and available to everyone like a sixth sense. So, what seems like magic to you now is just evolutional progress based on biological and physical laws. Most of the abilities are passive and therefore rather harmless—for example, Ricky’s ability. However, there are those with higher abilities, and if they can’t control them, it can become dangerous for everyone. This is why they want you out of the picture.”

  I snapped my head back at him with a frown. “Me? You’ve got to be kidding me. I don’t have an ability, let alone a dangerous one. I’m only dangerous to myself, believe me. I’m so clumsy, I could break my neck descending the stairs,” I tried to reason with him.

  “Clumsy?” Jimmy repeated with a frown. “You can’t be that clumsy if you can jump over buildings.”

  “That’s because I trained for years. My clumsiness nearly got me killed once, so I needed to do something to gain better balance.”

  “Hmm.” He eyed me skeptically as if he didn’t believe me. “Is it working?”

  “Mostly. Everything’s fine when I’m doing parkour, that’s the funny thing. I’m only clumsy during my everyday routines, especially when I’m nervous or frightened.”

  He eyed me for a few seconds, deeply lost in thought. “Anyway, you do have an ability, we just don’t know which one yet. Roes usually have appion eyes. You’re one of the few to have the jaylior eye color. You are rarer than rare. Our scientific status isn’t very progressive as there are still not enough of us to do wide-range tests, but the closest guess is that there are five hundred, maximum, of your kind.”

  I snorted in disbelief. “Five hundred of what?”

  “Of the whole population.”

  What the hell? I opened my mouth and popped it shut like a fish unable to speak for a second. “I’m one of about five hundred people in the world with that special eye color combination?” I asked skeptically. Now, I wasn’t so sure anymore if he was telling the truth. His story got weirder and weirder by the second.

  “That’s right.”

  “Sorry, I don’t understand. I’m still not getting the point.” I shook my head, trying to grasp everything I’d just learned.

  “Of course, you don’t, but this is all I can tell you for now. I can’t give you more information out here,” he apologized.

  “We can go inside if you want,” I offered, but Jimmy laughed.

  “That’s not what I meant. We live in a compound, a makeshift area not far away from here. If you want to know the rest, you have to come with me.”

  And there it was. That was what I’d promised Ricky. That was what Dylan had meant when he said Jimmy would come for me.

  “What do you mean ‘come with you?’ Somehow, I doubt you want me just to pay you a visit,” I probed. Was he asking me to live with them? Surely, he knew how crazy that sounded.

  “You’re not safe here anymore, and you won’t be safe anywhere else except with us.”

  “Are you serious?” I snapped, my voice rising. “What do you expect me to do? Just leave my apartment and my job behind to go wherever the hell you want me to go to?”

  “You’re not safe in the apartment and most of all, not in the bar.”

  I promptly stood up when it dawned on me that Jimmy wasn’t joking. I huffed a dry laugh. “I… I can’t do that. I don’t even know what you all are exactly. You expect me to come with you, a stranger I don’t even know, to some place and live with people I don’t know either, just like that?” I protested and clicked my fingers in the air to make my point.

  Jimmy stood up, too, a sympathetic expression on his face. “I know how that sounds, but believe me when I’m telling you that we just want to keep you under protection. We don’t want to harm you, and I think we proved that already. I can’t protect you here,” he tried to convince me.

  “Then don’t! I didn’t ask you to protect me!” I yelled, nerves frayed. I knew I was acting irrational, but what he asked for was just too much. He didn’t understand. I needed four years to feel somehow comfortable inside the walls I called home, and now I should just go and leave everything behind?

  “I know, but we have to. We have already lost two of you to them.”

  “Who are they anyway?”

  “They are like we are, but they are afraid of you. A long time ago, the situation got out of hand, and hundreds of us were killed in the process. Since then, there are those who want to protect, and those who want to destroy people like you.”

  “But… but I have a life here,” I cried in desperation, although I didn’t know what to think anymore. Lauren had tried many times to persuade me to leave. She’d always said I didn’t belong here, and that I should leave my past here, but I’d never had the balls to do it.

  “And what life is that?” Jimmy countered, and I stepped back in shock. “I’m sorry, that was harsh, but do you think you can continue your life here pretending the things you’ve seen and the things you know don’t exist? Live a ‘normal’ life again?” He took a step closer, while I took one backward. “Let me ask you a question, Haylie. Has your life ever been normal?”

  Now his face was only inches away from mine. I didn’t bother to take another step but just let myself slump to the ground. No, my life had never been the one I wanted to have—parents killed, sister killed, and now killers on my heels. It seemed as if fate was playing a vicious game with me.

  I turned back to look at the strange eyes staring down at me with pity. Jimmy must have seen the devastation on my face because he slowly squatted down beside me, resting a hand on my knee in a soothing gesture.

  “You have a huge burden to carry, and I’m sorry for that, but you can’t run away from fate. It will catch up with you… it already did. You aren’t meant to live a life among
the ones who are not your kin.” He let the words sink in before continuing in a lower voice, “Come with me. We’re all a family, and we would be honored to welcome you as a new member.”

  A family… I couldn’t even imagine how it would feel to have people to care about, to have people care about me. Maybe Jimmy was right, and I was meant to live in another world. I’d never felt like I fit in this world anyway.

  “Will I be able to come back? To see my friends? Lauren…” My voice faltered at the sound of her name. I couldn’t imagine a life without Lauren anymore.

  “Of course, you can come back. This is not for eternity, you know? You’ll just have to give it some time until you know more about us. Until you know what you are. Until you know about the evil out there and are able to defend yourself.”

  That sounded like a rational plan, but I was still not convinced. “What about my home? They’ll come back looking for me here, won’t they? What if they break in and destroy everything?”

  “They won’t come back. Not when you’re not here anymore. They will know, believe me.”

  Jimmy was right, I wasn’t safe here anymore. And if I weren’t safe here, then Lauren would be in danger, too. They wouldn’t stop until they got me. Shit. This was over-the-top crazy!

  Maybe it was time to change things once and for all. I didn’t know what awaited me, but it could only be better than the nothing that awaited me if I stayed.

  “All right. Can I… can you give me until tomorrow? I need to get some things in order first,” I pleaded, hoping he didn’t expect me to up and run with him the next second.

  “Of course. Take your time. Just remember one thing, Haylie. The others out there, they don’t know about us, and we want to keep it that way. We have the advantage that they don’t see any difference because they don’t see our eyes for what they are, but that doesn’t mean they can’t see what we’re able to do. They must not know about us, they wouldn’t understand. Not yet.”

  “You have my word,” I promised.

  “All right. I’ll come to get you tomorrow morning. I don’t expect anything to happen by then. We have greatly limited their numbers in the last few days. But if anything happens, just stay inside, hide on the roof or wherever and wait for one of us to come. The camera will signal anything unusual, okay?”

  I nodded and went with Jimmy downstairs to let him out.

  So, this was it. Tomorrow, everything would be different—the home I’d live in, the people I’d be surrounded by, simply everything. The fact that I had to abandon my apartment broke my heart. This was my home. The only home I’d known all my life. Shawna’s home. What would happen to it while I was gone? How long would I be gone, anyway?

  Slumping down on the couch in the living room, I cradled a cushion against my chest. Was I any wiser now than before Jimmy had visited me? Technically, the only thing I’d learned was that I was one of the rare people to have eyes worthy of killing. What did that make me?

  I don’t know how long I sat there, but after a while, I pulled the phone from my pocket and texted Lauren. I had no clue as to what I was going to tell my best friend. I wasn’t allowed to talk about anything that had happened which was a huge burden on my shoulders, but I couldn’t leave without saying goodbye.

  An hour later, Lauren strode in. Thankfully, I’d remembered to remove the contacts to avoid awkward questions. Acting as normal as I could, I greeted her. “Hey, come on in.”

  “Hey, you. Are you all right?” Lauren asked with concern and sat down on the couch next to me.

  “Yeah, I’m fine. I just wanted to talk to you about something.” I played with the hem of my shirt, unsure how to start the conversation.

  “I knew it,” Lauren muttered, and I was startled by her comment.

  “What?”

  “Something happened, right? Something bad. I could tell from the sound of your voice when you called,” she explained with a sad smile on her face.

  I should have known I couldn’t fool Lauren. How should I explain without lying or revealing the truth?

  “Yes, something bad happened. No, it wasn’t just one bad thing, but everything that happened the last few days,” I confessed. At least I could try to be as truthful as possible. Lauren deserved as much.

  “Tell me.”

  I sighed deeply. “That’s the problem, Lauren, I can’t. I just can’t. You know,” I turned my body fully toward Lauren. “What happened the last few days turned my life upside down. I saw things I want to erase from my mind forever, and I learned things that will change me forever. Life as I know it doesn’t exist anymore.” I stopped there to look for anything that might tell me what Lauren was thinking at the moment. I expected to see a confused frown, but instead I was greeted with empathy.

  “Look, I know this sounds all very crazy to you. Shit, I can’t even tell you how crazy everything is for me at the moment. I don’t understand the world anymore.” I threw my hands in the air in desperation only to let them fall back into my lap, completely helpless.

  “Your knee is healed,” Lauren mumbled, staring at said body part.

  Shit, what a stupid mistake. I could have at least pretended to limp but completely forgot about that tiny fact. What was I going to say?

  “Yes,” was all that came out while I watched Lauren’s reaction. She just nodded, deeply lost in thought.

  “You’re different, Haylie. I knew that from the beginning. That day I found you out there in the rain, do you remember?”

  How could I ever forget? A tear slid down my cheek. The conversation was quickly becoming quite emotional.

  Lauren took my hand squeezing it. “There was something in your look. I can’t explain it, but I saw something on your face that day, and I knew I had to help. I somehow knew deep down that you were important.”

  I was struck speechless. Did Lauren know something? Was Lauren connected to the events of the last few days somehow? Or was it just the human side of her, the side that could feel and love and care so deeply? The side that made you feel like she could see right into your soul and heal you from the inside?

  “I’m sorry if you had to go through something horrible. You are the last person I wish to feel any more pain. But I think it’s for the best, although I don’t want to let you go. You do have to leave, right?” She gave me that smile again.

  At first, I could only stare. How did she know? I didn’t even know myself a few hours ago. “Yes.”

  “How long will you be gone?”

  “I don’t know. As long as it takes, I guess.” I doubted I’d return soon. Gathering from my chat with Jimmy, it rather sounded like this would be my new life for the next few years.

  Lauren just nodded. “Will you be all right?”

  I smiled. “I will… someday.” We sat in silence, just staring into each other’s eyes. “Could you give Joey an excuse for me?”

  Lauren laughed. “Sure.”

  I bit my lip. “There’s something else…”

  “What?”

  “Shawna’s grave. I didn’t visit a lot, I know, but I don’t want it to run to seed.”

  “I’ll take care of it, Haylie,” Lauren promised and threw her arms around me. “Promise me you’ll call, okay?” she whispered into my ear, voice tight. I hugged her back, and we sat there for a few minutes giving solace to each other.

  “Of course.”

  Then Lauren pulled back, sniffed once, and changed her expression from wistful to determined within the blink of an eye.

  “When will you leave?” Lauren asked before standing up.

  “Tomorrow morning,” I informed her and rose with her.

  “So, it’s goodbye then.”

  “Just temporarily,” I reminded her, and we both hugged one more time before I prepared myself to move on to my new life.

  After the unplanned fight with the Hunters in Bryceland’s backyard, I drove through the city for hours to get my thoughts back in order before heading back to the compound just as dawn broke.

&
nbsp; Jimmy didn’t say much when I returned. He’d watched the whole fight on the monitors after Phil finally reacted to the signal. He hadn’t sent backup as he knew I could take the three of them alone. He let me explain what happened in a shortened version. When I was finished, the only thing he added in a deadly voice was, “We’ll talk later.”

  Now, I watched the dirt and blood mix with the water on the bottom of the shower. I couldn’t remember where the blood came from—it certainly wasn’t mine. I stood there, hands pressed against the tiles as hot water ran down my back.

  Did I make a mistake paying her a visit? Maybe. What had I wanted to achieve? Fuck, I had no clue. Maybe I was in search of answers as to why Ricky had to die. Answers I expected to find in her eyes, but instead, I’d only found more questions. I didn’t feel any different, didn’t feel more or less at ease as I’d hoped, just utterly confused.

  I recalled the remorse glinting in her eyes, the guilt, the shame, the glistening tears when I’d uttered Ricky’s name, the sadness in her face, the wish to turn back time and right it all. It didn’t change the fact that she was the reason for Ricky’s fate in the first place, and I still loathed her for that more than she could ever imagine.

  But Jimmy was right—she was devastated, and that made me furious. For a tiny second, I’d felt clearly disarmed, close to losing my focus. Resenting her was right. Resenting her came easier.

  However, all the hate would do me no good because I had to keep in mind who she was. That was probably the only reason I hadn’t lashed out at her. I knew she was important, and that we needed to keep her safe. Granted, I’d secretly wished to hand over the duty to Jimmy, Sarah, or whoever felt responsible for her well-being.

  That plan had backfired tonight.

  I wasn’t surprised the Hunters already knew where she lived, but I hadn’t counted on such a fast counterstrike. Their numbers were limited now. They couldn’t afford to lose any more of their best warriors. However, it seemed they were desperate to get to the girl whose jaylior eyes had been hidden from view tonight.