Scorching Secrets

by Kaitlyn Hoyt

  A large hand wraps around my arm and jerks me backwards. I whip around and attempt to fight off whoever grabbed me. The sudden movement and the intensity of the water causes me to lose my footing. I scream as my feet are lifted up off of the rocky bottom and I fall into the cold, dark water. The stranger’s grip around my arm disappears; my body is pulled by the current down the river.

  Gasping for air, I try to keep my head above the surface. The water is flowing too rapidly for me to swim to the other side. I should have noticed that before I ran into the river, but I was too focused on getting away. This seemed like my only chance of losing him, and I did lose him, but at what cost? Spotting a floating tree trunk off to the side, I stop struggling and let the water move me in that direction. If I could just grab onto it, I could use it to stay afloat.

  I collect a breath of air before the current pulls me under. I can’t see anything through the darkness. I push my arms upward to try and reach the surface, but I don’t know which direction it is in. I can’t panic; that won’t help anything. The cold water sends chills through my body, slowing everything down. I can’t move my limps as quickly as I could mere seconds ago.

  Out of sheer luck, I break the surface. Sputtering, I spit water out of my mouth and search around for that tree trunk again. Yes! It’s within an arm’s reach now. My muscles protest as I try to swim towards it. Hypothermia is already setting in. My arms wrapped around the wood, but its water logged surface snaps in half and I go under again. I don’t have time to catch my breath. With my lungs filling with water, I struggle to reach the surface. My arms and legs are moving in all direction, but I’m still pulled deeper into the freezing water.

  Disoriented and growing weaker with every second, my need to fight wanes. My body can’t push anymore. Deep laughter echoes around me as I sink further into the darkness. The chilled water freezes my muscles in their current positions. The water pushes me from all directions: up, down, left, right. I can’t fight. My lungs protest for air, but I have no way to get any. I swallow more water.

  Dravin’s won.

  With that thought, I close my eyes and wait for Death to come to me. He’s near. I can feel his presence around me. It’s not harsh and domineering like Dravin’s. Death is…misunderstood. In this instance, I don’t fear it. At this moment, I welcome it. My lungs reach their limit and my body starts shutting down. I’m no longer in control. My eyes snap open as an unearthly gray light spirals through the water towards my frozen hand. Slender, ashen colored fingers extend from a closed fist and point at me. The hand, covered in tattered black cloth, grabs onto my wrist and pulls me down further. I can’t fight Death’s grip.

  I gave it my all. There was nothing else I could do. Dravin was just stronger. It’s that simple.

  A scorching pain spreads through my stomach and Death halts his momentum. Though underwater, everything around me becomes clear again. I open my mouth to scream as the pain shoots through my body. Death’s grip disappears and by some invisible force, I’m pulled upward. Small bubbles float around me as I fly to the surface.

  Heat continues to spread through my body, and the second I break the surface, all the water from my lungs disappear, but the pain remains. My eyes close as I start coughing, trying to steady my furiously beating heart. Fighting the current, whoever has a grip on me, pulls me out of the water and onto the grass.

  With my back on the dry ground, the grip around me leaves. Since I’m still weak, I can’t sit up. I roll over to thank whoever helped me, but find the area empty. Out of the corner of my eye, I see a woman running back into the forest—long blond hair falling down her back.

  “Claire?” I whisper as another coughing fit seizes my body.

  I wake up with a start. “Claire,” I call out, but quiet when I don’t see any trees around me. I’m back in my bedroom. That was just a dream, right? My heart is beating crazily in my chest, but I don’t feel like I just about drowned…A dream. That was definitely just a dream. Claire died in that explosion; there’s no way that she could have pulled me out of the water, right?

  I glance around the room, toward the window. Not much sunlight is streaming in which lets me know that it’s early. Emma is still sleeping soundlessly in her bed. As quietly as I can, I walk towards the bathroom to take a shower.

  While lathering the shampoo into my hair, I start to think about everything that has happened recently. Everything was great at the wedding. I had fun. Real fun for once. The music spoke to me in ways nothing has for a while. I forgot about the situation we are in and just danced with Liam. Then we came back, and everything has gone downhill from there. I wish I had Hermione’s Time-Turner for times like this.

  I saw that horrible vision of Colton dying in front of me. He saw me die before, so shouldn’t he understand how hard it would be for me to witness that for real? He doesn’t seem to understand that I’ll do anything to make sure that vision never plays out. If we ever get captured by Dravin, I’ll tell him everything. I don’t care if he takes my powers. I don’t care if he has all my magic. I can’t let that vision play out.

  Then yesterday, he kissed me. Colton. Kissed. Me. My first kiss. He acted weird afterwards, so he probably regrets doing that, but I can still feel him holding me. The taste of him against my lips; the way his hair felt as I ran my fingers through it. I can remember it all. That is a good thing because it will probably never happen again. It can’t happen again. I need to protect Colton, and if people find out about my feelings for him, they’ll use him against me just like that vision showed.

  I turn the hot water off and step out of the shower. Today is an air-dry type of hair day. Curls all the way, I guess. Afterwards, I get dressed in a plain white v-neck t-shirt and a pair of jean shorts. I don’t feel like wearing any of my signature graphic tees. Yes…it’s one of those days.

  As I head downstairs, I realize that I’m not the only one awake. Larkin is sitting on the couch staring at the black TV screen. He looks up at the stairs when he hears me coming down.

  “How are you feeling?” he asks me.

  Instead of going into the kitchen to do the dishes, I plop down on the couch beside him. I lean my head against his shoulder and think about the question. How am I feeling? I don’t have an answer. I am alive still, which I guess is a good thing. But am I really living? I don’t know. I feel like no matter what I do someone ends up upset or hurt. Mentally and emotionally, I’m not doing well. Physically? I’ve been better. “I don’t know,” I answer honestly.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t come sooner yesterday,” Larkin whispers to me, patting me on my knee.

  “You came at the right time, Larkin. Can you do something for me?”

  I can see the hesitance in his eyes, but in the end his curiosity wins. “What?”

  “Can you keep an eye on Jane and Ross? That’s twice that they’ve almost been attacked. I can’t protect them all the time from here, and I’m scared that something is going to happen to them.”

  I don’t know what he expected me to say, but based on his reaction, that wasn’t it. Slowly, he nods. “I can watch them. But my main goal is keeping you safe right now. I can’t promise anything.” I know that that’s as good of an answer as I’m going to get. I sit back on the couch and lean into Larkin’s side. Yes, Larkin’s annoying sometimes, but I completely trust him. He’s done nothing but proved himself worthy of it.

  On the coffee table in front of me is my notebook. I’m not sure how it got there, but I reach over and grab it. Flipping to the back, I frown when I see the amount of blank pages I have left. I’ll have to go get another one soon. Putting in my iPod headphones, I click shuffle. Sara Bareilles starts playing. I’ve been listening to her a lot lately, but her songs speak to me.

  I draw a spider web—a large detailed spider web. Dew drops cling to each silky stand. In the top left corner, I draw a gruesome looking black spider with many eyes. It looks feral…hungry. In the bottom corner, is a small bug. A bug struggling to get away but can’t becau
se it’s tangled in the web. I feel like the tiny captured bug. Dravin is getting closer to capturing me again, and there is nothing I can do to get away. I am stuck in a web watching and waiting for my enemy to come and finish me.

  When I finally look way from the drawing, the room is full. Colton is sitting off to the side, not looking at me. Tom is sitting in the kitchen. Everyone else is in their usual locations. I take out my headphones, place my notebook back on the coffee table, and walk into the kitchen to talk with Tom. “Good morning, Ryanne,” he says with a smile as I sit across from him.

  “Morning, Tom.” I’m not sure if Logan told him about the vision I had. “Can I ask you something?” He puts his magazine down and nods at me, so I continue. “Is it possible…to extract magic from someone?”

  “Is this about the vision you had?”

  “Yeah, Dravin said that he found a way to extract magic from a person. I’m just curious if you think he was telling the truth or if he was just trying to scare me.”

  “I’ve never heard of it happening before, but a lot has happened recently that I’ve never heard of prior to this. I think it would be difficult for him to extract magic from a mage, but I don’t necessarily think that it would be impossible. You might be a different story. See, mages are born with magic basically imbedded in them because of our ancestors. You’re a different story because no one in your family was ever a mage.”

  I can hear people entering the room behind me, but I only pay attention to Tom. “So you think it’d be easier for someone to extract magic from me because I wasn’t born into a mage family?”

  “Possibly. Like I said earlier, I’ve never heard of it happening before. You’re one of a kind, Ryanne. I do know that if he got a hold of the amount of magic you have, he’d be unstoppable.”

  “Inconceivable!” David yells.

  “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means,” I say and turn toward David, waiting for his response.

  “Dang it,” he says.

  “If you’re going to use a movie quote, make it a little more challenging than The Princess Bride.”

  “You’re killin me smalls!”

  “The Sandlot.” I turn my attention back toward Tom. I hear David mumble behind me. “Thanks, Tom.” I stand up and walk back into the living room. “Boy, do I hate being right all the time,” I call over my shoulder.

  “JURASSIC PARK!” David yells. I turn around and smile at him before returning back to my previous position on the couch.

  So there goes my plan of letting Dravin just have my magic. I can’t give him any more power than he already has. We’re having enough difficulty fighting him off as it is. We don’t need him to be any more powerful. I’d originally thought that giving up my magic would save everyone, but I know that Dravin won’t use it for good, so that wouldn’t work. I’ll have to find something else to do.

  Soon after, everyone comes back into the living room too. I sit on the opposite end of the couch than I usually do. Liam takes the spot beside me. Colton sits in his usual spot. Bragden sits on the ground in front of me. Larkin stays in the kitchen with Tom.

  I ask Bragden to get my iPod off the coffee table, since he is sitting in front of it. When he reaches forward, the back of his tank top moves a little, and I swear I see something on his skin. He hands me the iPod and turns back around to face the TV. David and Emma are already looking for a movie to watch.

  Leaning forward, I move his shirt to the side a little and see the black marks I briefly saw earlier. Moving the shirt over a little more, I gasp at what I see on his skin. He still has the bear claw that I drew on his shoulder. It’s as dark as it was when I first drew it.

  “How is that still there?” I lightly trace the outline with my finger. “Shouldn’t it have washed off by now?” I tear my eyes away from the drawing and look at him. He is smiling widely at me. “What?”

  “Do you remember when you guys went out shopping?” Of course I remember that day. “Well, while you guys were out. Larkin took me to the closest tattoo parlor and I made it permanent.”

  “That’s a tattoo?”

  “Yep, I liked it so much that I wanted it to be inked into my skin.” I look back down at the tattoo. It does look good on him.

  “Really?” I smile widely at him. That’s awesome. I know that he didn’t get it for me, but it still feels good that he liked my drawing so much that he got a tattoo of it.

  Colton

  Ryanne leans forward and kisses Bragden on the cheek. Just a simple peck on the cheek and a freaking surge of jealousy shoots through me. I groan and lean back against the back of the couch. I know that David and Emma hear me, but it doesn’t look like anyone else did. Ryanne is obviously ignoring me, but why? She’s acting normal around everyone else, but she won’t even look my way. She’s sitting on the opposite side of the couch instead of beside me where she usually is.

  I glance over at her as she flips through songs on her iPod. Her lips purse as she tries to find a song to listen to. I’d kissed other girls before, but none felt like that. I didn’t think about their kiss for much longer afterwards. I wasn’t frustrated with those girls as much as I am with Ryanne. What does she want from me?

  I can hear the beat of the music coming from her headphones. I turn toward Emma, “Did you talk to her this morning?”

  “No. She woke up before me. Have you talked to her yet?”

  “Not yet. I came down here to talk to her this morning and she was talking with Larkin.” I turn toward Larkin, hoping that he will tell us what they were talking about. “And she appears to be ignoring me right now.”

  “She asked me if I could watch out for Jane because of the attacks against her. She’s worried about her.”

  Ryanne’s music starts to quiet, so we stop talking. Another song starts, but no one says anything. I draw my eyes from the TV screen one more time and look at her. She is staring down at the floor, biting her lip.

  “Liam, is she ok?” Since Ryanne isn’t going to talk to me, I’ll have to settle for finding things out from a second source. He glances over at her. She takes a headphone out and turns toward him. I can see the unshed tears in her eyes.

  “What’s going on, Ryanne?” Liam asks her. She doesn’t say anything to him. She looks down at her iPod, and then after a couple of seconds, she hands it to him.

  “Listen to this song.” Once he has the headphones in, she walks upstairs. I watch Liam, trying to decipher his reaction to the song. Without saying a word, he hands me the iPod. I listen to the song and frown as I listen to the lyrics.

  The sadness in the voice of the lead singer and the grim resonance of the lyrics pierce through me. Is this really how she feels? The song stops, and I pull the headphones out and turn the iPod off. I need to talk to Ryanne. She’s worse than she’s letting on. I stand up to go get her when she bounces back down the stairs, fully dressed in work-out clothes, pulling her hair into a ponytail.

  “What are you doing? We’re not training until later,” asks Liam.

  “I’m going for a run.” She grabs her tennis shoes and sits down on the last stair, quickly tying the laces.

  “Not on your own,” I tell her.

  “Then someone can come with me. I don’t care, but I’m going on a run.”

  Before I can say anything, Bragden volunteers. “I’ll go. I’m already ready.” Bragden is always wearing a training outfit. He says it’s easier than having to change twice a day. Ryanne brushes past everyone and walks out the front door. She begins stretching in the driveway as she waits for Bragden.

  “I hate running,” Bragden mumbles as he follows her outside.

  Chapter Seventeen

  About eight minutes into the run, I start to hear Bragden breathing heavily behind me. We’ve only gone a mile, and he is having trouble keeping up. How is he that well built if he can’t run a single mile? I stop running and walk back to where he’s standing on the side of the road.

  “How do you have so mu
ch energy?”

  “I don’t. I’m just frustrated. I needed to get out of that house for a while. I needed to be away from everyone. Running seemed like a good idea; I haven’t run in forever.” I pause and wait for Bragden to catch his breath, so we can continue.

  “I’m good. Let’s go.” I slow my pace a little to keep up with him, but after a couple of minutes, he starts to breathe heavily again.

  “Larkin,” I call out.

  Larkin blinks in beside Bragden and looks between the two of us, looking for danger. I shake my head at him. “Can you see if Liam can run with me? I think Bragden is dying.”

  “Yeah, I’ll be right back.” Larkin disappears.

  Bragden nods his head. “That was a good idea. I definitely wouldn’t have made it back to the house.”

  We wait a couple minutes before Larkin appears again with Liam at his side. Liam looks between Bragden and me and smiles when he sees how winded his brother is. Larkin puts a hand on Bragden’s shoulder, and they disappear.

  “How far out are we?” Liam asks.

  “A little over a mile. I need to run further though.” I start to run again while Liam stays where he is. “Please try to keep up,” I yell over my shoulder at him. Liam snaps out of it and runs after me. Unlike his brother, he is able to run a good distance before tiring.

  I am enjoying the way my muscles feel being strained like this. This is different from training. During our training, I use all my muscles, but I haven’t pushed myself like this before. I like how my heart rate increases, and it becomes harder to breathe. Strange as that sounds, it makes me push harder. I like hearing the sound of my footsteps echoing off the hard ground. I like how the sun feels against my skin, and how the wind feels against my face. If I could, I would just stay out here forever.

  “Ryanne…can I ask you something?” Liam asks while running beside me. I am more comfortable running with Liam. He matches me with athletic ability.

  “Sure…” I reply, without breaking my strides.