Kimber

by Sarah Denier

  I hear Wes behind me calling for Leo.

  “Lena!” I call out heading towards Leo’s bedroom since it is the closest.

  The smoke seems to thicken by the second. My eyes begin to burn and ping with pain.

  “Lena!”

  By the time I clear the bedroom and turn to leave, the smoke has engulfed my exit. I place one hand out in front of me and walk slowly straight forward. Rapidly I blink my eyes from the pain of the smoke. Calling out to Lena is no longer an option. I have to conserve every breath I am given.

  All I can seem to do is cough. I lower myself to the floor and begin to crawl. Bright orange flames quickly engulf the living room. I can’t make it out like this. Disoriented by the dense smoke, I start to stand. I step backwards until my foot connects with the bed frame. I reach down, retrieve the comforter and wrap it around me.

  I run though the layout of Leo’s living room in my mind and approximate the location of the front door. I count to three and take off in a mad dash towards what I hope is the front door. The flames kick up around me. The heat is extreme and dry and if I hold my breath for one more second I will become part of this hell. I hesitate to pause as I come to an orange glow of fire incasing the doorway. I jump though it and out to the other side.

  I land with a thud on the dirt.

  Quickly I discard the burning comforter and roll around. Besides the pain of throwing myself through an open door, I feel no effects of the fire having burned my skin. But my lungs are seared on the inside. I cough so hard that I’m hacking just to get the smoke out and the air in.

  Then I remember the reason I’m here in the first place. I push myself to my feet and run around back.

  “Lena!” I call out but it registers just above a whisper.

  The back of the house is missing, reduced to nothing more than a burnt frame. I double over in a coughing fit until I can taste blood in the back of my throat.

  Suddenly I’m lifted in the air. I start to kick since I cannot scream.

  “Kimber stop!” Leo orders.

  He places me back down on my feet. With his hand firmly locked onto my wrist, he pulls me away from the crackling blaze of fire.

  “Where’s Lena?”

  “You have to get out of here! Now!” Leo says pulling me towards my car. Wes waits in the driver’s seat.

  “I can’t leave her here!” I try to pull my wrist free. It’s no use. Leo opens the passenger side door.

  “Get in!” He yells over the blaze.

  “Where is she?” I shout grabbing hold of his shirt.

  “Go to Kimber’s and wait.” Leo instructs Wes as he leans into the car.

  “Please Leo, answer me.”

  I’ve become frantic. My body starts trembling. Tears fill my eyes. I fear I already know the answer. I just need to hear him say it.

  He ushers me inside the car and as I look up at him, the slightest bit of distress appears on his face. He opens his mouth to speak but thinks twice and closes it.

  “What have you done?” I ask before I realize why.

  He knows, he must. She was with him and now he will not answer me.

  “What have you done!”

  I grab the door handle and pull it once, twice, three times. Leo keeps it shut. He reaches in through the open window and secures the seatbelt around my torso.

  “Go! Get her out of here!” He roars.

  Wes peels out of the driveway faster than I thought my car could go. I stare wide eyed at the near demolished beach house.

  Sirens come alive in the distance.

  “We have to turn around!” I urge. “We have to find Lena!”

  Wes pays no attention to my request. He pushes my car to go faster.

  “Damn it Wes! We have to go back!”

  As the flashing lights of the fire truck and cop cruisers speed past us, Wes slows to the required speed limit.

  “Please, Wes. I can’t just leave her there.”

  He turns to look at me the same moment two piercing halogen headlights break through the darkness three hundred yards ahead. The vehicle becomes a vision of anger as it jumps the median and barrels toward us.

  Wes swerves to the right and for a brief second I swear he’s only driving on two wheels. There is nowhere to go but straight. The left side of the road is lined with towering condominiums. The right side with a shopping center and a few restaurants.

  The headlights are blinding. Wes tries what he can to evade the inevitable but his erratic decisions do not make a difference.

  The roar of the oncoming engine grows louder. I hold my breath and as the vehicle inches closer, I brace for impact.

  I lose all control of my body as the two cars fold into one. The screeching of metal as it locks around me is deafening. The world spins and topples, leaving me with no direction. The scent of old rusted metal; I associate with blood, claims the night air.

  Chapter Twenty Nine

  MY EYES FALL heavily shut as the soft warming white light embraces me. I feel safe and secure, as though I’m wrapped in a blanket woven with compassion and love. Tranquility becomes part of my DNA as I release myself from the insurmountable pain that cripples me.

  As the world turns from black to white I hear a popping noise and suddenly I am free. I feel like I could float within the clouds. Nothing remains of the night or the day. And as I face the light beckoning me forward, my heart swells. My mother, as beautiful as the day I last saw her, stands waiting for me. Her almond eyes smile the same time her lips do.

  “Mom!”

  I run into her embrace. No time is long enough in her arms. As she holds me against her, she smoothes tears from my cheek with her motherly touch.

  “Oh Kimber, I don’t want this for you. I want to watch you grow, live, love.” She pulls away holding me by the shoulders. “I’m so sorry. The way I left you…helpless against watching you suffer and break apart.” She pulls me back into her arms. “I won’t allow myself to be selfish and neither will you.”

  Confused I lift my head from her shoulder. “Mom?”

  “My path, this path, was always chosen for me. One way or another, this is where I belong, not you.”

  “No.” I furrow my brow and shake my head. All I hear in her words is how she does not want me. “I belong with you. We belong together. Why would I go back?”

  The vision over comes me. I can see the sadness painted on Leo’s face as he mourns me and stares down at the knife gripped within his hand. I gasp and look back at my mother. “Would he?”

  My mother nods then turns her head to the side as if listening to something or someone I cannot see or hear.

  “The Elders, they want to give you a gift. I want you to take it.”

  “A gift? What kind of gift?”

  My mother nods. “The gift of what rightfully belongs to you. The purist of pure blood.”

  “Mom.”

  “I don’t expect you to comprehend everything right now. It’s better if you take it piece by piece.” She reaches out, takes my hand turning it palm side up and caresses my wrist with her thumb. “Under here, this is who you really are and Kiddo, it’s powerful.”

  “I’m scared.”

  She pulls me back into her arms. “I promise that when fear looks you in the eye it will run and Leo will hunt it down. You were born for this. I’m sorry I didn’t awaken it to you sooner.” She whispers in my ear. “When you’re lost, look for me here.” She touches me just above my heart. “When you’re confused, look for me here.” She touches my head before taking it in both her hands and kisses me. “I love you, Kiddo. Remember that when nothing else seems real.”

  My head nods under her hands. Though my throat is too tight to speak, I send every ounce of love I have from my heart to hers.

  And she’s gone.

  Chapter Thirty

  MY BODY JERKS as though I have fallen on the couch and my eyes spring open. My head hammers with a pain forming behind my eyes. The room seems brighter than before I fell asleep. My body, stiff
and sore, protests against me moving. I feel like the tin man in desperate need of oil. I try to remember how long Wyler said muscle recovery took.

  I close the blinds and go to the kitchen where I take three Ibuprofen. As I reach in the cabinet for peanut butter crackers, there is a knock at the front door. I use the peephole and see Wes standing on the other side.

  Ugh, this is the last thing I need.

  Skeptically I crack the door open. “Hi.”

  “Hey.” Wes replies. He stands in the hallway studying me because I have not let him in. I’ve learned that lesson.

  “Do you need something?”

  “Can I come in?”

  “Why?”

  “Because Leo asked me to.” He’s annoyed.

  “Leo sent you here?”

  “It wasn’t the Tooth Fairy.”

  “Go to Hell.” I say with a perky smile.

  Before I can push the door closed, he has his black Nike wedged between the door and the frame. I roll my eyes and sigh with frustration.

  “Hey! I’m here ‘cause he asked me to be. Call him yourself if you don’t believe me.”

  “Don’t mind if I do.” I say opening the door for him to come in.

  Though the cuts on my hands have not yet formed into scabs, if he tries anything funny I will attack like a wild banshee.

  I grab my phone from the coffee table and hit speed dial number two. I figured that by this point, if he were lying, he would have tried to stop me.

  I watch as he strolls slowly through my living room, eyeing my things before sitting down on the couch.

  I listen as Leo’s phone rings and rings and rings until his voice mail picks up. Instead of the automated voice informing me of the number I’ve just dialed the phone crackles with static but there is a voice behind it. Straining to hear it, I press the phone harder against my ear.

  “Go!” A voice bellows into the receiver.

  I drop the phone and fall with it to the floor. My body convulses as I gasp for air. Wes takes me by the shoulders, trying desperately to help me. He babbles something about seizures. He doesn’t know that we’ve been here before. He doesn’t know how it ends with our death.

  “Lena!”

  I shrug him off and find my feet. I stumble to the counter where I fish my keys from my purse. Just like before Wes barricades the door with his body.

  I force the horrific thought of what happens if I do not make it in time from my mind. Twenty minutes or so went by the first time Wes was here, so that puts me about fifteen minutes ahead.

  “I can’t let you. Leo said—”

  “Leo said you had to stay here and guard me but you don’t really want to ‘cause you blame me for what happened in Egypt. But it doesn’t matter if you just a Half blood, you can still prove yourself to Leo, you can still be the Neph you envision yourself being.”

  He retains enough composure to keep his jaw from hitting the floor but it’s obvious he’s wondering if my aunt is not the only one with visions because he asks, “How do you know that?”

  “Wes, I don’t understand half of what is going on right now, but this isn’t the first time we’ve lived this moment. You have to trust me. If we don’t get to Leo’s right now, we die tonight.”

  Wary, Wes studies me. “Give me the keys.”

  This time I cannot get them into his waiting hand fast enough.

  His driving is as erratic as before and I’m just as thankful for it.

  The night remains calm and holds no other color than black. I tell Wes to be on high alert. We pull into the beach house driveway. It’s quiet, too quiet. The house is dark inside.

  Wes and I get out and stare at each other over the hood. He holds a finger up to his lips while pointing to the back of the house. I nod. He leads the way as I hang back a few feet. We look around and walk like stealth ninjas. Something is wrong. My fifteen-minute lead is whittling down.

  Other than the house not being on fire, what else is different? I look around but in the night, nothing sticks out. Then it hits me. Leo’s truck! It isn’t here. But I can’t recall if it was the first time. I grab my cell from my pocket and dial Leo again. It rings once before he picks up.

  “Kimber?” He says but his car window must be open because I can hardly hear him.

  “Leo! Get off the road! Pull over! Can you hear me?”

  “What the hell! Hold on!” He orders but it’s obvious I’m not the one he’s talking to.

  On the outside I stand still while on the inside my heart stammers. I will never fully be able to express what went through me the exact moment I realized how agonizingly close and yet exceedingly far I had been from him. The night shrouds my surroundings with darkness allowing every sense in my body to hear the distant screeching of rubber and the contorting of metal as it absorbs everything I have left and nothing I am willing to let go.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Sarah Denier was born and raised in Saint Petersburg, Florida. From the start, Sarah was compelled to write. As a little girl, she was mesmerized by her great grandmother’s handwriting and would imitate it on any surface in sight.

  At the age of seven Sarah participated in her first school writing competition and won with an essay on the use of balance in Martial Arts. Even at such an early age, Sarah recognized her talent. During her childhood she explored her talent by writing short mystery fiction. During her teenage years, she dabbled in poetry.

  Throughout her academic career, Sarah’s talent was recognized by teachers urging her to pursue a life in writing. In her eyes, writing was a personal form of expression, a means of escape.

  In the spring of 2009, Sarah sought to accomplish her first novel. Raising two children and working a full time job left little time for the project. Ten months later the first draft was finished. By the end of 2011, her perseverance had paid off with the completion of her first novel, KIMBER.