“What are you talking about?”
“Nothing. I just hope it’s all going well.”
Elijah looked between us in confusion. Then, he shook his head.
“I’m not even going to ask. Seriously, though, how did you find us?”
“I must have memorized Violet’s scent. I followed it until I found you.”
“So you’re mutating too, then?” Elijah said.
“I guess so. Where is your nanny? What was her name?”
“Maura.” Elijah and I answered grimly.
“She stayed behind.” I answered. I didn’t want to divulge the full details. I didn’t want to hear a person voice my own disgust at Maura’s choice. To hear it spoken out loud by a third party observer would do more harm than good. Sure, I’d like to hear Maura being torn down as a broken, pathetic woman who abandoned her surrogate children for a man that didn't love her. But it wouldn't lessen the sting of her leaving us. Bashing her out loud would only upset Penny.
Nick didn’t ask questions. Instead, we all just started walking. Penny was munching on some dried fruit loudly behind me, reminding me of my own hunger. I looked down as my stomach gave a mighty rumble. I would feed her above myself, always. Elijah would skip his meals for me. We were used to sacrificing things for each other but those sacrifices never involved food. We had always had more than enough at home, what with Maura demanding that our chef make us portions large enough to feed bodybuilders training for the Olympics.
“If they can afford to feed you this much, then you should eat this much.” She would say as we shoveled in those generous helpings of rich, delicious foods. I tried not to remember the tangy tomato sauce on the homemade pasta or the huge pieces of fried chicken that when bitten into, yielded only juicy white meat. As I chewed a hard piece of dried pear, I tried not to remember the sweet berry cobbler that our chef always made us in the summertime…
“Oh my God, I’m torturing myself…” I muttered to Nick as he walked beside me.
“How is that?”
“I’m remembering all the food we used to eat at home. I told you about my parents' jobs. They had money and they were never at home. Maura cooked once in awhile but we also had a chef. She made us so much food, we ran out of room in our stomachs.”
“What kind of food?”
“Nick!” I laughed and my stomach growled painfully. “I’m not going to torture you, too!”
“Why not? Misery loves company, doesn’t it?” He asked with a wry smile.
“Maybe so. But that doesn’t mean that I’m going to torment you with my vivid memories of homemade pizza with oozing cheese, bloody steaks and huge baked potatoes with sour cream and butter melting inside…” I sighed longingly and leaned against him, grasping his arm in both hands.
“This is torturing me. You’re right.” He told me with a soft laugh.
“Do you know what I would give for…”
I was so stunned by what was before me that I halted my sentence, never to resume it again. We had walked under a log and pushed through some hanging vines to come upon that sight. Nick and I stared, wide-eyed and mouths agape. I think we might have even been drooling.
Before us was a large grass hut. The smell of cooking meat wafted over us, sending us into an intoxicated stupor. On a table fashioned from the remnants of an old, huge, chopped down tree, there were cooked vegetables; fluffy mashed potatoes, steamed greens of an unknown origin, mushrooms tossed in some sauce that appeared to be butter, and huge pieces of what appeared to be purplish-blue broccoli were right there, ours for the taking. On another trunk-table, there were huge pieces of meat, cut open in the center to reveal their peeling, juicy, red centers. Even from where I was standing, I could see that there was not a scrap of fat on those succulent cuts. I could smell freshwater, too, and when I looked, I saw a stream running quietly behind the hut.
“I don’t even know what to say.” I blurted out as I stared, unblinking, at the feast that was before us.
Nick just shook his head. I looked over at him to see that he was diverting his gaze to the trees above or around us. Every time he tried to look away, though, his eyes snapped back to the still-steaming food. His conscience was trying to force him away from the buffet that wasn’t ours but his senses were overpowered by the grandiosity of the spread. His aching hunger was too much to bear in the presence of such divine food.
“Why are we hesitating?” He whispered before turning his gaze away to meet my eyes.
“I don’t know,” I giggled almost maniacally, “Let’s eat it!”
“No!” He grabbed my arm when I went to walk forward, “We’re starving, ja? So why are we hesitating?”
“Because we know that this technically isn’t our food. But whoever is in that cabin won’t mind if we take some. Come on, we’re two starving kids. They won’t care.”
“Stop!” He grabbed my arm to stop me from entering the clearing and grabbing a huge piece of meat off of the pure-white bone. “It’s the instincts, Violet! They’re telling us not to eat it! And it’s a native in that cabin! They’re probably waiting for us to start eating their food. Then they’re going to come out and attack us!”
“God, I’ll knock on the door if it’s such a big deal.”
“Everything is quiet! Listen!” He exclaimed in a loud whisper as he looked all around again. I looked up too, expecting to be able to call him a paranoid moron before shoving off to stuff my face. But he was right; the bird-like creatures that tweeted and sang in hypnotic consistency were silent. The trees were no longer rustling in the soft wind. In fact, the wind had stopped completely. It was as though we had fallen into some alternate space where some onlooker could pause the setting at will.
I could acknowledge that some unknown danger was brewing or I could allow my hunger to drive me further into the clearing where I would drop down on my knees in front of those tree trunk tables and start eating every bit of that fantastic smelling food until it was gone.
“I’m so hungry, Nick…” I struggled to grasp common sense. I struggled to remain in the brush. I knew that if I took a step, something would happen. There was a large chance that I would step out into the clearing and be ambushed by natives. But there was still that small chance that I could walk out and watch the food multiply to the same plentiful portions as what I was used to from home. It was such a small chance but it still existed…
My instincts were not dissuading me from believing that it was true…
I took a step and was immediately plunged into darkness.
“Violet!” Nick yelled behind me but his voice echoed around in my ears like some distant, annoying thought I was trying to suppress. The food and the cabin were still in front of my eyes. I knew that the sudden night was not normal but for all I knew, it was just another Pangean oddity. I ran to the trunk table and knelt in front, grabbing a huge handful of that steaming, sweating meat. It broke off with no fight, tumbling from the bone gracefully. With no finesse needed as I had no one to impress, I took a monstrous bite and actually growled in feral joy. The moment the meat hit my stomach, I could have stopped eating as I felt a comfortable fullness. But instead, I ripped even further into the handful I held, desperate for a permanent end to that agonizing hunger.
The door of the grass hut creaked open so loudly that I dropped the meat to cover my ears. I looked up to see a swirling, breathing darkness in the open space. I stared at it, remembering nightmares where I was staring into a dark abyss similar to that one, wishing I could pry my eyes away before some ghastly apparition appeared to me, scarring its hideous face onto my protesting retinas, never to be erased. I couldn’t look away; I strained my eyes trying but they held steadfastly to the darkness.
From within it, I heard a raspy breathing.
I struggled to stand, wanting to run as quickly as my newly-mutated body would allow. I begged whatever was holding me still to release its iron grip. I begged my eyes to look away.
They poured out of the grass hut like an
ts furiously escaping their smashed colony. They crawled across the ground at a speed that would make the natives turn and run. Somehow, even as I drew quick, desperate breaths, I felt the meat in my hand turn to soft, dripping mush. I looked down to find that the bowl was filled with trailing pieces of flesh mixed with blood of such a deep red that it burned my eyes.
In a horror beyond anything ever experienced by man or woman, I screamed as tears poured from my eyes. Every last one of those hideous creatures stopped running. They stared at me with unblinking, white eyes. The slashes in their faces that were their mouths opened and closed the way a fish gasps as it flails on a ship’s deck. It was silent, so unflinchingly silent that my ears rang with the same high-pitched squealing that came before the blast that had destroyed the earth...
In an eruption of sound that shook the very dirt beneath my feet, my scream was sent back to me, toppling me backwards, crippling my body. It was being spewed back by those unholy creatures that wanted to rip me apart and consume the shreds of my body.
My mind remained fully functioning as ten of them jumped on top of me, their claw-like fingers scratching me wherever they could find bare flesh. I screamed in utter agony, awaiting the moment they ripped into my body and ended my life.
A flash of light caught my furiously moving eyes.
There was a guttural scream of rage that filled my ears. All the creatures looked in one sweeping movement. There were three more roars that almost spoke in affirmation to the first and two more bright lights appeared in front of my burning eyes. Through the haze, I saw the outline of three human beings. Were they Pangean? Were they humans? Was it Brynna, James, Nick and Elijah? I couldn’t know for sure but I prayed that whoever they were, they would save me. I prayed for life, just a few more seconds of it, at least. I was so young. I didn’t want to die…
A crack of lightning erupted overhead, catching onto the lights carried by those four rapidly moving, viciously fighting shadows. Those shadows thrust their arms forward, pushing the lightning that had struck them into the bodies of the creatures. In a blur, they all begin to retreat, forgetting how desperately they wanted to devour me. As the lights wielded by those mysterious shapes hit the creatures, they immediately begin to convulse before crumpling to the ground in a pile of dust the color of soot. I watched, eyes wide as the monsters still on top of me jerked back and forth, spewing disgusting red froth before erupting in a display of fleshy fireworks or crumbling into that black ash. I coughed as some of the latter flew up my nose. Immediately, my body jerked forward in a series of powerful sneezes.
One of the shapes dropped down beside me. The light of day was returning even as I faded into the darkness of death.
“You stay with me! Violet, you keep your eyes open!” Her scream was one I had never heard before. In it, I heard desperation and fear so strong that they were capable of taking her very life. “Keep her back! Eli, hold her back!
“VIOLET!” Penny's high-pitched, terrified shriek rattled my eardrums.
“Do not close your eyes!” Brynna was holding my face, screaming just as loudly. She shook me wildly for a minute. “Stay awake, do you hear me?! Violet!”
My eyes had closed but I hadn't realized it. When I snapped them open, I saw the same fear I heard in her voice displayed unabashedly on her face.
“Brynn?” I looked up at her, gasping as the pain from being clawed so many times took hold suddenly. “Brynna?”
“Alright, we don’t have a choice anymore…”
James’s voice.
He was scooping me up in his strong, protective arms, bringing me more comfort than I ever could have imagined would be brought to me by him. But I was still gasping and sputtering blood, wails of agony erupting from me loudly enough to shake the trees. The wind whipped my already horribly pained face as James darted through the woods. I was reaching out for Brynna, screaming her name even as every breath inflicted even more pain on me. As she ran with the same inhuman speed beside him, she reached out and took my searching hand.
The last thing I saw was a towering green wall parting to reveal a circular tunnel.
Brynna
I had never run so fast. No amount of Reapers or those Scouts that had attacked Violet could bring forth such speed in me. I felt no fear besides one. I felt no fear besides perhaps the greatest fear of all: Violet was going to die.
I smelled her blood seeping from those penetrating cuts the claws of those things had made. Why had she eaten that food? Why had she fallen for their so obviously transparent ruse? I had failed her. I had stolen all knowledge from our gene pool and left her with a festering emptiness that should have been full to the brim with common sense. I hadn’t imparted my distrust of all things. I thought I had been doing her a service by allowing her to remain naïve and trusting. I had failed her.
I might not have forced her to see the worlds as being fraught with danger but I would not allow her to die for that inability to see. I would drag her back to life even if the effort killed me. I would empty every precious breath I had left into her dying lungs and jump-start her fading heart with the beats of my own. I would sell my soul. I would beg. No amount of shame was too high a price.
The natives in the lone city parted like the sea at Moses’s hands when James and I came barreling through. We sped by so quickly that I did not see their faces. Were they molded into the sneer of the animals within as their defenses sprang to life, urging them to attack? Or were they merely curious? I did not know nor did I care.
I could hear her heart’s steady beats spacing out to a rhythm too dangerously slow.
We stopped running once we reached an intersection. Blurs of light and sound whizzed by at the same vicious speed that we reached while running. The moving objects zoomed up a hill of rock and disappeared into the horizon between rows of gargantuan buildings.
A young girl with glowing purple eyes the color of the sky overhead stopped in front of us. Her mother had been clutching her hand tightly but she had twisted free from her grip. She looked to be about Penny’s age.
Penny. I had left her with Elijah, Quinn, Alice and whoever that boy was that had been with Violet when that awful event had occurred.
Why had he not stopped her? I would make my displeasure known on my next meeting with him. I would call him a coward for not accompanying her into that dark clearing.
The trees were parted overhead and the Pangean sun was glowing in the sky. Yet when we entered that space to fight those things, there had been only blackness and a crescent moon the color of blood.
If Violet died, I would kill that boy. I would destroy him with the animal fury I felt burning in a toxic wave of destruction within my chest.
“Adam.” The little girl had approached us without fear. She pointed to the towering palace that glinted in the fiery orange light of the clouds. “Adam.”
“Do not speak to the dark ones, Adina.” Her mother warned before reaching her hand out to draw the girl back to her. With an easy leap, the girl jumped onto her mother’s back to be carried off. Her arm was not attached to her mother’s body; she was still pointing to the palace.
James and I needed no more instruction. We were running again.
The palace was surrounded by a gate fashioned from the moaning trees in the forest. Their edges had been sharpened to points. Eight guards stood wearing the airy silver armor that was bordered with the sharp spikes of some creature I did not know. The long sleeves of their uniform were made of the same material.
“We need to see Adam,” I gasped out as I pointed at the palace, “We need to see him now! My sister is dying! Please let us in!”
“No inside.” A guard boomed through lips that barely formed his brutally loud words, “No…”
He stopped talking and in the distance, I heard a whispering that raised the hair on my arms. The guards parted to the right and left in perfect unison, leaving a space for us to get through. The large wooden gate swung open. Ahead, I saw the door of the palace open simultaneo
usly.
The interior of the man's home was as intricately designed as the paintings in French chapels. Murals that told stories I did not know were painted all along the walls. Ahead of us was a staircase that rose up at a sharp angle out of sight. In front of the staircase stood the man who had appeared that night at camp. That event seemed like it had passed so long ago.
“Please, will you help her?” I asked immediately, forgoing a polite greeting in favor of immediate beseeching. “There were these creatures in the woods…”
“Shadows.” He answered the question I had not posed out loud. As he spoke, his eyes locked on James's. “They have returned.”
“Sure,” I nodded vigorously, “She’s bleeding and she’s dying. I can hear her heartbeat but I can hear it stopping. I can feel...” I was rambling in my panic, not realizing that I was divulging far too much information, “I can feel her life draining. Please help her. Please, I’ll do anything!”
“She was tempted by them. She succumbed to their seduction.”
“She was hungry. She was looking for me and she hadn’t eaten in days…”
“It does not matter.”
“Yes, it does!” I screamed in desperate fury, “She’s only seventeen! She was acting exactly as most would at her age! She is young and too trusting and stupid! Please, we need your help!”
Violet’s breaths were ragged, interrupted only by soft moans of pain. The scratches were beginning to ooze a green liquid. The sight almost sent my hands flying to my mouth as an urge to vomit seized me.
“You are his offspring. Daniel Olivier.”
“Yes, but he does not speak for us.” The words rolled off my tongue before I fully understood exactly what I was saying. Somehow, I knew that was the right thing to say.
“I can see. You are of old. He is not.”
“This is all irrelevant!” I stomped my foot in frustration, “Do you feel it?! I know you can feel her life leaving her! I am begging you to do something!”
The Shattered Genesis (Eternity) Page 40