by A. P. Marie
The truth is I knew today was going to be a bad day. This morning after my shower I came into the room to get the clothes that Cam laid out for me, like always. Only this time the sight of the clothes stopped me in my tracks. They were familiar. It was the same outfit I had been wearing in my dreams. I dressed slowly and poked my healing bruises. In my premonition, the bruises hadn’t been faded but new and angry. I knew then and there that today was going to end in the training room.
Tyler came back at me with his fists flying. Strapped to the table, I was completely unable to protect any part of my body.
Going into the state of mind that I get in while meditating, helps me remove myself from my current situation. When I find that spot, I can feel Tyler as a dark, angry spot. I can feel my audience in the corner. I can also feel a person on the other side of the wall. That spot feels like joy and happiness. I don’t know how I know it, but I can tell that it is Cam. Sick fuck is getting off on hearing my screams. Hell, he might even have some way to watch what is happening.
I catch some of Tyler’s thoughts, but they are just random pieces of unconnected information. Impossible task. Sacrilegious. Bond breakers. Repeat through his mind the most.
Tyler lands a particularly hard blow to my temple and black spots dance in front of my eyes. Anger lashes through my body. I start screaming in my head, not wanting to give Tyler that satisfaction. I’m screaming that he needs to grow a pair. That he needs to stop. That he just needs to take me back to my fucking room.
I don’t even notice when he stops hitting me, but I notice when he unties me.
Our audience in the corner stands up.
“Tyler, what are you doing?” His nasally voice grates on my ears as Tyler lifts my limp body in his arms.
“Taking her back to her fucking room.” I pry my swollen eyes open and glance at Tyler. Something isn’t right with him. His eyes are glazed over and his voice sounds monotone, almost robotic.
I fade in and out of consciousness as Tyler takes me back, but I notice enough to see that the man from the corner tries to stop Tyler several times. Nothing he says has any effect. Tyler takes me back to my room, deposits me on the bed, and locks the door on his way out.
I know, even in my injury leaden head, that Tyler didn’t do this out of the goodness of his heart. I know that Tyler doesn’t have any goodness in his heart. He brought me back for one reason and one reason only. He didn’t have a choice.
Chapter 18
Queen
When I regain consciousness, I am in my cement room but something big is happening. I can hear gun shots and screaming all around me. It’s my dream come to life. Zander and Caiden must be coming for me. It sounds like a war is being waged right outside of my window.
I try to think back to those dreams to see if I can get any clues or if there is any way I can help, but with all of the commotion going on outside I can’t focus long enough to remember any details from my dream.
Pacing my small room, I try to think of anything that I can do to help. The worst part is not knowing what’s going on. That’s when it hits me. I can try and tap into the mental state again. I still won’t be able to help anyone, but I can at least try to see what is going on.
Tossing myself unceremoniously onto the bed, I fold my legs under me and quickly enter that state. This time, maybe because I have done this twice now, I am able to slip out of my body quickly. I can’t decide what direction to send my specter out though. Walking through the house would only show me Cam and his closest friends.
Which could be helpful, if one was standing right outside my door with the keys and was easily manipulated. But I might search the whole house and not find the right keys. Or I might find the right person, and not be able to control them. It only happened once, and it wasn’t even intentional on my part.
Outside would be where I would find Zander and Caiden, but I want to be able to see it all. I need eyes on all of the players. As soon as I think it my consciousness flies up through the ceiling. I drift through rooms, floors, what appears to be an attic space, through the roof and on up. And up. And up.
I float until I am high enough up in the sky that I can see the entire house and the surrounding fields for miles. There are heat spots everywhere. I try to focus on a few to see if I can locate Zander or Caiden, but it is a slow and tedious process. Then I realize that some of the spots feel different. They all feel like heat, but some feel like the heat of an oven, so hot that it is just on the verge of burning you. Others feel like the heat of the sun on a summer day, comforting and warm.
It doesn’t take much poking to prove my guess right. The comfortable spots belong to Zander and Caiden’s men. They brought an entire army. But Cam was ready, and his army of oven spots was waiting.
Right in the middle of a big huddle of comfortable spots I feel two spots that feel even warmer than those around them. I focus in on those spots enough to get a feel for them. A rush of comfort and a sense of home fills me. It’s Zander and Caiden in the middle of their soldiers. They’re arguing. I can just pick up bits and pieces. Caiden wants to go in personally and get something. Zander thinks they should let the army clear the way first. I try to focus harder when I notice something.
All of the oven spots are retreating towards the house. They had been holding their line against Zander’s soldiers, but all of the sudden they turned around and sprinted away.
Uneasiness creeps up my spine. I focus on Zander again, but he and Caiden are still fighting and haven’t noticed anything yet. I sweep the spots looking for Cam. I find him easily. He’s the spot that feels like the dark, evil things that creep around at night.
As I narrow my focus to him, my eyes dart all over the field. There must be something happening. I start getting flickers of impressions from him. Happiness. Excitement. Revenge.
I dig deeper and start to get an inkling of his plan. Draw the King out. Create a distraction for him and his army. Trigger a massive explosion.
My eyes shoot over to Zander’s and Caiden’s spots to try and warn them, just as the earth below me shakes with the strength of the explosion. It rips through the ground and trees, raining debris and soldier pieces all around.
The explosion is not picky. It tears to shreds everyone in its path. Zander’s men and Cam’s men alike are obliterated in less than a second. Not even leaving piles of dust in their wake.
My mental map, which had been lit up like a Christmas tree with thousands of bulbs, flickers out slowly, until only about half of the lights exist at all.
Blackness sweeps across my vision and rage like I have never known before erupts inside me. Through my rage, my focus on the remaining lights enhances, and all of the sudden it is no problem for me to see what they are all thinking, what they are all doing. It is no problem for me to see the strings I need to pull to bend them to my will. Like puppets on a string, they are all at my control and they have no idea. Wind whips my hair around frantically as I grab up all of the strings of the little oven spots and hold them in my mind.
I struggled before to control Tyler, not because I wasn’t capable, but because I didn’t think I was capable. But the rage coursing through my body has unleashed something older and angrier than I ever thought about being. That other thing, the pool of inky blackness inside of me, is desperate to avenge the Divine Nephilim. That thing knows the control my power wields, and it has no qualms about using me to gets its vengeance. Through it, I sense a door opening and I can feel things about the little lights it holds in its control. All of the sudden, I can feel hundreds of hearts beating, hundreds of lungs pumping, and hundreds of minds frozen in absolute shock as I stop them in their places.
It is no problem for me to pick out the divine Nephilim that are left and release them from my control. It is even easier for me to find Cam, hiding like a coward far from the destruction. I sense more than feel as the thing inside of me searches through the little lights until it has a firm grasp on the major organ of their cardiovascular systems
and I scream along with the falling Nephilim as the darkness inside of me wraps its fingers around their hearts and squeezes until they stop beating. It basks in the glow of so much death and destruction. It even double checks to be sure that Cam was included in its mass destruction. Sure enough, the spot that used to be Cam has no heartbeat. He is dead at the hands of the thing inside me, he is dead by my hand.
These little spots, these Nephilim, are nothing compared to the anger. This anger knows no beginning or ending. It knows nothing besides vengeance and hate. Cowering, inside my own mind, like a child afraid of the dark, I know that this thing will continue destroying with or without my consent. It is inside my mind and body, but it has a will and consciousness of its own.
I sense it turns its attention inwards, towards me. Almost lovingly, the thing strokes fingers down my cheek and whispers words of dark encouragement straight into my brain. Phrases rebound around inside my head, things like, “Don’t worry,” “I’m here now,” and “It’s my job to take care of us.” And then, terrifyingly, “This is just the beginning.” Something about the words in my head feel slippery. Like echoes of echoes, that started off as one thing and have become something new.
I can taste its intent on my tongue, and I know without ever asking or being told that this thing will not relinquish control to me. As soon as I think it, I feel my physical hand move and I see myself staring at my hand in fascination, but none of it is me. I didn’t tell my hand to move and I am certainly not fascinated by it. I try to put my hand back down, but nothing happens. Not a twitch of my finger, not a spasmodic jerk, nothing at all. Fear consumes me as I realize I am a prisoner inside my own body. The thing tries uselessly to soothe my nerves, whispering in my mind about its total control. Amusement trickles from it to me.
“The thing” it whispers to me, “will never do. Call me Queen.”
The last word repeats and echoes and reverberates over and over again in my mind. Until the word it started off as and the word it becomes are both apparent. Regina and Queen murmured and whispered and hissed until I think I can’t handle it anymore. Until I realize that being born a Regina wasn’t a blessing but my greatest curse.
Queen turns her attention back to the battlefield below us. The only people left standing are the straggling remains of Zander’s men. There is an alarmingly small number of them left. It isn’t until Queen focuses in on the area where Zander and Caiden were that I realize that no one is left standing there. A large crater has hollowed out a section of the land as absolute destruction has rained from the skies.
Much like the rage that unleased Queen, now sorrow encompasses my whole being. Zander and Caiden were standing right there when the explosion occurred. There is no chance that they got out. Sorrow for the lives that were lost on both sides. Sorrow for the men who I will never get a chance to know better. Sorrow for my best friend. Sorrow for my first lover. Sorrow for men who deserved a chance to live and discover and experience. Sorrow for men who will never do any of those things. And then something bigger takes over. Something even more powerful. An emotion that I was pretending didn’t exist, but which I can no longer deny.
Love. I loved those men. Right or wrong, good or bad, I loved them. They were mine to love and to cherish and to fight for. The blackness that exists where they used to be is so complete and earth shattering that even Queen balks from it. In fact, the more I think about Caiden’s smiling face, and Zander’s endless patience the more Queen pulls back. The more I remember the feel of Zander’s skin against mine and how he sat outside my room to give me space while also alleviating my pain the more control I gain over my own body. When I think about the way Caiden knew my every thought and desire even before I did and how he always had the ice cream that I loved so much, even though he hated it, I realize that Queen has pulled back far enough that I can wiggle my own fingers. Then my wrists, until eventually I have complete control again.
So many emotions are flowing through my body, so much has changed and is still changing that I don’t immediately realize when I start to feel ill. It’s the same sort of illness that comes after reading in a car on curvy roads. An unsettling in my stomach, an almost dizzy feeling in my head, and before I know it, I am sinking back down into my body in the basement of Cam’s house with an urgency that has my motion sickness worsening. When my consciousness and my physical body finally meet, a huge rush of relief washes over me, but before I can stop it my stomach rebels and I lose my lunch onto the cold, stone floor of my cellar room.
Chapter 19
All My Cards
I must have lost more than my lunch, because the next time I am aware of my surroundings someone is smacking my face and I can hear a voice murmuring lowly in the background. When my eyes finally obey the command to open, I see an unfamiliar man leaning over me and shining a light into my eyes.
In my dream, my premonition, there was never anyone else in the room with me. But this is the scenario. Physically I have been beaten to hell and back. I’m wearing the same clothes as in the premonition. And now, I have the terrible aching, longing in my chest. It’s in the exact place that was once filled by Zander and Caiden. That feeling of loss that has worried me for months is because I have lost them, the loves of my life.
“She’s awake,” he says, over his shoulder.
Confusion tears through my body as Cam steps gracefully around the door jamb surveying my stomach contents with distaste. He barely spares a glance in my direction before he briskly orders everyone out.
There is no sign of a recent battle on him. No cuts. No bruises. Hell, his hair isn’t even out of place and his suit is as perfectly pressed as ever.
Nausea churns through me again and I feel my stomach contract painfully. Cam only watches me with a look of disgust on his face as he shuts the door behind him, locking us in.
“What did you see?” His voice is cold. Colder than I have ever heard it and it sends chills down my neck.
“Wh-What do you mean?” My voice breaks from lack of use or lack of water, I’m not even sure which. I can’t stand the tremble in my voice. I clear my throat gruffly.
“We saw you. I had someone watching your room camera. What did you see?” Already he sounds like he is out of patience and that sick feeling intensifies.
Looking around dumbly, my absolute confusion must show on my face. What did I see? I saw a battle taking place right outside this house. A house that I saw destroyed mere moments ago, and yet it now appears to be as good as new. I saw the man standing in front of me die. I felt it as his heart quit beating. No, I felt my fingers squeeze it until it stopped beating. Yet, here he stands, very much alive.
I swallow thickly. Cam won’t give me an answer unless it will help him, that much I know.
“What was that?” I ask him, hoping that he will deem answering me useful in some way.
“A premonition. Your mother had the gift. I wandered if you would inherit it.”
Relief washes through me like a flash flood, leaving only hope in its place. The battle. The explosion. The Queen. Without meaning to, my face breaks into a huge grin.
“I saw myself grocery shopping.” Even knowing what will come next, I can’t quit smiling. “I got peanut butter. I love peanut butter.”
The fury that coats Cam’s face is unlike anything I have seen from him before, but it’s his utter stillness that sends little bolts of fear along my nerves.
“I thought we were past all of this.” As he’s speaking, he slides his suit jacket off his shoulders, lays it across my bed, and slowly starts rolling the sleeves of his dress shirt.
Danger is coming, I know it as surely as I know my own name. But today, it cannot touch me. With the utter relief of finally realizing that Caiden and Zander are fine flowing through my veins, I am riding a high that even Cam can’t bring down. More than just relief is flooding my system though. For the first time in a long time, I am full of confidence. That premonition was terrible, but if anything good came from it, it would be the b
etter understanding of myself and my powers that I now possess. Before I was afraid and unsure of them, now I have seen them used and I know they can be terrible, but I also know they can be useful.
By watching myself learn how to use them in that premonition, I taught myself in the present. I can toggle between the real world and the world my power opens as easy as breathing. I can sense the men outside my door just as easily as I can sense Cam standing right in front of me. I quickly and easily scour the men’s minds and read into their surface thoughts. From Cam all I sense is anticipation. He is glad that I have finally forced his hand and that he has a reason to punish me himself. These last few weeks have been torture for him, knowing that I was suffering, and he wasn’t the one inflicting the pain.
It’s nothing for me to channel deep enough into all the men surrounding me to control their entire beings. With a simple thought I order Cam to blink and he does without noticing anything amiss. I could tell him to stop breathing and he would. Or for his heart to stop beating. Anything I want.
I freeze all of the men outside the door to ensure I get some privacy in this room with Cam and a huge grin pushes against my cheeks again. Cam, not knowing how outmatched he is, smiles back and gently brushes the back of his hand across my cheek bone. I taste his intent before he even twitches a muscle, but I don’t move.
I stay perfectly still as he pulls his hand back and then, quick as a striking snake, smashes it into the same cheek that he was just stroking. My time in this hell hole has increased my pain tolerance, while also allowing me to learn to control my reactions to pain. So, when he looks back at my face, I know for a fact that he does not see anything, and my smile never falters.
“Cam, baby, I think you’ve underestimated me.” I purr as I stand and take a step closer to him. For the first time since I’ve known him, fear flashes across his face. He recovers quickly and replaces the fear with amusement, but he wasn’t quick enough.
