Sole: A Blue Novella (The Core Series Book 2)

by Combs, Teshelle

  SOLE

  A Blue Novella

  Teshelle Combs

  Teshelle Combs Books

  This book is purely fictional. All characters, names, places, events,

  traditions, and other material written by author is used fictitiously, even if such material exists in the real world.

  Copyright © 2014 by Teshelle Combs

  All rights reserved, including the rights of reproduction in print or online in any whole or partial form.

  Book design, layout, and other artwork by Nate Combs Media.

  Several brushes used in the design may be from brusheezy.com. Main brushes by Kimbahanne, Aramisdream, and Richard Thonet.

  Manufactured in the United States of America.

  ISBN-13: 978-1500718831

  ***

  To anyone who’s ever felt like no one is listening.

  You are not alone.

  ***

  Praise for Teshelle Combs’ novel

  Core

  “The vivid imagery, rich story, and interesting characters will leave you with one complaint; the sequel is not out yet.”

  “Combs’ writing is superbly descriptive and genuine. Her dialogue flows smoothly while offering a unique distinction to each character… Core is full of action as well. I love that Combs isn’t afraid to push the limits.”

  “What an amazing treat this was! It left me wanting more. I can’t wait to journey deeper into this fantastic realm created by one of the most gifted authors I have read in a long, long time.”

  “What kept me hooked was the originality of the novel. When you’re finished reading this book, you will be screaming ‘SEQUEL!’”

  “This is a book I will read many times. Money well spent! Looking forward to more work from this talented author.”

  All reviews from you, the real fans

  Praise for Teshelle Combs’ series

  The System

  “Combs writes bravely…With characters that steal your heart, a plot that keeps you guessing, and a romance that leaves you screaming.”

  “Nothing is ever clean or easy. People die. People kill. And people learn to survive.”

  “Her writing delves so completely into her characters that when you finish her books there’s an ache because you feel like you’re saying goodbye to real people.”

  “Dark but witty, devastating and yet full of hope, The System leaves an unforgettable impression on the reader.”

  “Exciting, intriguing plot and awesome characters, with lots of fun twists and surprises. The System would make an awesome TV series. Hope someone is listening. Time richly spent.”

  All reviews from you, the real fans

  One

  Door

  His mother painted his walls green.

  He sat on his bed, wrinkling the crisp sheets, watching as the paint dried. The shades changed from light olive to sea foam. He was supposed to find it comforting—reminiscent of the ocean, of the place where knowing began. But he found it to be…paint.

  She had it done while he was in their basement lab, working, as he did every day. One might have thought the interior makeover was meant to be a surprise, but that was not how Karma operated.

  “Do you like it?” Cale smiled, as he often did, and hovered by the open door. His dark hair was not so different than Cameron’s, but Cale stood more muscular, his easy demeanor more ready. “Mom said it had to be this color.” He still had paint on his knuckles.

  “It’s suitable,” Cameron said. His strong jaw and narrow nose might as well have been chiseled from stone. He showed nothing.

  Cale wrinkled his nose. “I knew you’d hate it.”

  Cameron studied his older brother—his relaxed stance, the way he leaned against his doorway. He had not invited himself in, because, even though he was a red dragon, programmed to fight and not to think, he remembered that Cam preferred his space.

  “How do you know what colors I like or dislike?” Cameron asked.

  Cale shrugged. “I didn’t think you cared about something as silly as color.” He pointed at the wall. “You just hate that she had us paint without asking your opinion.”

  Cam’s eyes, usually a deep, brooding blue, flashed and then calmed. Like a distant storm over the ocean. “It’s just paint.”

  “If you say so.” Cale moved as if he was about to leave, then turned back. “Hey, Cam, did you do the laundry yet?”

  “Of course. It was my turn.”

  Cale winced. “You left out Rory’s jersey, right? It’s the middle of the soccer season. Washing it is bad luck.”

  “Luck is an irrational construct. There’s no such thing.” Cameron’s gaze didn’t waiver. “I did the laundry. All of it. That’s the chore.”

  “I get what you mean. I think….” Cale sighed. “But you can’t tell Rory that. Just…be careful.”

  “Cale,” Cameron called.

  “Yeah?”

  “The door please.”

  And Cale closed it behind him.

  Cameron went to his desk and pulled out his text book. It was one of Gadamer’s philosophical endeavors: Truth and Method. The free time allotted to him between dinner and sunrise was meant to be for researching. His mother wanted him to better understand the human perception of the world, so he in turn could better understand how red dragons related to the human species. But he had other plans.

  He opened the old leather journal he kept hidden in his Gadamer textbook and ran his fingers over the sketching of the latest celestial pattern he’d been memorizing. He needed to know how the stars would align so he could conduct his experiment.

  Until his door flew open, leaving the hinges behind, smashing against the floor. It didn’t matter that Rory’s sandy hair and brown eyes made him look lighthearted, kind even. When he moved, he was like an animal, his enormous arms capable of flipping Cameron’s desk with little effort. The papers burst from their folders, the books colliding as Rory ran forward.

  Cameron knew what was coming. He wasn’t faster than his oldest brother, but he was smarter. He sprang onto the bed behind him, predicting and evading Rory’s lunge.

  “Get out of my room,” he said, trying to stay cool. Blood rushed to his face and neck anyway, tinting his skin a faint blue.

  Rory snarled at his brother, barring his teeth. “You washed my jersey,” he heaved.

  “I do my chores, Rory.”

  He charged again, but Cameron outsmarted him again, this time standing outside the closet.

  “You know it’s soccer season, Cameron, you know that! And you washed my jersey!”

  “Repeating yourself is a waste of both of our time.”

  Rory pointed a big, beefy finger at Cameron. “I’m going to hurt you this time,” he shouted.

  “No. You’re going to try.”

  Cameron sprinted for the door, predicting that Rory would aim for where he had been. Cameron was wrong. It hurt worse than Rory tackling him to the ground. Rory punched, Cam blocked, and to Rory’s surprise, the blue dragon shot one of his fists into his brother’s ribs.

  When Rory snarled and eased up Cameron tried to squirm away, but his brother was too fast, and his fist met with his brother’s face hard.

  Someone pulled Rory off and shoved him toward Cam’s door. Mac, the same hair, eyes, and build as his eldest red dragon son, pointed to the doorway. “Go cool off, Rory.”

  “He did it on purpose, Dad. He knew it would piss me off and he did it on purpose.”

  Mac took a deep breath, as if that would help calm his son down. “I said cool off. Go apologize to your mother for fighting in the house. We’ll sort it out later.”

  Cameron sat up on th
e floor, touched a hand to his bloodied lip as his brother stomped down the stairs.

  “No we won’t.”

  “Excuse me?” Mac asked.

  “We won’t sort it out. That was a lie.”

  “That’s enough of that,” Mac said, frowning down at Cameron. “Why do you do these things, Cam? You knew what would happen if you washed it. You knew he’d be angry.”

  Cameron looked at his fingers after he touched his lip, where the blue blood stood out against his skin. “It was my turn to do the laundry, so I did it.”

  “And you just couldn’t remember to leave the jersey out? You remember every element of the periodic table and you couldn’t remember that?”

  Cameron wanted to say that he’d learned the elements when he was three years old, when most red dragons were struggling with spelling their names, but he held his tongue.

  “You’ve got nothing to say for yourself? You know, Rory’s going to get in trouble for starting the fight. You’re going to let him take all the heat?”

  Cameron stared up at his father. They were nothing alike. Cameron and his narrow features, his cut jaw, his brooding eyes, looked like he should have nothing to do with his burly father.

  “I don’t mind getting in trouble as well. If that would make it fair.”

  Mac sighed and rubbed his forehead. “That’s not how punishments are supposed to work.”

  “I’m sure I understand the concept of punishment.”

  “Yeah, of course. But you don’t understand that you shouldn’t make trouble in the first place.” Mac stuck his head out of the door and bellowed for Karma.

  She walked up the stairs, wiping her hands in a kitchen towel, her deep blue eyes observing, analyzing, and concluding faster than Mac could open his mouth to explain why she was needed.

  “What have I told you about physical altercations, Cameron?” she asked in blue tongue, the shushed consonants softening the clinical language.

  Cameron kept his thoughts bottled in his head, still sitting on the bed, saying nothing. Anger was one of the things he wished he could eliminate. It got in the way of rational thought.

  “The question is not rhetorical, Cameron,” Karma said.

  Cameron swallowed past the lump in his throat. “Physical altercations are an unnecessary and vicious waste of time. Time is a commodity that is to be spent cautiously and intentionally on that which furthers intellectual prowess.”

  Karma narrowed her eyes at him. “I’m not sure your tone is one of submission and understanding.”

  “One could never be sure of something so subjective as tonal integrity.”

  Karma narrowed her eyes at her son and spoke in English. “Your punishment is as follows: attending the nest gathering tomorrow, behaving yourself as is called for, and apologizing to your brother.”

  Cameron felt a little like throwing up. “I object. That’s too harsh.”

  “I don’t remember you being deemed the parent. You cannot object.”

  “It doesn’t seem so bad to me,” Mac said, scratching his head. “He gets to go to a barbecue and throw a football around. Sounds like fun.”

  Karma patted her husband’s shoulder. “A punishment is only such if it is unwanted, Mac. Believe me, Cameron would not have minded being grounded from the event. Rory, on the other hand, is quite devastated.”

  Mac frowned at his son. “You don’t want to go, Cam? All your friends will be there.”

  Cameron scoffed in silence. A dozen reds boasting their manhood and feeding each other burnt meat? “I don’t have any friends.”

  “Well, you can make some.”

  “There is a very low probability that anyone at your red dragon herd gathering will want to befriend me. But it doesn’t matter. I’ll attend, as I’m required to. And I’ll behave, as I’m required to.”

  At last, his parents left Cameron alone. He touched his lip again, studied the blood on his hands a little longer, then stood and picked up the door his brother had torn off. He set it in its post, lopsided and unbelonging. Then he walked over to his bedroom window, opened it, and crawled out into the dark that midnight brought with it.

  He walked across the slanted roof as if he’d done it a hundred times, and then jumped down into the back yard. He walked a few blocks and was about to turn onto the street when he ran into someone, crashing hard enough for it to stagger him.

  A hood over her head, she gasped, cursed a little, and backed up along the sidewalk. She seemed surprised, as surprised as he was.

  “Cameron Anders?” Her brown eyes were wide, rimmed with thick lines of black mascara. She put her hands in the pockets of her gray hoodie. “I didn’t think you ever left the house. At least not voluntarily.”

  He didn’t say anything. He knew before long she’d take his silence as boring or impolite and go about her business. She’d never notice the busted lip or the bruised pride.

  Her ripped skinny jeans were tight against her legs, her usual heels traded in for combat boots. “Don’t tell anyone you saw me, okay?” She adjusted a lumpy blue duffel bag over her shoulder.

  Cameron wanted her to leave. The encounter was awkward enough since it was unsolicited. He never had anything to say to red dragons. And Myra O’Hara was red to the core. She and her twin sister often fought with the Anders brothers in the secret fight clubs. Yet, there she was. Trekking in the darkness. Alone.

  He was too curious to resist. “May I ask you a question?”

  She tilted her head at his unusual phrasing, at how his voice was at the same time quiet and rough. His face had always interested her. The sharp contours, the concentration behind his eyes. “I guess….”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Oh. I thought you meant like a real question.” She slipped her thumb under the strap of her duffel bag. “I’m running away from home.”

  Honest. And blunt. Cameron’s blue eyes narrowed as he observed her. Amusing. “Do you want me to stop you?”

  She sighed, looking over her shoulder at the way she came. “Kind of.”

  His voice platonic, “No, Myra O’Hara, don’t go.”

  She smiled, just a little. “Where are you going?”

  The personal question jarred him, but he tried to appear unphased

  by it.

  Myra pointed, each of her fingers adorned with a different ring, her fingernails in black. “Wait. Back up. Did I offend you just now?”

  “What?”

  “You hesitated. And then you put it behind you. I totally offended you, didn’t I? What did I say wrong?”

  Cameron shuffled his weight a little. He was going to miss the whole point of leaving the house if she kept asking him questions. It was especially unappealing, knowing she didn’t truly care to find the answers.

  She adjusted her bag again. “So what? If you just ignore me I’ll go away?” Her brown eyes grew sharp. “I’m serious. What’d I do?”

  Cameron decided it would be better if he just went, so he tried to move past her. She actually reached out and grabbed his arm.

  He stared down at her hand. Did she just touch me? “Did you just touch me?”

  She glared. “I thought you were supposed to be smart. You should know you can’t just walk away mid-conversation. It’s rude. Now…what’d I do?”

  Cameron examined her. She was insistent enough to appear genuine. “Blue dragons don’t usually ask personal questions, or questions that interrupt one’s train of thought, without getting permission first.”

  “Oh,” Myra said, putting her hands back in her pockets. “So what should I have said?”

  “Umm….” Cameron rocked back on his heels. “‘May I ask a question?’ Or ‘may I interrupt you with a question?’”

  “Okay. May I ask a question?”

  Cameron nodded.

  “Where are you going, Cameron?”

  “It’s private.”

  “Why?”

  “Because….”

  “You don’t know why it’s private?”
<
br />   “Of course I know. It’s for research.”

  Myra nodded. “Secret research. You dissecting red dragons?” She said it lightly enough. It was a joke.

  But Cameron’s jaw tensed, his temples pulsed. “That’s not funny,”

  he snapped.

  Myra blinked. “Oh.” She blushed, a slow red creeping across her alabaster skin.

  Cameron ground his hands into fists of impatience. “Aren’t you supposed to be running away or something?”

  Myra didn’t show that it hurt her feelings. Without another word, she walked past Cameron, her boots crunching along the lawn.

  Cameron felt his gut tighten. Annoying red dragon tendencies. Ridiculous overactive conscience. Most blue dragons would have thought it a waste of time to talk to the girl. Let her run away if she wanted to. But, he never could do away with the trickle of red dragon blood in his veins.

  “Hey, Myra, wait.”

  She walked backwards, stopping in front of Cameron.

  “I was rude,” he said.

  “Yeah, you were.”

  In red dragon society, he thought, one would make reparations. “Run away in this direction for a while.”

  She stopped. “You…want to hang out with me?”

  “No.”

  She frowned. “Then what?”

  “I want you to not run away.”

  She shrugged. “I run away all the time. At least once a month.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “You do?”

  “Yeah. I pack up all my stuff and take off. Sometimes for a few days. Once, I left for a couple weeks.”

  “Why?”

  “To see if anyone notices.”

  “And no one ever has?”

  She gave the smallest smile. “Except for you.”

  Cameron didn’t have a comeback right away. He was too used to being no one. “So this time you don’t run, then.”

  She grinned. It made her lighter, more alive, as if her whole self was waking up. “Oh, is that how it works?”