by Kade Cook
Don’t ever let your guard down—a lesson she learned long ago from her instructor who now tries very hard to gain control over his laughter. He struggles to seat himself upward enough to lean upon his right elbow but remains rested on the ground.
“Do you secede?” she voices once more in a louder yet confused tone.
Catching his breath from his sudden fit of laugher, Matthias composes himself finally. “Yes, yes. I concede.”
Gabrian retreats from her spot, taking two steps in reverse out of his immediate reach just in case it is merely a ruse. She maintains her correct fighting stance but keeps the tension in her muscles buzzing. The rush of the quick battle has managed to burn up some of the anxiety that she has been holding onto and it feels wonderful.
“Where did that come from?”
She relinquishes some of her rush with his question, her exhilarated joy of victory slipping from her face. “What do you mean?”
“Umm, the attack that just happened—the no surrender, not retreat, kill mode you just displayed.”
“Oh, um.” Gabrian disarms her senses and brings her arms up to hug her torso tightly.
Gathering himself up off the ground, Matthias dusts off the evidence of his defeat and stumbles toward her, wearing a warm smile. He catches her immediate cower and recede back into her shell, scolding himself for making her feel awkward. She had reached out to him. Ah, I am such an idiot!
“No, no, I mean that was impressive. You have always had the techniques down pat but until today, I had never seen the fire of battle in your eyes before.”
She looks up through her long dark lashes, unsure of what to think but then she sees his eyes—his warm hazel brown eyes and all that is reflected in them is admiration for her. Even his loosely kept mind’s voice utters nothing but replays images of her coming at him like a weathered warrior of time.
“It was incredible.”
Watching Matthias bound around with childlike enthusiasm as he recounts the details of her attack is more than she could take and the dam of laughter breaks within. From the center of her shoulders, all the pressure that had been mounting there is gone as she feels the bubble burst. It had met its match as she begins to join in, a ton of weight lifted with it and her heart light again. Even the savage thirst seems to be subdued enough for her to enjoy this moment. Allowing herself to relax, her arms drop and hang loosely at her sides, but she fidgets with the string on her pants, picking at its frayed end.
“Oh, well,” she exhales, “I guess I just got caught up in the moment.”
“Indeed, you did. But do you want to know what I think the reason was?” he offers, letting the words slip over his impish lips.
Sensing a wise crack comment surfacing, she prepares herself, a tickle fluttering in her chest at the rekindling of their friendship. “Okay, what? Please enlighten me with your ever-insightful wisdom.”
His crooked grin grows with a sparkle in his eye and he edges closer to her but maintains a respectful distance now that their match is at a truce. “I think you just missed me.”
“Oh, is that right?” Gabrian retorts, playing it off as a friendly jest but there is a shard of truth weighted upon each word. There once was a time when things could have been different—much different.
“Mmmhmm,” he finishes, his gaze meeting hers with final resolution.
She chuckles nervously at his candor, enjoying his refreshing spirit but in truth, he was on to something. All she knows is that a small portion of weight has vanished, the dread of seeing him again dissolves in the laughter and for this she is grateful.
“So, tell me something,” he says.
Gabrian’s body instinctively shudders at the statement. “All right.”
Matthias feels her sudden retraction of joy as her aura switches around her, the light flowy wisps of grey that had been playful and lazy, spark and twist, almost cloaking her in a protective shield. Not wanting to place anymore tension on their moment, he decides to leave the question and answer period for another day. “How do you feel about a run?”
Gabrian releases her breath, not realizing she was holding it in. “Oh,” she says, happy of the question.
“Feel up for it?”
“Umm...”
“Or do you have somewhere else that you need to be?”
She searches over her shoulder. The thoughts of the dark barren ground from her nightmare flashes in her mind. She shakes her head, trying to rid herself of the image. “No, I am good. A run sounds great.”
“Great, I figure since you outright kicked my butt on the battlefield that I would try my hand at running. At least there I might have a chance at keeping up with you.”
Gabrian rolls her eyes at her friend and gives him a playful shove as she pushes past him. “Ha! In order to keep up, you need to be able to catch me first,” she prods, bounding into a trot, and heads for the footpath beside the stone Magical institute that leads to the main campus and out onto Main Street.
Matthias squints his eyes, allowing his delight to show on his face as he sports a toothy grin and huffs with pleasure. “Hey now, that’s not fair.”
“Nothing in this life is fair,” she yells back at him from the edge of the stone building. “You just have to know how to bend the rules.” The words fly off her tongue before she knows it. Even though they make perfect sense about the world around her, they aren’t her words. They are an echo of logical reasoning that was used on her by her friend, her father, in order to convince her that it was all right to feed from the light.
Her minuscule moment of peace has passed. With this slip of the mind, her world begins to crash once more around her—the hunger, the cravings, the guilt of stealing life essence from her clients who gave it up helplessly. Gabrian’s body, even though is made for running, at this moment is faltering. Her need to expel the pent-up energy driving her crazy inside and the sheer exhaustion she feels from the lack of sustenance causes havoc within her vessel.
Any reserves Gabrian has are waning and her sudden burst of adrenaline she used to annihilate Matthias is nearly depleted. Hearing Matthias getting closer, she struggles to push herself to maintain her pace. Her body is working but she has to focus all she has to convince it to continue.
With a tug at her ponytail, Matthias passes her, wearing a sly grin of success. She forces her mouth to smile but her eyes cannot be convinced. Her feet know the rhythm of the road but she feels them grow heavier against the pavement beneath, catching on small pebbles within her steps and dragging down her motion.
“How are you doing back there?” Matthias shouts at her from across his shoulder.
“Great! Super!” she lies.
Matthias hears the sarcasm and normally would laugh it off but he can sense that she is off. Especially since Borrowers are renowned for their strength and regenerative abilities, the strange lack of energy seems definitely wrong. “Do you want to take a break?”
“No.” She huffs, lying again. It has only been a couple of miles out—this would have been just the warm up for the real run but today it feels like the last league of an impossible journey.
“Okay,” Matthias replies, watching her struggle, and only running a few more steps he stops dead.
Gabrian continues on for a couple of beats past him but ends her charade as soon as she realizes that he is no longer in motion. “What’s wrong?” she puffs, secretly grateful for the break.
“Just a cramp,” he says, rubbing the side of his leg.
Her brows twist at this odd reply. “Borrowers don’t get cramps, do they?”
“Apparently, they do,” he lies and pretends to continue rubbing at the culprit muscle in his leg. “We are not machines, you know.”
She laughs, pressing her hands on her hips, and struggles to breathe without her lungs straining to take in oxygen—still questioning the validity in his claim.
“I just need to walk it out. Okay?”
“Sure, okay.”
They reverse the direction o
f their journey and the only sound is the crunching of sand beneath their shoes. But the silence isn’t awkward. It never is between them. Maybe it is a Borrower thing but there is always sound. Not audible to the ear but a buzzing, a type of white noise that does not allow for awkwardness. Whatever it is, it is comforting—to the both of them.
“So, how are things?”
“Things, are good. Great.”
“Hmm.”
Gabrian’s eyes jet across to him but they don’t linger.
“And the Shadow Walker?”
Gabrian’s mouth curls upward at the edge, revealing the humour in his question. “Still in the picture.”
Matthias waves his hand across his chest and snaps his fingers. “Just my luck.”
She bumps her shoulder into his mid-side playfully.
“And how are you?”
“I am fine, like I said.” She glances up at him but turns away. Her eyes gaze out into the distance ahead of them and pretends to focus on the signs of town just ahead.
“I see. So, wearing dark circles under your eyes is the latest fashion then?”
She sighs, remaining silent to try and find an answer.
“Because, you know they really do bring out the blue in your eyes.”
Her lids close for a moment as she gathers her courage to begin to talk. “I haven’t been sleeping well.”
“Oh, and...”
“Or, thinking straight or...” Her voice catches in her throat as the flood gates of her emotional control head to a breaking point. Every word released from her mouth is another crack in the levy. “Or...”
Matthias slows his pace even more and then stops. His hand reaches out for Gabrian’s arm and he clasps her elbow tenderly. He doesn’t pull, but just the heat of his hand against the flesh of her arm causes her to stop. She hesitates to look at him, keeping her focus on the town ahead of her.
“Gabrian, please.” Her eyes stay glued on the “Welcome to Bar Harbor” sign, refusing to waver. “Before anything else, I am your friend. You know that, right?”
She nods in acknowledgement of his declaration.
“You can talk to me. That is what friends do.”
“I know.”
“Well?”
She presses her top teeth along the edge of her bottom lip, folding it beneath her bite. Her vision becomes blurred from the wetness pressing across her lashes from the corners. She does not want to look up at him, does not want to have to meet his supportive brown eyes with her own that are about to lie to him, again.
She wants desperately to tell him she is not eating right, that the dark sustenance of energy that she is to survive on tastes vile in her mouth—that it is painful to ingest and that she is nearly starving herself to death because she cannot stomach dark energy since she awakened from the nightmare of her father kidnapping her and attempting to kill her. Not to mention the fact she is daydreaming of sampling small strings of life essence from her own clients, a buffet of scrumptious morsels, just ripe for the picking.
“It’s just nightmares. No big deal, I am just tired.”
Her friend gives her a smile but it was much like hers—not reaching his eyes, a sign he is not convinced—but he drops it knowing she is not sharing with him the whole truth, and he will not push her. He just got her back but he will make sure to be there when she decides to.
“Nightmares, huh?” He eyes her with a light-hearted nod. “Well then, the best cure for nightmares is to not sleep and the only fix for that is an expresso.”
She looks up at him and sighs, happy to know her friend is letting her away with the lie, unchallenged.
“And the only place that has that cure for that is back in town. So, what do you say we head back and stop by the Coffee Hound for a fix of that whole nightmare thing?”
Her body expels a nervous chuckle at his cheesiness and she welcomes the relief.
“To the Coffee Hound it is then,” Matthias cheers, and pushes his fist out, pointing toward the sleepy town ahead.
“To the Coffee Hound,” Gabrian breathes out, a faint smile haunting her lips. She cannot tell him the truth. Not yet; she is not ready to see the way he may look at her. Not today. Today is just the first step to mending bridges that were broken.
Maybe tomorrow she will tell him the truth and see if he will still help her.
Maybe.
21
AWKWARD ENCOUNTER
AFTER WEEKS OF PUSHING herself through trying workdays then rushing home to finish her evenings with Shane, not to mention the occasional rendezvous with Matthias to wear down the intensity of her cravings through sparring, something dawned on her—she is not being a very good best friend to Rachael.
Rachael has been nonchalant about hinting she would like to spend some time with her but Gabrian never seems to have time to spare. Thoughts of concealing her newest tribulation of being a defective Borrower is mentally tiring. Every time Rachael enters her office to bring her a file or a message, her once illuminated smile that naturally hangs on her face does not seem to be as bright as it used to be—beginning to weigh heavy on Gabrian’s conscience and riddling her with guilt.
Sucking in a lungful of air, combined with a moment overloaded with self-loathing, Gabrian pushes herself forward out of her chair and toward the door then quickly opens it before she can change her mind.
Hearing the click of the latch as the barrier between them is breached, Rachael glances up from her paperwork and grins politely at her friend.
“Hey.”
“Hey.”
“Can I see you for a moment in my office when you have a second?”
Rachael’s brow wrinkles in her confusion, clouding the normal sparkle in her appearance, but disappears as quickly as it appeared.
“Yeah, sure. I’ll just be a minute,” she says, lifting her pen to signify she had something to finish first before she could join her.
Gabrian nods and slides back into her office, closing the door.
Moments later, there is a light rapping on the outside of her door as Rachael edges it open and peeks in around the corner. “Is now a good time?”
Gabrian waves her hand to gesture entry and quickly jumps to closing remarks in order to engage her exit from the current phone call she is on.
Rachael steps inside and turns to close the door behind her. Standing idly by the opening, her aura switches around—an obvious sign of discomfort as she waits. Ending her call, Gabrian’s eyes land on her distant friend, watching the aura tattle on her emotional state. She calls out to her own energy and settles its desire to flare out in the awkward state of confrontation. Rachael fidgets with her long crimson curls, and Gabrian sighs, saddened by her friend’s unnatural shyness and hesitation. The old Rachael would have bounced her way across the room and landed herself onto the long chaise, snuggling up into the oversized pillows along the back. But today she is not that Rachael and it’s all Gabrian’s fault—they both know it.
“Well, don’t just stand there. Come in.” Gabrian chuckles and rolls her eyes playfully at her friend. “You’d think we barely knew each other.”
“Well, I...” Rachael begins to speak, struggling to put one foot in front of the other as she closes the distance between her and the chaise.
“I know, I know. I haven’t been exactly what you could call welcoming lately.”
Rachael’s eyes sparkle in the light when she finally sits down at the edge of her seat but it is not because she is elated about being here, it is the film of tears that glossed over her vision about to escape down her cheek. Seeing this slices at Gabrian’s heartstrings and reinforces the heftiness of the already weighted guilt that is torturing her from inside. “And I am so sorry that I haven’t been much of a friend.”
“It’s okay, Gabrian. I know that you have had a lot on your plate.” Rachael lifts her hand and wipes the dew away with the back of her hand, trying to smile.
“That is no excuse. I should be more grateful for everything you have done for m
e, for everything you still continue to do.”
Rachael’s face lightens a bit more and the clouds in her eyes seem to drift away from Gabrian’s tender confession. Her iridescent aura slows itself, no longer switching in an erratic pulsing flare as her shoulders lift—losing some of the burden they had carried on the way in.
“So, what’s up?” she asks, sounding more like her bubbly self, and sits back to fold her hands across her knees.
“Well, it is supposed to be really warm tomorrow.” Gabrian hesitates.
“Yes, that is what the man on the radio said,” Rachael offers, crinkling her nose in jest of her friend’s odd statement.
“And, if you will let me finish...” Gabrian scolds her friend’s sarcastic tone with a playful smirk. “I have heard a rumor that my fridge may have a shelf fully stocked with smiley pops just for such an unusual occurrence.”
Rachael’s face beams as the excitement of what meaning this conversation holds and she can barely contain her excitement. “Oh, really?” she retorts her face no longer hiding her joy.
“So, what do you say?” Gabrian leans forward in her chair and tucks her hands in under her chin, resting the weight of her head upon her elbows buried amid the pile of client files on her desk. “My house, around noon? I will even stop at the market to pick up some rabbit food for you.”
“Well, far be it from me to refuse an offer like that.” Rachael jumps from the chaise and bounds behind Gabrian’s desk in nearly one step to embrace her in a large bear hug that Gabrian does not resist. “You my dear, have a date.”
22
CHILLING EXPERIENCE
TWELVE NOON ON THE nose, there is a knock at the door. Scurrying down the stairs and out into the kitchen, Gabrian draws in a deep breath, grabbing something out of the fridge, then hurries across the wooden floor to reach for the latch on the door.
“This is going to be fun,” she murmurs to herself, forcing an unstable smile to appear on her lips. “It’s Rachael. She is your best friend. Be happy.” She exhales, pushing out all the anxiety that has been building inside her since their visit. So what if Rachael figures out that she is struggling with things? She will understand. She always understands. Pushing down on the latch with her thumb, Gabrian gives the handle a gentle tug and jars the door from its frame, allowing entrance to her friend.
