Sunburst (Starbright Series)

by Rachel Higginson

  I lifted my hand to wave at him, but he slammed his locker and stalked off down the hall before I could explain or apologize or anything. But what would I have explained? And I truly didn’t have anything to apologize for.

  This was so stupidly complicated and I had done it to myself. I needed to sort this out immediately.

  But first I needed to get to class.

  Chapter Five

  “Stella,” Coach Farrow called from across the field. We were running our warm up around the grass next to the one-mile track. I looked up but kept running, knowing she probably wouldn’t like it if I stopped just to talk to her. She was pretty intense, but I loved it. “Go grab the practice jerseys from the equipment shed for me.”

  “Alright,” I called back and set off to the other side of the field.

  Mead High School had a decent field and football stadium for a small farm town. Our jumbotron was only two years old, and our stadium bleachers were new this year. The field, also new, was laid just a few months before- shortly after Seth and I destroyed it in our last battle with Aliah. The school, news and town all blamed the destruction on a freak February tornado. We were lucky freak tornadoes were an actual thing in Nebraska.

  The locker room damage was blamed on that same natural disaster in combination with an exploding boiler. Or that’s how the human authorities explained all the melting metal. They were still renovating the locker room. But the fields had to be ready for soccer and track season.

  Sports was practically all we had for entertainment around here and everyone took them seriously. Football was the obvious favorite, followed by girls’ volleyball and basketball for both girls and boys. The spring sports were the most neglected, but track and field won over soccer easily.

  Soccer was, however, my favorite sport and Coach Farrow was a really good coach. When I first started they had assigned the librarian to coach us and she didn’t know the first thing about it. She wanted the extra cash and the school just wanted to fill the space. Farrow had stepped in the very next year; she was a substitute teacher and got her coaching certificate, so we wouldn’t have to suffer through practices consisting of reading the rule books three times in a row.

  The equipment shed was around the building on the grassy side of the school. I kept up my pace as I made my way over there. I passed the boys warming up and shook my head at Rigley and Tristan who were whistling and making odd animal noises at me. Their teammates caught on then, and soon I had the entire boys’ soccer team hollering at me. I laughed, thankful Tristan seemed to be back to normal.

  My cleats clicked across the red running track before I hit grass again. I slowed down once I turned the corner, out of sight from the field and the various teams practicing. Spring was by far the busiest sports season. The boys and girls soccer teams and track all shared the space after school. It seemed to work though, since the track team had been to state every single year since the founding of the school and the boys’ soccer team qualified for state last year. We were also state qualifiers but lost in the first round.

  That was changing this year.

  I yanked on the door to the shed. It was just a metal building that housed all the outdoor sports and PE equipment. It smelled like rotten feet and moldy jock straps, but it served a purpose…. I supposed.

  It was never locked during school hours because people were always in and out of it, but the door was a pain to get open. Good thing nobody could see me back here.

  I released some of my Light and used my natural strength to yank it. It flew open immediately and out with it came a surge of Shadows.

  I dropped to my stomach on reflex and covered my head with my arms. They swirled around me, looking like macabre bats that wanted to eat my face.

  They swooped down, low and menacing, but never touched me. I felt their momentum and the rustling of wind over my back as they flew back up in one, unified movement.

  Without thinking I rolled over to my back and kicked my feet out so I jumped into standing. I let my hands light up until I looked like I was holding two balls of fire, and then waited for the Shadows to return. I wouldn’t go on the offensive in the middle of the day, just around the corner from fifty students and coaching staff, but I would protect myself.

  Jupiter had been pushing me hard during training and it was starting to pay off. I could control my Light in segments and I could use the intensity of my Light more effectively. I was so going to kick ass this afternoon.

  The Shadows settled on top of the equipment shed. They took the shape of blackbirds, perched precariously on every edge. They looked down at me, waiting for something…. a command maybe? The smell of sulfur, like rotting eggs drifted around me; I was surprised that I hadn’t smelled it before.

  I waited, too. An instinct, deep and intuitive within me, warned that this was just the precursor to whatever was going to happen.

  And then the temperature dropped- drastically. A thin sheet of ice spread out across the metal of the equipment shed like layers of lace. The wind picked up, clouds covered the once bright sun and then the most ominous, light-hearted laughter drifted through the air.

  Seven.

  And Seth was at home by now.

  Suddenly she was in front of me, flesh and blood. Her long, wild, golden brown hair whipped around her face and back in the wind. Her golden brown eyes held no light or warmth, they were just…. dead. She was so beautiful, but at the same time not. She was like a rabid animal, there was beauty there, but there was also danger, impulsiveness…. There was no way to predict how she would behave or what she would do.

  Except, I did know what she wanted to do- she wanted to kill me.

  And she would do whatever she could to accomplish that.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked. It wasn’t my most inspired question, but there was this soul-deep fear robbed me of my smarter instincts. For some reason she terrified more than anything else- more than Aliah, or my future, or anything.

  “Just stopped by to chat,” she grinned. My back was pressed up against the brick of the school building and she was standing next to the shed. Her hands were clasped in front of her demurely but her black and white striped maxi dress flowed out around her legs in a wild dance with her hair.

  “How sweet,” I intoned dryly.

  Two Fallen thugs stepped around the shed to join her. I recognized them from Aliah’s gang. One’s name was Saul, but I didn’t know what the other’s one’s name. They were big, muscular and completely dark- as if they sucked all the light around them into their black hole of evil.

  “Did we catch you alone?” Seven asked mocking innocence so well that I wanted to give her an Oscar. “Where’s my adorable, little brother?”

  “Where you can’t touch him,” I bit out. I was terrified to be alone here, with the pure, raw evil that was Seven and her henchmen. I didn’t even have a weapon on me, not even a dagger or any kind of sharp object. I was completely vulnerable with only shin guards and cleats to protect myself. But I was happy Seth wasn’t here. I would gladly save him this trauma.

  Seven’s eyes narrowed and a flicker of impatience flashed across her face. “Tell me, Stella, is Seth still having his bad dreams?” I pressed my lips together and narrowed my eyes at her, wondering if she had anything to do with dreams. “He used to have them when we were children too. Only then, I was the one to comfort him, hold him while he slept, kiss the boo boos better. I was the one that he counted on.”

  I just stared at her, knowing she wanted a reaction from me, knowing I could not give her one.

  She walked closer to me like a tigress stalking her prey. Stopping just inches in front of me, I realized we were the same height. At different times I’d imagined her a tiny, petite little girl, weeping for help and then I pictured her towering over me, alive with all her dark power. She was neither- she was my size and destructible just like me.

  Up close I could see black veins spread out from under her eyes and down her cheeks like the thinnest kind of tr
ee roots. Her chapped lips displayed a cut in the center of her fuller bottom one. And there was a prominent bruise on the underside of her jaw. What was happening to this girl?

  We didn’t exactly bruise easily.

  The closer she stood to me, the temperature continued to drop, and I felt her malevolent evil all the way to my spine. But at the same time she still radiated this healthy glow of Light. She did not make sense and it only made my head swim, trying to understand her.

  “You look tired,” I commented. “Do you also have bad dreams?”

  Before I could protect myself, her hand had lifted and slapped me soundly across the face. Her sharp fingernails caught my skin as they dragged down in painful slices. I gasped at the sudden sting and felt the trickle of blood as it dripped down my chin and onto my t-shirt.

  She lifted her hand but only to catch my pony tail. Her hand grabbed fistfuls of my hair and yanked it hard so I was forced to look up at her, “What do you think, little Star?” Her voice rasped aggression. I was tougher than a hair pull, but her grip was so firm that I couldn’t extricate my head from her hands without losing handfuls of hair in the process. “Of course, I have bad dreams. Not quite evil… not quite good…. Seth and I have that in common, you know? There’s no coming back from either though. It’s only a matter of time before Seth sees the…. light.” She laughed at her own joke- an airy, tinkling sound, that under any other circumstances would have sounded pleasant. Then she trailed a long, bloodied fingernail over my exposed throat.

  “Seth is not like you,” I croaked out. “He will never be like you!”

  Her expression immediately softened- the exact opposite reaction I expected. Her scraping touch became light and gentle; she lowered her face even closer to mine. It was this side of her that terrified me more than anything else.

  “I just love that you care so much about my brother,” she cooed in my face. I could feel her hot breath wash over me; I could smell the mint of her toothpaste. “He needs people in his life to take care of him, to scare all the bad monsters away.” Her voice was a singsong of sweetness. I shuddered as I felt the bile rise in my throat. “It’s so sad that you don’t get to stay around. You’re probably the only person that could save him.”

  “Save him from what?” I gasped as her grip became tighter and her fingernail started to dig my jugular. My arms fell limp at my side. I could fight back- I would fight back. But first, I wanted her to talk as much as possible.

  “From himself,” she growled, her voice dropping low and somehow shrieking at the same time.

  “There you are, my pet,” Aliah’s deep voice called from nearby. “I’d started to worry about you.”

  Seven’s expression immediately softened but not before her nail cut the skin at my throat; I felt more blood as it dropped down to the collar of my shirt.

  “Hello, Aliah,” she called in a perfectly normal sounding voice.

  “Hello, Darling,” His voice was lightly accented and as I looked past Seven I could see he looked perfectly normal too. In a sharp navy-blue suit with crisp white oxford underneath and yellow tie, he actually looked more than normal- he looked amazing. Bastard. “Having some fun?” he asked, clearly sounding amused.

  “So much,” she grinned without taking her eyes off me.

  “Well, I hate to interrupt you, but why don’t you let the boys do the dirty work. We don’t want you losing that luminescent Light of yours, now do we?”

  As if in a trance, Seven’s eyes went vacant again; she shook her head carefully. My stomach churned with a violent nausea, and tears pricked at my eyes for her. I felt sorry for Seven! How messed up was that?

  She dropped me immediately and skipped to Aliah’s side- with a childlike quality returning at his presence. She latched onto one of his arms and laid her head against his shoulder, while I stood up and ran my hand against my throat, wiping the blood away. It smeared across my palm, and I had to assume, the skin on my neck too. My face still trickled blood from her scratches as well, and dripped into the corner of my mouth, coating my tongue with metal and salt.

  “Stella,” Aliah greeted me casually. “How lovely to see you again.”

  I didn’t say anything. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.

  Seven rocked back and forth next to him, clinging to his arm, but her eyes still remained trained on me. She looked so much like Seth, but so different at the same time. And there was something more to her than even her bipolar personalities let on. She was childlike and out of her mind crazy, but she was also evil and twisted. Still, there was something beyond even that.

  I just didn’t know what.

  Aliah picked up on my interest in her. “She’s special, Stella. Surely you’ve noticed that already.”

  “She’s a little bit bat shit too,” I mumbled before I could stop myself.

  Aliah broke out into a huge grin, pleased with my insult. “Such a lovely mouth on you, Starling. What would your parents think?”

  The same thing. But I didn’t say that. I needed to think of a way to get out of this, or at least away from the practices happening just around the corner. If coach sent someone to find out what was taking me so long, they were going to get pulled into this and I could not let that happen.

  So I did something that went totally against everything that I believed I was. I stomped down my instincts and swallowed my pride. And I ran.

  Or flew rather.

  I was off the ground in a moment. I shot upward in a ball of brilliant Light that I felt in every inch of me. My entire being became blinding Light; my breathing stopped for lack of need. My eyesight became like night vision as Light even swallowed my eyeballs. I was as close to my true essence as I ever had been before and I wasn’t naïve enough to believe there wouldn’t be a very negative impact on the atmosphere around me but my main concern was to get Aliah and his goons away from the high school. And maybe even me.

  I was somewhere else in a few seconds. I was moving too fast to figure out exactly where I was, but I was not over Nebraska, maybe not even over the US anymore. I loved flying with the wind, the cold air against my hot skin, the freedom and complete independence of the air. But not in these kinds of circumstances; now, I just felt disoriented and lost.

  And afraid.

  Something hit me so hard in the side that I was knocked off course and sent plummeting to the ground thousands of feet below. Because I was letting off so much Light, I wasn’t breathing and therefore couldn’t scream- even though I wanted to. Instead, the panic and hysteria ignited in my blood like wildfire, consuming every last inch of me so that I suffered in silence.

  The something I could now identify as a body- an aggressive body that wanted me to die- was unrelenting with his pressure, with his assault. I fought against him, arms hitting solid body, hands clawing at his tight hold. But he didn’t give up an inch.

  He was forcing me to the ground, and I was helpless to do anything but wait for the impact.

  Suddenly my body hit the hard earth; every molecule in me screamed with brutal pain. Dirt, rocks, the soft mud below surface level skyrocketed around us like we were a bomb that hit the ground. Fountains of gritty earth erupted toward the sky like mighty geysers; we dug into the earth as if we would become one with it.

  My Light faded as I flickered back and forth between human-form and Angel. Every single bone felt broken; every inch of my skin burned from the scraping impact. My head felt like it was split in two. I almost wished that it would detach from my neck, so I didn’t have to suffer a moment more of this agony.

  The Fallen that had taken me down slowly detached himself from me when the dust settled around us and struggled to his feet. I took most of the impact, but not all of it. He was suffering too.

  Good.

  His face was streaked with red dirt and his clothes and hair completely dust-covered. I assumed I looked just as stellar, but I couldn’t find the will to care. I couldn’t even find it in me to get up and fight this guy.

  My body
finally settled on human form as I sucked in a choking breath filled with polluted, dusty air. It immediately set me off coughing and sucking in oxygen to sustain consciousness. I was barely succeeding when he stumbled toward me and kicked me in the jaw.

  I was dug deep into the ground, propped up in a crater of my own making. When his boot connected with my jaw, my head snapped back and hit the corner of a rock before falling forward again. My head snapped back and forth like an elastic rubber band.

  Blood ran from my mouth now, too. I wondered idly if my teeth would fall out, and if so, would they grow back like my bones? Or would I be toothless forever?

  A hot stream of blood spewed from the back of my head, down my neck, soaking my shirt. He- Saul, I recognized Saul- lifted his boot again to wind it back for another swing. I tried to block it with my hand or at least soften the blow to my face, but my right arm was completely out of socket; I couldn’t even drag it around on the ground it rested on. It hung next to me, completely useless.

  Before I could even contemplate checking out my other arm, his foot connected with my neck this time. I felt my trachea compress in my throat. I couldn’t breathe for long, gasping moments as I struggled to retain consciousness and to breathe again.

  I discovered that my left arm worked well enough to claw at my throat, encouraging it to work again, fighting for it to open up and send air in and out of my lungs. Finally, after what felt like forever, I started to receive oxygen; they were painful, burning breaths, but there was no better feeling.

  Saul stood before me and unsheathed the sword he kept strapped to his side. The afternoon sun glinted off the silver blade, blinding me momentarily. He moved slightly so I could see his face as the sun lit up the horizon behind him, like a brilliant spotlight on all his evil deeds. He studied me in a detached, curious kind of way. And if I wasn’t already delirious with pain or half-unconscious, I probably would have had something very snarky to say.