“Hey you,” Jackie said as I approached.
I quickly turned my frown upside down, sulking like a kid I was, and met Jackie with a smile.
Jackie frowned, “Where’s the drinks? I mean, I don’t care, but I thought that’s where you went.”
“Uh…” I replied dumbfounded, “Yeah, I um, got side-tracked talking to some of the random people here.”
She nodded her head slowly. Jackie could see past my lies any day of the week, I swear.
“It’s so weird, though. There are heaps of juniors from other schools here.”
“Yeah, I noticed that,” Jackie said a little bit more relaxed. “Guess we are just super cool, they want to party with us.”
“That’s totally it,” I laughed.
Jacob spoke up, “You both realise I’m standing right here don’t you?”
Jackie and I looked at each other and burst into laughter.
“Sorry, babe,” Jackie said to Jacob, touching his arm in sympathy. “You’re not like the rest. You’re cool like us, you can stay.”
He laughed at her and pulled her under his arm. “What would I do without you?”
“Sit at home all day and play X-Box?”
Jacob rolled his eyes at Jackie and I smiled. Not just because how silly in love they were, but because it was nice to feel at ease, and to feel happy.
We stayed around the bonfire talking together and mingling with the other seniors. Jacob insisted on getting the drinks this time, joking that I might not return for hours if it was left up to me.
There was nothing better than the natural high we were on; the pure joy of finishing school and knowing that it was a chapter in our lives behind us, and we now had the rest of our lives to make it whatever we wanted.
Jackie talked about going off the University and visiting Jacob on the weekends. I tried not to delve too much into what I was going to be doing. I knew I wanted to go to Uni now, but what about James? I had no idea what my future was going to be. I wanted there to be a way we could be together. I wanted to follow him wherever he went, but I knew deep down that wasn’t a possibility.
Maybe the demons would lose interest in us? Maybe the creator would accept our relationship.
Then what? The other voice in my head said. You’ll ride off into the sunset and live happily ever after.
Maybe?
No, doubtful. The world was against us, heck, the bloody universe was against us.
In the end, it didn’t matter. I would fight for us. James would fight for us. Somehow, we had to find a way. I wasn’t ever going to give up on us or lose hope. I really do believe that some people were meant to be, and I don’t care what The Creator or the Moirai think, our relationship is meant to happen.
“You’re frowning, what’s up?” Jackie questioned.
I pulled my trance from the bonfire and looked at her. Jackie was alone next to me. Jacob was deep into conversation with someone he must have known, judging by his body language.
“Nothing. I’m fine.”
“I haven’t seen him,” Jackie said softly, “James.”
I shook my head. “Neither have I.”
“You miss him don’t you?”
I nodded my head.
“You never know,” she said brightly. “Things always have a way of working out. If it’s meant to be, it will be.”
I secretly chuckled inside. If only she knew.
Noticing our drinks were low, I offered to go get some more.
“Do you want me to come with you?”
“No, I can handle it.”
“Sure… See you in an hour’s time then, hey?” she joked.
“So much confidence in me!”
I smiled and started to walk away when Jackie called out, “Hey, Lila.”
I turned back to her. “Yeah?”
“I was going to say this earlier, but you’ve changed in the past few weeks,” she said watching me closely. “Not a bad change or anything. Just more confident about yourself.”
It was true. Although I had always thought of myself as a strong person, there were still things that rattled me, but I guess everyone has their own weaknesses that they could improve on.
Being with James had brought a confidence within in me, not just the body confidence I had now found, but in myself. I felt like I knew who I was around him. I was less concerned about what people thought and more what I wanted, and who I wanted to be. It was rather awesome, actually.
“Thanks,” I replied, “I feel good.”
“I’m glad. I want you to be happy. I know things haven’t always been easy, especially the last few weeks with your family, James and everything that was happening at school, but things can only get better from here. I’m just glad I was able to experience it all with you; good times and bad. You’ve been a great friend, Lila. I’ll never forget our friendship.”
“I won’t either,” I said, walking forward and hugging her tightly. “You mean more to me than you’ll ever know.”
She pushed me back laughing, “Now, go before I start bawling my eyes out. Stupid alcohol making me all emotional.”
I laughed knowing full well Jackie had barely even had that much to drink, “Yes, stupid alcohol.”
I walked to the drink table again, this time determined to come back to Jackie and Jacob with some actual drinks, but as I started filling the cups, I quickly realised the bracelet Hayley had given me was gone. My eyes searched around the grass at my feet rapidly.
I hadn’t taken my bracelet off my wrist since the day Hayley gave it to me, and now I’d lost it.
I wracked my brain trying to remember the last time I had it seen it for sure on my wrist, but I fell short, I couldn’t remember. I’d known I had it on when I came to the party, but that was it.
Maybe I dropped it somewhere around the bonfire? Or in the forest?
I looked towards the forest and remembered James pushing me up against the tree. I remembered vaguely feeling the scratching against my wrist.
Convinced it had come loose on my wrist, I retraced my steps back into the forest. When I reached the spot where James had kissed me, well, I hoped it was the spot. It was hard to tell in the darkness. I bent down and began brushing the ground with my hands, searching wildly that it had landed somewhere in that area.
“Looking for this?”
The hairs on my spine stood. I felt my stomach knot in a painfully sick way. It wasn’t the voice I wanted to hear. It wasn’t the voice I ever, ever, wanted to hear again in my lifetime.
I stood slowly from the ground, turning towards Noah. He’d always had a dark aura about him, but tonight… tonight, he looked pure evil.
He held my bracelet up with his hand, rolling it back and forth between his fingers.
“Very clumsy of you to leave it out here. Although, the question has to be asked, why were you out here in the first place?”
His voice was dark and sadistic. It scared me to the core.
“Why are you here?” I retorted, my voice a little more shaky than I cared to admit. I didn’t want Noah thinking he could control my emotions and body the way he was doing, and effortlessly it seemed.
Noah tilted his head to the side. “Finding your bracelet, of course. Are you going to come and get it?”
My body stayed frozen. Not even the tips of my fingers wanted to edge even a millimetre closer to Noah.
He frowned. The sinister smile that was plastered on his face disappeared. “Come and get it. Now.”
It was a demand, not a request.
My eyes tried to find someone, anyone that may be able to help, but we were alone, alone in the darkness.
“Are you playing games with me? I’ve asked you to come and get your bracelet. I won’t ask you again,” his voice was like ice, piercing the breath right out of me.
I was terrified, but I did as he commanded. I could have turned and run away, but I was scared. I was scared he could come after me. For all I knew, he’d had a few too many drinks. I wanted to be
lieve that as soon as I got my bracelet from him, I could get back to the party as quickly as possible, and that would be the end of me.
Fear can do a terrible thing to you. It makes you hold on to the impossible; hope that it is all in your mind and isn’t what you know is the truth standing in front of you right now. It makes you deny and ignore your gut feeling. You should run, but you don’t. You can’t explain it; you just do what is being asked.
In only a couple of minutes, Noah had stripped me bare of all sense of rationality and confidence. I was left exposed and vulnerable. I had rationalised in my mind that Noah wasn’t being himself and that it would be okay, even when my body was screaming bloody murder to run and never look back.
My body shook in fear and in shock as I walked towards Noah. I held my hand out, barely able to grasp onto the bracelet as I fumbled to put it back on my wrist.
“See? That wasn’t so hard was it?”
I stepped backwards, the sound of crunching leaves against my feet, a reminder of the tension that grew thickly around us.
I didn’t thank him, and I didn’t wait for a reply. Instead, I turned my back towards him, but just as my foot stepped in front of the other to get away from Noah, he called out my name.
“Not so fast. You have something I need,” his voice sounded deep and scratchy. It wasn’t like anything I’d ever heard before.
I spun around to look at him, against my better judgment, but only to have the vision of Noah slamming a tree branch against my skull…
I was still in the forest when my vision returned. Only I wasn’t in my body, it appeared, as I stood staring over my body on the ground. Blood pooled from my head. My body lay still in a tangled mess.
Noah met my stare when I looked up, fearful he was still with me somehow, and now more scared out of my mind when I saw Noah still standing there.
I could tell instantly by the stillness of the forest that I was in The Shadows. How, I didn’t know. The leaves on the branches didn’t move, and the music I could hear before coming from the party was gone. There wasn’t a single sound to be heard. How had I come to be in The Shadows with Noah? Was it because I was unconscious? I’d only ever been able to go there when I was around James.
James.
My mouth opened to scream his name, but Noah had his hand on my mouth with enough pressure that my feet stumbled backwards. He pulled my back against his chest and held me firmly.
He breathed me in loudly, “I’m going to enjoy this.”
I screamed against his hand. My attempts at escape were pitiful, his strength was like James, unbreakable.
“I can see why James was so enthralled by you.”
My heart pounded against my chest as that sickening feeling in my stomach turned hard.
“Struck a chord, have I?” he whispered against my ear as his hand stroked the curve of my breast.
With a clenched jaw, I jerked my body from his touch. My rigid muscles ached at the movement.
“You need not resist, Lila,” he said as he pulled my head towards his. “You cannot control this outcome.”
He pressed his mouth against mine with so much strength I felt my lips bruise under the impact.
The kiss sickened me in every way and I struggled against him. I wouldn’t ever kiss him back willingly, so I used a moment of opportunity to bite down on his lip, hard.
He pushed me off him onto the ground. My hands only just caught the fall as my body hit the ground.
His eyes protruded as his hands clenched into hard fists. “You’ll be sorry you did that,” he spat with teeth baring in outrage.
I crawled my hands along the ground, trying to stand. This was quite possibly the only chance I had to get away, and I had to take it. When I took the first couple of steps, my body bruised and broken, I yelled for James, but the moment my mouth opened, there was no sound. I yelled out again, but there was nothing but the deafening silence around me.
I tried to say something, anything, but nothing came out, not even a whimper.
My fingers trembled uncontrollably against my mouth as I turned back to Noah. I looked between my hands at the monster that had become Noah and screamed. I screamed with all the air in my lungs but nothing. My voice was gone.
“I’ll make a deal with you,” the wickedness in his voice had returned. “You give me what I want, and I’ll consider going gentle on you. I might even give your voice back.”
I looked at him in disgust. I was never going to let him have me willingly. I would rather die than give myself to him.
At the thought of dying, I looked down at my body, more blood had soaked the ground around my head and I’d become deathly pale.
If I died, I could escape this hell. Noah wasn’t the Noah I’d always known… he was a demon. I didn’t know if he’d been a demon all along, or he’d become one recently. What I did know was that if I stayed here with him, he would do the unimaginable to me. There were things worse than death in store for me. I wasn’t going to deny myself of that truth. Dying was going to be the only way out…
As if reading my mind, Noah replied, “Didn’t James tell you?” He laughed at my silence. “Secrets between a couple is never the key to a happy ending.”
He walked closer towards me. “You see, if your body dies while you’re in The Shadows, you’ll be stuck in it for an eternity… and I’ve got nothing but time.”
I shook my head at his words.
“So it doesn’t matter if you run now, all I have to do is wait for your human body to die, and by the looks of it, you’re just about there. It doesn’t matter how far you run or where you go, I’ll find you every time.”
The sound of hundreds of cracking timbers forced my eyes to look above. The blackened wings of a dark figure descended in sheer brute force that the trees broke under the pressure of the powerful wind.
A dozen branches hurdled themselves down towards their target; Noah. He screamed out a deathly cry as he was thrown backwards, as the timber collided with his chest.
James didn’t turn to look at me when his feet touched the ground, his wings remaining outstretched.
I tried to manoeuvre myself from behind his back, but his hand pushed against my body, forcing me to stay behind him.
His other hand outstretched and it was then that I witnessed the long steel sword in his hand. There was no leather handle. It was all steel, but the distant light shined against the cross guard. Words from an unknown language were engraved in it. One thing I knew for certain, it was a symbol of power… of war… of death.
As James stood in a protective stance in front of me, griping his sword tightly in his hands, I caught a brief look of Noah on the ground, but I couldn’t tell if he was moving or not, so I stepped quietly to one side, my knees buckling against my weight. I needed to know if he was alive.
Noah didn’t move. He lay motionless on the ground. The branches that had pounded him still lay on his body in a crumbled mess.
James’s posture remained tense and I knew Noah was still very much alive, if alive was even a word to describe what state he was in. I wasn’t even sure what he was….
I didn’t move from behind James and was thankful he was between Noah and I, as I watched in shock horror as Noah began to move. He picked up each branch from his chest, throwing them from him. They crashed into the surrounding trees with so much force I felt the ground shake under my feel. What he did next, something that cried demonic possession, terrified me. His body remained rigid and hard as he levitated from his laying position on the ground until his feet were flat. I heard the popping sound of the bones in his body as he was standing, tilting deliberately from side to side, reshaping his fractured body.
“James,” Noah mused, “that wasn’t very nice. I thought we were friends.”
James didn’t reply.
“Don’t sulk. I was only going to have a little fun with her,” Noah teased.
James’s grip on his sword tightened as his wings outstretched even further above him. “Y
ou are foolish to ever think you could take advantage of Lila.”
The fierce warning in James’s voice didn’t startle or unnerve Noah. In fact, he seemed to thrive off the hostility between them as he took a step towards James.
“Foolish,” he mocked. “Foolish! Lila wouldn’t be in this situation if it wasn’t for you, if it wasn’t for the love you can’t control for her. You were the foolish one ever to think you could continue your relationship with her without anyone taking notice. From the moment you took interest in her, we never stopped watching, even when you both pretended it had finished. Do you really think you could deceive us? Stupid ignorant bastard!” Noah laughed loudly. “Never to mind, though. We’ve got what we were after now.”
“You will never have her.”
“It’s not her we’re after, although it will be quite enjoyable killing her. It’s you we’re after. Lila is only the bait, my dear friend.”
With one hard and quick movement of James’s wings, he was in the air bearing down on Noah. James didn’t hesitate as he charged the sword towards Noah, thrusting it deeply into him. Noah didn’t have time to respond or react as the sword buried itself within him.
James didn’t let go of his sword as Noah fell to the ground, James standing over him without resilience.
I didn’t move. I couldn’t move. I watched as Noah held onto the sword above his chest, his eyes growing dazed and the light slowly disappearing. I couldn’t bear to watch. Even if Noah was now a demon, his body still looked like the Noah I’d known for so long.
When I looked back at James, he wasn’t near Noah anymore, but bending down over my body, his hand touching my bloodied head.
“Wake up, Lila. You need to wake up now!” James screamed.
I felt dizzy and disorientated when I opened my eyes. James was looking down at me, his hand still on my head.
I remembered what had just happened and quickly shot up, looking for any sign of Noah.
“Easy,” James cautioned, “I’ve healed you, but it will take some time to recover fully.”
My head spun as I caught his arm for balance.
Angels of Moirai (Book One) Page 19
