Besides, she knew these woods like the back of her hand.
It took her an hour to hike from the forest to the one highway that ran into town and another twenty minutes to trot quickly across the bridge stretching through the gorge and reach the main part of town. But home was a further five miles across town. When she limped into the local bar looking for water, a chorus of “Katy-girl” met her at the door. She looked up to see Boris and Sam manning the bar at their usual stations. They toasted her with their half-consumed bottles of beer.
With stiff legs she walked to the bar and leaned on the counter.
“Trip,” she groaned aloud, “I’m dying.”
The diminutive bartender, a gnome and excellent brew master, gave her a wry glance. “Up in the forests again.”
“Yes, but not for what you think.”
“Really now?” said Trip while pulling on a tap for sparkling water—her favorite.
Gratefully she accepted his offering and swallowed the first gulp to say glumly, “Really, I wish I had been aura-gazing. Rose stranded me in the forest. Again.”
Trip shook his head in distaste. “That girl really needs to learn that a queen first serves. She canna rule without it.”
His thick Irish brogue was showing through.
“It’s what I’ve been telling her for years,” said Katherine eagerly. Out of all the townspeople, Trip was one of the few that didn’t worship the ground her sister—and for that matter, her mother—walked on.
He shook his towel at her. “Well, tell her harder. Now off with you. Young ladies don’t belong in bars.”
“If I can stand on my own two feet I belong here,” she countered. She hated that. By witch standards she was old enough to order hensbane, a toxic plant so lethal it was a Level 5 coven-controlled substance. So standing in a liquor-serving bar was child’s play.
He sighed. “Aye, lass, but for tonight it is not your place. Now go home—your mum will be worried.”
She nodded and turned to limp off. From behind her she heard Trip call out, “Ryan, take Katy-girl home!”
She turned to protest that she didn’t need the police captain’s help, but he had already eagerly accepted.
As she looked up into Ryan Moning’s face, she glared. He shrugged on his coat and held the door open for her. Katherine had known since she was five that the man had a crush on her mother. She knew because she had started reading auras like road maps when she’d encountered her first crush in grade school. That same crush had pushed her into a pond and laughed. But not for long. She smiled at the memory of his feet freezing in the shallow water. He had been stuck for hours. After that little push of power from her, he had left her alone, and she had considered them even. But she held the grudge against Moning still because it was just gross. Hell, her father had still been alive then!
Sighing, she got into the passenger’s side of the town’s police car and irritably stared out the window at the passing buildings—the town hall, the main library, the fireman’s station, until finally nothing but trees met her gaze. Firmly she ignored his attempts at starting a conversation until they came to the gates of the queen’s house.
Quickly she opened the door when the car stopped. “I can make my way from here, thanks for the ride!”
As he was protesting, she slammed the door and hustled through the wrought-iron gates.
She didn’t bother turning around as she limped forward in her dirty jeans, carrying the paintball gun. She knew he was still there. Once his headlights had fully receded into the dusk, she was able to relax.
Night had fallen. The moon shone as it rose in the sky and she walked the mile-long driveway in perfect contentment. This was her domain. The outside. The clean air. The night sky.
As she reached the door, which swung open without a touch, Katherine wondered what excuse Rose had given their mother this time.
No servants met her at the door. They didn’t have any. Her mother insisted on doing everything themselves, or magically, if possible. Everyone was responsible for their own mess. Which was all fine and dandy, but Katherine didn’t have the domestic powers that most of her family did. The one time she’d tried to fold the laundry with a wave of her hand, she had ended up bursting the water pipes and setting the carpet on fire. Her magic was different. Darker. Which was why she did her best to never use it. So while Rose and the queen were away on town duties, it was Katherine that ended up washing her own clothes, folding laundry, scrubbing the toilet, and picking pet dander out of the carpet.
As she walked into a sparkling home, she knew her mother had spent the afternoon cleaning. Which meant she’d waved her finger and wiped all the dust away, twitched her hand and dispelled the odor as well as the grime, and waved her arm to straighten all of the furniture.
It was good to be queen.
As she dropped her bag and her gun at the foot of the staircase, she yelled for her mom. “Mother!”
“In the kitchen!”
Taking off the paintball vest, as well, she dropped it with the other stuff.
“Mother, Rose—” Katherine complained, but stopped short.
Because when she entered the kitchen two things met her senses: the smell of cinnamon buns fresh from the oven, and the smirk of her sister leaning against the counter in a fresh new outfit with ribbons in her hair and not a smidgen of blood on her.
Katherine glared and said shortly, “Rose trapped me in the forest and took off with Derrick and his friend.”
Rose quickly snapped her head over to her mother who was busy bending over the stove. “What Katy didn’t tell you was that she deliberately sabotaged me. We were supposed to be a team!”
“Team,” Katherine gasped. “You were too busy with your tongue stuck down that idiot’s throat to realize the meaning of the word ‘team.’”
“Girls!” snapped their mother as she turned around and tossed her apron in the closet. “Inside and sisterly voices, please.”
Eyeing Katherine, she continued, “Katy, go upstairs and get cleaned up. Dinner’s almost ready.”
Katherine stared at her mother with her mouth hanging open. “What about her?”
“She’s already clean.”
“I mean what are you going to do to her?” she whined. She couldn’t help it. She wanted justice.
“Your sister and I will talk.”
Katherine couldn’t stand another minute. She rushed back to the stairs.
From the kitchen, her mother called, “Dinner in five minutes.”
“I’m not hungry,” shouted a disgruntled Katherine from halfway up the stairs.
“Good,” said Rose from where she had followed Katherine out to lean against the base. “We’ve got company coming over and you eat like a cow.”
Fists clenched, with one last parting shot Katherine yelled, “Well, at least I’m not a stupid whore.”
Rose flipped her luscious curls over her shoulder as an evil smile crossed her glossy, ruby-red lips and she sauntered up the stairs. As she passed Katherine, she whispered in her ear, “At least I’m not a prude.”
Katherine stared after Rose while a noxious mixture of envy, resentment, and anger filled her heart. That night she thought of all the things she would say to Rose the next day, all the comebacks, all the retorts she wanted to speak to her hateful older sister.
She never got the chance.
Rose was dead the next morning.
Read the full story of Accession: Sarath Web #1 today.
PENTIMENTO
( a dystopian fairy tale )
Cameron Jace
www.CameronJace.com
Edited by Jami Hampson
Copyright ©2013 Akmal Eldin Farouk Ali Shebl
All rights are reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author.
Other Books by Cameron Jace
The Grim Diaries Prquels Series
The Grimm Diaries Prequels 1-6
The Grim
m Diaries Prequels 7-10
The Grimm Diaries Prequels 11-14
The Grimm Diaries Prequels 15-18
The Grimm Diaries Main Series
Snow White Sorrow (book 1)
Cinderella Dressed in Ashes (book2)
I Am Alive Series
I Am Alive
“The only real alien planet is earth.”
J.G.Ballard
Merriam-webster’s definition of pen-ti-men-to:
An underlying image in a painting, as an earlier painting, part of a painting, or original draft, that shows through, usually when the top layer of paint has become transparent with age. From pentire, to repent.
1
Iris Beaumont wondered if the boy she had a crush on was one of the Beasts. Although he was seventeen, he didn’t look his age. He was a hunk, more tall and slender than most boys, with a body of a twenty-four-year-old athlete. His eyes were a sparkling blue, like late night ocean waves under a full moon. Naturally, he owned a demanding voice, and he was the school’s best steelball player. All nine yards of clichés in one boy. Colton Ray was just too good to be true. He had to be one of the Beasts.
Iris, his total opposite, was dangling her bare feet from the edge of the principal’s rooftop. Munching on a chocolate bar, she watched him walking gracefully in the schoolyard, as if he were king of the world. It was a fabulous scene. Real, yet dreamy. She let a sigh escape her lips and took another bite. The worst thing about this was watching the queen bee, Eva Washington, holding her king’s hand then kiss him briefly as they strolled on.
“We really shouldn’t be up here,” puffed Zoe, sitting next to her best friend. She was trying not to look down or she’d get dizzy.
Iris didn’t reply, chewing slower on the chocolate, imagining it was Eva screaming between her teeth.
“Do you have any idea how much trouble you’re into already?” Zoe began her parental speech. “You always skip class and risk being expelled while you know it’s our last year before college,” she counted on her fingers. “Last week you left school, manipulating the security robots somehow. And now you drag me up here, right above the principal’s office, to watch Colton. He doesn’t even know you exist, by the way.”
“Don’t you think he deserves better?” Iris discarded Zoe’s advice. The best way to make their friendship work was not taking Zoe seriously.
“Better? Are you kidding me?” Zoe said. Iris saw her fight the temptation to look down and double check on the most beautiful couple in school. “She is one of the most gorgeous girls in the school.”
“Is that all boys look for in a girl, beauty?” Iris let the chocolate melt on her tongue. She suddenly wished she was a fire-breathing dragon that could devour Eva in one jealously-filled bite. It wasn’t a wicked thought. Iris would never hurt anyone. She just liked Colton immensely—even when she suspected he was one of the Beasts. If he’d only notice her, she’d show him she was a special girl.
“Not all boys,” Zoe said. “But most of them.”
“I don’t think boys are shallow or narrow-minded,” Iris said. “It’s just that they’re made to think a beautiful girl is what they need. Look at Colton down there. Is it only me who thinks he is pretending he likes Eva? I mean, she does all the talk and he is smiling like a statue. It’s as if he is some kind of politician. He isn’t really happy with her. He is just pretending to be.”
“I hate to burst your bubble, Iris,” Zoe said. “But you’re saying this because you’re jealous of Eva. You secretly wish she’d disappear. Poof in the wind.”
“Or she’d be taken by the Beasts,” Iris said spontaneously.
Zoe shrieked immediately. “How could you say that?” her eyes darted sideways, making sure no one heard her friend.
Iris turned to face Zoe with the bar of chocolate between her teeth. Her eyes were a little moistened. She’d suddenly realized the predicament of her words. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that. I didn’t really mean that I hoped Eva would be taken as a Bride for the Beasts.” The chocolate bar fell in her lap. “You know I don’t like to keep my thoughts trapped inside my head. I just say what I feel.”
“But that was mean,” Zoe, always playing Iris’s seventeen-year-old mother, folded her arms, even though she didn’t even like Eva. But such a wish was beyond ethics. “The last thing any of us wants is to be taken by the Beasts. Isn’t it enough that one of us has to be taken every once in a while, and we can’t do anything about it?”
“I’m sorry, mommy,” Iris rolled her eyes. Apologizing once was politeness. Expected to keep apologizing was stupidity. “It was just a slip of the tongue.” She gazed up at the metallic skyscrapers in the distance, watching them thrusting through the sky like daggers. The sun was unusually high, splaying its rays upon the silvery city. Iris didn’t know why she didn’t like her city. Still, whenever her eyes darted upwards, she couldn’t stop looking. She suspected the Beasts lived somewhere up there in the clouds.
“Don’t you dare distract me by looking so dazed and confused at the city like you always do,” Zoe pulled her head gently down.
“I didn’t mean that either, Zoe.” Iris said. “You know I just get distracted when I look up there.” Although Iris was a citizen of The Second United States of America, she couldn’t help but feel like a stranger in a strange land.
“Then don’t look up when I am talking to you.” Zoe commented. “You know that…” she stopped suddenly to Eva’s pitched laugh from far below. Eva had a lingering voice that boys, and some girls, liked a lot. Zoe pretended not to be a fan, but she was. Most girls wished they could act as elegantly as she did.
Iris gazed back down at Colton and Eva, the happiest faces in school. They were like movie stars, always surrounded by their fans. This time, Iris tried to be honest with herself. Eva was beautiful. The kind of beauty that Iris never wished to possess, because if she did, she’d be self-conscious and scared to look in a mirror in case one simple feature changed a tiny bit. Iris had noticed that about most beautiful girls when she met them in the bathroom. Although they usually ignored her, she noticed how the slightest misshape in their faces was like the end of the world, leading her to wonder if beauty was some kind of a curse.
“So do you think Colton is one of the Beasts?” Iris snickered.
“He is definitely a sexy beast,” Zoe giggled, adjusting her glasses.
“And you think I’m horrible,” Iris giggled back. “But I don’t mean it like that. You know what I mean.”
Zoe shrugged and leaned away from Iris. Although best friends, it was ironic that Zoe preferred to stay out of trouble. “He can’t be a Beast,” she whispered, her eyes darting around again. “No one has ever seen the Beasts. No one, but the Council.”
“Do you really believe that?” Iris wondered why they were whispering. Did the Beasts have eyes and ears in the sky? “I mean, maybe the Beasts want us to think they’re invisible. Maybe they live among us, disguised in beautiful boys, like Colton.”
“Can’t be,” Zoe shook her head. Although she liked to follow the rules, she couldn’t resist talking about the mysterious Beasts who ruled The Second United States. Actually, most teenagers were curious. But only a few like Iris brought up the subject without fear. “If the Beasts could manipulate their image in any way, they wouldn’t need to take a girl from us every now and then. It’s very obvious they are hideous looking. They might have the technology that saved the planet and provides us with all our needs, but we don’t call them Beasts for nothing.” replied Zoe.
“That’s my girl,” Iris smiled. “Although I’m not sure I agree with you, once you let go and say what you want, I like you more. You have to practice being pissed off and expressive like that often.”
Zoe adjusted her glasses. “Do you think so?” she said.
Iris nodded.
“I’m afraid boys like Colton won’t like me if I express myself,” Zoe said. “My mom told me so.”
“Boys like Colton,” Iris sighed. “Won’
t like us either way.”
Iris and Zoe stared down at Colton and Eva kissing in the middle of the schoolyard. Watching them, the two best friends began sighing in unison. Iris envied Eva for tasting Colton lips, and imagined hers on his instead. Her only distraction was watching Zoe on the verge of clapping and applauding Colton’s performance. It was a long kiss, and almost everyone around was witnessing it. Such an entrancing scene.
Suddenly, in the middle of this, something terrifying happened.
A horn blared in the distance.
2
The horn was extremely loud. It was heard all over the city, as if a giant burped in the sky. But its loudness wasn’t the only scary thing about it. What the blasting of the horn meant raised goosebumps on every seventeen-year-old girl’s skin in The Second.
Iris watched Eva and Colton’s lips part, as a dreadful look dimmed Eva’s face. Iris’s too. She stared back at Zoe with wide eyes. Zoe looked like she was going to faint, and Iris’s heartbeat sprang to the roof. It was the horn they all feared. They called it the Call of the Beast. One miserable and unlucky girl was going to be Called right now, and never seen again.
The horn was always followed by the beeping of everyone’s phones. Iris watched Zoe’s hand shake while holding her vibrating phone. The beep was a message with one of the girls’ IDs. The one girl the Beasts were going to take tonight. It was said that the Beasts liked to call her the Bride.
Zoe shivered, pulling the phone up to eye level. Iris heard the other girls’ phones beep down in the schoolyard. The beeps never came at once. There was always this slight delay between beeps, as if to make sure the tension never died. Finally, Iris’s phone beeped.
Dark Roses: Eight Paranormal Romance Novels Page 138
