Souls of Fire

by Vanessa Black

  Handing her the cup of coffee he had poured for her, and pouring a cup of black coffee for himself, he sat down opposite her and thought about the best way to approach the insane subject they were going to discuss.

  Clearing his throat, he said,

  “You wanted to know why it’s so important to see Professor Wright. The first thing you need to know about him is that he’s the best at what he does; top of his field! Everything I know about the subject I teach, I know from him …

  You’re probably wondering if my class is even legitimate. It’s not a very common area, and I doubt there are many colleges that have classes such as this, but everything I teach has basis in facts, at least. If there’s a credible explanation to … any of it … Adam will find it.”

  Aaron paused for a moment, wondering how she would take his next statement. She might not believe a word he said. As far as he knew, she hadn’t felt a bond of any kind. Moreover, her mind may have repressed all the weird things that had happened between them, unable to cope with something it couldn’t understand.

  “We need to see him because he’s the only one who can make sense of what’s happening between us,” Aaron said, waiting for a response, any response.

  When Persephone didn’t say anything at all, but sat there looking confused about his meaning, Aaron continued with an audible sigh,

  “There’s something wrong with us … I mean … something seems to be happening to us … or …” He paused again for a second.

  “Listen, I don’t know what exactly is happening … or I wouldn’t feel the need to talk to Adam about this. All I know for sure is that I can feel something there … between us; a sort of connection, or … bond, if you want to call it that.”

  At the mention of the word ‘bond’, Aaron could see Persephone’s posture visibly change. Her formerly relaxed position had abruptly turned tense. Her eyes, bewildered and frightened, darted upward to search his, and flew away again instantly, as if she had been caught.

  Suddenly, Aaron understood: she knew! He couldn’t believe it!

  Here he was frantically fishing around for the right words so that she wouldn’t think he was totally nuts, and she already knew all along because she had felt everything he had. He was sure she had felt the same things because he could see it mirrored in her eyes. All of a sudden he felt foolish and upset.

  “You know!” he said in a deep voice, anger seeping into his tone.

  “You’ve known all along,” he continued, his voice incredulous, “and it hasn’t occurred to you to bring it up, even though I told you you’d think I’m crazy and asked you not to have me committed after telling you what you wanted to know?”

  “Just a minute, here,” Persephone huffed angrily. “How on earth should I have known that this,” her hand motioned back and forth between their bodies, “is what you were going to talk about? I thought you couldn’t feel it!”

  “Oh, I can feel it alright! It’s the only reason you’re still alive,” Aaron countered, his voice low and dramatic, letting the following silence make the words sink in even more. When he wouldn’t explain further, Persephone spoke after a minute, her voice slightly shaky,

  “What do you mean with ‘still alive’? Why on earth, wouldn’t I still be alive? You’re not making any sense!” Her voice sounded afraid, even though she clearly intended to act tough and untouched by what he had said.

  Aaron hesitated. He hadn’t wanted to broach the subject like this, so bluntly. But the anger and foolishness he’d felt had made him lash out at her in a harsh way.

  However, it seemed there was no way back now, after he had already made his dramatic opening.

  Letting out a long sigh, Aaron said,

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you! I … was just angry because I felt … well … like you had pulled the wool over my eyes, knowing all this time, and letting me worry all the while how I was going to bring up such a crazy topic. I realize, however, that you didn’t purposely keep it from me; and you’re right: you couldn’t have known what I was referring to. And had things been reversed, I probably would have kept my mouth shut as well.”

  Waiting for Persephone to give some indication that she understood and forgave him, Aaron only continued after a minute nodding of Persephone’s head in understanding.

  “Okay,” Aaron said relieved, “Now, what’s the last thing you remember?”

  “Well … I remember not going to classes … ah … because I was ill. The very last memory is lying in bed, feeling exhausted. I guess I must have just drifted off to sleep. Then, when I opened my eyes again …,” she paused awkwardly, apparently recalling the same scene Aaron was thinking of. She had awoken to his lips upon hers.

  “Well … you remember …,” she finished weakly, her cheeks turning slightly pink.

  “I have no memory of getting here, which is weird, right? I mean, I should remember how I came to be in your bed … room, I mean.”

  Obviously trying to hide her now glowing cheeks, Persephone lowered her face to the coffee cup she held in her hand, took a huge sip of coffee, and by the sound of it nearly choked on it.

  Aaron felt torn between bursting out in laughter and feeling sorry for her uneasy state. He vaguely remembered what it had been like for him at her age. He must have blushed just as easily in those days. Carefully controlling his features in order to make her uncomfortable moment pass seemingly unnoticed, he began to tell her what had happened.

  “I was lying in bed Friday evening,” he started, only to be interrupted by Persephone saying, “you mean this evening, you were lying in bed this evening,” she finished, evidently convinced it was Friday evening and he had used the wrong term.

  “This evening would be Sunday evening,” Aaron said with a significant look in her direction.

  “How can it be Sunday?” Persephone’s voice sounded distressed and incredulous. “I can’t have slept two days?” she said, the loss of time infusing panic into her voice.

  “Shhh, it’s alright,” he said in a soothing tone, reaching out to comfort her, placing his hands on her tensely interlocked fingers and gently prying her wringing hands apart.

  When he held one of her hands in his, the bond ― now noticeable only at certain moments and almost imperceptible the rest of the time ― sprang to life between them once more, no longer dormant.

  Across the small coffee table, Persephone and Aaron’s eyes met and held, each of them apparently feeling the overwhelming need to break through the impenetrable wall of silence that had sprung up between them at the touch of their hands, and each of them utterly speechless…

  Chapter 6 * Regrets

  Adam Wright paced nervously around his small, circular, cramped study, silently replaying in his head the phone call he had received only moments before. He didn’t like the sound of it. Strictly speaking, he had no idea what any of it had been about, but he knew his former protégé well enough to know beyond a doubt that trouble was on its way.

  And trouble hardly ever introduced itself, knocking politely on the front door. Trouble tended to crash right through the window, leaving no time to run for cover, and destroying everything in its path!

  He hadn’t heard from Aaron in about three months, ever since he had told him about the secret society called Haven. Actually, he had gotten the distinct impression off him that he hadn’t quite believed anything Adam had told him that day.

  Perhaps Aaron had even believed him to be quite deranged and in need of a strong dose of ‘happy pills’. Somehow, Adam couldn’t blame him. If their positions had been reversed, he might have had the same reaction. After all, who in their right mind would believe such nonsense!

  Since the Haven had been the last topic the two of them had discussed, and judging from the strained quality to Aaron’s voice, Adam couldn’t help but suspect that whatever was going on with Aaron must have to do with the society.

  Perhaps the clandestine guild had finally discovered the puncture in its carefully constructed, safe
little bubble of secrecy and confinement. A bubble that was now ― as far as the Haven was concerned ― leaking information about a world that shouldn’t even exist out into the open, into a world full of people unworthy of the knowledge they would obtain.

  For that was the way this organization thought about every other being who walked the face of the earth and did not belong to its ranks. Outsiders were nothing more than an evil that plagued the deserving members of the society. Without the outsiders, they felt they wouldn’t need to hide, wouldn’t need to live a lie, pretending to be everything they despised: ordinary.

  It could be only a matter of time, Adam gathered, before the Haven came knocking on his door, or more precisely, crashing through his window. When that happened, it would be too late.

  Too late to warn Aaron, who would be unsuspecting and unprepared, completely unable to comprehend the disastrous course of things ordained. Even if there had been time, though, Aaron probably wouldn’t be able to believe or accept the truth about himself. The truth about who he really was. The truth Adam had purposefully kept from him ever since he had stumbled upon it and upon Aaron himself.

  With a growing sense of unease in the pit of his stomach, Adam Wright carefully set down his unfinished pipe of tobacco and navigated around his favorite wingback chair, his hand brushing along the soft brown leather of its arm as he passed.

  He closed the easy distance from his desk to the opposite wall, sidestepping the piles of old leather-bound books haphazardly piled on top of each other and distributed around the room.

  Having reached the opposite circular wall which was covered floor to ceiling with rows upon rows of old books, he stood before a section that held ancient literature of little more importance than its being antique.

  The book he now stood gazing at intently had never achieved any recognition and its author had vanished in obscurity. It had a red leather binding and read “Elders” in bright gold lettering.

  Reaching out, Adam grasped the red book by its upper corner and carefully tilted it toward him. A soft clicking sound reached Adam’s ear just as a hidden entryway appeared as if out of thin air, the door ― still camouflaged with leather-bound books ― having swung inward when the mechanism released the lock.

  On the other side of the opening lay a very small circular room without a single window, solely illuminated by the little light that fled from the study into the small sanctuary.

  The room held only two objects at its center. One was a sturdy-looking hardwood table with a large rounded base and an equally large rounded top. The other was the object that lay on its surface: a large, very old and slightly glowing leather-bound volume. It was the most beautiful object Adam had ever set eyes upon. He had first beheld it in his very first year of college.

  He had been young and eager, full of life and hope for the future. He had been accepted into Oxford. All of his dreams were beginning to come true, he could do anything he wanted, become everything he had ever dreamed about. And he was giddy and euphoric and careless … and incredibly stupid!

  Years later, he would still think back to the night, the night so long ago, that had ended the life he had known and dramatically changed his notion of the future he had envisioned for himself and of the world he so foolishly had taken for granted.

  But it was too late to change any of it. If he were presented with a chance to go back to that ― to him ― single most important moment in time, the moment the wool had been pulled from his eyes, and stop the truth of what was to come from being revealed, he might actually do it. Although it would mean giving up the only thing he had ever truly cared about.

  But to reclaim his innocence and total ignorance of the terrible fate that loomed, to be able to behold the world as he once had, he would make that sacrifice. What good did it do to know what was coming if he couldn’t do anything to change it?

  He remembered that night as clearly as if it had been the night before. For years he’d dreamt of belonging to a fraternity at college. Then, the first week in Oxford, he’d overheard a small group of students talking excitedly to one another, catching the words ‘gathering’ and ‘at dusk’ while he’d remained hidden behind a large pillar in the cafeteria.

  There’d been no one else in the immediate vicinity, and it seemed they’d overlooked him standing there when they’d met on the other side of the pillar. The secretive way in which they’d stood huddled together, whispering in low voices while warily gazing about them, had given Adam the distinct impression that they must have been talking about a secret fraternity.

  Filled with excitement, and eager to check out this gathering for himself, Adam had decided to follow them to their meeting.

  Thinking he was in for a night of lots of beer and girls, and even more beer, he’d carefully shadowed the group to a small outbuilding on the premises. As he’d watched from behind a tree trunk, where he’d had a good view of what was going on without being seen, one of the group had turned to a wooden closet, opened the door and started handing out hooded crimson robes to each individual.

  Donning the robes they’d all walked up to one side of the outbuilding and started lining up behind … nothing. Adam had had a split second to wonder what the heck they were doing just standing there, when they’d suddenly seemed to disappear ― one after the other.

  Bending his neck even further around the tree trunk to see what was happening, Adam had been able to detect a trap door that had just been closing as he’d stood watching.

  He’d hurriedly run to the building, found another robe in the closet, thrown it on ― lowering the hood so as not to be recognized ― ,walked to the heavy trap door which had lifted after several tries, and dashed down the small ladder and along the earthen tunnel … straight to his doom.

  Following the long and winding dark tunnel that had seemed to slope down deep into the earth, and just barely able to make out his surroundings while having doubts eating at his determination every step along the way ― what the hell kind of fraternity was this, for Christ sake? ―, he’d finally arrived in a gigantic earthen room with a soft dirt ground, rough stone walls and high uneven stone ceilings.

  Hastily blending into a small crowd of onlookers standing to one side of the cave, Adam had been able to take in the full absurdity of the scene before him.

  The circular room had been adorned with five enormous brackets that hung around the wall and held large wooden torches which had been lit, giving off a warm, but certainly not welcoming glow.

  The large leather-bound volume now resting on the table in the circular room had sat face-up on the surface of a large ornately carved wooden book-stand, emitting a beautiful ethereal radiance.

  At first, Adam hadn’t been able to believe his eyes. What was that light coming directly from the book? Dismissing anything out of the ordinary, he’d then concluded that it must be some kind of new age article able to light up, and had merely been made to look really old.

  A circle of people had stood at the center clad in long and flowing crimson robes, their faces carefully hidden beneath their gigantic hoods.

  Right out of a cheap horror movie, Adam had thought, fighting back the urge to laugh out loud at the ludicrous cliché in front of him. Sensing, however, that this might not go down too well with the ‘clinically unbalanced’ facing him, he’d managed to suppress the urge and keep a straight face.

  Wow, Adam had pondered, this fraternity seriously needed a reality check!

  The group of wannabe horror movie stars had stood circled around something in the middle of the floor that Adam had had trouble recognizing at first … until it had moved a bit and uttered a terrified sound.

  At the center of the ravenous crowd had lain a pitiful little girl. Looking past the dirty state she’d been in ― her fine features smudged with blood and dirt, her long fiery mane mud-streaked and plastered to her skull ― and the ragged state of her clothing, it had been obvious to anyone who’d dared take a closer look that this girl of no more than perhaps e
ight or nine years of age was a rare beauty.

  Over the years her face had haunted Adam’s dreams nearly every night. Her eyes, the color of priceless emeralds, had looked up at him ― straight into his cowardly soul ― and forever burned into him the shame of not having been brave enough to save her from death’s greedy clutches.

  He’d stood rooted to the spot, unable to move an inch ― completely terrified and incapable of dealing with the surrealism of the sight before him.

  Within a heartbeat, the sharp blade he hadn’t even realized had been sailing through the heavy earthen air had come down on the girl’s delicate and exposed neck, sending her already slumped form crumbling to the ground as her beautiful shining eyes had surrendered their last tiny spark to darkness.

  That night, Adam had left behind a part of himself. He’d always believed to be a good sort of person, a courageous person; the kind of human being who would stand up for his fellow man, no matter the cost. He’d always fantasized about the heroic actions he would take if the need ever arose.

  But fantasies will suffer in the harsh light of day when reality intrudes and slowly pokes holes through one’s carefully constructed self-assessment.

  That was the day Adam lost all self-respect. How could he have been so mistaken in himself? How could he ever justify his cowardly behavior?

  It wasn’t so much about not having helped the girl, for even if he had attempted it, he was certain that there hadn’t been enough time to save her. The moment he’d realized she was going to be killed had already been a moment too late!

  But he couldn’t escape blame! For in the instant he’d recognized the terrible truth of the situation, he’d known he would not help her. He wouldn’t have wanted to go anywhere near the monstrous circle at the center. He’d known then what he truly was at heart ― a coward!

  Not a day had gone by since that he hadn’t tried to be braver, to be a man he could someday be proud of again … someone with the courage to do what needed to be done.