I still miss my old life.
Most of the time, I suffer for her. For Kismet.
But overall, it does feels nice not having to heal or kill anyone. Less eventful… but still nice. I’d forgotten what it felt like to be normal. I’d say I feel free, but I don’t know what freedom is.
I sigh and turn on my night lamp, giving up on sleep completely for the moment, and look over the stack of books in the corner of my small apartment. I’ve become an obsessive reader. The books I own range from light fiction to ancient Greek philosophy, with everything in between. I’ve also become a fan of epic fantasy. There’s nothing like dragons and swords and a noble hero on a deadly quest to distract me from the loneliness.
Right now, however, I need something that provides a more powerful distraction. Then my eyes fall upon the dilapidated old notebook that lies by the side of my night lamp. Why the hell not? I would write.
My writing is shitty, but it keeps me busy. Most importantly, it preserves my sanity. My ennobled literary creations consist of the chronological examination of all my kills.
The man who had killed his father.
The serial rapist.
The 24-year old runaway girl who was a heroin addict.
The prostitute.
All of them flash through my head and into my wrist as I scribble new details, new emotions, new things I notice from the scene due to the sharpening of my memory, that I had not noticed before. They pass by me, film-like, from first to last until eventually my last death appears….The innocent paramedic.
Fuck you, Benedict.
It was him who planted the idea of guilt in my mind. Now it has taken root and it’s destroying my conscience from the inside out. The more I think about my previous life with The Children of the Sun, the more I hate everything about it and everything it represents.
What we do is wrong. We’re not God. We don’t get to decide who lives and dies. Benedict was right. It just took me killing an innocent, running away from the tribe, and starting a whole new life to realize it.
Writing is the only way I can delve into my fucked up reality completely and also escape everything around me at the same time, as strange as that sounds. If I don’t write, I’ll end up losing my mind and killing myself. I just know it. I think about killing myself a lot, but then I remember Kismet and the sun-shaped scar on my back, and it makes no sense to take my life. I didn’t fight so hard to survive just to end up killing myself.
So I don’t. I just hold on.
Plus, I have that debt with Morgana to settle. She’ll never forgive me if I die before she cashes in.
I want to write down a particular painful memory that got ahold of me a couple of hours ago and that I haven’t been able to shake from my mind. I sit on my mattress, take the pen and the old notebook that is falling apart from its seams, and start putting down thoughts to paper in my sloppy, rushed handwriting.
I write about Kismet, about how she abandoned me, and how I think about her every single day. I scribble furiously, and the pen makes sharp noises as it digs into the paper.
I miss her so much.
I also hate her fucking guts.
I hate her as much as I love her, if not more. I write for I don’t know how long, until I throw up all the bile in my brain onto the paper. Then I stop and put the pen and notebook aside. It feels like I’ve just lived through it, even though it happened six months ago. Thinking about it still hurts so much.
I shut off the light and lie down on the bed again. Someday, when I’ve managed to build a normal life for myself, I’ll make sense of everything I’ve written. I’ll even try to make sense of my damn life—how’s that for a goal?
I toss and turn around restlessly in my bed for a few more minutes before relaxing. Writing helped, like I knew it would. It always does. Even more than books, even more than epic fantasy books, even more than the most epic of the most fantastical of books… My thoughts trail off, and I’m falling asleep when, suddenly, I hear a gentle rapping on the window.
I stand up instantly, the hairs on my arms prickling up. Have they found me at last?
No, that’s impossible. My scar is fullproof. Or at least, Morgana said it was.
Relax, Daniel. It’s probably just the wind.
I hesitate, then lie down and close my eyes. I’m dozing off slowly when again I hear the rapping, this time louder. I jump up and stare at the window, my muscles tensing, ready for a fight. But there’s nothing outside except the trees, their branches moving in the wind. The wooden frames creak as I open the window.
“Who’s there?” I whisper. My neighbor has his porch light on, but that can hardly be considered strange. There’s no one outside. I breathe out… I’m being paranoid again.
Then I hear a soft, silky voice whisper in my ear. “Hello, Sun-Child.”
I slam the window shut and run toward the door, silently cursing Morgana and her stupid black magic and her ineffective rituals, but I’m stopped dead in my tracks by the sudden apparition of a small, blonde woman. She smiles at me with her pink, full lips.
“Easy there,” Her blue eyes gleam with mischief. “We’re not going to hurt you.” Her voice is girlish, like a child’s, but she’s definitely not one, judging by the curves of her body.
“Who are you?” I say, taking a step back. “Who is ‘we’?”
She just giggles.
She’s not a Sun-Child, none of our kind has blonde hair, and she’s too small and flighty for an Immortal. She doesn’t look dangerous, but underestimating her would be a mistake. She’s barefoot, and the only piece of clothing she’s wearing is a baby-blue flowing tunic with a hemline that stops a little above her knees. She’s astoundingly beautiful, and as white and pale as snow. If she’s not a Sun-Child and not an Immortal…there’s only one thing she can be.
“You’re a witch.”
She smiles. “I was wondering how long it would take you to figure it out.”
“Don’t tease him, Virginia.” I spin around to face whoever said that and see not one, but two other women inside my apartment, right beside the window. They’d gotten in without making a single noise. “I’m afraid we have frightened him terribly.” The tall one says.
One of the women is short and curvy, with dark, wild eyes and curly auburn hair that falls to the middle of her waist. The other one, the most beautiful of the three, is statuesque, with light-green eyes almost cat-like in shape, crimson red lips, and wavy, pitch-black hair that cascades down to her shoulder blades. All of them are unnaturally pale, like every witch I have met.
“How the fuck did you find me?” I’m supposed to be protected from witches detecting me. If the ritual didn’t work, I’ll go back to Minnesota and strangle Morgana with my bare hands.
The girly blonde, Virginia, giggles again and skips over to the tall one’s side. “Temper, temper.”
“Language, rather,” the tall one says, her upper lip curling. She looks into my eyes, and I’m spellbound to her green irises. “There’s something curious. My, my, my…” she says, laughing softly, making me feel deeply uncomfortable.
“What is it, Isabella?” the curvy one asks eagerly, her voice low and mellow, like a cat’s purr.
“This boy here is a runaway.” Her eyes shimmer. I glare at her, all the muscles in my body tense.
“We won’t harm you, boy,” she says, waving a white, thin arm through the air, as if she could release the tension in the environment with it.
“I’m going to ask this one more time,” I say, lowering my voice and finally breaking eye contact. “How. The Fuck. Did you find me?”
“Can’t three witches welcome a new neighbor to town?” The tall one says.
“You’re about six months late.”
She ignores my comment and holds out her hand to me. I look at it warily.
“You must kiss it,” she says, sounding annoyed. “That is the proper way of greeting the leader of a clan of witches.” I never had to kiss Beatrice’s or Hilda’s or Alice�
�s hand, not even Morgana’s, and I definitely don’t want to kiss hers. But so much could be avoided through this simple act of politeness that I take her hand and kiss it quickly. It smells of flowers, and the skin is cold, but soft.
“My name is Isabella, and this is Virginia and Veronica.” She waves her hand over to the blonde witch and then to the curvy one. “We are the Witch Clan of Rickshaw Forest.”
There’s a moment of silence in which I don’t know how to respond. I’ve never heard of witches living in forests, let alone a clan of them. “Excuse me if I sound ignorant, but what are witches doing living in the woods?” I finally say.
“We are nature witches, boy,” Isabella says. “Our powers are as natural as the trees that surround us, and we are as free as the wind that blows through our hair.”
“I’ve never heard of nature witches.”
Virginia sighs. “More and more of our kind are moving into cities to work for either The Children of the Sun or the Immortals. They get rewarded handsomely, but the price they pay is way too high.”
“How so?”
Isabella gives a slight shrug of her shoulders. “If a witch isn’t surrounded by nature, her powers become corrupted,” she explains. “Many of our sisters become involved in dark magic, which is the most dangerous of all.”
I become intensely aware of the scar on my back.
“Nature witches possess the most beautiful and most pure magic of all,” she continues, her voice clear and riveting, like pebbles rushing down a stream. “It is the magic closest to our true essence.”
I look at the three of them. They are the most beautiful women I have ever seen. Nature is also beautiful, but savage and untamable. I make a note of this and remind myself not to trust them just because they’re beautiful. Especially because they’re beautiful.
“Well? Aren’t you going to introduce yourself?” Veronica says, breaking the silence.
“I’m Daniel Maze,” I say simply. I don’t see the need to use my alias with them, since they’re not human. “And I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to insist on the small matter of ‘How the fuck did you find me’ before continuing our delightful conversation.”
Isabella arches an eyebrow. “I didn’t expect you to be so coarse.”
I stare at her, unblinking.
She sighs. “Very well. I assume you know quite a lot about our powers.”
“I know enough.” I knew about triads and visions, and swords with engraved dragons and scars shaped like suns.
“So you know that witches can sense things?”
I nod. The best ones, like Beatrice, knew how to see into the future.
“Well,” Isabella says, smiling mischievously. “We should have sensed your presence the moment you arrived in Rickshaw, but we didn’t.”
I swallow once, and put up a mental barrier around the image of my scar and all the moments in my memory relating to it.
“All right, Daniel,” Isabella says, smiling. “I’ll back off. Besides, now that I’ve met you, I can tell I’ve been missing out.” Her eyes flicker up and down my body.
I look away, slightly embarrassed.
“We want to extend a friendly welcome.” Virginia says. “You shouldn’t take it lightly, witches don’t make friends easy.”
“I wonder why.” I say, and she laughs. Virginia looks at Isabella, and her laughter dies mid-air. Isabella’s glaring at her. I clear muy throat. “Would you ladies like to sit or something?” I motion to the only piece of furniture in the room, which would be the mattress.
“Thank you, love, I believe I will.” Isabella says. She sits down on the edge of the mattress as daintily as she had held out her hand to me. Veronica follows suit, more roughly than Isabella, but Virginia walks over to my stacks of books and starts scanning them.
“You said this was a clan,” I say, sitting down in front of them. I still feel tense, but not as much as before. “Where are the rest of you?”
“I see we have got ourselves a curious little fellow here,” Veronica purrs.
Isabella pouts her lips before she speaks. “Nature witches are known to live in pairs, or trios at most, to avoid beauty contests and fights over stolen lovers.”
“Sounds nice.” I say, not really knowing what to say.
“Our beauty grows with every passing century, wouldn’t you agree, Daniel?” She says, batting her lashes. Suddenly I take in her green eyes, porcelain-like skin and statuesque amazonian body. She’s a lesson in perfection, and more ethereally beautiful than any woman I’ve ever seen. I feel the embers of desire slowly alight within me.
“Why Montana?” I ask.
“I am old, Sun-Child,” Isabella says. “Older than you can imagine. There was a time when these forests were greater and fuller of magic than anything you have ever seen. I live here with my companions because the trees are special, even if they are only the remnants of what once was, and shall never be again.” Her eyes pierce into mine, drawing me into them. I shake my head, freeing myself from her gaze, hesitant to become spellbound once again.
“Why are you a runaway?” Veronica asks me.
“Wow. You’re direct, aren’t you?” I say, running a hand over my hair.
“It’s only fair to ask you questions if we’re answering yours.” She grins.
I look at the floor for a moment before I answer. “I don’t want to kill or heal anyone anymore,” I say. It’s a half-truth… just like what Benedict gave to me a lifetime ago. “I don’t think I should decide which humans get to live or die.” And I especially don’t want my powers to evolve, which is the other reason I don’t use them anymore. Nothing can happen if I don’t use them.
“A Sun-Child forfeiting his mission?” Virginia says, leaning her chin into her hand. “Now that’s something I haven’t seen before.” She giggles.
“I don’t see why that’s so funny,” I say, irritated.
“Please forgive Virginia,” Isabella says with a snide. “She’s a new witch and has not learned to behave herself yet.” She shoots Virginia another glare, but she’s already staring at the floor, defeated.
“How do you manage to not take life?” Veronica asks a little too enthusiastically.
“I don’t heal,” I say. “That way I don’t lose life-force and don’t need to feed to recover.”
“So it does work that way,” Veronica muses. There’s silence for a moment.
“The sun will be up soon,” Isabella says, looking out the window.
“Yes, I can smell it in the air.” Virginia closes her eyes and takes a deep breath.
“You’re learning quickly,” Isabella says simply, and Virginia smiles at her, adoration written all over her face.
“We must be going now, Daniel Maze.” Isabella coos. They stand up and walk over to the window.
“Why?” I ask. I don’t remember Beatrice having any qualms about daylight. It’s not like they’re vampires. But then again, did I actually ever see Beatrice or any of the other witches leave Agartha during the day? I can’t be sure. I also met Morgana during the night, and even then, all the curtains were shut tight.
“Daylight burns our skin,” Veronica explains. “The Ladies of the Night are not friends with the Sun. Well…not usually.” She winks at me before jumping out the window, and Virginia follows her without another word.
“Will I see you again?” I blurt out to Isabella, not even thinking about what I’m saying. I blink a few times, surprised at the sudden longing I feel.
She gives me one last playful smile before answering. “You know where we live. Call out for us with your thoughts only, and we will come.” I blink and she’s gone. I’m all alone in my empty apartment again, like it was all a dream.
I sigh deeply and sit down on my mattress again, processing everything that just happened. With a pang of longing, I suddenly realize this is the first time I’ve hung out with anyone since I left Agartha. And they’re witches. With them, I can be myself.
A strange excitement grows in me. I
think of Isabella, and feel that squirming sensation in the pit of my stomach. I haven’t felt any type of…attraction…for any other woman since I left Kismet. Not until tonight, when I saw her.
I lie down on my mattress, my head spinning. Could I possibly be moving on with my life? I try to rein in the giddiness. Maybe I’m moving too fast. Maybe I should be more wary of them, but it’s hard to be wary when, for the first time in months, I don’t feel so lonely anymore.
A few minutes pass, and the rays of the sun seep through the window and into my room. I sigh heavily, feeling the warm rays touch my skin, caressing my arms and face and neck as only sunlight can.
Running
It’s a beautiful summer Sunday, and since I have nothing better to do with my life, I go for a jog in the park after eating some breakfast at the local diner. I like to jog and get lost in the rhythm of moving without really doing anything else.
However, what I really want to do is run as fast as I can until the heat radiating off the cement burns the soles of my sneakers, like it used to sometimes when I ran through the streets of Seattle. That last part was a little painful, but running at that speed… what a rush.
But that isn’t an option. Not with so many people around who could spot a human-sized blur running loops through the park. I could go and run in the forest… but it’s so far away.
So jogging—and daydreaming—around the park it is.
My body starts heating up after a while, and I can feel the beads of sweat running down my back and the sides of my face. I focus on my breathing and keep going. The sun shines through the cracks in the tree leaves. I jog through the path under knotted branches, and the sunrays touch my skin, leaving it warm and pulsing with energy.
It feels nice. The sun…the trees…the energy, everything. Not indecently pleasurable or voraciously overwhelming… just nice.
Nice is good.
I keep going until my shirt is soaked through with sweat and I’ve run at least four loops around the rather large park, and finally slow down when I reach the entrance again, and start walking.
The Sun Child (The Sun Child Saga Book 1) Page 11
