Savior (The Savior Series Book 1)

by Bradley, A. King

  “Don’t move dammit! Don’t move!” he shouted as he glared at Jason.

  They both were fifteen meters away from me. I could cover that distance in a single bound but I wasn’t sure if I could outrun the bullet.

  “Drop the pistol or lose the hand,” Jason ordered. His hands gripped the handle of the sword sheathed at his waist as he glared at the gunman.

  “Yeah, fat chance, ninja boy!” the gunman shouted.

  “The only person that will die if you pull that trigger is you. I suggest you drop it!” I growled.

  “Not gonna happen, pal. If I pull this trigger— when I pull this trigger, your friend here is toast!” He kept his eyes on Jason as he shouted at me.

  “I’ll snap your neck before the casing hits the ground!” I roared.

  “Geez, Reaper, could you back off a bit?!” Jason yelled.

  “Back off? For what? I can totally take this guy!” I was confused. I wasn’t sure if Jason was angry at me for butting in or if he was afraid that my interference would lead to him getting shot.

  “Yeah, and so can I! You’re stealing my thunder, man. Why can’t you just let me handle this?”

  “Handle it?! I’m trying to save your life!” I fired back.

  “Are you kidding me? Are you two really arguing over who’s gonna take me out like I’m not the one with the gun?!” the gunman exclaimed as he glared angrily at me.

  “You mean that gun?” Jason asked firmly.

  By the time the thug and I focused our eyes back on Jason, half the thug’s right arm was lying on the ground in a pool of his own blood still clutching the pistol. His eyes widened with horror as he raised the bloody stump that remained to his face. Jason's long headband fluttered in the wind as he stood motionless with his blood-splattered sword held before him. He had drawn the sword and severed the guy’s arm in less time than it took the thug to glance at me.

  Impressive, I thought as I watched the thug fall to the ground. I remember wondering who would win a one-on-one fight if Jason and I were ever pitted against each other. Sure I was stronger but there was no doubting that Jason was deadlier.

  My thoughts were interrupted by the blood-curling scream of the disfigured thug as he came out of shock. Within seconds, Jason was on his bike revving the engine. We both sped away as police sirens rang out in the distance.

  Minutes later, we were miles away speeding into the darkness and leaving the corruption of Knightsville behind us.

  “I’m sorry I lost my temper back there, bro,” Jason said, as I dashed alongside his bike.

  A wave of confusion washed over me as I continued to sprint. Until that moment, I thought our “argument” had been merely a diversion. Did Jason truly think that I was stepping on his toes by coming to his defense against an armed enemy?

  “It’s fine, Ace. No big deal,” I replied, nonchalantly. But it was a big deal. In the past, Jason had come to my rescue so many times that I had lost count. For the first time in our lives, the shoe was on the other foot and he had the audacity to feel offended.

  If he considered getting help in a fight an insult, why did he help me so many times? Was he insulting me every time he chose to come to my aid? Was I so weak that he just had to step in and save the day? Or perhaps he was so accustomed to that weaker version of me that he felt insulted that I would dare offer my assistance with a situation that he thought he had a handle on.

  Sooner or later he was going to have to accept that things had changed. I was the one in the newsreels and viral Internet videos around the globe. I was the one with the real power. He needed to recognize those facts and act accordingly— act as a sidekick should.

  Maybe I’m blowing this out of proportion, I thought as we raced onward. I ultimately decided to drop the issue as long as it didn’t happen again. Jason and I maintained radio silence as we both accelerated to over 100 miles per hour.

  28. LIQUID COURAGE

  OUR LATE NIGHT CRIME FIGHTING HAD DONE THE JOB. I had managed to curtail my blood lust by the time I made it home later that night. It was just before eleven o’clock when I walked in the front door but my mother was still awake and sitting at the kitchen holding a bottle of wine. I didn’t notice any nearby glasses so I assumed she had been drinking straight from the bottle. Her thin face seemed a bit more hollow than usual as she glanced in my direction.

  She didn’t say anything, just stared blankly at the space that I was occupying. I walked over to the kitchen sink, which was filled with filthy dishes. I rinsed out a dirty glass and poured myself a glass of water. I wasn’t really thirsty but I was compelled to hang around for a bit just until I was sure that she was okay. She could drink very heavily at times and I wanted to make sure she didn’t hurt herself as a result.

  “Where’ve you been?” she finally asked without turning to look at me.

  “I was just hanging out with some friends,” I replied, not looking at her either.

  “You’ve been doing that a lot lately,” she said before taking a swig of the wine.

  “It’s no big deal, Mom. I’m just finally starting to make some friends. That’s all.”

  “Is that right?” she asked, her voice dripping with sarcasm.

  I paused as I considered telling her about Monica.

  “Yes, that’s right. I actually sort of met this girl, too-”

  The sound of the glass wine bottle shattering brought my sentence to a screeching halt. I quickly faced her and was relieved to see that she was unharmed. The wine bottle that she had been holding, however, was in a million glittering pieces on the floor beside her.

  “You did what?!” she bellowed, her cold eyes glaring at me as though I had just mentioned an atrocity the likes of which she had never heard. “You can’t! You have to end it, Adam! You have to end it now!” she demanded, hysterically.

  “What’s the big deal, Mom? I’m almost 17! What’s wrong with me having a girlfriend?!”

  “Because you’re not right, Adam! Who knows what could happen!” she replied with a look of disgust on her face.

  “What are you so afraid of?! What aren’t you telling me?!” I demanded, yelling at her as loudly as I could. She cowered in fear as the rage within me swelled so intensely that I could barely contain it.

  It pained me to see her fearful of me. That heartache was the only thing that allowed me to calm myself. How could she be afraid of me? How could she think that I would ever hurt her?

  “You don’t have to be afraid of me, Mom. I’m still your son,” I said as I placed my hand on her quivering shoulder.

  She violently jerked away from me and scrambled to the other side of the table.

  “Get away from me! You are not my son! You-You’re a monster!” she screamed and bolted for the stairs before I could react.

  As she reached the foot of the stairs, she looked back at me with an icy glare. “You’re the reason he’s not coming back! The reason I’m all alone. I wish I had never found you!”

  She stormed up the stairs, leaving me behind wondering what had just happened. I didn’t know how to feel. I was far beyond devastated as the mountain of confusion and anguish overwhelmed me and brought me to my knees. How could she say something like that to me? Sure, she had been drinking, but from what I had heard, people often tell the truth when they’re inebriated. If the old adage about “liquid courage” was true, did that mean that she was serious when she said I wasn’t her son? What did she mean when she said she wished she had never found me? Suddenly my confusion matured into anger, my despair into rage. I had to leave and I needed to do it quickly. I knew that if I stayed for another minute I would demolish the entire building.

  In one leap, I covered the entire staircase and rushed to my room to stuff my backpack with a change of clothing. There was nothing left for me in that place. My brother was dead. My deadbeat father had been gone for days and my mother had just disowned me.

  She stood in the hallway as I exited my room. A hint of remorse flickered in her teary eyes as she st
ood in silence.

  “Where are you going?’ she asked, her voice quivering with guilt.

  I trudged past her without a word. It’s too late now, I thought as I stormed down the stairs.

  “Adam!” she shouted from the top of the stairs as I threw open the front door and left without closing it.

  By the time that she had made it to the front porch, I had already vanished. She fell to her knees and sobbed as I zoomed away into the night.

  29. ALONE

  I WAS RELIEVED TO HAVE 3D TO MYSELF FOR THE REST of the night. As I lounged on the large couch where Monica and I had watched the Travis concert, I tried desperately to focus on the action movie playing on the gigantic screen in front of me, but I couldn’t shake the questions that clouded my mind. How could she have found me? If I wasn’t really her son, whose son was I? Back in the junkyard Howie said he had something he wanted to tell me but he didn’t because he didn’t want to “overwhelm me.” I wondered if he knew something about my past that he wasn’t saying.

  He did seem awfully calm when he discovered everything that I could do. Was this because he already knew? The more I thought about it, the more my paranoia took hold of me. Before long, I started to question whether or not I could truly trust Howie or Jason. Sure, we had formed a team, but what would happen if one of us got caught by the authorities? Could I count on them to protect my secret if they were facing prison time? I was the one taking the real risk. If I ever got caught and the wrong people found out what I could do, I would be looking at something far worse than simply being thrown in prison.

  As I sank deeper into that depressive state, my mind wandered to the only thing that could lift my spirits. I grabbed the nearby phone and thought about dialing Monica’s number. I hadn’t spoken with her since the night that I saved her after she fell from the roof of the gym. Even though it had only been a couple of days since I last saw her, I could already feel the darkness within threatening to consume me. She was my last line of defense against the monster that I could someday become, but what if she knew? I asked myself as I clutched the phone. What would happen if she knew that I had the power to save her father and didn’t?

  “Then I would truly be alone,” I muttered answering my thoughts aloud.

  Yet I had to try. I had to do something to counteract the rage that fumed inside of me before I found myself rampaging through another city like the night before. Maybe I won’t ask to see her, I thought as I punched in her phone number. Just hearing her voice should be enough to lift my spirits. My hopes were dreadfully dashed as I heard her voice mail greeting. Instantly furious, I abruptly hung up the phone and dialed again. Then again, and again, and again, until I had called her over twenty times. I finally let the phone fall to the floor and sank deeper into the massive couch. I had never felt so alone in my life before that point. As the gravity of my seemingly perpetual despair bore down on me, I buried my face in my arms and drifted off to sleep.

  30. FROZEN SKY III

  HER EYES BURNED WITH A PASSIONATE REVULSION AS she beckoned for me to let her go. I took a deep breath as I prepared to adhere to her demands. As I released her, we both floated in midair for what seemed to be an eternity before she finally began her descent.

  I shuttered as I watched her sink deeper into her impending doom. I had let my despair get the better of me, and in doing so, I had let go of the one thing in this world that I could not live without.

  She was silent and as still as a shadow as she plummeted toward the ground beneath her. Despite the distance that separated us, I could still see the hatred that burned in her eyes as she inched closer to her death.

  The moon rose higher in the frozen sky as I too began to sink into the nothingness below.

  Soon her body would collide with the earth and mine would shortly follow. Despite my hopes, I knew that I could not follow her in death.

  31. TRUTH

  THE PHONE RINGING BESIDE ME PULLED ME OUT OF THAT all too familiar dream world. Not yet fully conscious, I stared at the ceiling as the handset continued to ring.

  I knew it was probably Jason or Howie, but I didn’t feel like talking. The dream had taken its toll on me. Why did I keep having it? Something told me that it was some kind of message. I knew that I had to figure out a way to save her, but what was I supposed to save her from? Was there actual life threatening danger waiting for her around the corner, or was I supposed to save her from myself?

  That flaming hatred that I saw within her eyes had to have come from her finding out that I could have saved her father. If I let her know that— if I let her know what I could truly do, I was certain that she would hate me forever. Maybe that’s what my dream was about. For a moment, I decided that forcing myself to let go of her was the only way that I could save her until I remembered that letting go in the dream always led to her death.

  The phone rang again as I continued to stare at the ceiling. Forget it, I thought, before realizing that it could have been Monica that was calling. I threw myself on the floor and frantically scrambled to grab the receiver as it continued to ring.

  “Hello?” I said as I answered the phone call.

  “Finally!” Monica jokingly replied on the other end of the line.

  “I’m sorry. I was asleep.”

  “Well, I’m tired of standing outside, so get your butt up and let me in!”

  I was rushing to the entrance before she even finished her sentence. She must have seen the plethora of missed calls and drove over while I was asleep. I was nervous about seeing her for the first time since the death of her father, but a part of me was still excited to see her.

  She was waiting at the entrance when I opened the door. My palms were sweating profusely from the anxiety that I felt about blowing her phone up. I was relieved that she didn’t appear to be angry as she entered and instantly fell into my arms.

  “How’ve you been, stranger?” I asked as I stroked her soft hair.

  “Better. Just taking it one day at a time,” she said with her head still buried in my chest. After a moment, she suddenly looked into my eyes. I could tell by the expression on her face that she was worried about something. “I’m sorry I didn’t answer the phone when you called. I was still-”

  “You do not have to apologize to me, Monica. You have nothing to be sorry about.”

  She was silent as she digested my words. She pressed her head against my chest again and exhaled a sigh of relief.

  “Thank you,” she said softly.

  “Why are you thanking me?” I asked.

  “For not being mad. I know I haven’t been there for you to help you deal with the loss of your brother. I thought you were angry at me when you called so many times. I tried to call you back but when you didn’t answer I thought that you had moved on.”

  “Monica, listen to me,” I said as I placed my hands on her head and gazed into her eyes. “There is no moving on. You are all that I’ve ever wanted, and I will wait for you until the end of time if I have to.”

  Her eyes became teary as she processed my words.

  “Monica, what’s wrong. Did I say something wrong?” I asked.

  “No,” she said wiping a tear away, “You didn’t say anything wrong.”

  I was surprised when she abruptly pulled away from my embrace and turned her back to me.

  “I just feel like I don’t deserve to have you in my life,” she said struggling to choke back her tears.

  “What do you mean?” I asked, truly baffled by her statement.

  “You’re always so open and honest about your feelings for me and I haven’t exactly extended you the same courtesy,” she replied with her back still turned.

  “Monica, I don’t understand.”

  She sobbed as she finally turned and faced me. Slow desolate tears ran from her reddened eyes and streamed down her already wet cheeks.

  “All you’ve ever done is care about me more than any other person has ever shown. And the only thing that I’ve given you in return is doubt. I
t’s just not fair. It’s not fair to you, Adam.”

  “Monica, you have never done wrong by me. I don’t understand where this is coming from.”

  “Adam, ever since we’ve been together I’ve second guessed our relationship because I always had this feeling that you were holding something back from me. That’s why I don’t deserve you. You’re so open and honest with me and all I do is second guess you.”

  “Monica, you’re wrong.”

  But she wasn’t wrong. I was holding back. I was holding back more than she could have possibly imagined.

  I placed my hands on her quivering shoulders and looked into her glimmering eyes. “Monica, I have been holding back. There is something that I’ve kept from you all this time.”

  I wasn’t sure if the expression on her face was sadness or fear. Perhaps a bit of both.

  “What do you mean?” Her voice cracked as she spoke.

  We gazed at each other in silence as I contemplated my words.

  “Monica, the truth is…I’ve been holding back the fact that I am completely and unequivocally in love with you.”

  Her eyes widened in disbelief as her expression softened.

  “I have been in love with you since before I even met you. Since the first day that I saw you in Mr. Miller’s class at the beginning of the school year.”

  “You-you love me?” she asked in a hushed whisper.

  “Of course, I love you! You have no idea of the extent to which you fascinate me. The only reason that I’ve held that back from you is because I was afraid that you didn’t feel the same way.”

  It worked. As she fell into my arms, completely uninhibited, I could tell that my confession was enough to convince her that the only thing I was hiding was the true nature of my feelings for her.

  Our second kiss was far better than the first. There was no anxiety or life threatening danger to contend with this time. There was only passion. When the two of us came together in that moment, nothing else mattered. I still didn’t know the danger that lay before us, but I decided that whatever that peril may be, I would make certain that I was there to save her from it. In my dream, I had made the mistake of letting her go, but I would not repeat that mistake in real life. A cool gust of wind from outside reminded me that the door was still open.