Marked

by T. L. McDonald

  “Well, that seemed to work.” He laughs clearly amused by my outburst. “I guess a strong emotional response is your trigger.”

  “You think?” His trademark blue baseball cap hides his eyes and I wonder if he’s being serious about the text or if he was just making it up to get a rise out of me. “If she really sent you a text then you better have deleted it.”

  “You know, come to think of it, I’m not sure if I did or not.” His voice is teasing, but I still can’t see his eyes to know for sure if he’s messing with me or not. In one giant step I’m in front of him knocking him flat on his back. His eyes grow big in surprise, then that goofy smile of his returns as I lean over him reaching into the front pocket of his jeans for his phone.

  His arms wrap around my waist pulling me down on top of him. “If you wanted to cop a feel why didn’t you just say so?” His teeth graze my earlobe sending tingles throughout my body. Mouth to my ear he whispers, “Wonder what other strong emotions I can make you feel.”

  My mind goes foggy, the search for his phone forgotten as he flips me over onto my back so that I’m on the bottom. He kisses my neck, his hand going under my shirt. Fingers softly trail across my stomach causing goose bumps to spring to life. My heart races in my chest. The overhead light begins to burn brighter until there’s a loud pop and the room falls into darkness. He kisses me with a smile.

  Somewhere in the distance I hear the front door open and slam shut. “Hanna? You home?” Adam yells. “I brought home dinner.” Covered in Jared’s kisses I’m too breathless to answer. A minute later I hear Adam’s footsteps pound against the stairs and come to a stop outside my door. He knocks. “Hanna?”

  I kiss Jared one last time before I pry myself away to answer the door. It opens before I get there. Light floods in from the hall temporarily blinding me. I blink against the sudden brightness. Adam flips the light switch in my room up and down. “What happened to your light?”

  “Huh?” I say like an idiot. Jared laughs softly behind me. “Um, Jared and I were studying and the bulb blew.”

  “Uh-huh.” Adam narrows his eyes in suspicion, a slow smile spreading. “What were you studying?”

  “Biology,” Jared answers for me. With a grin he winks before skipping down the stairs leaving me alone with Adam.

  “Biology huh?” Adam grins. “Do we need to have the talk?” He laughs and I want nothing more than to melt into the carpet.

  ***

  I kick the covers off with a sigh. There are just too many things running through my head to sleep. Things like wondering if Will and Zoe had any luck finding out more about the journal or if they found out whom the traitor is without being caught. And then there are my fears about actually finding the boy from the prophecy once we do find the journal. Will we really have the power to sway what he does or who he becomes? What if we do our best and he still turns out to be the bad guy who destroys the world?

  Ugh, I’m never going to get to sleep if I can’t clear my mind. I swivel the clock around, 2:18am. So I don’t wake Adam, I tiptoe downstairs as quietly as I can to make myself a cup of chamomile tea. It always helps me sleep. Once it’s done, I move to the living room curling up on the sofa, the cup of tea warm in my hands.

  I take a few sips burning my tongue a little. Sitting the cup down on the coffee table my sleeve pulls up a hair allowing the edge of the symbol to peek out. All the answers I need are there somewhere contained in Sam’s memories. If only there was some way to call a specific one. If only there was some way to control what I see.

  Maybe I can just ask?

  Could it be that simple?

  Only one way to find out.

  I close my eyes holding my thumb over my wrist. Here goes nothing. “Show me who your brother is Sam.” The familiar burn of the symbol pierces my skin as my thumb makes contact. Everything that makes me…me, fades, as I become another person.

  I hold my mother’s journal in the darkness of my father’s office conflicted about whether I should open it or not. On one hand, I just found out that I have a brother and everything I need to know about who he is could be in here. And on the other, I just found out I have a brother and if I open this it will make it true. I’m not sure if I’m really ready for it to be true.

  I trace my finger over the letters of her name carved into the soft leather of the journal’s cover. Emily Jacobs. My mom. I thought I knew everything there was to know about her. Of course, she died when I was young so most of what I know came from the stories my father told me about her. But this journal, this is her in her own words, her thoughts, her feelings, her world. If I read this, the stories my father told me might change, but I’ll be getting to know her and isn’t that what I’ve always wanted?

  Holding my flashlight under my chin my hands shake as I untie the string holding it closed. Hooking my finger under the bottom edge of the worn front cover I slowly open it. Headlights cut through the slates in the window blinds shining light into the office.

  Crap.

  My father’s home.

  Quickly I shove the journal into the back of my jeans covering it with the bottom of my shirt. Closing the filing cabinet I stole it from, I lock it, then put the key back in its hiding place. Turning off my flashlight I leave my father’s office just as I found it, minus the journal of course.

  My lungs fill and expand with a rush of breath that burns as if I were inhaling water instead of air. Turning to my side I roll off the sofa knocking into the coffee table. My cup of tea tips over spilling what was left all over the surface.

  Pinpricks of white light dance behind my eyelids as my stomach rolls with uneasiness at the spinning room. Maybe trying to access a specific memory was a bad idea because this returning to my own body experience is way harsher than the ones before.

  And I didn’t even get what I asked for.

  I claw my way back up onto the sofa, fighting off the urge to vomit. Every muscle aches and by the time I’m up enough to lay down I’m so drained I can barely hold my eyes open. Haziness swims around the edges of my vision as my eyes become unfocused. Heavy. Weighted.

  “Well, well, well. Look what we have here.” Blondie’s voice crawls over my skin leaving it cold and frozen. “I’m so glad we have this opportunity to meet again. Our last little get together didn’t quite go according to plan. But here we are, with a second chance.”

  I turn to face him. Blondie’s ice blue eyes are pools waiting to drag me under. I can’t look away. Smiling with his usual menacing grin he breaks eye contact letting me go. Free from his gaze, I notice that a ring of trees surrounds us in the darkness. It doesn’t take me long to realize that we’re standing in the woods where we had last met.

  “How did you get back in my head?”

  Blondie circles staring at me like I’m some kind of weak prey he’s about to pounce on. I steel myself and stare right back. His smile widens as he runs a finger down the side of my face. “I love it when you try to be defiant. It makes all this so much more fun. And as for why you’re here, well that’s easy. You fell asleep someplace unprotected and now we get to play.” Abruptly, he stops circling, bringing his face to mine. “Did you miss me?” He pulls back with a laugh. “Because I missed you.” He gestures at the space around us. “I hope you like the venue I’ve chosen. I thought maybe we could go for round two. Round one was a little disappointing.”

  “Yeah, well, you better get used to disappointment.” My voice is confident. My insides are a quivering mess.

  “Is that so?” He grabs my arm so fast and so hard the bone cracks. His ice blue eyes pierce into mine freezing me from the inside out. He squeezes harder. I bite my lip to keep from screaming. “It doesn’t have to be like this you know. All you have to do is tell me what he showed you and I’ll stop.”

  I bite back the pain. “No.”

  Blondie tips his head back closing his eyes, his usual smiling mouth now a thin line. With a sighs he looks at me, his blue eyes turning black. “Guess we’ll have to do this
the hard way then.” His sick evil grin returns as he digs his nails into my flesh straight through the symbol and down to the bone. I scream dropping to my knees. He brings his lips to my wrist then whispers something against my skin. His black eyes remain on mine the whole time he’s whispering leaving me feeling violated. With a twisted smile he says, “Until next time.”

  Screaming like a banshee, I sit up so fast I nearly fall off the sofa for a second time. I slap a hand over my mouth to silence my screams before I wake up Adam and possibly the whole neighborhood. Quiet now, I remove my hand only to want to scream again when I move my arm. My shirtsleeve, soaked through with blood, sticks to my arm as I lift it. The skin at my wrist is ripped open showing the fractured bone beneath. My heart beats in time with the throbbing pain of it as it starts to heal, which I have to say feels way worse than when it was being broken.

  Pounding footsteps echo loudly as my brother runs down the stairs. He slides around the corner into the living room his face panicked, his knuckles white from gripping the baseball bat in his hands so tightly. His head jerks back and forth taking in the scene. “What the hell Hanna? I thought you were being murdered or something. Why were you screaming like that?” His chest moves in and out with fast breaths. Closing his eyes he breathes in deeply to calm himself. Once he’s collected he leans the bat against the sofa then sits down beside me. “Are you okay?”

  I cover my arm with a throw pillow, hiding the blood that’s still running from the gouges Blondie left behind. “Yeah. I’m fine. It was just a nightmare. I’m sorry I woke you.”

  “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “No. It was stupid and I can’t even really remember what it was about now anyway.” I remember every last detail and in no way will I ever tell him anything about it. I’m not going to involve him in any way. Even if he were to think it was just a dream, which it definitely was not, I don’t want to jeopardize his safety. Adam can never know what’s really going on with me because I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if something bad were to happen to him because of it.

  “Okay. Well, in that case I’m going back to bed.” He grabs the bat, offers me his other hand.

  Giving him my good hand I let him help me up off the sofa as I hide my injured arm behind my back. When we reach the stairs, streams of warm blood have already collected in the palm of my hand. I squeeze my fingers shut, hoping that it won’t drip as Adam and I head back to our rooms. By the time we reach the top and I’m standing outside my door the pain in my arm has mostly subsided now that it’s healed, which is nice, though scary at the same time because it also doesn’t feel quite right.

  “Night sis.”

  “Huh?” I say to the sound of a closing door. “Oh, good night Adam.”

  In a daze I go into my bathroom to rinse off the blood so I can inspect the symbol. It looks normal. Pale blue. Flawless. Yet, it feels different. Tainted. Dirty even, and I have to consider the possibility that Blondie did something to it when he was whispering over my wrist. Something bad.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Adam shuffles into the kitchen like a zombie still half asleep. He wipes his eyes then heads directly for the coffee pot. “Morning.” He barely gives me a second glance as he scoops coffee into the machine, adds some water, and takes down his favorite mug. While he waits for the coffee to brew he opens up a strawberry pop tart taking a big bite without toasting it. “I talked to the alarm people yesterday. They’re going to send someone to install it on Friday.”

  “That’s good.”

  I already know who broke in the first time, but having an alarm still sounds like a good idea. So far Blondie has only attacked me in my dreams or when I’m away from home, but how soon will it be before that changes. What if he tries to attack me here? What if Adam’s here when he does? Blondie may be a big bad Fallen and it’s probably silly of me to think that an alarm will keep us safe from him, but in some strange way it does.

  Adam pours himself a mug of steaming hot coffee then moseys over to the table with his half eaten pop tart hanging out of his mouth. He sits down biting off a mouthful, really looking at me for the first time: fully dressed, backpack on, keys in hand. He glances at the clock on the stove then back to me. “You’re leaving this early? You know you don’t have to leave for school for another hour.”

  “I know, but I have an art assignment due so I thought I’d go in early.” I ruffle his hair as I walk by. “I’ll see you after school.”

  His chair scrapes against the floor behind me. “Actually, I’ll be late coming home tonight so I thought I’d bring home dinner. Any suggestions?”

  I pause at the doorway. “How about that new Mexican restaurant that just opened downtown?”

  “Sounds good.”

  I leave Adam to his breakfast then head to school. Once I get there a janitor lets me in. Escorting me to the art room he doesn’t say much and neither do I making our walk a little uncomfortable. With a jingle of his keys he unlocks the classroom door, flips on the light, then nods a goodbye. Without wasting time, I hang my book bag over the back of a chair. Walking across the room I pull my painting out from a stack along the wall.

  I’m still no closer to understanding why I painted the angel then I was the day I did it, but I feel connected to it somehow like it has some significance that I just don’t understand yet. I prop it up on the easel looking at it from all angles. Or maybe I’m just crazy and it holds no significance at all. Maybe it’s just something I’ve seen somewhere before and the image got stuck in my head and now I’m just making copies. Who knows? Nothing in my life makes sense anymore.

  Opening up a container of white paint I dip my brush in intending to paint over the angel, but as my hand gets closer, I just can’t do it. I can’t destroy it. Putting it away I grab a fresh blank white canvas from the stack on the back table.

  “Okay bowl of fruit, let’s get you painted,” I say to myself.

  Brush to paint. Paint to canvas. I begin. And when I’m done I still haven’t painted the assignment. The same angel I painted yesterday covers the canvas before me, with slightly different details. Today he’s no longer shackled to the floor and the chains that held him prisoner are now broken and discarded at his bare feet.

  “The angel again huh?” Rain Rivers tosses her bag against the leg of her chair before coming closer to look at my artwork.

  “Yeah. But I don’t know why I keep painting him.”

  I don’t know why I just told her that either.

  “This one’s different than your other one.” She stares at the painting, her eyes moving over every inch. “No more chains. He’s free now.”

  The way she says he’s free now sends shivers down my back. It’s almost like she knows something that I don’t. Of course, that would be ridiculous because it’s just a painting. What could she possibly know that I wouldn’t about something I created? All this fallen angel stuff and mystical symbols must be making me paranoid.

  “So um.” I glance around the empty room suddenly feeling a little claustrophobic being alone here with her. “What are you doing here so early?” She looks at me strangely and I start to feel bad for possibly offending her because she’s been nothing but nice to me. “I just mean, you know, we have art together in the afternoon so…” I’m tripping over my words like a fool so I let the sentence hang incomplete.

  “I come in early most days to work on my own stuff. I have four younger brothers at home which makes it impossible to work on anything there, so Miss Willow said it was cool for me to do it here.” Rain pulls out a key hanging from a chain underneath the neck of her shirt then takes it over to unlock a cabinet across the room. It’s full of different size canvases, all stacked and smooshed together to fit. She removes the one on top. Bringing it over she props it up on an easel beside mine. “I mostly do landscapes.”

  Her painting is of a large willow tree standing alone along a riverbank. It’s lush and green with its branches hanging over the edge so that the tips of th
e leaves touch the surface of the water. Purple and yellow wild flowers mixed in with thick green grass cover the roots almost as if they were hugging them.

  “It’s really beautiful.”

  “Thank you.” Her cheeks redden as she turns away to glance at the clock. “We still have some time before classes start. Do you mind if I paint with you?”

  “I don’t mind.” And I find that I really mean that. Why I was feeling weird or suspicious of her seems silly now. “In fact, maybe you can help keep me on track with painting the bowl of fruit I’m supposed to be doing.”

  ***

  At lunch time the cafeteria is full, buzzing with different conversations all melting together making it hard to distinguish one from the other. I scan the room looking for my friends. No sign of Jared, but I spot Will and Zoe sitting at a table near the windows in the back. They’re huddled so close together their heads are nearly touching and they both look angry.

  “Hey.”

  Startled, my heart slams against my chest in racing speeds.

  Jared tries to hide his smile and fails. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.” He kisses me lightly on the cheek sending my heart racing for completely different reasons. “So I stopped by your house this morning. Thought maybe we could ride to school together, but you were already gone.”

  “Yeah. I had to come in early to finish an art assignment.” Because I can’t seem to stop myself from painting shackled black winged angels, I think to myself. There has to be a reason why I keep painting them. Maybe Sam’s trying to tell me something and I’m just not getting it.

  “Wonder what kind of delicious food they have prepared for us today,” Jared teases, as we get in line. No school prepared meal is ever delicious. Most of the time you’re left wondering what exactly it is that you’re eating. I really should start packing a lunch.