This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are a product of the authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

The sound of tires screeching on pavement sliced through the silence of Lily Andrew’s house like a high-pitched scream wailing in the wind. Piercing and shrill, the shriek cautioned from beyond her room. Seconds earlier she’d slept, nestled comfortably in her bed, dreaming peacefully. Now, however, she stirred, and concern crawled within her, rousing her from sleep. She lifted her head, rubbed her eyes groggily then opened them briefly. The world appeared fuzzy, as did her thoughts. Slumber summoned her and her eyelids closed several times. Returning to the dream she’d been having seemed like a far more inviting prospect than getting out of bed and inspecting what was likely a neighbor returning from a night of too much partying.

She was about to let her head fall back against her pillow and ignore the skidding sound she’d heard, as well as the faint worry that whispered through her body, when she realized her room was bathed in light. She glanced at her alarm clock. It read 3:30 a.m., too early for the sun to have risen. Yet, white light poured through her curtains like molten steel and blanched everything around her. She sat up immediately, alarmed, and jumped out of bed. The preternatural glow disoriented her, but she managed to cross her room on unsteady legs to her window. Once there and concealed by her curtains, she peeked out beyond the pane into the blinding light. She squinted against it and her eyes watered, but she was able to make out an image. Her breath caught in her chest when she saw that three large black SUVs blocked her driveway and faced her house with their headlights left on. Her mind began to swirl, exhaustion and confusion conspiring against any form of reasoning. What she was seeing did not make any sense. But something prickled inside her, a feeling or sense warned her to get her parents and leave. She did not know what the vehicles were there for, but did not hesitate a second longer to consider it. She ran out of her bedroom down a long, narrow hallway to her parents’ bedroom and pounded on their door twice before rushing in.

“Mom, Dad! Wake up,” she said but they did not move. “Mom, Dad! Come on!” she tried again and tapped their feet.

“There are people here!” she said with urgency. “Get up, now! Three black SUVs are blocking the driveway with the lights on.”

Just as she finished her sentence, the sound of glass shattering was followed by thunderous pounding and wood splintering. It sounded as though the front door had exploded. Both of her parents sat upright. Lily’s body jerked as though she’d been struck by a bolt of lightning, and deep within her, intuition cried out for her to flee.

Her father stood and gripped the phone in his hand. He began to dial and she watched his features transform from worried, to horrified. His complexion paled and his mouth formed a hard line. Her stomach churned and he didn’t need to tell her the line had been cut. His face had said it first. “Damn it! There’s no dial tone!”

Lily felt as though her legs would give way beneath her. The feeling inside her that warned seconds ago screamed now, and demanded that she heed it. Her body began to tremble.

“Mine’s in my room. I can get it,” she said but did not trust her legs or courage to carry her there.

“We need to stay together!” her mother ordered and clasped Lily’s hand between her own. She felt calmed by her mother’s touch, but only briefly.

Heavy footsteps stomped decisively through the downstairs hallway and began ascending the staircase.

Lily felt a tug at her hand, and her mother pulled her toward the window. She looked out. Her parent’s bedroom overlooked the backyard. The landscape was usually a picturesque scene of lush greenery, of serenity. Normally, she would see a meticulously mowed lawn sprawling and stretching to a verdant tree line that marked what looked like an endless forest beyond. But she did not see any of that now. The rich, vibrant hues of green that usually colored her yard had been paled, faded to a sickly silver-gray shade. Stony moonlight cast a ghostly pallor and allowed her to see that her backyard was not as it had been left hours earlier. And there were people milling about. Her heart thundered in her chest as she saw nearly a half-dozen men moving by the scant ashen light of the Moon, as well as the headlamps of the SUVs, piling branches and brushwood around a tall wooden stake. They moved somberly, but with purpose, in the dusky dimness and lent the perplexing scene gravity and darkness. Lily felt her mother’s hands release hers and watched as they shot up to her mouth. Her mother gasped.

“Oh my God,” her mother breathed. “Jim, in the yard; look what they’ve done in the yard!”

But her father never had the opportunity to see what she and her mother had seen. A torrent of black swept into the room, a flurry of blurred shapes that moved in a coordinated but hurried manner. Lily heard the scream escape her lips as she saw them enter. Her father did not have time to turn toward the window or react. They moved too quickly. Men, all large and dressed in dark clothing, descended on them like a tide of blackened ocean. They surged into the room with ski masks pulled over their faces and advanced without breaking stride. The men grabbed both of her parents.

“Mom! Dad!” she cried and felt hands yank at her wrists. She lurched backward and nearly fell.

The world began to spin. Her mind filled with disjointed incomplete thoughts, whirling and revolving faster and faster. She desperately wanted, needed, to anchor herself to a coherent thought, something concrete; something that made sense. But nothing made sense. She heard her parent’s voices shouting. They sounded as if they were calling from the end of a long tunnel.

“We’re not here for either,” a calm voice said from the doorway and sounded far closer and clearer than any other. The spinning in Lily’s mind slowed considerably, albeit inexplicably. But her heart pounded more rapidly, speeding dangerously at the sound of the man’s voice. His voice flowed smoothly in a deep, rich baritone, the cadence as soothing and lulling as floating on a gently rolling river. Yet, it did not make her feel at ease in the least. To the contrary, the feeling inside that warned when she had awoken and continued to warn, though blindsided seconds earlier, began to rage against it, presaging of imminent danger. She and her parents were being held against their will, and something about the man in the doorway, something about his demeanor, terrified her more than the men holding them.

With her mind no longer spinning and her thoughts sharpened, she looked to the entryway, curiosity mingling with terror, to see the person whose serene voice had set off a firestorm of fear and aversion deep within her core. A tall sinewy shape filled the frame. He wore dark clothing like the others, but instead of a mask, a large hood covered his head and obscured his features.

The man with the hood approached her slowly, his gait deliberate. She could not see his eyes, but felt them on her, burning her skin like acid.

“Don’t you fucking touch her!” her father yelled, but the man remained unfazed. He kept walking until there were only inches between them. Lily’s heart knocked dangerously fast against her ribcage and tears streamed from her eyes. Each breath she took was short and shallow; she had never been so afraid in all of her sixteen years. The man did not speak right away. He loomed over her with his body so close to hers she could feel the heat radiating from it. He smelled of pine and musk, and she felt sickened by the scent. He raised his hands and she flinched, certain he was about to strike her. Only he did not. Instead, he lifted his hands to his head and pulled back his hood. She inhaled sharply, involuntarily, at the sight before her. Beneath the hood, he was monstrously disfigured. Deeply pitted flesh in shades of brown, pink, gray and angry red spread out in a horrific network and covered his entire face. His skin was puckered and charred, his features consumed completely by what looked like burns. His lipless mouth remained in a perpetual snarl and his ears seemed to have melted to his skull. He stooped to look at her and she recoiled in fear. He glowered at her with sunken, slate-colored eyes that had neither eyelashes nor eyebrows, yet managed to convey intensity with their stare. The hatred he radiated for her was palpable. But the reason for his hatred of her remained a mystery; she did not know why. She had never seen him before, would have surely remembered his face. And if she survived this encounter with him, she was positive his features would be indelibly etched into her memory, for it was the content of nightmares. With him so close, she struggled to move, to breathe even. Every part of her, including her lungs, had frozen. He looked like a demon, a beast that had risen from the depths of hell.

“Yes, yes,” the demon man hissed and ran his tongue over his bared teeth. “She is one of them,” he said then he reached a hand into his jacket. Before she knew what was happening, a deafening blast rang out. She saw the muzzle flash, but did not realize a gun had been fired until she saw her father fall to the floor. Her mother opened her mouth to cry out, but the words never formed. She was silenced by bullets to her head. Lily collapsed to the floor, every part of her trembling and teeming with emotion.

“No!” she screamed; her voice shrill and foreign to her own ears as she looked at the image before her. Her parents lay in an expanding pool of blood on their bedroom floor. Her mind began to spiral, plunging headlong deeper and deeper into a blackened abyss from which there was no escape. Dark, velvety oblivion beckoned her with welcoming arms and numbness. She heard a flurry of voices and fought the seductive swell of shock.

“Why did you kill her parents?” a voice questioned. “Was that really necessary?”

She watched blearily as the demon man unsheathed a knife from his belt and slashed at the air with astounding speed. The man whom she presumed had spoken dropped to the floor beside her, his throat slit in a long arc below his jaw.

“Does anyone else wish to question God’s will?” the demon man asked. “He who harbors the devil’s minions will suffer God’s wrath.”

He waited for someone to respond and Lily felt herself fall to the darkness until the man’s voice rang out again. “Grab her and follow me!”

She felt both of her arms being tugged by two separate people. Her eyes scanned the room and landed on her parents. She began to scream and thrash, but the men who held her did not react. They dragged her down the stairs, through the hallway and out the sliding glass door to her backyard. She fought and kicked, but was powerless against them. They were simply too strong. Her mind no longer tried to succumb to the void though. Something else entirely began to happen; something primal and inexplicable began to rise within her. What she saw beyond the glass of the doors sent it coursing through her veins like electricity. She saw a group of men clad in hooded cloaks. They held crudely fashioned crosses made of branches and chanted verses that were unintelligible. They stood and had formed a circle around a tall, wooden rod with brushwood piled beneath it. She recognized what it was immediately and cried out, “No! Please, no! No!” But no one responded to her pleas. They hoisted her up atop the twigs and began tying her to the pole. The circle opened and the chanting silenced briefly as the tall man with the burnt face entered and approached her. The circle closed around him. He held a torch in his hand.

She watched in horror as he pulled a lighter from his pants pocket and lit the combustible end of it. He held it close to the kindling and said, “Where is she? Where is the One, the Sola?”

“Liar! You know exactly who I’m talking about. She is the sole prophet, the darkest one among your people, witch,” he spat. “She has been here; I can feel her.”

Lily had no idea what he was talking about, why he rambled on about such nonsense. All she knew was that he was a murderer, an insane murderer who had killer her parents, tied her to a stake and intended to burn her alive.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I-I’m not a witch! And I don’t know anyone named Sola!”

“Very well, then. Have it your way!” he said and threw the torch at the brushwood.

The dried branches caught fire immediately. She felt her bare feet begin to burn as flames licked at them, writhing and blistering, reaching up her ankles and calves searing her flesh. She heard herself whimper in pain, blinding white-hot pain. The man watched her face and seemed to relish in her agony. She saw her own face reflected in his cold, pale eyes. And rage began to fill her, rage unlike any she had ever felt. A strange sensation crept up the length of her spine and spread out from her core to her extremities. She knew the flames had engulfed her thighs; that the fire had reached her waist, but she no longer felt its heat, or the pain. The unfamiliar sensation had etched away at it. She looked up into the eyes of the demonic looking man, and a glow of red in her irises was mirrored in his. Crimson light blazed from her eyes.

“We all see it now, witch. Evil has shown its true face to us,” he said and attempted a cruel smile.

Lily let his words fall to the flames with her body. The fire engulfed her fully, yet she felt a sense peace overtake her. Death embraced her. Consciousness slipped away, escaped slowly. The sadness and anger she’d felt earlier dissolved into obscurity along with the ethereal scarlet glow of her eyes. Her body had been reduced to ashes, but her spirit had been released. Fear, pain, misery and rage dispersed like cinders into the night sky.

Arianna Rose looked around the cramped mobile home she and her mom stood in and groaned.

“It’s fine baby. We’ll be fine here. It just needs a little sprucing up is all,” her mother replied.

“If by sprucing up you mean set on fire than yes, sprucing up is exactly what this place needs.”

She knew that making the dumpy trailer “a home” was her mother’s code for picking up a man at the nearest bar and making him a regular fixture in their living room. The thought of yet another scotch-soaked suitor setting up camp with them made her stomach turn.

“Yeah Mom, I know what you need to make this place a home. And I’m sure you’ll find Prince Charming at the dive we passed on the way here.”

Her mother raised her brows and feigned insult. “Don’t you talk to me that way, girl,” she began.

“Oh save it, Mom,” Arianna said and effectively ended her mother’s halfhearted attempt to reprimand her.

Arianna reached a hand into her black canvas bag and dug out a pack of Camel Lights and a lighter. She took one out for herself and one for her mother. She watched as her mother lit her cigarette with impossibly long, hot-pink nails. Arianna often wondered how her mother managed to do anything with her artificial claws, much less ignite a lighter. But she did, and with surprising dexterity.

Arianna smiled and cocked her head to one side. Her mom loved to smoke, so much so she closed her eyes and tipped her head back as she puckered her lips and inhaled. Each crease around her mouth deepened as she did so, yet her expression remained one of sheer bliss. She left her eyes closed while she blew out ribbons of opaque smoke. Once the ritual had been completed and the first drag had been taken, she opened her eyes and raked her hand through her dry, dyed blonde hair. Her hair remained back where she’d pushed it, positioned in place like hay with styling product added to it. The metal bangle bracelets on her wrist clanged together softly as she dropped her hand to her side.

“Yeah, we’re gonna be just fine here, baby,” her mother crooned. “You’ll see.”

“Oh I’m sure we will,” she replied and lit her own cigarette. She did not indulge in the same dramatic routine as her mother, but the infusion of nicotine into her bloodstream did improve her mood a bit.

“I guess so,” Arianna answered. “I really wish I could have finished out my senior year back in Rockdale, though. At least I knew a few people there, had a few friends.”

“Oh don’t start in on me about that now, okay? Haven’t I been through enough with the whole Carl thing? Haven’t I hurt enough without you giving me shit too? I was shamed out of Rockdale. Do you know what that was like?”

She saw her mother’s eyes begin to well with tears. She did not want to risk making the blue mascara and eyeliner that rimmed her tear-filled eyes run, so she decided to let her mother off the hook on the subject of relocating during her final year of high school for the moment. She shifted the conversation, instead, to a more pressing matter at hand. Namely, the run-down trailer that reeked of mold and a sour stench she could not quite place.

“Shithole or not, we would be on the streets if it weren’t for your Uncle Eddie. No thanks to Carl, of course.”

Her mother ran her hand through her hair again and instigated the bracelets a second time. Arianna found her good mood souring along with whatever had rotted in their new home. She’d had enough of her mother’s self-pity for one day and decided to remind her that Carl’s decision to evict them had not been on a whim.

“Mom, he found you screwing his cousin on a lawn chair. What did you think he’d do?”

“Well, I don’t know what I thought he’d do. But I didn’t think he’d kick us out, that’s for sure.”

Ordinarily, she would never have let anyone else get away with saying something so ignorant, but she genuinely believed her mother lacked the ability to think any situation through. It was as if her mother has stopped developing mentally somewhere around her sixteenth birthday, that adulthood had eluded her entirely. Arianna’s mother, Cathy Rose, never considered consequences, especially where relationships were concerned. She acted on impulse, was self-indulgent, and prone to fits similar to a two year-old baby’s tantrum. She loved attention – preferably of the male variety – and drank too much, but she was the only mother Arianna would ever have. And for that reason, she let a lot of stuff go.

“We passed a Safeway on the way here with a Help Wanted sign in the window. I’m gonna drive by there and pick up some hair dye for my roots and some stuff to clean this place, and maybe see if a manager is around so I can see about the job. You can start unpacking your stuff. I’ll help you unload it first.”

Her mother disappeared out of the trailer to their car. Arianna stubbed her cigarette out on the sole of her boot and looked around. She dreaded unpacking. Time and experience had taught her that no home was permanent. Just as she’d get settled in a new town, her mother would decide that the relationship she had been in had to end. And they would have to leave. The same story played out each time. The only thing that changed was the zip code. Now, she was in a new town called Herald Falls in New York and she could almost hear a timer initiating the countdown until they left for another town, and yet another miserable trailer. Until then, though, she would have to deal with the current one. Reluctantly, she turned from the dismal display before her and walked to her mother’s car. Two boxes waited for her stacked neatly. Her mother had passed her and brought one to the trailer. Three egg boxes they’d gotten from a supermarket held every belonging Arianna owned. Her life had been condensed into three egg boxes. The thought made her chest ache, but only briefly. She never allowed herself to wallow more than a moment.

“Ya got those, baby?” her mother called out as she opened the driver’s side door of her ancient and decrepit Toyota Camry.

“I’m fine, Mom. Go get your hair dye,” she called back. But her mother couldn’t have possibly heard. She had already closed the door and waved absently as she preened in the rearview mirror. Arianna rolled her eyes and made her way through the small living room and even smaller kitchen to a narrow hallway that ended with her room. She dropped the boxes she was carrying and opened the one on top. After moving a few leather-bound albums, her hand felt a plastic scented-oil warmer. She pulled it out and searched for an electrical outlet to plug it into. When finally she found one, she shoved the prongs of the warmer into it. The vanilla oils began to heat immediately and contend with the odor of mildew. She breathed in the warm scent and began removing her possessions.

She took folded clothes and placed them in the squat dresser that had been left behind by her Uncle Eddie’s previous tenants. The dresser had water ring stains on the surface and more splintering chips in it than she could count. But the drawers slid in and out smoothly, a feature she was grateful for. Her last one would fall off its track half the time and fell out of the dresser completely the other half the time. Any dresser, or no dresser, was an improvement from the last she’d had.

Unpacking her clothes did not take long, and what little she had fit nicely in the small bureau. With that done, she turned her attention to the bed, if it could even be called that. The sleeper more closely resembled an oversized window seat, and she wondered whether it would be long enough for her to stretch out and sleep comfortably in. She sat on it and crinkled her nose as the smell of sweat and feet rose from it. Before she would attempt to lay in it, she would need to borrow one of her mother’s old comforters to cover it and stifle the stench. She stood and slid the last two boxes in the far corner of the cramped room and set about inspecting the rest of the trailer. Overall, it wasn’t dramatically different from her last. The trailer her uncle owned and allowed them to stay in for the time being, the one she now lived in, was much smaller and smellier than the last, but the layout was nearly identical. Of course, one major selling point of their current trailer was that it lacked Carl and his many friends and family members who visited at all hours of the night in varying states of inebriation. But she was confident her mother would remedy his absence with a new string of frequenters. She was sure that in no time she would stumble home after a work shift and several cocktails at the local dive bar with someone new. All she could hope for was that the new clown was a mellow drunk as opposed to some of the angrier, more aggressive types she’d encountered along the way. Angry, aggressive drunks who sought to enjoy both her mother and her had taught her at a young age that she needed to arm herself when she slept. She remembered her knife and quickly returned to her room and took it out of the bottom box. The hilt was slender and the blade lightweight. It fit perfectly in her hand, familiar and comforting like an old friend. It, like a friend everyone should have, had saved her many times. She removed it from its sheath and stared at the silvery blade.

In it, she saw an image of herself, distorted, but her, nevertheless. She looked different from most girls her age, harder. She did not opt to bleach her hair as her mother did. And she did not have her mother’s fair skin and blue eyes either. In fact, she did not resemble her mother in the least and guessed she looked like her father, whoever he was. Her deep brown hair fell in pin-straight panels around her face to her shoulders and was all the same length. Her eyes were nearly the same color as her hair and her complexion was olive rather than peaches and cream. She lined her eyes with charcoal-colored makeup and preferred to wear black as opposed to the candy-colored rainbow her mother favored.

Arianna was nothing like her mother. She promised herself years ago that she would never allow herself to be vulnerable and at the mercy of a man. And if she ever decided to have a child, she would wait until she was older and more settled, and certain she could provide for it.

Settling down and having children were distant, obscure possibilities. School, however, was definite. In less than twenty-four hours, she would enroll at yet another school. Her eighteenth birthday had passed three days earlier and she was sure she would be one of the oldest students in her grade, and likely the newest to the school. But the months would fly by as they always had, and before long she would do something else her mother had never done: graduate from high school. After high school, she wasn’t sure what she would do. She quickly sheathed her knife again and tucked it safely in her boot. She would place it under her pillow as she had every night for the last eight years, and it would accompany her to school the next day.

The sound of tires kicking up gravel in front of the trailer distracted her from her brooding. She looked up and realized the room had darkened considerably, that the sun had set some time ago. A rumbling engine outside meant that her mother had returned. Her mother had been gone for several hours and had likely found her way to the local watering hole. Arianna paused a moment in her room and considered going out to greet her and share a smoke with her, but the sound of a male voice followed by her mother’s laughter changed her mind. She froze where she was. Her mother did not like to be alone, and Arianna never liked the people she kept company with.

“Baby, come out and meet a new friend I made in town,” her mother called in a slightly slurred voice. “We got fried chicken!”

More giggling ensued, both her mother’s and the mystery man’s, and Arianna decided to ignore her mother and forgo dinner. Hunger would be a welcome alternative to sharing a meal and part of an evening with another of her mother’s loser suitors. Instead, she shut the door to her tiny room, and the world beyond it, and prepared for her first day in a new school.

The alarm clock radio beeped incessantly until Arianna reached a hand out and silenced it with a smack. She stayed in bed for several seconds and allowed her eyes to scan her room. Morning sunlight did little to brighten it by any definition of the word. The effect was quite the opposite, in fact. Water stains on the ceiling were more visible, along with the overall yellowness of the walls. But the condition of her room was the least of her concerns. She needed to get up and start a new school. And she needed to slip into the bathroom without encountering her mother’s overnight guest. She doubted either of them would be awake. They had stayed up until the early morning hours and, judging from the noise level of their partying, had imbibed plenty of liquor. To be safe, she hurried and picked an outfit from her dresser: a white tank top with a cropped black T-shirt that hung off her shoulder to layer atop the tank top and a pair of black, stretch skinny jeans. She accessorized with several hoop earrings that went up her earlobe, a thick-banded wristwatch and her favorite black motorcycle boots. Her boots were the most expensive article of clothing she owned. They were genuine leather, steel toed, and her proudest purchase, second only to her motorcycle that waited on the trailer’s porch.

Her motorcycle, a used 2009 Kawasaki KLR 650, had been purchased seven months earlier with money she’d saved working after school and summer jobs. The three-year-old bike was the closest she’d ever come to owning a new one. She loved to ride, had caught the fever for it when she was twelve. A boyfriend of hers had a dirt bike, a KX 80, and had taught her to ride. As soon as she had become comfortable with the mechanics of operating it, she had fallen in love. Everything about riding had enticed her, the feeling of freedom, of speeding on two wheels with nothing between her and the world around her, going where cars couldn’t go. Her relationship with her motorcycle-riding twelve-year-old boyfriend had ended after a short time, but her love affair with riding had just begun. When she had turned sixteen and had gotten her driver’s license two years earlier, she had bought her first bike, a used CR 250. Not surprisingly, her mother had not protested her purchase, as any decent parent would have. To the contrary, she had celebrated alongside Arianna when she’d finally saved enough money to buy it.

Arianna shook her head remembering her mother’s unorthodox reaction to her choice of transportation and took a final glance in the mirror. She supposed most girls in her position would have started a new school with a new outfit, but new clothes were a luxury she simply could not afford. The clothes she wore were neither new nor expensive. But they were clean and she had paid for them herself. Such details may have been lost on another, but were held as small victories in her mind. They gave her a degree of confidence and pride she would not have had otherwise.

Dressed and armed with her smidgen of self-confidence, she stole out of her room and crept to the bathroom to brush her teeth and hair. Once she’d finished in the bathroom, she peeked out beyond the door into the living-room area and saw a man sprawled out on the couch. She shook her head and was about to slip down the hallway and out of the house when she heard a voice whispering in her ear.

“Funny, I didn’t remember him havin’ boobs last night,” her mother whispered and Arianna jumped.

“Shit mom! Are you trying to kill me? You’re like a ninja or something sneaking up like that. Shit!” Arianna’s heart pounded. She’d assumed her mother would be in the living room or her bedroom, not right beside her. It took a moment to compose herself before she laughed at her mother’s comment.

“So, he didn’t have boobs last night, huh? Looks like he’s got a pretty generous set now,” she said and giggled.

“I know. His are bigger than mine,” her mother said and cupped her own breasts.

“Enough to free willy in there,” her mother said and laughed. “The guy’s a whale, get it?”

“Yeah Mom, I get it,” Arianna said and took a few steps closer to get a better look. The man slept in a white undershirt with matching yellow crescents under each armpit. His belly was large and round and he did have what appeared to be breasts. The few hairs he’d had been combed and stretched across his scalp in a feeble attempt at concealing his bald head.

“Oh Mom, I think this one’s a keeper,” she said sarcastically. “You should marry him. I see my future father in there.”

“For starters, take a shower. Don’t forget to bring your cell phone in, and lock the bathroom door. And when he wakes up, tell him you have an early appointment and you’ll call him later.”

Her mom paused and seemed to mull over the advice she’d given her. The time she’d spent coaching her mother had cost her time she would have spent eating breakfast. Her stomach rumbled and reminded her she had skipped dinner the night before. If she hurried, she would have time to stop at a gas station and grab a roll.

“That could work, baby! What would I do without you?” her mother asked and gave her a quick peck on the cheek. “Where are you off to so early?”

Her mother had clearly forgotten it was her first day at a new school. A night of heavy drinking often caused her memory to lapse. That and what little common sense and good judgment she had generally expired.

“School, Mom, I start school today,” she replied. “And I’m going to be late if I don’t leave now.”

“Oh, good luck, baby! I’m sorry I forgot. This has all been so hard on me. I can’t seem to keep a thought straight in my head.”

She turned and walked down the hallway, past the sleeping man. She grabbed her backpack that rested against the inside wall by the front door and headed out. Her motorcycle leaned against the trailer with her helmet affixed to the back. She slipped her arms into the straps of the backpack and put her helmet on. Then she straddled the bike and started it. The Kawasaki engine purred and she felt her pulse rate quicken. She enjoyed few things in life, and riding was one of them. She revved the engine twice, released the clutched and shifted into first gear with her foot. With a slight twist of her wrist, she felt wind in her face. She rode, enjoying the openness of the county roads, for more than ten minutes before she reached the gas station that skirted the campus of her new school. She ran in and grabbed a roll and paid. She ate most of her breakfast quickly then continued to school.

She supposed she should have felt butterflies in her stomach, or nerves of some sort. But she didn’t. New schools were old news. She did feel like having a cigarette. Twelve hours had passed since her last one and her body was craving nicotine. Most schools were smoke-free campuses, but as she rode down the driveway, she did not see any signs indicating her new school was as well. She parked her motorcycle in a side lot and noticed that there were many ordinary cars. Interspersed among the ordinary cars, though, were many luxury ones as well. Mercedes, BMWs, Land Rovers and Porsches, all shiny and new looking, popped up frequently and made the normal cars look like jalopies by comparison. Arianna hadn’t seen a nice neighborhood when she and her mother had entered town. Hers certainly wasn’t.

She wondered where the fancy mansions that belonged with the equally fancy cars might be as she lit her cigarette. Just as she filled her lungs with smoke, the first bell rang. She was the only person in the lot and leaned against her bike, but she noticed that groups had gathered near the main entrance and slowly started to disband. She figured she ought to start walking and make her way inside. Surely, a meeting with a guidance counselor would be on her agenda, as well as a tour, compliments of a student council delegate.

With thoughts of guidance counselors and tours filling her thoughts, she began climbing the wide concrete steps. As she did so, she noticed a group of boys watching her. Dressed in collared shirts and chinos, they looked preppy, and rich. She stared back with her cigarette dangling from her lips. All of them looked away, except one. With exceedingly bronze skin, light-brown hair and bright blue eyes, he looked like a designer clothing catalogue model or a playboy who would be more comfortable helming his yacht than attending high school. He stared at her in a way that irked her so completely, she contemplated walking up to him and punching him right in his smug face. But she did not want to get kicked out of school on her first day. Not again. So she decided to let it go, to ignore his scrutiny. She took a final drag of her cigarette and heard a voice.

“Man, I’d like to go slumming and tap that ass someday,” preppy yacht boy said as she was about to pass him.

Still, she refrained from punching him, but chose instead to casually flick her cigarette at his face as she walked by.

“Holy shit!” he shrieked and ashes, some lit, cascaded down his expensive-looking shirt. He frantically tried to brush them off and left charcoal smears in their wake. “What the fuck?” he whined and sounded like a girl.

“Dude, you totally sounded like chick just now,” she heard one of his friends say and they all laughed at him.

Inside, the hallway was lined with students, most bustling at their lockers gathering books, while others lingered and chatted. A few girls looked in her direction, but looked away quickly. Arianna was not shy about making direct eye contact with people who eyed her. She’d been told many times that her stare was lethal. While she doubted anyone had been killed by it, she felt confident that at least a few had been withered by it.

Her eyes roamed about from the faces of students to room numbers. She was looking for the main office when a pert blonde placed her face in Arianna’s.

“Hi there! Are you Arianna? You must be because I’ve haven’t seen you around here before, and I know everyone,” she said in one breath and eyed Arianna’s clothes disapprovingly. Arianna caught the not-so-subtle look and bristled immediately. She also couldn’t help but notice how the girl’s smile curled up at the corners of her mouth, and did not reach her eyes.

“I knew it! I’m Cheryl Charles and I am your official tour guide,” she began and flashed her insincere smile. Arianna repressed the urge to gag. “I am the Vice President of the Student Council here at Herald Falls High.”

“What, I’m not important enough to get the President,” Arianna joked and watched the phony smile sag. Clearly, her joke had been lost on Cheryl.

“Well, I suppose I could speak to Principal Wood and get the President here if I’m not good enough for you,” Cheryl said snippily.

“Oh,” Cheryl said and smoothed her lavender blouse. “I see, well, ha, ha then. Very funny,” she added narrowing her eyes and pursing her lips.

“Of course not,” Arianna muttered as a man approached. He wore a tweed blazer with elbow patches and had gray hair parted neatly and plastered to one side.

“Good morning Cheryl,” he said in a gravelly voice then turned to Arianna. “I’ve never seen you before. Who might you be?”

“Mr. Wood, this is our new student, Arianna Rose,” Cheryl said in a suddenly syrupy voice.

“It’s Wood, not Woods dear. Wood, W-O-O-D, no ‘s’; Wood,” he corrected her. Cheryl smirked triumphantly and Arianna used just her middle finger to scratch an imaginary itch on the bridge of her nose. Cheryl got the message and gasped.

“Very well, then. Miss Rose, I will see you in my office after the tour and introduce you to our counselor Mrs. Gallagher. She can help you with your course schedule et cetera. Good day Miss Charles,” Mr. Wood said and turned on his heels to leave.

“Let’s get this over with,” Cheryl said in a tone far different from the saccharine one she’d used with the principal. “I have more important things to do than be seen with you.”

“Oh and I want to be seen with a preppy little bitch like you?” Arianna said testily. “Go. I think I’ll manage without you.”

Exasperated, Cheryl handed her a map and several other sheets of brightly colored paper. “Here. Suit yourself. Good luck. I’m out of here!”

“Sounds good to me,” she replied and watched as Cheryl started to walk away.

Cheryl stopped abruptly and turned, wearing a snarky smile on her face, “If you go straight down this hall and take the first left, you’ll see a door. On the other side of it, you’ll find people who are more your kind,” she said and eyed Arianna from head to toe. “You know, the trashy kind that really don’t belong here.”

“Excuse me?” Arianna asked. “What did you just say to me? Did you just call me trashy?”

“I think you heard me just fine,” Cheryl said icily. “I would get closer and say it right in your ear, but I don’t want to catch something from you.”

Incensed, Arianna fought to keep her tone calm. She took several steps and stopped just inches from Cheryl. “You’re about to catch something from me right now, bitch,” Arianna hissed and stared into her eyes.

Cheryl’s face blushed deeply and she recoiled from Arianna, shrinking back a few paces.

Cheryl refused to meet Arianna’s gaze and opted instead to stare at her feet before marching out of sight. Arianna simmered as she watched her walk away and decided she needed a little fresh air. Left alone with her map, she decided to take Cheryl’s advice and step outside for another cigarette. After her interaction with the student council Vice President, she needed it. She figured she had at least half an hour before she needed to report to Mr. Wood-without-an-s’s office. That left plenty of time to smoke and visit the ladies room.

She continued down the hallway and took her first left and stopped at a pair of doors. She opened one, but wedged a rock in the hinge so that she wouldn’t be locked out. A single step led to a clearing surrounded by trees. The treeline looked afire with rich fall colors. Leaves in varying shades of red, orange and yellow blazed against the azure sky. The scene would have been enjoyable, relaxing even, if she hadn’t been so annoyed by the Cheryl incident. She sat on the step, took out her pack of cigarettes and her lighter and was about to light up when someone called to her.

“What’re you nuts! Don’t light up there. You’ll get suspended,” a male voice said.

The voice laughed as well then added, “I’m serious. This is a smoke-free campus. You don’t want to do that.”

“Funny, I didn’t see any signs,” she said and rolled the flint of her lighter. Before the flame touched her cigarette, she caught sight of a figure near one of the trees. “Oh shit, I guess it wasn’t God after all.”

She couldn’t see him clearly, but was able to make out that he was tall and dressed in dark clothes.

“Why don’t you save yourself from getting the boot from this dump and join me over here?” he said.

“Huh,” he replied. “I guess I don’t. Good luck,” he said and disappeared.

Arianna couldn’t explain why, but felt compelled to meet the person who’d warned her. She stood, slung her bag over her shoulder and walked across the grass to the tree he had stood near. She looked behind it, certain she was at the right one, but saw no one. She turned around and scanned the clearing. As far as she could tell, she was alone. She placed the cigarette she held between her lips and lit it, all the while wondering where the darkly dressed figure had gone. She looked from left to right a final time as she exhaled a cloud of opaque smoke. She fanned it with her hand, despite being outside.

“I’m supposed to be getting a tour from Cheryl Charles. But we didn’t exactly hit it off so she gave me this,” she showed him her map then added, “and sent me on my way.”

“Lucky you. Dodging Cheryl Charles is a good thing. Prissy little bitch,” he spat.

“How could you say that about your esteemed Vice President?” Arianna said sarcastically.

“Arianna, that’s different. Pretty, but different,” he said and lit a cigarette of his own.

“Uh, that’s a good question. Art class, I think. I go so infrequently, I’m starting to lose track.”

“No elementary school story here, just cutting class and attendance bullshit,” Luke smiled.

Arianna liked his smile. His smile was mischievous and pleasant; his entire face smiled, in fact, right up to his gray-blue eyes. But his smile dropped almost immediately.

“Principal douche bag Wood just passed in that window,” he pointed to a large window on the building. “He never comes out here. How much you wanna bet that bitch Cheryl told him to check out here? Come on. Let’s get out of here,” he said and took her hand.

She allowed herself to be led, liked the feel of his hand around hers. He walked quickly and navigated a labyrinth of trees and low-growing brush. The strip of woods was narrow and they arrived at a grassy clearing which led to the front parking lot. He let go of her hand once they were on the grass and Arianna felt inexplicably disappointed. She was not the type of girl who fawned over guys. She didn’t dare indulge in extravagances like teen romance and crushes. She was all too familiar with what men did to vulnerable women. And she did not allow herself to be vulnerable.

“We should be fine now. I doubt he saw us, just that there were two people standing by a tree.”

She sighed. “Well that would have been a record for me, getting kicked out of a school on the first day before I even made it to my first class. My mom would have had an excuse to tie one on,” she mumbled under her breath.

“Sounds like our moms are a lot alike,” Luke said and surprised her. She didn’t think he’d heard her. “Mine goes from shitty boyfriend to shitty boyfriend with a glass of whiskey in one hand and joint in the other.”

“Shit, we should send them out together, my mom could be your mom’s sloppy wing man,” Arianna laughed.

Luke laughed too but stopped when he looked up. Arianna followed his eyes and saw what he was looking at. She was tall and thin with platinum-blonde hair. She wore heavy eye makeup and a tight miniskirt that showed off nicely shaped legs. And she glared in their direction.

“I gotta go,” Luke said and didn’t take his eyes off the mystery blonde. He turned to her suddenly and added, “It was nice meeting you, Arianna,” then jogged toward the glaring blonde.

Arianna watched as he went to the waiting girl. She felt a twinge of something, a faint pang of emotion she was uncomfortable with. Jealously was too strong a word for it. But it did vaguely resemble it. It seemed ridiculous to feel jealous, even slightly so. After all, she had just met Luke. And he had not flirted with her overtly. Yet, as she watched him approach the waiting blonde, she felt annoyed and a little sad at the same time. He stood in front of the girl. She could not hear what the girl said, but saw that she spoke animatedly to Luke, gesturing angrily to him then to Arianna. He did not appear to argue back which surprised her. She wasn’t sure why, but she did not see him as the kind of person who accepted reprimand readily. Then again, she’d only known him for ten minutes. Either way, she felt a fleeting sense of disappointed.

She quickly brushed off the feeling of disappointment. She needed to get back inside and meet with her guidance counselor. She walked to the front of the building again and entered. The hallway was deserted and she consulted her map to find the main office. Her day, as well as her final year of high school, was about to commence.

Howard Kane knelt upon the pristine, tiled floor before the altar of the Soldiers of the Divine Trinity Church and listened intently, waiting patiently for God’s instructions. God had been speaking to him since he was a young boy, guiding him and directing him through life. Though many people had claimed they’d heard God’s voice, he felt confident only a select few had. The rest were narcissists who lacked the discipline to hear anything more than their basest impulses. He was not like others who had alleged to hear God. Howard had heard God clearly, and the Lord’s voice had not caused him to indulge his desires or whims. To the contrary, he felt more rooted to his beliefs, compelled to dedicate himself fully. He needed God, and God and his fellow worshippers needed him.

With his hands pressed together in prayer, he paid close attention to every subtle sound in the hallowed building, opening the sincerest, humblest channels to his soul to foster God’s voice. In a near-meditative state, he heard many things. Sounds of settling creaked and crackled intermittently. Dried leaves rustled from a treetop beyond the stained-glass windows, likely caused by the departure of finches or sparrows that had remained too late into the fall. But his Maker’s instructions did not echo in his head, did not breathe through him like a warm spring breeze caressing tender blooms as it had in the past. All he heard was the sound of his own breaths, and the rhythmic pulse of his heartbeat.

Days had passed since he’d heard God’s words, long days of strained silence. But he felt neither frustration nor anger. God would invariably speak to him. He always had, and Howard doubted He would ever stop.

With his hands still clasped in front on him, he closed his eyes and inhaled deeply and focused more intensely. When concentrating as he was, his senses seemed to heighten. Sounds were amplified. His sight became sharper, and his sense of smell more distinct. He filled his lungs, drawing in air through his nose. Strong notes of pine infused the air and mingled with the slightest hint of lemon. The average man would not have noticed the fresh, clean scents surrounding him, their subtlety; their depth. But he did. He had a divine appointment. His followers knew of his blessing and one of them had undoubtedly scrubbed and polished the altar hours earlier. His many gifts were not secrets he kept from his congregants, and they responded accordingly, heeding and abiding the ancient adage that cleanliness was, in fact, next to godliness. He was, after all, the closest a human being could ever be to God, and his followers knew that. For that reason, every surface of the church was cleaned daily in his honor, as well as the Lord’s. As founder and leader of the Soldiers of the Divine Trinity congregation, in addition to having divine influence, Howard was the heir to a kind of sight only a select few in his family had possessed; sight that the naked eye was incapable of perceiving. He could see evil, sense it as clearly as the notes of pine and lemon in the air. His vision, his divination, enabled him to lead his congregation.

He preached daily at the consecrated dais he knelt before, reached out to his flock, shared his vision, and spread the word of God. But God’s word was not as simple as other groups claimed it to be. It went beyond Commandments and Sacraments, surpassed feasting, fasting and offerings. His unique vision offered his devotees a singular experience. It offered them opportunity to seek out and eradicate evil. Other sects downplayed the evil that roamed the earth, romanticized it even. But he did not. He knew the truth. He had the gift.

His gift empowered him and the Soldiers of the Divine Trinity to obey the Lord’s commands and protect the world from the vile minions of Satan. God ordered them, through Howard, to root out servants of darkness. They were anointed soldiers of light. The devil had created warriors that roved about and wreaked havoc on humanity. Howard and his followers were charged with destroying them before their numbers grew unmanageable and threatened humanity. His church had become powerful with hundreds of devoted disciples worldwide, all committed believers in his mission, God’s mission.

Fighting evil was in his blood, quite literally. His ancestors had been fighting the devil’s slaves for nearly three centuries. Their battles dated back to the days of the Salem witch trials. It was his ancestors who had orchestrated the destruction of countless witches and had rescued humankind from an uprising of catastrophic proportions before it began, before the number of witches had proliferated and innumerable covens had been formed. The witch trials of Salem had since been held as a benchmark of brutality brought on by mass hysteria. But what the ignorant masses could never possibly understand, what their fragile minds could never comprehend, was the truth. An uprising of evil had begun, but was thwarted by the Lord’s soldiers. He, and his descendants before him, had fought and continued to fight to preserve light on Earth, the slaying of each fiend a result of his divine sight and orders from God.

Howard breathed deeply and enjoyed the purity of the air, of his surroundings. He found that reflecting on the successes of his predecessors relaxed him and filled him with indescribable peace. Remembering the sacrifices and trials of those passed opened the channels between him and his Maker. He felt confident that his work, and the work of his servants, had been far-reaching and considerable. Many witches had been exterminated. They had been of little consequence, however. Some had even claimed unawareness of their power. Of course, he did not believe them. Witches were liars, all of them. Awareness of one’s power was unavoidable. He was living proof of it. To believe that a witch was unaware of her power was as ridiculous as believing a muscled man did not know of his strength; it was preposterous. He knew the demons were conscious of their abilities, and that a herald walked among them. She was referred to as the Sola in his ancestor’s scriptures. Sola, or one who walks alone, had been long considered a harbinger of humanity’s demise, but she had not arrived yet. For more than three hundred years, her arrival had been predicted, her power and capability for chaos warned about. The Sola had been prophesied to possess the capacity to unite every witch on Earth and create an army of evil. But no one had ever sensed her. No one had felt her presence. But of late, Howard had begun to feel her.

In recent months, he had sensed her, felt her foul presence among humanity. He was drawn to her in a way that contradicted reason, and instead of repelling her, as most polar opposites do, he was attracted to her. His pull toward her felt almost magnetic in nature. And each day that she lived, he could feel her growing stronger. Her power was rapidly gaining strength, signifying that she’d either become of age for her powers to manifest themselves, or she had made an enormous stride in her dark art. Either way, the potency of her energy had changed dramatically in recent weeks. Her essence was connected to his. His task of killing her pulsed and throbbed in him, summoning him with all its majesty. God had linked him with the Sola to simplify the greatest challenge in his mission, so he could eliminate her, and the threat she posed against humankind could end.

He had been close to her many times in months past. He had been on her trail. But she had eluded him. He wondered whether she, too, felt his presence, that the fear of the Almighty existed within her instinctively. After all, they were heritable enemies.

He pictured her in his mind’s eye. Though he had no idea of what she truly looked like, he envisioned a raven-haired enchantress with black eyes and tan skin capable of seducing and charming with wickedness. He imagined her raven hair enveloped in flames, her black eyes weeping as fire consumed her. Her death would be his greatest tribute to the Lord. The day could not come soon enough. In the meantime, she still lived and retained the potential to join all evil on Earth.

Howard shivered at the thought of the damage the Sola could cause. If she were able to do as his descendants predicted, he worried he and his followers would not be able to stop it, that she would overtake humanity. He rose to his feet slowly, but not before touching his hand to his forehead. His fingers lingered there long enough to graze the charred and puckered skin, the same scarred skin that covered his entire face, before he dropped his hand to his navel, crossed it to his left shoulder then his right. He breathed a quiet “Amen” and genuflected before heading down the center aisle of the church, out the door and to the vestibule. There, he dipped his fingers in the basin of holy water and crossed himself again. He left not because he doubted God’s voice would fill his head, but because he needed to find her. He needed to destroy the Sola. And he believed he would succeed. The worry and doubt that had plagued him earlier was a test, one of many tests he’d been subjected to throughout his life. God would fortify him with the strength he needed for his task, as He always had. God would not allow him to fail.

The school day had passed quicker than Arianna had imagined it would. Though it had been practically the exact same routine in every school she’d been to and her new school differed little, her first day at Herald Falls High School had been by far the most exciting one yet. Thanks in part to her run-in with Cheryl, and meeting Luke, her experience had been interesting if nothing else. Of course, Cheryl and Luke had been the only departures from the standard first day grind. The rest of her time had been spent meeting with the guidance counselor, finding classrooms and surviving gym class. When the final bell had rung at a little after two thirty, Arianna had needed to look twice at her schedule to confirm that she was free to leave. She had fled the building without a detour to her locker. She had wanted nothing more than to climb onto her motorcycle and feel the wind rushing at her.

As she secured her backpack to the rear of her bike, her insides trilled. Riding would give her opportunity to replay the events of the day. It would free her mind long enough to revisit the better parts of it. The look on Preppyboy’s face when she’d flicked her cigarette at him was going to be her starting place. She intended to follow it up with Cheryl crinkling her upturned nose at her in a huff after she’d made plain that she wasn’t the kind of person who tolerated insult from her or anyone else. Luke’s face had flashed in her mind several times throughout the day. She’d resisted the image, yet it had recurred more times than she wanted to admit. He was good looking. She had seen her share of good-looking guys before, had even dated a few. But there was something else about him. She wasn’t sure what it was. Perhaps it was his smile. She had found his smile to be pleasant enough. She liked the way the corners of his mouth turned up impishly, and how his eyes smiled along with his lips. He was tall and lean, and not pretty at all. She despised pretty boys, the kind that primped like Hollywood starlets and fretted when a hair was out of place. She also wasn’t a fan of jocks. In her experience, athletes were self-appointed royalty. They reigned over their peers. And as royalty, the jocks assumed they were entitled to more than the average student as well as maintaining generally arrogant dispositions. She did not like arrogant people and found an air of entitlement to be loathsome. Luke did not look like a jock. The fact that he smoked also suggested he wasn’t involved in sports. He dressed similarly to her, in darkly colored clothes, and she had noticed tattoos on his forearm that she would have liked to have asked him about. But she doubted she’d get the chance to see him again, much less talk to him. His leggy, blonde girlfriend had sent daggers her way with her heavily lined eyes, and would surely not approve of him smoking with her in the woods again. Arianna placed her helmet on her head and fastened her chin strap and forced Luke, as well as his girlfriend, from her mind. She’d wasted enough time thinking about him already. He was taken. That was it.

She looked into her side view mirror as she slowly backed out of her parking space. As she did so, she glimpsed Cheryl talking to Preppy-boy by a sleek, silver Mercedes. Cheryl was chattering away and Preppy-boy looked disinterested. Arianna got the impression the two were a couple. She contemplated backing up further, lifting her visor and waving at them, but reconsidered. The road called to her. So she drove off the campus and onto the county road. She wanted to test the engine of her bike and feel the world, as well as the wind, rushing at her. But she was unfamiliar with the area. Without the ability to anticipate speed traps and upcoming bumps and bends in the road, speeding would lose its edge. Freedom and a guaranteed adrenaline rush would be replaced by a feeling of recklessness. She did not want to spoil what promised to be a thrilling ride. It would come in time. She would be patient. In the meantime, she obeyed the speed limit and scrutinized every niche she saw in search of patrol cars. She passed the gas station she’d stopped at in the morning and was about to turn onto a stretch of tree-lined road when she noticed a figure emerge from the woods a few hundred feet from where she was.

She squinted and strained to see what it was. The size and shape seemed human. As she got closer, she saw that it was a man. She assumed he was a hitchhiker or that his car had broken down. Either way, he wasn’t her problem and she wanted to steer clear of him, literally. She switched into the left lane to put as much distance between them as possible. Something about the man unsettled her. She looked at him as she passed and saw that he studied her. He did not resemble a hitchhiker. He was dressed impeccably in what looked like designer jeans and a fitted T shirt. Each clung to his fit body. He watched her intently. She felt his eyes on her, even after she’d passed. The fine hairs on the back of her neck rose and quivered. She pulled into the right lane and then off to the shoulder, determined to show she hadn’t been intimidated. Once on the side of the road, she stopped and twisted to look behind her, where he should have been, but saw that he’d vanished. People didn’t simply vanish into thin air, so she scanned the road, looked left, right and all around. He was nowhere to be found. She did not see a car along the road and she hadn’t seen anyone stop either. A feeling of worry washed over her, worry and anticipation. Her heart pounded and she felt beads of cold sweat stipple her forehead. It seemed an odd reaction to have, for her to feel as such after passing a man she did not know on a stretch of county road she was unfamiliar with. He had watched her and she had watched him. Nothing extraordinary had happened. But something seemed oddly familiar about him. She tried to remember each detail of his face, of his build. Everything about him stood out. If she had seen him before, she would not have been likely to forget him. Yet, something felt familiar.

Arianna waited for a few seconds before pulling back on to the road, just to be sure she hadn’t missed him, to see if she glimpsed him behind a tree. When he did not reappear, she chalked her nervousness and odd feeling up as consequences of skipping lunch. She vowed to eat the moment she got home.

After ten minutes of riding, the trailer park she currently called home came in to view. She turned down the dirt lane and followed it to her and her mother’s trailer. She parked her bike on the wooden porch and chained it to one of the banisters. She doubted it would hold if it were ever tested, but reasoned that some security precautions were better than none. As she unfastened her backpack from her motorcycle, she felt eyes on her again. Her head snapped up instinctively and searched the park. She did not see a handsome mystery man in designer clothes, but she did see a dirty face framed by a small window in the trailer across from hers. He watched her with wide, unapologetic eyes then smiled when he saw that she was looking at him. He was missing several of his front teeth and what remained did not hold much promise. He ran his tongue over his lips lewdly. Arianna felt her stomach churn. She found that subtlety was lost on people like the toothless peeper.

“Look elsewhere asshole. You don’t have a shot in hell with me,” she warned him and he disappeared like a mechanical Whack-a-Mole critter.

Satisfied that at least one riddle was solved, she unlocked the front door and strode in. The first thing she noticed was that the fat man still slept on the couch.

“Didn’t need to. Last time I checked, dead people don’t snore like a chain saw.”

“I don’t know. I figured I’d wait for you to come home and you’d come up with something. Meanwhile, I’ve been trapped in this room like a prisoner! I’ve had to tiptoe to the refrigerator, and forget about watching my shows! It’s been a nightmare.”

“If you shook him and he didn’t wake up, why would you tiptoe to the fridge?’

“Oh Arianna! Stop interrogating me! Jesus! First I’m stuck in this room all day then you come home and give me the third degree,” her mother pouted.

“Give it a rest, Mom. I’m not giving you the third degree. I just asked a question. Don’t worry, it won’t happen again,” she said with the slightest hint of sarcasm. She was careful to not overdo it. She did not want to hurt her mother or incite a tantrum. “I have an idea of how to get rid of your chubby loverboy. Follow me.”

Arianna marched down the hallway with her mother in tow and stopped in front of the couch. The man lounged on his side facing her. His belly drooped over the edge of the couch. She reached behind him, behind his generous backside and gripped the removable cushion he slept on. Pulling as hard as she could, she lifted the cushion as high as she could. The man rolled forward and fell to the floor with an unceremonious thud.

“Uh, Artie, my name is Artie Sellers,” he said with breath so foul Arianna suppressed a gag. He rose to his feet and raked a hand through his flimsy hair.

“Well Artie Sellers, it’s almost four o’clock in the afternoon. You’ve been asleep on our couch for more than twelve hours and it’s time for you to leave now,” she said firmly but in the same civil tone.

She and her mother watched as he fumbled awkwardly gathering his shoes and shirt.

“Uh, thanks for your hospitality, uh, uh,” Artie bungled and searched for her mother’s name.

“Thanks for a lovely uh, evening,” he blushed and tottered out their front door.

Once he was gone, Arianna’s mother snorted and laughed out loud. Arianna couldn’t help but laugh as well.

“That was an interesting way of waking him, and getting rid of him! Rolling him off the couch like that, I never would have thought of that. I nearly peed my pants,” her mother managed through giggling fits. “And then the way you handled him! ‘Hi, I’m Arianna’ all as pleasant as you please; you’re too much!”

Her gesture drew another fit of laughter from her mother. Arianna found herself laughing as well, but less about the circumstances and Artie, and more about how when her mother laughed uncontrollably, her mouth would open wide and just low, intermittent yelps would escape. She bobbed her head and clapped her hands, all the while yelping quietly. The overall presentation resembled a circus seal in a silent movie. When the outburst passed and her mother gained her composure, she blotted her eyes. “Here I am, laughing like a loon when Artie could’ve been a serial killer or something,” she said.

“What do you mean lecture? You’re worried Artie could have been a killer. Any of the guys you pick up could be killers. It’s not a lecture to tell you not to bring them here. It’s common sense.”

“Don’t take that holier-than-thou tone with me. You know I’ve been through a lot, and that Artie was just my way of, of, well, blowing off steam.”

“Yes, I’m serious,” her mother said and avoided eye contact. “What did you do today?”

“School, remember, I told you this morning. I started school today. First day in a new school, does it ring a bell?”

Her mother’s eyes swept from side to side as if she were literally looking for the answer. “I was a little fuzzy this morning. I may have had a bit too much to drink last night.”

“Anyway, how was it? Were there lots of nice people? I bet there were. God I loved high school. I’d give anything to go back in time and be a teenager again. Of course, I got pregnant before I got to graduate, but that’s beside the point.”

Her mother was rambling. She tapped her foot impatiently and her mother took the hint.

“It was the same day I’ve had three times in the last two years. Chirpy student council bitch who thought she was better than me had to be put in her place,” she said and began counting the similarities with her fingers. “Asshole principal, hot guy in the courtyard, boring classes. And the added kicker is there are a bunch of rich kids at this school. I can’t tell you how many BMWs and Mercedes were in the parking lot.”

“Huh, never would have thought that judging from this side of town,” her mother said with a half-smile. “But let’s get back to the hot guy.”

“Oh, yeah, well, he’s not worth mentioning. I don’t even know why I did. We had a smoke together and that’s it.”

“How the hell should I know? And besides, Luke has a girlfriend. She’s a bleach-blonde bombshell with a body like a playmate.”

“Whatever, I’ll probably never talk to him again, so this discussion is a waste of time. Mentioning him was a waste of time,” she said testily.

She didn’t mean to snap at her mother. It had been a frustrating day. Everything that had happened, from the comment on the steps of her school, to Cheryl, to Luke, to the mysterious man on the side of the road, to the pervert in her trailer park, the entire day had been stressful. And that was without the whole Artie incident. With him factored in, the day could be considered one for the record books.

“I’m sorry, Mom. I’m just...frustrated I guess. Moving again, the new school, you know, it’s hard.”

“Oh, I do know. I’ve been so depressed about Carl and me breaking up and him kicking us out and all. I don’t know where I find the strength to go on some days. I guess I’m just one of those strong, take-charge kind of people.”

Arianna had so many things she wanted to say, so many instances she wanted to hurl at her mother wherein which she had been anything but strong and in charge. Artie would have been a prime starting point. But she did not. What would have been the point? Instead she changed the subject.

“Umm, I went to the store last night I think. I vaguely remember chicken, but I think Artie and I took care of that.”

Arianna’s eyes scanned the small living room and she saw that an empty fast-food bucket sat atop the coffee table. Her mother’s eyes followed hers.

“Ah, there’s the empty bucket. Yep, we finished it,” her mother said peering into the tub. She then lifted an empty pretzel bag from the floor. “And we ate the pretzels too apparently. Let’s look in the fridge. I think there may be some bologna.” She watched as her mother opened the fridge and bent down to look inside. “Hmm, we have jelly. But I don’t see any bologna.”

“Of course we do. What kind of mother would I be if I didn’t have peanut butter and jelly and white bread for my baby?”

“Let me make it for you,” her mother offered and began searching the drawers for a knife.

She paused and stared at her mother as she opened drawers and cupboards, unsure of what to say. Cathy Rose was not exactly Susie Homemaker and hadn’t cooked or prepared a meal for her in as long as she could remember. Dinner, if any, usually consisted of whatever either of them picked up in their travels or after work. She would have loved a home cooked meal, couldn’t really remember what one tasted like. But she had to admit, her mother’s offer felt nice.

Her mother smiled at her warmly and her previous frustration melted away. She almost felt sorry for her.

“Thanks,” she said again then turned and riffled through her backpack until she found her pack of cigarettes and her lighter. “I’ll be back in a sec.”

She stepped outside and lit her cigarette. The sun hung low in the sky and the air had cooled. She wrapped an arm around her waist and allowed the elbow of her other to rest against it. She took a long drag from her cigarette and thought about her day. Luke popped into her head again for what felt like the hundredth time since they’d met. But it was immediately followed by his scowling girlfriend. She closed her eyes briefly and shook her head. Instantly, another face appeared in her mind’s eye, one with vaguer features and attached to a larger, sturdier looking body. The man on the side of the road had also plagued her thoughts. She was not sure why, or what it had been about him that had struck her, how his eyes had followed her, and how he had disappeared. It was as though he had vanished. And there had been something oddly familiar about him. She shook her head a second time certain she was finally losing her mind. The reality of the situation was that he likely hadn’t been looking at her at all, but past her, and that he hadn’t disappeared, but had returned to whatever he had been doing in the woods previously. Hunger and sleep-deprivation had probably caught up with her and gave the illusion of a situation that simply hadn’t happened. Regardless, she felt confident she would never see the man again. She would go inside, eat her sandwich, take a hot shower and get some rest. Another day of school awaited her and was just hours away. A feeling deep inside her warned her that she’d need all the rest and strength she could get for the days ahead.

Morning was announced with the continuous beeps of Arianna’s alarm clock. Normally, the sound would have been unwelcome, but on this day it had provided relief. It interrupted the nightmare she’d been having the entire night. Her sleep had been filled with terrifying images of burnt flesh and the sound of a girl screaming. She had woken several times, twisting and writhing, feeling intense heat, heat unlike any she’d ever felt before. Each time she had gone back to sleep, she’d expected the dream to have ended. But it had not. It had continued. Dreams – good or bad – had never continued for her in the past. There had been times when she’d wanted nothing more than to return to Brad Pitt who waited for her on his motorcycle, but had been unable to. Yet this one, this awful nightmare, had refused to end for the entire night. Some of it lingered still. She was wide awake, but kept with her the feeling she’d had, a panicked feeling that was laced with what could only be described as guilt. She did not know why. But now, and in her dream, she had felt somehow at fault.

In the light of day, of course, none of it made sense. Try as she may to remember the exact details of her nightmare, she could not. Disjointed pieces of it flashed in her head like black-and-white film running through an old projector. Images, horrific yet blurred, wound around her mind illogically. Determined to not dwell on a dream that was little more than brain garbage, Arianna sat up and kicked her covers off. Her pajamas felt damp and her skin felt cold. She ran a hand through her hair and found that it, too, was moist. She was covered in sweat and needed to shower again before leaving for school. She groaned aloud. Showering would set her back at least ten minutes. Ten minutes lost in the morning translated to her missing breakfast. She quickly gathered the clothes she would wear and dashed down the short hallway into the bathroom. She grabbed her toothbrush, turned on the shower and began brushing while she waited for the water to warm. As the water ran and heated, the mirror above the sink began to fog. Little by little, condensation accumulated on the lower edges of it and crept up slowly. She watched as her reflection was unhurriedly consumed by opaque vapors, and the panicked feeling she’d felt during the night returned. Her heart began to beat wildly, her mouth went dry and she refused to blink. All of a sudden, she began to feel hot. Her feet and legs blazed as if she stood submerged to her hips in a cauldron of boiling water. The feeling traveled up the length of her body slowly, insidiously. She was about to scream, the inexplicable heat she was feeling too intense to withstand a moment longer, when a knock at the door ended it all abruptly.

“Ha, ha wiseass. Are you going to be long in there? ‘Cause I want to get an early start on my job hunting.”

Arianna breathed deeply again and opened the door, “I’ll be quick. And I’m glad you’re looking for a job today. I’m doing the same after school.”

“Good, good,” her mother said and looked at her strangely. “Are you okay? Your face and neck are all red and your hair is sweaty in front. You look like my mama when she was having a hot flash.”

Arianna ducked her head down and looked at her feet embarrassedly. “No hot flashes for me, just hot in here. I’m jumping in the shower now. I’ll be out soon,” she said and shut the door.

She stripped out of her tank top and sweatpants and stepped into the shower. Warm water, cooler than her body temperature, felt refreshing. She would have liked to relax beneath the stream for several minutes, but needed to rush. She washed her hair and body, combed in conditioner then rinsed a final time before turning off the faucet, climbing out and wrapping herself in a towel. She dressed and arranged her hair in a thick braid down her back. She would be cold going out with a wet head, but did not have time to blow-dry her hair.

She grabbed her boots from her room, slipped into them then headed to the kitchen. A jar of peanut butter sat on the counter and she took a spoon from the drawer and scooped a heaping spoonful of it onto a piece of white bread. It wasn’t the best breakfast in the world, but it was something to put in her stomach. She ate it as she gathered her books, jacket and backpack.

She shoved the last of her peanut butter sandwich in her mouth, put her helmet and backpack on and sat astride her motorcycle. Rain had fallen the night before. The sky was still cloudy and overcast and she hoped more rain had not been forecast for the day. Her bike performed well in the rain, but maneuvering it in driving rain was a challenge. It was also generally unpleasant to get soaked.

Luckily, the sun peeked through thinning clouds in some spots and promised clearing as she traveled along increasingly familiar streets. Houses and shops stood out as recognizable landmarks. She felt confident she would be acquainted with the town of Heralds Falls in no time. She passed an intersection and the stretch of road where she’d seen the mystery man. Her eyes scanned the woods for movement. Nothing stirred as far as she could tell and she felt relieved. The gas station she’d stopped at the previous morning was up ahead in less than a mile. She glanced down at her fuel gauge to see if she needed to stop. The needle hovered around the halfway mark. When her eyes returned to the road after taking them off it for a split second, a figure loomed in the distance once more.

The same figure she’d seen the previous day appeared impossibly, from nowhere, and waited, watching. She could feel his eyes on her. The fine hairs on the back of her neck rose and quivered. For reasons she could not explain, she felt afraid, threatened. She glimpsed in her side view mirrors and checked for oncoming cars before twisting the accelerator handle toward her. The bike lurched forward, and the world charged at her. Her speed increased from the forty-five miles an hour to more than sixty miles an hour. She did not look in his direction as she passed, but knew he watched her. When finally she’d passed him and was at what she felt was a safe distance from him, she decelerated slightly and twisted her upper body to look over her shoulder at him. She expected to see him standing there still, facing her expressionlessly as he had the day before. But he was gone again. He had disappeared.

Arianna’s pulse began to race. She reached for the brake lever on her right handlebar, the system that controlled her front brakes, and squeezed it gently. At the same time, she stomped down on the foot pedal the activated her rear brakes. Only something had gone wrong. She felt it immediately. She had braked too hard on her rear brakes and not enough on the front. The tires of the bike tried in vain to grip blacktop slickened from overnight rain, but skidded as the back end of it kicked out. Both the motorcycle and Arianna slid along the pavement. Metal shrieked in protest. Sparks rose and evaporated like fireflies in a night sky. Her shirt and sweater lifted and the ground tore at her skin like innumerable razor blades, slicing and chafing every exposed part of her. The world fell silent. A blur of colors rushed at her. Greens, grays and brown, all melded together in a jumbled mess. She was rolling, tumbling into wet grass and down an embankment.

The embankment was not steep and she landed hard on her back. Every part of her ached and smarted.

She lay there, still, for several seconds, afraid to move, afraid that movement would confirm she’d broken several bones. Sound returned to her and suddenly the world was alive with sound. A car horn blared, birds squawked, and fallen leaves rustled. The rustling of leaves made her heart race dangerously. She wondered if perhaps the mystery man was approaching. A sudden urge to survive superseded her fear of broken bones and she sat upright quickly. To her surprise, the stabbing pain she’d assumed would accompany serious injury did not follow. Even the blistering pain she’d felt as her bare skin had scraped along the road had dissipated. Leaves crunched again close by, too close by for comfort. She snapped her helmet off and looked to her left expecting to see the man from the side of the road, the man who’d watched her and disappeared, but saw instead a plump, gray rabbit.

“I survive a bike accident but Peter fucking Cottontail almost gave me a heart attack,” she mumbled and stood.

The rumble of a car engine and voices could be heard from the ridge she’d careened over seconds earlier. Someone approached. A slim form dressed in dark clothes dashed down the grassy hill. Arianna looked down at her clothes. She supposed she should not have felt self-conscious. After what she’d just been through, grateful should have been all that she felt. But looking down at her torn, muddied clothes, she felt vulnerable. The back of her pants had been completely shredded and revealed her thong underwear, and what was left of the back of her shirt and sweatshirt could not be used to cover her exposed skin.

As the person approached, she realized he looked familiar. She knew him. Luke rushed toward her, and stopped several yards from her, recognition touching his features.

“Uh, yeah, but don’t come any closer, please, my clothes are ripped to shreds and my ass is hanging out,” she said.

“I saw your bike go down. I saw you wipe out in a massive skid. How the hell are you standing? And why are you worrying about your ass?”

Arianna laughed. She couldn’t help herself. She stopped abruptly when she looked up and saw another familiar face. Blonde hair glowed like a halo backlit by emerging sunlight. Luke’s girlfriend glowered down at them from the road. Arianna felt confident she would not venture down the hill. Though the slope was not steep, her high heels were, and certainly not conducive to hiking down wet earth.

“Seriously,” Luke said and took several steps toward her. “How the hell did you survive that?”

“How did it happen? I mean, I saw most of it. I saw someone on a motorcycle, you, just totally skid out. No other car. No collision. What happened, you lost control of it?”

Arianna wanted to tell him she’d been twisting her body dangerously to look behind her at some man who appeared and disappeared from the side of the road. Of course, that would sound ridiculous and he’d think she was insane, so she kept it to herself. Not even her nutty mother who believed in horoscopes and Ouija boards would believe her claim, much less a boy she’d just met.

“I thought I saw something, an animal I guess, and I tried to brake to avoid hitting it. I didn’t brake hard enough in front and overcompensated with the rear. Next thing I knew, I was skidding across the pavement.”

“You should be dead, or at least seriously fucked up right now, your bike is totaled, and so far you’ve worried about me seeing your ass and being late for school. Am I missing something, or are you crazy?”

She chewed her lower lip and pushed errant hairs that escaped her braid from her brow. “When you put it that way, I guess I’m crazy.”

Luke took several more steps, slowly closing the distance between them. “Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want you to get in trouble at school or anything, and I’d love to see your ass, but I don’t know, I thought you’d be more freaked out than you are.”

“I am, trust me,” she said. “The whole thing was just crazy. And I’m so very flattered by your ass remark,” she said sarcastically.

Luke laughed, and she liked the sound of it. But a quick glance up the hill reminded her that he was taken. Never one to ignore the three-hundred pound blonde gorilla in the room, Arianna decided to comment on the heavily lined eyes that watched them. “I’m sure your girlfriend wouldn’t like to hear you say that either. She looks like she’s ready to kill me just for talking to you.”

“My girlfriend?” he asked. “I don’t have a girlfriend,” he said then followed her gaze with is eyes to the road. “You mean Stephanie?”

“Is that her name?” she said and heard the edge of jealousy in her own voice. “What are you guys if she’s not your girlfriend, friends with benefits?” she asked coolly.

“She’s always pissed. It’s some sort of personality deficiency,” he said and turned to her and gestured with his index finger. He turned back to Arianna and said, “She has two moods: bitchy and pissed.”

“Oh, there’s a difference. Trust me,” he said and quirked an eyebrow at her. “But we can discuss Stephanie later. Right now, you’ve got to come with me,” he said stooped and picked up her helmet then reached out a hand. His hand cupped her elbow and he gently led her forward.

“Wait, what? Where? I can’t go anywhere without my bike,” she protested and allowed herself to be led slowly up the hill. “Or with my ass hanging out.”

“Here, take my jacket,” he said and removed his lightweight jacket. She tied it around her waist immediately.

“Thanks,” she said. “At least one problem is solved. Now I’ve got to get my bike taken to a repair shop.”

“Lucky for you, I have a pickup. We can put the bike in back and worry about the rest later.”

“First of all, I’m going to worry about it all day. I’m not exactly loaded and this accident is going to set me back a lot of money, money I don’t have. And second of all, there’s no way you and me can load my bike into your truck by ourselves, and I doubt Stephanie is going to help.”

“Don’t worry. There are other cars up there that stopped,” he said and didn’t address her other concerns. “I’m sure someone will help loading it.”

“Yeah. Just two or three, though. It was a pretty big thing, you know. And once they see it was a girl riding, a girl that looks like you no less, any guy around will line up to help.”

As they reached the lip of the slope she’d tumbled town, she saw flashing lights, a decrepit pickup truck and two other SUVs.

“Fuck Luke! We are so late now,” Stephanie snapped. “Let’s go. She’ll be fine. The police are here.”

“Nice to meet you too,” Arianna snapped back. “I’m Arianna, by the way. I saw you yesterday, remember?”

Stephanie seemed surprised that she had answered her in the same tone, that she’d had the nerve to be huffy right back.

“Yeah, I remember you,” Stephanie replied, the edge in her voice softening slightly. Then to Luke she added, “We’re going to be late.”

“Then we’ll be late ‘cause I’m going to load her bike into the back of my truck.”

“What? No! I’m on academic probation as it is! If I’m late,” she let her voice trail off. Stephanie eyed Arianna, allowed her gazed to examine her tattered clothes. “Jesus, there’s not a scratch on you, but your clothes are shredded to shit.”

“I have a bag in the back of Luke’s truck, clothes and stuff. We’re about the same size,” Stephanie said in a much gentler tone. “You can change on the way, if you’re not too modest,” she added with more bite.

“Modest? My whole ass is hanging out right now. The only thing between it and everyone right now is your brother’s jacket.”

“Huh,” Stephanie said and ignored Luke’s comment. “Looks like he got a few guys to help him load your bike. I guess looking like that,” she said and gestured to Arianna. “Well, I’m sure it helped.”

Arianna wasn’t sure how to respond. Stephanie’s comment sounded more like an accusation than a compliment, so she let it slide.

Once the bike had been loaded into the back of Luke’s pickup and the other men had left, Luke chatted with the police officer who had stopped. They spoke briefly and Arianna watched as Luke pointed to her then, with the officer, approached.

“Arianna, this is Ricky, I mean Officer Arnold,” he said then added. “Sorry man. Still hard to think of you as a cop, you know?”

Officer Arnold rolled his eyes and nodded. He looked about twenty. Pudgy and baby-faced, he seemed genuinely uncomfortable in his uniform. “Uh, ma’am, I mean miss,” he stumbled. “Are you all right? The bike was in pretty bad shape. Are you in need of medical treatment?”

“No, no, I’m fine,” Arianna answered honestly. “I don’t know how, but I’m okay.”

“Um, I’m not even sure what to do here,” he said. “I guess you can give me a statement, you know, tell me what happened and I’ll write a report.”

“Okay, sure,” she said and proceeded to tell him the same story she had told Luke, that she’d thought she’d seen an animal and had swerved to avoid it.

“You’re lucky to be alive,” Officer Arnold said when she’d concluded then added, “Later Luke”

Stephanie rolled her eyes and sighed loudly as she climbed in the passenger side.

“Here Arianna,” Luke said and opened the driver’s side door. He moved his seat forward and she saw that the cab had a second row. She climbed in and sat uncomfortably next to a duffle bag.

“Sorry. There’s not a lot of room back there. Just put your legs up on the seat,” Luke said.

“Thanks,” Arianna replied. Then to Stephanie she said, “Are the clothes you said you’d lend me in this bag?”

“Oh yeah,” Stephanie said, annoyance lacing her words. “There should be a pair of yoga pants and a T-shirt.”

“Thanks,” Arianna said. “You’ll get them back tomorrow, washed, of course.”

Arianna opened Stephanie’s bag and took from it the two pieces she’d been offered. She untied her boots and slid them off before tugging her tattered leggings off. The cotton and spandex material was in shreds and she was left with just her thong underwear, which did not offer much in the way of coverage. She had placed Luke’s jacket over her pelvis and began sliding the yoga pants up her legs.

“I am so jealous of that jacket,” Luke said. She glanced up and saw that he’d been stealing glimpses of her.

“Oh God, kill me,” Stephanie groaned loudly. “You’re such a douche, Luke!”

Though she had feigned annoyance at his peeking, Arianna was secretly thrilled that Luke had tried to see her as she’d dressed. She pulled off her shirt confidently and didn’t bother trying to hide behind his jacket. The front of the truck jerked as she tugged the tight T-shirt over her head.

“They’re just boobs, idiot,” Luke’s sister admonished. “And they’re in a bra!”

He looked at Arianna in the rearview mirror again. “And I missed them!” he complained.

Stephanie laughed. Her laughter was a surprisingly pleasant sound, sweet and mellifluous. Arianna didn’t know why, but she had half-expected Stephanie’s laugh to be a maniacal cackle instead of the honeyed sound it was. She found herself laughing as well.

When the laughter died down and just the radio broadcast crackled from the ancient speakers and filled the truck, Arianna began to think about the accident. She closed her eyes and the entire scene replayed in her mind. She saw the man on the side of the road, saw his face. Though she did not know him, she was convinced she had seen him before. She did not know where or when, just that he was familiar to her. It was hard to imagine that a man that looked as he did would not be more memorable. Men who looked like models didn’t exactly constitute the vast majority of the male population. She racked her brain, struggling to place where it was she knew him from, yet came up empty. She decided to focus on the other question that plagued her: Why hadn’t she been hurt? She had felt pain as she’d scraped along the road. She had ached at every bump as she’d tumbled down the embankment. Yet there was not a mark on her, not that she could see at least. No blood, no bumps or bruises, not a scratch. It did not make sense. Her brain reasoned that it wasn’t possible for her to walk away from the accident unharmed, but she had.

“I saw you with your eyes closed, that’s all. Don’t die or anything, okay? We don’t want Officer Jumbo to lose his job.”

“Don’t worry. I think I’ll live,” Arianna interrupted their bickering. “I was just resting my eyes. The adrenaline rush wore off I guess.”

And it had. The trembling charge she’d felt earlier had left her. What remained were questions, too many questions. Each weighed upon her with leaden heaviness. Chief among them was her escape from the accident unscathed. That point nagged at her, demanding attention like a willful child. It had also birthed yet another issue: she could not remember ever being hurt. As far back into her childhood as she could recall, she had never been injured. No broken bones, no stitches, no trips to the emergency room. It wasn’t as if her mother had been watching her every moment of the day either. To the contrary, her mother had let her roam freely. And she had been a daring child, climbing trees, skate boarding, inline skating, ice-skating. None had produced a scratch worthy of so much as a plastic bandage.

Her recollections were interrupted by Luke’s truck rumbling to a stop in the rear parking lot.

“Or where happiness comes to die,” Stephanie added. “I’m off. See you later.”

“My sister, the wordsmith,” Luke said. “We’re really working on her social skills.”

He smiled, and Arianna smiled, too. Luke had an easy way about him. She felt comfortable around him.

“You know what I mean,” she said. “If you hadn’t passed by when you did, I’d still be back there with Officer Arnold and God-only-knows-who else. So thanks for stopping, and for helping.”

“No need to thank me. Thank whatever force let you live today. Man that was a nasty wipeout.”

“You don’t need to tell me,” she said in agreement. “I got lucky, very lucky.”

“Speaking of getting lucky, meet me here after last period,” he said and flashed a playful smile again. Amusement danced in his eyes.

“I’m just joking around. I’m assuming you’ll need a ride, right?” he said.

He laughed. “All right, point taken. Can’t blame a guy for trying, right? But kidding aside, I’ll meet you back here after school, and take you wherever you need to go, okay?”

“Yeah, that would be great. Wow, that’s really nice of you, but,” she began.

“And don’t freak out about the mechanic thing,” he interrupted as if reading her thoughts. “I know a guy who fixes bikes, and he’ll take care of it for you, no problem.”

“Yep, I’ll introduce you to him at my place after school today if you want.”

“Yes! Please! That would be great. I was supposed to go job hunting, but that can wait ‘til tomorrow. I’ll need that job to pay your guy!”

“He’s cheap. Don’t worry,” he smiled broadly, a warm smile that she swore made his gray eyes shimmer. “Be here at the end of the day.”

He hesitated for a moment and searched her eyes. A strange expression touched his features, flickered there for a fraction of a second, as if he wanted to say something else to her. But instead he turned and walked away. Alone, she slung her backpack, now frayed and ragged-looking, over her shoulder, and began her second day at Herald Falls High School.

God had made plain His disdain for witchcraft. Exodus, Deuteronomy, Galatians and Revelation all spoke of forbidding a witch to live, and prohibited the use of divination, sorcery and witchcraft. Howard Kane knew of each verse in the Bible that condemned heretics. He could quote them all by heart. He had also heard the Lord’s voice speak them through him.

Though God had not communicated with him in some time, signs had abounded. He lived his life, ever vigilant and sensitive to more subtle messages from his Maker. Vigilance and sensitivity combined with technology had enabled his latest endeavor.

He drove along a narrow, winding road. Wind-driven rain pelted his windshield and his wipers struggled to clear it. Gusts whipped and lashed at the treetops on both sides of the street, sending fiery red and orange leaves in every direction like burning embers and rocking his SUV. But he never doubted the capability of his Chevy Suburban, or the envoy that tailed him.

He glanced up into the rearview mirror and glimpsed his fleet of three identical vehicles behind him. Together, they were on a mission, a divine mission.

Weeks of poring over information received from his network of followers had resulted in his current outing. A report had come to him, from a very loyal and dedicated source, that a small group was planning an initiation ceremony. They had intercepted several cryptic e-mail exchanges and learned where and when the ritual was to take place. Gatherings of witches for the purpose of ritualistic behavior, introductory or otherwise, implied the formation of a coven, and covens of witches were a dire threat to humankind. Perhaps their gathering had been instigated by the Sola in an attempt to unite forces with others of far lesser strength, others who possessed meager powers by comparison, but powers, nevertheless. She would rank highest among them, and have the authority to preside over their disgraceful service. He, and the others who followed in their trucks behind him, were en route to end the ritual by any means necessary. They were headed to destroy the demons. If she were there, he would destroy her as well.

A turnoff ahead signaled the entrance to a long driveway. He did not bother signaling, but veered off the main road and on to the gravel lane. Muddy impressions made in the pebbles meant that the witches had already arrived, and had likely begun their pagan rite. Howard’s insides pulsed, infused with righteous power, the power he thrived on to conquer wickedness.

He parked his truck at the end of the driveway, before a crumbling house. Built in the early 1900s, the building had been a rumored spot for every kind of imagined depravity. Some said it was haunted. Others claimed it was a house used for satanic ceremonials. But none of the rumors mattered now. After all, everything he’d heard, every rumor, was just that. The proceedings that were likely under way were supported by facts, evidence, and not mere speculation. Howard looked up to his rearview mirror again and saw that his followers had already exited their vehicles. He stepped out as well. As his feet hit the stony pathway, the rain slowed to a fine mist then ended abruptly. He raised his eyes heavenward and saw that clouds, unhurried minutes ago, now raced across the sky. Patches of blue could be seen in some spots. Undoubtedly a sign from God, the weather was predictive of his upcoming victory. The earth around him had been doused in heavenly water, purged of its sin and left clean. The parallels were remarkable, how the Lord made clear his plan, miraculous.

Two men approached him, a father and son. Mark Andrews and his son MJ had been loyal servants for more than a decade.

“Brother Howard, the e-mail said they were meeting in the basement,” Mark said.

“Ah yes, very fitting that they’d conduct their wretched business on the lowest level of the house,” Howard commented.

Mark put a hand on his son’s broad shoulder and squeezed. “That’s why we’re here, son. To cast them from their shadowy depths and shine the light of God on them.”

Howard beamed at Mark and MJ. They were such bright and benevolent servants. The others joined Mark and his son and gathered around him. After he’d given his instructions, they entered the derelict house.

He led them through the front door. There was no need to worry about surprising the witches. They’d likely known of Howard and his men’s arrival; had sensed it. Innumerable dust particles scattered as thin rays of light sliced through the darkened entrance. He immediately noticed several sets of footprints in the thick layer of dust on the wood floors. He followed them to what used to be a kitchen where they disappeared abruptly.

“They’re here. I can feel it,” he whispered. And with his words, God sent him another sign. The smell of incense assaulted his nasal passages, its woodsy musk thick and heavy. He closed his eyes and forced himself to inhale deeply, to breathe the filthy scent. “Yes, they are near, very near.”

He took several steps toward a door that looked no larger than a pantry closet and the scent intensified. He pointed to a wooden door and nodded. Mark stepped forward and slowly turned the handle. The door opened inward, and he expected its hinges to creak in protest. To his surprise, it opened silently. Before them was a narrow, stone staircase. Howard began descending the staircase, into the darkened bowels of the house. Up ahead, he saw a red glow that swelled and diminished intermittently. The smell grew stronger still and he fought the urge to hold his breath. And then he heard it. Voices chanted, murmuring forbidden words, summoning ancient evil. The sound of the incantation filled the air. He turned and looked to Mark who was just a step behind him and nodded solemnly.

At the bottom of the steps, he and his men rounded a corner, and before them stood a hideous display of blasphemy. Five sinners in all chanted at the vertices of a pentagram drawn in chalk on the concrete floor. Candles and incense burned, suffocating the room with unholy light and fragrance. Around the pentagram, a circle had been traced. Just outside the perimeter of the circle, a blue book with a silver pentagram inscribed at its center sat on the dirt-coated floor. He knew it well. Widely held as the most thorough and respected authority on witchcraft, it was a mark of defilement in his eyes, a blasphemous reminder of man’s frailties. In it pages was the despicable history and philosophy of witchcraft, as well as powerful spells and ritual instructions. To the novice, the book was a veritable how-to book for the induction into the ungodly practice. To the experienced sorceress, it was a reference guide that had long since been committed to memory. Beside it sat a notebook with the words “Book of Shadows” scrawled across it in loopy handwriting. The Book of Shadows was a common term for a witch’s journal. It was where she would record each of her rituals and their outcomes, along with her profane journey down the path of evil. He loathed to touch such offensive works, but needed to confiscate them as evidence for his congregates. But before he reached for the book, before he made his presence known, he searched his soul and tried to sense the Sola’s presence.

He closed his eyes and held his hands out at his sides, palms facing upward. He felt her existence thrumming through his core like a constant current of electricity, coursing through his very being. She was near; of that he was certain. But he did not feel the charge of her growing power. The energy he sensed in the room was different from that of the dangerous seer. The energy of the room, concentrated in the encircled pentagram was latent, its force as yet untapped. He opened his eyes and noticed that one of the cloaked conjurers watched him.

“Who dares to conjure evil in this house?” he boomed. No one answered, but five sets of eyes now stared at him. “Who is the high priestess of this ritual?” he demanded again.

One of the hooded fiends lowered her cloak. “I’m not a priestess or anything,” she answered. “But I am hosting this ceremony.”

Her face was smooth and round, childlike, yet had been tainted by dark makeup. He guessed she was perhaps eighteen years old.

“Ceremony,” Howard said and stooped to pick up the blue book. “You call gathering together to summon darkness a ceremony? This is an abomination, an offense against God!”

Howard scanned the faces of the cloaked children. He searched with his soul, with God’s gift, and realized they were not the devil’s disciples; they possessed no genuine power. They were just misguided teenagers intrigued by unholiness.

Howard paused and took a deep breath. “Whose book is this?” he demanded but no one answered right away. “Whose book is this?” he boomed a second time.

“That’s my book,” the baby-faced girl said in a voice that quavered, betraying the confidence she’d feigned. A silver earring looped through her nostril quivered and reflected the candlelight, and he noticed that her dark hair was streaked with scarlet strips.

He stepped toward the girl, closed the distance between them and removed his own hood. She gasped and he took her plump face in his hand and squeezed her cheeks.

Howard glanced back to his men and nodded. All twelve stepped from the shadows and drew their weapons. He returned his attention to the girl. One hand held her face while the other clutched the book. He raised it and placed it close to her face. “You see this?”

The girl cried. Blackened tears fell from her eyes and formed sinister rivulets down her cheeks.

Howard swallowed back the bile rising in his throat and took a deep breath to calm the rage that scorched inside of him.

“You are not a witch,” he said through his teeth and squeezed her cheeks harder. “None of you are!”

Anger shot through him like a lightning bolt. His body began to tremble and he squeezed even harder. “Foolish child,” he condemned.

He stared into her eyes. They were the eyes of a scared and reckless teenage girl. His peripheral vision confirmed that all present were scared, foolish teenagers. None held powers. None were witches. But Howard felt no pity for the girl or her friends. They had chosen freely to experiment with darkness. They had turned from the light, from God. And he could not ignore such an affront. He could not forgive it.

“This is a sin. You are all sinners!” he said and dropped the blue book to the floor. It landed with a thud and he felt the girl flinch beneath his grip. With his freed hand, he reached into his jacket pocket and retrieved his blade. In one quick motion, he thrust it into the girl’s stomach.

A stunned hush blanketed the room then was quickly slashed by cries of terror and pleas.

“I cannot allow for such blasphemy to go unpunished. This is God’s will,” he said solemnly. Warmth spread over his hand and a large crimson stain grew over her abdomen, saturating her shirt and expanding to the waistband of her pants. In the warmth of her waning lifeblood, he felt infused with calm and peace. He was carrying out God’s work. Righteousness filled him. He felt dizzy, giddy even, and weightless. Tears filled his eyes, the Holy Spirit overwhelming him.

At his command, shots rang out and echoed though the old house. Tears streamed down his charred, leathered skin. Pure joy filtered through him like sunlight. He relished in the moment and muttered, “I heard you, Lord. I hear you.”

He pulled his blade from the girl and returned his attention to his men. All of the sinners had been shot dead. None lived. Smoke filled the room and through its hazy veils, he saw that some of his men looked weary. He recognized their need for divine inspiration.

“Sometimes we have to fulfill commands that are unpleasant on the surface. But rest assured that at their core, the activities here were unholy, and had to be punished. These were not children of God. They had strayed and sought out dark forces. They sought out Lucifer.” He paused and heard “Amen” muttered several times then continued. “These sinners needed to fall,” he said and enriched his voice with virtue. “They will be examples to others who might consider following them.” His men nodded in agreement. He raised his voice, honesty and morality ringing out like a bell heralding a new day, and said, “We are God’s soldiers. We must be strong and carry out His will, however difficult it may seem. We will leave these bodies, as they are, around the very symbol of their ungodliness. They will show the world what happens to those who trespass against the Lord.”

Howard watched as MJ’s eyes surveyed the room, the blood that had splattered against the concrete walls and seemed to dance in the flickering candlelight. A smile tugged at the corner of the boy’s mouth and he looked to Howard and said, “Amen.” With his loyal followers and God on his side, Howard knew the Sola’s days were numbered. She, like the sinners he stood before, would fall.

Starting the day by losing control of her bike and careening down a stretch of road on her back had not been Arianna’s first choice of ways to begin her day. She felt safe assuming that the accident would be the lowest point of her day, and that anything else that happened thereafter couldn’t possibly be worse. Not even her second day at her new school. In fact, thanks to her new friend, Luke, Herald Falls High School didn’t seem half bad, even though she was forced to face it dressed like a prostitute. She ran her hands down her abdomen and touched her borrowed clothes. Luke’s sister had surprised her with her generosity, but in her clothes, she felt less like herself. She felt vulnerable. Though she’d never shied away from wearing tight clothing, the thin material of Stephanie’s yoga pants left little to the imagination. Every curve of her body was on display. The T-shirt she’d borrowed was more fitted than the ones she normally wore as well. The cotton and spandex blend of the fabric stretched and strained across her chest and hugged the contours of her breasts. She wished her sweater had fared better so that she could have covered up with it. She’d wanted to ask Luke for his, but he’d done so much for her already. His offer to connect her with an inexpensive mechanic to fix her bike was more than she could have possibly expected, not that she’d expected anything that had happened earlier in the morning.

The morning, and the accident, was still so fresh in her mind. Each time she blinked, she saw a glimpse of it. The world rushing at her as her bike spiraled out of control, scraping along the asphalt, rolling down the hill, and the strange man on the side of the road. Images unceasingly presented themselves, but none more disturbing than the man. The stranger on the side of the road had distracted her, and had arguably instigated her crash. But she did not want to think about him. Not now. She had a long day ahead of her.

Pulling one of two large doors toward her, she pushed the mystery man to the back of her mind, replaced by a sudden need for nicotine. She could not remember when she’d had her last cigarette and felt a distinct edge encroaching on her temper. Walking toward her first period class, she decided she’d sneak out at her first opportunity to the small clearing. Even if she only managed a few drags, the nicotine would mellow the irritability she felt. She dug through her bag and found her course schedule wadded at the bottom. She smoothed the creases as best she could and saw that her first class was just a few doors from where she stood. Few students lingered in the hallway. The first bell had rung while she had been in the parking lot with Luke. The ones that remained watched her, though they tried to do so discreetly. She would have loved to stare each of them down, freeze them out with her hardest look, but there was no time. She jogged to her class and crossed the threshold just as the second bell rang.

Everyone was already seated. Arianna looked at roughly twenty-five or so sets of eyes. And they were all on her. All looked unfamiliar, save for one. Cheryl Charles narrowed her green eyes at her and smirked.

Arianna resisted the urge to walk to her desk and wipe the stupid grin she wore right off her face, and probably would have, had her teacher not begun to speak.

“Oh, hello there,” he began in a soft voice. “My name is Mr. Bates. Welcome to American History. You must be Arianna Rose.”

“Good to meet you. We have an empty desk back there,” he said and pointed to a desk in the last row.

Arianna walked to the back of the classroom and felt eyes on her as she passed. Some of the looks were approving. The boys she’d passed let their eyes travel the length of her body and generally rested on her chest. The attention was flattering. There was no doubt about it. But it did not go over well with the girls in the class. A few huffed and rolled their eyes and Arianna silently cursed Stephanie’s available wardrobe.

Once she’d finally made it to her desk and settled in, she looked up and noticed another familiar face. The boy she’d flicked her cigarette at, Preppy-boy, sat at the desk next to Cheryl. Both had turned in their seats slightly and eyed her. She met Cheryl’s gaze first and watched her unwaveringly. After she realized Arianna was not going to look away, Cheryl returned her attention to the front of the room and shifted uncomfortably. Preppy-boy gave up as well and followed Cheryl’s lead. Mr. Bates began his lecture and twenty-five boring minutes into class, everyone was broken into groups. Neither Preppy-boy nor Cheryl had been assigned to her, but their group had met beside hers.

More than once, Arianna heard Cheryl remark to Preppy-boy muffled words then laugh and look in her direction. Anger began to boil in her like molten lava. She did not know if it was Cheryl’s arrogant smirk, or her body’s need for nicotine gnawing at her, but she could not recall ever feeling as riled as she did in that moment. Each time she laughed, Cheryl tossed her head back and slung her blonde hair over one shoulder. The hair toss, the exaggerated cackle, and that smug smirk incensed Arianna. It felt as though every cell in her body teemed, alert and alive, and on edge. She balled her fists and put them in her lap, her nails digging into the skin of her palms so deeply, she was certain she’d drawn blood. She heard the word “slut” hissed and saw Cheryl stand and brush her hair off her shoulder followed by another girl chiming in and adding, “She really does dress like a slut.”

“I hope you’re not talking about me,” Arianna said aloud and looked directly at the girl.

The girl did not reply. She lowered her gaze to her textbook and stared at it as if it were the last thing she’d read. Cheryl, however, had become suddenly emboldened. She looked at her and tipped up her chin, “Arianna, why would you ever think we were talking about you? The outfit perhaps,” she said and raked her eyes over her before cackling again.

An indescribable feeling shot through Arianna’s body, like a bolt of lightning streaking across the sky. It jolted each of her senses and all she could think of was humiliating Cheryl, knocking her from the high horse she’d placed herself on. Her pulse pounded in her ears and her breathing became short and shallow. Words escaped her fleetingly and she envisioned Cheryl on her ass. She took a deep breath to calm herself and was about to utter a sharp retort as Cheryl squatted to seat herself in her chair again. Arianna stared at the chair, concentrated hard on it and focused all of her rage, all of her energy toward it. She wanted nothing more than for the chair to glide back, away from Cheryl. She lifted her hand to brush a lock of hair from her forehead and noticed that her fingertips tingled and watched as, impossibly, the chair shot out from behind Cheryl, slid of its own volition more than twenty feet. Cheryl’s backside landed against the floor with a thump, and judging from the expression on her face, the fall had hurt more than her rump. The entire class laughed.

“Ow! Oh my God! Ouch!” she squealed and stood slowly. “What the hell! You people are not funny! Not funny at all! Which one of you did it? Huh, which one?” she accused her group.

No one took credit for kicking her chair out because no one had. Arianna had seen the chair move by itself. Or had she? Searing pain exploded in the back of her head. She raised a hand and tried to massage the overwhelming ache and found that the tingling had stopped. She wondered whether the massive headache was nicotine withdrawal or possibly a concussion. Or perhaps she was going crazy. Fortunately, the pain subsided quickly, and as the laughter subsided and it had been determined that none of the people in her group had kicked the chair out from beneath her, Cheryl glanced over her shoulder at Arianna. Only this time, her haughtiness was tinged with embarrassment. Arianna was the one to smirk this time around, and though she was left with a dull smarting at the base of her skull and the distinct possibility existed that she was injured or losing her mind, she felt that either way, Cheryl had gotten what she deserved.

Mr. Bates quickly regained control of his class and silenced any remaining chatter. The rest of the period wore on and Arianna’s headache wore off. When the bell finally sounded and ended American History, she gathered her belongings and bolted out the door. A quick glance at her schedule confirmed that her next class was two doors down the hall. When she arrived there, a note had been posted on the door that her teacher had needed to leave unexpectedly. The class was instructed to report to either the library or computer lab for study hall. But she had no intention of doing either, not right away at least. Enduring a fifty-minute class in the throes of a nicotine fit had been next to impossible. She did not intend to ignore opportunity when it presented itself. She needed a cigarette. She dashed down the hallway and found the alcove that led to the clearing in the woods. She pushed open the door and noticed that it did not fully close. A rock had been wedged near the bottom hinge. She smiled and realized someone had borrowed her idea.

The sun was strong for the late-October morning. Although she wasn’t particularly fond of her tight T-shirt, she was grateful it was short-sleeved. With one hand reaching into her backpack digging for her box of Camel Lights, she stole across the leaf-littered grass to the tree line. When finally concealed by a formidable maple, she placed her cigarette between her lips and lit it. She inhaled deeply and felt the smoke fill her lungs, the nicotine entering her system. She felt immediately calmed, and a bit lightheaded, but not unpleasantly so. Her accident earlier in the morning, her run-in with Cheryl, as well the bizarre chair incident moments ago, seeped from her and was replaced with quiet calm. The area around her, bathed in golden light and bejeweled with brilliant treetops, was peaceful. But the sound of damp leaves swishing in the distance ended her peacefulness. Growing nearer, it meant that she wasn’t alone. She peeked out from around the trunk of the maple she hid behind and did not see anyone. She guessed animals had made the noise and returned her attention to smoking.

“Holy shit!” Arianna jumped and dropped her cigarette in the wet leaves. She turned, her heart slapping wildly against her ribs, and found a pair of familiar gray eyes staring at her. “Luke,” she breathed and clutched her chest. “Are you trying to kill me?”

“Guess it’s my ninja skills,” he said and winked. She did not know whether to be touched or embarrassed by the fact that he’d remembered their first conversation in such great detail. She chose to do neither and decided to change the subject.

“You’d better hope that wasn’t my last butt,” she said referring to her fallen cigarette. She began rifling through her bag and Luke stepped closer.

“Here,” he said and placed one of his between her lips. He stood close to her, with only about a foot of space between them, and smelled of soap and deodorant. She enjoyed his clean scent, his nearness. He lit her cigarette with his lighter, all the while staring at her mouth. She felt her insides begin to tremble slightly and removed the cigarette from her lips, the sudden need to busy her hands overwhelming. She exhaled upward then watched as a veil of smoke descended slowly, shrouding and obscuring Luke’s features. When the smoke had cleared, she saw that he smiled again, his lively gray eyes sparkling.

“No. Well, not all day. Normally, I’d wait ‘til later. But someone decided to crash her bike this morning and interrupt my morning cigarette and coffee.”

“Who would go and do something that awful to you?” she said then added, “What an asshole.”

“Ah, you know, maybe ‘asshole’ is too strong a word; rude, might be better. But she’s really hot, so I let it slide.”

Arianna was not accustomed to compliments or flattery. Guys she’d dated in the past had shown her their appreciation of her appearance in rather obvious ways, and while she did not prefer their methods to Luke’s, it had been all she’d ever known and come to expect. Luke wasn’t like other guys she’d dated, though. He was far different. The tattoos and scars that marked his ropey arms were betrayed by the kindness in his eyes. He looked at her and smiled, a wicked, crooked smile, yet his eyes brimmed with anything but wicked intentions.

She was about to make a snappy comeback about the rude comment when voices echoed from beyond the trees. A male voice said something inaudible and was followed by both male and female laughter.

“Come on,” Luke said and took her hand. He gave it a gentle squeeze then tugged and led her away from the maple. “I want you to meet some of my friends.”

“Well, I don’t know,” she balked. “I’m not dressed like I normally do.”

“Oh stop,” he said and pulled her slightly. “No one cares how you’re dressed. I mean, you look smokin’ hot, don’t get me wrong, but they’re not like that.”

She allowed herself to be led briefly, another unfamiliar action. She walked alongside him deeper into the woods. Luke let go of her hand and disappointment at his gesture nipped at her. He wasn’t her boyfriend. She didn’t know why it had bothered her. He was just a guy she’d met the day before who had helped her out of a tough spot. She’d only known him all of one day. So what if she’d thought about him all evening and most of the afternoon after she’d met him. Big deal, he was good looking and had kind eyes. She’d avoided disappointment when it came to guys her whole life. By insulating herself against caring or getting deeply involved, she’d safeguarded herself against vulnerability, against heartbreak.

Slogging through soggy leaves, she pushed the fleeting feeling of disappointment from her mind and silently promised herself that after he introduced her to his mechanic, she’d thank him and offer him some form of payment for his help then distance herself from him. She walked beside him and approached his friends, but knew she was alone.

“Hey guys,” Luke said. “This is Arianna. Arianna, this is Ryan, Mike, Bulldog, Christa, Carrie and Beth.”

“Hey, how’s it goin’” Arianna said. Luke’s friends stood, seemingly at ease and all smoking in a circle.

“Good to meet you,” Ryan, a stocky guy with brown hair that grazed his shoulders, said.

“What’s up?” Bulldog said and looked every bit of his nickname. Broad-shouldered and brawny, Bulldog looked well equipped to handle himself in a fight. Scars on his face and arms hinted that he’d seen his fair share of brawls. He smiled at Arianna and raked a hand through the sandy-colored stubble that covered his head.

“Where am I not from is more like it,” Arianna said and raised her brows. “The last school I was at this year was up in Rockdale.”

“Oh man, I gotta go,” Mike announced. “Second period’s already half over.” He then kissed Carrie on the cheek and said, “Later!” to everyone. Before he’d walked to the edge of the wood where the trees gave way to grass, he turned and called out, “You comin’ tomorrow night, bro?”

Arianna wasn’t sure to whom he was speaking. When Luke answered, “You know I am,” her question had been answered. “Hey, you wanna come out with us?” he asked her.

She wasn’t sure how to answer, but figured a group get together was conducive to his feelings for her. Not a date, just a group of friends hanging out.

“To Blue Ivy. It’s a club on the edge of town. Eighteen to party, twenty-one to drink, but we all have IDs,” Christa answered.

“Yeah, I gotta take my girl out and show her a good time every now and again,” Ryan added.

By Arianna’s count, Ryan and Christa were together as were Mike and Carrie. She felt confident, however, that Beth was not with Bulldog. She guessed Bulldog had to be more than six-foot-two inches tall, every inch of him solid. Beth, on the other hand, looked as though a stiff wind would blow her away. Extremely thin and petite, Arianna wondered whether Beth could even shop for clothing in the adult department. Her mind refused to believe that such an odd pairing could happen. She smiled and remembered she hadn’t gotten all the information she’d needed.

“Count me in,” Arianna said then remembered her bike. “Shit, count me out. My bike is totaled.”

“Well, before this morning, I had a Kawasaki, older model, of course, but it was in decent shape.”

“I can take you,” Luke said nonchalantly. “Stephanie’s probably coming too, so if you don’t mind riding in back and listening to her bitch, come with me.”

She wasn’t sure how to respond, couldn’t get a good read on Luke. One minute he seemed to be into her, and the next, he seemed cool. Regardless, she had no intention of letting herself get involved with him. He could be cute and charming all he wanted, she would just keep him at arm’s length and be his friend.

“All right. I’d better get going. Don’t want to push it on my first day. With my luck, Mr. Wood is personally looking for me as we speak,” she said and the group chuckled. “Later.”

Arianna turned and began walking away from Luke and his friends. As she trekked through the wet leaves, she felt a breeze blow. The trees did not stir though. In fact, the woods seemed eerily still. Yet, a warm wind whispered at her back, tickling her senses. She spun around and half expected to see the man from the side of the road standing behind her, watching as he had earlier and the day before. But no one followed. Not even Luke. He had remained with his friends. The annoyingly persistent hint of disappointment that had wormed its way into her thoughts now edged again. She picked up her pace and was about to step up onto the single concrete step that led to the double door when a voice called out to her.

“Hey! Hold on a sec,” Luke said and jogged to close the distance between them. “Damn, you walk fast,” he wheezed.

“I don’t know, nothing. I just wanted to walk back with you,” he said and smiled warmly.

“Oh, it didn’t seem that way,” she said and caught herself sounding pouty. “You seemed like you wanted to stay. And besides, you give me too little credit. I can find my way back you know?” she joked and returned his smile.

“I’m sure you can. I never mind watching you walk away either. I just, I don’t know,” he said and let his unfinished sentence hang in the air.

And there it was again. Was he flirting with her, or was that just what he did with every girl? Why did she care? She shouldn’t care. She refused to care.

“I have to get to class,” she said. “I’m sure second period is half over by now.”

“Oh, yeah, you’re probably right,” he said and she saw an emotion she couldn’t name dim his features.

He lingered a second longer and leveled his silvery eyes at her. He looked as if he were about to say something to her when Ryan jogged up.

“I’ll see you later, Luke,” Arianna said before turning and walking inside.

The second day of school had begun terribly, but mercifully, had passed quickly. Arianna had been grateful for how fast the day had passed. She had not seen Luke since second period in the woods, a fact that irked her for unclear reasons. He had not been in the cafeteria at lunchtime, but she’d seen his friends. Though she hadn’t wanted to, she’d wondered where he had been, adding to the irksome feeling. Now, as she waited by his pickup truck, she wondered still. She glanced around the parking lot and watched as other students hopped into their cars and took off, eager to leave. She was eager to leave as well, but perhaps not as much as her classmates. They were likely headed to more exciting places than she was; at least she imagined the ones in the fancier cars were. She was not headed anywhere that would qualify as even remotely exciting. To the contrary, her prospects were rather depressing. Meeting with Luke’s mechanic while harboring the fleeting hope that the price of repairing her totaled bike would not be ridiculously expensive made her feel nauseated. She had originally planned to look for a job so that she could help with household bills and have a little spending money. Now, however, she guessed every dime she’d make in the coming months would go toward fixing her bike. She would know for certain soon enough. That’s if Luke ever showed up. The final bell had rung more than ten minutes ago. She’d assumed Luke would be the first person out of the building; that he’d be leaning against his truck waiting for her. But he hadn’t been. His truck, with her banged-up bike in back, had been the only thing she found when she’d rushed to the rear lot. No Stephanie; And no Luke.

People parked in surrounding spaces stared at her suspiciously. She fished around in her backpack and tried to look busy. Her hand landed on her phone and she pulled it out. She checked it quickly for a text message from her friend from Rockdale, Lily. Lily hadn’t messaged her in more than five days. That was a record for them. Lily had been the closest thing to a best friend Arianna had ever had. And now she hadn’t heard from her in almost a week. Warning whispered in the air and brushed against her skin like a faint breeze. Her insides fluttered briefly and she froze, concentrating on the feeling so completely that she blocked out the sounds of the parking lot. Her mind focused on Lily, and the strange sense of portending beating inside her.

Suddenly, a hand grasped her shoulder. Arianna spun around, her concentration broken, and she pushed the hand off her shoulder. Luke reeled backward and stumbled, catching himself before falling against the car parked beside his. She’d just grazed his hand, yet he’d felt the need to lurch and stagger melodramatically. After waiting for more than ten minutes only to have him scare the crap out of her, she was not in the mood for fooling around.

“Damn, girl!” Luke said and feigned shock. “You’re freakishly strong.”

“Sneaking up on you?” he asked and his expression changed. “What do you mean? I called your name twice. Didn’t you hear me?”

“No,” she said and paused, her thoughts retuning to Lily. Heat crept up her body and flushed her cheeks. “No I didn’t. I guess I flaked.”

“With the morning you had, I guess you’re allowed to do more than flake,” he said and reached a hand out to touch her shoulder again. “Dare I, or am I gonna get thrown around again?” he asked and looked at her with exaggerated fear.

“Shut up,” she said playfully and felt her annoyance dissipate. “Where the hell have you been? I’ve been waiting here like a moron for like, fifteen minutes.”

“Sorry to make you wait,” he said then looked at his shoes. “I was getting things set up with the mechanic.”

“Whatever,” she said. He seemed genuinely sorry and she simply did not feel angry enough to give him a hard time. “Everything went okay?”

She considered making a snide comment about being ready for the last fifteen minutes, but chose not to, opting instead for, “Absolutely.”

Luke reached into the front pocket of his jeans and grabbed his keys before unlocking the passenger side door of his truck for her. “My sister, Miss Personality, won’t be joining us this afternoon,” he said as he tugged at the handle. The door screeched open and she climbed in. “I’m sure you’re all broken up about it.”

“I vaguely remember her mentioning something about that this morning,” Arianna admitted and fought the smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. His actions, unlocking and opening the door for her, hadn’t exactly been the pinnacle of chivalry, but they were the closest she’d come to actually being on the receiving end of gentlemanly gestures. He climbed in beside her and started the truck. The engine started easily, rumbling to what she guessed was a reliable start.

She hadn’t realized the smile had won out against her efforts. “What?” she fumbled. “Oh nothing, just uh, Cheryl today. Something funny happened in first period.”

“Cheryl’s never been funny,” he said seriously. “Ever. Mean, yes. Funny, no way.”

“I’ll give you that,” she said. “I’ve only known her for two days and funny is definitely not a word that comes to mind. The word bitch does, though.”

Arianna debated telling him what Cheryl had called her, wondered whether she could confide in him. She wanted to, and did not like that she wanted to. Deciding against it, she left out the part about Cheryl calling her a slut and the fact that for a moment there, she believed she’d used her mind to move the chair out from under her.

“Cheryl was about to sit down after standing up and flipping her hair around and lecturing the group she was in, when out of nowhere, the chair slid out from behind her. She went to sit back down and she landed on her ass.”

Luke laughed out loud. It was a pleasant, hearty sound that made her laugh as well.

“Oh shit,” he said through laughter. “I would have loved to have seen that. Shit, I know people who would have paid to see that!”

“Hell, I don’t even think they like her. Was her boyfriend, Paul, sitting next to her?”

Luke erupted again with his infectious laughter. “Preppy-boy, huh? I like that. I usually just call him douche bag, but I’ll try out Preppy-boy. I think teachers will appreciate that one more.”

“You asked if he was sitting next to her,” she said and was curious to know where he had been going with that. “Why?”

“Yeah, exactly my point,” he said and laughed again. “If you spent you’re free time with that uppity bitch wouldn’t you want to drop her on her ass every now and then?”

“I would. No doubt about that. But aren’t she and Preppy-boy the same, I don’t know, species. They’re both from planet privileged.”

“Oh I like you,” he said through laughter. “Shit. I’m glad I met you,” he added and she glimpsed him looking at her from the corner of his eye.

They had been driving for less than five minutes when they pulled out onto the main road near the accident site. A shiver slithered up her spine and she stopped smiling. As if he sensed her anxiety, Luke said, “Feel free to smoke.” He reached onto his dashboard and grabbed a pack of Marlboros. He pulled two cigarettes from the red pack and offered one to her.

She put the cigarette between her lips and was about to reach into her bag for her lighter when a flame appeared before her.

“I’m seriously trying to woo you here,” Luke smiled and lit her cigarette for her.

She smiled and rolled her eyes as the flame touched the tip of her cigarette. “So this is what wooing is,” she said playfully then added, “Huh, not bad. Not bad at all.”

They chatted about their classes and teachers they had in common as his truck rattled along for another five minutes before he pulled in to his driveway. The gravel-filled path was more dirt than gravel and several tires dotted the dying crabgrass on either side of it. The driveway ended in front of a detached garage which neighbored a white clapboard house with peeling paint and gutters that drooped dangerously.

“Welcome to Casa Rand,” Luke said and she swore she detected embarrassment in his tone. She knew for certain that if he saw where she lived, he would not feel embarrassed. “Need to use the bathroom or anything?”

“No problem. Just please, look past the junk. No one should be home, but certain people in my house don’t clean up after themselves.”

He climbed out and she followed him across the yard to the front door. A screen with several holes in it stood ajar and the front door looked like a kindergartener could kick it in. Yet, Luke selected a key from his key ring and unlocked the front door. The smell of marijuana and another strong, chemical-laden scent hung in the air. She tried not to inhale too deeply for fear of getting high off of some unknown drug cloud. Pot she could live with, but whatever else had been cooked or smoked smelled horrendous. Luke noticed it too. It would have been impossible not to. He scanned the room and his lips formed a hard line as he shook his head. “Damn it,” he muttered and she saw the muscles around his jaw flexing. She wanted to reach out to him, to comfort him, but figured nothing she could do could help.

“The bathroom’s down this way,” he said tightly and began walking to the left, toward a short hallway.

Arianna did not want to stare, but it was hard to ignore what was before her. A stained, plaid, upholstered couch that sagged on one side occupied the majority of the room flanked by a floral recliner and a straight-back wooden chair. Directly in front of the couch was an oval wooden coffee table atop which sat a lighter, a hypodermic needle, a blackened spoon and several pieces of aluminum foil. Beer bottles, rolling papers and fast-food wrappers also littered the table, but had been pushed to its perimeter. The image was sad really, but not as sad looking as the half-naked woman who looked to be in her mid-fifties and was sprawled out, likely stoned out of her mind, on the floor between the couch and table. Arianna tore her eyes away from the haunting image and followed after Luke. He pointed to the first door and said, “Bathroom.”

She went inside and quickly shut the door. Water stains spotted the ceiling and the sink faucet dripped incessantly. She relieved herself and washed her hands quickly, eager to return to Luke. When she opened the door he waited for her, the warmth gone from his face. They walked outside and he did not bother locking the door.

“I’m sorry you had to see that,” he said addressing the obviously strung out drug addict in the room. “I called ahead and she said she wasn’t going to be here.”

“My mom. And in case you didn’t notice, she’s a fucking addict,” he spat.

“Yeah, me, too,” he said tightly. She was clean for all of four days, longest she’d ever gone. And now this.”

She could see the hurt in his silver eyes, could feel it. She stared at him, focused on him, on his life, and was suddenly consumed by it. She was Luke at eight years old, seeing life through his eyes. She saw a dark-haired woman with dark circles around her eyes and marks up and down her arms. The woman was shouting and shaking her then stormed off. Another image flashed before her and it was the same woman lying still in a pool of vomit. She desperately wanted to help the woman but couldn’t; was never able to help her. Her palms slickened and a bead of sweat trickled between her shoulder blades. Fear and helplessness pressed her from every angle.

His silvery eyes turned to hardened pewter. “Yeah,” he said reluctantly. “How did you know that?”

Her mind raced, searching for a viable response. “Well, uh,” she fumbled. “She’s an addict, right?” was all she managed.

“I just pulled it out of nowhere, a guess really,” she said and her heart raced dangerously.

“What?” she asked. “I don’t get it. Why are you looking at me like that?”

“There is no mechanic,” he said and scrunched his features as if bracing to be hit.

“Well, no, not exactly. I’m the mechanic actually. I’m going to fix your bike.”

“I’ll take you to and from school until it’s finished and I’ll only charge you for parts. Come on, you have to admit that’s a sweet deal.”

“I’ve been fixing cars and motorcycles my whole life. Trust me. You’re better off with me than some dude at a garage.”

She cringed. She didn’t have much of a choice. Her funds were limited, and if she were to take it to a repair shop, they’d double the cost of the parts and add labor charges to her bill. She simply couldn’t afford such an expense. “All right, but what’s the catch?”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “That and what?” she asked suspiciously and hoped he did not have some depraved list to rattle off.

“It’d be nice to have some company while I worked,” he said and tried to sound offhand. She breathed a sigh of relief as he continued, “You could come here some days after school and hang out with me.”

She didn’t think he’d mention his mother again. His comment refreshed her memory of her earlier experience. It had not left her, but she had been distracted by his conversation. The sensation she’d felt had placed her in his past, it had been as if she were visiting his life in clips through his eyes, feeling what he’d felt at that time. Her insides shook at the recollection.

“I’m fine,” she answered absently and looked at the ground. She looked up and saw his concerned expression. “Seriously, don’t worry about me. You’ve been through a lot of shit, still going through it. The last thing you need to be doing is worrying about me.”

“Thanks,” he said and started walking toward his pickup truck. He opened the back of it and ran to the garage. When he returned, he dragged a wide, wooden plank. He rested the plank against the back of the truck and made a makeshift ramp. Then he climbed into the back of the truck, lifted the bike so that it stood on its wheels and walked it down the ramp.

“I’ve done this before. Don’t worry!” he called, but her breath still caught in her chest when he reached the midpoint of the ramp and it bent impossibly without breaking. She held her breath until he’d reached the ground below.

“See! I’m fine!” he said proudly. He smiled and she was happy to see that some of its sincerity had returned. He pushed the bike to the door of the decrepit garage. “Here, hold this,” he told her and gestured for her to balance the bike. While she did, he lifted the garage door. Beyond it was innumerable tools lined along the walls, all neatly arranged in size order. Two chests with several drawers had been placed against the far wall which she assumed held more tools. The garage had been more neatly organized than his house; that was for sure. It was clearly the area he presided over, the area he took pride in. He withdrew the kickstand of the bike and placed it near the center of the space then set about collecting tools from the chests. She watched how confidently he moved, how purposefully.

“I’m gonna get a look at her and see what the real damage is here. Do you want anything to drink, a soda or something?”

“I am a little thirsty,” she said and regretted sending him back into the house. “But it’s no big deal.”

“I have soda in the fridge over there,” he pointed to a miniature refrigerator tucked in a corner. “It’s not like I have to go back inside or anything,” he said more quietly.

“You mean you’re not fully wooed?” he said and matched her tone. “Shit, you’re quite the princess aren’t you?” He sighed exaggeratedly then walked to the refrigerator. “Fine. A soda for the lady.”

She heard herself giggle and silently chastised herself for being so girlie and silly. But she felt happy, inexplicably happy, despite being in a garage that resided beside a house with the drugged out mother of a boy she liked. And there was the matter of what had brought her to the garage in the first place: crashing her bike. She allowed her gaze to drop and concentrated on a stray thread that stuck out of one of her boots. Luke crossed the garage and delivered her drink to her.

“Here you go. It’s not diet or anything. I hope that’s okay,” he said and handed her a red can. She looked up at him and reached out her hand to take the can. When she did, his hand grazed hers. It was not an unpleasant feeling and sent a small shiver up her arm.

“Thanks,” she said and he held her gaze, his silvery eyes dancing. He smiled and raked a hand through his dark hair before sitting down on an overturned bucket beside her. She opened her soda and waited for him to say something, all the while her insides stirred at his nearness. He placed the can he held in his hands on the floor between his feet and turned to face her. She strained to see him in her peripheral vision before stealing a glance at him. When their eyes met, he leaned in toward her as if he were going to kiss her. She stood and walked toward his work bench, effectively evading his kiss.

“These are cool,” she said nervously. “What do they do?” She’d heard the words come out of her mouth and died a small death, cringing at how stupid she’d sounded. Of course, she knew what a hammer, screwdrivers and saws were for. And it wasn’t as though she’d never kissed a guy before. She kissed many guys before, and gone a lot further than kissing. But Luke seemed different than other guys at times. When they were alone, he was sweet and silly, and kind of a gentleman. Around his friends, he was a bit harder to read.

“Well,” he said and lifted a hammer. “This is a hammer. You hit things with it, like nails and sometimes your thumb if you’re not paying attention.” He smiled and winked at her as he inched closer.

“You just wanted to get the hell away from me,” he said still smiling. “I get it.”

He turned and leaned his back against the bench, not looking at her. He folded his arms across his chest. With the sleeves of his shirt pushed up, she could see his tattoos more clearly, the colors and elaborate artistry. She stepped back and reached out her hand and pulled one of his arms forward. With her fingertip she outlined the outer edge of a serpent of some sort. He seemed to like her touch because she noticed that goose bumps arose on his forearm.

“No. It’s the tail of a dragon,” he said and pushed his sleeve up farther. His arm was lean, but muscled, nevertheless. She doubted he lifted weights and that the bulge of his biceps and forearms was a result of the work he did in the garage.

She traced the long, curving tail of the dragon then looked up to find a pair of silver eyes trained on her. They looked like pools of moonlight, mysterious, yet vulnerable, and contradicted everything else about his appearance. Something deep within her was drawn to him intensely, and she wanted to act on it. She did not hesitate a second longer. Without considering it any further, she rose up onto her tiptoes and kissed Luke. She pressed her lips to his, and found that his lips were deliciously warm and soft. Surprised, but seemingly pleased, nonetheless, he reciprocated. He kissed her sweetly at first, almost chastely. But the feel of his lips instantly became like a drug to her. She need more. She nibbled at his bottom lip temptingly and he immediately responded, reading her need and answering it. He crushed her mouth with his and wrapped his arms around her waist. He pulled her body close to his. She felt his heart racing against her chest. Warmth filled her as his hand slid up her back and grazed the side of her breast. Fueled by the brush of his hand, she pressed her body closer to him and felt his tongue slip between her lips, darting and probing. His hands went up further and cupped her face briefly before moving to her hair.

His fingers tightened in her hair and he pulled her closer. Her body was already too tight against his, yet she did not care. In fact, she felt it was not tight enough. She urgently wanted to be closer still. To her surprise though, his fingers relaxed a bit in her hair and slid down once again. They stopped at her lower back and found the small strip of skin that hadn’t been covered by Stephanie’s T-shirt. The roughness of his fingertips against her lower back made her wish he’d run them over every inch of her body. She arched her back pushing her chest against his and kissed him more passionately, more fiercely, until his mouth left hers and followed the line of her jaw then explored the length of her neck. She heard herself moan in delight. He kissed and tantalized the tender skin of her neck, making his way back up from her collarbone until his teeth grazed her earlobe. She shivered, felt her body come alive. She moved her hands from his hips up his back and dug her nails into his shoulders as he continued to kiss just below her ear. The stubble of his chin swept along her neck, eliciting more moans from her. She dropped her hands down to his lower back and lifted the back of his shirt, wanting the feel of his bare skin against her hands, against her body. He dropped his hands as well and gripped her backside firmly. Every part of her ached with want and she began to lift his shirt. As she did so, her bag began to roar like Godzilla, her mother’s ringtone.

“Shit,” she muttered and felt the desire and urgency that had assembled within her moments earlier, begin to evaporate.

“Can’t you just ignore it?” he breathed in her ear, tempting her to do just that.

“No, it’s my mom. She never calls me. God only knows why she’s doing it now,” she said as she reluctantly pried herself from him and hurriedly crossed the garage to her backpack. She rummaged for her phone for several seconds before she found it and answered.

“Hi baby,” her mother said in a voice undoubtedly thickened with alcohol. “I’m in a bit of a jam and could use some help.”

“First of all, you shouldn’t be driving in the condition you’re in. And second of all, when’s the last time you gassed up?”

There was a pause on the other end of the phone followed by giggling. Arianna looked up and saw Luke looking at her. “I’m sorry,” she mouthed to him. He lifted his chin to ask if everything was okay and Arianna shook her head slowly.

“Oh baby! You’re not going to believe this,” her mother crooned. “I’m all outta gas. Silly me! Think you could scare some up and bring it to Joe’s Bar?”

“If I had my bike that would be tough to do. But since I don’t even have that,” she started but didn’t bother finishing her sentence. What good would it do to tell her drunken mother about an accident that had happened hours ago? Her mother would likely just find a way to make it about her and Arianna would end up consoling her mother over something that happened to her. “Never mind. I’ll be there soon,” Arianna said and ended the call.

“What was that all about?” Luke asked as he came up behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist.

“My mother is drunk at a bar and was about to drive home, but realized she has no gas,” she said and blew out an exasperated breath. She wasn’t used to sharing her problems with anyone. “I don’t suppose you’d be willing to take me to the gas station then drop me at Joe’s Bar, would you?”

He did not groan or complain, but disappointment was evident in his eyes. “Sure, no problem,” he said.

“Are you sure? You’ve done so much for me already. I feel funny even accepting help from anyone, let alone a new friend.”

“I’m not your friend,” he said and looked longingly at her. “Everything I do is to try and get in your pants,” he said and smiled mischievously.

“Oh I think I was pretty close before,” he said and slapped her on her backside.

She contemplated arguing, but he was right. She would have given in to her desire if her mother hadn’t called.

“All right, all right. Let’s go before my mother makes a new friend I’ll have to kick out in the morning again.”

He did not say another word but smirked and gathered his stuff. They left the garage and he locked it up as well as the front door to his house. In the truck, he was far more somber. They drove and talked about movies and music until they reached that gas station. She filled a tank he’d lent her and they promptly left and headed to Joe’s Bar. In the parking lot, she found her mother leaning against the car talking to a dangerous looking character whose face and neck blazed in an unhealthy shade of red. He rocked from one foot to the other as he spoke to her, as if teetering on the brink of toppling over. Arianna called to her mother and the man left quickly. Luke filled her mother’s gas tank and with a quick peck on her cheek, left Arianna with her mother. Her heart clenched slightly as she watched his taillights fade in the waning rays of daylight. The last thing she’d wanted to do was fall for any guy. She’d avoided it her entire life. Yet Luke had wandered into her life just two days earlier, and was slowly making her feel as she never had before.

Arianna watched as the sun grudgingly relinquished its grip on the day, as if too tired to continue as the furnace fueling the autumn warmth and allowed itself refuge in the horizon. Breadths of pink and purple streaked across the sky and twilight befell the earth.

“What a beautiful sunset, baby,” her mother slurred and returned Arianna to reality.

“Yeah, mom,” she replied absently and started the car and drove out of the parking lot of Joe’s Bar.

The sun had set and darkness began to overtake the earth. Howard looked out briefly from the vestibule of his church. The world around him glowed in an ethereal shade of blue. Dusk had settled. Preternatural stillness had hushed the birds and bugs. All that remained were cyan shadows, and silence. Beyond the door, out in the eerie void, he could feel her. She was near. He was sure of it. And she was growing stronger each day. Like a low hum deep within his core, her essence reverberated through him. He knew he was closing in on her.

Howard slammed the door of the Soldiers of the Divine Trinity Church shut and locked it. He passed through the narrow enclave to another set of doors that opened into the sanctuary. Once inside, he dipped his hand in a large basin of Holy water, crossed himself and genuflected. He walked briskly down the aisle, past more than a dozen pews and stopped just before the altar. He knelt and crossed himself again and remained bowed in prayer. With his eyes closed, he concentrated, listening for God’s words to direct him, to guide him on the path of righteousness.

His path had been filled with innumerable detours thus far, but none could be considered a waste of his time. Diversions strengthened him, reinforced his belief in divine influence. The incident at the abandoned house the day before had been a shining example of a deviation resulting in the fortification of his faith. Being able to make an example of misguided fools a day earlier had proved a worthwhile endeavor. The deaths of teens tampering with witchcraft would surely save lives in the future. Others seeking to summon dark forces, as well as full-blooded witches who walked among them, would learn of their demises and heed the warning they signaled.

Taking the lives of the teens had not been a direct order from God. His Maker’s words had not commanded him. In fact, he had not heard the speech of the Lord in several days. So Howard had been forced to infer what God would have wanted him to do, his decision based on countless other situations when he had been instructed to example others, others who hadn’t been true vessels of evil, but had been pupils of evil. He knew the Lord would have wanted the teens destroyed, just as He had in the past. Howard also felt confident that, despite the taciturnity of God, despite the numerous tests and obstacles presented to him, he would do what was right for humanity.

Tests were not new to Howard. He had been tested his entire life, beginning when he was a boy. His father had been a soldier of God as well, had fought to rid the world of evil. But the law of man had seen fit to take his father from him at a young age. The law did not understand what his father had been up against, still did not understand. Every law-enforcement agency on the planet shared the limited view that only human beings killed and committed atrocities against other human beings. They did not embrace the existence of the underworld, that demons of every kind roamed the earth and hunted humanity. But he embraced that wherever lightness existed, darkness followed; with good came evil. Howard had the vision, and so had his father.

When Howard had been just eight years old, his father had been arrested and sentenced to life in prison for murdering a family who had just moved to the neighborhood. Kneeling before the altar of his church conjuring the painful memories of long ago, he squeezed his eyes shut and remembered his father’s arrest, how police had punished and locked away a servant and soldier of the Lord. His father, Howard Kane, Sr. had been incarcerated for dousing the new family’s house in gasoline, boarding the doors shut and setting it on fire. The blaze had burned for hours, consuming everything it had touched except for the concrete foundation it had sat upon, including a husband and wife and their three small children. The family had been black; a fact that had only been of importance to the rest of his neighborhood, law-enforcement agents and the media of that time. The police department and newspapers had fixated on the color of their skin, had accused his father of a racist act. The men with him had been members of a discriminatory group called the Ku Klux Klan and the police had claimed his father had been a member too. Others in the neighborhood had alleged to have seen his father fraternizing with Klan members, and had charged he had been an active participant in their organization. But Howard had known better. He had known his father had shared his prophecy. His father had told him as much.

He had visited his father in prison. Guards had the patriarch of his family dressed in a bright-orange jumpsuit, shackled and cowed like a common criminal. He remembered the sickliness of his father’s pallor, the pale clammy look of his skin. But neither had left as lasting an impression as his words had on that fateful day. Strong and clear, his father’s voice had resounded with truth when he’d told him not to believe the newspapers or idle gossip. He’d told him the family he’d killed had been corrupt and that he had done a service to mankind by cleansing the world of their existence. Howard had listened intently to his father, especially when he’d told him that God had instructed him to kill the family, that they had been pure evil.

Howard had never bothered to ask if they had been witches. The thought had never occurred to him, not then. He hadn’t heard God’s voice in his ear yet. All he had been told was that his father had destroyed evil, and that was all he’d needed to know. But his father’s explanation hadn’t ended there. His father had more wisdom to share. He had told Howard that he would have to make a very difficult decision in the near future, that he would be put to a test. Howard had asked what that task would be, but his father had said he could not tell him.

A few weeks after his visit to the state penitentiary, his father had been killed by other inmates. As it had turned out, other inmates, black inmates, had been fooled into believing his father had been a racist who’d killed an upstanding family. His father had died, unceremoniously, stabbed to death in the shower room. The other inmates hadn’t known the truth; that the color of evil’s skin had been, and always would be, irrelevant. So they had taken the life of one of God’s warriors, his father.

At eight years old, Howard had been left with only his mother. Still, his stomach churned at the thought of her. After his father’s death, his mother had transformed into a sinful woman who had poisoned her body with drink and drugs and had allowed her body to be used by any junkie who had offered her a nightly fix. Relegated to his room, he had begun reading the only book he’d owned: the Holy Bible. Night after night he had read from it, and just shy of one month after his father’s murder, he had read the Bible from cover to cover. Certain sections of it spoke to him more than others. Exodus, Deuteronomy, Galatians and Revelation had been of particular interest to him. He had absorbed the vital messages communicated in each. They condemned witchcraft and sorcery, and the evocation of spirits. They denounced heresy. Every single night he had read the word of God, had absorbed it like a dry sponge absorbing water. He had prayed each day and night, begging God for strength and guidance, all the while his mother had panted and moaned in the next room with a different overnight friend. Every day that he’d prayed, he’d thought he’d felt something, an inexplicable sensation that had filled him with utter peace. That peace had calmed him daily, and had made sleep possible while his mother had become inebriated and cavorted with a steady flow of men.

One night, however, his peace had been interrupted abruptly. He had awoken to strange sounds unlike the sighing and huffing he’d usually heard in other parts of the house. The light bulb above his head had begun flickering. He had wondered whether it had been an electrical surge, or something more nefarious. When the bulb had hissed and sputtered, he had believed his unspoken question had been answered. He had leaped from his bed immediately, had felt a cold sheen of sweat cover his entire body and he had dashed down the hallway to the living room. Experience had taught him to never surprise his mother when she was with a man. She had not liked it when he’d done that, and had beaten him badly on more than one occasion. She had even allowed one of her friends to beat him as well. He dared not surprise her again and incur her wrath, or anyone else’s for that matter. He had crept slowly to the den and saw that his mother and two men had gathered around a board, a Ouija board, he’d learned later. He had stared in shock and horror as he saw his mother chanting to spirits, summoning them from the pits of hell. They had laughed as though their godless actions had been a joke. But in that moment, when Howard had looked into his mother’s eyes, he had seen the truth. She had been one of them, one of the evil ones that stalked humankind.

His father had warned him of the evil that lived among them. Howard had run off to his room, away from the incantation, away from his mother. In the safety of his room, he had dropped to his knees and implored God for guidance. And on that day, God had answered. God had given him his first order.

With his task fresh in his mind, Howard had waited several hours until his mother and the friend she’d selected to share her bed had slept before he had snuck downstairs and selected the largest, sharpest carving knife from a drawer in the kitchen. He had snuck back upstairs and stole into his mother’s bedroom. Howard had hovered over the sleeping man first then drove the knife into his heart. The man’s eyes had opened for an instant. He’d flailed and shouted, waking Howard’s mother, before life had escaped him. His mother had awoken and had been shocked. She’d begged him to put the knife down, to leave her unharmed. Though he had not threatened her immediately, her inhuman sense had told her otherwise. He had drawn back the blade and, trembling, had plunged it into her chest. He had pulled it out, only to return it again and again, thrusting the sharp blade in and out of her flesh.

Killing his mother had been the toughest job he’d ever undertaken. He had stood beside her bed long after her lifeblood had left her. Only when he had been certain she had been dead did he leave the room and return to the kitchen. He had picked up the telephone and called the police to tell them what he’d done. When the police had arrived, they had stared at him in disbelief, had marveled at his ability to compose himself at such a young age after he had killed his mother and her lover. They had been fools, all of them. They had not known he had been chosen by God to war with evil on Earth. He had heard the words “psychopath” and “sociopath” mentioned several times that night. He had not known what those words had meant when he had been eight years old, but he knew now. He had not suffered from a personality disorder then and he certainly did not suffer from one now. His missions had never been spontaneously violent or aggressive acts for which he hadn’t felt remorse. They had been well thought out, well planned acts for which he hadn’t felt remorse. God had charged him with destroying wickedness. He neither mourned nor repented the death of the wicked. And evil still walked among man, prowling in the shadows, scavenging for souls. The Sola, a seer of the devil himself, lied in wait. She was the lone huntress, sent from the depths of hell by Lucifer himself, to unite those who bowed to darkness on Earth and overtake humanity. But Howard would not allow that to happen.

Kneeling before the altar of his church, a feeling began to stir. Familiar and welcome, it spread from the center of his body and traveled, tingling and prickling, to the tips of his fingers and toes. The sensation pulsed from his core, shivering and vibrating to every part of him, invigorating him with renewed conviction and faith in his mission. God was not speaking to him, but he could feel Him, feel His divine commands, and feel His righteous might. Howard Kane knew he must find and kill the Sola, utilize his Lord’s support fast, and rid the world of her foul existence.

More than twenty-four hours had passed since Arianna had kissed Luke in his garage. Twenty-four hours that had included a restless night of sleep followed by a school day. School had been uneventful and the day had lapsed painlessly, and quickly; perhaps too quickly. Now, she stood in her room and was charged with the task of deciding what to wear to a nightclub in the neighboring town of Shadow Hills with Luke and his friends.

Typically, Arianna did not concern herself with fashion trends or what other people wore. She’d always worn what she liked and what she felt looked best on her. Price always had a hand in her decision making as well and often dictated where she shopped, or if she shopped at all. To her, her wardrobe was just a compilation of stuff, necessary elements of her existence like eating and sleeping. Of course, she wouldn’t refuse nicer clothes if they were to ever magically appear in her closet, but such a phenomenon was out of the question, as unrealistic and unlikely as her landing a date with Ryan Gosling. Besides, she’d learned early on that pining for things she couldn’t afford was nothing more than a painful waste of time. Still, as she looked at her clothes she couldn’t help but feel a little depressed. All had been affected by time. Some had faded, while others had not maintained their original shape. She did not own an outfit she could get excited about, or one she felt Luke would get excited about. So she settled on a spandex miniskirt and a striped top that hung off one of her shoulders. She slipped into her black motorcycle boots and stepped back to appraise her appearance. Unexciting and comfortable at best, her outfit would never place her on a best-dressed list, but she felt at ease in it. She didn’t feel as if she were pretending to be something she was not. True, the black fabric of her skirt had washed out somewhat, as did the black in the stripes of her shirt. But the lighting in clubs was usually dim and she highly doubted anyone would notice.

Satisfied that her outfit was as good as it could be, she ran a brush through her hair and was about to start her makeup when a knock at the door startled her.

Within seconds of the knock, her mother’s face appeared in her doorway. “Hey baby,” her mother said. Going out tonight I see.”

She didn’t bother correcting her mother that it was her who had paid for the gas and drove her home because she had always been too absent-minded to keep tabs on the fuel gauge. “Yep, he’ll be there,” was all she said tightly.

“And does Luke have an older brother, or young uncle who will be joining you tonight, or, maybe perhaps in the future?’

“What? Can’t a girl ask if her daughter’s boyfriend knows any available cuties?”

“Luke is not my boyfriend, first of all. Second of all, and I want to be really clear about this, I am not going to ask him to fix you up with anyone, okay? And lastly, the term is hotties, not cuties. If you insist on using slang, get it right.”

“Okay, okay. No need to go getting all huffy, baby. Jeez, what’s your problem today?”

Arianna could easily rattle off a list as long as her arm about what was troubling her. At the top of it would be that her mother had refused to grow up and she was getting tired of bailing her out of jams like kicking out slovenly overnight guests who’d slept on their couch for the entire day, or meeting her in a bar parking lot to refuel the car she’d intended to operate when drunk. Throw in the fact that she couldn’t get in touch with the only friend she’d made in her gypsy life of moving from place to place after each of her mother’s failed romances and the reason for her alleged huffiness became clearer. But she knew her mother was incapable of handling difficult or profound discussions. She never had been. Even now as she looked at her mother pouting over her refusal to play matchmaker with a boy she’d just met, she couldn’t help but pity her, how even the slightest hint of confrontation sent her into a complete tailspin. Her mother was used to getting her way. But that didn’t stop Arianna from feeling bad for being sharp with her.

“I’m sorry, mom. Things have been rough the last couple of days,” Arianna admitted.

“I know what that’s like,” her mother said. “I’ve been climbing the walls with loneliness these days; just stuck here, all alone, day after day. I could really use some companionship.”

Her mother’s strong suit was certainly not subtlety. She intended to guilt Arianna into fixing her up with someone. But what her mother didn’t know was that Arianna had no intention of giving in to guilt as she so often did.

“You’ll make friends, mom,” Arianna consoled and felt as though the roles should have been reversed. “Once you start working you’ll meet people, women and men.”

“By the way,” Arianna continued. “How did you make out with the job search yesterday?”

“Oh, I forgot to tell you,” her mother brightened. “I got a job at Super Mart! I start on Monday.”

“Yeah, and let me tell you, the assistant manager is a hottie, as you say,” her mother said and winked. “And I didn’t notice a wedding band, not that that ever stopped me.”

Arianna arched an eyebrow at her mother, shocked that she’d even remembered that she’d planned to look for a job, let alone directed the conversation from herself to her daughter. She was tempted to look outside to see if pigs had begun flying as well.

“Well don’t look so shocked, baby. I listen to you when you talk,” her mother said and beamed with pride.

Arianna leveled a gaze at her and she quickly qualified her statement, “Okay, most of the time I listen when you talk,” her mother said and rolled her eyes like a child who’d been caught by his mother with his hand in the cookie jar.

“How come? That little savings you got stashed in the toilet tank is not going to last you much longer,” her mother warned.

“I know,” she said then added, “But I had an accident with the bike and it’s totaled.”

“Yesterday morning, I was on my way to school and I thought I saw something on the side of the road. I turned after I’d passed and lost control of my bike. The bike is totaled.”

Her mother’s face was aghast, horror etched her every feature. Arianna’s chest tightened immediately as worry marked her mother’s face. It wasn’t until her mother began to speak that she understood the horrified look she wore. “I can’t believe you didn’t call me! Why didn’t you call me? Why am I the last person to know? I’m always the last person to know everything!”

“Well of course you’re fine. You’re sitting right here talking to me! I, on the other hand, think I lost a few years of my life just now,” her mother said and placed her hand over her heart dramatically. “My chest is hurting all of a sudden. I hope I’m not having a heart attack.”

“Should I call an ambulance?” Arianna said and called her mother’s bluff with syrupy concern in her voice.

“No, no,” her mother panted. “I think I’m okay, for someone who was just told that her daughter had an accident and she wasn’t told about it until the day after.”

“Sorry for leaving you out of the loop, mom, but as you said, I’m fine and sitting right here.”

“Thank God for that,” her mother sighed and Arianna felt herself soften slightly. But her softening was short-lived. “I mean really, baby, you need to be more careful. What would I do without you? I need you. So don’t go killing yourself on me.”

And like that, her touching mother-daughter almost-moment had vanished. “And you love me and all that stuff, right?” Arianna said sarcastically.

“Well of course I love you!” her mother snapped indignantly. “How could you even say that to me? After all I’ve been through you’d think I wouldn’t need to prove myself to my own daughter.”

“No, no. No one’s asking you to do anything like that,” Arianna added and did not bother trying to conceal the edge in her voice.

“Good, because I won’t. I gave you life and that was proof enough. And I’ve sacrificed a lot, too. My breasts have never been the same since. Do you know how tough dating was with a baby?”

“Really tough, that’s how. Most men didn’t even want a woman with that kind of baggage. Fortunately, I look like I do, or I would have been home with you every day and night,” her mother added in expectation of sympathy.

“Yeah I know, who would want to do something crazy like, I don’t know, raising their child, when there’s a whole sea of men out there waiting to be Cathy Rose-ized,” Arianna spat and did not temper the acid in her voice.

Arianna thought her head would pop off her shoulders, anger welling and brimming dangerously.

She thought for sure her inflammatory remark would draw some sort of rebuttal, an “I loved being your parent, baby,” comment, or something close to it. But her mother, absorbed in her own recollections, was not the least bit interested in comforting her daughter.

“You used to get into all sorts of trouble, always climbing trees and cabinets. One time, when you were about seven or eight, you and the neighbor’s kid climbed up onto the roof of the trailer we’d been living in and,”

“Hold on a sec,” Arianna interrupted. “I was always climbing things, and clearly you were not around to stop me, didn’t I fall and get hurt all the time?”

“Well if you’d let me finish my story instead of being rude and interrupting, you’d find out. So anyway, there you were, up on the roof of our trailer, and I came home from the neighbor’s house after enjoying a card game and cocktails only to find you up there. You and that little girl with the buck teeth, oh, what was her name, Emily, Amy, Mary? Oh I wish I could remember! You remember her, right? She had frizzy, red hair and big ole buck teeth like a beaver,” her mother rambled.

“Oh, yeah, so you and the frizzy-haired girl were up on the roof holding hands and, I don’t know how it happened, but you both slipped, together. Both of you fell from the roof down to the gravel below. And I was sure you’d have to be taken to the hospital. Of course, I looked a fright from a few too many drinks, so I wanted no part of that. Me and the neighbor ran over to you girls. Frizzy was a mess, you know, howling bloody murder in pain and all. She’d ended up breaking her leg, both wrists and had a concussion. But not you. You had not a scratch on you.”

Arianna could not believe what she had heard. She knew she ought to say something, to tell her mother how severe the accident had been and how she should have been seriously injured, but reasoned it would be pointless.

“Not a scratch on me?” Arianna asked to be certain her ears had heard correctly.

“Not a scratch,” her mother confirmed. “You never got hurt. After all your shenanigans, all your dangerous stunts, you never broke a bone or needed stitches. Guess you were born under a lucky sign or something. That’s why when you wanted to buy that bike of yours when you turned sixteen, I didn’t argue. With all the luck you’d had through the years, I figured you’d be safe. Guess your luck ran out, huh, baby.”

She nearly bit her fist to stop herself from screaming at her mother that she was wrong, dead wrong, that she was not merely lucky, that she had survived a series of childhood accidents as well as what would have been a fatal motorcycle accident a day earlier, and that she’d possibly moved a chair with her mind. No, lucky signs had nothing to do with what she had experienced. Something else entirely had been going on. She just didn’t know what.

“Now you’ll have to be extra careful once the bike gets fixed,” her mother said solemnly.

Watching her mother’s grave expression made Arianna wonder how exactly her mother had lived to be in her forties believing that luck and luck alone, had prevented her daughter from death over and over again. She guessed that most other parents would have, at the very least, marveled at their child’s ability to cheat death once before shielding them from it in the future. Not her mother, though. Her mother had watched her fall from the roof of trailer with a friend who’d sustained serious injuries that had included a broken leg and two broken arms as well as a concussion and chalked her lack of injuries up to being born under a lucky sign. In all fairness, most other parents wouldn’t have allowed their eight-year-old to roam free unsupervised in a trailer park and end up on the roof of one of those trailers in the first place. Most parents would have questioned the fact that she had remained unharmed a little further, would have sought answers from a spiritual source perhaps. But most parents were not like Cathy Rose. Most parents did not view their child as a burden preventing them from having a more active dating life. Arianna felt her blood pressure rise. Her fingertips began to tingle as they had in class when Cheryl’s chair had shot out from beneath her. She tuned back in and listened to more of her mother’s ramblings and felt the tingling strengthen.

“And then there was the time I let you cook for me and a friend,” she said with a laugh. “You were maybe five and I was with, I think his name was John or Joe, something with a J, and we had you make us some fried chicken. You were doing all right until you started frying the breaded pieces. You pulled a chair up and started tossing drumsticks and wings into the frying pan and scalding hot oil splashed all in your face. I thought for sure you’d disfigured your face, that not only would I have a daughter no man wanted around, but an ugly one at that.” Her mother paused to laugh again, as if the story she told were somehow a funny or cherished memory. “Luckily, your face was fine. I have no idea how that happened because when I touched that pot, I burned my hand, see?” she pointed to a minute scar on her left thumb.

“Yeah, I see it, mom,” Arianna replied. The tingling had spread and grown. She felt as though a current of electricity had charged every part of her. Suddenly, she felt as though she needed physical distance between her mother and herself. “Look, we can stroll down memory lane some other time. Right now, I have to get ready to go out.”

“Oh, okay,” her mother said. “I guess I’m just so lonely and starved for companionship, I didn’t realize I was holding you up. I’ll let you finish getting ready.”

Arianna felt her body begin to tremble. Her mother was actually attempting to guilt her into taking her along on her first night out in months on the heels of bragging about being a negligent parent.

“Think of me while you’re out having a good time,” her mother added pitifully and Arianna wanted to shut the door in her face.

The door shut finally and her mother was safely on the other side of it. Arianna blew out a breath of air then inhaled deeply again. After several deep breaths, the trembling had subsided and her hands felt steady enough to handle a mascara wand without poking her eye out. That is, if her lucky sign had not, in fact, failed her. The thought of such nonsense riled her again slightly. She quickly pushed it to the back of her mind and tried to concentrate on the task at hand, and the night ahead of her.

She applied two coats of mascara and some eyeliner before grabbing an empty purse from her drawer, stuffing some cash, her cigarettes and her fake identification in it and leaving. She passed her mother sitting on the couch in the living room as she headed toward the front door. Her mother sat with a blanket draped across her shoulder sipping a large glass of wine. Her intention had surely been to guilt her further, a final look-at-me-I’m-so-depressed effort. But Arianna would not bite. Instead, she called a quick “See you later!” to her mother and closed the door behind her.

Outside, the air was crisp and cool. The distinct autumn chill promised an even colder night. She pulled a cigarette from her purse and lit it while she waited for Luke to arrive. As she smoked, she tilted her chin upward and looked to the sky above. Constellations ornamented the navy expanses like innumerable diamonds affixed to a velvet backdrop. The sky was so stunning, the stars so bright and numerous, she felt dizzied slightly, but smiled regardless. She’d see a great many things in her short life, had experienced far too much even, but none of it had etched away at her appreciation of nature, at her sense wonder. She’d wanted to be an astronaut when she was a little girl. That was why she had been atop the trailer when she was eight. And the little girl had not been Amy, Emily or Mary. Her name was Avery. She had been Arianna’s best friend. Her conversation with her mother prompted her to remember an event she’d blocked from her mind for many years. Her best friend Avery’s serious injuries, and the trailer climbing that had caused it, had been the reason Avery’s parents had forbidden her from playing with Arianna ever again. They had blamed Arianna. After all, Arianna had not been harmed. But their daughter had been. The only eyewitness to the fall had been Arianna’s drunken mother.

Arianna’s heart raced wildly in her chest, her memory suddenly vivid. She was about to turn and walk back in to the house and forget about going altogether, feeling that her mood had been irreparably soured when the rumble of a truck engine stopped her. Headlights sliced through the darkness and approached slowly then stopped in front of her trailer. The door opened and the overhead interior light illuminated Luke’s face. And he wasn’t alone.

Stephanie occupied the passenger seat looking impossibly beautiful despite the unflattering lighting and the sour expression she wore.

“Thanks,” Arianna replied and wondered why he didn’t kiss her on the cheek or anything. A day earlier they’d shared an intense and passionate kiss, but since then, there hadn’t been any hand-holding, hugging, nothing. Now, with his sister perched in the front seat and her relegated the back seat, there was no chance of even an accidental brush of hands. Between her mother’s reminiscing and attempted guilt trip and Luke doing nothing short of pretending like what happened between them in his garage had never happened, Arianna found herself missing her bike more than ever. If she had her bike, she would have canceled with Luke in favor of a nice long ride to clear her head. But she did not have it. Instead, she bumped along in Luke’s pickup truck for twenty minutes until they reached Blue Ivy nightclub in Shadow Hills, a seedy town in an even seedier neighborhood that straddled the border between theirs and the next.

Two cars had followed them the entire trip. Ryan and Christa had trailed in his Honda CRX with Bulldog, Beth, Mike and Carrie not far behind. Stephanie had planned to meet friends there and had hitched a ride with Luke. After parking in a small lot just past the entrance to the club, everybody jumped out their cars, eager to get inside. Bass rumbled deeply, growling like thunder from beyond the walls of the club, pulsing like an immense heart issuing its rhythmic beat.

“Let’s do this!” Ryan said enthusiastically and Christa rolled her eyes at him.

Everyone started moving toward the club slowly. Stephanie hung back and pulled at Arianna’s arm to stay.

Arianna couldn’t imagine what, and was afraid to ask. She waited as Stephanie searched her purse then finally produced two white tablets in a plastic bag. “Thought you might want to do a little ex before we go in,” she said and offered a tablet to Arianna.

Ecstasy was not a drug Arianna was interested in trying. She’d smoked pot before, but that had been the extent of her experience with drugs.

Stephanie studied her for a moment and Arianna anticipated a snide comment or pressure, but none came. Instead, Stephanie shrugged, popped the tablet into her mouth and caught up with the rest of their group.

The line to get into Blue Ivy was long, but moved quickly. Within ten minutes, they were inside wading through a sea of people grinding and writhing to the roll of booming bass. Bulldog led the pack, and much like a bulldozer, pushed his way past people until a path had been cleared for them that led straight to the bar. His intimidating size and appearance, complete with a square jaw, deep-set eyes and countless scars, discouraged anybody from protesting their prime position. Pressing his luck further, as well as his substantial form, Bulldog managed to secure a small table for them to stand around close to the bar.

In the far corner of the club, they had a view of the dance floor. Packed with scantily clad girls gyrating and rubbing up against eager guys, the dance floor was crowded. Arianna was not known to dance and she doubted Luke was much of a dancer either. She preferred drinking at clubs and watching others dance.

“What’re you drinking tonight?” Luke shouted in her ear over the loud music.

Luke smiled then shouted, “You’re a cheap date. I like you more and more every time I see you!” and smiled.

Arianna smiled too, but not because of his joke. She smiled at his use of the word date. Luke disappeared toward the bar with Bulldog. Though the bar was just a few feet away, they were immediately swept away on a wave of people and carried in the current. They returned several minutes later with a round of drinks for everyone. Luke sidled up behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist. His body moved to the music faintly and rocked hers pleasantly. She enjoyed the feel of him pressed against her, feeling his heartbeat against her back, his hard body.

After the second round of drinks had been finished, Luke left her with Stephanie to go get another. She watched him as he left then allowed her eyes to scan the crowd. As she did, her breath caught in her chest. In the distance, near the wall farthest from her, she spotted a familiar face. The man she’d seen on the side of the road not once, but twice, in the last three days watched her. She wondered what the hell he was doing there, why he was following her, so she grabbed Stephanie by the elbow and urged her forward.

Arianna didn’t want to argue. She just wanted someone with her when she confronted him, a witness that he existed, that he was real. She quickly searched her mind for a reason that would motivate Stephanie.

“It’s a guy I know. He’s single and loaded, but I guess I’ll see him another time.”

She could practically see Stephanie’s brain working. She tossed a lock of platinum blonde hair over her shoulder and took Arianna’s hand and began moving through the crowds. A sea of swaying bodies, changing faces and snippets of shouted conversations became disorienting. Unsure of which corner she’d seen the mystery man in, she stopped.

“What are you doing?” Stephanie yelled. “I thought we were going to see your rich friend.”

“I think he left already,” Arianna fumbled for an excuse. “Since you took so long to come with me,” she added and worried she would suffer Stephanie’s wrath at any second. When it did not come, she nearly sighed aloud in relief.

Arianna glanced around nervously. “What about Luke and the others?” she asked.

“We can’t take our drinks outside, and I’m not leaving them lying around here,” Stephanie cautioned.

Stephanie turned and began leading them toward the perimeter of the club in search of an exit door. They stumbled through throngs of people until they found one and opened it.

“Wait,” Arianna said to Stephanie as she stepped out. “What if we can’t get back in this door?”

The door led into a dimly lit alleyway. Sodium vapor lamps provided meager light as well as an eerie jaundiced glow. Dumpsters lined the walls and added to the depressing ambience.

“This is gross,” Arianna said. “Let’s go back in and go out front to smoke, you know, where there’s no garbage or rats.”

Arianna tugged the handle to the metal door and, as she expected, the door had locked from the inside.

“Who gives a shit?” Stephanie said with a slurred voice as she lit her cigarette clumsily, the ecstasy and alcohol clearly affecting her coordination.

“Call me whatever you want, we’re not staying back here,” Arianna said then added, “One of us has to use her brain here.”

Arianna took a step forward to lead her and Stephanie out of the alleyway when a sound halted her. She stopped and listened intently.

Arianna listened again and heard footsteps approaching. Fear slithered like a serpent down the length of her spine and raised bumps on her skin. Her heart began to race, adrenaline flooding her system to flee from what she perceived as danger.

“Shut up!” Arianna hissed as the footsteps sounded closer. “Someone’s coming,” she whispered.

“We were just leaving,” Arianna said and ducked her head down. She grabbed Stephanie by her wrist and yanked her along.

“What’s the rush ladies?” the voice said again and two men stepped out from the shadows.

Grungy and bedraggled looking, both men looked as though they could benefit from a shower with soap and a stiff-bristled brush. Heavily tattooed and clad in jeans, they looked as if they’d seen and committed their share of violent acts. One wore a gray bandana on his head and a black leather vest while the other had illegible tattoos scrawled across his neck.

“We have friends inside. Came out for a smoke and got locked out,” Arianna answered and tried to sound calm.

The man with the gray bandana stepped away from the man with the tattooed neck and approached Stephanie. Arianna felt her heart slamming against her ribcage as he raked his eyes up and down their bodies, circling and stalking them like prey. Neck tattoo advanced as well. The closer he got, the more hideous he became. Silver jewelry pierced the skin of his face and ears and jingled softly as he walked and he blinked often, his nearly lashless lids straining over eyeballs that protruded. His tongue continually darted from between his thin lips like a snake sniffing out its next meal. Both men looked as if they were high on something.

“Aren’t you both just a pleasant surprise? So pretty to look at,” neck tattoo hissed and ran his serpentine tongue over his lips again.

“Thanks,” Arianna said flatly and slid a glance at Stephanie. “But we’re leaving. Our friends are waiting.” Stephanie looked terrified and trembled so violently her large hoop earrings quivered.

“I don’t think so,” neck tattoo warned and closed the distance between him and Arianna. He cuffed her upper arm, his grip on it vice-like. “They can wait. We’re just getting to know each other.”

Arianna tried to wrench her arm from him and scream, but he clapped his hand over her mouth and slammed her against the brick wall behind her. With the pressure of his hand pinning her face and head to the wall, he used his other to pull a small rectangular object from his pocket. He pushed a button on it and a shiny blade appeared. He pressed it to Arianna’s throat and said, “If you make another sound, I’ll slit your fucking throat.”

Arianna could hear her blood roaring in her ears. The man pushed his knife against her skin and she felt the sting of skin breaking. All the while, he stared into her eyes, his own completely devoid of any sentiment whatsoever. From the corner of her eye, she saw Stephanie move, attempt to run. But the man with the bandana grabbed her before she’d taken more than two steps. He slammed Luke’s sister against the far wall and Arianna heard her head connect with the brick wall with a sickening thwack. Stephanie slid down the wall slowly until her body slumped to the ground.

“That’s all right,” bandana man said. “She doesn’t have to be awake for this.” He then crouched down over her and lifted up her miniskirt.

“Like what you see?” neck tattoo said to Arianna, and ran his tongue up her neck. Bile rose in the back of her throat and she thought she might vomit, fear fighting to purge the beer from her stomach. “Now you be a good little girl,” he ordered her and she felt his hands touch the hem of her miniskirt. He raised it high and revealed her thong underwear. “Oh, I like those,” he laughed approvingly.

Suddenly the sodium vapor lamps brightened considerably, transforming from a sinister, jaundiced glow to a bright, near-white hue that pulsed all around her; through her. The world suddenly buzzed and the fear she’d felt seconds earlier melted away.

“I like it when they struggle,” neck tattoo said confidently, but the look on his face betrayed his confidence. He looked shocked by her lack of fear.

Spurred, Arianna felt her muscles bunch and strain, burning to move despite the weight of his body against her. An odd but not altogether unfamiliar sensation whispered through her body, gently at first then gained momentum immediately until it throbbed through her veins with more force than her lifeblood. The man who sought to rape her had not noticed the changes that were occurring. He did not sense Arianna’s transformation. But she had, in fact, transformed. She no longer felt fear unlike any she’d ever felt before. She no longer wanted to flee. She wanted something else entirely.

Her stomach roiled angrily as if somersaulting over a slithering serpent that moved unendingly inside her gut. The scent of garbage from the surrounding trash bins in the alleyway intensified, but was overpowered by a different scent: Blood. The metallic stench of blood hung in the air like mist, overwhelming her, fueling her. Her vision, shrouded moments ago by tears and darkness, now saw clearly that blood dripped from a wound on Stephanie’s skull. Fury shook her body and the urge to kill the man before her as well as the one who hovered over Stephanie overtook her. Kill or be killed. The words passed through her with the tremors that shook her, vibrating and echoing through her core. She shoved her hands forward with strength and energy she should not have had and the man launched backward. She swept her arm up and to one side and the man’s body moved, as if he were a marionette on a string guided by her hand, and slammed against the brick wall of a neighboring building. She heard loud snaps, bones no doubt, and several of them, when his body met with the wall. In the instant that it had happened she’d wondered how she could possibly hear his bones yielding on impact. But the thought had been fleeting. The hum inside her encompassed any reason she’d possessed and drowned it out completely, and she was filled with the urge to punish the man she seemingly controlled. She retracted her hand quickly and watched as he lurched forward, impossibly, his feet not touching the ground. Then she flicked her wrist away from her body and he smashed against the wall once more. A vile thrill of excitement trilled inside of her as his form met with the wall a second time. She watched as the man with the neck tattoo fell to the concrete unmoving, his leg jutting out from beneath him unnaturally.

Feeling her blood roaring through her veins, she turned her attention to the man with Stephanie. Stephanie’s underwear had been torn from her body and the man with the bandana had begun to unzip his pants. He produced his own blade and pressed it to Stephanie’s neck. “One more step and I’ll kill the bitch,” he said.

At his threat, Arianna’s breaths came in short, shallow pants and she felt as though a black hole resided deep in the pit of her belly, one that could never be filled. Her eyes burned with red-hot heat as if both were glowing embers. Everything in her field of vision was bathed in crimson. She saw the man crouched over Stephanie freeze. He looked at her, shocked and confused.

“What the fuck?” he shouted. “You’re eyes! You’re eyes are r-r-r-red!” Fear laced each of his words, but Arianna felt nothing for him. “Stay back or I’ll cut her!” he said again and pressed the point of the blade so that it produced a thin rivulet of blood. Stephanie began to stir and regain consciousness, undoubtedly in response to the pain of the blade pricking her throat.

The coppery scent of blood filled Arianna’s nostrils once again, burning the back of her throat. All she wanted was to avenge her friend who lay littered on the ground like refuse, her skirt lifted to her waist and her underwear torn off. The man had intended to rape her, to strip from her that which was not his to take, her dignity, her worth. But Arianna would not let that happen. Her body shook as a ripple of ire passed through her, flaring to the tips of her fingers, tingling and burning. She raised her hands quickly. As her fingers lifted to the height of her shoulders, heat flashed from their tips and felt like it was arching in a scorching stream. The man rose to his feet, but not fast enough to evade her all-consuming rage. Her scarlet sight watched as he burst into flames. He rose to his feet and scampered away from Stephanie whose eyes fluttered, flames licking every part of his body. He screamed and writhed, tried to pat the flashes of fire that rose and fell like the breaths of a great beast. He howled in pain and pleaded for help as the flames grew larger and encompassed him. But Arianna did not offer help and she did not want him to feel reprieve. She wanted him to feel the fire of hell and burn.

Arianna’s felt her own chest rise and fall, her breathing strained and labored. She looked to Stephanie who had awoken to the sight of a burning man before her.

Arianna didn’t bother answering any questions. She grabbed Stephanie and pulled her to her feet with strength that began to drain from her, leaving in its wake pain, indescribably intense pain. Every part of her ached. She tugged on the handle of the door they’d exited.

Arianna yanked it as hard as she could and the felt the lock surrender. Thumping bass poured out from the opened door and they stepped into the darkness. The effort of opening the door had sapped what little strength had remained. She shivered, panicking about what she’d just seen, what she’d done. Her brain could not process what had just happened, her strength, her power. The club began to spin in lopsided circles and disgust ate at her. Had she killed both men? In the moment, she hadn’t cared, had actually wanted them gone, permanently. She felt the energy inside her waver and a swelling sting swept through her, tearing at her insides, branching from the center of her body and shooting out. Stephanie let go of her hand and pushed through the crowd leaving Arianna alone. The music and voices around her seemed to murmur, suddenly muffled as if she were hearing them from underwater, distorted and indistinct. Her knees threatened to give way beneath her, stabbing pain radiating from her gut.

She hunched and clutched her stomach about to drop to the floor and curl into a ball against the blinding pain she felt when a pair of warm hands cupped her face. And just as suddenly as the pain had come, it receded like a wave. She looked up to see who held her face and drew in a sharp breath when she saw him. Tall and broad-shouldered with golden hair and blue eyes that penetrated the dimness of the nightclub, the man’s touch calmed her, yet evoked a stirring of warmth in her torso that expanded and touched the tips of her fingers and toes. Faint light from a roving spotlight shined behind him, haloing his exquisite shape, and if he’d whispered in her ear that he was an angel, she would have believed him.

For unclear reasons, she did not fight or protest. The man she’d seen on the side of the road twice, the same one she’d seen before she’d gone outside with Stephanie, took her hand in his and stepped forward.

“You know who I am, Sola. And who I am does not matter. Who and what you are is all that matters.”

He pulled her close to him and the world around them disappeared, the club, the people, the tables, everything vanished from sight. Light burst into her mind, brilliant white light, and she was on a roaring wave. The warmth she’d felt moments ago filled her so fully she thought it would burst through her arms and legs. Warmth, comforting, enveloping warmth charged the center of her being. She was light. She did not feel pain or fear. Her worries disappeared like grains of sand in the wind. She was free.

Arianna found herself standing on unsure legs, surrounded by lush fields of green speckled with blossoms in vibrant shades of pink and purple. The dimness and haze of the nightclub she’d stood in seconds earlier had disappeared, replaced instead with golden light that kissed and caressed the vivid landscape. The incessant rumble and thump of bass in music that had blared had been silenced, swapped with a faint whisper of a breeze stirring tall grass and the distant sound of birds chirping. The entire world she’d existed in moments ago had vanished, she had vanished. Stephanie, Luke, and the group they’d been with, along with the rest of the club-goers, had gone, faded into an oblivion beyond her reach. She was no longer with them. She had been transported, impossibly, to a picturesque meadow. And she wasn’t alone. A substantial hand gripped hers, a hand attached to an equally substantial arm and body.

The man that held her hand, the same one she’d seen watching her on the side of the road on two occasions, the one she’d noticed in the nightclub, remained with her, and towered over her, as glorious and golden as the sunshine touching the earth they stood upon. She looked up at him and he smiled a kind, almost affectionate smile, and she noticed that her hand, the one he held, tingled. The slight tingle moved up her arm to her shoulder, warm and pleasant, and spread. It thrummed through her in time with her heartbeat for several seconds, a calming sensation that radiated from him in waves of energy so strong she swore they were tangible.

She released his hand and felt the calm come to an abrupt end. Everything that had happened rushed at her. Suddenly, the sun felt strong overhead. Her body heated and flushed with warmth.

“What the hell?” she shrieked. “What the hell? What just happened? Where am I? Where are my friends?”

Panic began to sweep through her like fire through dried brush, racing and torching everything in its wake. She wondered whether she were dead, and the field she stood Elysium, the fabled home of the blessed after death. After all, the man before her could easily have been an angel. Then she remembered what she’d done in the alleyway before staggering back into the club and realized no paradise would await her after death; she was very much alive. Anxiety filled her, burning and corroding any sense of reason she’d ever possessed.

“Shh, calm down, Arianna,” the man said and searched her eyes with his. The brilliant blue of his irises was a shade she’d never seen and matched the hue of the sky above, only more crystalline in their clarity.

“Calm down? Are you kidding me? What the hell is happening? Am I dead, or drugged? What is going on?” she shouted.

“You’re not dead, Arianna,” he said calmly. “And you haven’t been drugged, though drugs were offered to you before you went into the Blue Ivy tonight, were they not?”

“Well, yeah,” she fumbled before realizing there was no possible way he could have known about Stephanie’s offer unless he had been standing right beside her when it had happened. She and Stephanie had been alone. “How do you know about that? And how do you know my name?” she asked and felt another flash of fright blaze within her.

She stared at him incredulously, becoming more and more convinced by the moment that a hallucinogenic drug had been slipped into one of her beers, that levitating and thrashing one man into a building and setting ablaze another would all be part of a horrific, drug-addled memory in the near future. And this beautiful man who spouted utter nonsense was a figment of her imagination, little more than brain garbage tangled in the effects of the drugs.

“Yeah, right,” she said laughing in a crazed way that was foreign to her own ears.

“Okay, whatever you say,” she pacified going along with what she supposed was a delusion.

“I hear your mocking tone,” he said levelly. “And whatever you think this is, a dream or hallucination, you’re wrong. This is happening.”

Arianna did not know what to say or how to react. If she were experiencing drug related delirium, nothing she said or did would matter. She remained silent.

“Are you telling me I don’t look familiar to you?” he persisted in his serene tone.

“Of course you look familiar to me,” she replied. I saw you just the other day when I crashed my bike, and the day before that.”

“I thought I saw you in the club. But that could have been the onset of whatever drug some asshole popped in my beer, the beginning of the freaking delusion I’m having right now.”

“You did see me in the club. I was there, and you were not drugged. No drug would affect you, not that I would have allowed anyone to drug you in the first place.”

“No drugs affect me?” she asked indignantly. “I’ve smoke pot before and,” she said and her voice trailed off. She did not complete her sentence, could not.

She searched her memory for one time, any time, she had become high from marijuana she’d smoked, but came up empty. She could not recall a single instance when she had succumbed to the influence of marijuana or any other substance she’d abused. She couldn’t recall ever being drunk and had long since assumed her father, whoever he was, had an unusually high tolerance for alcohol he’d imparted to her.

“I’ve been with you your whole life, watching you, waiting,” he said not pausing for her answer. “I know your life has been far from ordinary.”

The way he looked at her, his tone of voice combined with how he’d practically read her mind and anticipated what she’d say next, all of it was as compelling as it was disturbing. Still, all of it had to be a dream of some sort. He spoke so sincerely, so openly, it would have been easy for her to give in to his words, to believe them. Of course, if he’d shown the slightest shred of sanity, he would have furthered his cause. What he was saying was completely preposterous.

“Yes. It is my mission to ensure your safety and guide you as you mature, as your powers strengthen.”

“All right, enough! This crap has to stop. Even if this is some kind of hallucination, it’s got to stop. I can’t listen to this crazy shit anymore!”

“You’re saying all of this is crazy, but deep down, you know it’s true. The moment you saw me on the side of the road, you knew. You recognized me.”

She wanted to deny it, wanted to tell him he didn’t know what the hell he was talking about, but he was right. Something had clicked when she’d seen him, something hidden deep within her had sprung forth like a sudden recollection from a vague dream or a missing puzzle piece appearing unexpectedly after days of looking for it. He had appeared like the missing puzzle piece or muddled face from a long-forgotten dream.

“I don’t even know your name,” she said and decided not to refute his claim.

“I know what you were trying to be, that you were trying to defuse a situation you cannot control with humor. You do that a lot.”

The lack of emotion coming from his benevolent face seemed wrong. Arianna felt heat prickle up her neck, anger partnering with it.

“Please save your armchair assessment of me, Desmond. I was trying to be funny, that’s all. No deeper meaning behind it,” she said and hated that she sounded so defensive.

“I’m sorry if I’ve offended you,” he said earnestly and she felt frustrated anew. “But I think we’re getting off topic here.”

“Off topic? Are you kidding me?” she railed. “I didn’t even know there was a topic to be off of.”

“Yes you do. We were talking about you, why I’ve been watching you, what you are,” he said evenly.

His calm demeanor was grating on her nerves, how he spoke so offhandedly alleging she had powers and what, as opposed to whom, she was. She was Arianna Rose, just as she’d always been, and he was a crackpot figment of her drugged imagination.

“Stop it! Just stop talking about watching me and what I am. I’m going to wake from this soon, so don’t bother trying to sell me your brand of crazy.”

She felt a fine sheen of perspiration collect and cover her brow. Her palms slickened with sweat as she remembered the pure rage that had coursed through her veins before the man had burst into flames. The man that had slammed Stephanie against the wall and drew blood from her head, the one who’d torn Stephanie’s underwear from her body and lifted her skirt like an animal before trying to rape her, appeared in her mind’s eye. She had wanted him to burn for what he had been about to do, for what he’d done. He had placed a blade to Stephanie’s throat and had threatened to kill her. Arianna had felt fury flood her core so fully, it had drowned her. Even still, the thought of him made her insides tremble with wrath. His screams, his pleas for help, had meant nothing to her then. But now, her wrath was tinged with another emotion, one she struggled to name.

“Yes, you are very powerful,” Desmond said staring at her unwaveringly, as if seeing the vision her memory produced as easily as she did. “That’s the reason I’m here, the reason I’ve always been here with you. You are the chosen one, the one we call the Sola.”

“The Sola, you are the Sola. You are the lone one, the most powerful one among us, who will unite us all.”

“Some would call you a witch and me a warlock, but those are such ugly, hollow terms, wouldn’t you agree?”

Her head began to swim, reeling and whirling with conflicting emotions. She had always been aware of her differences from others, peripherally at least, but had always attributed those differences to her mother’s lifestyle choices, as well as her own. The fact that she’d escaped injury unscathed time after time and had avoided the effects of both drink and drugs further supported that she was unlike most people. She found herself awash with confusion. She wondered whether she was lucid, whether what was happening was real. Desmond’s words had struck a chord. They’d touched upon a yawning stretch of her being that had always ached for identification, for validation. And now she finally had a name for it: witch.

“Okay,” she murmured. “So I’m a witch, I mean, the Sola. I am supposed to unite all the witches and warlocks of where, and for what?”

“You will unite the witches of the world. They will know of your coming of age, of the dawn of your true powers. They will sense the shift in their own powers and they will know.”

Arianna was speechless. What he was saying, as insane as it sounded, resonated within her. All of her life, she had never felt as though she’d belonged. She’d never felt as if she’d found her place among any of her peers, among anyone. Lily Andrews, a girl two years younger than her who had been the closest thing to a best friend she’d ever had, had been the only person she’d felt remotely at ease around. But her friendship with Lily had been brief, as brief as her mother’s relationship with Carl, and she’d been relegated to her usual station: feeling like a square peg being forced into a round opening; until now. Desmond’s words resounded deep inside of her.

“And why do they, uh we, need to be united?” she asked and felt an instinctive sense of warning wash over her.

“Because we are being hunted,” he said and trained his sky-blue eyes on her.

“There are many people who want you dead,” he said solemnly. “They are killing off witches, one at a time, in search of you.”

Her mind began to spin again as the rational part of her brain attempted to deny what her heart, what her entirety, knew to be true.

“I will not let you die, I assure you,” he said and misinterpreted her quiet revulsion at people dying because of her as worry for her own welfare.

“I’m not worried about dying, Desmond,” she said more forcefully. “I just can’t wrap my mind around the fact that people are actually dying because of me, because someone out there wants me dead.”

“Do not feel guilty, Arianna,” he said soothingly. “They would have been hunted no matter what. The people who hunt you want all witches dead. The real witches that died knew they were dying for a greater good. They did so without prolonged pain or suffering. Their spirits were returned to the earth, wind, fire and water.”

She wondered whether he actually thought she would be appeased by others accepting their death and only suffering a little as opposed to a lot. And he had made reference to real witches. Had there been fake witches?

Arianna raked her hand through her hair then rubbed the back of her neck. The muscles near her collar complained, bunching and tensing. “That’s all well and good that their spirits went back to nature, but they are dead! And all because of me! How the hell am I supposed to feel about that?”

“And what did you mean when you said real witches who died? Were there witch impostors who died, too?”

Desmond glared at her, aiming his ethereal cerulean eyes at her as though he sought to bore a hole in her head. “No, Arianna, there were no witch impostors, just innocent people who had been curious about witchcraft,” he spat.

His words stung. He had not spoken them with an accusatory tone, but guilt weighed upon her with leaden heaviness, nonetheless. And how could it not? She felt horrified at the notion of witches dying in her stead, but innocent, powerless people dying was more than she could bear.

Tears burned behind her lids. She fluttered her lashes, trying in vain to blink them away, but more came and streamed down her cheeks.

“It is a tragedy, Sola. I know. But we mustn’t focus on the past now. We need to prepare for what is to come.”

“It’s much worse. I will not lie to you about that. There is a man who has made it his sole purpose in life to find and kill witches, or anyone who stands in his way. And he is getting close.”

“Yes, too close. He was just outside of Rockdale when your situation there changed.”

“What? He was in Rockdale?” she asked unable to mask the alarm in her voice.

“I nudged Carl to come home, influenced him if you will, so that he would come home that night and find your mother with his cousin.”

Arianna had found it strange that Carl had returned the night he’d found her mother with his cousin. Generally, when Carl had set up shop on a barstool, he had been very reluctant to leave. When her mother had begun her affair with his cousin, Carl would go to their local haunt without her and nothing short of a fire in the bar would have given him cause to leave it. Desmond’s involvement in that scenario made sense.

“It did shock me when Carl came home before the bartender kicked him out,” she admitted. “You must have some serious powers to have gotten him out of there before closing time.”

Desmond smiled; a wide, warm smile that lit up his entire face. “It did sap a tremendous amount of my strength to move him off that barstool.”

Arianna laughed. Laughing felt good considering the gravity of her predicament, that lives had been claimed because of her. Desmond laughed, as well. The sound was pleasant and buoyed her spirits somewhat.

“What do we do now?” Arianna asked and shifted their interaction away from its lightheartedness.

“Oh no! The club, I forgot about the club! My friends are going to freak out that I left, especially after what happened right before I left,” she worried.

“No need to worry. They won’t even know you were gone,” he said in his tranquil tone.

“What, I mean, how is that possible?” she asked, but he did not answer. He took her hand in his instead, and she felt a tingle begin in her hand and travel up her arm as softly as a breath blowing across her skin, warm and welcoming. Within seconds, she felt his energy flowing through her, thrumming in time with her heartbeat, whispering through every part of her. The scenic paradise around her began to melt, evaporating into obscurity. All that remained was Desmond’s face, beautiful and serene, perfectly sculpted as if it had been carved from marble, staring at her, through her. He pulled her close to him, wrapped his arms around her, and she felt her breath catch in her chest. Light filled her field of vision, brilliant white light. Desmond and his warmth surrounded her, covering her body with wisps of awareness, light and feathery. Her entire body quivered pleasantly. Her worries and fears ebbed as if they were froth. And she was gone again.

It wasn’t until darkness encroached and a chill raced over her, eclipsing the light and peace she’d felt seconds earlier, that she realized she and Desmond were huddled together in the Blue Ivy nightclub once again. Music thundered from mammoth speakers and beams of light pulsed and swept over the crowd. She felt Desmond’s arms around her then in an instant, they were gone. Arianna looked up and expected to see his glorious face, but realized he’d disappeared. A scrawny guy with baggy jeans, a rainbow mohawk and a nose ring stood where he had been. The guy smiled at her and she turned from him. In her mind, she swore she heard Desmond’s laugh echo followed by a faint message. “I’ll see you soon,” his voice whispered. Though he wasn’t there, she felt the heat of his breath at her ear and a warm tingle stole through her. Her eyes scanned the club for Desmond. She knew he was gone, could feel it, but looked anyway. She did not see him, just as she’d suspected, but saw Luke.

Luke waved and signaled for her to join him. A part of her ached; deeply and inexplicably, she smarted, inundated with an undefined emotion. She moved toward Luke, through the gyrating throng, toward a life she would never fully be a part of.

Stephanie rejoined her and was crying. Rivulets of black streaked her face and her platinum hair was ruffled. A small puncture wound at the base of her neck trickled bright-red blood. Just as Desmond had said, no time had passed for Stephanie. In her mind, the men in the alleyway had just tried to attack them and had been freakishly thwarted. Stephanie had not had reprieve from it. Arianna had. But Arianna’s reprieve had been anything but a break from what had happened. To the contrary, she had been made aware of a far graver threat than two thugs in a darkened alleyway. She had found out that she’s a witch. The reality of all that had happened, all she’d been told, sent a shiver through her. She wrapped her arm around Stephanie’s shoulders, her need for physical contact, for connection, replacing any awkwardness she might have otherwise felt for her action.

“That man was on fire,” Stephanie kept muttering. “The one who tried to, who tried to,” she struggled but was racked by sobs.

“I know,” Arianna attempted to comfort her, but her words were drowned out by the music of the club.

Consoling Stephanie would be difficult anywhere. But with deafening music blasting all around them, it would be nearly impossible. Arianna tightened her grip around Stephanie. Any other time, she would have expected Stephanie to balk at such a gesture, to stiffen and shrug her off if she did not shove her outright. But after what had happened, Stephanie seemed to welcome it.

Nestled against each other, Arianna shepherded Stephanie to the far corner of the nightclub where Luke and the others had set up camp. He smiled and waved until he saw his sister’s face. His smile collapsed to a hard line and his hand dropped to his side and balled into a fist. He shoved past several people and was at their side immediately.

Arianna hesitated to speak, unsure of what the hell she was going to tell him. The truth was not a possibility and for obvious reasons. But any variation was a slippery slope to navigate as she was uncertain of just how much Stephanie remembered. Not only had Stephanie taken the drug ecstasy, she’d also been drinking before her head had been slammed against a brick wall. Her consciousness had been spotty during their time in the alley at best.

“These two guys tried to attack us,” Stephanie managed, her voice quivering with raw emotion.

“Attack you? Attack you how?” Luke said and Arianna could see his anger brimming.

Bulldog, Beth, Mike, Carrie, Ryan and Christa looked toward them in alarm then, seeing the state Stephanie was in, made their way over to join Luke.

Stephanie crumpled into her brother’s arms unable to say anything more. Arianna realized she would be forced to speak. She took a deep breath and steeled herself.

“We went out that exit door,” she said and gestured over her shoulder with her thumb to a pair of black doors that led to the outside. “We went to smoke and when the doors shut, we were locked out. While we were smoking, these guys came up to us. They started talking at first only we made it clear we didn’t want to be bothered. They weren’t too happy about that and they grabbed us and tried to attack us.”

“They still back there?” Bulldog asked and Arianna could see the muscles in his jaw flexing angrily.

“No,” Stephanie said. “That was the weird part. The guy that was trying to, the guy that was on top of me burst into flames. Arianna’s eyes turned red, like they were on fire or something and then the guy just burst into flames.”

A stunned silence befell the group. Furtive glances were exchanged among everyone before they all lingered on Arianna. Arianna’s mouth went dry and her heart slammed wildly against her ribcage. Apparently, Stephanie had witnessed more than she had originally thought.

“Don’t talk to me like I’m fucking crazy,” Stephanie yelled. “I know what I saw!”

The conviction in her voice was compelling. Arianna would have believed her, regardless of how preposterous it may have sounded, if she were anyone else in the group. After all, what Stephanie was saying was true. Arianna had experienced it, had seen her field of vision veiled in a translucent shroud of crimson, had felt the heat radiating from them, from her entire body, before she’d lifted her hand and produced an arc of fire that burned him. But no one could know what had happened. Not even Stephanie. Arianna needed to convince them that it hadn’t happened. She needed to mention the ecstasy that Stephanie had taken.

“My eyes weren’t red,” Arianna lied and hated herself for what she was about to do. “What happened to you, to us, was so unbelievably awful,” she said and felt her eyes well with tears. One fat teardrop spilled over and trailed down her cheek. “I wish I’d had some magical power to have set those bastards on fire. I fought them off the old-fashioned way: a kick to the balls and some scratching. But I think it was the ecstasy and drinks you had earlier that made you think you saw my eyes glowing red.” Arianna brushed the tear from her cheek with the back of her hand and watched as Luke held his sister at arm’s length.

“You did ecstasy again? I thought we talked about that. No more drugs,” he warned sternly. “Look at mom for fuck’s sake!”

“No, no, not at all,” Luke said apologetically. He looked to Arianna and asked, “Are you okay? Shit, I didn’t even ask if you were okay.”

The last thing Arianna wanted was for Luke to feel guilty about what had happened. She was far from okay, but she had handled the situation to the best of her newfound abilities.

“No, I’m not,” she answered honestly. “But I think I’m better off than her,” she said referring to Stephanie.

“Enough of this hugging bullshit, let’s go find these fuckers and deal with them,” Ryan said.

“They’re probably still in the alley,” Stephanie said quickly. “The guy that was on fire is I bet.”

“Was the guy on fire?” Luke asked Arianna looking equal parts embarrassed and annoyed to be asking

“There was fire,” she admitted. “He lit a cigarette while he was, you know, on top of her. After I got the other guy off me, and I saw that he’d hit his head and wasn’t moving, I ran over to Stephanie. When I did, she started fighting back and hit into his arm. It must have dropped down his shirt or something because the guy lit up like a Roman candle.”

Arianna could still hear his tortured screams in her mind, see him flailing about to try to extinguish the flames lapping his body.

“See! I was telling the truth, asshole!” Stephanie shouted at Luke and interrupted Arianna’s recollection.

“I don’t see how,” Arianna answered truthfully. “Whatever was on his shirt, maybe cologne or gasoline or something, burned so damn fast. He was covered in flames. I didn’t stick around to see what would happen. I just grabbed Steph and ran.”

Stephanie began sobbing again, gasping and trying to catch her breath, the memory of it all too painful for her to bear.

“Yeah, this is all too crazy. These guys should be locked up, if they’re alive,” Christa said.

“No. No cops,” Luke said determinedly. “If those scumbags are alive, I want a piece of them for trying to rape my sister and my girlfriend.”

Arianna supposed she should have been happy that Luke had announced to his friends that she was his girlfriend; it was the first time he’d said it, yet she did not feel even the slightest bit of happiness. In fact, she felt troubled by it. Apart from the circumstances that had instigated his announcement, she was upset by it. She wasn’t sure why exactly, but felt shame at his admittance, at his want to defend her against her attackers. Guilt gave way to anxiety and anxiety clawed its way into her lungs, making it hard for her to breathe. She attempted a deep breath, desperate to not let her nerves get the better of her and make her sick all over the nightclub floor. Not that she doubted that the floor had seen its fair share of vomit on it in the past. She just didn’t want to be among those who had actually done the vomiting.

“You okay, Arianna?” Carrie asked and took hold of her arm. “You don’t look so good.”

“Then what are we waiting for?” Bulldog asked. “Let’s go pound on those fuckers!”

Deep within her, an innate instinct portended that one of the men lived, that one had survived her counterattack, but barely. Still, she needed to dissuade them from going into that alleyway. Too many questions would be asked, questions she could not answer. Lying was not her strong suit. She was terrible at it, in fact. But she needed to convince them to leave.

“And if the cops happen to find the nine of us hovering around a couple of dead bodies what do you think they’ll assume?” she asked. No one offered any thoughts, so she continued. “They’ll assume we, at the very least, saw something. Then they might ask why Stephanie looks like she does, why she has that fresh cut on her throat. Do you see where I’m going with this?”

“They’ll think something happened and we retaliated by killing them,” Ryan said.

“I don’t want to spend any time in county lockup,” Bulldog said as if he’d been there before.

“Neither do I,” Mike added. “My brother’s been there overnight and he said it’s no joke.”

Luke looked directly into Arianna’s eyes and held her gaze as if trying to silently express a profound truth to her. His silver eyes had hardened to steel, unreadable to her in the shadowy nightclub. But she sensed significance in his weighty watch.

“I just want to get out of here,” Stephanie finally said. “Please, can we go?”

Luke did not lower his eyes to his sister as Arianna would have thought. He did not acknowledge her request either. Not right away. He continued to stare at Arianna. Whatever he sought to convey wordlessly, whatever psychic message he seemed intent on sending to her, was not reaching her. She shifted her weight from one leg to the next uncomfortably, waiting for him to speak, to yell, anything. Heat crept up her neck and touched her cheeks. She was suddenly thankful for the darkness of the club and the loud music as well. Had the music not been playing, she feared Luke and the rest of their group would hear the mad pounding of her heart. She wondered whether he suspected her of lying, whether a part of him believed his sister’s claim about her eyes glowing red. Of course, he would have been correct in doing so; Stephanie had told the truth, as preposterous as it had sounded. Regardless of his motivation, Arianna was unnerved.

Stephanie’s words had broken the spell and Luke released her from his gaze. Arianna breathed a silent sigh of relief.

“So that’s it?” Bulldog asked. “No one’s catching a beating tonight?”

Luke led them through the club to the main entrance. Arianna, Bulldog, Beth, Mike, Carrie, Ryan and Christa filed behind him. Stepping out into the cool, quiet night air, Arianna felt the crushing squeeze anxiety had placed on her lungs begin to subside. Once they’d reached the parking area, everyone began to disperse. She was left alone with Luke and Stephanie.

“I’m going to take Stephanie home first then drive you home if you don’t mind,” he said to Arianna.

Arianna felt her heart make a leap from her chest to her throat. “Uh, okay, if that’s what you want,” she fumbled. “Seems like a big production to go to your house then my house then back home, don’t you think?”

“I don’t mind. I really want to be alone with you, and talk to you,” he said and looked at her again in that peculiar way he had in the nightclub.

“Fine. If that’s what you want,” she said and hoped she hadn’t sounded cold or cruel. Any other night before this night, being alone with him would have been exactly what she would have wanted. But this night had not been like any other. And she wanted to be alone.

Luke’s face sagged a bit and she realized she’d hurt him. “Sounds great,” she added for his benefit and watched him brighten. “I’d like that.” He smiled, his usual warm smile, and she found herself smiling back at him. He pulled his seat forward and she climbed into the back seat of his pickup truck. Stephanie assumed her position in the front seat and Luke drove.

The drive to Luke’s house was silent, painfully silent. The tension in the air had been so thick, Arianna swore she could see it seep from the car in ribbons when Stephanie opened the door and climbed out. Arianna said a quick “Good night” to Stephanie, which was ignored, before positioning herself in the front seat.

She watched Stephanie stride in impossibly high-heeled shoes to the front door. When she looked away, she slid Luke a glance and saw that he did not watch his sister, but her instead.

“I’m so glad you’re okay. You’re taking it much better than my sister.”

“Different people handle things differently I guess,” was all she could come up with.

“Yeah, you’re right. You’re a strong person, Arianna. I knew that from the first time we met.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure,” she said, the irony of their exchange weighing on her.

“I am sure,” he said. “You have this, I don’t know, energy about you, like you can handle anything. Shit, you fought off not one, but two guys tonight.”

He spoke to her without the slightest hint of sarcasm or suspicion, but with what she could only name as reverence. His admiration pained her for she was no ordinary high school girl who had fended off a pair of assailants. No, she’d had an advantage, a tremendous advantage. And she aimed to conceal her advantage from him.

“I guess it was adrenaline or something,” she said flatly wishing he would just drive already.

He reached a hand across the console and rested it on her leg. “Well whatever it was, I’m glad you’re okay, that you weren’t, you know, hurt,” he said and she knew exactly what he’d meant. “And thanks for watching my sister’s back,” he added then moved his hand from her leg to the gearshift.

The car began to rumble slowly as Luke backed out of his driveway. The short ride to her trailer park was blissfully quiet. When Luke pulled up in front of her porch, she resisted the urge to bolt out of his truck and run inside, not stopping until she reached the shower. She wanted, needed, to scrub the events of the night from her skin, fill her nostrils with the scent of strawberry shampoo in hopes of it purging the fetid stench of charred flesh from them. She wanted to cleanse herself of the man with the neck tattoo’s touch, wash away the entire night. She liked Luke, liked him a lot, but needed to shower, needed to process everything that had happened.

She watched as Luke turned the key in the ignition and the engine stilled. He opened his door and walked around to the passenger side to open hers.

“Wow, this is some big-time wooing,” she said and smiled back, unable to resist the sincerity he’d radiated.

He took her hand and helped her out. In the night air again, Arianna felt the need to busy her hands. She released Luke’s hand and reached into her bag and felt for her pack of cigarettes. Luke produced two of his own and offered one to her. She accepted it, placed it between her lips and waited for him to light it. He lit hers first with exaggerated arm gestures.

She wondered why, and how, he was able to behave so normally after what he’d heard. Perhaps it was just her guilty, possibly murderous, conscience convincing her that he ought to be doubtful of the story she’d told him and nothing more.

“Listen Arianna, I know this isn’t great timing, but I just want to say that I like you, you know? I care about what happens to you,” he admitted. “When you told me what happened, what that scumbag tried to do to you, I freaked out. I wanted to kill him. I mean literally kill him.”

Little did he know, she had likely killed at least one of them. “Honestly, I wanted them both dead, too.”

“Feeling like I did, as angry as I was, I never felt that way about a girl so quickly. I mean, I haven’t known you a long time, but I liked you right away. And tonight, everything that happened,” he said then paused. He stared at the ground for several seconds before he looked up at her and said, “It made me realize I care about you.”

Arianna wasn’t sure how to react, what to say. Hours earlier, if he had said anything even similar to what he’d just said, and with the earnestness he’d just said it with, she would have been kissing him already. But a lot had happened, more than he could ever know, more than she could ever tell him. She knew that with every second that passed, every second she remained silent, he was dying a small death. Like her, Luke did not seem like the kind of guy who offered his heart to others readily. She cared for him too, despite the fact that she was a supernatural being with a bounty on her head. She dropped her cigarette to the gravel beneath her and closed the distance between them. She wrapped her arms around his waist and tipped her chin up. He lowered his head and pressed his lips to hers. Warm and soft, his mouth was suddenly exactly what she needed. She began to kiss him eagerly, hungrily. She slipped her tongue between his lips and tasted the nicotine in his hot breath. He returned her kiss but with less intensity, less passion. He slid his hands from her waist up her back and into her hair before cupping her face in his hands. He slowed her fevered pace, kissing her tenderly, affectionately, until he was placing light pecks on her lips. Then he pulled her closer, wrapping both arms around her, and hugged her tightly. She felt the slightest trace of his excitement pressing against her belly, but knew he was exercising restraint; that their kiss had not been about sex, but something else entirely.

They held each other for several seconds before Arianna allowed the tension in her arms to relax and she released him. “I’m going to go inside,” she said quietly.

“I’ll have to take a rain check,” she replied. “It’s not that I don’t want to be with you, because I do, I really do. I just feel so...dirty. I want to just scrub the whole night off me.”

Sadness clouded his features and Arianna felt her heart clench. “Except for this, these last few minutes with you. They helped, Luke. You have no idea how much. Hearing how you feel about me, well, it means the world to me,” she fumbled. “Shit! I’m so bad at this feelings stuff. I care about you, too, okay? You know that right?”

He did not say anything, but smiled his broad smile that made his silver eyes twinkle then kissed her lips gently.

“Go on,” he said and patted her backside. “Go inside and wash every bit of this night off, except for the last five minutes. Enjoy your hot shower. I’ll be thinking of you when I take a nice cold one myself,” he winked.

He waited, leaning against his pickup truck until she was inside before he started the engine. His truck wheezed and sputtered in protest as his headlights faded in the dark. Inside, Arianna turned down the narrow hallway and headed to the bathroom, intent on purging the night from her skin. She knew that soap and water would never rid her of what she’d seen, what she’d done; who she was. But it was a start.

Howard felt a jolt of panic shoot through him, jarring him so abruptly, so wholly, he was forced to brace himself against a wall. He’d just finished orating to a small group of congregants, had just left the nave of the Soldiers of the Divine Trinity Church when terror rocked him. Shaken, he crossed himself, touching his right hand to his forehead, his belly, his left shoulder then his right. He prayed silently, leaning against a corridor wall that led from the sacristy, where he’d left his Bible, to the presbytery, which served as both his office and private living quarters.

The sudden frightened feeling did not end despite his silent pleas, though. Instead, it changed, transforming into a familiar sensation, one he hadn’t felt in some time, but a familiar one, nonetheless. The initial jolt had been a mere catalyst, a warning, for the reaction that began between his ribcage and spread slowly, swelling and stretching like a great beast awakening from slumber inside of him. Howard bit his lower lip to keep from screaming, the torturous pain branching from his abdomen unbearable. Twisting and writing demonically, the feeling wound within him weaving and snaking down throughout him to the tips of his fingers. He heard himself gasp as realization of what was occurring settled upon him. Abrasive awareness scratched and clawed its way to his consciousness and he grasped that he was feeling the evil energy of the Sola. Her power had come to fruition, had matured. And she had used it for her own depraved purpose.

An offense against God had just been committed, and she had been responsible for it. Of that he was certain. Her iniquity entwined itself around his very veins with barbed tentacles, pulsing tainted lifeblood through them. He could not be sure what exactly had happened, could not see her wicked deed, but felt it, felt her sin winding its way inside him agonizingly.

The feel of sin had not been foreign to Howard. He knew the grotesque sensation all too well. He, himself, had been a sinner at one time.

As he breathed deeply, trying desperately to exorcise the fiendish ache, memories rushed through him, swirling with the excruciating pain in a horrific dance.

He had not sinned in more than thirty-five years. He was a man of God and did no wrong, now. But when he had been a boy, he hadn’t been the shining example of man he currently was. He had not been on the righteous path he was presently on. Long ago, he had lost his way.

When Howard had been just twelve years old, he had been living in a youth detention center for two years. Sentenced for six months to a locked-down facility after he’d killed his mother and her lover, he had been transferred shortly thereafter to an all-boys prison camp of sorts where corporal punishment had been implemented. There, he had experienced the most trying times of his entire life. Brutality had abounded. It had been part of a venomous cycle. Guards had abused detainees and detainees had abused one another. Howard, in particular, had endured multiple forms of cruelty. Small for his age and delicate of feature, he had been branded a “sissy,” had been teased and taunted regularly. But the abuses had not ended with words. Every part of him had been raped: body, mind and soul. Bruises had marked nearly every inch of him and improperly healed fractures and lacerations had marred his appearance. But neither his bruises nor cuts, nor the deformities of poorly fused bones had deterred his assailants. No, the assaults had continued. Some had been worse than others. Some attackers had been more zealous than others.

Among the seemingly endless string of people who had brutalized him had been two boys who’d taken particular joy in his suffering. Howard closed his eyes and, even after thirty-five years, could still see their faces in vivid detail. Tom Callahan and Greg Santos had both been tall and strapping for their fourteen years. They had badgered Howard relentlessly, had called him Mother Killer. They had said Howard had been jealous of his mother’s lover, that he had wanted to have intercourse with her and had killed them because of his incestuous desire for her. They had accused him of heinous feelings. But Tom and Greg had not understood that his mother had been evil, that he had killed her at God’s urging. They had not known about his divine calling, of the power he had possessed. And still, after decades of time spent away from the camp, free from the likes of Tom and Greg, his former name, Mother Killer, nauseated him.

Their taunts and insults, along with their continual abuse of him, had eventually taken their toll on Howard. One day, after a particularly vicious assault that had included being sodomized then beaten, Howard had been filled with rage, and an unquenchable thirst for vengeance. He’d yearned for it, longed for the dark feeling of revenge, of retaliation. He’d read that revenge was a sin. The teachings of the Bible had advised him to turn the other cheek, to forgive those who’d trespassed against him. But with bright-red blood trickling from every orifice of his body and the sound of jeers echoing in his head, retribution had beckoned him. In that moment, he had turned from God, had charged God with turning His back on him first. He had succumbed to the sinister seduction of score settling. He’d known what he’d needed to do to avenge all the atrocities Tom and Greg had committed against him.

Several of the guards had been smokers. Having had lit cigarettes extinguished on his bare torso before they’d ravaged him, he had known all too well of their filthy habit. Smoking had been the least of their many odious, deviant behaviors.

Since the guards had maintained order though regular acts of brutality, they had not feared disobedience. They had never guessed that Howard, the smallest, weakest prisoner, would take one of their numerous lighters that had littered their office, a refillable silver-plated lighter. And they had not expected him to relieve them of a container of lighter fluid either.

Though they had not concerned themselves with insubordination, they had been vigilant, always watching. Howard had been forced to wait until nightfall late one evening to steal out of his room, down a long, dark hallway while everyone else had slept, to collect the lighter and flammable fluid. He had moved with agility he’d never known he’d retained, had crept down the corridor with the silence and stealth of a cat and had gathered his tools unnoticed. From the guards’ office, he’d skulked back to the dormitory and searched for the cots Tom and Greg had occupied. Their bunks had been positioned side by side, almost touching. Like jackals, they’d stayed close to one another, existed as a vile pair.

Howard had stood at the foot of their beds and had felt the darkness stroke him with shadowy fingers, guiding him, pushing him. With a steady hand, he’d opened the canister of lighter fluid and had squeezed it over them, saturating them with the accelerant, careful to soak the small sheet that rested between their beds. Then he’d taken his thumb and rolled it over the flint. The wick had lit immediately, its golden flame swaying bewitchingly. He’d been mesmerized by it, had needed to tear his eyes from the small flicker long enough to toss it atop the sleeping boys. The lighter had landed exactly where he’d wanted to place it: on the sheet their bunks had shared. The material had caught fire immediately, and the fire had instantly spread along pathways created by lighter fluid. Both Tom and Greg’s bodies had begun to burn. It had taken the boys several moments to rouse from their slumber and realize what had been happening. They had awakened with a start, screaming and crying out in agony as their skin had begun to burn. Howard had merely watched, a sense of satisfaction filling his chest as he’d smelled the fetid odor of smoldering flesh. Tom and Greg had begun to thrash about wildly, trying to pat their bodies and smother the growing flames. Their efforts had been useless, though.

As they’d thrashed, Tom had released a guttural shriek and had lunged forward. He had latched onto Howard and had held tightly. He’d felt the heat of Tom’s blazing form, had watched as his own clothes had begun to burn as well.

Tom had looked like a man possessed. He’d howled out, a raspy war cry, just inches from Howard’s face as flames crept up his neck and began to blister his chin and cheeks. Howard had tried to shove him off, tried to pry Tom from him, but each time he had resisted, Tom had tightened his grip.

The last thing Howard Kane remembered about that fateful night was Tom pressing his fiery face to his, a blazing kiss of death, then the feeling of blinding pain searing his entire body, pain unlike any he’d ever experienced. Voices had sounded from some distant void, and oblivion had tempted the edge of his vision. He’d resisted at first, had focused on the voices that had likely belonged to other guests at his internment camp, or perhaps emergency personnel. He would never be sure to whom the voices had belonged to as he had surrendered to the nothingness that had called for him.

The next memory he’d had was lying in a hospital bed. Weeks had passed and he’d been told that he had suffered third-degree burns over the majority of his body. He’d been wrapped in lengths of white bandages, his blisters crusting and festering beneath them.

During the time he’d spend in the hospital recovering from his near-fatal burns, he’d sunken into a deep depression. He had realized that he had not avenged the wrongs perpetrated against him. He had not emerged the victor. Tom had the final laugh. Tom had taken from him the only attribute that he’d retained during his stay as a ward of the correctional system: his looks. Ironically, it had been his looks, his attractiveness that had bordered on feminine prettiness that had generated such a hedonistic frenzy among the other inmates. And even that had been stripped of him. Howard had been mutilated beyond any form of recognition, body and soul. He had been transformed from a beautiful twelve-year-old boy, to a monster. And all of it had happened in the name of vengeance.

For months, his understanding of what his life had become had felt like bobbing lifelessly in a bottomless, blackened sea with no land in sight. Despair had crashed against him like mighty waves, drowning him. His dejection had lasted for nearly half a year, until one day, God had sent him a sign.

The Lord’s sign had come in the form of literature. A volunteer who’d brought books and magazines to patients in the hospital he’d stayed at had dropped a Bible on her way out. Howard had groaned before stooping to pick up the holy book. He’d had most, if not all, of it committed to memory during his eighth year of life, when his father had gone to prison and his mother had taken to drugs and men. He had not touched a Bible in some time. In the hospital, he had begun thumbing through it and was reminded of verse after verse of testimony that supported God’s ability to forgive him of his egregious sins. He had flagrantly offended God, as many had before him, but God had forgiven them. And he had known God would forgive him, too.

Standing in his hospital room, Howard had felt right holding the Bible in his hands, in his heart. Each word had nearly jumped off the pages, resonating with truth, with sense. He had known from that point on that everything that had happened had happened for a reason. He had been tested. His suffering had been part of God’s plan for him. Even his disfigurement had made sense in that divine moment. Vanity issues had been eliminated in one swift motion by his burns. He had known that no woman would ever want him, especially since his burns had spread over the lower half of his body destroying any chances of procreating or partaking of marital relations. He had beamed at the notion that God had chosen him, had freed him of the burden of marriage and parenthood, of pride and conceit. With all of those factors eliminated, his life had been unfettered. He had been granted the opportunity to devote his life to God and His work. He had been alleviated of the duty of creating a life for himself; one had been created for him. He had sinned, had claimed the lives of two people, and would in turn, devote his life to God and pay penance for his offenses.

From that day forward, Howard had begun reading from the Bible each day, had repented each day, begging for the Lord’s forgiveness. On his eighteenth birthday, six years later, all of his doctors and therapists in the federal hospital that had held him had unanimously decided that he had turned a corner. They had believed he had been rehabilitated. They had credited his devotion to Christ for his turnaround, and no longer saw him as a threat to society. He had been released, freed to pursue his holy quest.

Propped against a wall in the hallway of the Church he’d founded nearly a quarter of a century ago, Howard’s breathing began to calm. His pain began to subside. While the event he’d just experienced, the agony of the Sola’s sin, had been devastatingly real, his recollection of his path had confirmed what he had always believed. He would find the Sola and kill her as God had ordered him to, and he would end a plague intended to beset the planet before it began.

Standing on the steps of Herald Falls High School on Monday morning, Arianna felt her stomach roil. The weekend had passed far quicker than she would have liked it to, and she’d only spoken to Luke on the phone. She hadn’t seen him, or anyone else from school, for the entire weekend. What had happened at the nightclub, though certainly fresh in everyone’s mind, had not been discussed again. But inevitably, it would be brought up, and likely sooner rather than later. She dreaded that moment. She breathed deeply to calm her stomach and her nerves and pulled one of two twin doors toward her.

Stale air immediately greeted her. Invisible heat blowing from dusty vents filled the halls as fully as the roar of chatter from students that lingered there. Both the sound and the smell overwhelmed her, stifling and choking her. She’d been to school for more than a week, had walked the same hallways in a building that had maintained the same ambient temperature for a week. Yet, the atmosphere seemed to have changed. She had changed. Her senses felt heightened.

Voices echoed loudly along the corridor, louder than they had the previous week. A group of girls huddled by their lockers laughed, a grating cacophony of high-pitched staccato sounds that scraped at Arianna’s eardrums. She strained to ignore them, but the harder she tried, the more she focused on them, the shriller they became. When finally they stopped and began talking again, after Arianna had moved past them, she could still hear their conversation as clearly as she would have had they been standing right beside her.

Arianna turned and looked over her shoulder. She could barely see the girls any longer. But impossibly, she could still hear their catty conversation. She quickly tried to focus on something else, anything else, all the while her heart thumped frantically. She wondered whether this was one of the new skills she’d gained, whether enhanced senses were among them. She reasoned that surely, shifting criminals and chairs were the extent of her talents, along with generating fire. Either way, she decided to find out. Further down the hallway, her English teacher stood at the threshold of the faculty lounge door speaking intently to her gym teacher. She stared in their direction, and focused on the two teachers.

“Yes. My wife will be out of town until next week. Come to my house. We’ll have the whole place to ourselves,” Mr. Davis suggested.

“Ooh, perfect. That’s even better than our usual spot,” Mr. Smith crooned. “I can hardly wait.”

Arianna could not believe what she was hearing, that she was hearing it at all. Her two teachers, who’d plotted a secret rendezvous, had been so far away, there would have been no possible way for her to hear what they’d said. But she had. She’d tuned in to their conversation as simply as she would have tuned into a radio station; And with crystal-clear reception. Her stomach began to twist and she pressed her hand to her belly, the realization of yet another skill made plain. In the distance, she watched as the men parted. To another onlooker, their interaction seemed normal, professional. Arianna had assumed that if she were able to hear their conversation at all, and it had been a longshot, it would have been a boring, benign conversation. She had been wrong in both assumptions.

Now, as Mr. Davis approached, heat shot straight to her cheeks. He nodded in acknowledgment of her. She smiled weakly, and avoided eye contact. She would see him soon, but with the information she had unwittingly stumbled upon, she wondered how she would ever look at him again without her cheeks blazing.

Learning she had the ability to move objects and people with a sweep of her hand, to manipulate their state of being, and that she had suddenly amplified hearing, made anxiety tear at her lungs, making her feel as if their capacity had been severely diminished, and sent her stomach churning anew. The overly warm temperature of the building and her racing heart conspired with what felt like the beginning of a panic attack. Arianna began making her way to the ladies room.

She navigated clusters of students, narrowly dodged getting leveled by a football jersey-clad giant walking backward and was about to round the corner to an alcove with the bathrooms tucked within it when Luke suddenly appeared beside her.

Arianna sucked in a breath, startled. “Enough with the ninja routine!” she said and placed her hand over her heart.

“Sorry,” he said with genuine concern. “I probably shouldn’t have done that after what happened this weekend. That was fucking stupid of me.”

“Don’t worry about it,” she tried to comfort him. She did not want him to treat her differently. And she certainly didn’t want him to feel bad for being himself. “I’m just tired this morning. I’m jumpy when I’m tired.”

“You don’t need to make excuses, Arianna,” he said and looked at her with his shimmering silver eyes. He took her hand and pulled her out of the hallway into the alcove. Once they were alone, he lowered his voice and said, “I saw the news report Saturday morning, too. That guy, the guy that caught on fire, died. And the other one’s not talking. I’m glad the bastard’s dead, but I’m feeling pretty jumpy myself. It’s all so freaking crazy.”

Arianna leaned into him and he wrapped her arms around his waist. He smelled inviting, of soap and aftershave and minty toothpaste. She could not believe she had involved him, though not purposefully, in the twisted mess of her life. He deserved better, deserved to be with someone normal, someone who wasn’t a witch guilty of murdering an attempted rapist.

She didn’t think he’d heard her and was shocked when he released her from his embrace. He quickly pulled away from her and held her at arm’s length. He stared into her eyes, stared so intensely she worried Luke was looking right through her, seeing her for what she really was: a monster. “You have nothing to be sorry for,” he surprised her by saying. “That thug had a rap sheet longer than my arm, according to the report, and he and his buddy were trying to rape my sister and my girlfriend. I’m glad he’s dead. The world is better off without him.”

She did not argue his point and was grateful when he pulled her against his hard chest again. The racing rhythm of his heartbeat was a welcome reprieve from the noise level in the hall. She wanted to stay with him, hide out in the remote nook near the bathrooms with her faced buried in his sweatshirt for the rest of the day. But the sound of Stephanie’s voice snapped her back to reality. Stephanie approached from a staircase behind Luke.

“Luke, there you are!” Stephanie said testily. “You disappeared as soon as we got here.”

“I was looking for Arianna, Steph. Didn’t know I needed to tell you where I was going at school,” Luke said.

“Hi Stephanie,” Arianna attempted, but Stephanie did not respond. Instead, she turned on her heels and walked away.

“What the hell?” Luke said, annoyance lacing each of his words. “Hold on a second, Arianna. She’s not getting away with being a bitch to you today,” he said and dashed off after Stephanie.

Arianna watched as Luke caught up with Stephanie near the stairwell. She stared after them, forgetting her newfound ability would allow her to hear their every word. When she heard their voices clearly, she tried to focus on the chatter around her, tried to hum a song, but nothing worked. Nothing she did drowned out their conversation.

“I told you Luke, there’s something wrong with her!” she heard Stephanie argue. “Something weird happened and I’m telling you, her eyes were glowing red in that damn alley. She set that guy on fire and killed him after she messed up his friend.”

“Oh come on, Stephanie! Not this shit again! You were fucking drugged out, and now you’re gonna try to convince me of some crazy-ass story that my girlfriend set a guy on fire with her eyes. Listen to yourself! You sound like a nut, or worse, a druggie. Either way, I’m not listening to your shit anymore!”

“So you’re okay that your girl over there is a freak and a murderer?” Stephanie antagonized him.

“Have you completely lost your mind? Those assholes got what they deserved! They were trying to rape you, and probably would have killed you afterward, in case you forgot. I would have killed them myself had I been there. Shit! I wish your half-baked story were true. I wish Arianna set that scumbag and fire and cooked his ass!

“Do you hear yourself? You’re the one who sounds crazy. It was murder, and we need to tell the cops!”

Arianna wished she could ignore their conversation, ignore Stephanie’s distrust of her, disdain of her. But try as she may, theirs was the only sound she heard in the school. All other conversations had faded. Only Luke and Stephanie’s voices remained.

“Seriously,” Luke said and sounded as though he’d gained a degree of control over his temper. “Do you really want to bring the police into our lives so they can get a look at mom? They’ll definitely haul her off, I’ll be on my own and you’ll go into the system as a minor.”

Stephanie was quiet for a moment then she added solemnly, “I don’t like her, Luke. She scares me. And I don’t scare easily.”

“Look, you were messed up the other night,” he said more gently. “It was the drugs screwing with your mind, with your sense of reality. Just let it go.”

Stephanie shook her head slowly then continued up the staircase. Arianna waited while Luke jogged back toward her. She tried to smile, to pretend she hadn’t heard what she’d heard. Eavesdropping was as dangerous an ability as mindreading, and one she wanted no part of.

“Sorry about that,” Luke said smiling a bit too broadly, likely trying to compensate for his sister’s low opinion of her. Though he’d have no way of knowing she’d been privy to his interaction with his sister, he still wore a look of guilt plainly. “She was in a hurry and feels bad about leaving like that,” he lied.

“No problem. I understand,” Arianna said and tried to swallow the lump that had formed in her throat.

“Just Stephanie being Stephanie,” he said and tried to sound nonchalant. But Arianna could see the quick throb in the side of his neck, could practically hear the frantic beat of his heart as he tried to cover for his sister.

“I have to get to my locker, but are we on for after school today? I’ll work on the bike. You’ll make out with me from time to time,” he said and slipped his arms around her waist.

“I was disappointed when you told me your mom was taking you to school today. I would have liked to have had the ride in to be with you.”

“I don’t think Stephanie would have liked that,” she couldn’t help but add.

He held her gaze for a moment then added, “No. I would have stuck her grumpy ass in the back seat and pretended she wasn’t with us,” he said and grinned.

A look flashed across his face. Perhaps she had hurt him or perhaps he’d been surprised. Either way, the look was fleeting.

“I don’t think she’ll ever wake up early enough to drive me to school again. The only reason she did today is she probably thinks it’s my birthday or something.”

“No. My birthday passed a couple of months ago. I just don’t think she knows that,” Arianna laughed.

“Gotcha,” Luke replied. “All right, I’ll catch up with you later,” he said and pressed his lips to hers.

The feel of his lips and the clean minty, scent of him made her temporarily forget the bizarre state of her life. Her heart ached and the lump returned to her throat when he let go of her and moved down the hall, away from her. She watched him leave, and an instinctive presentiment pervaded her thoughts. In the darkest recesses of her mind, she knew she’d witness him leaving her again, but not for his locker or to go to class. He would be leaving her forever.

After a school day that had dragged at a pace so slow it had bordered on cruel, Arianna had spent the remainder of the afternoon in Luke’s garage. She’d watched admiringly as he’d labored and toiled with parts she couldn’t name, parts that belonged to her motorcycle, all the while, his hands had worked expertly, skillfully. He was undoubtedly talented at repairing anything with a motor. She’d been impressed with his level of expertise. Moreover, the confidence with which he’d moved had struck her. Until that point, she had only seen him as the person he was with her, and with his friends. He had been relaxed and funny, and quick to flash his warm smile. In his work space, however, he had been intense, focused. Neither his lips nor his eyes had smiled. He had hovered over her bike, his mouth pressed to a hard line, his brow furrowed, and had worked passionately while she’d sat and listened to music. Of course he had stopped occasionally, and had allowed the Luke she knew to return long enough for a kiss. But for the most part, he had concentrated on her bike.

She hadn’t been annoyed by his concentration on her bike rather than her. In fact, she had been thankful for his distraction. She had enjoyed watching him work inasmuch as she could, enjoyed the way the ropey muscles in his arms flexed and bulged, but did not feel like her normal self. She supposed she would never feel like her normal self ever again. Not with the changes that had occurred, and continued to occur. And certainly not now that she knew what she was. She was the Sola, whatever the hell that meant exactly. Her new title seemed to mean she’d be acquiring new powers at warp speed. The most recent had been her heightened hearing. She wondered what would come next. The ability to hear the slightest of sounds had made for an equally draining and revealing day. Mr. Davis and Mr. Smith’s conversation had been the tip of the iceberg. She had been involuntarily privy to enough gossip, information and meanness to last her a lifetime. The only power she could have imagined being more stressful and consuming would have been mindreading. And she prayed that would not come next.

Interspersed between the nasty and conspiring whisperings she’d been able to hear, the fragments of lectures she had been able to actually pay attention to and the general freaking out she had been doing about the chaotic condition of her life, she’d thought about Lily and Desmond. She’d thought about them in the quiet of Luke’s garage and thought about them still.

Home and alone in her cramped room, Arianna dug out her cellphone from her bag and decided to try Lily’s number again. She punched in the ten digits and waited. When she was met with the same set of nearly a half-dozen rings followed by a voicemail recording, she hung up, not bothering to leave yet another message. Frustrated, confused and exhausted, she sat on her lumpy bed that did not smell as bad as it had when she’d first sat on it, and allowed herself to fall back. She stared up at the yellowed water stains on the ceiling still clutching her phone. Her muscles yearned for rest, for revitalization. But questions swarmed in her mind and prevented her from relaxing long enough to drift off to sleep. The question of Lily’s whereabouts was chief among them. Ordinary people did not simply stop answering the phone call of friends; they did not disappear as Lily apparently had. Arianna and Lily had been close when she had lived in Rockdale. She had been drawn to the pale, fair-haired girl two years her junior, had felt protective of her even, though she, herself, had been the new girl. In the months after their initial meeting, she had become close to Lily. Lily had been the closet a person had ever been to holding the title of best friend in Arianna’s recent past. They had spent almost every day together, had confided in one another, and had gained each other’s trust. Now, Lily was gone. No fight or falling out had occurred and no indication of their friendship ending when Arianna had moved had been suggested. Arianna could not think of a logical reason why Lily would suddenly sever all contact with her; unless something else had happened, something far more nefarious. The fine hairs on the back of her neck rose at once as awareness slithered up the length of her spine with serpentine deliberateness. She became convinced that something had happened to Lily. She could feel it shiver through her. And with that shiver came panic.

A sense of dread forced her to her feet. Another matter pressed her, made the notion of sleep impossible. She wondered whether she was responsible in some way for Lily’s disappearance. The question burned inside her, seared her to her core. She needed answers. She needed to find out what was happening with Lily. She needed Desmond.

Unable to be still a second longer, Arianna grabbed her coat from her closet and slipped into her boots.

“I’m going out,” she called to her mother to be sure Cathy Rose was not the last to know about it.

Her mother did not reply and she assumed the woman was either too drunk to answer or did not care. Either way, she was not waiting around to find out. She dashed down the hallway and out the front door.

Outside, the temperature had fallen considerably. She pulled her coat closed and wrapped her arms around her waist. She looked left then right, undecided about where she should go exactly. She just knew she needed to move, to be away from her trailer. She wasn’t sure where she was going, but needed to find Desmond. If he had been with her for her entire life, he would not be hard to find. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath of the crisp night air. As she exhaled, she decided she would walk for a mile or so to an open field she’d passed on her way to school, before her motorcycle had been totaled, and summon him. She wasn’t sure how to do it, if there was some special witch way of doing it, but was confident she would figure it out. She had to figure it out. Lily’s life could depend on it.

With a plan in place, Arianna began moving. She walked out of the trailer development and on to the main road. Her feet crunched rhythmically on the gravelly shoulder of the street, the faint whoosh of the occasional passing car, a soothing sound. Dried leaves rustled and stirred and a faint but chill breeze blew. Overhead, the stars, abundant and gleaming against the blackened night sky, looked as though they quivered rather than remain fixed, shuddering with the same nervous energy Arianna possessed. She would get answers, answers she might not be ready to hear, but answers, nonetheless. She picked up her pace and walked more quickly, determined to get to the clearing as quickly as possible. Beyond the clearing was a wooded area. No houses skirted the clearing or the woods. As far as she knew, it existed as undeveloped land. She pictured it in her mind, willing her legs to move faster. She would go to the woods and call for Desmond.

After nearly twenty minutes of walking, Arianna’s lungs burned. Despite the burn, however, she wanted a cigarette. But she would not smoke before calling to Desmond. She crossed the clearing and stepped into the woods. Around her, barren trees reached skyward with skeletal branches, piercing the navy heavens with their blackened limbs. The crunch of fallen leaves gave her pause. She quickly scanned her surroundings, checking to see if anyone lingered near. She stilled herself and listened, every muscle frozen, for the sound of movement, human movement. When none was perceived and she was confident she was alone, she spoke Desmond’s name aloud.

A section of the air before her became visible, quivering and shimmering like heat radiating off pavement on a sweltering summer day. She instinctively stepped back, away from it, and waited. She knew she should have been afraid, that anyone else would have been afraid, but felt fearless, her need for answers superseding any fear. Light burst briefly from the shimmering air, creating a phenomenon similar to a camera flash. The flare had been unexpected, her eyes hadn’t been prepared for it, and she was blinded briefly. But when the dark shapes subsided from her field of vision, Desmond stood before her.

The sight of him stole her breath. She’d forgotten how tall and broad-shouldered he was, how strong he looked. How beautiful he was. His fair skin, golden hair and brilliant blue eyes shined against the moonless night and Arianna had to remind herself to breathe.

“Hello, Desmond,” she replied and her reason for calling to him came rushing back with her breath.

Rationally, she knew her changes had not been his fault, that whatever defective DNA she possessed, or birthright she was heir to, was responsible for it all, yet could not halt the accusatory tone in her voice.

“Well, you could start by answering one of the, I don’t know, thousands of questions I have for you,” she huffed.

“When you told me that the Carl thing was a catalyst to get me and my mom out of Rockdale because someone was getting close, who did you mean? Who was following me?”

“Who is Howard Kane? I’ve never heard that name in my life. Why would he be following me?”

“Because he wants you dead,” Desmond stated as matter-of-factly as he would have said it was nighttime.

“He knows the Sola is near, is drawn to her, to you, though he does not know your name or what you look like, and he will not stop until he finds you. He is the leader of an organization, a church filled with followers who hunt people like us.”

“Hunt people like us,” Arianna echoed his haunting words. “Like what, like we’re game or something?”

“Yes, just like big game. Only unlike Bengal tigers or a pride of African lions, we have supernatural powers.”

“He is a very skilled hunter. He and the hundreds of supporters he has get us by targeting the ones whose powers are not yet fully developed, or by surprising us.”

Us, she thought. Desmond used the word so casually to refer to her and the witches of the world, so nonchalantly. She still struggled with the fact that she was part of a supernatural order of beings. Not just one among them, she was their paranormal prophet, designated to unite them in their fight to exist.

“I don’t know how he is able to find us, but he does. He’s been waiting for your arrival. He’s been following you for months now.”

“So he was in Rockdale, this Howard Kane,” Arianna thought out loud. “And right behind me, on my trail. Lily was left behind.” Emotion collected in her throat and constricted it. She tried to swallow against it, to speak, but her words came out in a hoarse whisper, “Was Lily one of us? Did this Howard Kane, did he kill Lily?” she asked, afraid to hear Desmond’s answer.

“I don’t know,” Desmond replied. “I left with you, remember. My mission is to protect you.”

“So you let something happen to her,” she accused more than questioned. “You let them hurt my friend!” She lunged at him and pounded her fists against his hard chest. He did not flinch, just stood stoically, unmoving.

“How can you just stand there? Don’t you care that a sixteen year-old girl could be hurt, or dead?”

“I know! Because your goal is to protect me; I get it! But she’s innocent! She’s never hurt anyone,” Arianna said as tears welled then spilled down her cheeks.

“Good for you! Good for you that you’re sorry! ‘Cause I didn’t ask for any of this! I didn’t ask to be the Sola or whatever the hell you say I am. Life was hard enough before. Now I’m some fucking freak that’s supposed to save others like me when I can’t even save the only true friend I ever had!”

“No! Lily’s probably dead because of me! Just for knowing me!” she cried and took several steps backward, the need for distance between her and Desmond overwhelming.

“You don’t know that anything has happened to your friend, Arianna,” he tried to assure her.

“And neither do you,” she accused. “I thought you were some all-knowing warlock, but you can’t even tell me if one girl is okay!”

“First of all, I am not an all-knowing warlock,” he said shedding his calm tone of voice for a more commanding one. “I have powers that are limited and will someday pale in comparison to the ones you will possess when the transformation is complete. And second of all, I needed to get you out of that town before Howard discovered that you’re the Sola. I didn’t have time to check in on your friend, who, by the way, may very well be a witch herself given that you felt drawn to her and protective of her. Had you ever felt that way, an inexplicable pull toward another?” he asked.

She wanted to answer him, tell him that she felt a kinship with Lily unlike any she’d ever felt, that she felt like an older sister to Lily, but her mouth went dry, the lump in her throat burning, and all she could think to do was run, run as fast and far away as her legs would take her. And she did.

She turned from Desmond faster than she’d ever imagined she could possibly move and began to run. With her head down, she watched her feet take turns hitting the grass then the pavement. She knew she should have felt her shoes slapping against the ground, knew that her body should have labored at the exertion, but felt as though she were weightless, as though she were flying. In her mind, she swore she heard Desmond’s pleas for her to stay, heard them whisper through her as though they were her own thoughts but spoken in his voice. She tuned them out more readily than her own thoughts, though, and concentrated on the beat of her heart, felt its energy swell and flare through her veins. But she did not feel peace in the lulling rhythm her heart produced. Instead, every possible worst-case scenario began to play out in her mind’s eye. The phantom Howard Kane, his sick followers, all of them, faceless forms in her imagination, faceless, maleficent forms. They swirled and eddied about like spectral predators prowling for and preying on the naïve, on the innocent.

Anger surged inside her, propelled her forward, faster. Tears streamed from her eyes and blew back, dampening the sides of her hair. She balled her fists tightly as she pumped her arms in sync with her legs. So tight was her grip that her fingernails bit into the tender skin of her palms. But she did not care. Physical pain had become irrelevant. She knew what she had to do. For the first time in her life, she felt a sense of purpose. She would go back to Rockdale and she would look for Lily. If Lily were a witch, as Desmond had speculated, than she would have someone to entrust with her deepest, darkest secret, instead of a guardian hell-bent on shielding her at the expense of those she loved. Lily would have someone to unburden her secret with, too. And if she happened upon Howard Kane, she would deal with him, just as she’d dealt with the men in the alleyway behind the nightclub.

Howard Kane had awakened days earlier from a deep sleep. In his bed, he had stirred with a start only to find that the sun had just begun its ascent, an eager ball of fire surging from the horizon line. From the window beside his bed, he had seen pure gold illuminate the skyline, melding into shades of orange, intensifying as it swelled and blended rich pinks and purples before deepening to violet as it shepherded night to day. He’d sat upright immediately, rapt. But the glorious sunrise had not been responsible for his rapture. Something far more magnificent had happened. He’d heard the sweet sound of the Lord’s voice, crystal-clear, in his head. Warmth and light had abounded within him, a heavenly peace teeming inside his heart. Even now, if he concentrated, Howard could hear God’s message echoing in his thoughts, and feel complete tranquility. He’d been given another mission. His divine instructions had been explicit. Howard was to find a man that was on fire; God had told him to find the burning man.

In the many hours since he’d heard from the Lord, he had not slept, only rested intermittently. He had worked tirelessly on finding the burning man, on orchestrating his meeting with him. It had not taken long to find exactly whom the Lord had spoken of. In fact, he hadn’t needed the team he’d assembled to scour the Internet exclusively. A quick search of the local newspaper archives revealed exactly what he’d needed; what God had wanted. An article from the weekend edition of the Herald Falls Times indicated that two men, both hardened criminals whose releases from prison baffled Howard, had been attacked in a dark alleyway behind some hedonistic sinner’s club known as the Blue Ivy Nightclub. One had been burned to death and the other had been badly beaten and had almost died.

As he’d read the text on the screen of his laptop computer, he’d known it was the work of the Sola, had felt her evil deeds as they were occurring, and that now he’d found the burning man who would lead him to her. Of course, the burning man had died, but his friend had lived. His survival had been the Sola’s mistake. She had undoubtedly tortured both men for her own amusement, but failing to kill them both would lead to her demise. He would make sure of it.

Days of preparation had gone into executing Howard’s plan to make contact with the man who’d survived the Sola’s attack. The man, a Lester Vice, was recuperating at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Hospital. Fortunately, the hospital administrator, Graham Everett, was a weak man easily swayed by money. After being offered generous compensation, Graham had been more than willing to help facilitate his mission. Graham had agreed to influence scheduling decisions made by department heads so that a skeleton crew would be working on the floor the night Howard intended to visit. He’d also promised to equip Howard with a maintenance keycard that would permit him to gain access to the hospital through an employee service entrance. Disabling cameras and security guards had been left to Howard and his team.

With as many factors as he could control being manipulated, Howard arrived at Our Lady of Perpetual Help at one o’clock in the morning. Visiting hours had ended four hours earlier. The parking lots had emptied and only staff cars remained. The lot he sought was around the back of the building near a loading bay. He directed his black SUV in to a space designated for employees only and quickly scanned the surrounding area. No one lingered near the loading bay smoking or talking on their phone as he often saw them doing during daylight hours when he’d surveyed the area. Confident he was not being watched, Howard stepped from his vehicle into the chilly autumn night. A crisp breeze stirred the dried leaves that had fallen from trees that lined the property. He pulled the hood of his jacket over his head and tightened the drawstrings around it, but not to protect him from the wind. He did it, instead, to conceal his features, features one could easily remember and remark on.

His hooded coat that hid his face had been placed over of a navy jumpsuit identical to the ones worn by the custodial staff. The uniform had been a necessary guise crucial to him entering and moving through the building as inconspicuously as possible. Two of his men, dressed in similar garb, followed alongside him as he entered through the service entrance of the hospital. He swiped his keycard and the lock on the door disengaged promptly. Inside, he and his fellow Soldiers moved quickly down a long, narrow corridor, careful to keep their heads low and inaccessible to the prying eyes of security cameras, to an elevator bank. The area was deserted. No one milled about, yet they still shifted anxiously until a pair of doors opened. Jeb Atwood, the man to Howard’s right, immediately produced a can from one of his jacket pockets, aimed it at the camera lens in the elevator and depressed a valve that released a thin stream of black paint. Once the lens had been sufficiently blacked out, they rode to the fourth floor where Lester Vice, the criminal who’d seen the Sola, convalesced.

Before the elevator came to a stop at the fourth floor, a walkie-talkie at Howard’s hip crackled to life.

“The security guards that were posted by the southern elevator bank have been disposed of,” a deep voice said.

Howard depressed a button on the side of his device and spoke, “Excellent. We will be stepping off the elevator in approximately twenty seconds. I trust that the nurses have been busied elsewhere?”

“Yes,” the voice replied and Howard replaced his handset to his belt just as the elevator came to a halt. The doors opened and he and his men stepped out.

A team had arrived moments before them and had secured the area. Three nurses and two elderly security guards had been injected with hypodermic needles filled with Ativan, a high-potency, short-acting sedative drug Howard had obtained, which had been prefilled prior to the team’s arrival. After being drugged, the hospital staffers had been locked in a supply closet. The sparse number of guards and nurses had been courtesy of Graham Everett, as was the shortage of doctors on call that night. The last thing Howard wanted, the last thing anyone wanted, was for innocent people to be harmed in his process of collecting information from Lester Vice. With extraneous individuals out of the way, he could breathe easier, confident he would get exactly what he came for. Everything had been set into motion, his path made clear and uncluttered by God and His loyal servants.

Cameras had been identified and their lenses blackened in the area surrounding Lester’s room. Two men from the team that had tranquilized the nurses and guards had stayed behind and now stood sentinel outside the closed door to Lester’s room. As Howard approached, the men nodded deferentially to him.

“Good evening, gentlemen,” Howard said to them. “Thank you for this divine service you’ve provided. The Lord appreciates your work. I appreciate your work.”

He watched as the men beamed at his compliment, how their eyes glistened with reverence when they lifted their heads and looked upon him. He left Jeb Atwood in charge of the three men that now protected the room. To him he said, “No one is to enter this room without my command.”

Jeb nodded indicating his understanding and Howard slipped into Lester’s room.

The room was dimly lit by fluorescent fixtures that cast a sickly pallor on everyone, but Howard had to suppress a gasp when he saw the sad state of the man on the gurney in front of him. Neither the bruises that covered him nor the casts that covered one of his legs and arms had generated the near-gasp. His aura, stifling and laden with sins, mortal sins, hung around him, clinging like scum on a pond. He allowed his eyes to inspect Lester’s bare skin. Almost every inch of his exposed skin, his face, neck and arm straight down to his fingers, had been scribbled on. Tattoos of every shape and size, some blasphemous, some pornographic, covered his flesh. He’d defaced and mutilated the body God had given him. Had he not been in need of information from the wretch before him, he would have wrestled with the urge to strike him down and rid the world of such a vile stain. But he could not indulge in such assistance. He needed Lester, despicable as he was.

Howard moved to the foot of the bed and tapped Lester’s foot. Lester did not respond right away so Howard tapped harder. Lester’s eyelids fluttered before he opened his eyes. Howard stepped back, directly under the light fixture, and pulled his hood back from his head. When Lester’s eyes adjusted to the light, they opened wide in shock briefly before being replaced with an arrogant stare.

Something in the way the man narrowed his beady eyes made Howard bristle, blistering with rage. How a contemptible man like Lester possessed the audacity to regard a man like himself, a man of God, with such scorn, was beyond him.

Howard swallowed back the anger that arose within him and spoke. “I’m here to ask you some questions about the night you were attacked,” he said levelly.

Lester’s upper lip lifted into a snarl and he spat, “I didn’t tell the cops shit and you don’t look like no cop, so why would I tell your Freddy fuckin’ Krueger ass anything? Unless I’m dreaming, then I’m in deep shit,” he said and laughed a twisted laugh. The laughter caused him to grimace immediately, his face twisting in pain. Howard couldn’t help but allow a thin smile to touch his lips.

“Do you think mocking a man who has been near fatally injured and disfigured amusing?” Howard lectured in a booming voice.

Impervious to Howard’s scolding, Lester smirked and said, “I have a question.”

“Where’s your claws and red striped sweater?” Lester taunted then laughed before cringing in pain.

Tired of the man’s insolence, Howard approached the side of the bed and handcuffed Lester’s free hand to the bedrail. He did not concern himself with the other as it had been wrapped in a cast from shoulder to wrist. With both of Lester’s hands immobilized, Howard shoved a rag in his mouth so quickly the injured man did not have time to react. He then grabbed Lester’s arm, the one protected by a cast, and slammed it against the bedrail. Lester tried to howl out in pain, but the cloth in his mouth muffled the sound.

“Now,” Howard began. “I am going to remove the cloth from your mouth and you’re going to tell me what I want to know, or things are going to become very unpleasant for you.” Howard removed the rag, sure that his threat had been sufficient.

“Okay, I get that you’re a fucking nut job, really I do, but I’m still not tellin’ you shit.”

Howard, undaunted by Lester’s words, shoved the rag back into his mouth. He reached into his coat pocket and retrieved a scalpel. The blade was long and deadly sharp and gleamed when it caught the light of the overhead fixture, flashing just before he slashed at Lester’s stomach. In one quick motion, the instrument sliced through his gown and flesh. The cut made a wide wound just below his navel, wide and deep. But not so deep that it caused immediate death. Ruby-red blood spilled from the gash immediately and began collecting near his groin.

Lester’s eyes grew wide and his face contorted in anguish. He tried to scream, but the gag prevented the sound from leaving his throat.

“It seems as though you have a rather serious injury, Lester,” Howard said calmly.

Lester began to thrash wildly searching for the call button near his bed, desperate to alert a nurse or doctor. But twisting caused the blood to flow faster, soaking his gown from the waist down and falling to the mattress below.

“Oh, I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Howard warned and pointed to the expanding pool at Lester’s lap.

Lester could not respond, but the desperation in his eyes conveyed every sentiment he wished to convey.

“Such a pity, you with this gaping wound in a hospital full of doctors and nurses who could help. Of course, they’d need to get here in time to save you,” Howard paused and allowed for the gravity of his words to sink in. “And I could arrange for that, if you tell me what I need to know.”

The bleeding man nodded eagerly. Howard issued a final warning before removing the rag. “If you scream or disrespect me, you will die from that wound; make no mistake about it.”

Lester glanced at the lower portion of the mattress he rested upon, now saturated with his blood. His brows knitted together in worry and he bobbed his head up and down. Howard removed the cloth from his mouth.

“A teenage girl,” Lester said hurriedly. “My friend and I jumped her and her friend in the alley, just wanted to have some fun with them.”

“Whatever,” Lester dismissed. “Anyway, it never happened. One of the girls, she changed. One minute she was scared shitless, then she went dead calm. Next thing I know, I’m flying across the alley and getting slammed into a brick wall. After I hit the wall, a force pulled me away then slammed me into it again. That’s the last thing I remember. When I woke up, Rick was dead and I couldn’t move.”

The “force” that Lester had referred to confirmed that dark powers had been at work in the alleyway the night of the incident, powers darker than the ones that lurked inside of Lester.

“It wasn’t a date, man. I don’t know. Are you going to help me now? I told you all I know. I’m getting dizzy here.”

Lester’s words had confirmed what Howard had sensed all along. The Sola had been in the alley, had maimed one of the men and killed the other. And she remained nearby. He needed to find her and kill her before she got away, but not before resolving matters with Lester Vice.

He looked at the bleeding man and spoke. “You are a wicked and foolish man,” he charged. “In that alley, you actually attempted to rape a soldier of the devil.” Howard trained his gaze on Lester who looked unbothered by his words. “And no one is coming for you,” he said then shoved the rag back inside his mouth.

Lester’s eyes widened in horror for a second time, but a look of arrogance never replaced it as it had earlier. Howard stared long and hard at him, at the panicked look etching his features. He wondered how many times Lester had caused others to make the exact face he made now. A swell of satisfaction jolted through his core and he realized that his decision to purge the world of an awful man like Lester was the right one. God would have wanted it.

Howard Kane walked out of room four-hundred-twenty-eight on the fourth floor of Our Lady of Perpetual Help Hospital and ordered his men to block anyone from entering Lester Vice’s room for at least half an hour. Lester would bleed to death, a slow and painful death deserving of a being as despicable as he. But Howard did not feel remorse for his death. Instead, he took hope in the fact that he had done work God would approve of, that his Maker would have had him carry out the task eventually; he’d simply taken the initiative and done it sooner. He had rid the Earth of one more sinner.

Hours had passed since Arianna had called for Desmond in the woods, and in those hours her thoughts had continually returned to their discussion, to his words. He had attempted to explain away his disregard for Lily by saying his mission was to protect her, and only her, the Sola. That hadn’t been what she’d wanted to hear. She’d wanted to hear that her friend was okay, to have her worries allayed and questions answered. Yet, she had left their meeting with more questions than she’d arrived with, questions that nagged at her brain.

She needed answers. And if Desmond did not have them, she would find out for herself. After a night of restless sleep, she awoke and decided she would ask Luke for yet another favor. She would ask him to go with her to Rockdale, back to the town she’d fled with her mother less than a month ago. With all the help he’d given her already, she felt like an ingrate asking again. Of course, he had offered to repair her motorcycle, as well as taking her to school each morning until the work was finished. But she had accepted. Accepting help had been foreign to her then, was foreign to her still. Though she liked Luke and he seemed more than willing to help, motivated by his own unique set of reasons, she did not like feeling indebted to anyone. A thin smile touched her lips as she recalled Luke telling her he was helping in hopes of someday bedding her. He had been blunt, almost to the point of offense, yet completely charming all at once. Yes, she liked him. And he liked her.

After showering and dressing, Arianna waited outside her trailer. Before long, she heard the faint rumble of Luke’s pickup truck. Within seconds, it came into sight then wheezed to a stop in front of her porch. She noticed that Stephanie was not with him and breathed a sigh of relief.

“Sorry, Miss Personality will not be joining us today,” he said as he climbed out of the driver’s side. He walked around the front of the truck and opened the door for her.

“Not until I get what I’m after,” he said and patted her backside playfully.

“No need to worry about her,” he said picking up on her worry. “I’m sure that the stick up her butt bothers her some days.”

“Well, not so much for her, I’m guessing,” he said and quirked a dark brow at her.

“I think you did mean it,” he kidded. “I think you’ve been trying to get me alone for a while to, you know, have your way with me. You probably even planted a sick person’s snotty tissue in her purse, all part of your elaborate plot to claim my virtue.” He’d used a feminine, sugary Southern accent she didn’t know he could possibly produce with his deep voice as he’d said claim my virtue and she laughed out loud. She laughed so hard, tears sprung from her eyes.

She found a rumpled tissue in her purse and was about to blot her eyes with it when she paused. “Should I be worried about this tissue?” she asked him.

“With the rash of snotty tissue droppings, I just want to be sure I’m not a target,” she said and started laughing again.

“What?” he asked with mock indignation. “Are you suggesting it was me who planted the snot bomb? Little ole me?” he finished with his accent again.

Arianna laughed so hard her sides ached. She doubled over clutching her stomach and could not compose herself until they were nearing the driveway of Herald Falls High School. It had felt good to laugh, to truly let go, even if just for a few minutes. Luke had a knack for making her forget her problems, for making her laugh; for making her happy.

“Let’s take a road trip together, you and me. Let’s skip school for a day and go to Rockdale,” she heard herself say and couldn’t believe the words had actually fallen from her lips.

“Yeah, I heard you telling Mike and the gang when you first met them. Why not just call this Lily?”

“I’ve been trying since I got here. I can’t get in touch with her. I’ve tried her house phone, her cellphone, sent her text messages and emails, and haven’t heard a word from her.”

“Maybe she’s pissed at you, you know? Maybe she just doesn’t want to talk to you,” he said gently.

Arianna was quiet for a moment, thinking about what he’d said. The possibility existed that what he said was the case; that Lily was simply done with her, their friendship terminated. But something inside of Arianna, a feeling she could not explain, niggled. She had known Lily well, as well as she could in the nine months she had spent in Rockdale. Cutting off all contact so abruptly was not Lily’s style. She was not like that. She was not rude or cruel. In fact, there did not seem to be a mean or vindictive bone in her body, which is likely why Arianna had felt so protective of her, not the theory Desmond had suggested.

“I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings,” Luke said and broke her concentration. He reached a hand across the console and placed it on her hand tenderly. He had clearly misread her silence as sadness.

“You didn’t,” she replied. “I was just thinking about her. She wasn’t like that. She wasn’t the kind of person who would do that, I think. And if I’m wrong, I’m wrong. I’ve just been worried about her and wanted to see her with my own eyes. At this point, I’d be happy to get there and find out she’s blown me off. At least I’d know she was okay.”

Luke directed the truck down the drive of their school and searched for a parking spot. The lot was emptier than normal, their arrival earlier than most. Arianna was grateful for the extra time they would have now, without Stephanie, and hopefully on their trip to Rockdale.

“Motel room? Why didn’t you lead off with that?” he joked and was back on his game.

“We’d have to stay in a motel room,” she flirted. “We’d be leaving after school, today if you want, and we’d need to rest, naturally.”

“Why Luke, I do believe you’re blushing,” she said leaning across the console and touching the tip of her finger to his chin. “Aren’t you ready to be rewarded for all your wooing?”

She did not give him time to respond. And judging from the expression on his face, she doubted he had a response. She climbed out of his truck and slung her backpack over her shoulder, satisfied she’d intrigued him by turning his tactic on him. She had bluntly offered him exactly what he claimed he’d been wanting. Whether either of them would go through with it remained to be seen. She glanced over her shoulder at him and saw that he smiled his broad, mischievous smile at her from behind the windshield.

He rolled his window down and called back, “Just give me a second okay. I just need a second.”

She laughed and leaned against the passenger side door, waiting for whatever physiologic response he’d been beset by to pass.

After a few minutes had passed, Luke jumped out. “I’m in,” he announced. “Let’s take a road trip.”

“Yep. We can miss school tomorrow. There’s a stupid assembly that’s gonna eat up half the day anyway. Let’s do it.”

“We can meet here after school, go back to our houses and grab a few things then leave. Will your mom be okay with you and me going away overnight together?”

“You’re joking, right?” Arianna asked sarcastically. “I’m eighteen, and even if I wasn’t, my mom doesn’t say a word about where I go and who I go with. I’ve been coming and going as I please for as long as I can remember.”

“So it’s settled. I’ll see you here in a few hours,” she said and rose on to her tiptoes. She wrapped both arms around his neck tightly, her body pressing to his and kissed his lips.

“Oh, that’s just wrong!” he called after her. She turned to look at him and saw that he held his books low over his waist.

THE MORE THAN SIX HOURS of her school day had seemed like an interminable stretch of time. She’d glimpsed the clock on many occasions throughout the day certain hours had passed, only to find that mere minutes had passed. When the last bell of the day finally rang, Arianna felt as though she’d survived a marathon, tired and worn. But once she stepped outside and the cool fall air greeted her, she felt invigorated. As she approached Luke’s truck and saw that he waited for her, excitement stirred within her. Though she was going to Rockdale under troublesome circumstances, she was looking forward to taking a break from her new school, from the idea that she was the Sola, from her life, and hanging out with Luke. He was fun and funny and they got along well. She felt certain that the six hours they’d spend together in the car would be enjoyable ones.

“Let’s go to your house first and get what you need then we can head to my little circus tent so I can grab a few things.”

Luke opened the passenger side door for her then climbed in to the driver’s seat. His truck protested twice, sputtering and choking, before the engine turned over, roaring to life grumpily.

“That doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence with a six-hour drive ahead of us,” Luke commented.

They drove for less than ten minutes, chatting lightly about their respective days, until Arianna’s trailer park came into view. A depressing display of metal, synthetic turf and plastic ornaments intended for rolling green living lawns, it resembled a junkyard with paths carved through the mountains of debris. Tires of varying brands and sizes littered nearly every front porch, and clothing lines laden with atrociously patterned clothes spanned as far as the eye could see. To many who enjoyed a more lavish lifestyle than she, her community was the material of nightmares, offensive and tasteless. To her, it was home. After years of living in one trailer park or another, she’d grown tired of apologizing for where she lived and what she didn’t have. She’d made peace with the fact that belongings, were just, well, stuff. And stuff was not what made a person interesting or exciting or worthy of respect, character did.

Luke stopped in front of her trailer and turned the engine off. He reached a hand out and was about to pull the lever on his door when Arianna asked, “Oh, you’re coming in?”

“No, nothing like that. It’s just that this place is cramped and smelly. It belonged to my uncle and he was either a slob or had rented it to slobs.”

“Arianna, you saw my drugged out mother unconscious near a pool of her own vomit. Nothing in your house could be as bad as that,” he said sincerely.

“Fair enough,” she said then added, “But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

The walked together, up three worn wooden steps, to the front door. Arianna unlocked it and they stepped inside. The small living-room area was free of fat men sleeping on the couch and there were no fast-food boxes or bags cluttering the coffee table. That was always promising. They walked past the living room and a quick glance at the pea-colored vinyl flooring made Arianna suspicious. A strong lemon scent hung in the air and the floors looked freshly mopped suggesting that her mother had cleaned. And Cathy Rose cleaned for one reason and one reason only: for a man. A man was either coming over in the next few hours or had just left. Either way, a new man in her mother’s life did not bode well for them remaining in Herald Falls for long.

“This isn’t bad at all,” Luke said from behind her. “No drugs, no vomit. Already it’s an improvement from my place.”

She reached behind her and took his hand in hers, gave it a gentle squeeze before releasing it. They walked down the short, narrow hallway past the bathroom to her room. She emptied her backpack of books and began grabbing things she’d need. A change of clothes was chief among them, then underwear and something to sleep in.

“So this is your room,” Luke smirked and sat on the sleeping cushion that served as her bed.

“I know. It’s gross. Most nights I crash on the floor or the couch. That’s when I can sleep at all.”

She smiled sadly because he hadn’t the vaguest idea what she was talking about. He’d assumed she had referred to her life with her mother, about the hard times she’d had. But he’d been wrong. Of course, she did not blame him. How could he, or anyone else for that matter, guess that being a witch with untapped phenomenal powers could cause so many sleepless nights? Having a group of people hunting you with the intent to murder you didn’t make for a good night of sleep either. But Luke had no way of knowing those were problems that existed in the world, let alone in her daily life.

“Let me grab my toothbrush and some cash and we’ll get out of here,” she said.

In the bathroom, she lifted the lid of the toilet tank and reached her hand inside. Her fingers felt the cool, smooth surface of a plastic bag. She picked it up, but not before allowing as much water to drain from it as possible, and opened it. Inside was a roll of money, mostly twenty-dollar bills. She took three hundred dollars from the bag then returned her savings to the toilet tank. She washed her hands, grabbed a brush and her makeup bag and opened the bathroom door.

“I don’t know. Every time my sister packs, she takes forever. I thought all girls were like that.”

“Well, I’m not like other girls, and I’m not like your sister,” she said and winked at him.

“No, no you’re not,” he said seriously. “And I’m really glad you’re not.”

He moved toward her, slowly closing the distance between them. She stepped back instinctively and found her back flush against a wall. He placed both hands by her ears, trapping her between him and the wall. But she did not feel trapped. Her heart raced excitedly. He stared at her, allowed his gaze to drop to her mouth. She ran her tongue over her lips, readying them to be kissed, tempting him to kiss her. Luke dropped one of his hands and placed it on her hip. He pulled her close to him so that her chest pressed against him. She felt the planes of his body, warm and hard, touching the softness of her own. Kiss me already, her mind screamed. He slid his hand from her hip up the side of her body grazing the side of her breast and cupped her face in his hand tenderly. She felt his hot breath on her face and did not want to wait any longer. She tipped her chin up and kissed him.

She did not kiss him with the tenderness he’d touched her with. Instead, she kissed him with abandon, wrapping both arms around his neck then raking her fingers through his hair. He lowered his hand and grabbed her backside. She could feel his excitement through his jeans pressing against her belly. She writhed against it and heard him moan.

“Do I need to get a hose in here, or something?” she heard her mother’s voice say suddenly.

Luke let go of her embarrassedly. She saw ribbons of scarlet streak his cheeks as he hunched forward to hide his excitement.

“Hi Ms. Rose,” he said, his eyes darting anxiously. “Nice to see you again.”

“Ma’am. I like that. So respectful. Arianna, this one’s a keeper,” she said loving every moment of Arianna and Luke’s discomfort. Then she turned back to Luke and said, “Did I do that to you?” gesturing to the obvious bulge below his belt.

Her mother did not say another word. She disappeared in to the kitchen. The clanking of pots reminded them that she hadn’t left and intended to ruin any further romance they may have had in mind.

“You’re telling me,” Luke agreed. “I’m going to, uh, use the bathroom and um, splash some cold water on my face before we leave.”

“Well, well, well. It looks like you and loverboy were having quite a moment there,” her mother snickered.

“Please, mom,” Arianna cringed. “I’m going out tonight and I won’t be back until tomorrow night.”

“Oh really?” her mother asked. “Just use protection. You don’t want to end up knocked up like me.”

Arianna didn’t want to have this conversation again. “Whatever, I’ve been worried and I want to check on her,” she said curtly.

Arianna pulled a pad from the drawer below the telephone. She scribbled the school’s attendance office number on it and left if near the phone. “Thanks mom.”

“Don’t worry about it. She’s just worried about you. She loves you,” he said offhandedly.

She was sure her mother had meant well, but her tact and timing left much to be desired.

“Yeah, well, she has a funny way of showing it,” Arianna said and folded her arms across her chest.

“At least she’s, I don’t know, conscious,” he said and the sadness in his voice made her heart lurch.

“I guess,” she said and reached in her bag for her cigarettes. “Mind if I smoke?”

“If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you’re trying to get in my pants,” he said impishly.

He closed the door. “I don’t know, Arianna. I think you want me,” he teased.

They drove away from her trailer and out of her complex on to the main road. Faint rays of sun waged a fruitless war against leaden clouds that encroached, advancing like a fleet of warships. The wind had picked up and shook flame-colored leaves from treetops sending them cascading to the ground like burning embers. Arianna watched as they fell chaotically, heard the wind hiss through the dried leaves and branches like a thousand voices whispering at once. A strange sensation washed over her and made her skin crawl as though innumerable spiders raced across her bare flesh. Perhaps it was the just the eerie way the wind sounded or how the leaves fell like cinders to the earth, or perhaps it was something far more intrinsic that had unsettled her, but Arianna believed a warning had been issued; a warning that she may not return the same person she was leaving as.

After four hours of driving, Arianna finally convinced Luke to pull off the highway they’d traveled on and eat before searching for a motel to spend the night at. Sitting across from one another in a cozy booth at the Starlight Diner, Arianna devoured her cheeseburger as though it were the first meal she’d eaten in days. In reality, she’d had lunch eight hours ago and had not been in danger of starvation, but the smell of French fries and griddle cooked food had sent her hunger into overdrive.

“Wow,” Luke commented. “The girls I’ve dated just picked at their salad, never scarfed down a whole cheeseburger before I finished mine.”

Squirting ketchup on to her plate, Arianna paused and searched his eyes. As usual, his grey-blue irises shimmered with delight. He was teasing her, and she decided to tease him back.

“Feeling pretty satisfied right about now, Luke? Now that you’ve hurt my feelings,” Arianna said with feigned hurt. “Would you have preferred it if I’d ordered a salad? Or maybe if I didn’t eat at all?”

“No, no. Of course not,” he fumbled. “I love that you, that you’re not like other girls. I meant what I said as a compliment. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings,” he said and reached out for her hand.

“That’s just wrong,” he said good-naturedly. “Toying with my feelings like that, you’re bad.”

“What’s the matter, sport, you don’t like when people tease you back?” she said and narrowed her eyes mischievously.

“Well, I’m fresh out of snappy comebacks,” she said and started to laugh. Luke laughed, too. “And I’d like to get started on my fries.”

“Jeez, you have room left for fries? I’m not even done with my burger and I’m stuffed,” he offered a final zinger.

Arianna narrowed her eyes and pursed her lips at him a second time. But she was not mad. She imagined it would be impossible to stay mad at him on the off chance he’d ever said something hurtful. Even the thought of him saying something to make her angry seemed impossible. He laughed easily, at himself and others. She liked that he could deliver a sharp, perfectly timed remark. He had a knack for it. He was witty and she admired his wittiness. Perhaps someone with a more sensitive nature would have found his jokes critical, or mean spirited. But she was not among them. She was thicker skinned. Life had hardened her enough and made her realize that fretting over minor incidents and analyzing or agonizing over every conversation with friends and loved ones was a waste of time.

“I know. It’s hard to be around me and not get lost in a fantasy,” he started.

“I think we should stay at the motel across the street,” she said changing the subject. She pointed beyond the window they sat in front of to the Main Street Motor Inn. Few cars were parked in the lot beside it. “What do you think?” she asked him.

“Okay. It looks slow there, so we shouldn’t have trouble getting two rooms.”

Color touched Luke’s cheeks and he glanced at her quickly. “Oh, okay,” he said coolly. But Arianna lowered her gaze to his throat and saw the fitful drumming just below his jaw. His carotid artery gave him away. She swore she could hear the nervous beat of his heart. His body language suggested that spending the night with a girl was no big deal to him, commonplace even. But physiology never lied.

“All right then, it’s settled. We can get the check whenever you’re ready and head over there,” she said.

“What? No dessert?” he kidded, but his smile ended at his lips. His eyes had clouded over and become more serious.

As if she’d heard their desire for the check, the waitress appeared at their table.

“If you’re all set here, I’ll get you your check,” she asked pleasantly.

The waitress smiled and blushed, obviously thrilled that Luke had spoken to her. She returned moments later and left their bill on the edge of the table. Luke reached for it, but Arianna grabbed it before he could.

Arianna flipped over the piece of paper and saw that the waitress wrote her name at the bottom of the ticket with a heart beside it. She’d circled the Come Again Soon logo and had added an exclamation point to it. Arianna did not feel threatened by the waitress in the least, yet a possessive sense of annoyance prickled inside her. She’d never been a jealous girlfriend and wasn’t about to start being one now, but a burst of bitterness bubbled inside her. She looked over to where the waitress whispered with a coworker. She focused on them, concentrating. Suddenly, the world around her became quiet. Conversations, music, the whoosh of cars passing outside on Main Street fell silent. All she could hear was the sound of two voices.

“Yeah, you’re right. They might not be together. Besides, they look just wrong together. That girl looks like a real bitch,” their waitress concluded.

She did not argue as she would have under ordinary circumstances. She refused to give the girls at the counter the satisfaction of having more speculative garbage to mull over. Instead, she slipped her arm around Luke’s waist. He immediately reciprocated and pulled her close thereby ending any question the girls had about whether or not they were a couple. Luke paid the cashier much to her chagrin and they stepped outside. The temperature had fallen drastically. She wrapped her arms around her body clutching her midsection as an icy breezed gusted. Luke wrapped both arms around her and nuzzled her neck. She stood on her toes and hugged him back pausing only to smirk over his shoulder at the waitresses gawking at her with looks of disgust plastered on their faces. Another gust bit at them and they released each other in favor of running to the truck hand-in-hand.

“Listen, before we go to the motel, I want to stop at the gas station market first, okay?”

The gas station he referred to was two buildings away from where they had eaten. Luke dashed inside the market while Arianna opted for the warmth of the truck. He returned with a brown paper bag in his arms and settled it between them. She craned her neck to look inside and he quickly folded the top of the bag over.

They turned in to the Motel parking lot a few seconds later. Arianna had insisted on paying for the room and this time Luke didn’t argue. She left him in the car and procured their room for the night before returning to the truck with the key.

They quickly gathered their backpacks and Luke grabbed the bag from the market then walked up to the door with the number that matched their keychain.

“A key,” Arianna rolled her eyes. “How old school is that? I bet this place is a dump.”

But to her surprise, when they opened the door, the room was not a dump. It was neat and brightly decorated and smelled as though it had just been cleaned. Two queen-sized beds with a nightstand in between them occupied most of the space and a small table with two chairs was to their immediate left.

“I know. This room is nicer than my trailer,” she said and was only half joking.

Luke set the bag on the table and reached one of his hands inside of it. He pulled out a pack of cigarettes first. Then he reached in a second time and pulled out two decks of cards. One was a standard playing card set while the other was an Old Maid set.

“Old Maid!” Arianna squealed. “I haven’t played that game since I was a kid!”

“There’s more?” she asked. “What else could we need besides Old Maid and cigarettes?”

Arianna clapped and bounced on the balls of her feet. “Yay! This is the best trip ever,” she said and knew she both sounded and acted like a child. But she did not care.

Luke twisted off the cap of one of the beers and handed her the opened bottle. Then he opened one for himself. He raised the bottle and touched it against hers. “To our trip,” he said.

“Cheers,” she said then took a long drink. She picked up the bag and was about to place it on the floor when Luke said quickly, “I’ll get that.”

His voice had an edge of nervousness to it she’d never heard. He took it from her hands hurriedly but not before she spied a small box of condoms at the bottom. She contemplated ribbing him about his lofty expectations, but his nervous reaction had given her pause. She did not want to embarrass him; not about something so serious. Ignoring his purchase as well as his reaction she sat in one of the chairs and began opening the box of Old Maid cards.

After several hands of the game and two beers each, Luke yawned exaggeratedly. “I’m pretty beat,” he said. “I think I’ll shower and hit the sack. Which bed do you want?”

He slid her a glance she was certain she wasn’t meant to catch, one that suggested he was feeling her out, trying to see what the sleeping arrangement was going to be.

“Whichever one you want is fine with me,” she said refusing to take the bait.

He stood and took his backpack then disappeared into the bathroom. When he returned later, he wore nothing but a pair of jersey material athletic shorts and a towel around his neck. His shorts sat low on his hips and the waistband of his boxers peeked out. Arianna had never seen him without his shirt before. She’d felt how hard his chest was through his clothes, had imagined what it would look like bare, but enjoyed the appearance of it far more in reality. Trim and lean, the planes of his muscles were clearly defined. He lifted one arm and his bicep muscle flexed as he dried his hair. Tousled and still wet from his shower, his black hair looked boyish, charming.

“The pressure on that showerhead is phenomenal,” he said and walked past her. He sat on the bed closest to the table she sat at. He smelled of soap and warmth and toothpaste and she had to consciously resist the urge to throw her body atop his. “I may never want to leave this place.”

“Me neither,” she agreed. “Guess I’m up now.” She grabbed her bag and headed to the bathroom.

Luke had been right; the shower pressure was strong, a far cry from that of her trailer. After she’d washed and combed her hair and brushed her teeth, she looked at the clothes she’d hastily grabbed to sleep in. A tank top and yoga pants hardly seemed like seductive attire. She’d seen girls at school walk around wearing less clothing; clothing that had been far more enticing. Regardless, it was all she’d brought so she slipped the outfit on, not bothering to put a bra on. Hers was not from a fancy retailer and didn’t have all of the push-up features men liked. She opened the door and walked to the bed she supposed she’d sleep on, the one closest to the bathroom. She pulled down the duvet and the sheet and slipped beneath them.

“I’m tired, but I don’t need to go to sleep right this second or anything,” he said.

Luke walked over to her bed and sat. She pulled the coverings off her legs and sat on top of them before folding them like a pretzel. She looked at him for a moment. He looked incredible. His mussed hair was not spiked up as he normally wore it and was free of gel, and his tattoos were plainly visible. She reached out and touched the dragon on his forearm and watched as the hairs on his arm rose. “I like this one a lot,” she said tracing it. “Did it hurt?”

“It wasn’t too bad,” he said and she heard the slightest tremble in his voice.

She allowed her fingertips to glide gently up his arm to his shoulder. He closed his eyes, enjoying the sensation and her fingers skimmed the length of his neck up to the back of his hair before sliding back down his throat past his collarbone and down his chest. His eyes remained closed and she could see the fitful pounding in his neck again. She leaned in and grazed the throbbing pulse point with her lips. When she pulled back, he watched her, his silvery gaze attentive. He reached out and cupped her face with his hands then bent toward her. He kissed her tenderly. She tilted her head and welcomed the warmth of his lips against hers. His mouth was soft and his kiss was sweet. She felt the world fall silent save for the sound of her heart racing in her chest. His tongue traced her lower lip and the feeling sent a shiver through her, raising goose bumps on her skin. She ran her hand up his arm again, over his shoulder and twisted it in his hair. He drew in a breath through his nose and pulled her toward him. She obliged by climbing on to his lap, one leg on either side of his hips. His lips began crushing hers, his kiss deeper, more passionate. She could feel his excitement between her legs, rubbing pleasantly against her.

His mouth left hers and traveled down to her jaw first then her neck, leaving a trail of wet kisses in its wake. His hands slid up her back and brushed the sides of her breasts and every part of her ached for his touch. When his hand slipped under the narrow strap of her tank top, it was she who inhaled sharply, the anticipation of his move overwhelming. The band fell off her shoulder and exposed to top of her breast. He lowered his mouth to the soft mound and warmth pooled low in her belly, twisting longingly. His chin lowered the fabric of her top further, revealing more of her willing body. She arched her back toward him, welcoming him. Eager to explore her further, he took a hardened peak between his lips and ran his tongue over it, teasing and tantalizing the sensitive skin. Arianna moaned then pushed him back against the bed, unable to withstand the desire that burned inside her a moment longer. She slid his shorts from his hips and started to push his boxers down as well.

He sat up quickly, unexpectedly and pulled open the drawer of the nightstand. He grabbed a foil covered square.

“Please don’t talk about your mother now,” he said and climbed on top of her. “Are you sure you’re sure,” he asked again. “You really want to do this?”

His eyes roamed her nearly naked body. He kissed her neck and nibbled her ear. “You’re beautiful,” he whispered.

His hands slipped under the hem of her tank top and he lifted the material up over her head. His skin against hers felt blissfully warm. He stared at her exposed chest with appreciation and her nipples hardened with excitement. He lowered his mouth and kissed the valley between them before taking a firm tip into his mouth again. Rippling need wavered through her body. Her hands slid down to the waistband of his boxer shorts and she began pushing them down. His hands left her breasts and found their way down her waist. His fingers slipped underneath her underwear and began drawing them down. He slipped them off her hips and down her thighs then tossed them aside. Once they were off and resting on the nightstand, she parted her legs and felt him enter her.

Arianna clutched the duvet as he drew his body against hers. She wrapped her legs around his thighs and pushed against him, urging him. He moved slowly at first and she closed her eyes reveling in the feel of him. She focused on their bodies moving in sync as one. She glanced up at him briefly, and saw the intensity in the set of his jaw. One side of his mouth curved up, a half smile, and she closed her eyes again.

Behind her lids, however, an imaged flashed, an unwelcome image. Golden hair and fair skin, and the bluest eyes she’d ever seen. Desmond appeared in her mind. She tried desperately to block the image, intent on not ruining her intimate moment with Luke. But his image persisted. His likeness stood before her bare chested. His broad, muscled body highlighted by bright sunlight, golden light that matched his hair. Suddenly, she was with him, naked. They were both in a grassy clearing. He stared at her hungrily, unwaveringly, and a smiled did not touch his features. He looked upon her, his eyes smoldering pools of tropical water, with pure lust. With his rippling muscles tensed and the desirous look in his eyes, he looked like a warrior about to descend on an adversary, but none were present; only her. Luke’s ragged breathing in her ear warned that he was nearing climax. She wanted to join him, but couldn’t shake Desmond’s nude body from her mind. Perhaps subconsciously, she did not want to. She opened her eyes again for a split second and glimpsed Luke’s face, a mask of concentration before closing them again, and returning to Desmond. Only when she did, it was Desmond atop her, his face confident, his cerulean gaze trained on her. She imagined her hands tracing the swollen peaks and valleys of his powerful chest and shoulders and felt a tremor of pure bliss overtake her. The image of Desmond triggered small bursts of light behind her eyelids as her body contracted around Luke. A quiver of ecstasy caused her to cry out and within seconds, Luke panted in release then collapsed atop her. She could feel his arms trembling as he lifted himself up to kiss her.

“It was, wasn’t it,” she whispered back as a wave of guilt washed over her. She hadn’t planned to picture Desmond as they’d made love. He’d just appeared unexpectedly, uninvited. Yet, the thought of him, undressed, inside of her, had aroused her in a way she’d never experienced. But she had been with Luke, not Desmond. Another wave of guilt swelled, threatened to drown her as Luke lay next to her drifting off to sleep.

The light of the bathroom cast a soft glow on his face, caressing his features, softening them. With his hair in a state of disarray and his countenance completely relaxed, he looked much younger than he was, boyish really. Her heart clenched tightly. She felt as though she’d betrayed him.

Shame clawed at her as she slid beneath the covers beside him. She kissed his forehead lightly and saw his eyelashes flutter. He was asleep already. She rested on her side for several minutes watching him sleep, wondering if he dreamed. He looked peaceful, and vulnerable, and the squeezing in her heart intensified. Exhausted and with another two-hour drive ahead of her, she settled her head against the pillow and inched closer to Luke. Sleep found her immediately, and she floated off into oblivion.

The sun had not yet made its appearance when Arianna and Luke left the Main Street Motor Inn. Stars still ornamented the velvety abyss and the Moon had just begun its descent. They’d dressed and grabbed food from the takeout window of a fast-food restaurant before they’d resumed their drive to Rockdale. Luke had not mentioned their night together and Arianna wondered why. In fact, for the remaining two hours it had taken them to journey to the town she’d lived in just a few short weeks ago, Arianna had begun to fret about his silence on the subject. She had been reluctant to bring it up herself, especially since at the height of her arousal, Desmond had invaded her thoughts, and had become the subject of a sexual fantasy. Merely recalling the scenario, of her fantasizing about Desmond while making love to Luke, made her cheeks burn, guilt and discomfort conspiring against her. She was certain Luke had no way of knowing of her fantasy; he was not capable of mindreading. Yet, he’d acted as though he knew and had been oddly silent for much of the ride. He’d left the radio on, but it had not been playing so loudly that a conversation would have been impossible. She wondered whether he had been displeased with her sexual performance. He had seemed happy enough with it last night. But she didn’t know what he’d been accustomed to. Perhaps he was used to more adventurous interplay, or found her body unattractive.

Suddenly plagued with insecurities and doubts she was unacquainted with, she began to feel anxiety stir in the pit of her stomach. First, her little jealous schoolgirl episode at the diner had occurred, and now this. She was the Sola, possessed supernatural power and was designated to unite her fellow witches, yet was worrying over her boyfriend being quiet. It all seemed so absurd. Whatever his reason for silence, she was determined to not waste another moment fretting over it. They were headed to find Lily. Everything else would be addressed, or not, another time.

When finally they turned on to Lily’s street, the uncomfortable silence that had plagued Arianna for the two-hour drive had become unimportant. The white Victorian waited at the end of a long tree-lined street. A warning breathed at the back of her neck and tiptoed down the length of her spine. Lily’s house typically looked warm and inviting, but not today. Cloaked in thick fog, the steep roof pitches and pointed decorative gable trim assumed a hostile, foreboding quality. Mist veiled the entire neighborhood, covering it like a funeral shroud. It clung to the cedars that flanked the residential road causing their limbs to droop as if carrying the fog as they would the weight of wet snow. As they drew closer, Arianna immediately noticed that both of Lily’s parents’ cars were parked in the driveway. The digital clock on the radio read 7:45 a.m. Neither Lily nor her parents would have left for school yet. The presence of the cars should have been a promising development, but didn’t feel promising in the least. Something felt off.

“Looks like,” Arianna replied but couldn’t shake the feeling that something was not right. “But there are no lights on.”

“Maybe they’re sick, who knows? Either way, I think you have your answer,” he said more gently.

The answer he thought she had was that Lily was fine, but no longer interested in maintaining a friendship with Arianna. What he did not know was that would have been the preferred answer to what her body, what every cell within her, screamed. Inside of her, it was as though an alarm wire had been tripped and silent sirens were wailing.

“You can do whatever you want. I’m not telling you what to do. We can go up to her front door and ring the bell. You know I’m with you. I just don’t want to see you get your feelings hurt, that’s all. I care about you.”

She thought it ironic for him to worry about her feelings after hurting them with his reticence for the two hours it took them to get from the motel to Lily’s, the motel they’d shared a bed in.

“I appreciate your concern, but I’ll be fine,” she said a bit more testily than she’d have liked. “And I highly doubt Lily’s going to slam the door in my face or something if that’s what you were implying.”

“I wasn’t implying that at all. It’s like I just said, I don’t want to see you get hurt.”

“Huh,” she huffed then mumbled under her breath, “That’s why you were so chatty on the ride up.”

To her surprise, Luke had heard her mumbling and replied to it. “I wasn’t the only one quiet in the car, you know,” he shot back staring straight ahead. “First I felt stupid, thought maybe you’d had too much to drink last night and regretted sleeping with me. I was sober, and nervous as hell, but you, you’re a lightweight. The beer must have hit you like a ton of bricks. When you didn’t say anything about it, I figured I’d better keep my mouth shut.”

“I was sober and knew exactly what I was doing, thank you very much,” she argued. “And you’re my boyfriend, right? Keeping quiet was the worst thing you could do. I mean, with all the girls you’ve slept with, surely you know the silent treatment never goes over well.”

“What do you mean all the girls I’ve slept with? I haven’t slept with a lot of girls.”

“Oh give me a break,” Arianna huffed. “You expect me to believe that? You’re the badass guy that’s hot and knows how to fix shit. That’s the stuff of every girl’s fantasy.”

He turned in his seat to face her. “So, you may think you know what goes on there, but you don’t. Our school is divided into social classes. In the small group I’m in, yeah, I suppose I’m a stud. But beyond them, I’m a fucking leper. I smoke. I drink. I have tattoos. And it’s no secret my mom’s a goddamn junkie. None of that nominates me as prom king,” he said.

“Bullshit?” he asked incredulously. “Arianna, you’re the second girl I’ve ever slept with, okay,” he admitted, his cheeks suddenly streaked with scarlet bands. “And you’re the hottest girl I’ve ever seen. I have no idea why you even did it. Every guy at school wants you.” He refused to meet her gaze, chose instead to stare at his lap.

She was shocked. For all his flirtation and macho bravado, he had been unsure all along. The way he’d behaved, his hot and cold moods and his overt attempts at seduction, had seemed like things a hormonally charged playboy would have done. But he was not a playboy at all. He was vulnerable.

She reached out and took his hand in hers. “Hey,” she said and craned her neck to look into his eyes. “Hey, last night happened because I wanted it to, because we wanted it to. All that other stuff doesn’t matter. All the bullshit at school, all the bullshit in your head, it’s just that: bullshit.”

He didn’t reply, just smiled thinly and blew out a small puff of air through his nose. He looked sad, and his sadness made her chest ache. Without thinking, she yanked his hand toward her, pulling him to her side of the car, and kissed him. At first, he kept his lips closed. But she swept his lips with her tongue playfully then nibbled his lower lip. Finally he smiled then returned her kiss.

Their kiss continued for several seconds and was passionate. Luke had returned from whatever brooding doldrums he’d hidden in and she was sad when it ended. Now it was time to find out, once and for all, what had happened to Lily.

“My, my, Arianna, you have a knack for improving my mood,” he said and smiled warmly. “Are you ready to do this?” He nodded toward Lily’s house.

“As ready as I’ll ever be, I guess,” she said and felt anything but ready.

They climbed out of his pickup truck and out into the miasma. Somewhere beyond the clouds and fog, the sun waited, prepared to rid the area of the seemingly impenetrable murk that had besieged it. Luke took her hand in his and walked alongside her. She watched as the fog licked at his body like innumerable serpentine tongues, their silky, sinuous shapes passing over and under him menacingly. She willed the sun to burn through the clouds, to incinerate the spectral vapors, but as far as she knew, she did not possess the capability to raise the sun.

Arianna and Luke walked up the driveway and walkway and stopped on the large front porch. She rang the doorbell and waited for a response. After nearly a minute had passed, she rang again.

“Cool it with the doorbell,” Luke advised. “Give them a chance to get to the door.”

But she did not hear movement inside. The street was quiet, unnaturally so, and had someone been moving inside the house, she would have heard it thanks to her newly enhanced hearing. She stood perfectly still and focused on the area beyond the walls, listening for conversations, for water running, for movement, breathing, anything. But the house was completely still. She quickly stepped back from the door and scanned the porch, searching for a ceramic frog.

“A frog, I’m looking for a frog,” she said as she moved to the far corner of the porch. “This frog as a matter of fact,” she said as she lifted a weathered gray frog that rested against the front of the house between two gnomes. Beneath it was a key.

“Are you kidding me?” Luke asked. “People actually leave a key to their house on the front porch?”

“Well, maybe to us, but does this look like my neighborhood or yours for that matter?”

“No,” he replied and she watched as his eyes examined the stately houses and the luxury cars that sat in front of them. “I guess not. But still, thieves target neighborhoods like this. They prey on trusting fools like them.”

Arianna bristled at his implication that Lily and her family were fools. Regardless of his thoughts on the subject, suggesting they were anything less than the kind and decent people they were seemed harsh.

She didn’t say anything further. She knew he hadn’t meant for his comment to be offensive. Instead, she moved toward the door again and pushed the key into the lock.

“What’re you doing?” Luke panicked. “We can’t just barge into their house. They’re home! Their cars are here.”

Arianna spun around and trained her gaze on him. “If you’d like to wait in the car, be my guest. I’m not forcing you to come in. But my friend and her family could be hurt and I’m going in to find out.”

“I guess I’m coming too,” he huffed. “I can’t let you go by yourself.”

Arianna turned the handle of the front door and pushed it inward. “Lily? Mr. and Mrs. Andrews? Anybody home? Hello?” she called.

She began walking down the center hallway. The kitchen lay ahead while a formal dining room waited to the right. The house was completely quiet save for the ticking of a grandfather clock coming from the living room to the left and the faint whirring of the refrigerator.

“I don’t know, but this place, how quiet it is, is freaking me out. Let’s get out of here.”

“No!” Arianna said sharply. “Something doesn’t feel right. I’m going upstairs.”

She started to move away from him toward the staircase. He reached out and gripped her upper arm. “Wait. You’re right. Something does feel off here. All the more reason to, I don’t know, put in an anonymous call to the police department or the fire department.”

“I’m not waiting around for anyone,” she replied. “If they’re hurt, we may not have time to wait.”

She turned to leave again, but he spun her around. “And we’re going to do what exactly?” he asked, annoyance creeping into his tone.

“Exactly. And neither do I. So let’s just call the police. Do you have your phone?”

Luke patted his pants pockets searching for his phone. “Mine’s in the truck, too,” he said. “Let’s go get them, or better yet, call from there.”

She paused a moment and looked around, feeling the strange rise and fall of energy, slow and steady like the chest of a sleeping beast. “Fine,” she finally gave in. Or so she’d led Luke to believe.

She waited and watched as he turned to leave before she stole up the steep staircase. Luke was halfway to the door before he turned and realized she had tricked him.

He reached the top of the stairs just a few steps after her and must have taken them two at a time. He grabbed her arm again and turned her to face him. “That was not right,” he said, his eyes hardened. “We don’t know what is going on here and you pull shit like that?”

She stood on her tiptoes and pressed her lips to his. “Oh don’t be mad,” she attempted. “We’ll just do a quick check then get out of here. We will call the cops as soon as we get to the truck.”

Luke narrowed his eyes at her as if assessing whether or not she was telling the truth. When he felt satisfied she was telling the truth several seconds later, he released her from his gaze and smiled. “Okay, okay” he agreed.

“Whoa! This room is like, I don’t know, a dream or something,” he observed. And he was right. Arianna had always loved Lily’s room. The striking midnight blue walls with Sun and Moon ceramic wall hangings and floor-length gray drapes with matching gray bedding, though dramatic and unusual, were whimsical. Shimmering stars in silver and gold tones of metal hung from beaded strands from the ceiling just over Lily’s bed.

The room looked neat, far neater than Lily had ever kept it. Every knickknack was in place and looked freshly dusted and polished. The bed was made so meticulously it looked as though a hotel chambermaid had done it. Lily had never liked to make her bed, had usually left it unmade, in fact. The sudden change set off warning bells inside Arianna. Ignoring the bed for the moment, she crossed the room and walked toward the window. For reasons she could not explain, she felt drawn to it. She pushed the curtain aside and peeked out. As she did so, an image jolted her. She felt suddenly terrified and began to tremble. The fog outside wavered briefly before it was replaced by bright light, blindingly bright light. Her breathing came in shallow pants and she felt the urge to run, to search for Mr. and Mrs. Andrews.

“Arianna!” he called, alarmed. But she did not stop. She went straight to Lily’s parent’s bedroom.

The room was empty, just as Lily’s had been and possessed the same sterile quality; it was neat, too neat, and smelled of cleaning product. She stopped at the foot of their bed and her heart pounded frantically. A vision flashed in her mind’s eye, a vision of Lily’s parent’s lying in a pool of blood where she stood. She stifled the scream that begged to escape her throat and walked on unsteady legs to the window. The backyard beyond it, though enveloped in fog, looked different. She could plainly see a patch of grass on the otherwise scrupulously maintained lawn had been burned, its shape a near-perfect circle.

He moved his head closer to the pane of glass and strained his eyes against the mist beyond it. “Holy shit,” he murmured. “What the hell? Why would anybody do that?”

“I don’t know,” she said. But an instinctive awareness drifted across her skin like a sigh of warm breath.

She took Luke’s hand in hers and pulled him out of the room toward the top of the staircase. She ran down the stairs and turned down the center hallway once she reached the bottom. She ran straight through the kitchen and opened the sliding glass door that led from it to the backyard. She stepped outside and walked until she stood upon the burnt grass.

Standing near the center of the scorched patch of grass, Arianna was hit with a surge of energy unlike any she’d ever felt. A dark, sinister force crashed against her. It felt like a million needles piercing her skin at once. She felt pain immediately, pain and heat. Burning heat started low and rolled up her body with a flash of intensity, singeing her cells. She felt her feet burning, felt flames licking at them, writhing and blistering up her ankles and calves. She cried out, heard the sound tear from her throat, but was powerless to stop it. She no longer felt in control of her body. She knew that Luke waited somewhere along the edge of the charred circle of grass, knew that he’d heard her scream, but he began to fade. The world around her began to fade. Blackness taunted the edges of her vision and the low clouds that occupied the early morning sky began to spin round and round, threatening to send her off balance. Her legs buckled beneath her. She dropped to the hard, unforgiving earth on her knees and for a moment, the world fell completely silent. She no longer heard anything but the surge of her own blood through her veins. An acrid stench began to fill her nostrils, smoke and sulfur mixed with something else, something like hair and oil burning. The smell tore the air from her lungs and made it difficult for her to breathe. She gasped for breath, yet every attempt she made was strangled by air so heavy, so blackened and foul she could not seem to fill her lungs. She struggled against the blackness that beckoned her, and felt rage fill her. Her entire body began to tremble. Sweat trailed down her form, hot and cold contending. She squeezed her eyes shut, tried to force back the scorching heat that had reached her thighs. When she lifted her lashes, a face appeared before her eyes.

The face was monstrous. Charred and puckered, his complexion was a patchwork of pitted skin in varying shades of brown, gray, pink and red. His mouth snarled and he glowered at her with sunken, slate-colored eyes devoid of eyelashes and eyebrows. He spoke to her, words that were muddled and indistinct. She strained to hear them, but could not concentrate, for something else was happening. His dark energy shot through her body, clawed its way through her muscles and bones. She did not know who he was or where he’d come from, but she knew what he wanted; he wanted her dead. His hatred of her was palpable, throbbing and pounding like a heartbeat. She blinked and fortified her resolve, pushed back against his encroachment. A tingling sensation of success raced through her. She clung to it like a lifeline and pushed harder until his putrid face vanished altogether.

She heard Luke’s voice, felt his touch jerk her back to reality. “Arianna!” he shouted.

“They killed her, Luke,” she heard herself say before sobs overtook her. “They burned her to death right here!”

“What?” he asked bewilderedly. “Who burned her to death? H-how could you possibly know that?”

Even in the gray light of the overcast morning, she could see the confusion etched on his face, the worry in his eyes.

“I saw it happen just now. I felt her pain. And I’m sure they’re coming for me next.”

Howard Kane sat before his massive cherry wood desk in the office of the Soldiers of the Divine Trinity Church and heard a distinct ringing sound coming from one of its drawers. Surprised, he immediately reached for the drawer’s knob and pulled it toward him. The ringing was coming from a cellphone, and not just any cellphone, but a phone he had purchased and reserved exclusively for emergencies. What he and his congregants categorized as emergencies generally dealt with their dogged pursuit of evil in every form, and more specifically, witches. He watched for a split-second as the small black phone vibrated and moved itself less than an inch in one direction then stopped. He scooped it up and depressed the “send” button and answered.

“Sir, it is John. I’m here at the Andrews house, and was told to alert you of any unusual activity,” the voice on the other end said.

“Go on,” Howard urged. “You’re calling me on an emergency line, so clearly there is an emergency.”

“Yes sir. Sorry,” John began. “I can’t be sure, sir, but I think the Sola is here.”

The phone nearly slipped from Howard’s grip, shock weakening it. John Cartwright had been stationed at the Andrews house for the last two weeks, but just as a precaution. On the off chance that a vile cohort of Lily’s visited, he had wanted the area secured and with someone in place capable of handling such a being. Never in his wildest dreams had he imagined that the Sola herself would arrive. Yet, according to John, she had.

Howard inhaled a trembling breath, anticipation squeezing his lungs. “What makes you think that the Sola is at the Andrews house?”

“Well, we were here, and the doorbell started ringing. It rang several times and we assumed it was family or friends stopping by.”

“This person, a girl, she was able to enter the house. She opened the front door and walked in as easy as you please and began calling out to Lily and her parents. She announced herself as though she knew them. She said her name’s Arianna Rose.”

The name jarred Howard, a jolt of inexplicable recognition registering in his brain. His pulse rate sped, racing dangerously, excitedly.

“Then what happened?” Howard asked John careful to conceal his eagerness and keep his voice level.

“We had been hiding in a hall closet upstairs and came out when she and her friend went outside. She stood at the center of the patch of grass, where we burned the witch, Lily. She stood there for a long time then collapsed. While she was on her knees, she screamed out, the sound of a demon if you ask me. When her friend grabbed her, she told him she had seen her friend burn. She said she knew what had happened.”

“It’s her,” Howard hissed, awareness tingling through his veins like lifeblood. His leathered skin tightened near the spot where his scalp used to be and he felt the few fine hairs of his body that had remained raise and quiver. The Sola was in his crosshairs. He would finally have her and the world would be rid of her depraved presence. “Who is she with?” he asked.

“Excellent. Please get me the license plate number of that truck, John. I want to find out as much as I can about her friend.”

“Kyle is getting that for you as we speak,” John said. There was a pause in their conversation and the sound of paper rustling crackled over the line. When John’s voice returned, he shared the information his partner had obtained. “Okay, the plates are from New York and the numbers are K4E695. Did you get all that?”

“Yes, yes. I got it,” Howard replied as he scribbled the numbers down on a sheet of paper.

“What would you like us to do, wait for you and the others to arrive?” John asked.

Silence befell the other end of Howard’s conversation and was interrupted only by the sound of John’s ragged breathing.

Howard ended their call knowing that John and his partner, Kyle would likely fail. The Sola would not be taken easily. But they would have to try. They were bound by oath to do so. It was what God wanted them to do. And their sacrifice would not be in vain should they fall to her malevolent powers. They had identified the Sola, unearthed her human name: Arianna Rose.

Arianna Rose. The words blew through him like an icy wind and left him breathless.

He clutched his arms across his body, bracing himself against the chill of her soulless existence. But his arms provided little comfort. The only comfort he would feel would be when she had been burned at the stake like her ancestors before her. He would formulate a plan. Should his soldiers fail, as he felt certain they would, he, with the Lord’s guidance, would bring down the Sola.

Arianna remained at the center of the charred circle of grass, sweat covering her from head to toe and breathing unevenly. To Luke, she imagined she looked like a lunatic. After all, she’d just told him she’d seen what had happened to Lily; that she had felt what Lily had felt and that people were coming for her, too. She sounded like a delusional, paranoid maniac, but had blurted the words out suddenly. She hadn’t bothered to filter what she’d said.

“What?” Luke asked Arianna incredulously. “You can’t possibly know that. I mean, you can have a feeling, like a gut feeling or something, but you can’t know for sure.”

Luke was looking at her as if she were insane and she couldn’t help but feel resentment creep into the panic-stricken state she was in. She understood how he most likely felt, seeing her wild-eyed, hearing her scream as she’d experienced the burning heat of flames licking at her body, the same flames that had claimed Lily. He hadn’t seen what she’d seen. He hadn’t felt what she’d felt. He had no idea what she was.

He approached her slowly, timidly, with his palms facing her at chest height. In a soothing voice he said, “Everything is all right, Arianna. I’m not sure what you think you saw, but you’ve had a lot of stress lately: new school, new trailer, the attack at the club and worrying about your friend. It’s been hard for you, hasn’t it?” He didn’t wait for her to answer. Instead, he continued. “I think it’s best if we get out of here.”

“I saw it happen! I felt it! It happened!” she screamed. “Why don’t you believe me?”

She knew she could not reveal herself to him, could not tell him she was a witch, and not just any witch, but the Sola. He was already treating her like a mental patient. Her screaming at him, pleading with him to believe her, would not help her cause. The rational part of her knew he was reacting the way any normal person would, that he thought she was having some sort of breakdown. But she had seen everything, had experienced it as though it had been happening to her.

“What? C’mon Arianna, it doesn’t make sense,” he started to argue, but was silenced when something whizzed past his ear and shattered the window of the detached garage to their left.

“What the hell?” he said and immediately ducked with his hands over his head.

More shots followed, their distinct popping sound pierced the quiet of the morning and echoed as they hit the garage. Arianna had known they were the intended target, had sensed it before it had started.

Crouched low, she grabbed Luke’s hand and pulled him toward the garage. Taking cover behind the garage was not the best option, but she figured at the very least, they were safer there than standing out in the open in the middle of the backyard.

With the small structure between them and whoever hunted them, Arianna paused to catch her breath. “What the fuck?” Luke wheezed. “What the hell is happening? Why would anybody be shooting at us?” His skin had paled to the color of his white shirt and his chest rose and fell quickly as he struggled to catch his breath.

“We need to get out of here,” he said and held her gaze. “You run. I’ll distract them,” he surprised her by saying.

Her feet moved beneath her, though she had not willed them to do so. She ducked and stayed close to the siding of the garage. But rather than running toward the woods or making a dash for the front of the house where she would be visible to neighbors and passersby, she darted to the front of the garage, determined to catch a glimpse of the shooter. She was the one being hunted. She was the one they wanted dead. The phantom “they” that pursued her knew who she was, but existed as a nameless, faceless entity. Howard Kane was the single name she’d heard. But she needed more. She needed faces. She inched around a drainage pipe and peeked around the side of the garage. Her head pounded and kept time with her thundering heartbeat. Luke had announced their exact whereabouts, but no one had approached, yet.

Arianna’s insides began to quiver and she focused on the man, or men, who had shot at her and Luke. In an instant, the world around her began to fade. The sound of chirping birds hushed. The buzz of crickets and katydids silenced. All she could hear was the decelerating beat of her heart, and that began to fade as well. She immediately recognized that her senses had heightened. Earlier, she had struggled to see through the dense fog that clung to every surface around her. Now, however, she could see clearly as if her surroundings had been scrubbed clean of the mist and haze. She could plainly see a man inching cautiously toward the garage gripping his pistol expertly. Clearly, he believed himself to be cloaked by the milky miasma for he sought no other form of concealment. He had been wrong. He had underestimated her powers.

She was about to step from the inadequate protection of the garage when the faint scent of sweat caught her attention. Bitter and pungent, an acrid odor assaulted her nasal passages and was followed by the sound of walking. Blades of grass crashed noisily against one another under heavy footing that approached from behind her. She spun around to greet the person who intended to surprise her.

A dark hulking figure stood before her and clutched a gun between his hands. The gun was aimed at her chest.

“It’s you,” he spat with disgust. “The Sola. I’m going to be the man who kills the Sola.”

“No, please,” she begged him not to kill her. His obvious but baseless disdain for her was palpable. He wanted her dead, intended to kill her where she stood. She froze temporarily, her arms reduced to useless, leaden appendages at her sides, unable to summon powers she knew she possessed.

“Die witch!” he screamed. But as he squeezed the trigger, a sickening thud echoed through the air, and a stunned looked screwed up his features. The shots he’d fired zipped past her and missed her completely. The man dropped his pistol and fell forward to the ground, a pickax lodged in the back of his skull. Behind him, Luke stood with a look of utter horror on his face.

“H-he, he was going to kill you,” Luke stammered, his bottom lip quivering. He ambled toward the man’s fallen body; his eyes pinned on the pickax. “What have I done?” he asked and began to breathe unusually rapidly.

Arianna paused for a moment, her mind struggling to process what had just happened. A man she’d never seen before had attempted to kill her, had revealed her to be a witch, but her boyfriend had killed him first. Her visions, her newfound powers, her title, the fact that she was being hunted, all of it closed in on her. Death surrounded her at every turn, and all were deaths that she was responsible for in some way, shape or form. She wanted to drop to the ground, squeeze her eyes shut and cover her ears with her hands and will all of it away. But Arianna knew that was not an option. She needed to stay in control of herself. She needed to protect Luke and survive. She needed to find the other gunman.

Refusing to succumb to the hysteria that hounded her, she closed the distance between her and Luke and gripped both of his arms. His skin felt cool and clammy and his eyes refused to focus on her. “You had no choice but to kill him, Luke. You saved my life,” she told him.

“I-I didn’t need to kill him, though,” Luke replied dazedly. “I killed him. He was alive just a second ago and now he’s dead...because of me!” He pulled away from her and raked both hands through his hair before covering his face with his hands and squatting near the dead man’s feet. “Oh my God!” he cried.

She knelt beside him, all too aware of the fact that the other shooter remained, lurking in the early morning shadows. “Luke, look at me,” she said and cupped the sides of his face. “You had no choice,” she repeated firmly. “He was going to kill me, kill us.”

As the words fell from her lips, a man emerged from the mistiness. Both of them spun to find the muzzled of a gun pointed at them.

Arianna saw the instantaneous flash of the shots being fired and screamed, “No!”

A bolt of energy rushed through her body to her fingertips and branched like electricity. She felt the heated streak flare from her fingertips and leave her body in a burst of blue light like lightning and lurch outward toward the man. His bullets halted and fell to the dew-covered ground and the man pitched backward, stunned. His gun fell as well. The man did not venture toward her. He remained where he was, immobilized, his face a mask of shock.

Arianna entire body trembled, humming and buzzing with energy she could barely harness. “Why are you trying to kill us?” she demanded of him, her voice shrill and frantic.

“I’m trying to kill you,” the man said and pointed a meaty finger at her. “Not him.”

“What? Why?” she asked, but in the dark recesses of her mind, she knew why he wanted to kill her.

“You are a soldier of evil,” he spat. “Killing you is the Lord’s work. I am doing the Lord’s work.”

Arianna took a step toward the man, wanted to look upon his face for a feature or characteristic familiar to her. He wore glasses; that much she could see. But perhaps he had a birthmark or freckle, something that would set him apart from others. As she approached, however, his face faded temporarily, replaced instead with the orange-red glow of flames. Heat swathed her once again and flames crept up her body. Her arms and legs were bound and she suffered. But through the thick smoke that billowed all around her, a face appeared, and it did not belong to man with the charred and scarred flesh. This man’s head was cloaked in a heavy, dark fabric that edged his pasty skin. Beady, black irises gaped at her from behind wire-rimmed glasses. The flames snaked up her body and began to melt away her skin. She wanted to cry out, desperately needed to, but under the watchful, maleficent gaze of the beady eyed man, she could not. When finally, the flames engulfed her fully and she felt life begin to escape her, she saw that the man smiled, a satisfied, self-righteous smile.

Blackness teased at the edges of Arianna’s vision as she relived her friend’s final moments.

“You were there when she was murdered,” she said through her teeth recognizing the beady bespectacled gaze of the man before her. “You watched her die. You watched a sixteen year-old girl burn to death, and you enjoyed it!” she hissed and felt ire roil and swell inside of her.

His words set off a firestorm of reactions within her. Every cell in her body began to teem with anger, anger unlike she’d ever felt before. It rose like molten lava, pressing and surging, brimming so closely to the surface of her flesh, her skin felt heated. She struggled to suppress the urge that raged inside of her, the powerful need to punish the man who’d tortured and murdered her friend.

“She was the devil’s minion!” he offered a final charge. And with his words, she erupted.

“She was my friend!” Arianna screamed in a voice that sounded foreign to her own ears.

“Arianna, no!” she heard Luke cry out from a distant remote place. His voice called to her, weak and muddled as if she were submerged in a vast ocean and he ashore. She was gone. Her vision was awash in crimson, her body adrift on a blood-red tide. She felt her arms shoot out in front of her and she watched through a scarlet veil as the man who’d brutalized her friend levitated several inches off the ground. He shrieked in terror, seemed to sense his fate, but she did not care. She felt a charge rush through her arms to her fingertips before leaving her body, then saw the man’s head and neck twist sharply, violently, to one side. She heard a sickly snap and witnessed his head flop and loll to his chest. His lifeless body dropped to the grass, motionless. Arianna dropped her hands to her sides and felt drained. Color slowly returned to the world around her, driving out the crimson. A voice called to her, a panicked voice; Luke’s voice.

“H-h-he killed her. I saw him, he enjoyed it,” she replied in a trembling voice.

Luke took a tentative step back, away from her, away from the two dead bodies that littered the backyard of the Andrews house.

“I don’t understand,” he said in horror. “I just don’t understand what happened here. It just, it’s just, all so unbelievable.” He raked his hands through his hair and rested them at the nape of his neck. “Y-y-you killed him, without even touching him. What the fuck are you?”

His words stung. She had not intended to tell him of her powers, much less example them for him, but had used them twice in his presence, nevertheless. The first time had been to rescue his sister, and herself, from a brutal attack, and this time, she’d had avenged her friend’s murder and had prevented them from being exterminated in the process. Of course, he had no knowledge of the truth of what had happened at the nightclub with Stephanie. But he had witnessed everything that had occurred moments earlier. Arianna swallowed hard against the lump that had formed in her throat. Her heart clenched and felt unnaturally heavy in her chest. He saw her for what she was: a monster.

Luke looked at her and held her gaze for the briefest of seconds. Usually, his eyes nearly sparkled, their silvery hue shimmering and dancing with delight, with warmth. But when he looked upon her now, his eyes had hardened, their silvery shade replaced with steel, cold and mirthless. In the fleeting second that he looked at her, Arianna knew that nothing between them would ever be the same again.

Tears burned her eyes, and the lump in her throat grew so large she worried words would not escape her lips.

“We have to leave now, Luke,” Arianna managed, her voice a hoarse whisper. “We have to get out of here.”

He nodded mechanically and his eyes refused to meet hers again. She turned and walked toward the front of the house, toward Luke’s pickup truck. The only way she knew he followed, was the soft shuffle of his feet echoing behind her.

For more than five hours, Arianna had ridden alongside Luke, and he had not spoken a single word to her. They had not stopped to eat at a diner and they had not shared a motel bed together. Instead, they’d traveled in silence without even stopping to visit the drive-thru window of a fast-food restaurant. When finally they’d reached her trailer park, Luke returned her just beyond her doorstep, hungry and enervated, and had refused to meet her eyes with his. Their silence was not for lack of subjects to discuss. They’d experienced a traumatic incident, had committed murders. He’d seen her powers displayed in a most violent manner. And unlike their uncommunicative trip after their night together in the motel, she was certain Luke’s reticence had nothing to do with sex or insecurities; it ran far deeper than that.

Once she was inside her trailer, she dashed past the living-room area, thankful that her mother wasn’t home to ask frivolous questions about her trip. She had not cried yet, but knew that one look at her mother, one attempt at speaking to her, would have granted her some sort of unspoken mother-daughter permission to cry. She did not cry often, and feared that if she started, a great floodgate within her would break and she would not soon stop. Yet, it seemed unavoidable.

Stopping at the bathroom to splash cool water on her face, she felt her throat constrict, felt a lump swell in her throat. She swallowed hard against it, an act she was all too familiar with, and choked back the tears that threatened. The events of the last few weeks, all the death and destruction that surrounded her, all of it fell upon her with crushing heaviness. She felt her chest rise and fall against the seemingly insurmountable weight of it and clutched her head with both hands. She was responsible for all of it, she was the source. Her friend had died because of her. The man in the alley, though he had attacked her and Stephanie, had died at her hands. And now, two more men could be added as casualties. Of course, they had been shooting at her and Luke and would not have mourned her death, but celebrated it. Nevertheless, she was not comfortable with killing. She was not experienced at it as they were. They had burned Lily to death. No matter how enraged she’d been at them, how angry she remained, and no matter how much she tried to justify their deaths, it all came back to her. The men would have never been hunting Lily had she never been friends with her in the first place. She was the Sola. She was the one issued a death warrant by Howard Kane and his people. She wondered how many others had lost their lives in his quest to slay her.

The thought of more acquaintances, more innocent people whose only crime had been associating with her, losing their lives, sent a shiver of revulsion through her body. Bile rose in the back of her throat and she dropped to her knees before the toilet as sickness threatened. When several moments had passed and she was confident the need to vomit had passed, she stood and stripped her clothes off, the need to shower overwhelming. She turned the water on and stepped behind the shower curtain. Standing beneath the spray, she was reminded of Luke’s comment about their motel shower’s water pressure, how it had been better than the one at his house. She had agreed, and he had been right, the motel shower had been better than his and hers, as well. Everything had been better at the motel.

With a meager mist of water cascading down her body, a chill settled over her, and the heaviness in her chest was immediately replaced with emptiness. She reached out and turned the temperature control knob to the left, making the water hotter, in an attempt to rid her body of the chill that felt as though it had seeped into her very core. But even as the water flowed over her, it did little to warm her.

She wrapped her arms around her waist not only to warm herself, but to physically hold herself together. She leaned her forehead against the cool vinyl of the shower inlay and replayed the entire drive in her head. Her memory revealed the scene at Lily’s house as it had unfolded. Luke’s face looped in her mind again and again like a film reel, the look of shock and horror after he’d wielded the pickax, his look of repulsion when she had not been merciful with the man who’d intended to murder her, who had murdered Lily, and had chosen instead to use her powers in front of him. She rubbed at her eyes, tried to rid her mind of Luke’s look of disgust at her. All the while, tears began to mingle with the water that fell down her face.

Salty droplets streamed down her cheeks as she agonized over what had happened, and how things had changed. She doubled over, her body racked with sobs, and yielded to pain of the raw and ragged hole that had been punched in her chest since her powers had been revealed; since she’d learned she was the Sola.

The Sola; the name made her knees weak, made her cry even harder. She found the title absurd, her role the stuff of science-fiction novels. Yet, no matter how much her brain wrestled with and resisted her designation, a deep-seated sensation persisted, one that confirmed all she wished to deny, one that resonated with certainty.

The realization was a harsh truth. She released her grip on her waist and straightened her posture. Several deep breaths did little to alleviate her profound sadness, but helped take the edge off of it long enough to halt her tears. She washed her hair and scrubbed her body, allowing to the clusters of bubbles and lather to slide off her body and down the drain. Cleansed, she turned the water off and stepped from the shower.

As she dressed, other issues arose in her mind. Chief among them was the fact that she would see Luke the next day at school. She had no idea what to expect from him, no way to anticipate what his attitude would be. She wondered whether he would continue to ignore her. She supposed she’d find out in the coming hours.

The thought of him disregarding her sent a pang of sadness through her once again. She’d barely managed to stave off tears during the long car ride home, and then it had been just the two of them. At Herald Falls High School, Luke was her only real friend. Without him to ally herself with, she would be utterly alone.

She smiled sadly at the irony of her aloneness and her title as the Sola. After all, the Sola had been prophesied as the one who walked alone, and she had been alone her whole life. She was a walking example of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

But loneliness was not the only concern that plagued her. Numerous questions nagged as well. She wondered whether anyone had seen Luke’s truck parked on Lily’s street. His truck did not exactly fit with the vehicles that typically lined the wealthy neighborhood in Rockdale. Surely, someone had noticed his rusted, out-of-place truck. And if the truck had been noticed and coincided with the sound of shots being fired, eventually, Luke would be implicated. She guessed the police had paid a visit to the Andrews’ residence and had found the two bodies in the backyard. Luke had handled the pickax with his bare hands, had undoubtedly left behind fingerprints. His truck, paired with forensic evidence, would all but seal his fate.

The very real possibility of Luke going to prison, of another life being destroyed because of her, left her breathless. She combed her hair quickly and strode down the hallway, fully intending to hop on her motorcycle and ride, ride as long and as far as it took her to organize her thoughts. She was about to open the front door when it dawned on her that her bike was not beyond it, chained to a post on the front porch, that it remained in Luke’s garage. Her temples began to throb and she contemplated punching the flimsy front door to punctuate her frustration. She was stranded, left only with her thoughts and devoid of any type of outlet.

After a night spent drifting in and out of restless, nightmare-laden sleep, Arianna woke to the sound of the front door opening. The sound startled her. She opened her eyes and sat upright, alerted, only to see shadows covering her room with dusky fingers. A thin stream of light trickled in from the kitchen through her partially open door and cast eerie shades on familiar objects. A quick glance at the alarm clock on her nightstand revealed that it was just after three in the morning. She climbed out of bed and listened at her door. Footsteps padded upon the carpeting and the jangle of keys rattled. She assumed her mother had returned home alone after a night out until a man’s voice echoed down the hallway. It was immediately followed by her mother’s laughter. Clearly, her mother had brought a friend home.

She nearly groaned aloud. Another man would be sharing her mother’s bed. She knew she shouldn’t be as annoyed as she was. After all, he was just one among a seemingly unending line of suitors. Arianna felt nauseated. Too little sleep and too much stress united and aggravated an already offensive situation. She slammed her door shut, an immature message to her mother that she was awake and did not approve, but a message, nevertheless. Shushing followed by giggling suggested that both her mother and the mystery man were intoxicated. The situation was not unfamiliar. In fact, it was all too familiar to Arianna. But her blood boiled more than ever before. She collapsed on to her bed and rested her head on her pillow. Her alarm clock had been set to ring in three hours. She needed to force herself to fall back asleep, but as riled as she was, she felt it impossible.

To her surprise, sleep found her faster than she could have guessed. But it was not peaceful sleep. Horrific images flashed over and over, images of burning people tethered to posts, screaming and pleading for help, for mercy. But neither help nor mercy came for them. Instead, cloaked shapes chanted, their voices carrying in the wind as unnervingly as a haunting wind shrieking through trees.

When the shrill cry of her alarm clock sounded, she did not stir immediately, rather she believed her dream had continued. But a brightened sky peeked through the narrow rectangular window overhead and warned that a new day had begun. A night of broken sleep that had been filled with nightmares and gruesome images did little to lift her heavy heart. In fact, dawn brought with it not only the recurring recollection of her dreams, but also the realization that she would see Luke again at school. He had not mentioned picking her up for school as he’d done in days past. She guessed she was on her own.

Thoughts of Luke made her throat squeeze and brought an instant sting to her eyes. But she forced herself up to a sitting position and slid her body out of bed. After gathering her clothes quickly, she headed to the bathroom, confident she would not run into her mother or her mother’s overnight guest. Both had been drunk hours earlier and had likely fallen asleep not long before her alarm had sounded. She brushed her teeth and washed her face then styled her hair. A few quick coats of mascara and a swipe of eyeliner completed her morning beauty routine and she was left with the task of figuring out how she would get to school. She strode down the hallway, not bothering to make an attempt at quieting her movements. She gathered her backpack and rummaged through it to be certain she had a full pack of cigarettes then stepped outside.

The morning was unseasonably warm. A fine drizzle fell from gray skies and a balmy breeze blew. She pulled a cigarette from her pack and placed it between her lips. She ignited her lighter and watched as the flame wavered in the winds. With her cigarette lit, she drew smoke from it and inhaled it deeply into her lungs. As she did so, she glanced about the trailer park and noticed that someone watched her.

“Hey asshole! I thought I warned you not to spy on me!” she threatened and knew she could support any threat she made.

His face disappeared from the grimy window of his trailer. She was about to breathe a sigh of relief when it reappeared attached to a body at his front door.

She immediately dropped her cigarette and turned toward him, her stance defensive, prepared. With her feet spaced shoulder-width apart and her hands on her hips, she squared off with one of the least attractive men she’d ever seen.

She expected him to come out shouting, or angry, at the very least. She had called him an asshole, after all, and most people did not prefer to be called that. But instead of yelling, he smiled at her. His teeth were a dull greenish brown and looked as though they were all competing for the same spot in his mouth. Overlapped and jagged, his teeth made his smile look more like a grimace. He held up his hands in surrender.

“Just gettin’ my paper is all,” he called out to her. “Don’t want no trouble.”

He seemed harmless enough, but Arianna was unsettled that he always watched her. Even when she didn’t see him as she came and went, she always felt his eyes on her.

“Why do you always watch me?” she asked him and surprised him as well as her.

He froze reaching to pick up the newspaper laying on his stoop. “I, uh, I guess, well, I guess I just like to look at pretty things,” he said and shrugged.

His candor caught her off guard, disarmed her briefly. She didn’t know why, but she’d expected him to say something rude. She’d braced herself for it. But he had not. He’d responded simply, and sincerely. She did not know what to say.

“I don’t have much to do most days. But I like to watch birds and butterflies and flowers in the spring. Your mom is real pretty, too.”

“Hmm,” was all Arianna could say and nodded. Then a thought occurred to her. “Hey, you don’t happen to know the bus schedule around here, do you?”

He stood clutching his newspaper in front of him and twisted his mouth to one side, deep in thought. “Why yes, yes I do,” he exclaimed excitedly. “The number seven bus comes by here at 6:48 a.m. It runs down the county road and out past the high school.”

Arianna glanced at her watch and saw that it was already 6:45 a.m. If she hurried, she might make it to the end of the park in time to catch the bus. She slung her backpack over her shoulder and began jogging, but not before thanking the man who’d watched her since the day she and her mother had arrived.

“Absolutely no problem,” he replied closing his eyes and shaking his head from side to side enthusiastically.

His goofy,unfortunate looking smile confirmed that she’d said the right words and she headed toward the end of the long pathway leading out of her trailer park. She reached the end of it just in time to see a bus approaching. The doors opened and she stepped inside. After paying her fare, she took a seat at the rear of the bus. Few people were seated and all bore the same defeated expression.

The ride was short and stopped just next to the gas station near the driveway of Herald Falls High School. She jumped off and dashed inside the market of the gas station of purchase a buttered roll and a hot chocolate. Deep within her, a voice whispered that she would need as much strength and sustenance as she could get for the day ahead of her. She ate quickly as she walked and made it to school in time for the first bell.

The first half of the school day had passed uneventfully. She had not seen Luke yet and wondered whether he had taken the day off. She’d sworn she’d seen Stephanie, but wasn’t sure. When the bell ending fourth period sounded and officially began lunch period, Arianna went directly to the cafeteria. She had not packed a lunch and needed to buy a sandwich. In the service area, she grabbed what looked like chicken salad on wheat bread and a carton of chocolate milk. She turned and was about to pay when she nearly walked into Bulldog. He was with Beth, and though they’d narrowly avoided a collision, when she looked up at him about to crack a joke about it, he merely looked over her head as if she wasn’t there. Neither he nor Beth acknowledged her. She felt heat creep up her neck and color her cheeks, embarrassment and sadness joining forces. She dropped her gaze immediately, an uneasy knot twisting in her stomach. She turned from them awkwardly, her hands trembling, and pretended to examine a display of fruit, picking up and sniffing an orange. Her hair covered her face like a dark curtain and she stole a look from behind it and saw them leave. She dropped the orange where she’d found it and gripped the plastic tray that held her food so tightly, her knuckles whitened. Bulldog and Beth had reacted to her peculiarly. She wondered what Luke had told them. Perhaps he’d told them he and Arianna had broken up. Perhaps he’d told them everything. She did not know. She needed to speak to Luke.

After paying the cashier for her lunch, Arianna rounded the corner of the service area and saw that Bulldog and Beth had joined Mike, Carrie, Ryan and Christa at a table in the far corner of the cafeteria. Seconds later, Luke strolled in wearing his usual warm grin. He sat with his friends, then, as if sensing her eyes on him looked up and made eye contact with her for a fleeting moment. In the instant that he’d locked eyes with her, she’d tried to convey a psychic message that they needed to talk, but was met with a steely gaze, one that warned her to stay away. She dropped her eyes to her tray and found an empty table at the opposite end of the lunchroom.

Alone, she set her lunch down and fought tears that threatened. Determined not to cry, she opened her sandwich and began eating it. The mayonnaise tasted sour and the bread, chalky, but she did not care. She ate to have something to do. Leaving would mean they’d won, that they’d succeeded in making her so uncomfortable that fleeing was the only option. Instead, she ate her vile lunch, swallowed every bite despite a growing urge to vomit. She dug through her backpack and produced a textbook and began flipping through its pages.

As she did so, she began to pick up on snippets of conversations from neighboring tables. A familiar voice nagged at her ear, Cheryl’s voice.

“Aww, look at her,” she said sarcastically. “She has no one. Even the rejects don’t want her anymore!”

Arianna glanced up and saw that Cheryl watched her, and that a few of her friends had turned in their seats to watch as well. None of them knew that she could hear them. None of them knew of her powers; she hoped.

“She’s looking at us,” a female voice said concernedly. “Do you think she knows we’re talking about her?”

“That trashy bitch has no idea. Just smile like you do at your stupid-ass poodle, Lisa,” Cheryl said.

Lisa smiled at Arianna as she was told and Arianna was sure she knew just who the dumb bitch among them was.

Lisa laughed nervously and Arianna smiled in their direction before erecting her middle finger at them.

Cheryl ignored Lisa, her focus on Preppy-boy who had just sauntered into the cafeteria.

“How does my hair look?” she asked Lisa and smoothed her golden locks. “Do I look okay?”

“Yes,” Lisa replied exasperatedly. “You look the same as you always do.”

“Good because he wants to do it again today after school and I want to look as...appealing as possible,” she crooned and unbuttoned the top button of her sweater.

Arianna was done listening to Cheryl’s nasty conversation and decided it was time to leave. Lunch was almost over and three more classes were scheduled before the school day ended.

She endured English class, barely, and had nearly sprung from her seat when it finally ended. She was eager to leave the class, leave the school. But she needed to speak with Luke, if for no other reason than to discuss how she would get her motorcycle back from him. She regretted accepting his offer, regretted ever meeting him. She had allowed him the smallest sliver of access to her heart only to be frozen out. She’d seen her mother go through breakup after painful breakup, and seen her lose a bit of herself each time. Arianna did not want to be like her mother, even if it meant never loving another person. She’d come so close that night in the motel, so close to surrendering to Luke’s sweetness and innocence. Her fantasy of Desmond had been a blessing in disguise. It had snapped her back to reality.

Her mind swam with frustration, so much so that she only caught the tail end of a rude comment hurled at her from a small cluster of people gathered by the lockers to her left. She heard her name and the word “loser” attached to it. She stopped and glared at the group. A staccato laugh followed by blonde hair being tossed arrogantly over one shoulder divulged the source of the comment. Cheryl stood with Preppy-boy, a nervous looking Lisa and two other girls she did not recognize.

“See, she knows her name,” Cheryl said in a cloying, bitter tone. “She responds when we call her ‘loser.’”

Cheryl laughed again and Arianna felt her insides heat, her blood simmering and pulsing through her veins.

Unable to withstand the vicious taunt any longer, Arianna dropped the books she clutched in her arms and strode up to the group. “What did you just say?” she asked, inches from Lisa’s face.

The two unfamiliar girls stepped back, away from Lisa, and away from Arianna. “I-I didn’t say anything,” Lisa replied in a trembling voice.

The chatter in the hallway hushed as Arianna concentrated and focused all of her attention on Cheryl. Cheryl tipped her chin up haughtily and tossed her hair over her shoulder. “Ha! You’re calling me a bitch? Aren’t you the loser who got dumped by the biggest rejects in this school? You’re pathetic!”

Without warning, a crimson shade colored Arianna’s vision. She reached out both hands and shoved Cheryl. Surprised, Cheryl flew backward, a blur of blonde hair and designer clothes, slammed against her locker then landed on her backside, hard. Preppy-boy, eager to defend his partner of convenience, grasped Arianna’s upper arm. All she felt was the bite of fingers digging into her skin and she turned on him, and gripped the wrist of the hand that held her. She yanked it from her body and twisted it. Preppy-boy howled in pain. But his pain did not deter Arianna. All she could see were red shapes, red shapes who had hurt her.

Holding the arm she’d twisted behind his back, Arianna pushed Preppy-boy headfirst and he smashed into a row of lockers. He fell to the ground, his eyes dazed an unfocused. She was about to turn to the group and see if any of them had insults to offer when a vice-like grip seized her arm and spun her around.

The scarlet cloak that shrouded her eyes evaporated and she saw a pair of gray eyes glowering at her. Luke squeezed her upper arm.

His face held no anger, and it held no affection either, just fear and something else she could not name exactly. But it was not good. His expression was a blend of shame and disgust, of embarrassment and repulsion. He looked at her as if he was seeing her for the first time, but only saw a monster, not her. He slowly released his grip on her arm and shrunk back, and she knew his feelings for her had slipped away just as readily. She tried to draw in breath, the pain in her chest sudden, but her lungs felt like they had shrunk, refusing to fill. The air she breathed burned in her throat, ached in her core.

Luke lowered his eyes to the floor and turned his head. She took a last look at his profile, his spiky black hair, his full, soft lips, then ran out of the building. She did not know where she was going, did not care, but knew she could not spend another second in Herald Falls High School.

She’d only made it to the edge of the parking lot where school property met with the main road when Desmond appeared. His large biceps bulged intimidatingly as he crossed both arms across his broad chest. His face, typically the epitome of calm, looked livid and she could see a small muscle in his jaw tense and flex. She’d had an awful couple of days, and judging from the look on his face, knew that her day was about to get much worse. He leveled his sky-blue gaze at her and with her own eyes, pleaded with him wordlessly to go easy on her. When his features softened and his arms dropped to his sides, she wondered whether he’d heard her silent plea. She also could not help but notice how, even in the harsh gray light of the gloomy day, he looked like a golden god cast to Earth from the heavens, an angry god, but a god, nonetheless.

When she was close enough to smell his spicy aftershave mingling with the faint scent of leather, he spoke only three words.

“Come with me,” he said in his rich, soothing voice. He reached out a large hand and she placed hers in it. With her hand in his, she felt a tingle begin in her palm and travel up her arm as gently as a summer breeze blowing across her skin, warm and welcoming. The inviting sensation was immediately followed by his energy flowing through her, thrumming in time with her heartbeat, wafting through every part of her. The anguish she’d felt over recent days began to fade, replaced by a sense of peace.

The world around them, leaden and dreary, began to fade. Desmond pulled Arianna close to him and enveloped her in his powerful arms. Her legs threatened to give way beneath her as all of her worries seeped from her. She closed her eyes, relishing in the feel of his body against hers, his masculine scent; his protection. When she opened them, lush fields of green dotted with blossoms in vibrant shades of pink and purple surrounded her. Herald Falls had disappeared completely. The clouds and drizzle were replaced with brilliant sunlight that kissed the vivid landscape. The stagnant air polluted with the stench of car exhausts passing on the county road they’d stood near moments earlier had been traded for a refreshing breeze that stirred tall grass and the faint sound of birds chirping. She recognized the field they stood in immediately, it was where he’d taken her the night she’d encountered the attackers at the Blue Ivy nightclub.

Desmond stood just inches from her, bathed in golden light that caressed each of his magnificent features. She wanted to remain encircled in his muscular arms, breathing in his intoxicating scent, but reluctantly stepped back.

Around Desmond, she did not have to pretend. She did not need walls to protect her. He knew what she was, had always known, and did not reject her.

“I am sorry for what has happened to you, for what is happening” he began. “Nothing has ever been easy for you.”

Arianna blinked feverishly, fighting tears that welled and fell despite her effort.

“But it is imperative that you learn to control your emotions,” he continued.

“I know. Believe me. I have been through it myself,” he surprised her by saying. “But your powers are far greater than mine were or will ever be. And you need to control them. What happened today, at your school, can never happen again. Do you understand me?”

“Of course I understand you! Do you think I want to be this way? I have no one. No one at all,” she said her eyes overflowed with emotion.

Desmond reached out and took her hands in his. “You are never alone,” he assured her. “I am always a heartbeat away. You have me.”

Arianna looked up into his cerulean eyes and saw nothing but kindness and warmth shining in them. She wanted to believe in something, in him.

The sudden realization of what she’d said sent her pulse racing and color to her cheeks. She hadn’t given any thought to her words, had just blurted them out.

She allowed her form to meld to his, felt the heat of his skin through his fitted T-shirt.

“You will learn to manage your powers,” he said. She looked up at him and he brushed her cheek with his knuckles. The contact sent a shiver across her skin. “It will get easier.”

“First, you will need to stay away from people who evoke strong emotional reactions from you.”

“And no Luke,” he said then added thoughtfully, “You should not have given yourself to him. He isn’t worthy of you.”

“Wait, what?” Arianna asked and wondered how Desmond could have possibly known about her night with Luke. “How did you know?”

“You saw?” she asked incredulously. “As in you saw us, you know, doing it.”

“Unfortunately, yes. I saw the two of you begin your intimate moment,” he said and Arianna thought she heard a hint of jealously in his voice. She quickly dismissed it, though. How could Desmond possibly be jealous of Luke? The fleeting thought seemed outlandish. Desmond looked like a god, and Luke looked like an average teenager. Regardless, she decided to accuse him, if for no other reason than to punish him for invading her privacy.

“You sure seem it!” she pressed. “And I bet you put that image in my head of you all shirtless when Luke and I were doing it.”

Desmond visibly cringed at the words “doing it,” then his expression changed unexpectedly, and a smirk spread across his lips. “You thought of me while you were intimate with Luke?” he asked and appeared pleased.

“Yeah, like you didn’t know. Like you didn’t put that image in my head,” she egged him on.

“Arianna, your thoughts and fantasies are your own. I do not have the power to make you think or do anything you do not want to think or do. So if you thought of me while with Luke,” he started and his sky-blue eyes suddenly danced with delight.

“Don’t even say it!” she interrupted him before he could finish his sentence. “And don’t talk to me like you’re my father because I’ve never had one and don’t need one now!”

Thrilled she’d hit a nerve and ruffled his seemingly unflappable feathers, she persisted. “Well you say you’ve been hovering around me my whole life, like a father.”

Desmond took a step forward and gripped her arms, “I feel nothing fatherly toward you,” he said and his aquamarine eyes smoldered. He pulled her close. Arianna could feel his breath hot on her lips. She wondered whether he was going to kiss her, wished he would kiss her. But he did not. Instead he embraced her and placed her head against his chest, over his heart.

With her body pressed against Desmond’s, she felt the slight adrenaline rush she’d felt while arguing with him dissipate. She felt as though their powers were mingling, felt the calming presence of his energy flowing through her in a steady current. Yet in that current, she still detected the slightest hint of jealousy concerning her night with Luke. She ignored it, however, chalked it up to wishful thinking.

“I hate to bring him up again,” she said softly. “But Luke has my motorcycle, and I need it back.”

“Well, I can’t afford a car. Besides, I love the freedom of riding,” she said and envisioned herself on an open road, the wind in her face, the sun shining.

“A motorcycle it is, then,” he agreed. “In the meantime, stay close to home. I will stay close, as well. I can be with you every moment your mother is not around. It will give us time to work on breathing and relaxation techniques that will help you channel your powers more responsibly.”

The news that she’d be spending more time with Desmond was the best new she’d received in quite some time.

The mention of Howard Kane clouded Desmond’s glorious features. “He is close, and you will face him soon. That is why we need to ready you,” he said firmly.

His words suggested she would be preparing for battle, a battle she would be fighting alone. Her heart sank to her stomach and she let go of Desmond.

Sensing her reaction, he pulled her closer. “You will not be alone against Kane,” he said. “He wants us all dead. We will help you as much as we can. Ultimately, though, you will be the one to kill him.”

Arianna squeezed her eyes shut and refused to acknowledge what he had just said. Instead, she focused on the even beat of his heart.

“It is time to return,” he whispered. And with his words, the flowery meadow began to evaporate. Light filled her field of vision, brilliant white light. Desmond and his warmth surrounded her once again, covering her body with wisps of awareness, light and feathery.

Howard Kane directed his large Chevy Suburban into the Shady Pines Trailer Park in Herald Falls, New York. Though it was daylight, thick fog smothered everything in its wake. Each trailer appeared haunted, crawling with ghostly curdled shapes that dove and lunged at every turn. He found it fitting that the Sola should live in such a sinister looking community.

He parked his car just outside a smaller unit near the end of the long lane, and saw that a rusted Toyota Camry occupied the space right in front of it. He turned the headlamps off, as well as the ignition, and spoke to the men with him.

Eli had sounded worried, frightened by the prospect of a possible run-in with the Sola. Fear among his followers did not inspire much confidence in Howard. Fear made them potential liabilities. He would be sure to keep a close eye on Eli in the coming days.

“Yes,” Howard replied and leveled his gaze at Eli. “John Pawley confirmed that she is at school. He called about ten minutes ago. You have nothing to worry about.”

Eli raised a brow at him, “I’m not worried,” he said, but his eyes told another story. “I just want things to go smoothly, that’s all.”

Howard could tell that the man had lied to him, that Eli was feigning calm he did not feel.

“Good, Eli,” Howard said plainly. “We fight with righteousness on our side; there is nothing to fear when God is on your side. Fear when fighting alongside the Lord would mean your faith has wavered. Has your faith wavered, Eli?”

“Good. That’s good, because I need you in top form in the hours forthcoming.”

Howard did not say more on the topic. Rather, he climbed out of his SUV and strode to Arianna Rose’s front door. He turned the doorknob and, to his surprise, the door had not been locked. Given the seediness of the trailer park, most others would have found more security precautions necessary. But no other was the Sola, only Arianna Rose.

He opened the door slowly and peeked inside. The faint light of a side table lamp illuminated the area before them, a crowded area with a couch and coffee table. No one appeared to be in the living-room area. He turned to his men who’d followed and nodded before proceeding to enter the trailer.

Once inside, he was immediately greeted with the sour smell of liquor and nicotine. Both familiar scents from his youth, the stench reminded him of his childhood home he’d shared with his mother, before he’d killed her. He glanced around and saw that an empty bottle of Scotch sat atop the far edge of the coffee table, along with fast-food wrappers. His eyes quickly scanned the kitchen area and hallway. He did not see anyone and was about to address him men when the sound of panting and moaning filled the trailer.

Howard felt a small jolt pass through him and his knees buckled involuntarily. The moaning, the stink of alcohol, cigarettes and cheap cologne transported him back in time. For an instant, he was eight years old, his father dead and he alone with his mother. A different man had shared his mother’s bed each night of the week, and they had drunk and smoked a bevy of vile substances before retiring to her bedroom, and that had been when the panting would begin.

The overwhelming urge to march down the narrow hallway before him and kill the two fornicators snapped Howard back to the present. He balled his fists at his side so tightly his fingernails bit into his palms. He glanced at the faces of the men with him. Their heads had turned toward the sound. Fortunately, none of them had noticed his moment of weakness. His movement toward the moaning alerted them to follow him.

The first door on the right was closed, the sounds of sexual intercourse on the other side of it loud. Howard opened the door and boldly stepped inside, expecting some sort of reaction. But he did not get one. The moaning did not stop. The carnal display before him was grotesque. A pale man with dark body hair thrust his pelvis from behind a blonde woman like a barnyard animal, one hand gripping her breast while the other bounced and flopped as he did so. Both the man and the woman had been so consumed by passion that they hadn’t noticed that four men had entered the room.

He stood, stunned, momentarily as they brazenly continued with their depraved act. Another shock bolted through him as it had moments ago and weakened his knees once more. A vision of his mother being ravaged by a greasy-looking man with long hair flashed through his mind’s eye. The man had knelt behind his mother, thrusting, and clutching her breast, just as the one before him did now. His insides began to quiver and sweat beaded his forehead as anger mounted inside of him.

Silently, he unsheathed his blade from his waistband and crept up behind the man. He swung it in a wide arc and slashed at the side of the man’s throat. Blood spurted out immediately. He’d hit the man’s jugular vein. The man cried out and held his neck then flopped to his side, disengaged from the woman’s body. A bright-red pool expanded around him and the shrill scream of the woman tore through the room. The woman spun and faced them.

“Oh my God! Oh my God!” she cried again and again, and the irony of her pleas did little to calm Howard.

His voice had obviously calmed her as he’d hoped it would as her wailing ceased. She reached for the covering on her bed and attempted to cover herself, suddenly modest after a room full of men had seen her naked and submitting to immoral behavior.

“Please just take whatever you want. I’ll do anything you want, Just please don’t kill me,” she said in a trembling voice.

With her hair in a state of disarray, her blue makeup smudged around her eyes and streaming down her cheeks, and her face the epitome of terror, Howard almost felt bad for her. But pity was an emotion he reserved only for those deserving of his graces, for the just. And the woman before him was anything but just.

“You have only one thing I want,” Howard said calmly. “And you are going to help me get her.”

The woman looked at him confusedly before a nod to his men ordered them to descend on her. One held her arms while another grabbed her feet. Eli approached with a syringe.

Neither Howard nor any of his men flinched at her entreats. Eli jabbed the needle into the woman’s buttock. She blurted out a few incoherent sentences; her voice slurred by the powerful sedative they’d administered then fell to the bed.

Three of the four men obeyed, but one paused. Eli hesitated and turned to Howard.

“Yes, Eli. I told you we were coming here for her,” Howard said, impatience creeping into his tone.

“How does she help us kill the Sola, though? The Sola is so powerful, so evil. What makes you think her mother will give us any leverage?”

Anger edged its way into Howard’s already changeable mood. Eli was questioning him. He wondered who exactly Eli thought he was. Eli had not heard the voice of God. Only Howard had.

“I have a plan, Eli,” Howard hissed. “God’s plan. Do you question God’s plan? It sounds to me like you are.”

“No, no, Brother Howard. I would never,” Eli fumbled but was interrupted by the sound of Howard’s booming voice.

“God does not speak through you, Eli. He speaks through me! How dare you question my plan, God’s plan? Were it not for your father, I’d strike you down here and now!”

“Now, get out of here so that we can move things along. Make no mistake about it, we will not fail. Evil will not rule this world. Arianna Rose will burn at the stake as God intends.”

Eli would not meet Howard’s weighty gaze. Instead, he kept his head bowed, eyes lowered and assisted the other two men as they covered Arianna’s mother in a sheet from the bed. Once she’d been covered, they hauled her to the truck parked behind Howard’s.

Howard stayed behind after the others had left, breathing the air Arianna breathed, feeling her presence all around him. He knew he would triumph, that her remaining days were numbered. His assurance came in the form of a very special, very sacred article he had in his possession. Iron shackles used in the various witch trials during the 1600s had been passed down to him through his ancestors. Blessed by a Puritan priest, the manacles had been designed to restrain the most powerful witch; they’d been designed to restrain the Sola.

A thrill of excitement raced down Howard’s spine, the Sola’s death so close at hand. In the cuffs his kin had created, Arianna would be unable to move her hands and enact her powers; she would be powerless to conjure evil. He smiled at the thought of her being rendered powerless then took a final look around her sad little trailer. In less than a day, the world would be absolved of her vile existence. Arianna Rose would be denied her chance to destroy humanity.

Without warning, Arianna stood before her trailer, home again. The golden light she’d enjoyed had weakened until it had dulled to a pale gray. Mist bled from fleshy clouds that crowded the sky. The world around her had faded to a sickly version of the one she’d just visited. But to her surprise, not everything had disappeared. Desmond remained, surrounding her with his warmth. In the past, he had faded along with the magical field they’d stood in. But this time he hadn’t. And she was grateful for his presence.

Wrapped in his arms, she felt calm, safe. Desmond was the only person who truly understood her. All her life, she’d never had a true place among any group she’d ever been a part of, and those had been few and far between. Most of the time, she’d been alone. Moving from town to town, whether it had been of Desmond’s doing or not, had not helped matters. But encircled in Desmond’s sturdy arms, for the first time ever, Arianna felt like she was home.

She rested her cheek against his solid chest, listening to the steady beat of his heart, feeling his energy waft through her with every pulse. She did not want to let go, wished they could stay as they were forever. She breathed in his scent. He smelled of leather and spicy aftershave, masculine. Warmth spread throughout her and lingered low in her belly, need twisting inside of her.

Suddenly aware of their close proximity and the effect it was having on her, Arianna allowed her arms to drop from his waist and stepped back. Heat crept up her neck and flushed her cheeks, embarrassment at her overwhelming attraction to him.

As if he intuited her desire for him, Desmond hesitated for a moment and did not release her from his hold. When finally he did, Arianna felt breathless, but knew she needed to say something.

“I guess I should go inside now and sleep for like, the next twelve hours or something,” she said and immediately cringed at how silly she’d sounded, how juvenile.

“Good, you need your rest,” he replied. “I’ll be back in the morning. When I return, we need to decide what to. But one thing is for sure: you cannot go back to that school.”

She smiled at Desmond involuntarily, unable to hide her eagerness at seeing him in less than twenty-four hours. She had no idea where he went when he left her, whether he ate or slept, or had a wife or girlfriend. The thought of him leaving her and resuming some sort of warlock domestic setup with a woman as gorgeous as he spurred a spark of jealousy through her blood and straight to her heart. She knew feelings of jealousy were as irrational as they were dangerous, but she’d had no control over it.

“I need to go visit a fellow warlock in a nearby town and see if coven formations have begun; all business, you know? It’s not like I have anyone waiting for me, though,” he said and she swore he’d read her mind. “I’ll be back shortly after the sun rises. I promise. In the meantime, try to stay out of trouble, okay?”

Arianna rolled her eyes exaggeratedly then said, “Okay, fine, if you insist.”

Desmond smiled at her, his face serene and angelic. His coloring and overall appearance was Nordic, but the energy he radiated was otherworldly, divine.

“I do insist,” he said and the corners of his mouth faltered. “Stay safe Arianna. We need you in one piece. I need you.”

His words had caught her off guard. He needed her. He’d said it himself. But in what capacity? She wondered. Did he need her powers, her leadership, or was it something more?

“I’ll do my best,” she said and wanted to ask every question as it popped into her head. She lowered her eyes, instead, afraid of the answers she might hear had she dared ask.

Alone and suddenly chilled to her bones despite the abnormal warmth of the mid-November day, she wrapped her arms around her waist and walked toward her trailer. A quick glance at the parking spot in front of her porch revealed that her mother was home. The pathetic Toyota her mom had driven for as long as she could remember waited there, rusted and looking as though it would collapse under the weight of the thick fog.

Arianna was not in the mood to answer what promised to be an unending battery of questions from her mother about why she was home from school so early. She leaned against the railing that she’d formerly tethered her motorcycle to and fished around inside her bag for her pack of cigarettes. When finally she found it, she slipped a slender cylinder from it, placed it between her lips and lit it. She inhaled deeply and the nicotine entered her system immediately. Moderately relaxed and a little lightheaded, the morning replayed in her mind. After her skirmish with Cheryl and Preppy-boy, Luke had grabbed her. The way he’d looked at her had winded her as though she’d been punched in gut. He’d narrowed his eyes at her, his face stricken, disgusted by her. He knew what she was now, and wanted nothing to do with her. She did not blame him. But not blaming him did little to ease the disappointment she’d felt, the shame. And while she was not happy about either dropping out of high school in her senior year or being forced to transfer to yet another district, she was relieved she would not have to see Cheryl, Preppy-boy or any of Luke’s friends any time soon. She would not be forced to endure the judgmental stares, the intentional snubs or the looks of disapproval. And she would not have to see Luke.

Luke. She did not want to think of him, did not want to address the gravity of what had happened between them, yet he had crept into her mind again, no longer welcome, uninvited. She extinguished thoughts of him, along with her cigarette, and braced herself for her mother’s illogical wrath. Arianna hoped her mother’s overnight guest had gone home. She doubted she could withstand another awkward introduction. She had experienced many in the course of her lifetime and wanted to avoid more than she absolutely had to.

Arianna sighed loudly then turned the handle of the front door. As usual, the front door was unlocked.

“Mom! Hey Mom! You know, you really ought to start locking the front door. Any weirdo could just let himself in,” she called out then mumbled under her breath, “Or you’ll just bring him home from the bar to spend the night.”

She walked into the trailer and dropped her bag on the floor just inside the doorway. She looked around and didn’t see her mother, but did see that the living room was in a state of disarray. An empty liquor bottle sat unapologetically on the side table next to the couch and fast-food wrappers were strewn on the coffee table.

“Way to clean up, Mom!” Arianna called. Her mother did not answer so she called out again. “Mom, I know you’re here your car is outside!” she said then it occurred to her that maybe her mother’s new friend had arrived in his own car and that they might be out together.

Arianna marched down the hallway and stopped at the first door on the right, her mother’s bedroom. The door was shut so she knocked and waited for a response. Ordinarily, if a man had spent the night with her mother, she would not consider opening her bedroom door the next morning for fear of walking in on a scenario that would likely scar her for life. She checked her watch and saw that it was not yet one o’clock. Plenty of time had passed for both her mother and her mother’s guest to sleep off the doozy they’d undoubtedly tied on the night before. She knocked again then turned the doorknob. She peeked inside and saw the foot of the bed. It looked as though the bed had been made so she swung it open all the way.

The entire bed came into view and Arianna gasped then covered her mouth with her hand to stifle the scream that fought to escape her lips. Blood covered nearly every surface of the upper portion of the comforter, sheets and pillows, and a man she’d never met sat, propped up against her mother’s headboard. His eyes were wide with fright and his hands had been positioned in front of him, pressed together impossibly in prayer. An angry maroon arc at the side of his neck, along with the tremendous amount of blood that had saturated the front of his nude body, indicated that his throat had been slit. The scene was beyond macabre. A man had been murdered in her mother’s bed then placed, ghoulishly, to look as though he was praying. Arianna felt the world tilt on its axis, the phantasmagoric image before her too much for her mind to process. She fell to her knees and clutched her belly as the urge to retch overcame her. Her blood roared in her ears and her stomach clenched violently. She gagged and heaved yet nothing came up, just sobs that choked the air from her lungs. She was about to leave, to crawl out of her mother’s bedroom on all fours, when something caught her attention.

On the wall above the murdered man’s head, a piece of paper had been affixed to the wall, stabbed into the plaster with a long blade. Arianna rose to her feet, her legs trembling so hard she doubted they could support her weight. She took a tentative step forward and was surprised that, not only had they held her, they’d also moved. Her body shook so forcefully, she saw the dark curtains of hair on either side of her face quivering as well. Slowly, she made her way to the bed.

Standing near the dead man, her stomach churned and threatened again, the metallic stench of blood filling her nostrils. Her breath came in short, shallow pants, hyperventilation looming on the horizon, as she reached out a trembling hand and pulled at the knife in the wall. The hilt felt cold and slick and she withdrew her hand immediately. She looked down at her hand and saw that it was covered in blood.

Repulsed, she wiped her hand on the bedspread, desperate to clean the man’s blood from her palm. But it seemed to have seeped into her skin. No matter how hard she wiped, the man’s blood remained on her hand. Panic began to mingle with shock and she fought to keep both at bay. She moved back to the knife and quickly yanked the paper from beneath it. She looked at it and saw that the paper was torn but the words were still legible. The note had been scrawled in meticulous handwriting and said:

I have your mother. If you ever want to see her alive again, you will come to the Soldiers of the Divine Trinity Church at the address listed below. If you contact the police, I will kill your mother. If you bring anyone with you, or alert anyone, I will kill your mother.

I have eyes and ears everywhere, Arianna. You are being watched right now. Do not do anything stupid. If you maintain hope that your mother will survive, you will do exactly as I say.

Arianna’s mouth went dry as she read the words in front of her. Howard Kane had her mother. He held her mother as his hostage. He had been to her trailer and had killed her mother’s lover. Another innocent had died because of her. And now, her mother’s life teetered at the brink of a great precipice from which there was no return. Her mother would die if she did not face Kane.

Her hands continued to shake as she held the note in her hand as a fresh wave of tremors racked her body. But instead of trembling with fear, Arianna began to tremble with ire. Fury seized her, gripping her with an urgency so consuming she could no longer be still. She stuffed the paper into the front pocket of her jeans and fled the room. She dashed down the hallway, pausing only to sling her bag over her shoulder and raced out the front door. She slipped behind the wheel of her mother’s car and turned the spare key her mother had insisted she have in the ignition. The engine groaned to life and she riffled through the glove compartment for a GPS navigation unit her mother had relieved Carl of weeks earlier. When she found it, she frantically punched in the address Kane had left her then stomped on the gas pedal. She sped down the driveway of Shady Pines Trailer Park and on to the main road.

She drove for three hours, blind to traffic, the weather, the world. She traveled with a single purpose: to rescue her mother from Howard Kane. She had not called the police and she had not called upon Desmond, though a part of her had wanted to do both. In her heart, she knew neither the police nor Desmond could help her. She was the Sola, and she would face Kane alone. Left with the irritating female voice of the navigation system and her own tortured thoughts, Arianna arrived at The Soldiers of the Divine Trinity Church a little after four o’clock.

She pulled down a lane lined with stately cedar trees. The limbs of the trees sagged as if bearing the weight of a great secret upon each of their boughs, and lent their appearance the impression of majestic mustached watchmen guarding confidences they’d rather not keep. At the end of the long pathway, an imposing structure loomed. Made of stone and beveled stained glass, the cross at the apex of the steeple looked as though it had punctured the heavens above. Leaden clouds began to weep fat raindrops sporadically. Thunder growled in the distance, threatening at any moment to hemorrhage a downpour.

Arianna pulled her car in front of the Soldiers of the Divine Trinity Church and slid out of her mother’s car. She climbed a small set of concrete steps and paused before a set of wooden doors. She tugged at one of the ornate metal handles and was surprised when it opened silently. She stepped inside and found herself in the vestibule of the building. Faint light spilled from lit candles and cast eerie shadows all around her. She reached out and touched the cool stone of the wall and edged her way around a large vat of holy water in the center of the passage until she reached another set of doors.

The doors opened to the congregational seating area. Rows of pews faced the sanctuary. From where she stood, she saw a man kneeling at the altar. She ran down the center aisle past the pews, up three steps and stopped beside the man.

The man turned his head toward her slowly. He looked like an ordinary man, and she was certain he wasn’t Howard Kane, but something gleamed in his eye, a flicker of something familiar.

The sound of his voice, the look in his eye, both hit her and an image flashed in her mind. The man kneeling at the altar had worn a long, hooded cloak. He had stood alongside Kane and chanted indecipherable words, and had watched as Lily burned

“He is out in the courtyard,” the rumble of his voice snapped her from her vision. The man gestured with long, thin fingers to the right of the sanctuary.

Arianna rushed in the direction he’d pointed her in and silently vowed to return and find him when she’d finished with Kane. He would pay for what he’d done to Lily. She would make sure of it.

To the left of the altar lay the sacristy. The sacristy was little more than a storage room for books, vestments and an assortment of odd-looking tools. There was a sink, a narrow window and a single door. She reached out and tried the handle without delay and discovered it was unlocked. Though the handle turned, when she pushed against the door itself, it did not budge. Undeterred, she dropped her shoulder and rammed the weight of her body against it several times until, finally, it gave way. She found herself standing on a small rectangle of concrete before a courtyard. An immense fountain surrounded by ornate statues blocked her view, but beyond the overly elaborate display, something else was happening, a nefarious scene was unfolding. A tingling whisper of awareness inched down her spine and propelled her forward.

She ran around the statues and fountain and she immediately saw a woman’s frightened face. Her mother had been tied to a stake in the middle of the clearing, brush piled beneath her, tears streaming down her cheeks. She cried out to Arianna, “Run baby! Get as far away from these deranged killers as you can!” her mother’s voice was panicked and shrill, unlike Arianna had ever heard it before.

“Shut your mouth, sinner!” a voice boomed and a man stepped from the shadows.

He gripped a torch in both hands and Arianna recognized the charred and puckered flesh of the man’s face, the same burnt face that had haunted her nightmares. Only this time, it was not Lily who burned at his hands. Her mother would be the one who burned.

Fierce tremors shook Arianna’s entire body and her vision became veiled in crimson. Her racing heart slowed and all she could see was Howard Kane. Her scarlet gaze glowed, shining from her eyes, and soaked him in a blood red shroud. She could hear his lifeblood coursing through his veins; smell the coppery scent of it. But she did not feel the need to retch. She did not feel sickened by it. She felt incensed by it. A primal voice inside urged her to kill, kill him where he stood, spill his blood and feast on it. Howard Kane had claimed the lives of countless innocents and the day of reckoning was upon him. Her muscles twitched, eager and aching to channel the energy that stormed inside her. She started to raise her arm, the force of her energy pulsing like an electric current.

“I would think twice about that,” Kane warned confidently and signaled. A man appeared from the direction Kane had just gestured to with an assault rifle in hand. The rifle was equipped with a small, black scope and aimed at Arianna’s mother.

“This is Eli,” Kane spoke. “He is one of more than a dozen men who have your mother in their crosshairs. If you do not lower your arm and calm yourself right now, she will be killed.”

Arianna felt her energy begin to flare despite her effort to control it. Men surrounded her and her mother. She could sense them. And there was no way for her to unarm them simultaneously before one took their kill shot at her mother. She spun, scanning the clearing, looking to the woods beyond it for armed shapes, when a man sprung from her left. The bite of tiny electrodes against the nape of her neck was immediate and followed promptly by a burst of electrical energy that dropped her to her knees. As soon as she felt the cold, wet earth touch her legs, she felt the prick of another set of electrodes hit her back and shoulders. Men rushed her, she could hear the urgent tone of their voices, knew she had been tasered more than once, as her body began to convulse. She tried to scream, to thrash, but her body refused to cooperate. Darkness embraced her, stroking and lulling with silky, sinuous fingers. She strained to shirk it, to evade its elusive allure, but was overtaken.

Heat warmed Arianna’s face. She blinked and tried to open her eyes, her vision bleary as though she’d slept for far too long. But she hadn’t slept. She’d been unconscious, and not for long. Night had not fallen yet and the brightness of day made her eyes tear. Sporadic rain still fell. She could feel it on her face. A scent infused the air, acrid and foul.

The smell of burning flesh struck her, burning her nasal passages and the back of her throat. She concentrated on seeing more clearly, willing her eyes to focus. When finally the fuzziness lifted, she saw that her mother burned before her, still tied to a stake. The flames had reached her mother’s waist and her body still twitched as she moaned weakly, suffering. But the twitching and moaning faded quickly as the fire swelled suddenly and consumed her head. Arianna watched, frozen, a prisoner in her own personal hell, as the last bit of life drained from Cathy Rose. She watched as her mother’s head lolled to one side, her beautiful face blackened, gone forever.

A sound escaped Arianna from a deep, primitive part of her. The sound tore through the courtyard, her soul crying out. She felt as though a hole had been punched in her chest, a bottomless pit of pain and loss that would never heal. Tears spilled down her cheeks and a lifetime of memories rushed to her mind. In each were she and her mother.

“Why did you do that?” she heard herself ask Kane. “It’s me you want, you monster!” she cried.

Howard materialized beside her, his face gruesome. “I am no monster,” he hissed in her ear. “It is you who are a monster. And that woman,” he pointed to her deceased mother, “that sinful, wretched woman, she birthed you. She raised you, readying you to begin your dark mission.”

“You have no idea what you’re talking about!” she screamed and felt her anger swell. He had murdered her mother and continued to insult her as she dangled lifelessly from a pole.

The grieving hole in her chest began to fill with the purest of rage. The world around her became awash in a crimson glow again.

“Your powers will be of no use to you, Arianna,” Kane said. “Your wrists have been shackled with restraints designed more than two hundred years ago for the sole purpose of containing the Sola, you.”

Kane watched her, apparently waiting for some kind of reaction. But she would not give him the satisfaction, so he continued.

“And I have one more surprise for you before I end your mission before it ever truly began,” he said theatrically.

He signaled to the tree line and Arianna saw a man approaching. He walked slowly and was followed by another, larger man who pointed a gun at his back. As both men drew closer, she gasped in horror and saw that the man with the gun trained on his back was Luke.

“Arianna!” Luke called to her. Tears streaked his dirtied cheeks and panic filled his voice. His eyes were wide with terror as they searched hers for answers.

“I’m sorry, I can’t do that. He helped you kill two of my men, two servants of the Lord. Their deaths cannot go unanswered,” Kane said and withdrew a pistol from his robe. He aimed it inches from Luke’s forehead and Luke began to cry uncontrollably.

“No!” Arianna screamed but the sound of her voice was stifled by the deafening sound of a gunshot. Luke’s body fell to the ground, his once lively silver eyes now vacant.

Howard gestured to the men who lingered in the courtyard and each of them began igniting torches they held. Then, one by one, they threw their torches into the kindling at her feet. The kindling began to burn immediately, the flames growing and expanding. But Arianna did not feel the heat of the flames lapping at her ankles, and she did not feel sadness or grief. A new feeling had overtaken her, surging and coursing through her being. It melted each of her emotions, the ache in her chest, her anger, and her need for vengeance, each seeped from her, until all that remained inside her was pure power. Her entire body began to radiate red light. It shone as if the power within her could no longer be contained by her flesh, pulsing vibrantly, harshly, hissing like fiery snakes from her skin. In that moment, she realized she was no longer Arianna Rose. She was the Sola.

HOWARD KANE STARED in shock. He began to feel fear for the first time in over twenty years, since he was a boy being abused. The vision before him, Arianna Rose’s entire body alight in a scarlet halo, could not be happening. She had transformed into the Sola, living and breathing. The fire beneath her had climbed up her body, yet she remained unscathed. He watched in equal parts horror and disbelief as she lifted her glowing arms out to her sides, like a Phoenix defying its death pyre and spreading its wings. The shackles around her wrists snapped then fell to the flames as though they’d been constructed of chintzy material, not iron.

He wanted to run, to flee from the imminent destruction, but his legs refused to budge from where they stood. Instead, he was forced to witness the Sola raising her arms, flames shooting out in every direction. Each of his men at the perimeter of the circle that had surrounded her was suddenly ablaze. He heard their tortured screams tear through the evening sky. He clapped his hands to his ears, trying futilely to muffle their cries, and saw that the rest of his men staggered from the surrounding woods, their flesh burning. Everyone around him burned. He was the only one who remained. He became confident that God had spared him.

That confidence buoyed him as the Sola stepped toward him. She stopped directly in front of him and glared at him with eyes that blazed with the blood of those who’d martyred themselves. She loomed near him then spoke with a voice so haunting, the hairs on his body rose like quills.

“You are a fool, Howard Kane,” she said and her voice echoed through him. “A fool who believes God is directing him to murder.”

“No!” she shouted silencing him. “You kill because you enjoy it, because you are evil,” she accused.

His insides began to trill, a sudden inexplicable phenomenon. “God has chosen me to hunt witches, to protect mankind,” he said in a trembling voice.

The Sola began to laugh, a mirthless sound that resonated through the courtyard. “No, Howard. You are one of us. God is not drawing you to us. Your own power is.”

Howard’s eyes widened and a breath of awareness raced across his skin. He knew she’d spoken the truth, could feel it deep within him. He was a warlock. He was not going to heaven as a soldier of the Lord. He would burn in hell for eternity alongside the rest of the evil beings he’d already sent there.

The Sola smiled at him as though she’d read the recognition in his heart as plainly as she would have read a neon sign. She swept her arm out to one side and he felt himself flying through the air. It wasn’t until he felt his back collide with something slender and hard that he understood what was happening. His wrists were suddenly immobilized behind him around the pole, though nothing tangible bound them.

“You have spent your life hunting and killing your own people, my people. You convinced yourself you were doing noble work, God’s work, and now, you will burn here on Earth, and for eternity.”

Howard cried out in terror, her words cutting through his very core. She gestured again and brush at his feet blazed angrily. She assumed a position in front of him and locked eyes with him. He felt the weight of her judgment blister as painfully as the flames that traveled up his body. He howled in agony, the heat unbearable as darkness teased at his vision.

Fire lapped at him, torturously, excruciatingly. But the Sola remained before him, unflinching.

The last image Howard Kane beheld was a pair of scarlet eyes glowing vengefully at him, glowering, judging his final moment on Earth, and casting him to hell.

Arianna staggered from the courtyard, dragging legs that felt leaden, to the small doorway she’d come through and into the sacristy. Each part of her body resisted movement and ached agonizingly. She stumbled after every few unsteady steps she took. Pain shot through her head and felt like someone had shoved a sharp blade into her brain and continued to twist it with every move she made. Shock had not brought with it numbness, or silence. To the contrary, every cell in her body screamed at once, a deafening shriek from which there was no escape. She covered one ear with her hand, a painstaking effort she immediately regretted, and found that the shrill sound only burrowed deeper inside her head and shook her bones. She dropped her hand immediately and nearly collapsed, but a familiar image flashed before her eyes.

Blue eyes, a brilliant shade that matched the sky on a clear day, penetrated the dimness of the church and watched Arianna. She was sure it was a hallucination, a wishful product of her fractured brain, until she heard his voice.

He reached for her as she was about to collapse and she crumpled into his arms. He pulled her close and she felt his warmth surround her immediately. Relief carried her on its current and the stabbing pain in her skull began to recede like a wave, taking with it the smarting pain in her muscles.

“I felt what happened here,” he said solemnly. “I got here as soon as I could.”

“They’re dead, Desmond. They’re both dead,” Arianna whispered. And with her admission, the floodgates that had held her emotions at bay faltered. Tears rained down her cheeks, a sudden deluge from a vast tempest of hurt. Her mother was dead. Luke was dead. Lily was dead. Everyone she’d cared about had died, because of her. Desmond was the only one who remained.

Desmond tightened his arms around her. Her cheek pressed against his solid chest. She felt his lips touch the top of her head. “You should have called on me,” he said softly.

Arianna brought her hands up and pushed them against his chest, forcing him back. She stood of her own volition now, the physical ache and heaviness nearly gone, and put enough space between them so that she could look into his eyes.

“No,” she said in a voice far stronger than she felt. “I had to go alone. We both know that.”

Had he fought alongside her, he, too, would be dead. He stared at her for several knowing moments, his luminous gaze wise. He knew she had spoken the truth, she could see it in his face. He could not have helped her in her battle with Howard Kane. She was the Sola.

“Yes,” she breathed and brushed back tears. “I felt nothing but power, like I wasn’t me anymore. I was everywhere at once. I was light and fire, I was,” she paused and closed her eyes. “I was the Sola.”

Arianna opened her eyes and met Desmond’s. “I know,” he said. “I felt your power. We all did. And now they know you’re here, that you live.”

The gravity of Desmond’s words sent a ripple of uncertainty through Arianna’s being. The witches of the world had felt her power reach its fullest potential. They now knew the prophecy had been fulfilled, that the Sola had come. They would look to her for guidance, for support, for protection. She was supposed to unite all witches on Earth. But she hadn’t the slightest idea what to do next.

“What do I do now?” she asked Desmond. “I’m only eighteen. I can’t live on my own, alone.”

She heard herself say the word, felt it punch through her core. Alone. Her mother was dead, her only family member, murdered. She was all alone.

Desmond stared into her eyes, his expression grave, and said, “You are the Sola. It is your destiny to walk alone.”

Arianna paused, repeating what Desmond had just said in her head a few times, sifting through them for sense, for meaning. Alone. It was her destiny to walk through life alone, as in, without him either.

She knew she’d just begged him to stay with her, heard the words fall from her lips, but had not been able to stop herself from saying them. She did not want Desmond to leave. She needed him, hated that she needed him, hated the vulnerability she swore she’d never feel at the mercy of a man, yet felt for Desmond. He was the only person she had left. Everyone else was gone forever, leaving in their wake a cavernous, aching hole. He felt like home to her. And she needed him.

“I cannot go with you,” he said and she saw it in his eyes, urgency, and a certainty. His eyes were like matching oceans of tropical water, warm, clear, and bottomless. She searched them, looked into them for miles and miles, yet nowhere in their fathomless depths did she see contradiction to the words he’d just spoken. For reasons she was unaware of, perhaps it was destiny or something far more mysterious, he could not accompany her on her journey.

“Why?” she asked and saw an emotion flicker across his face. She could not identify it. It hadn’t lasted long enough. He’d composed his features immediately into his usual mask of serenity.

“Your time has come, Arianna. You will go off; your missions will be forever changing. This,” he said and gestured to the church around him. “This clash with Howard Kane, it was just the beginning. There are more people like him, people who hunt witches. Your help is needed in so many places.”

Arianna’s head swam, overwhelmed by a sense of duty she feared she could not fulfill. “How will I know where to go, who to go to?”

All of it was too much. The tremendous losses she’d suffered, the responsibilities awaiting her, her condemnation to a life of solitude, it was too much. She needed something, someone, to anchor her to sanity, to give her something to live for. Without thinking, she stood on her tiptoes and wrapped both arms around his neck, clinging to him like a lifeline. She held on to him tightly, pressing her body to his and savored the feel of his warmth, of the safety she felt with him. She pressed her cheeks to his and whispered, “Please don’t leave me.”

Firm fingers gripped her upper arms suddenly and Desmond held her at arm’s length. “I want to stay,” he said. “I want to stay more than you’ll ever know. Please understand that.”

His eyes, suddenly molten, burned into hers with intensity that was overwhelming. She inhaled a trembling breath and waited for him to continue. “I have been with you for so long, cared for you from a distance. You’ve been a part of my life, a part of me, for as long as I can remember. I can’t imagine my life without you. I’ve dreaded this moment,” he said and looked away.

“Then stay,” she begged and cupped his face in her hands, returning his gaze to her.

“So I’ll never see you again, is that how it works?” she asked and felt her brows draw together in mystification. “It doesn’t even make sense.”

“Of course you’ll see me again. I’ll always come when you call upon me.”

Arianna wanted to argue, wanted to press him for a reason, but knew deep down, that it was pointless.

She started to pull away from him, his hands still held her arms. He gripped her more tightly then pulled her against him. He lowered his face to her and she could feel the hurried rise and fall of his chest, feel his hot breath against her mouth.

He stared at her for a long moment. He placed his hands under her chin then slowly, achingly slowly, his lips met hers.

The world fell away from Arianna for the briefest of moments. The insurmountable ache of loss and melted as the sweet taste of his lips sent a tingle of electricity through her body, something that wiggled and whispered through her soul. It wasn’t about mourning, or her powers, the battles that awaited her or what she could do to help others like her. It was about the feel of him, and only him, the feel of Desmond’s lips upon hers. He was an irrevocable part of her, and she of him. His kiss somehow sealed that unspoken connection between them, and explained why he could not stay. He kissed her slowly, softly, a gentle act of his undeclared feelings for her.

His mouth felt blissful against hers and she wanted more. She wanted to be closer to him, as close as she could possibly be. She wanted to affirm life, to acknowledge the existence of something other than death, for death surrounded her, followed her.

She flattened his lips with hers and tightened her hold on him, then raked her nails down his broad back to his taut waist. She lifted the back of his shirt and felt his smooth skin beneath her fingertips, warm and inviting. The urge to peel his shirt from his body and feel his bare skin against hers pressed at her until his hands pushed her away.

“Your lips say that, but is that what you really mean?” she replied. She nibbled his lower lip, and he groaned a delightful sensual sound that reached intimate parts of her.

“Arianna, no,” he said more sternly and grabbed her shoulders. He held her back, away from him. “I want nothing more than to,” he said and allowed his eyes to travel her body from head to toe. “But we can’t.”

“Why? Are there rules about that, too? Am I to be chaste as well as alone?” she asked and knew she sounded irrational, like a pouting teenager.

“No. There are no rules. And you have not been chaste,” he said and for the first time, his voice was not even. A hint of acid had crept into it.

Arianna’s cheeks blazed. He was referring to her night with Luke, a night she’d regretted wholeheartedly. Desmond had been jealous. She’d suspected it, had thought she’d heard the slightest traces of jealousy in his voice when she’d seen him afterward, but had dismissed it. A remote part of her supposed she should be flattered that he cared, but hearing Luke’s name, poor, sweet Luke who had died because of his short relationship with her, only saddened her.

“I have to go,” Desmond said dejectedly. “And so do you. You are needed.”

Desmond did not give her time to protest or ask questions. Instead, he wrapped his arms around her and she felt a tingle begin in her chest and branch out as softly as a breath blowing across her skin, warm and welcoming, throughout her body. She felt the familiar flow of his energy through her, thrumming in time with her heartbeat, whispering through every part of her. Arianna pulled back for a second to look at his face, desperate to memorize every plane of his beautiful, serene, face. She did not know when she would see it again. His golden hair haloed the perfectly sculpted angles of his face. He looked as though he had been carved from marble, save for his eyes. He eyes stared into hers, through hers into the farthest reaches of her soul. Then he pulled her close to him, and she felt her breath catch in her chest. Light filled her field of vision, brilliant white light. Desmond and his warmth enveloped her and for a fleeting second, the loss and loneliness that escorted her like a dark and permanent passenger, faded. All she felt was Desmond.

When darkness returned, Desmond was gone and the yawning pit of grief slowly returned. Her hand covered her heart and she doubled over for a moment. Then she heard a voice whisper through her mind, “I love you, Arianna. We will meet again soon,” was all it said. But each word caressed her being with frothy wisps of comfort, of hope. She would see Desmond again.

Jennifer and Christopher Martucci hoped that their life plan had changed radically in early 2010. To date, the jury is still out. But late one night, in January of 2010, the then stay-at-home mom of three girls under the age of six had just picked up the last doll from the playroom floor and placed it in a bin when her husband startled her by declaring, “We should write a book, together!” Wearied from a day of shuttling the children to and from school, preschool and Daisy Scouts, laundry, cooking and cleaning, Jennifer simply stared blankly at her husband. After all, the idea of writing a book had been an individual dream each of them had possessed for much of their lives. Both had written separately in their teens and early twenties, but without much success. They would write a dozen chapters here and there only to find that either the plot would fall apart, or characters would lose their zest, or the story would just fall flat. Christopher had always preferred penning science-fiction stories filled with monsters and diabolical villains, while Jennifer had favored venting personal experiences or writing about romance. Inevitably though, frustration and day-to-day life had placed writing on the back burner and for several years, each had pursued alternate (paying) careers. But the dream had never died. And Christopher suggested that their dream ought to be removed from the back burner for further examination. When he proposed that they co-write a book on that January night, Jennifer was hesitant to reject the idea outright. His proposal sparked a discussion, and the discussion lasted deep into the night. By morning, the idea for their first series was born.

The Dr. Frank N. Stein series, as well as the Arianna Rose series and the Planet Urth series, The Vampire Extinction series and the Demon Hunter series are works that were written while Jennifer and Christopher continued about with their daily activities and raised their young children. They changed diapers, potty trained and went to story time at the local library and served as room parents. All while writing. Life simply continued. And in some ways, their everyday lives were reflected in the characters of each series.

As the story line continues to evolve, so too does the Martucci collaboration. Lunches are still packed, the “Mom taxi” still exists and time remains a valued and precious in their household. All has grown and changed. Jennifer and Christopher agree that the sound of happy chaos is the true background music of their writing. They hope that all enjoy reading their work as much as they enjoyed writing it.

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