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Michael tossed something at me, the object flying fast as I sat up to catch it. The journal. I nodded, grasping his hint. We didn’t have time to lay around and try to find our courage. If we wanted this battle to take place and the running to stop, we needed to find a solution to stop Bentos.
With the power of three being the only thing we knew that might help, it was time to see if the wolf journal had anything to help. Too bad I couldn’t read all of it.
“See what you can find. We’ll stay here tonight, but we leave in the morning.” Michael pinned me with his stare, his dislike of Rob sitting all over his handsome features.
“Leaving already? I kinda like this place. It’s so... country.” The sound of Rob breathing in deeply caused my lip to turn up.
“You’re more than welcome to stay behind and guard the house. Fine by me.” Michael shrugged and turned.
Rob mimicking him in a rather high-pitched voice didn’t sound like Michael at all. “Stay behind n’ guard the house.”
“Watch it!” Michael yelled over his shoulder.
“I’m a Grollic. Not a dog,” Rob muttered.
I couldn’t help but watch Michael walk away, the strong muscles of his back pressing against his t-shirt, his blond hair almost seeming to shimmer every time the sun hit it. What he saw in me was beyond understanding, but I’d take it as long as he let me.
“Not to your own ears, but Jamie and I heard something pretty much like my rendition of you.”
Mortified, I didn’t know where to look or what to say.
“It’s Rouge.” Michael’s voice grew soft as he left.
I watched him leave, torn between going to talk to him and staying here with Rob. I wished the two of them could get along. I elbowed Rob. “Don’t mock him anymore. It’s not cool.”
“Fine. I’ll try not to.” Rob rolled his eyes before letting them focus on the book in my hand. “How’d you end up with the journal again?” He sat up, reaching over to touch it.
I jerked it away out of habit, a look of surprise running across his features.
“Sorry.” I extended it, my heart beat racing at the idea of him touching it. Why did it feel so intimate, like something I should hide away and treasure only for myself? That thought alone should have me handing the damn thing over to Michael for safe keeping, but did I trust him with it?
No one but you...
Rob shrugged and clasped his hands together, raising them high into the air and seeming to ignore my offering to touch the book.
“You ignoring me?” He smirked and dropped his arms.
“Yeah.” I opened it to a random page, scanning the foreign language, the images blurring a little as I concentrated on the curve of the first letter. I blinked a few times and looked up, a slight pressure in my head. Surely I could push past the blockage that held me back from understanding what it said. If my father had gifted me, even grudgingly and not by his choice, all of this power because I had the Seventh Mark, then everything I needed to decipher the words lay inside of me. How to unlock them had become the question. I’d unlocked bits and pieces before, why couldn’t I now?
“Jamie?”
“Call me Rouge please. Jamie’s not my name.” I glanced over at him, Rob jolting back a little from me.
“What the hell?” He moved from the bench.
“What?” I dropped the journal in my lap and swatted at my hair and face. “Is it a spider? I hate bugs.”
He reached for me, stilling my arms. “No. Your eyes turned oily black, like the cover of the journal. What did you do?”
I shook my head slightly, blinking like crazy. “Is it gone?”
He nodded, his mouth hanging open. “What’d you do?”
Feeling like nothing had happened, I wasn’t sure if he was teasing me or really scared. “I tried to focus on the words. I can only read certain parts. It’s driving me insane.” I growled in frustration and picked the book back up. My eye color was the least of my concerns.
“Do the words make sense when you first look at them or do they shift into focus?”
“Lately none of it makes sense, but that’s because I’m fighting who I am.” How did I know that?
“Then stop fighting.” He smiled as I looked up at him.
“I don’t know how.”
“Accept it. Own it. Use it.” He moved beside me, leaning over as I opened the book again.
“Nothing but jumbled symbols and signs here, and here, and here.” I flipped through, Rob’s finger stopping me as he touched the top of one of the pages. He jumped back and hissed, lifting his finger to his mouth and blowing on it. “What the hell was that?”
I held my place in the book and moved off of the bench. “What’s happened?”
“Why didn’t you tell me it would?”
“Would what?”
“Burn me!” He stuck his finger in his mouth, pulled it out quick and began blowing on it.
“I didn’t know it would do that. Actually, I think you’re the first Grollic I’ve seen touch it.” I brought it toward him again and he jumped away from it. “Hey, I’m still figuring all of this out.” I sighed. “Is the skin melted from your finger?”
“It’s probably half gone. I swear I can feel bone.” He glanced down at his finger, turning his hand over. “It’s... It’s not.”
“Then stop crying like a baby.” I smiled and glanced at him, unable to help myself from chuckling at his pain. He growled a warning, but I ignored him, walking a few steps away as my eyes moved across the triangle at the top of the entry on the page I’d bookmarked with my finger. “This the triangle you were pointing at before the book laid a hurting on you?” I looked over my shoulder and got the bird flipped at me. “Classy.”
“Yes. It’s gotta be the power of three. Three corners... points... whatever you call them.”
I began to pace, an idea forming in my head. “Say three people were fighting together against a group of attackers. What’s the best military position to take?”
“That’s easy, you go for higher ground.”
“Say you can’t do that. Say you’re surrounded. You need eyes on all of the enemy right?” I wasn’t a military person, but the idea in my head seemed to think I knew something about it. “If there were three people fighting together they would put their backs toward one another.”
Rob nodded. “Then you would have eyes and ears on everyone if you worked together.”
I snapped my fingers. “Exactly! Three people facing three directions. It would create a triangle!” I made the shape with my hand.
“Except you could only fight that way for so long. If you’re surrounded by a pack of Grollics, and Bentos is one of them, you’re pretty much screwed.”
I rubbed my thumb along the image, the black ink fading to red and back to black. A soft gasp left me, my eyes widening as I tried it again.
Nothing.
“Try to focus and read something from that page, Jamie.”
“Rouge.”
“Whatever.”
I looked up and glared at him. He held his hands up and took a few steps toward me. It was my turn to growl.
He grinned and nodded. “Nice. Very Grollic-like. You’ll need to learn to foam at the mouth, too.” He chuckled.
I ignored him as the diary began warming in my hands. I looked back down. “You’ve not seen me early in the morning,” I jested, my thought long removed from the silly conversation with my brother. Something inside of me whispered the truth of this page, of this entry. The power of three... the triangle. It had to be perfectly balanced to stand strong. None of the sides would be able to bend or break, or be less effective than the others.
I squinted, calling into the depths of my mind to bring the words to life. Nothing.
“What’re you doing?” Rob asked, his voice seemingly distant.
“Show me what I want to see,” I whispered. The wind blew around me, the world fading slightly as the words just below the symbolic picture turned crimson and lifted off the page. I yelped and dropped the book, the world around me went dark. I froze. What the heck had just happened? I tried blinking but everything stayed black. “Rob?”
“I’m right here. Just breathe. Your eyes are black again. Can you see anything?” His hand touched my wrist lightly.
I blinked frantically, my heart racing as fear washed over me in suffocating waves.
I see you...
The world came into view and I looked around, searching for who might be watching us.
“Rouge, what did it say? Could you read any of it?”
I stopped turning and stared at Rob, the air so hard to breathe. “I only got the title of the entry. You’re right. It said ‘Power of Three’.”
He waved his hand, annoyed I wasn’t telling him everything. You didn’t need to be a rocket scientist to figure out that something had just transpired. “What else happened?”
I didn’t know exactly, nor was I ready to talk about it. Could Bentos pinpoint me when I read the book? Or was it the power I had to pull forth from deep inside myself to have it make any sense? “I don’t know.” I was terrified. “I think I need to lay down. I feel sick to my stomach.” I clutched my stomach trying to fight the bile rising in my throat at the same time.
Rob picked up the book and tossed it to me, yelping again as he burned himself. I caught it and moved toward the house, the forest seeming darker and more ominous all of a sudden. I didn’t want to tell Rob about the strange voice. Should I tell Michael?
I knew one of two things; either the book was talking to me, or Bentos was.
Rob opened the door and tried to tease me. “You feel sick because you ate a twelve-inch sub. Piggie.”
He was being stupid, but I appreciated the distraction. I popped him in the chest and moved toward the stairs.
Michael appeared at the opening to the kitchen and he looked past me to Rob.
“We need to change a tire on the Jeep. You any good with those types of things?”
“I lived in the poorest part of town but everyone I knew there drove a nice car.” He straightened and saluted Michael. “I can change all your tires and wash your windows in twenty minutes flat.”
I turned and rolled my eyes at Rob before making my way up the stairs.
“Good, just the one tire then.” Michael’s voice followed me, the sound of his feet moving up the stairs behind me giving comfort.
“I’m going to lay down.” I walked into the bedroom. “I feel kind of sick. Maybe it was the sub,” I lied.
“Mind if I come with you?”
“Not at all, but I’m serious about trying to take a nap.”
“I understand.” He moved in behind me and closed the door as I crawled up on the bed and snuggled up on what I figured was my side. He moved in and curled up around my back, his arm wrapping around me and pulling me in close. He moved the hair from my neck and pressed a few soft kisses on my skin as my eyes began to flutter.
“I’m scared,” I whispered, my voice not sounding at all like my own.
“I know. But Rouge, I’m here with you. I’m not going anywhere. Neither is Grace, and we couldn’t get rid of your mangy brother if we tried.”
I chuckled, the warmth of Michael’s embrace pulling me deeper into the need for rest. I needed to come clean with him about everything that was happening inside of me, but what if it scared him? What if he rejected me simply because he wouldn’t know any better than I did how to deal with all of it?
“Did you find anything in the journal, Rouge?” He didn’t sound convinced I would. He kissed just below my ear and I turned in his hold, tucking myself against the front of his body as we lay on our sides. He pulled me in closer and entwined his legs with mine. I wished I weren’t in jeans so I could feel more of his skin, the soft warmth of him always leaving my world spinning out of control.
“I found the page that talks about the power of three.”
He jerked back, looking down at me as I glanced up at him. My eyes started to shut again, my body feeling as if it weighed a thousand pounds.
“What did it say? What are the three objects that we need?”
“I don’t know. I dropped the book when it came to life.”
“It came to life? Explain.” He pulled farther from me and I grumbled, reaching up and pulling him back.
“I’m tired. I’ll talk about it later.” I tucked my face against his t-shirt again and breathed in deeply, wanting him to be my reality and nothing else. “I can’t talk about it now. Please.” I pressed closer to him. “I’m scared... terrified.”
For once he didn’t argue. He simply held me and kissed the side of my head as darkness invaded my thoughts and sleep pulled me down to lay hold of my fear.
