Blood of Eden
CHAPTER FIVE
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Moments after stepping out the front door, I turn to see the big yellow bus, majorly keyed but otherwise still the same. There are about thirteen creepy-looking little kids hanging out the windows, all of the screaming their heads off.
“Oh, great!” I bitterly curse. I had forgotten about the racket. Well…not anymore. Last year I blew up and threatened a bunch of kids who were jumping seat to seat, most of them in my sister’s grade, and I yelled in a fit of fighting, enraged fury until everyone shut up and went to being quiet for the rest of the bus ride. They stayed sitting down after that, too, but it only lasted for a week or two before starting up again. This time I’ll scare the crap out of anyone who gets on my nerves. I’m not going to ride the bus for an hour in a torrent of head ache-causing chaos every morning and evening for this whole school year!
I sigh and shake my head as I quickly pace down the short sidewalk as Jamie boards the bus. I hear her voice add to the rest of the voices. It’s faint compared to the rest of the yelling, but I am able to understand, “Hey! Kathrice! Dana!” There’s a pause as she says, “No, my summer was terrible, thanks to Marie…”
I ignore the rest and pause to see the familiar white rectangle with the bold, shining black bus number just to my left on the side of the bus. The number seven bus it the one we’ve always ridden. I hope that doesn’t change. I like that number. I reach out to touch it and trace it with my finger—
“Hurry up, kid,” a gruff man’s voice says, causing me to jump and bringing me to my senses. “Get on or stay off. What choice?”
He’s a very large man, probably around three hundred pounds or so, and six feet, and about seven feet tall, perhaps a tid-bit taller. He’s a beastly man with a shaved beard and mustache, rough, ragged-looking swollen face and crooked teeth that curl into a rather unpleasant sneer. His hair is cut like a G.I.”s hair and he’s wearing camo and his sleeves are rolled up, revealing a black tribal tattoo of a dagger dripping blood. His eyes are a deep shade of brown, but sneer as much as his curled lips. He’s definitely not the jolly type of giant-man you usually meet. Most of them remind me of so-called Santa. But this one’s like…his evil twin…or worse. Not sure.
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The noises are very loud and I want to not board the bus. But, as I know I have to, I take the first step. Just as my foot lands on the black rubber-covered step, something suddenly screams from my sinside, jerking at me from the pit of my stomach…
Ashley and Janice use to ride this bus. They always sat with me because we all three sat in the two very back seats with one other kid, a blond-haired guy named James Williams. He sat with us because he was Ashley’s boyfriend, and he was in a grade higher. They would’ve been in tenth grade this year…
I take another step and the pain grows. Somehow, though, it doesn’t connect with my emotions, just like what happened earlier this summer.
Another step, another deep pulse stronger pulling. I reach the top and turn. The noises are so loud…
Slowly, as I begin to walk forward, something keeps pulsating within me, that deep, hypnotic, disturbingly dark pulse. I only stare at the floor, not realizing at first that each seat I pass, those sitting there fall to a hush so quiet a pen could drop and sit, though still watching me as they try to scoot away from me, squishing the person or people closest to the wall and window.
All eyes are on me now and the bus has only a few people talking left. I’ve reached the middle. Mostly the older kids are here-abouts. The braver ones are in the back. I look up and feel all the eyes on me as the bus starts moving.
My head hurts again. You’d think it’d be the noise that set it off, not the absence of noise!
My heart seems to begin to hold anger. There’s two new kids, both taking up the back seats with their backs against the metal of the walls and against the windows as their legs are crossed and stretched out across the dark red, leather seat liners. Both are totally decked out in black, and they have a near-Gothic look about them.
To my left is a really muscled up, bald-headed guy. He’s not at all ugly, but is definitely not one I’d go out with. He has a spiked nose ring on his left nostril and he has a beaded black necklace with four silvery inch-long spikes pointing down as they lay upon his neck from the necklace. He has a light tan, big arms, broad chest and his eyes seem sort of red, almost a blood-red color, but slightly lighter. They are by far, the strangest color I’ve ever see…Perhaps it’s contacts.
The guy is wearing a black leather bomber’s jacket and has a shirt with the flaming black logo dripping blood, “AfterDeath.” The writing is a style I recognize as Dragonwick.
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Around his left wrist is a sort of bracelet that looks kind of like barbed wire, and it even looks sharp. I see scratches as if the bracelet’s cut him before, and even scars.
Eww. Why’d anyone want to wear that?
My eyes flicker to the girl as I look over at her. She’s flicking small pieces of paper at the seat across the isle in front of the guy, and the tiny paper wads are hitting the edge of the seat in almost the exact same spot every time.
The girl has jagged-looking hair that’s cut in a rather cool style. I like it actually. It's a little shorter around the back and the bangs are kind of long and curved in toward her neck. Streaked though the black is a natural-looking red hair colour. It runs through the bangs.
Wow. Looks like that took a lot of time and effort. You probably have to bleach the strands and then that color or something, and she chose the right color, too.
Her eyes are about the same strange hue as the guy’s, and she’s quite thin, like me, and looks kind of short, too. Her skin is a little lighter than the guy’s skin and she has on a girl’s biker jacket. She also has a very dark maroon silky-looking shirt with a black lacy material sewn to curve with the low neck. She’s got black leather biker’s pants on, too.
Wonder where she got those. They look kind of expensive.
Her right leg is up so that her right arm is resting atop her knee.
She flicks another tiny paper wad after tearing a small scrap of paper from the piece of paper in her left hand. I notice her black fingernails.
“You’re in my seat,” I tell her. There is a rather dark sound to my voice. My words are still accented, but I didn’t say it all that loud, so it wasn’t so noticeable.
She flicks another, but this time at me, and it bounces off the new cut on my head.
She nods slightly at it. “What happened to your head?” she asks, her black lips sneering at me in a half-bait smile. “You get into a fight with the rat that jumped out of your trash-can?”
She flicks another and it again hits my head wound, causing me to blink. It’s extremely sensitive. The guy, I suppose her brother, since they look enough alike and dress enough alike and have nearly the same eyes and all, snickers almost so quiet that I can’t hear him.
“Could one of you move?” I asks. I still feel everyone’s eyes on me and these two new kids as the bus rolls on. I can sense their interest.
She looks over at her brother, exchanging a glance with him, and they both slouch quite a bit more, an obvious ‘no’ with heated attitude.
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This really ticks me off and I have the urge to jump her and start trying to beat the hell out of her.
The pulse is suddenly ten times stronger, and I’m now dizzy, though I don’t sway or lean, and can’t bring my hand to take hold of the seat for support to keep myself from falling or stumbling. My heart seems to take more pressure as it somehow begins to slow. I don’t understand why the opposite of what should happen is happening. Adrenaline is coursing through my veins and my hearing’s gone faint as the energy surges through me…yet I stand still, resisting the will to attack her.
She crumbles up another tiny piece of paper between her thumb and finger and lifts her hand to warningly aim.
I don’t blink and she waits a moment and then flicks it. I see it as if in slow motion, and I know it’s going to hit me in the eye, yet I don’t blink…I can’t. It’s like I’ve lost the reflex, and then it hits my left eye.
Strangely I still don’t blink, not even twitch my eyelid…My heart slows more, but the dizziness begins to leave.
I see a hint of a tiny admiring surprise in her eyes.
“You look like you’ve been through hell,” the brother says mockingly. I find myself unable to look or even glance at him. I’m still staring, frozen, at this girl who won’t get out of my seat.
Immediately to my right, in the seat just in front of the seat she’s sitting in, sits James Williams. He never liked being around me all that much, but he at least half-accepted me, mainly because I was Ashley’s friend, though. He’s sitting in such a way that he’s turned so he can see all three of us easily. He speaks up, talking to them, mainly the girl, “You guys know what? Marie’s a psycho. She’ll flip out on you. If you two butt-heads knew her, you’d not try to get in her way.”
Then Jamie cuts in from her seat about the middle of the bus, “No, she’s a freak. I have to live with her, so I know. She’s crazy…”
I look back at her expressionlessly as she smiles slyly, “She sees things in her head and hears them all the time.” That received quite a few silently suppressed laughs. She continues, “You should’ve seen her this summer. She gets more psycho and schizo all the time.”
Now the buff dude’s interested. He looks at me thoughtfully and directs his attention back to Jamie as he leans forward, sitting upright and hanging his arms over the seat as he crosses them and leans his head so that his chin rests upon the seat. He’s got a slight, intent frown on his face. He glances at me a couple of times as she speaks. But it’s not a disgusted look. Surprisingly, it’s an almost friendly look, no longer the threatening one he beheld a while ago.
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Actually, I get a vibe that they’re the type who would compete to be the biggest freak and that they like the outcasts and other freaks, and they seem proud of their freakish nature.
He chuckles when she completes her so-called speech and says, “She sees things, huh?”
I can imagine her cringing because a freak spoke to her.
Then his strange eyes look into mine as he smiles, revealing bright teeth and an even smile. There is laughing humor in his eyes and he tries to suppress his smile and get serious, “What types of things?”
His sardonic actions are making me rather angry, so I tell him flatly as I frown and return the sneer to him he earlier gave me, “You’d kill to get it out of your head.” I then look at the girl and tell her, “And that little rat bite on my head was from—“ I suddenly change my mind and shake my head. “Just get out of my seat.”
Jamie again speaks, loudly as before, “She sees vampires and shit. Lots of people being killed by’em—“
I turn my head in light anger and impatience seeking to hit her and wrap my fingers around her throat and beat her head against the red seat she’s standing next to. But I ignore the impulse. “But if you insist I just see, then you should recall that the ten people were dead. If you recall what happened to me when I knocked you out…Remember?” By now, a smile has wrenched itself loose.
I see the color drain from her face and her mouth shuts. She begins to turn around, and then she sits. But then she looks back to both of the new kids and tells them as she avoids meeting my gaze. “You’re both gothic right? Or freaks or whatever? Hope you tear her head off and do something creepy to it. I’m just glad I found out she was adopted and I wasn’t.”
She gives me a cocky smile and then turns to chat with Kathrice and Dana.
I turn to again direct my attention to the two new kids. Surprisingly, though, they’re both smiling at me as if something’s funny, or as if they like me or…I’ve no idea what…Maybe they’re imagining something “creepy” to do with my head or something.
Then I see admiration in the girl’s eyes. She half-smiles with a cool smile and tells me, “I hate preps,” as she nods to Jamie. Her red eyes return to me once more as she cocks her head slightly to the side in a thoughtful manner, “You on the other hand…You don’t look like a freak stereo-type. What they sayin’ true?”
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She flicks another paper ball at me but something forces me to lash out the second she does. Only, instead of trying to hit her, that impulse snaps my fingers gracefully into an arc and suddenly I flick the wad and it hits her in the eye.
She jumps spontaneously and curses, dropping the rest of the shredded paper to rub her eye. But a moment later, as her brother laughs, se looks up, beginning to laugh, too.
Both of them seem to relax quite a bit. The girl sits up correctly and scoots over closer to the window. “You can sit with me,” she tells me with a smile as she goes to rub her eye again.
“That was great,” the guy says, leaning back and taking his previous position against the wall and window as he watches us.
Everyone’s attention had dwindled away when they realized there’d be no fight, and they began to talk again, the noise winding up again, though quite a bit less toward the back.
The girl is no longer rubbing her eye as she tells me, “You don’t have to worry about us…We don’t bite.”
It was meant as a joke and I know it was, but I can’t smile. I look at her and try to fake a smile, “I just found out this summer that I do. Don’t know why either.”
He laughs quietly again.
I kind of like this guy. He’s not as dark as he had seemed. He’s rather cool. This girl is, too, and both look almost gothic, though I get the feeling they’re not.
“Vampires, huh?” He nods as he speaks and then shakes his head as if it’s ridiculous. But then he shrugs, “Cool enough. Just don’t bite me…That like a favorite creature or something?”
I roll my eyes, “No. I hate them. They like blood and kill for sport. I hate blood and would rather die than having to go through what I’ve gone through lately.”
“Like what?” Curiosity edges upon his face and remains evident.
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“Leave it,” I tell him as a frown snakes its way onto my own face.
The girl then says, “You got the kind of attitude I like. You’re cocky, but…seem like a freak-out type—psycho-type. Never know what they’re thinking.”
The brother simply rolls his eyes, “Intriguing.”
“He’s my older brother,” the girl tells me. “His name’s Chase.”
As she says his name, his wrist twitches a wave to which his hand agrees. But his arm doesn’t move much.
She continues, “And my name’s Danique Kilbourne. What’s yours again?”
“Marie.”
“Right,” she smiles. “So what’s your last name?”
“Ivan.” I’m not exactly thrilled with this. Making friends with them feels like replacing Ashley and Janice, and no one could ever take their place. I don’t really want these two as friends, even if they’re cool and nice and everything. Honestly, I don’t want anyone as a friend. I just want to be left alone.
I close my eyes and lean forward till my forehead touches the seat and close my eyes. “Middle name’s Draculess, and I’m serious, not joking.”
“Weird,” Chase says.
I’m extremely tired. I’ve been up for four hours, since three o’clock this morning, and I went to bed probably around night. Yesterday we got all my books from school and got my classes chosen and a locker number for me.
I feel myself slowly drifting to sleep and stop answering their questions or talking to them. Their voices and the voices of every other person fade slowly and that drifting feeling begins to return. The pain in my head is only a mere numb tingle now, and the familiar sensation of that other world or view or mind, or whatever, that I saw from earlier, returns to me once more…
But it’s much different now, though still as blurred as before.
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There is a light breeze, a very warm, comforting heat. I am of a child’s mind again, a young feeling, and I am barely awake. There is a woman’s voice very familiar to the child’s ears. It’s a motherly voice, and comforting to me. My position seems strangely different than I am aware I’m actually in. It’s as if I am curled upon a bench or something, and my head is resting upon her lap.
I hear another child’s voice whimpering faintly. It’s very echoed, as is the woman’s voice as she speaks to him. But this time, I understand what the woman’s voice says, though it seems so very distant and quiet. “Shhh. Don’t wake your sister, Riva. Aidenn’s very tired. You both fought well and learned much of the gift today. You’re both surprisingly strong, but she lost a lot of strength. Let her be, let her be…”
The child said something else and she told him, “Yes, you may go train with Danica, but don’t rush too far ahead or stay too far behind in case the Pyr soldiers or an enemy scout spots you. You know of the danger. And stay away from the soldiers’ roads…”
“Yes Mo’era,” the young child says.
To this, I left my head and my eyes open as a smile peeks out my eyes and lips, a childish smile so full of joy.
“Momma!” I say quickly, looking up into the woman’s blurred, dark face. I perceive a smile.
The woman says to me, “What is it, young Ember?”
“Can I go with him?” My strength draws and I feel the heat stirring within me, quivering, trembling.
She chuckles, “The both of you are as unpredictable as flames. Yes, Aidenn, go with your brother. He will likely forget Danica. He prefers a match fight.”
I quickly jump up and begin to run, yelling back, “Thank-you, Mo’era!”
I begin next, to shout his name, “Riva! Riva! Wait for me! Riva! Guess what?” I reach him in this hazy vision, and see his eyes clearly; red eyes.
This child’s red eyes are much darker-a-shade than Chase’s nearly orange eyes or Danique’s lighter shade. His hair is short and black, and there is a streak of blond down either side of his bangs, which are cut just above his eyebrows and have the now-natural form or revealing his forehead because of constantly being brushed aside.
In this mind, his hair is always like this, and when I see it, I recognize it as the same as mine. I seem to pay no attention to it. His eyes widen in excitement and I tell him, “Momma let me come fight you! I woke up…”
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He smiles.
I try harder to see, again becoming the older version, but now just remembering it. My pain and grief is strong again and I am now cold and empty inside, as if something has been taken away. I am trying to remember how it felt to be warm inside, to have that strange energy.
It is dark, nighttime, as I perceive. There is a group of figures gathered round a distant fire. I glance at them and then I look back up to the starry sky. A tear trickles down my cheek and I sense a presence before me suddenly, so I look down and see the child, Riva. There’s a gash in his head and blood covering the right side of his face and still dripping farther, down his neck. He stands ever still, motionless and timeless, unblinking as he stares so very sadly into me. There is a blood-ridden tear that silently falls from his eye.
“Riva…” I whisper sadly. A twisted word tumbles from my lips and it reveals itself to mean brother, or sibling, or family member, depending upon the intended meaning, “Kyedesh….”
I look away sadly for a moment and the presence dissipates into the darkness around me…If only I could use the gift, if only….Perhaps what I remember of using it is only dreams, though. I am not like everyone else. That is why they hate me. I am powerless and the fire burns me…
Whoa—What?
Blood of Eden Chapters
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