Arianna Rose: The Awakening (Part 2) (15 page)

“Go on,” Howard encouraged.

“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 deprave
d presence.  “Who i
s she with?” he asked.

“A boy, a teenage boy,” John replied.

“Did they arrive together?”

“Yes, she arrived in his truck with him.”

“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.

“No,
they will be gone by then
.  Kill them
, kill them now
.”

Silence befell the other end of Howard’s conversation and was interrupted only by the sound of John’s ragged breathing.

“Are you there, John?  Did you hear what I said?” Howard asked.

“Yes sir,” John replied and Howard heard the faintest tremble in his voice.

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.  They 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.

Chapter 11

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 so 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.

“Gunshot!” she cried.  “That was a gunshot!  Run!”

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.

S
he did not try to answer him.  Sh
e did not have time to explain. 

“
We need to get out of here,
”
he said and held her gaze.  “You run.  I’ll distract them,” he surprised her by saying.

“What?
No!
I’m not leaving you!” she protested.

“Go!” he yelled
,
and
with his cry,
gave up their flimsy hiding place.

He
r
feet moved beneath her,
though she ha
d not will
ed
them to do so. 
She ducked and stayed close to the siding of the garage.  But rather than running toward the wood
s
or making a dash for the front of the hou
se 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 need
ed 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 e
xact 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 very surface around her.  Now, however, s
he 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 pers
on who
intended
to surprise her.

A dark hulking figure stood before her and clutched a gun betw
een
his
hands.  The gun was aim
ed 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
.  B
ut as he squeezed the trigger, a sickening thud echoed through the air
,
and a stunned looked screwed up his features.  The shot
s he’d fired
zipped past her and missed her completely.  T
he 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
-h
e, 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, deaths 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 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 eye
s
refus
ed 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 fa
c
e
.  “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.