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

“You set a man on fire back at the club,
you
, with
your
powers.”

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.  S
he 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, on
e
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 sh
e 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 what?” she managed, her voice a strangled whisper.

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

“Us?  Who’s us?”

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

“I’m a witch?” she gasped.

“I prefer to call you a seer.  Your powers are not of this world.”

“So I’m Arianna the Seer?”

“No, you’re Arianna Rose, the Sola,” he corrected.

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.

“Hunted?  Why?  By who?”

“We are being hunted as part of a search.”

“A search for what?”

“For you.”

“For me?”

“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 h
er brain
attempted to deny what her heart, what her entirety, knew to be true. 

“People are dying,
for me
?” she asked weakly.

“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.  The
y
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?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” he began but she cut him off.

“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.

Seeing her cry, Desmond’s demeanor softened visibly.

“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.”

“I can’t imagine it’s worse than this,” she said.

“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.”

“Close?  Close to us
?”

“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.

“Yes, but I was able to get you out of there in time.”

“Wait, what? You didn’t do anything in Rockdale.  I never saw you there.”

“I did do something,” Desmond
confessed
.

“What did you do, Desmond?”

“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 had come home before the bartender had 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.

“I think it’s time to get back to the club,” Desmond replied.

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

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

“What, I mean
,
how is that possible?” she asked, but he did not a
nswer.  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.

Chapter 2

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 alleywa
y.  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 shoulder
s, her need for physical contact, for connection, replacing any awkwardness she m
ight
have otherwise felt
for her action
.