Blakeshire (3 page)

“And you had four,” I stated coldly. For the longest time, I thought I was my father’s first son. That was an honor almost as great as royalty in this world. When all hell broke loose, I discovered that I was not the first, but the third. That news triggered the rage I have fought with since the discovery of my past.

“Your
third
is bowing out.”

“You can’t. Not yet.”

I held a cold stare on her, trying to read her. I almost thought that she didn’t want me to go because my youngest brother was barely six; maybe she wanted him to rule, for him to be older. I couldn’t allow that. He was too pure. I alone had fought to protect him from everything I had endured.

“I can’t
, because you feel that some old wives tale has promised you that if you bear sons, this kingdom is yours. I can’t, because you would not dare place your other babes in harm’s way.”

“Not true.”

“I’m not even king yet.” My voice might as well have been ice. She was one of the factors holding me back on that front. Before I could stand, she would have to swear to the court and this world that she was host for Perodine and Donalt; that I was their child, not hers. She would only do so if I went to speak to my father’s spirit.

She stood, gently running her palms over the creases in her gown. “You are well aware the crown is yours. You are the only one holding back, son.” She walked to the doorway before looking back. “We do not live in an instant world. Fate cannot be seen from moment to moment, but over the path of life. You run now, and you will be throwing away each sacrifice your family has made to bring you here.”

She left before I could say another word. That woman always had to have the last word. Always.

Chapter Two

~Madison~

I’m blind...well, maybe not
blind
, but I’m definitely seeing the world through new eyes. Up until a few hours ago, I always saw the emotions of others, their auras. Not only did I see them, I felt them as if they were my own. That was, at one time, my normal. I suppose every climax has a fall, and this must be mine.

You may have guessed that I have never been quite ‘normal,’ but then again, who is? What exactly is normal? Anyway, beyond seeing energy constantly, I have a few other odd flaws. I can see the dead. The damned
-dead, that is. I also have some odd sense that allows me to see into the souls of the living, too.

So a few weeks ago, if I were to look at any soul I would see a wide range of colors around their body, so many that their image, in most cases, glowed or seemed angelic, soft at least. I would also see a constant stream of life events, usually ones that said person was pondering at the moment. And on top of that, I would hear whispers—whispers of the damned.

That was my normal.

Then all hell broke loose. My best friend Charlie was basically hunted, and her memory was taken. We managed our way through that, but then one of my twin cousins, Draven, fell into some kind of dark world that we later came to call The Realm. In that mayhem, we figured out that his energy was more than likely a little darker than the rest of us—the rest of us meaning his twin brother Aden, along with me and Charlie.

All of us can hear the damned, see them in our own way, so for a while we had been looking for a way out, a way to live a ‘normal’ life. With everything happening to Charlie and Draven, we became fierce in our search for peace.

The more we searched, the more we fought, the worse I became. I mean, I’ve always had a bit of a dry wit, but lately sarcasm is all I seem to speak. I thought at first it was just because I was exhausted. My dreams became so vivid that I thought I was living a double life a time or two. I’ve had weird dreams my whole life. I call them weird because in my dreams I didn’t see the way I did when I was awake. There were no colors or energy; each one was all too real, including the sensual boy with eyes as deep as midnight. The boy that could make my heart skip beats with a glance.

Those dreams of him seemed to amp up right around the time Draven and Charlie started having trouble. I tend to research everything, so I assumed, like every article I could find, that in some way my dreams were just a reflection of what was going on in my life, that they were not real. So, I wasn’t all that worried when the boy in my dreams started making horrid decisions, or worse was hurt because of those actions. I took them as a warning for me and my friends to tread carefully, which we always did anyway when it came to redeeming the damned.

Weeks later, I realized that the dreams were not a reflection. I realized that when I saw an epic battle; when I saw Bianca, a girl that had caused a lot of trouble around all of us, fight not only us, but also another girl that looked just like me.

The dream scared the hell out of me, made me think I was having some kind of mental break. My mother put me in a deep hypnosis and recorded the process for me to watch later; she knows I have to have proof of everything. The words that came out of my mouth struck me at my core. I told my mother that a boy that I loved across time thought I was someone else—that the girl he was chasing was in danger, just like me. When my mother pressed for me to explain, all I said was, “Seven; seven deadly emotions.” I repeated words like: ‘twisted,’ ‘fated,’ ‘lost,’ ‘misguided,’ ‘new world order’...tell me that’s not terrifying for anyone to hear.

I reflected on that exercise for countless hours, maybe days; I don’t know anymore. I do know that I came to the realization that the boy I dreamed about in some way or form was real, and he was cheating on me. That made me mad. No, furious. I also assumed that my dreams were telling me that random souls around me were being pulled together unnaturally, that when or if we we
re all close to one another we would be in danger, making it far too easy on our enemies.

Even though I knew my analysis meant that at some point I would have to walk away from my cousins and my best friend Charlie, I held on to that idea and waited for the world to open up and show me the path to my fate, meaning I kept fighting and waiting for the right excuse to walk away.

In my mind, I wanted Draven to be in a safe place because if he was safe, Charlie was safe. I wanted my other cousin, Aden, to face his own haunts, and I wanted to help Charlie figure out how to protect a fifteen-year-old girl, Monroe, who had landed on our doorstep. That was the long and short of my to-do list.

Basically, I figured I was a servant for now and would lead soon. That once I got everyone else taken care of, I could figure out my own fate. Fight my own demons.

It hasn’t quite worked out that way; instead, that girl that looks just like me, Willow, found us and needed us to save none other than the boy that was in my dreams. Our enemy Bianca had pulled him along with Willow’s soul mate, Landen, into The Realm.

I knew as soon as I heard this that we were headed down the wrong path, that we needed to be dividing and conquering, not
migrating into one easy bull’s-eye, but at that point I had no choice. Willow needed us to get those boys out, and the universe needed us to bring them back to the forefront of the war with evil that we have all been slated to fight.

I planned to split right after that point, but Charlie talked me into staying by calling out my weakness, by saying that I wanted to run from Drake, the boy in my dreams, and I did, but that wasn’t the only reason I wanted to run. I just couldn’t tell Charlie that we had to part, that we had come that far only to say goodbye for a little while. She was scared in her own her way, meaning that Charlie was like me in the sense that as long as she had someone to take care of, she could ignore her own demons. Not a good trait for either of us in the long run.

I figured sticking around a few days wouldn’t bring any harm. I was wrong. So very wrong. Hours after coming to the dimension of Chara, Bianca reared her ugly head and attacked. We survived, but right after that these children, these very special children, put us all to sleep. I woke up in hell.

Well, it felt like hell. I still saw emotions, still felt them, but I saw them in a more vibrant way; I felt them deeper in my soul. Basically, it hurt. The slightest negative emotions would nearly kill me; the blissful ones would make me feel so high that I couldn’t think. I was on a violent roller coaster. I couldn’t think. And I
love
to think.

I knew I had to get away from everyone, that this was what my soul was warning me about, but Charlie and the others needed me once more to help save the damned, to pull them out of The Realm, a wicked dream plane.

This time when I entered that wicked place, I was pulled into a moment that I’d endured in a past life; it wasn’t fun the first time, and it sucked even worse the second time. It wasn’t all exactly the same, though. This time, Monroe, the young girl that Charlie and I are trying to protect, was pulled in, too. I saw her standing in a fire and did everything in my power to save her. In the end, I did. But as I pulled her from those flames, a force I could not see started to pull from me. The colors I always saw left, and the insane emotions I always felt left.

In its wake, I felt numb—really numb. I almost felt like my soul was surrounded by shrink-wrap; the power was still there, but it was stored away to use at a later time.

After we reached reality once more, Monroe was furious with me—an emotion I had never once witnessed in her before. Somehow, she threw a wave of energy over me, saying something like ‘Compromise,’ followed by ‘She doesn’t want to feel emotions that she feels she has no right to deal with—request granted.’

All of that was out of character for Monroe; she had always been quiet, blissful, and deep with the words she did choose to say. So, I didn’t take this temper tantrum lightly. I knew there was a double meaning to what she had said.

I couldn’t fathom how Monroe had the power to toy with my insights.

I have no doubt that everyone here thinks I’m broken, that all my supernatural gifts have been stripped, but I think this is a time-out, a crossroads. That maybe Monroe had just taken the nonsense away and pointed an arrow at where I needed to focus.

Every life has peaks and valleys—a reset button, if you will. I was on the wrong track, and somehow Monroe found a way to reroute me. As I was reprogrammed after that last battle, Monroe took away the sensation of fear, stripped the sensation of shock; she bled away the emotion of grief and sorrow. And now here I am with my own personal demon: obsession.

I am currently obsessed with the idea of finding and fighting for my unspoken fate.

Someone is trying to kill me. They have a bull’s-eye on my back, and it has been there ever since I took my first breath. The idea of that fact alone should have my core shaking with anxiety, but I guess you need fear to have anxiety.

Maybe I could use this to my advantage after all. Anxiety is not something I really have time to deal with, and fear—well, fear sucks.

For hours now, I’ve been going over every single thing that happened to me during the last few months. My steaming bath had all but turned me into a raisin a few hours back, but I wasn’t ready to face another soul just then, so I wrapped a towel around me and have been sitting on the edge of this overgrown claw-foot tub, staring at the water, testing my emotions and insights with every thought that crossed my mind.

Obsession. If I could have wished for one emotion to leave me, it would have been that. But no, Monroe has decided that I still need to be obsessed with my unspoken fate. She’s decided that I should not move through this hell without depending on the one sense that has become my drug. Figures.

I ignored the knock on the door by turning the water back on. I guess they wanted to make sure I’m alive or something. One thing about the dimension of Chara: the hot water never runs out; everything in this utopia of a place is abundant.

This dimension is nothing like my home one, the one I call real. It’s peaceful, beautiful, and near flawless in every way. Not really a good place for someone who has spent their short life fixing all that is wrong. Funny thing about getting what you want: when you finally do, you really don’t want it anymore. It was the chase that you were in love with. At least that is how I see it, and like I said, I’m obsessive.

We wanted peace, and we found it in Chara in some way. We found a new home base to rest and gain strength in. Even before all of this mayhem, the knockout that amped up my senses followed by the hell that stripped me down to this, I was bored here. Really bored.

It didn’t matter if I let my thoughts rest or ramble; they always pulled me into the dimension of Esterious, the darkest one of them all, the one place that would likely never run out of souls to mend. Of course, that was also the same place where Drake, the boy in my dreams, lived and was set to rule.

He was an added complication to all of this. I was mad at him for, in some way, cheating on me. So jealous that I have been near ruthless since I saved his life. He only managed to get me to be real, open up, for a few hours last night. No matter how hard I tried, each time I looked into his eyes I saw him staring back at Willow, the girl he fought to have for months, my celestial twin.

I had mental battles about that issue often. Part of me agreed with my friends that he was tricked into that—that he was in some way looking for me. The other part argued he never should have been fooled, that he should have
known
the difference.

The fact that Drake was blunt and honest didn’t really help me. He admitted loving Willow, admitted that he was sure he’d had past lives with her.

It seemed that in some way we were both pushing and pulling each other away. Doomed lovers, no doubt.

I pushed the thought of him away as I stared at the steaming water my feet were dangling in. You would think that because I’m a water sign, a proud Scorpio, that I would adore water, feel at peace around it, but I fear it. At least when I could feel fear, I feared it. Now I just know that I don’t care for the element.

The whispers of the damned have always been there, lingering in the background of my mind, but as I grew up they became fiercer, like they were sick of me ignoring them or something. Not long after that point, shadows started to move and form into awkward images.

My mother, a spiritualist at heart, thought that I needed a natural escape, so she packed up her only daughter and rented a beach house. I think she thought that the waves would block out the sound of the dark whispers and relax me, and they did, for all of about five minutes.

Right when my feet touched the water, which was heated by a blazing summer day, chills spread across my skin. Even though the sun was out and the water was fairly clear, my mind pulled me into a different world, a different time. I saw a black pool of water. I could see something moving within this water that might as well have been ink. As I peered closer, I saw the largest octopus that has ever existed. I also saw a woman’s reflection. Every feature on her face was chiseled, almost squared off. She said one word: run. And I did.

I ran screaming past my mother into the beach house. It took my mother three hours to convince me to come out from under my bed, and I squealed when she made me take a bath to get the sea salt off me. I squealed because every time my mother let the water pool in the tub, I saw that woman’s face, heard her tell me to run.