Born of Fire: The Dawn of Legend (2 page)

“Yup,” Philippe replied, taking a sip of his coffee. “The big unveiling isn’t until next Saturday, but I figured since you don’t have school tomorrow, that maybe I could pick you up and take you to the museum for a little sneak peek. What do you say?”

“Don’t be late picking me up,” Rex replied with a broad smile.

His father laughed, and Rex ate as fast as he could. He was so excited about seeing the new exhibit that he had practically forgotten all about their earlier conversation. Moments later, he was putting on his shoes and heading down to the bus stop. Rex was a bit of an oddity in the neighborhood, as one could imagine. While many of the children treated him the same way they did at school, many of the adults treated him with a certain degree of wary apprehension, like a sheepherder eyeing a wolf drawing too near to his flock.

King High School was crowded with children climbing off the buses that carted them to and from school every day. To Rex it had always looked like a meat wagon carrying cattle to and from a slaughter. He had sat alone on the way over, as he normally did, refusing to engage any of the other teenagers in whatever nonsensical fracas that had seized their attention that morning. Even if he had wanted to interact with them in any way, it would just result in them giving him the odd glare and remaining silent until he retreated back to his solitude. He got off the bus and proceeded to his classroom, pushing and shoving his way through the throngs of students crowding the hall. He reached his biology classroom, and with a heavy sigh, walked in.

“Good morning, Rex,” said his teacher as she looked up from rearranging a set of books on one of the shelves in the far corner of the room. “You’re always the first one here.”

Rex just smiled and went to his seat, not really knowing what to say in response. What could he tell her, the truth?
That would sound good,
he thought.
I rush to get here every morning, Mrs. Bolster, because I know if any one of those assholes out there get it in their heads to pick a fight with me, I’m going to take their heads and drill them into the fucking wall
. As if killing off a third of the school would make things better for him.
Still, it’s something to consider,
he mused.

Thirty minutes later, the bell rang, and everyone still standing outside ran inside the classroom and took their seats. Mrs. Bolster started with roll call as she did every morning, followed by a quick review of the previous day’s lesson. Rex could already feel his mind wandering to more entertaining thoughts. School had always been difficult for him. He found it hard to concentrate, and when he did, much of the material never made sense to him. His father had asked the school to test him many times, and they always came back with some new term to describe what was supposedly wrong with him: ADD, ADHD, learning disabled, and so on. Rex could not help but feel that the school staff was more interested in labeling him than they were in actually teaching him. His father did his best to help him with his schoolwork at home, but he worked so much that he often was not home enough to do so. It was not as if Rex was incapable of learning; he excelled at certain things, but he felt like his mind processed information it received differently than others. Unfortunately, he did not know how that was, and as a result, his education was a series of hits and misses.

Twenty minutes passed, and a girl came into the room and rushed to her desk. Her long golden hair, which reached to her lower back, gently brushed over Rex’s right arm as he caught that sweet smell he had come to love. “You’re late, Allison,” said Mrs. Bolster in an irritated tone.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Bolster,” Allison replied as she took out her textbook from her backpack and put in on her desk.

“Do you have a note?”

Allison shook her head nervously. The teacher sighed and simply said, “See me at lunch, please.”

Allison sat in front in the row off to the left of Rex. Rex thought she was beautiful and always found himself staring at her. Occasionally, she would turn her head, and he would quickly turn his so she would not catch him looking into her big blue eyes. As strange as it sounded even to him, Rex found himself almost hypnotized by her scent, which smelled of something he could not quite put his finger on. But it was there, drawing him in even though he dared not get too close. She was a good student, making good grades, but every now and then she would show up late to class acting strangely. Normally, she would have a note from her father, but she had been coming in late at least three times a week now, and she never seemed to have an excuse.

As usual, Rex lost himself in his favorite class pastime, drooling over the pretty blonde. However, this time he noticed something that put him on edge. She turned her head slightly to the right, causing her hair to shift and expose the back of her neck. That is when Rex saw it, a bruise. He had come home with plenty of them from all the fights he used to get in, so he knew one when he saw one. He wondered where it came from.
Who would hit Allison?
he thought to himself. She was so nice to everyone, even him.
Come to think of it, she’s the only one nice to me
. She moved her head again, and her hair covered the bruise back up.

Class dragged on for what seemed like forever, when finally the lunch bell rang and everyone headed to the cafeteria. Rex, remembering what his father had said, took a deep breath and headed to the cafeteria after everyone else had left, everyone except Allison, who walked up to Mrs. Bolster’s desk with her head down. Rex walked outside the door but stood just out of sight and listened in.

“Sit down, Allison,” he heard his teacher say. “You’ve been coming in late more and more lately.”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Bolster,” Allison said in a soft, frail voice. “I promise to try to get here on time from now on.”

“Allison,” Mrs. Bolster paused before continuing, choosing her words carefully. “Is…everything okay at home?” Rex leaned against the wall harder, as if it would allow him to see through it. Allison remained silent. “It’s okay, you can talk to me.”

Allison finally spoke up in a shaky voice, “My…dad—”

“Rex,” came a voice from behind him.

He turned to see Vice Principal Goran standing halfway down the hall, looking at him with his hands on his hips. He motioned for Rex to come over, who groaned and complied despite his legs telling him to move in the opposite direction. Goran was a tall, lanky man with a bald spot and a dark mustache. He was notorious among the students for being mean, condescending, and never making an effort to hide the fact that he hated young people.

“Is there a reason why you’re just standing out here in the hall like this?” he asked in his usual demeaning tone.

“No,” replied Rex, trying to hold back his disdain for the man. “I was just heading to the cafeteria.”

“Really? Because it looked to me like you were eavesdropping on your teacher.” Rex felt cornered, and when that happened, he became angry. “Maybe you and I better go talk about it in my office,” said Goran in an elevated tone that got under Rex’s skin. He felt like his blood was boiling. Normally, he only felt like this when the others his own age started trouble with him, but with them, he could just yell or throw a punch. Then again, perhaps he did not need to lift a finger, just allow his reputation to get him out of a potentially unpleasant situation.

Meeting the older man’s gaze, Rex smiled as he furrowed his brow slightly. “You know, now that you mention it, there are some issues I’ve been feeling the need to discuss. Why don’t we go to your office? You know, someplace small and confined, with a locked door so no one can just barge in on us.” He leaned in close enough for Goran to see the faint glow coming from his red eyes, and feel his hot breath against his face as he got an uncomfortably close look at Rex’s serrated teeth. “I hate being interrupted once I get on a roll. Shall we?” He could see panic set in the man’s face, or rather could smell it pouring off him in waves. It was so sweet, like an elegant perfume that rivaled even the sweet smell of Allison. Rex had always been keenly aware of what others around him were feeling, even if they themselves were not. He could read people’s emotions like an open book. In fact, all people were like books to him, the events that shaped them like the pages in their story. This, however, was another reason why he found it increasingly difficult to make any sort of connection with them. They were too transparent, lacking any real depth into which he could delve. He always felt as if he was standing in shallow waters when surrounded by them.

Rex now felt light, as if his body was slowly rising off the ground. He could hear Goran’s heartbeat increase as if someone was pounding on a war drum. His eyes tracked a bead of sweat as it traveled down the tall man’s face and fell, where it proceeded down to the floor and hit with a splash.

“Uh…yeah…” Goran struggled to find his words, his gaze no longer meeting Rex’s. “All right…I’ll let it go this time, but don’t let me catch you doing this again. Get to the cafeteria.”

“Yes, sir,” Rex answered with mock cheer and walked past him down the hall and towards the cafeteria.
Walked away from another one
, Rex mused to himself.
Still, I hope I scared him enough to keep his mouth shut. I really don’t want Dad hearing about this
. It used to bother him that he could intimidate people with his appearance alone. He had learned early on that people feared what they did not understand, and he most certainly fit into that category. Still, he knew how it made his father feel, and so for years he would ignore his natural instinct to strike fear in others, as he knew he so easily could. After all, how would people ever come to accept him if he gave any sort of validation to what they were feeling towards him?

However, as time marched on and their attitudes grew judgmental and fearful, Rex began to find himself on the receiving end of violence. What started as teasing from afar evolved into being jumped after school. At first he tried not to fight back, instead opting to just take it so as not to stir things up further. After all, it was not like they were really doing any damage. Part of his superior physical prowess came not just in being able to dish out punishment but also take it. So he would just sit there, letting them unload all their fears and hatred on him until they grew tired or fearful when they realized that ten solid minutes of beating barely resulted in so much as a bruise. After that, they kept their distance, but by this point the real damage had already been done, for while he remained physically intact, any chance of a desire on his part to understand them on equal footing had been beaten out of him, replaced with a sense of contemptuous superiority. While he had no desire to use this sense of power to lord over them as a tyrant, he also felt no need to try to meet them on their terms. He saw them as insects crawling beneath his feet, and if one had the gall to try to sting him, he would crush them underfoot. Perhaps this was how tyranny began, he often thought, not by choice or desire but by circumstance. An interesting thought, indeed, but one that was interrupted by his growling stomach.
Philosophy later, food now
.

He sat by himself at the far table in the back of the cafeteria. To his surprise, no one who usually picked fights with him bothered him today. He wondered if his father had called the school and told the teachers to tell them to stop bullying him. That would not surprise him, especially with the way his father insisted he eat lunch here today. He loved his father and appreciated everything he was trying to do for him, but even he could not truly understand what Rex was feeling on the inside.
No one can
.

He finished his lunch and returned to class with the other students when the bell rang. The rest of the day played out as usual: more lessons that could not be any less interesting, and silent wishes that Allison would turn and say hello. Actually, any indication that she knew he existed would have been enough. At last, the end bell rang. Rex, in a daze, was getting his things from his locker when someone pushed him hard against it from behind. Spinning around quickly, he found himself facing seven boys who were standing with less-than-kind looks on their faces. The one in the middle was only a few centimeters shorter than Rex, but of a considerably smaller build with short, dirty blond hair. The others seemed to blend into the background. All people, unless they made some sort of real first impression, all looked the same to him.

“Hey, crybaby!” said the boy.

“I wouldn’t,” Rex replied, giving him a warning look.

“Why?” replied Dustin. “You gonna go and cry to your teacher again?”

“I’m not a fan of repeating myself, so I figured I would just hit you really hard this time, since diplomacy obviously failed.”

“Then why did Goran yell at us all morning in his office?” the boy said as he pushed Rex again.

“Because your smile isn’t as dazzling as mine,” Rex replied, turning and flashing a toothy grin.

“More like because you went and cried to that French asshole that keeps you on the end of his leash,” Dustin said angrily, pulling out a switchblade and thrusting it at Rex, who moved without hesitation to intercept it, grabbing the blade in his left hand.

Everyone gasped then held their breath as a trickle of blood ran down Rex’s hand and arm. With a sigh, he closed his locker, then grabbed Dustin by the throat and effortlessly applied the necessary amount of pressure to close his airway. “Now I know you’re only human, so there’re about two million years of stupidity bred into you, responsible for the vast level of disconnect between what you should and should not have done here, so you’re probably searching the barren wasteland in that head of yours for why this all got away from you. Hmm?” The boy gasped for breath and did his best to nod. “Well, don’t worry. I won’t take it personally.” With that, Rex lifted him off the ground, and with an impressive display of raw physical power, drove Dustin’s entire head through a locker door. Everyone gasped in horror as his body hung limp with his head still inside the door. Rex just shook his head, then turned back where he was immediately confronted by startled faces that frantically backed up. “I’m getting tired of dealing with you people day after day. How about everyone here who thinks I’m a freak, asshole, son of a bitch, motherfucker, or just unpleasant all have your go at me now so I don’t have to do this again on Monday.” No one moved, not a single person. They all exchanged nervous glances while murmuring to one another. “No? What a momentous moment, a mob of irrational people making a rational decision. Will wonders never cease?”