Dark One: One for Sorrow... (The Khiara Banning Series Book 1) (29 page)

I frown. “How much time did you actually spend with her outside of school?”

She shrugs delicately. “Not much. But we texted. And went shopping a couple of times. Never had very many friends back home thanks to my dad, and when I moved here nobody really spoke to me besides you guys.”

“I think,” Cara says slowly, “that
maaaybe
you overestimated her friendship level. Chilling a couple of times and texting for half a year does not a best friendship make. Your best friend has to actually care about you, regardless of your differences.”

Janie sighs and runs her hands through her blonde hair, pulling it up into a high pony-tail. “I guess I should’ve known that.” She turns to Cara, “Well I guess have you,” and then she turns to Chris, “and you. Also everybody else in prayer group, though they don’t exactly come around me or Chris outside of church.”

Then she turns to me. “And…well I don’t
always
hate you. It’s pretty damned hard, actually, because you’re sweeter than sweet tea sometimes and it gets hard some days, to conjure up the exact amount of disdain I have for you,” she drawls. There’s the ghost of a smile on her face. While I’m pretty sure we will never be friends, this is a good start towards something of a truce.

I roll my eyes. “Thanks for trying to be nice,” I say, but I smile at her when I say it so she knows that I actually appreciate her effort.

“Well I guess you’re welcome.” She replies, picking up her sandwich and taking a ladylike bite from it. How she manages to make eating a messy pulled pork sandwich look delicate, I have no idea. I eat like a pig!

“So,” says Cara a little too innocently, turning to me with a smirk on her lips and a mischievous glint to her blue eyes. “How’re things with the boy-toy? You’ve been together for a little while now. Have you guys done the dance with no pants yet? Because there’s a bet going on between a couple of us and I want to win.”

“You have a boyfriend?” asks Janie, suddenly perking up. “Who is he?”

Cara grins. “Yeah. You’ve probably seen him around town. He works at a café at the mall. He’s Irish…he was with us at the mall that one time…”

“Shut up, Ohmigod!” shrieks Janie. “
He
is
your
boyfriend? I thought you just worked there, but hot damn, girl, he’s your boss
and
your guy. He’s hella cute! You know in that way where he’s not a beefy jock or anything, but he’s got that brooding musician feel. I mean no offense or anything but he could have
anyone
, though I guess there’s a certain charm you’ve got, as… messy as your sense of style is. I mean he’s not my type, but good for you. I thought for sure that day at the theatre was the last date y’all would have.”

“Uh, thank you?”

She sighs dramatically. “You’re damn right you should thank me. You don’t know when you’re being complimented.”

“It’s not often you even give me the time of day,” I point out, and she shrugs like it couldn’t possibly matter.

Chris smiles a bit. “So Janers does this mean you officially don’t lead the Khiara Banning hate club anymore?”

She appraises me for a second and shrugs again. “I wasn’t captain or nothin’ if that’s what you mean. That was Victoria. I just used her to fuel my hate fire. I was more like vice president. I guess now I should default to president but after a good four years of pointless hatred over a dress, I guess I have to let it go sometime.”

Janie reaches a dainty hand out and snatches my pudding cup off of my tray, smiling a bit. “You never eat vanilla pudding anyway,” she says as way of explanation.

“So that bet,” she says. “I want in. I’m going with no, because you don’t look like the type of girl to put out.”

Startled, I smile a bit at that. “I’m not going give away answers,” I reply. “If there’s a bet, I’m going to keep you all guessing.”

Cara sighs exasperatedly, flinging her arms in the air. “You’re never any fun!”

~*~

Vicky’s fist slams into my gut with the force of a freight train. “You need to fight harder!”

I begin to crumple to the ground, stunned, before finding my footing and sending a kick straight towards her temple which she easily blocks.

Dropping my foot, she smiles, and I can’t help but think that she looks like a little girl, with her hair in pigtails, wearing that yellow sundress from that day at the library, and a bright pink denim jacket, though it’s snowing out and I have no idea how she could possibly be so immune to the cold.

Vicky snickers. “Not bad. I wasn’t expecting that. Now try again,
harder
. I’m not going to go soft on you just because you’re breakable. If you want to be able to fight, you’re going to have to endure pain. This is all you have since you lost your necklace to fuck-face and you’re one hundred percent, certifiably human.”

She smiles apologetically, as if being human is an insult. “Find your opponent’s weaknesses and exploit them. We all have an Achilles heel.
Find
mine
. See this is why we don’t have your boyfriend here when I’m training you. You’re
his
weakness.”

“We’ve only been at this for the better part of two weeks!” I manage to gasp out. “You can hardly expect me to be a pro by now.”

Vicky rolls her eyes and lets out an exasperated sigh. “You’ve been training with everybody” she says it like
ev-uh-ree-body
, for emphasis, “for two weeks.
Intensively
. I’m sure you have muscles on top of muscles that you never knew you had. Look, we don’t have a lot of time. You need to learn to fight.” Her expression softens a tad. “You’re not that scared little girl you were when we first met, kid. You couldn’t fight back against the big bad kidnappers. But now you can – with our help.”

I frown, thinking hard about the memory. “Is that why you dyed your hair again? To remind me of who you are?”

She smirks, reaches out and musses my hair. “Yep. When we met, I had blonde streaks. I thought I’d try to jog your memory. Did you ever look at the notes I gave you?”

Surprised, I shake my head. “No, sorry.”

“They were all about angels, though not accurate information by any means. The particular angels were Verchiel, Douma and Camael. Didn’t think to include Leliel because I wasn’t sure he’d want to get involved. I’m surprised you didn’t even glance at them.”

“Sorry,” a bead of sweat falls down my spine, causing me to shiver, and I’m surprised when I feel the need to strip off my jacket from the intense heat caused by training. “Damien –”

“Douma,” she interrupts me.

“Right, Douma. He also brought me some notes that Cara took for me, so  just used those and never thought to look at the ones you gave me. And actually, he also brought me some cookies. I threw them out though.” I feel it’s important to tell her I didn’t eat them.

Vicky smirks. “Oh, the cookies were fine; I made them. I just told him they were poisoned…well not poisoned, exactly. They were just supposed to be laced with enough meds to put you to sleep.”

Balking, I reach over to smack her on the arm, but she dances out of my way, her streaked hair bobbing with the movement. The streaks are already fading, and I find myself wondering why.

“You’ve gotta be faster than that, girlie!” crows Vicky, sticking out her tongue at me. “Now come on, find my Achilles heel. I am giving you full permission to fuck my shit up.”

She pauses her dancing and shoots me a loaded look, “Start with what you know about me, which isn’t much. But it’s enough.”

Two days later, Vicky and I are sparring in our usual spot behind Liam’s house. The ground is covered in thick snow, and the flurries falling lazily just add to the white blanket.

She sends a kick straight for my left leg, and it hits me – not her kick – that if I’m Cael’s weakness, then hers must be…

“Your kids,” I shout breathlessly. “Your weakness is your children.”

She stops and stares at me, her face a complete mask of indifference, but she nods once.

I take this as encouragement. “Then your husband is too, right?”

She punches my right arm so hard I’m scared it’s actually broken and I won’t be able to use it ever again.

“You were supposed to use that moment to injure me, Khiara.”

Frowning and cradling my arm, I try to understand. “You told me to find your weakness. But you never told me to hurt you with it.”

“You can’t really hurt me, kid. Only two people in the entire world can hurt me. Douma, and myself. I just wanted you to distract me.”

“I’m sorry.” I’m not sure what else to say, but it seems to be the right thing because she nods once again.

“Just try again next time.” She begins to walk back to the cottage, but shouts over her shoulder. “Thanks for playing!”

~*~

“Don’t be scared,” says Cael, his voice thick with sleep. This is the worst nightmare yet. I’ve been getting these dreams more and more, dreams of being trapped in a hall of mirrors with this woman’s voice asking me to choose, telling me that death is inevitable. Sometimes, there’s a man made of shadows, and he feels evil. But other times, Cael is there, bloody and dishevelled.

I have no idea what my subconscious is trying to tell me.

“Shhh,” he soothes. “
Camael eepeh behlehaheness Ohleh
,”
He whispers tiredly, in that musical language of his.

“What did you say?” I ask, and he blinks at me for a second before smiling sheepishly.

He pulls me close to him, pillowing my head on his arm. “Sorry, love. You caught me when I was half-asleep. I said that I will keep you safe. I will protect you.” He kisses the top of my head. “We should be getting up now anyway.”

I shake my head and groan. “My parents aren’t home, and they’re not getting back for hours. Plus, they like you well enough.”

Cael laughs a little, nuzzling my neck. “That’s because they think I’m a legally emancipated nineteen year old, who owns his own business, drives responsibly and never makes out with their daughter,” he punctuates his by kissing me, leaving me slightly breathless.

“Only chaste kisses, then,” I tease when I recover, pecking him on the lips and pulling away, sticking out my tongue at him.

He pouts playfully and says, “What they don’t know won’t hurt them,” and he leans forward to kiss me – but then he frowns for real, his blue eyes taking on that sad look hat always breaks my heart. “Only…it will, in the end, if you get hurt, won’t it?”

“Don’t think like that,” I say, kissing the spot between his mouth and chin, where he has a freckle I’ve only just noticed. “Well figure something out. My training’s going well. I can kick Tristan’s ass now, and I’m half way there to being able to kick Cara’s. Soon maybe I’ll be able to kick
yours
.”

Trying to lighten the mood doesn’t work. He just stares at me. “The problem is that you don’t have to fight me to beat me. I could never hurt you. You’d have already won the minute we began sparring.”

I make an irritated noise in the back of my throat. “We’re going to have to spar eventually, Cael. I’ve fought with
Tristan
and
Vicky
, two
angels
, learned their
weaknesses
, and…well I know that I’m yours, but you have to overcome it. I’m not some delicate flower you need to preserve; well compared to everybody else, I guess I must seem that way, especially to you. But I don’t want to be seen that way. Yes, my body is breakable, but I want to fight. I need your help. The closer we get to the Battle and the more I try to prepare myself, the more I feel as if I’m on the verge of…something big.”

“Your soul is slowly awakening…” he whispers, and then louder, “your soul is
awakening!
”

“Is it? I mean we don’t exactly have a reference point for what that awakening actually is…”

“You were supposed to grow into your role as the harbinger of the Great Battle as you grew up. Your heavenly guardian would protect you from harm as you realized your importance, and when the time came, the knowledge of the war between the sides, and how to fight
should
have been imbued into your very being. We don’t even know what it is exactly that you’re supposed to know. We just know the bare minimum of the prophesy that states that you’ve got the potential to set the repentant on the side of Light free. And we’re trying our hardest to prepare you.”

“How do we know it’ll awaken on time?” I ask.

Cael looks towards my window where the red curtain is drawn, letting light into the room and sighs. “We don’t.”

“We’re home!” says Dad, walking into the living room where I’m currently sprawled out on the couch. Lisa is sitting on top of me, and has frozen mid punch to my thigh.

“Uh,” she says, hopping off of me. “She was taking up the whole couch?” she says in way of explanation. If I could properly see her face, I’d probably be laughing.

“Such a violent child, you are Lisa Foster!” Mom jokes while chuckling. “Well you two are in luck. We got Chinese for dinner.” She gestures to the packages Dad’s holding. “We’ll have to heat it up mind you, since we got it on the way home from the museum.”