• "thunder" chapter eight

    I pushed her away automatically. I knew the whole time that she was familiar.
    She stepped toward me, but evaded my arms, "what's wrong?" She asked.
    Should I tell her? What would she think? If she knew it was me, would she reject me? It was my fault. Why wouldn't she?
    She continued to step closer to me, "Please tell me what's wrong, Adrian."
    I guess I just had nothing left to do but confirm it, "How did your mom die?"
    Her face showed a grim understanding. was it the same incident that I'd caused that'd killed her mother? I had to be sure.
    There was a long pause before she began the story, "Well, I was about five. My mom and dad took me to the mall. We were buying presents for my birthday. A huge group of guys stormed the place with lots of guns and stuf like that. Everybody there started freaking out and running. We were too, but I stopped when I heard some other kid screaming for them to stop. they were ignoring him, but then, something weird happened. he kept walking toward them, and they started shooting at him. But it was weird. It was like the bullets were just moving out of his way, or something. Electricity seemed to start jumping from him. Then lightning started coming down and the ceiling of the place began to crumble. stuff was falling from everywhere. Me and my dad managed to get out, but my mom never made it. they found her body in the rubble the next day.
    "I was so sad, I cried for three hours straight. I would've blamed that boy, I would've blamed the whole thing on him, but I remembered what my mom always told me when I was young. She'd always tell me that blaming someone else is just a way of hiding your own guilt. So I'm not as sensitive about it as I am of everything else." Still, I could see the tears crawling down her eyes, "Why did you want to know?"
    "I was in that very same incident. It was before we moved here. I just wanted thopse guys to go away, and leave everybody alone. Something took control of me when that happened, and I blacked out. When I woke up, my mom was driving me home. do you realize who that boy was? It was me. I saw it the next day, Eighteen people were killed and twenty were badly injured. That was when we moved, and the high circle began training me." I held her tightly, afraid that if I let her go, she'd run away. She didn't. She only buried her face in my chest as her tears became a sad, broken waterfall. "Hate me if you want." I said, but every part of was screaming at me,'Please don't hate me, I'm begging you! The last thing I'd want from you is for you to hate me! Please, whatever you do, don't reject me!'
    It seemed like hours, but had only been a few minutes before she lifted her head up and smiled at me, "Why would I hate you?"
    How the hell could she ask thet? "I killed your mom."
    She pressed herself closer to me, "She also had several bullet wounds. But I still can't blame anyone. Dad's told me stuff before, too. He said that God may be powerful, but even he has no control over death. He said that no god or goddess does."
    Is that all her life is built up on, is life sayings and morals? Seriously. "Your parents seem like revolutionaries, don't they?"
    "They never did anything like that." A confused look passed over her face.
    I sighed, "Revolutionaries? Like Ben Franklin, didn't rely on greater beings, you know?"
    "Oh, that kind of revolutionaries. No, they weren't like that."
    I decided not to argue while I was greiving the fact that I had probably killed her mother along with eighteen other people. I didn't even have time to do that. Some woman started walking up to me, "Adrian Winters?
    "Why does everyone keep calling me by Winters? But yes, I am Adrian Winters."
    She motioned over to a navy blue Ford focus. Sparkling with a recently-washed-car look. I saw Matt's dad in the driver's seat. Odd, seeing as Matt was nowhere to be found, "I need you to come with me."
    I figured that if Matt's dad was waiting as well, then I should go, "Alright" I Followed her to the car and got in the back seat as we drove off the opposite way from which Maria was headed (or, for that matter, the way I was going to go).
    Matt's dad looked into the rear-view mirror at me, "Adrian, do you know why I came here to get you?"
    There was a pretty obvious answer to that, "No, I don't even know how you found out I was here."
    He shrugged it off, "Matthew told me you'd probably be there. I came after you because there has been a murder."
    Since when did they need me to take care of a murder? "Who died?" I asked.
    "Her name was Isabel Roqiez. I believe you know her from your patrols of the eastern gate."
    "Yeah. How'd she die?" My voice dropped so low, even I could barely hear it myself.
    The woman started talking in a clinical, monotonic voice, "the heart was torn from the body from behind." We stopped in front of the Main office building of the high circle of necromancers. It had tons of windows that pretty much equalled one entire wall per cubicle. Which wasn't bad, considering the cubicles were huge. People with the many styles of capes representing a necromancer's status and ordinary office attire, or in ordinary office attire, dashed in and out of the place. We got out and entered the building through one of the revolving doors.
    So why did we come here?" I asked after a long silence.
    Matt's dad turned to me, "You know how we have security cameras stationed around the perimeter of the gates just like the demon hunters themselves?"
    Duh, I see them all the time. I guess I had too much on my mind, "Yeah, I feel so blank."
    He chuckled, "We all do sometimes. We're taking you to the security station to see the videos of the victim's deaths. We feel that you might be able to give us some insight on who is doing this, since you have developed the senses of demonic entities. You see, its been happening alot recently, and the outcome is always the same. And we see the same shadow who makes the kill."
    I already had a feeling deep in my gut that something wasn't right, and it wasn't anywhere demon-related.