• Chapter 1


    Eyes


    "Check it out, gals." Kristen clicks her tongue against her teeth. "Hot guy, four o' clock." I laugh and shake my head as Scarlet and Reagan instantly whip their heads around, searching for the guy.

    "Ooooooooo." The three of them sing in chorus. Then Reagan, an violent, senior tomboy and my new friend in my choir class, elbows me as she walks past us at the salad bar and says, "He's looking straight at you, Char."

    "Looking? More like staring." Scarlet, my one year older sister, corrected.

    "In total amazement." Kristen adds, who is also another senior and new friend of mine who is outgoing, very social, brave, boy-obsessed and Reagan's best friend. She looks back at the guy again. "Damn, he's fine."

    "I'm not even gonna waste my time to look." I reply as I walk up to the main food booth where a gooey, yet overcooked enchilada is dropped onto my tray.

    "Oh, right. You have songboy." She says and the three girls sigh and shake their heads. "A shame, really. He's seriously a hot dude."

    "Except for those eyes. What are they, red?" Reagan and Kristen walk off to their own table as an unwanted image comes to mind. A guy who looks exactly like Keaton, my hot, nice, senior boyfriend, but he has eyes the color of blood. Real blood is trickling down from his mouth. My own blood.

    I shake the image from the nightmare out of my mind and walk to a table in the lunchroom with Scarlet. The nightmare had shown itself the night Keaton became a guardian, the night I met my dead brother's ghost, the night The Demon Lord in Kellan's, one of Keaton’s older brothers, body tried to take me to hell.

    A guardian is a creature that is pretty much extinct now days. The Hathaway family may be the last ones alive, even. They are guardian angels in the forms of human. They have human looks, personalities, feelings. But each one is assigned a human on the earth who they must protect with powers they are given. People officially turn into one at age 18, although sometimes later. Keaton turned into one that night, a very powerful one. And he was assigned to me.

    "Hey, have you guys seen the new kid?" Lance, Keaton's careless best friend, asks as he takes a bite of his corn on the cob. I shake my head but Scarlet nods intensely, her strands of thin, deep red hair flying everywhere.

    "Yes, and he is HOT!!!!!" She says a little too loudly, and Lance, Keaton and I laugh when people turn to look at who just said that. "Except for those eyes. Those are creepy." She finishes when everybody finally turns away. The blood red eyes appear in my mind and I squeeze my eyes shut, forbidding this nightmare that haunts me every night to show itself now.

    "Well, I heard he's keeping a close eye on a few people...." Keaton starts as he brushes his beautiful locks of blonde hair with brown highlights away from his deep, brown eyes.


    "Who?" Lance asks as he starts to get up from the table to throw away his food.

    "Us." Lance freezes and we all stare at Keaton, not taking in his words. Scarlet and I lock our gray eyes with Lance's chocolate brown ones, and then all of us with Keaton's.

    "Hey, Becky." I call to a girl with short, light brown hair as she walks past us with tiny jumps on the tips of her toes. She turns and walks over to our table.

    Becky is a junior like myself and knows all the latest gossip, so she's bound to know about this guy. I start out, "What do you know about that new kid?"

    "Ah, the one with the red-

    "Don't talk about the eyes." I cut off immediately, "Just tell me about him."

    "Alright, well, he's 18 years old and has lived as an orphan almost all his life, traveling from orphanage to orphanage. Apparently there was something wrong with him and his family straight out ignored him until he was taken away to the first orphanage at age 8."

    "That's so sad....." Scarlet whispers as Becky continues with her story.

    "So, a lotta people think that he came here looking for his twin brother who got all the attention and love. To get revenge." She stands up and starts walking away but then adds, "Oh, yeah, and his name is Kaden Hathaway."

    We sit there for a second and then turn back to Keaton. He sits in shock and then whispers, "Could he be.......my brother?"

    I feel eyes on me and look to the dark corner of the cafeteria to see a guy in a hood sitting there. He has all of Keaton's features, except for his eyes.

    His eyes are a red.

    A blood red.


    Chapter 2


    Shocks


    "That guy scares me." Scarlet says as she walks through the door of the Hathaway mansion, where we've been staying since the night all the crazy crap started. We place our stuff in the sitting room while Lance attacks the fridge and Keaton calls for his oldest brother, Kyle. We all travel to join him in the living room, where Kyle sits watching TV.

    "What guy?" Kyle asks as he pauses his show. I stretch out on the dark brown, leather couch as Scarlet sits on the bench for the antique piano, Keaton stands back in the corner with his hands in his pockets, and Lance sits backwards in a chair eating a platter of cold chicken.

    "Kaden Hathaway." Lance mumbles through a mouthful of the food. Kyle instantly freezes at the name.

    "I'm sorry, I must have misunderstood you. What did you say?"

    "Kaden Hathaway." Scarlet says before Lance can open his mouth again and risk the chance of choking. Kyle looks out at the beige wall in front of him, his eyes not really focusing on anything.


    "Did you know that biting your nails damages your teeth and exposes you to harmful bacteria?" Lance randomly states this fact to break the awkward silence. We all slowly turn to stare at him.

    Scarlet is the first to speak, "Congratulations, Lance. You know something!"

    Lance pouts, "That's not very nice."

    "Yeah? Well the world's not very nice, in case you haven't noticed."

    "Hey, the world-

    "Did you know that if you don't SHUT UP I'm gonna shove my fist so far down your throat that-

    "SHUT UP!" I yell in frustration above their bickering. Everybody turns to stare at me now. "This isn't the time to be fighting over useless things!"

    "Charlotte's right." Keaton speaks up. It's the first time he's talked all day since lunch. "This guy could want some freakin' dangerous revenge on us."

    "Then we should get him before he gets us." The voice of Kellan calls from the top of the grand staircase. He turns, walks and beckons for us to follow him. We all exchange glances and hesitate for a brief moment before following.

    He ends up leading us to Mr. and Mrs. Hathaway's bedroom, and then he pulls a suitcase out from under their bed. While unlatching it, Lance and Scarlet exchange a confused glance, Kyle isn't focusing again and Keaton puts his arm around my waist and pulls me into him.

    After digging through the suitcase for a while, Kellan apparently found what he was looking for. "Ah, here it is." He takes out what looks like a simple handheld gun. But it's painted silver and looks very round and carefully made. There's an image etched into the side that looks like two capitol Cs facing each other that are looped together by a thorny rose stem, and the actual rose rests on the C on the left.

    "The gun?" Kyle asks as he turns to look. Kellan picks up a clear bag of what looks like some kind of bullets and loads the gun and nods.

    "It's what Mom and Dad used to use to put him to sleep. But with these special bullets..." Kellan aims at a expensive vase behind us and shoots. A strange purplish light comes out with the bullet and the vase is destroyed into tiny, crushed pieces. "his kind could be killed in a matter of minutes."

    "Why don't I remember him?" Keaton asks out of nowhere.

    After a moment of silence, Kyle replies, "Because Mom and Dad didn't want you to, so they erased all memories of and with him."

    "My own brother...." Keaton mutters to himself, "my own twin brother...."

    "You had a sister with you guys, too." Kellan adds.

    "Triplets?" Scarlet, Lance, Keaton and I gasp.

    "Yes." Kellan nods. "But she died at birth."

    There's an icy cold tension in the air as Kellan hands the gun over to Keaton. He stares down at it for a moment and then secures it in his belt, using the tail of his shirt to cover it.

    "What is his kind, anyway?" I ask, looking up to the two oldest brothers.

    Kyle jumps out a window to watch for this Kaden Hathaway and as Kellan stands on the windowsill to follow him, he looks back and says, “We do not speak of them. And I’m afraid.” He leans out the window and before he calmly falls forward finishes, “that it’s you he’s really after.”