Elemental Awakened by Helen Scott
3
Tessa
The door banged open, drawing my attention from Brok to the entryway of my apartment. Finn and another guy appeared in the small opening, each with a grim look on their face. Neither of them was looking at me, and only Finn had shot me a cursory glance when they first burst in. It was as if he’d needed to verify that I was uninjured, which was silly since the guy barely knew me.
Brok spun to face them, but only Finn seemed to be paying attention to him, the other guy was scanning the apartment. Maybe he was looking for other intruders? Or maybe he could see the dragons like I could? I pushed the thought away, mentally scolding myself. I knew I was the only one that could see them. Then the stranger’s eyes flew to mine and stayed fixed on me as though he was evaluating me.
I wasn’t one to back down though, so I gave him a thorough once-over as well. He wasn’t as tall as Finn, but he had the same athletic build, as though they were workout buddies or something. Where Finn’s eyes were a dark brown, this guy’s were almost black, but it looked like there were flecks of gold in them, even from where I was standing. Though Finn had a five o’clock shadow, this guy had a short ebony beard.
The man’s eyes almost seemed to look through me, as though he could see something about me that no one else could. I tried not to make any snap judgements, but my brain was spinning like a centrifuge.
Brok lunged across the living area and tackled Finn to the floor. “You don’t get her, demon!” he screamed.
Out of all the things I would have expected him to yell, calling these guys demons was not it.
I stayed pinned in the corner right next to my big peace lily that sat on a small table, both of which my foster mom had bought for me when I got the apartment. The white, spoon-shaped flowers were highlighted by the green spike in the middle, none of which was going to matter if the guys knocked it over. Quickly, I moved the plant to the kitchen area. At least there, it had a chance of surviving the scuffle, unlike my coffee table, which had just splintered and broken under Brok’s weight when Finn pushed him back.
The only choice I had was to hunker down in the kitchenette and hope that whatever beef these guys had with each other was resolved soon. I peeked up over the edge of the counter and saw Finn throwing a punch that looked strong enough to break a cinderblock. Brok caught it.
He freakin’ caught it like it was a baseball or something. Finn’s friend was circling behind him though, splitting his attention as the two of them took him on. They exchanged blows, while Finn and his friend seemed to rotate in and out of Brok’s range.
The idiot just kept gunning for the two men though. He lunged again and managed to knock Finn to the floor. Finn hauled back as far as he could, which was a surprising distance since he was on the ground, and punched Brok in the nose. He must have hit it just right, because blood started gushing like a hose had been turned on.
Brok jumped back as the spray of blood went all over himself and Finn before it began staining my carpet. Part of me felt like I should intervene, try and pull Brok away or something, but the asshole had attacked me. He deserved everything he got. Besides, I didn’t want to get caught in the middle of a fist fight. And there was no mistaking this scuffle for anything else.
It was the stranger who leaned down and pulled Brok off Finn a second later, as though he was only just realizing that the two should be broken up. As soon as he was moved, Brok turned and scanned the space for me, running toward me as soon as he realized where I was. The whole time, his eyes shimmered like a cat’s at night while they blazed with a fury I had never seen before.
I had no idea why he was so pissed at me all of a sudden. It wasn’t like we’d done anything with each other. All I’d ever done was reject his creepy advances. Maybe that really was enough to flip his crazy switch.
Come to think of it, he’d barely even talked to me when we started the group project, then a couple weeks ago, I became the center of his attention.
I cowered in the corner, trying to press myself back into the wall as my feet slid against the linoleum tile. I wished I’d had the money for a bigger apartment, you know, one with doors and shit I could put between me and an attacker. Before he could get to me, thick bands of arms wrapped around Brok, which I somehow knew belonged to Finn even though I couldn’t see him or his friend from the corner I’d squeezed myself into. I knew instinctively that this would happen. Brok kicked and elbowed and shoved, trying to get out of Finn’s hold, but none of it worked. His eyes seemed to flare brighter and brighter as he struggled, while his mouth hung open in a silent scream.
“Shit, he’s burning out!” Finn yelled before dropping Brok to the ground, his arms red and blistered.
I pushed up from where I’d been crouched, confusion pulling at me. As I watched, the black T-shirt Brok was wearing became singed and the skin peeking through was peeling away as though he was burning. The edges turned black and crusted as whatever was happening sped up. I held my nose, because the smell was making me gag, only to feel like I could taste it when I breathed through my mouth.
My eyes were locked onto Brok, like he was a car accident happening in front of me and I couldn’t look away. The skin that had been black was turning to white ash and breaking away from his body like the worst sunburn in the world. Brok’s stare still pinned me to the wall, but there was no life in his eyes anymore as his body seemed to collapse in on itself into a pile of ash. That was almost something I could comprehend, until a black cloud rose from it and surged toward me.
I took a breath to scream as my brain finally began to process what was happening around me, but the cloud coming toward me had me snapping my jaw shut with an audible click of my teeth. Somehow, it felt important that I didn’t give it easy access to my internal organs. The mass wrapped around my head, blocking out everything in the room, until all I could hear was the pounding of my own blood in my ears and all I could see was the swirling smoke in front of my face.
Part of me, the terrified, now is the time to run part, stumbled forward, trying to get away, but it just seemed to follow me. The cloud was pressing tighter and tighter against my skin until it felt like I was wearing a mask, except there were no air holes. My lungs started to burn as I struggled to breathe through the thickening mass.
Strong arms picked me up then, and I knew I was being taken somewhere, but I couldn’t see where or by whom. There was nothing I could do except either cling to the person carrying me, which I had a feeling was Finn, or fight them until they put me down. I knew enough about biology to know that fighting would just make me use up the small amount of oxygen that was still in my blood faster.
Fire was burning in my chest as my lungs screamed for air. I tried to scratch and claw the thing off my face, but my fingers couldn’t find purchase. They slipped and slid all over the mass that was covering me, never finding a hold or even an edge. It was like the whole silky gooey thing was fused to my body.
The arms placed me down on something, and I immediately tried to move, tried to find some way out of this nightmare. Two hands landed on my shoulders and forced me to face the way I was before when I was first set down. This time, I stayed put, mainly because I could feel myself getting lightheaded and a different kind of darkness was setting in. One I might not wake up from.
A wet feeling covered my back, which for the first time, I realized was exposed and the black cloud was only around my head. Water was spraying onto me from somewhere, not that I had any clue where, but at this point, even if I wanted to move, I couldn’t. The slumped position I was in would take too much energy to get out of—energy I didn’t have anymore.
What had felt like a hose now felt like a power washer pounding against me. The water was punishing against my skin, moving over it with such intensity, I felt like it was being scoured off. My instinct to take a breath to scream overwhelmed me, but no breath came, at least not at first.
Within a couple of seconds, the sweet, rich taste of oxygen filled my mouth, and the black cloud of both my consciousness and the one that was wrapped around my head began to dissipate. It felt like it was dragging my skin with it though, and every inch it gave up was an inch of my life that I was struggling to hold on to.
My breath came in deep, shuddering gasps, followed by a coughing fit that had me vomiting onto the ground before I could draw more than a lungful of air. Embarrassment scorched my cheeks, and a hand rubbed my back while holding my hair out of the way. In between retches, my eyes recognized the patchy grass from the area behind the apartments.
The area where I was kneeling had been the backyard at some point, since the building had originally been a house. After it had been turned into studio apartments, there wasn’t anyone who really took care of the area, so it had fallen into disrepair. There were only four of us living there, but we hadn’t befriended each other, we were all too focused on school. It was one of the few buildings that was reserved for what were considered honor students—aka the nerds—that came to college with crazy high grade point averages and equally high standardized test scores.
I had no clue how I’d made it into their honors program, but I didn’t question it in case it was a mistake or something, and that was how I’d been going on for the last four years. A change in major had delayed my graduation by a semester, but I would be done with school as soon as I got a few term papers turned in.
The vomiting had stopped, not that I’d had all that much to bring up, having missed lunch and most of dinner, and the hand had gone away. I hoped it was just to give me a moment to compose myself and not that whoever it was had just abandoned me. Not that I could blame them if they had.
My head buzzed with noise, as though I’d been in a sensory deprivation tank, except this one also happened to not have any oxygen either. Slowly, the sounds started coming back into focus, including the sound of someone’s voice. Two men’s voices, actually. My brain flashed with a reminder of Finn and his friend standing in the doorway. It wasn’t that I had forgotten that they were there, more that I hadn’t focused on anything except breathing and escaping whatever the hell that was until that exact moment.
“What are you going to tell her?” Finn’s friend asked quietly.
“I don’t know. Any ideas?”
“Not a one. We need to get back though. Kai needs to take a look at that,” the friend said.
I sat back on my heels and stared up at them. Both turned to look at me with equally intense gazes. Ones that made my blood heat and my skin break out in goosebumps. Or maybe that was the cold air. I shakily pushed to my feet and stumbled forward.
“I’ve got you,” Finn said as he jogged over and put an arm around my waist.
After a few more awkward steps and almost falling, even though he was helping me stand, he stopped us. He bent at the waist and carefully tucked his other arm under my legs, lifting me and carrying me inside like a bride on her wedding day.
I didn’t have the energy to protest or struggle, so I just laid my head against his shoulder and breathed in the fresh clean and citrus scent of him. Something in me eased at his presence, his closeness, and while that would’ve normally made me uncomfortable, I couldn’t summon the energy to be mad at myself and just enjoyed it while it lasted. Soon enough, we were up the stairs and back in my apartment.
Finn gently set me on the couch, and my eyes locked onto the pile of ash on the floor. The pile of ash that used to be Brok. How could someone burn so hot that they turned to nothing but ash without setting the whole place on fire? It was one of the many questions that filled my head, and yet it wasn’t the most urgent.
“What the hell happened?” I asked, looking up at Finn and his friend, who had evidently found his way around my kitchenette since he was handing me a glass of water.
“Uh, that guy from the computer lab attacked you,” Finn said, moving to stand so he was blocking the pile of ash.
“Yeah, and then shit went crazy. What the hell was that?”
“What do you mean?” the friend asked, his dark eyes seeming to bore into my own as he stared me down.
I glanced at the friend and said, “Listen, no offense, but you haven’t even introduced yourself so you don’t get to ask the questions. I’m asking the questions. I want to know what just happened. What was on my face? What happened to Brok? Why were you even here?” I skewered Finn with my stare. I knew I had my no bullshit face on, but I refused to flinch and look away. If this was a battle of wills, then I was damn well going to win.
Finally, after more than one tense moment, Finn sighed and dropped down onto the only other chair in my apartment. “Dresden and I happened to be in the building, and I heard someone yelling. Since I’d felt so off earlier, I wanted to check it out. I was worried he’d followed you home, or maybe he was even trying to attack someone else, but I was right, wasn’t I? He did follow you home. Not that you texted me like you promised.” Finn almost pouted for a moment. “As for what happened to Brok, why don’t you tell me what you remember?”
“That’s how you want to play this?” I paused, swallowing my anger and frustration. When he didn’t reply, I said, “Fine. I remember you coming in, you and Brok getting into a fist fight, then he just burned up from the inside out. Spontaneously combusted or whatever. When he did, some weird black thing came out of his body and wrapped itself around me and tried to suffocate me.”
“Do you have your sketchbook?” Finn asked.
My jaw dropped open at the sudden change in subject. “Of course I have it, but I don’t see how it’s important.”
“Can I show it to Dres?”
“Not until you answer my questions.” I wanted to scream and shake them both until the answers fell out of them, but I knew it wouldn’t work, even if I could move them. Although with the way they were planted, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to move them at all.
Dres’ arms were crossed over his chest as he seemed to evaluate everything in the apartment, from the art I had hanging on the wall to the now splintered and broken coffee table that lay on the ground between Finn and me. I tried to catch his eye, but with no success. The man seemed intent on ignoring me.
“If you let me show Dres your sketches, he won’t throttle me for answering your questions.” Finn shrugged.
I wanted to rage at him, but the resigned tone of his voice let me know that the only way I was ever going to get any answers about what had happened was if Finn answered them. The two of them were in no way surprised when Brok had, for all intents and purposes, disintegrated in front of us.
“Fine.” I ground the word out, irritation flowing through me. I wasn’t about to give them a blanket permission though, so I added, “You can look while I brush my teeth. After that, I get it back and you answer my questions. Oh, and no tearing pages out or smudging my drawings!”
“Agreed.” Finn stood and walked over to me with his hand outstretched as though we were two nations that had just come to a peace agreement or something.
I pushed up from my ratty old couch and shook his hand. My legs were still a little unsteady and I kind of wished they’d taken me to the ER or something, but I also knew I wouldn’t be able to answer any questions the nurses would ask without sounding like a crazy person. All I needed was for them to pull up my medical history. They’d take one look at that and have me on a forty-eight-hour psych hold.
My backpack was resting against the door frame, so I picked it up, setting it on my old couch. The faded hunter-green and tan plaid was usually covered by a blanket to make it look somewhat presentable, but of course, I’d been in the middle of doing laundry before the group project meeting.
The thick, spiral binding of the sketchbook was easy to grab and tug on, but the books and other pads of paper released it reluctantly, as though they didn’t want to lose their friend. I shook my head. They were notebooks. Inanimate objects didn’t have friends. And yet…I couldn’t shake the ominous feeling that had gathered in my stomach. I hadn’t voluntarily shown anyone my sketches since my last counselor or my art professor, but that was all about to change. I tugged the pen from the binding and handed the pad of paper to Finn as I walked past him and into the bathroom.
Once in there, I let out a shaky breath. I hadn’t felt so exposed or vulnerable in a long time. I pushed the feeling aside. It wasn’t important right now. What was important was getting the taste of vomit out of my mouth. I spread the toothpaste on the brush and began going to work. Within a few minutes, my mouth was minty fresh and I felt somewhat like a human being again. I pulled my hair out of the bun it had been in and redid it, tucking all the lose strands that had come out during my scuffle with a shadow—if that was even a possibility—back up so I didn’t look like I’d been dragged through a hedge backward.
After one last once-over, I turned and exited the small bathroom that had, without a doubt, been a closet at some point in its life. I could hear Finn and Dres talking between themselves quietly, which stopped as I walked up.
“You’re very talented,” Dres said, looking me over for the first time as though he was reevaluating me. It was like after he saw my drawings, I’d suddenly become a lot more interesting to him.
“Thanks,” I said, trying to smile pleasantly, even though the urge to shake them both was still there.
“How often do you sketch?” he asked as he took a seat on the couch, and I only just caught the curl of disgust that twitched his lips.
“Whenever I get the urge,” I said, my brain going wild with all the different creatures I’d seen over the years as though it were flipping through a card catalog of each experience.
“Once a week?” he pressed.
“Sure, about that. Although I’ve found myself drawing a lot more frequently lately. Maybe it’s just the stress of finals.” I shrugged.
It did worry me how often I’d been seeing the creatures lately, and I wondered how much it was distracting me from the rest of my life.
“Do you only ever draw the same thing?” Finn asked.
“I draw whatever’s on my mind.” I needed them to get off this line of questioning before they thought I was completely crazy. Just as Finn opened his mouth to ask another question, I said, “So, want to tell me what happened to Brok?”
“Not really, but I can. You’ll think I’m nutty though.” Finn chuckled.
“I doubt that,” I said, while my mind filled with all the sketches of the creatures and the memories of seeing them in person, not to mention the time I’d been put on a psych hold.
“Here’s the thing… Brok was possessed by a demon who was traveling through your realm and trying to remain undetected while he completed whatever mission he was on.”
I sat stock-still for a moment, my ears ringing with his words, while my brain screamed at me that he was mocking me. That somehow, he knew my history and was using it against me.
“Get out,” I said quietly. My face a blank mask, holding back the rage and fear that was bubbling under the surface.
Confusion flitted across Finn’s eyes. “What?” he asked before glancing up at Dres, as though he needed to confirm that this was really happening.
“You heard me. Get out. Now. Or I’ll call the cops—the real ones, not just campus security either.” My voice sounded unreasonably calm to my own ears, while inside, my emotions roiled and threatened to overflow.
Finn set my sketchbook on the seat after he stood, and he and Dres walked out, shutting the door with a quiet click behind them. The scared little girl in me wanted to beg them to come back and tell her they were just joking, but the adult knew the admission would come at a price she wasn’t willing to pay. I’d claimed to see demons before, and it had almost landed me in permanent psychiatric care. No one wanted the little girl who draws such interesting things to believe those things were real. Everything had to stay locked up in my head.
I stood and picked up my sketchbook, tucking it back into my backpack so it was where I always kept it in case I needed it. Once that was done, I looked around and felt nauseous at the damage to my small studio apartment. I had a lot of cleaning to get through before I could sleep, and sleep was all I wanted to do.
