Arianna Rose: The Awakening (Part 2) (14 page)

Luke raised his hands in surrender.  “Sorry. 
I d
idn’t mean to offend
you
.”

She did
n’t
say anything further.
 
She knew he hadn’t meant for his comment to be offensi
ve. 
Instead,
she
moved toward the door again and pushed the key into the lock.

“What’re you doing?” Luke panicked.  “We can’t just barge into their house.  They’re home!  Their cars are here.”

Arianna spun around and trained her gaze on him.  “If you’d like to wait in the car, be my guest.
  I’m not forcing you to come in.  But my friend and her family could be hurt and I’m going in to find out.”

“If you’re worried, call the police,” he argued.

“Not yet,” she replied.  “I’m going in.”

“I guess I’m coming too,” he huffed.  “I can’t let you go by yourself.”

Arianna turned the handle
of the front door and pushed it
inward.  “Lily?  Mr. and Mrs. Andrews?  Anybody home?  Hello?” she called.

No one answered.  She stepped inside with Luke behind her.

“Lily?” she called out louder.  “Is anybody home?”

She began walking down the center hallway.  The kitchen lay ahead while a formal dining room waited to the right.  The house was completely quiet save for the ticking of a grandfather clock coming
from
the living room to the left and the faint whirring of the refrigerator. 

“Mr. and Mrs. Andrews?” she shouted.  “It’s me, Arianna Rose!”

No one replied. 

“No one’s here, Arianna,” Luke said and tugged at her arm.

“Then why are the cars here?” she asked.

“I don’t know, but this place, how quiet it is, is freaking me out.  Let’s get out of here.”

“No!” Arianna said sharply.  “Something doesn’t feel right.  I’m going upstairs.”

She started to move away from him toward the staircase.  He reached out and gripped her upper arm.  “Wait.  You’re right.  Something does feel off here.  All the more reason to, I don’t know, put in an anonymous call to the police department or the fire department.”

“I’m not waiting around for anyone,” she replied.  “If they’re hurt, we may not have time to wait.”

She turned to leave again but he spun her around.  “And we’re going to do what exactly?” he asked, annoyance creeping into his tone.

“I, well, I don’t know,” she stammered.

“Exactly.  And neither do I.  So let’s just call the police.  Do you have your phone?”

“No.  I left my bag in your truck.”

Luke patted his pants pockets searching for his phone.  “Mine’s in the truck, too,” he said.  “Let’s go get them, or better yet, call from there.”

She paused a moment and looked around, feeling the strange rise and fall of energy, slow and steady l
ike the chest of a sleeping beast.  “Fine,” she finally gave in.  Or so
she’d led Luke to believe.

She waited and watched as he turned to leave before she stole up the steep staircase.  Luke was halfway to the door before he turned and realized she had tricked him.

“Damn it Arianna!” he yelled and scrambled up after her.

He reached the top of the stairs just a few steps after him and must have taken them two at a time.
He grabbed her arm again and turned her to face him.  “That was
not
right,” he said, his eyes hardened.  “We don’t know what
is going on here and you pull
shit like that?”

“Sorry,” she said and made no attempt at sounding sincere. 

“Yeah, you really sound it,” he said sarcastically. 

She stood on her tiptoes and pressed her lips to his.  “Oh don’t be mad,” she attempted.  “We’ll just do a quick check then get out of here.  We will call the cops as soon as we get to the truck.”

Luke narrowed his eyes at her as if assessing whether or not she was telling the truth.  When he felt satisfied she was telling the truth several seconds later, he released her from his gaze and smiled. “Okay, okay” he agreed.

“Okay,” she echoed him and walked to Lily’s room.

They stepped inside
and Luke immediately commented on the décor.

“Whoa!  This room is like, I don’t know, a dream or something,” he observed.  And he was right.  Arianna had always loved Lily’s room.  The striking mi
dnight blue walls with Sun and M
oon ceramic wall hangings and floor-length gray drapes with matching gray bedding, though dramatic and unusual, were whimsical.  Shimmering stars in silver and gold tones of metal hung from beaded strands from the ceiling just over Lily’s bed. 

“I know,” Arianna nodded.  “I always loved sleeping over here.”

“I can see why,” he said as his eyes scanned the room.

The room looked neat, far neater than Lily had ever kept it.  Every knickknack was in place and looked freshly dusted and polished.  The bed was made so meticulously it looked as though a hotel chambermaid had
done it.  Lily had never liked to make her bed, had usually left it unmade, in fact.  The sudden change set off warning bells inside Arianna.  Ignoring the bed for the moment, she
crossed the room and walked toward the window.  For reasons she could not explain, she felt draw
n
to it.  She
pushed the curtain aside and peeked out.  As she did so, an image jolted her.  She felt suddenly terrified and began to tremble.  The fog outside wavered briefly before it was replaced by bright light, blindingly bright light.  Her breathing came in shallow pants and she felt the urge to run, t
o
search for Mr. and Mrs. Andrews.

She bolted out of the room past Luke.

“Arianna!” he called, alarmed. But she did not stop.  She went straight to Lily’s parent’s bedroom.

The room was empty, just as Lily’s had been and possessed the same sterile quality; it was neat, too neat, and smelled of cleaning product.  She stopped at the foot of their bed and her heart pounded frantically.  A vision flashed in her mind’s eye, a vision of Lily’s parent’s lying in a pool of blood where she stood.  She stifled the scream that begged to escape her throat and walked on unsteady legs to the window.  The backyard beyond it, though enveloped in fog, looked different.  She could plainly see a patch of grass on the otherwise scrupulously maintained lawn had been burned, its shape a near-perfect circle.

“Oh my God,” she whispered.

“What is it?” Luke asked, concerned.

“There,” she pointed to the grass. 

“What am I looking at?
”
he asked, confusion in is voice.

“The grass has been burned in an almost perfect circle.”

He moved his head closer to the pane of glass and strained his eyes against the mist beyond it.  “Holy shit,” he murmured.  “What the hell?  Why would anybody do that?”

“I don’t know,” she said.  But an instinctive awareness drifted across her skin like a sigh of warm breath. 

She took Luke’s hand in hers and pulled him out of the room toward the top of the staircase.  She ran down the stairs and turned down the center hallway once she reached the bottom.  She ran straight through the kitchen and opened the sliding glass do
or that led from it to the back
yard.  She s
tepped outside and walked until she stood upon the burnt grass.

Standing near the center of the scorched patch of grass, Arianna was hit with a surge of energy unlike
any
she’d ever felt.  A dark, sinister force crashed against her.  It felt like a million needles piercing her skin at once.  She felt pain immediately, pain and heat. 
Burning heat started low
and rolled up her body with a flash of intensity, sing
e
ing her cells. 
She felt her feet burning, felt flames licking at them, writhing and blistering up her ankles and calves. 
She cried out, heard the sound tear from her throat, but was powerless to stop it.  She no longer felt in control of her body.  She knew that Luke waited somewhere along the
edge
of the
charred
circle of grass, knew that he’d heard her scream, but he began to fade.  The world around her began to fade. 
Blackness taunted the edges of her vision and the
low
clouds that occupied the early morning sky began to spin round and round, threatening to send her off balance.  Her legs buckled beneath her.  She dropped to the hard, unforgiving earth on her knees and f
or a moment, t
he world fell completely silent.  S
he no longer heard anything but the surge of her own blood through her veins. 
An acrid stench began to fill her nostrils, smoke and
sulfur mixed with
something else, something like hair and oil burning.  The smell tore the air from her lungs and made it difficult for her to breathe.  She gasped for breath, yet every attempt she made was strangled by air so heavy, so blackened and foul she could not seem to fill her lungs.
  She struggled against the blackness that beckoned her, and felt rage fill her.  Her entire body began to tremble.  Sweat trailed down her form, hot and cold contending.  She squeezed her eyes shut, tried to force back the scorching heat that had reached her thighs.  When she lifted her lashes, a face appeared before her eyes.

The face was monstrous.  Charred and puckered, his skin was a patchwork of pitted skin in varying shades of brown, gray, pink and red.  His mouth snarled and he glowered at her with sunken, slate-colored eyes devoid of eyelashes and eyebrows.  He spoke to her, words that were muddled and indistinct.  She strained to hear the
m, but could not concentrate, for s
omething else was happening.  His dark energy shot through her body, clawed its way through her muscles and bones.  She did not know who he was or where he’d come from, but she knew what he wanted; he
wanted her dead.  His hatred of
her was palpable, throbbing and pounding like a heartbeat.  She blinked and fortified her resolve, pushed back against his encroachment.  A tingling
sensation
of success raced through her.  She clung to it like a lifeline and pushed harder until his putrid face vanished altogether.

“No!” she cried out, the guttural cry of a warrior.

She heard Luke’s voice, felt his touch jerk her back to reality.  “Arianna!” he shouted.

“They killed her, Luke,” she heard herself say before sobs overtook her.  “They burned her
to death
right here!”

“What?” he asked
bewilderedly.  “Who burned her
to death?  H-h
ow could you
possibly
know that?”

Even in the gray light of the overcast morning, she could see the confusion etched on his face, the worry in his eyes.

“I saw it happen just now.  I felt her pain.  And I’m sure they’re coming for me next.”

Chapter 10

Howard Kane
sat before his massive cherry wood desk in the office of the Soldiers of the Divine Trinity Church and heard a distinct ringing sound coming from one of its drawers.  Surprised, he immediately reached for the drawer’s knob and pulled it toward him.  The ringing was coming from a cellphone, and not just any cellphone, but a phone he had purchased and reserved exclusively for emergencies.
What he and his congregants categorized as emergencies generally dealt with their dogged pursuit of evil in every for
m
, and more specifically, witches.  He watched for a split-second as the small black phone vibrated and moved itself less than an inch in one direction then stopped.  He scooped it up and depressed the “send” button and answered.

“Hello?” Howard spoke into the receiver.

“Sir, it is John.  I’m here at the Andrews house, and was told to alert you of any unusual activity,” the voice on the other end said.

Howard waited patiently for John to continue but was met with silence.

“Go on,” Howard urged.  “You’re calling me on an emergency line, so clearly there is an emergency.”

“Yes sir.  Sorry,” John began.  “I can’t be sure, sir, but I think the Sola is here.”

The phone nearly slipped f
r
o
m Howard’s grip, shock weakening it.  John Cartwright had been stationed at the Andrews house for the last two weeks, but just as a precaution.  On the off chance that a vile cohort of Lily’s visited, he had wanted the area secured and with someone in place capable of handling such a being.  Never in his wildest dreams had he imagined that the Sola herself would arrive.  Yet, according to John, she had. 

Howard inhaled a trembling breath, anticipation squeezing his lungs.  “What makes you think that the Sola is at the Andrews house?”

“Well, we were here
, and the doorbell started ringing.  It rang several times and we assumed it was family or friends
stopping by
.”