Arianna Rose: The Gathering (Part 3) (21 page)

Arianna could not recall the drive home from Scott’s house to her home in the woods.  All she knew was that when she saw her small cabin, she wanted nothing more than to be inside it, to shut out the world forever.  She staggered through the front door and dropped her bag to the floor then made her way into her bedroom.  She collapsed to the bed and felt a tidal wave of emotion crash against her.

Desmond was dead.  She’d hea
rd the words fall from Agnon’s lips, heard him say the only words that had remained in this world capable of bringing her to her knees.  Her comfort, her inspiration, the only reason she had for waking each morning, Desmond, her love, was dead.

The air suddenly sweltered. 
She pressed her fingertips to her forehead; felt her skin, warm to the touch, grow warmer.  The room began to sway and the light bulbs flickered overhead and in the lamps on her nightstands. 

“Desmond,” she
wept and wished she could hear his voice, if only for a moment. 

Pain unlike any she’d ever felt or imagined rocketed through her, sing
eing every cell in her body with excruciating precision.  The lights swelled again before each bulb burst, dimming for good.

Desmond was dead.  She repeated the phrase in her head over and over.  She did not know why.  Repeating it did not diminish the torturous ache in her chest. 

She felt as though a hole had been punched in her core, through the very center of her being, its edges raw and ragged.  She closed her eyes and fought against it, fought the fiery flash of agony so pure it bled the air from her lungs.  She tried to breathe, but felt as if her lungs had collapsed.  Her throat had tightened and tears blurred her vision.

“Desmond,” she cried again and the dams that held her tears broke.

She cried with the very essence of her, her soul wept.  A life without Desmond was unfathomable.  They were connected.  He was hers and she was his.  Prophecy or no prophecy, she’d known it from the first time she’d laid eyes on him. 

Imagining his glorious face
bathed in golden light that matched the color of his hair made her double over clutching her waist.  His hair was sunshine, his eyes the sky and she would never see either again, not as they were meant to be seen.

She did not have a picture to hold, or a sweater he’d left behind, nothing, just her mind’s eye to rely on to preserve his memory. 

Suddenly, the too-hot feeling she’d had seconds earlier was replaced with a chill that felt as if it reached her bones.  Violent sobs racked her body.  She was powerless to stop them.  Hurt poured from her in a great deluge. 

Desmond was gone.  And nothing else mattered.

When hours had passed and the tears slowed, Arianna leaned back against her pillows and rolled to her side.  She tucked her knees to her chest and did something she had not done in a very long while.  She prayed.  She silently begged the heavens above for an end to her sorrow.  She prayed to be with Desmond.

As she laid still, her sobs reduced to a steady stream of tears, she did not hear an answer to her pleas.  She did not hear a thing, in fact.  Instead, darkness, soothing, velvety darkness, lulled her, welcoming her with its blackened void and comforting her with arms readied to embrace her.

Chapter 14

Arianna awoke to find the house submerged in darkness.  The only light she could see came in the form of glowing red numbers on her alarm clock.  She squinted to read them, her eyes blurry from crying, and saw that only an hour had passed.  For one hour, she’d been granted reprieve from the insurmountable swell of pain she’d been feeling. 

Now, however, the pain returned, and mingled with a rush of anger.
  But her anger was not reserved exclusively for Agnon as it had been earlier.  Someone else was fueling it, someone familiar. 

She closed her eyes and allo
wed herself to relax just a bit, to push the anger and hurt aside.  She felt her eyes grow heavy, felt sleep tempt and tease at her consciousness, but was struck by a sensation that chafed her to her very core. She shook her head several times, hoping the action would clear her brain, and it did, briefly.  Rolling to her side, she closed her eyes a second time and felt it again, felt the sensation return.  It niggled like nails on a chalkboard, piercing and grating as it shrieked through her ears and scraped everything in its wake before piercing her brain.  She struggled to identify it at first, knew it was familiar, but it squealed through her so loudly, she could not concentrate long enough to identify what it was.  After several more attempts at naming it, she willed the sound to be softer, and that’s when she placed what it was.  The sound was a cackle, a high-pitched female cackle,
Jess’ cackle
.

Her blood began to simmer as she wondered why
Jess’ laughter screeched through her.  Why would Jess trespass in her mind while she grieved so deeply?  Arianna did not recall having a dream during her brief rest, so how was it that a voice resounded in her ears, unmistakable and crystal-clear?  She did not know why or how, but Jess’ laughter had echoed then, echoed still. 

If it were a dream, she would not ignore it.  After all, t
he last dream she’d had foretold of Agnon, and he had materialized hours later, the silver-haired messenger of death, of murder.  His existence made her reluctant to discount the warning screaming inside her as a mere nightmare.  Her life had become a nightmare, and with nothing left to lose – no mother, no friends, no Desmond – she decided to locate Jess and find out why her annoying laugh echoed in her head.  If the rest of the group was with Jess when she found her, she would face them all.  She was not afraid of dying, not anymore at least.  She no longer had anyone to live for. 

She squeezed her eyes shut, fought the tears that threatened to fall once again, and
forced images of her beloved Desmond from her mind.  She tried, instead, to picture Jess’ face. 

Immediately, pale-blue eyes she’d once found open and kind now stared at her in her mind’s eye, glimmering with dea
dly delight.  Shoulder-length flame-red hair framed pale skin dotted with freckles and a long thin nose sloped close to full lips curled to a cruel smile.  Just a few short days ago, Arianna had thought Jess was fresh-faced and sweet, her looks representative of her personality.  But Arianna had been wrong, dead wrong.

The time had come to right those wrongs
.  She was the Sola.  She supposed that woven within the fabric of her esteemed title was the obligation to uphold some type of moral code among others like her, other witches and warlocks.  As far as she could see, Jess and the others had violated any conceivable moral code that could possibly exist between supernatural beings and human beings.  They had used humans as their playthings, had caused them to maim then murder each other.  She had seen it for herself, and she could not allow for that infraction, for that blatant abuse of power, to go unpunished. 

Her heart began to pound, its beat a thunderous roar in her ears.  The vaguest trace of a current began to ripple at her core, wavering at first. 
She concentrated harder on the image of Jess she’d created in her mind, focused with every bit of attention she could muster.  As she did, a stronger flux of energy surged forth, stronger than the first and drifted from the center of her body, gliding and flowing, until it branched slowly down the length of each arm and leg.  Only it did not feel like a reckless force rushing and charging outward.  It felt unlike any experience she’d ever had, in fact.  For the first time ever, she felt completely in control of her power.

She breathed deeply to steady her racing heart.  She did not want to lose whatever influence she was using to govern the hum of power buzzing through her.  With
Jess’ deceptive face still swirling in her head, she crossed both arms across her chest to form an
x
.  Her position change, combined with her intense focus, caused the hum to strengthen and pulsate, teeming with energy so potent she felt as if she could move a mountain if she tried.  But she did not want to move a mountain.  She wanted to find Jess.

Potent power poured through her veins like electricity and light filled her field of vision, brilliant, blinding, white light.
The experience was identical to the one she’d had with Desmond the first time he’d sifted with her from the nightclub to a meadow.  But instead of feeling surrounded by warmth,
his warmth
, she felt cold and alone. 

Desmond.
  Suddenly, Jess slipped from her thoughts and all she could think of was Desmond, how much she cared for him, how much she would miss him.  He was gone.  She would never see him again.

Both hands instinctively covered her heart and the twisting ache in her chest returned full-force. 
With her concentration broken, shifting from Jess to Desmond, she pictured his face and was lost in a vast, unknown sea.  Hurling and tumbling through a silvery abyss, he filled her every thought, her memory, her mind.  Beautiful and serene, his face was perfectly sculpted as if it had been carved from marble, and his azure eyes, bottomless oceans of tropical water, stared at her through the void.  She reached out for him, was sure she’d called his name.  But he did not respond, and her hand did not touch his skin.  It landed, instead, on something rigid, something inflexible. 

As soon as her hand grazed the hard surface, o
n impact, Desmond vanished and darkness seized the light.  Blackness surrounded her, enveloped her.  She waved her hand in front of her face, but soon realized she could not see it, not even a vague outline of it.  The cold she’d felt seconds ago was replaced with stuffy, dank air, warm and suffocating.  She found herself lying on her back feeling as if she were being pulled to one side against her will. 

“What the hell?” she murmured and her voice did not travel far. 
She became increasingly aware of the very limited space around her, and the very limited air available.  She felt as if she were enclosed in a sealed area. 

Her arms rocketed forward involuntarily and slammed against something hard and close by.  She forced her arms out to her sides and felt only a little more room in either direction.  Panic gripped her as she felt barriers all around her
, all the while, the air available seemed to diminish rapidly. 

Sweat began to stipple her brow and her heart started to slap madly against her ribcage. 
She did not know where she was exactly, just that she was confined to a dark, tight, airless space. 

The need to free herself from the tight enclosure, to feel air circulating around her, pressed her to move. 
She reached out again, pushing her arms forward, trying to force the barrier closest to her face farther away.  But her effort was without result.  The barrier did not budge. 

Her breathing became short and shallow, claustrophobia instigating an attack of anxiety.  Had she been buried? She wondered. 
She blinked several times, sure she was dead and that being aware of her burial was part of her eternal punishment.

She was about to begin screaming and thrashing when the strange tug she felt stopped abruptly.  She jerked to one side and felt an idling to her back
, redirecting her focus from walls closing in around her and airlessness.  Her body was on high-alert, waiting and listening.  The only sound was an odd whirring.  After several seconds, the movement restarted and she lurched to the opposite side.

She braced herself and tried to prepare to be pitched to on
e side again, and she was.  Less suddenly than the first time, the pull she felt was interrupted.  The idling resumed, competing with the whirring sound.  But over both, a high-pitched cackle sliced through the waning air.  Arianna felt her heart stop. 

The high-pitched cackle belonged to Jess.  She realized she had
found Jess, and that she’d sifted to her.  She reached her hands out and felt along the walls around her.  The one overhead was smooth, but the rest had a fuzzy quality to them, like flat, stiff carpeting. 

Realization
hit her like a sledgehammer.  The tight, cramped space, the limited air, the carpeted walls, the movement and idling, all of it gelled at once.  She was in the trunk of a car.  She’d teleported herself to the trunk of Jess’ car.

A bump jarred her and made her roll to one direction
. 

“Goddamn potholes!” a shrill voice yelled
then the car came to a stop.  When the rumble at her back ended, Arianna guessed the engine has been turned off.  Now, she heard Jess’ voice distinctly.  And Jess was not alone.  A male voice spoke, as well. 

Not willing
to allow herself to be held captive in Jess’ car, though Jess had no idea Arianna had sifted there, she focused every ounce of her energy on being outside, beyond the confines of the trunk. 

Her entire body tingled once again and her power felt controlled.  Only this time, she worked at blocking Desmond from her mind.  As hard as it was to do, she did not want to risk finding herself at the bottom of
an ocean, or a trash receptacle, or inside a coffin.  The horrific possibilities were endless.  She had never sifted on her own before the trunk incident.  Apparently, losing focus on where she intended to go was a risky endeavor, one she would not want to experience again.

She
concentrated on seeping through the walls of the trunk, on fresh air and freedom, and felt her body become weightless. White light filled her vision and within seconds, she stood atop pavement.  She immediately crouched low, gulping cool air while clinging to the bumper of Jess’ car, before scanning the surrounding area.