The Stelter City Saga: Ultranatural (43 page)

This time Ace did raise his brows quizzically
and pulled back his lips in a half smile. “What do you mean?”

A plan was already forming in the back of
Ithaca’s mind and being fueled my jealousy, she didn’t bother to
think twice. Even from a distance, she was able to tap into Lee’s
mind. By simply wishing her to look out the large window, Lee’s
head turned for the first time that day, she caught sight of Ace.
Ithaca wasn’t sure what Lee would do next, all she needed was for
her to watch for the next several seconds.

“
I mean,” Ithaca went on,
“Do you want to know what it’s like to be under
persuasion?”

Ace scoffed, “Yeah sure. Make me do something
I would never do in my life. But don’t kill me alright?”

Ithaca smiled and she was already tapping
into Ace’s brain. “Of course not.”

In the next moment, Ithaca watched as the
light drained from Ace’s eyes due to the loss of his self-control.
Then to her will he was reaching for her, his fingertips brushing
the base of her ear. As his strong hand lifted her face closer to
his, the other was reaching for her the smallest part of her waist.
Just before her eyes slid shut, Ithaca caught sight of Lee with her
nose practically pressed to the glass watching them. A devilish
smile spread across Ithaca’s lips just before Ace pressed them to
his own.

To Ithaca, their lips fit perfectly and she
willed for him to press them harder. The hand on her waist slid
around to her back and forced her ribs against his chest. As her
head tilted to the side, her fingers wove into his dark curls
locking them behind his ears. His mouth opened just as she willed
it to and his soft breath collided with her own as the feeling of
his tongue on hers sent chills racing down her arms.

Losing herself in the way he was, Ithaca
pulled her legs from the water and scraped her knees on the cement
as she swung them around his hips. She wanted him to hold her
tighter and upon that single command, Ace slid both his hands down
to her waist jamming his thumbs into the grooves inside her hipbone
and shoved her down on his lap.

Just for an extra sense of pleasure Ithaca
slid her eyes opened and glanced at the glass door. The look on
Lee’s devastated face was priceless. Her entire face down to her
neck blotched over a furious blush and the way her brows slanted
gave her the look of hopeless sorrow. Her hands flattened against
her chest just over her heart as if she were trying to keep it from
breaking. That’s when the waterworks poured from her eyes. Large
tears rolled down her puffy cheeks and stained the collar of her
top. Then she turned around and hurried up the spiral steps.

Seeing Lee turn and run finally satisfied
Ithaca’s appetite. As good of a kisser Ace was, she knew there was
no emotion behind his movements. Just her own greedy lust for his
beauty. Before giving Ace permission to stop kissing her, she had
rolled off him and climbed to her feet. “What did you think?” she
asked as the color slowly flooded back to his eyes.

During the kissing, Ace had fought to pull
away. But there was something in his mind almost like a relaxing
chemical had been released keeping him in a state of being too
tired to resist. Now that he had regained control, Ace climbed to
his feet with his jaw taut. He was face to face with Ithaca once
more with his insides shaking but he wasn’t sure if it was from
anger or shock. After all, he wasn’t sure she knew he was in a
relationship with Lee and she had just forced him to cheat on the
one woman he loved.

“
What do you think?” Ithaca
asked again her grin unwavering.

Ace glared down at her, his
expression unchanging. “You’re right.” He managed to utter as he
took a step back, “That is something I would
never
do.” Instead of waiting for a
response, Ace whirled around and marched back to the gymnasium
knowing full well that the stunt she had just pulled on him was an
invitation to keep her out of his life.

Chapter 11 King of the Hill

~Larissa paced anxiously across Waikiki
Beach. But just before she could turn around and create more
footprints, a shallow rush of water rose up to flatten the sand.
Her feet sunk with each step as the water receded back to the
ocean. It was a lovely day, but the gentle roaring of the waves and
the steady morning beam of the sun weren’t calming her nerves. From
within the open back galley of the Stelter Hotel, Larissa peered at
the time hanging against the lobby wall. Zach was supposed to be
there almost an hour and fifteen minutes ago and Larissa was past
worrying.

What if he had forgotten? Or what if she had
misunderstood and he meant 9 PM as opposed to AM? Regardless,
waiting for him was setting her anxiety at a peak and she wasn’t
sure if she could take it any longer. Her breathing was getting
shorter and shorter with each step she took and her own pulse beat
so rapidly, she could feel it against her neck and wrists.

Once more that powerful feeling was beginning
to stir in her chest. It was the same sort of feeling she got from
kissing Ammon right before her feet left the ground. But this time,
it felt like a time bomb. If Zach didn’t show up, she was going to
explode. As she continued to march across the sand, she willed her
body to not shake with anticipation and she dug her nails into her
palms to try and stop it.

“
That’s it,” Larissa
whispered to herself. “If he’s not here in five, I’m
gone.”

Kids ran to the water only to race back up
shore to avoid being splashed by crashing waves. For a moment, the
scenery darkened as a big fluffy cloud cast its shadow on the
beach. Larissa watched as the line separating sunshine from shade
slid across the scenery before disappearing up to the beachfront
hotels. Once the light returned, Larissa should have been
wonderfully aware of how beautiful the island was. The water was so
crisp and the distant island of Heleow decorated the horizon like a
bow on a gift. But why was she not calming down?

Her pulse was rising with anticipation to the
point her vision was starting to tunnel and suddenly she was very
aware of how annoying her hair was as it slapped up against her
face with the breeze. What ounce of sanity she had left was used on
keeping her hands at her side rather than tearing her hair out. As
she whipped around once more to continue pacing, her eyes shot once
more to the clock. Not even a minute had passed.

She could practically feel her blood boiling
at this point. She had never been a patient person, but waiting on
the thing she needed most was torturing her. Any moment now she was
going to explode like a supernova. She should just accept the fact
that Zach wasn’t showing and leave before anything happened.
Larissa was marching back up to the hotel when she finally heard
her name.

“
Larissa?”

The girl whirled around and sure enough, Zach
was standing there in a pair of sunglasses and baggy beach-shorts.
She didn’t bother studying his shirtless state since the only man’s
body she ever adored was Ammon’s, and also the sight of him half
naked was so strange considering he was like a brother to her.

“
What took you so long?” she
snapped crossing the beach to get in his face. She was in such a
fury, she almost ran over a little boy digging in the sand. “I have
been here since
nine
o’clock, Zach!
”

“
It’s nine o’clock already
isn’t it?” he asked rubbing his head. “Can you please quit yelling
at me? I’m a bit hung over. I guess I partied a little too
hard.”

Larissa managed to stop the
explosion of word vomit before it left her tongue. Hung over? Zach,
her only friend was
hung over?!
Her mind spiraled back to yesterday when Zach
explained how busy he was and that he didn’t have time for his long
lost friend. He had promised to show up on time but instead he had
ripped her off by partying the night before and making her wait on
him?!

Larissa had clenched her teeth shut to keep
the rage from spewing. When her teeth grinded on eachother, a
little kick of energy fluttered from her heart.

Zach had to clamp a hand over his ears,
“Seriously, stop yelling. You’re pissing me off. Now come up to the
bar, I met some chick just now and I need you to be my wing-woman.”
And with that Zach spun around and began trudging back up to the
Stelter Hotel.

Larissa refused to follow
him. Did he just say he met a girl
just
now?
He was sitting at a bar, talking to
other women while she was being honest to his word for an hour and
a half! No. Larissa was not okay with that. Her hands were shaking
uncontrollably now and that feeling in her chest was rising to the
surface. The ends of her fingers felt as if she had just been
holding onto something hot and Larissa shut her eyes to cool her
fire, but even that was a failure.

A sudden ringing in her ears was building
until it was practically the pitch of a dog whistle and managed to
drown out the sounds of birds, cars, and children. Though her eyes
were shut, she suddenly had a very vivid idea of her bone
structure. It was as if her skeleton instantaneously caught fire
with the heat centered along her spinal cord. Then it happened, a
sort of snap and suddenly, she was at peace. All the pent up energy
had flown out of her system but from the anger an agonizing scream
tore through her ringing ears.

That was the last thing Larissa heard from
Zach. When her eyes flipped open he was dead; murdered in the most
grotesque way she had ever seen. Larissa had never known a human
body could contain the amount of blood flooding to the scene until
she watched it dribble in red lines over the sand and down the
shore to her bare feet. It felt like burning water against her
flesh, but that was just her subconscious describing murder. It was
inevitable that she had just killed a man and a horrified cry
choked in the back of her mouth when her eyes finally rested on his
corpse.

It was as if his entire skeleton had made a
complete 180 inside his body. The skin of his face had been
completely ripped to one side of his skull revealing the layers of
muscle and fresh veins in his neck. Where his familiar green eye
should have been was now replaced by the patch of hair beside his
ear and the folds of lose skin crinkled around his neck stopped
twisting at the spot where his shoulders should have been. Instead
each bone that had once formed his ribcage had broken off in the
process of twisting around to form jagged horns ripping from his
side and spiraling until his sternum finally burst open where the
top of his spine should have been.

Pieces of his innards hung from his bones
like a poorly decorated party. She had never seen human organs
before, but in real life they were even more disgusting than she
could ever imagine. Small and yellow-brown like the color of vomit.
Some had even been punctured by his ribs and were held up now like
a decapitated head on a spear. What pieces of his interior that
weren’t tangled to his skeleton had been blown out to the side. The
same side his skull was now facing. They decorated the bloody sand
like shrapnel from an explosion. Even his sunglasses had been
ripped off his face now lay atop a hunk of his guts as if it were a
pillow.

At about this point the first pedestrian
scream ripped across the beach. If Larissa hadn’t been in the haze
of shock, she might have turned to see where the scream came from.
Instead her gaze was frozen on Zach’s back, shredded apart like the
stripes of a tiger. More screams flooded the beach, people were
fleeing, a baby wailed in the distance, a man was on the phone for
the police, but Larissa hadn’t moved. The blood had stained the
sand in such a crimson that when the waves came up to clean it, it
dispersed the blood by soaking in the red and making it look like a
greater horror than what it already was.

Tourists were running around her, hurrying
out of the way for fear of being the next victim but once more
Larissa didn’t even budge. Slowly another woman approached her
through the chaos. It wasn’t until they were an arm’s length away
that Larissa finally slid her eyes to the side.

“
I tried to warn you.”
Ithaca muttered glancing at the corps.

Heat rose to Larissa’s cheeks as her friend’s
dead body reflected back in her damp eyes. When she closed them,
Larissa tried to pull herself as far away from the moment to
remember what Ithaca had told her on the mountain. There was
something about how her powers were unstoppable; she wouldn’t know
when the next outburst would be and she wouldn’t know how to
control them. Ithaca said she could help…

“
I warned you.” Repeated
Ithaca.

“
SHUT-UP!!” Larissa roared
whipping herself around. She had no idea where the sudden burst
came from but the look in Ithaca’s eyes conveyed she was hardly
surprised. “You are not my family and you
never will be!
I don’t need you in my
life!” she raged pulling her fist back. “
Leave me ALONE!!”

When her fist launched forward, it was like
watching someone else control her body. Larissa only showed
violence with her words and never with her actions, but even as her
fist flew, she had no regret.

Larissa’s fist was headed straight for
Ithaca’s beautiful face. But even with supernatural speed behind
the punch, Ithaca managed to smirk before swerving out of the way.
The blow had come from an inexperienced fighter so Larissa let her
body swing forward with momentum. That was the technique Ithaca was
waiting for. Without a moment’s notice, she snatched onto Larissa’s
extended wrist and pressed her other hand on Larissa’s back. With
Larissa still leaning forward, all Ithaca had to do was give a
light nudge between Larissa’s shoulder blades to send her face into
the sand.