The Stelter City Saga: Ultranatural (58 page)

Kasper glanced down at the ocean far beneath
them and sighed. “Dad told me not to tell you. I wasn’t keeping it
a secret from you. I was doing it for him.”

Had he said
dad?
Lotus’s jaw dropped
as she gazed into his familiar green eyes. So familiar… too
familiar… How could she not have noticed before..?

“
Lambert?” She nearly
sobbed.

He nodded before smiling down at her once
more with that familiar joy in his eyes. “You were never alone,
Lotus.”

~“For the love of all that is good!” Ammon
exclaimed as he stepped between his two bickering friends, “Please
stop arguing! Both of you!”

“
Well-” began
Cassie.

“
Zip it!” Ammon
exclaimed.

“
But she-” Josh
interrupted.

“
I said enough!” shouted
Ammon once more. “Okay, you know what? The two of you can look for
Larissa together, I’m going by myself.” And with that, Ammon turned
around and began walking back to the studio’s small
lobby.

“
Way to go Cassie…” Josh’s
voice was fading behind him. “You made him mad.”

“
Please, Josh. I’ll just
hotwire that Stelter Hailstorm parked up front for him and he’ll
forget why we are even here.”

They had only just arrived five minutes ago
and since then, Josh and Cassie had not learned to stay quiet. It
was already going to be hard to find a supernatural that wanted
nothing to do with her old friends, and Cassie and Josh’s bickering
were only making it worse. If Larissa had heard them, she would
have fled. But Ammon was hoping on a miniscule chance that he would
find her and that he would be able to talk some sense into her.

The light coming in from the
lobby was just enough to illuminate the dark hallway. Along one
side of the hall, a door reading:
House
Audience Entrance Only
illuminated in the
gloomy haze. He hadn’t noticed the door before. Most likely because
he was too busy fighting the urge to hit his friends in the face.
He glanced over his shoulder once more to see if they were still
bickering but by then, they had vanished around the corner. With a
shrug, Ammon jigged the house entrance door and with a click, it
opened.

Utter darkness greeted him from the inside
and anxiously, Ammon fumbled against the wall for a light source
but there was nothing.

“
Larissa?” He whispered into
the darkness knowing full well that her ears would be able to pick
that up even if she were hiding in the farthest corner of the dark
room. “Larissa, if you’re in here could we please talk? I’m not
mad. I miss you… we all miss you.”

As he spoke, Ammon reached into his phone and
set his home screen to the brightest setting available. When he
shut the door behind him, darkness swam around him and his phone
was only bright enough to illuminate five feet in front of him. As
he shined his phone around, Ammon discovered that the door had lead
him to a small cavity between two sets of bleachers. When he took a
couple steps forward, his phone was able to illuminate an elevated
stage. He didn’t need to see much more to know that he was on the
set of the Dylan Dade Show.

With a sigh, Ammon realized he had walked
into a dead end. He had just started to turn around when the faint
sound of footsteps behind him made him freeze in his tracks. Before
he could strain his ears, all of the house lights turned on,
blinding him with their sudden intensity.

Startled, Ammon nearly dropped his phone as
he slapped his hands over his eyes to shield from the
brightness.

The footsteps approached him quickly from
behind. “I heard we had some visitors.” A woman’s voice hissed
coldly.

Ammon whirled around and peeled his fingers
from his face just for a moment. The barrel of a gun was only
inches away from his nose and he stepped back quickly with a
startled gasp.

“
What the-?” He began as he
blinked the last few stars from his eyes.

When his eyes finally adjusted to the scene,
he finally glanced back at the woman holding the gun. With a gasp,
Ithaca had remembered who he was before Ammon could.

Ammon stared at the woman with familiar eyes
wide with shock. There was something recognizable about the shape
of her lump pink lips as they hung open in astonishment. He almost
didn’t realize the height in her cheekbones with the way her long
dark hair was pulled back. Nor did he recognize the intensity of
gold and green in her eyes. With stilettos on her feet, she was
several inches taller than he had remembered.

Slowly Ithaca lowered her gun and Ammon
watched as her eyes began to shimmer as her mind took her back to
the times they had known each other. Her hand went limp, so limp
that the gun threatened to clatter on the ground. She took a
hesitant step back, and as she did so, Ammon’s mind continued to
travel back in time as he tried to remember why this stranger
looked so familiar.

Slowly, like the way a rainstorm fills a
tank, his memory came back to him in bits and pieces. She was his
first kiss. That was why those lips looked so familiar. He had
never known just how brilliant her eyes were because she had hidden
them with a pair of rectangular glasses. The bold features of her
stunning face had been hidden by long bangs that had fallen down to
her small nose. She had always been shorter than Ammon, but it was
the perfect height when their bodies were pressed together in an
interment embrace.

She was his first love. The
women he could never stop thinking about until Larissa came into
his life. She was the one he wrote silly notes for. He had written
their names in sharpie on the tops of her old shoes. Even after she
left him, Ammon had used the strip of pictures taken at the photo
booth on their first date as a bookmark for his text books. She
was
everything
to
him. And by the way she stared back at him, Ammon knew she never
forgot him either.

His heart seemed to catch on fire just before
he muttered her name, “Isobel…”

Ithaca shook her head and brushed the water
from her eyes before they could spill over. “No, Ammon, you can’t
be here…” Her voice was almost inaudible. “I don’t want you to see
what I’ve become…” Her voice was trembling along with her entire
body.

Since he had remembered who she was, Larissa
was blown out of his mind. All the old feelings for Isobel came
back in a snap. She was on the verge of tears and the gut wrenching
sensation in his core made him reach for her.

“
No!” she barked, stepping
back quickly. A cold glare flashed over her eyes. A part of her
wanted to point the gun back at his face. The other part wanted to
remember what it was like to wrap her arms around him. But she
couldn't. She wasn't his Isobel anymore. That part of her died long
ago when her uncle Gadiantion found her and reminded her of her
terrible past. She was Ithaca Iglesias now; ruthless, merciless,
and powerful Ithaca. She knew that, and yet her entire body
strained to pull the gun up to his chest.

"I'm sorry..." she gasped without meaning to.
The words seemed to be pulled from her throat.

Ammon had been too
bewildered at the sight of his first love that he had completely
forgotten that she was holding a gun until it was pointed at him
once more. She had mentioned she had changed... but he didn't know
that by
change
, it
meant that she was now a murderer.

"What are you doing?" he gasped, noticing
that her hand was struggling to keep aim. "This isn't you-"

"Of course it is!" Ithaca
screamed. She felt her usual self recovering from the shock of
seeing the only man she had ever been in love with. Those feelings
were slipping away from her heart but her body and mind were still
indecisive. "You don’t know what I've had to do to become the way I
am!" She wailed, "It's a shame really. I'm capable of many
incredible things." she cocked the gun and felt the confidence
swell up inside her. She
needed
to do this. If she didn't, she knew she would fall
back in love with him. Love would be her only weakness.

Though her words were vicious like a snake,
Ammon could read the pain swelling up behind her eyes. He should
have been terrified at the very thought of her holding a gun to
him. But he couldn't see the killer in her. She needed him more
than ever, and though they had been away for years now, his
feelings for her had never changed.

"Isobel," He said calmly as her lips quivered
slightly. He raised a hand slowly and set it on the gun.

Ithaca didn’t resist. She let the weight of
his hand glide the gun back down to her side. As she did so, his
fingertips brushed against hers. It was as if they had never been
separated. The familiar surge of butterflies in her stomach swam up
to her chest and she was reaching for him before her mind could
tell her not to.

Ammon didn’t hold back. Their bodies fit
together like a puzzle piece as their lips pressed tightly
together. Kissing her felt more real in his mind than it did to his
touch. She was taller now than he remembered and she had filled out
her curves so much more than when they were freshman I high school.
As he tilted his head to the side, he reflexively compensated for
the glasses that were no longer on her face.

But the way she moved was what remained the
same. The way she pulled on his hip with her long thin fingers and
balled her other hand in the hair behind his ear. The way she
sighed against his lips when she was satisfied and gasped when she
couldn’t get enough; all these things brought back an ocean of
memories he had managed to forget one day at a time. It felt so
right to be kissing her again, and for the first time in a long
time, he didn’t want to let go.

"Ammon," Ithaca muttered pulling away
slightly.

He didn't want to stop, but somehow, Ammon
found it in himself to stop kissing. He pressed his forehead
against hers and sighed deeply. "Yes, Bell?" he asked as if only
yesterday he had called her by that name.

Ithaca looked up at him. Her eyes glistening
once more with tears. At the sound of her name, Ithaca couldn’t
take it anymore. Tears flowed from the corners of her eyes and ran
like rivers down her smooth cheeks. She couldn't choke out what she
needed to say. The building would burst into flames at any minute
now and they both needed to get out immediately.

Ithaca held him tightly and let the world
spin out from under her feet. The sudden event nearly knocked the
wind from Ammon's lungs. Before he could understand what was
happening, the lush green mountains were spinning into view and the
pitter-patter of rain on his brown hair made him realize he had
appeared just outside the studio. If Ithaca hadn't been holding on
to him, the sudden impact of uneven ground would have sent him to
his knees.

"You can't be here." Ithaca gasped before
Ammon's eyes could focus on her face. "Ammon... you need to
go."

"How did you…?” he sputtered rubbing his
temple. Before he could finish asking, he had remembered that the
reason why they had broken up was because she was capable of doing
things like that.

"Ammon." Ithaca said again, this time more
seriously. She slid her hands around so that she was clinging onto
the collar of his shirt desperately. "Listen to me-"

Before she could say anything else, her voice
was drowned out by an earthshattering explosion. When Ammon looked
up at the studio, an enormous ball of fire was rolling into the air
like a monstrous fiery cobra slithering into the sky. Large chunks
of metal and wood were thrown into the air. Some of them flying at
such high speed, Ammon could have been cut in half. A wall of heat
washed over him with such intensity that it incinerated all the
humidity from the rainy atmosphere. If Ammon had been any closer,
he knew for sure that the sudden explosion would have singed his
hair if he were lucky enough to avoid being decapitated by
shrapnel.

Before another ball of fire could roll into
the air, Ammon had grabbed onto Ithaca’s hand and was sprinting
across the vacant parking lot to the nearest warehouse sized
filming studio. The sound of fire feasting on the studio was almost
defining and the heat was sending beads of sweat rolling down his
neck as they ran. When Ammon glanced over his shoulder, the fire
had already sent a section of the large studio crumbling to the
ground. As the metal roof crashed through the rooms filled with
fire, it launched a car sized fire ball out to the parking lot. It
would have incinerated them if Ammon hadn’t decided to run.

“
Let go of me!” Ithaca
barked once they had rounded the enormous warehouse. Ithaca pulled
her hand from his sharply and glanced up at his bewildered
expression. “Ammon, we can’t be doing this.”

Ithaca glowered up at him as they stood
hidden from the flames. The intense heat still surrounded the air,
but from where they stood, they could neither see the flames nor
feel the incoming rainstorm sprinkle its droplets over their
head.

“
I need you to leave me
alone.” She snapped. She wasn’t sure what it was, perhaps the fire
and the explosion knocked the sense back into her brain. But she
had already made the mistake of letting Ammon back into her heart.
“Just stay away from me!” She barked taking a step back, “And I
swear Ammon, the next time I see you… I won’t be afraid to
shoot.”

Her words were so cold that even with the
heat surrounding them, she managed to pierce his heart with an
arrow made of ice. A flicker of darkness flashed over her eyes.
Darkness, or was that sorrow? Before Ammon could get a second
glance, she had vanished as if she had never existed.