Blakeshire Read online

  I figured sticking around a few days wouldn’t bring any harm. I was wrong. So very wrong. Hours after coming to the dimension of Chara, Bianca reared her ugly head and attacked. We survived, but right after that these children, these very special children, put us all to sleep. I woke up in hell.

  Well, it felt like hell. I still saw emotions, still felt them, but I saw them in a more vibrant way; I felt them deeper in my soul. Basically, it hurt. The slightest negative emotions would nearly kill me; the blissful ones would make me feel so high that I couldn’t think. I was on a violent roller coaster. I couldn’t think. And I love to think.

  I knew I had to get away from everyone, that this was what my soul was warning me about, but Charlie and the others needed me once more to help save the damned, to pull them out of The Realm, a wicked dream plane.

  This time when I entered that wicked place, I was pulled into a moment that I’d endured in a past life; it wasn’t fun the first time, and it sucked even worse the second time. It wasn’t all exactly the same, though. This time, Monroe, the young girl that Charlie and I are trying to protect, was pulled in, too. I saw her standing in a fire and did everything in my power to save her. In the end, I did. But as I pulled her from those flames, a force I could not see started to pull from me. The colors I always saw left, and the insane emotions I always felt left.

  In its wake, I felt numb—really numb. I almost felt like my soul was surrounded by shrink-wrap; the power was still there, but it was stored away to use at a later time.

  After we reached reality once more, Monroe was furious with me—an emotion I had never once witnessed in her before. Somehow, she threw a wave of energy over me, saying something like ‘Compromise,’ followed by ‘She doesn’t want to feel emotions that she feels she has no right to deal with—request granted.’

  All of that was out of character for Monroe; she had always been quiet, blissful, and deep with the words she did choose to say. So, I didn’t take this temper tantrum lightly. I knew there was a double meaning to what she had said.

  I couldn’t fathom how Monroe had the power to toy with my insights.

  I have no doubt that everyone here thinks I’m broken, that all my supernatural gifts have been stripped, but I think this is a time-out, a crossroads. That maybe Monroe had just taken the nonsense away and pointed an arrow at where I needed to focus.

  Every life has peaks and valleys—a reset button, if you will. I was on the wrong track, and somehow Monroe found a way to reroute me. As I was reprogrammed after that last battle, Monroe took away the sensation of fear, stripped the sensation of shock; she bled away the emotion of grief and sorrow. And now here I am with my own personal demon: obsession.

  I am currently obsessed with the idea of finding and fighting for my unspoken fate.

  Someone is trying to kill me. They have a bull’s-eye on my back, and it has been there ever since I took my first breath. The idea of that fact alone should have my core shaking with anxiety, but I guess you need fear to have anxiety.

  Maybe I could use this to my advantage after all. Anxiety is not something I really have time to deal with, and fear—well, fear sucks.

  For hours now, I’ve been going over every single thing that happened to me during the last few months. My steaming bath had all but turned me into a raisin a few hours back, but I wasn’t ready to face another soul just then, so I wrapped a towel around me and have been sitting on the edge of this overgrown claw-foot tub, staring at the water, testing my emotions and insights with every thought that crossed my mind.

  Obsession. If I could have wished for one emotion to leave me, it would have been that. But no, Monroe has decided that I still need to be obsessed with my unspoken fate. She’s decided that I should not move through this hell without depending on the one sense that has become my drug. Figures.

  I ignored the knock on the door by turning the water back on. I guess they wanted to make sure I’m alive or something. One thing about the dimension of Chara: the hot water never runs out; everything in this utopia of a place is abundant.

  This dimension is nothing like my home one, the one I call real. It’s peaceful, beautiful, and near flawless in every way. Not really a good place for someone who has spent their short life fixing all that is wrong. Funny thing about getting what you want: when you finally do, you really don’t want it anymore. It was the chase that you were in love with. At least that is how I see it, and like I said, I’m obsessive.

  We wanted peace, and we found it in Chara in some way. We found a new home base to rest and gain strength in. Even before all of this mayhem, the knockout that amped up my senses followed by the hell that stripped me down to this, I was bored here. Really bored.

  It didn’t matter if I let my thoughts rest or ramble; they always pulled me into the dimension of Esterious, the darkest one of them all, the one place that would likely never run out of souls to mend. Of course, that was also the same place where Drake, the boy in my dreams, lived and was set to rule.

  He was an added complication to all of this. I was mad at him for, in some way, cheating on me. So jealous that I have been near ruthless since I saved his life. He only managed to get me to be real, open up, for a few hours last night. No matter how hard I tried, each time I looked into his eyes I saw him staring back at Willow, the girl he fought to have for months, my celestial twin.

  I had mental battles about that issue often. Part of me agreed with my friends that he was tricked into that—that he was in some way looking for me. The other part argued he never should have been fooled, that he should have known the difference.

  The fact that Drake was blunt and honest didn’t really help me. He admitted loving Willow, admitted that he was sure he’d had past lives with her.

  It seemed that in some way we were both pushing and pulling each other away. Doomed lovers, no doubt.

  I pushed the thought of him away as I stared at the steaming water my feet were dangling in. You would think that because I’m a water sign, a proud Scorpio, that I would adore water, feel at peace around it, but I fear it. At least when I could feel fear, I feared it. Now I just know that I don’t care for the element.

  The whispers of the damned have always been there, lingering in the background of my mind, but as I grew up they became fiercer, like they were sick of me ignoring them or something. Not long after that point, shadows started to move and form into awkward images.

  My mother, a spiritualist at heart, thought that I needed a natural escape, so she packed up her only daughter and rented a beach house. I think she thought that the waves would block out the sound of the dark whispers and relax me, and they did, for all of about five minutes.

  Right when my feet touched the water, which was heated by a blazing summer day, chills spread across my skin. Even though the sun was out and the water was fairly clear, my mind pulled me into a different world, a different time. I saw a black pool of water. I could see something moving within this water that might as well have been ink. As I peered closer, I saw the largest octopus that has ever existed. I also saw a woman’s reflection. Every feature on her face was chiseled, almost squared off. She said one word: run. And I did.

  I ran screaming past my mother into the beach house. It took my mother three hours to convince me to come out from under my bed, and I squealed when she made me take a bath to get the sea salt off me. I squealed because every time my mother let the water pool in the tub, I saw that woman’s face, heard her tell me to run.

  My mother had a reason for everything. She convinced me that I had watched The Little Mermaid days before and my mind was shifting through images and had managed to take my fears of the whispers, which I shouldn’t hear, if you ask me - and turn them into something tangible that I could see.

  I bought that for a time, that is, until every time I went near water, saltwater, I would see that woman.

  Later, my best friend Charlie figured out how to make the whispers stop, or calm down at least. She taught the rest of us to us
e our ability to ‘see’ and figure out where these souls went wrong in their lives and remind them of a time they were loved; after that, they almost always moved on. Of course, more came, but at least they were nicer and we were now in charge of the curse. When Charlie taught me this, in the back of my mind I thought that maybe that woman was just a ghost that had died by the water and needed my help to move on. I never had the nerve to test that theory and stayed pretty much landlocked until a few days ago.

  I saw that woman again. And she wasn’t in water. She was in the palace that Drake lives in.

  The second I walked into that palace to save Drake and Landen, the boy that was with him, I heard that woman. I saw her. Her image was in every piece of artwork that had any water or sky within it, which was literally like every few feet. Not easy to deal with when you figured out that you have a celestial twin and the boy that should not be real, was. What a disaster.

  I tried talking to that image of the woman, used every trick in the book to get her to move on, but she wouldn’t. She just became more and more furious because I wouldn’t listen to her. Maybe I should have. I did get stabbed right after that, but still...something was off about that ghost.

  The other shadows refused to go near her. She was all alone, standing within a vast sea of the damned. It was almost as if they feared her. Of course, my nasty habit of being obsessed with anything weird has left me to ponder this endlessly, on top of everything else.

  Any time I go near that palace, I see her. Now, if she is as evil as my gut is telling me, evil enough for the damned to shy away from her, and if she told me to run, then she was trying to get me away from something that she doesn’t want me to have—right? That is the way I see it anyway.

  So what would my fate have to do with her? With water? And why was she, along with fate itself, trying to keep me away from that palace? Was it Drake? Was that what she was trying to keep me away from? Why? Maybe it was because the ghost that dominates that palace, Donalt, wanted Drake to love Willow. That thought alone made me sick to my stomach.

  The palace was near the ocean, but I’d been that close to seawater before and not tormented by her. At one time, I thought maybe the entire existence was symbolic, that the octopus stood for something, the black water that was made of salt, but all of my research led me to nothing but dead ends. Which is why I just fell into rhythm with Charlie and the others, focused on what we could do, and tried to figure out why we could do what we could do. There were enough damned souls in this world to occupy any soul for a few lifetimes, but right now, in this near numb state, I’m almost sure that was supposed to be my distraction.

  I have to figure out how to use this last blow to my advantage. And for a foolish, girlish second, I thought that maybe if I didn’t have the emotion of fear anymore that I would have the will to let Drake in, to let him see the real me, not the jealous, stubborn woman that was too afraid to tell him that he would always be my first and last obsession within this life.

  I had to smile a little when I thought of last night. Even though I was in pain for most of it, Drake made me forget that; he made me forget because I couldn’t help but be absorbed by him, be nervous, curious and excited all at once. He was so freaking addictive.

  Even though seeing was second nature to me, that at a glance I could see someone’s past, it was harder with him. I think it’s because he always has his guard up. I guess you have to if you are meant to rule a few billon souls and a demon is bartering to take over your body so he can have that rule.

  The thing is, even though Drake was helping Willow, my twin, fight a master Escort and current ghost named Donalt, and my best friend Charlie was fighting another master Escort named Xavier—I think I have my own waiting on me.

  Yeah, I’m pretty sure something sinister has been trying to steer me off course, and when my insights were amped up, I was distracted. If I were the enemy, I would have played this the same way—which leaves me to believe, broken or not, that I was given a gift tonight by Monroe.

  That phantom woman that scared me as a child made a mistake. She chose to use fear to hide something from me. I suppose she thought that emotion would keep me away, but I don’t have that barricade anymore, which begs the question as to why I lost that emotion. Why Monroe was selective in which emotions she returned and which ones she took away from me.

  I reached to rub my temples. As always, my mind had too many questions and the answers I found always led me to dig a little deeper: right back into obsession.

  The knock on the door grew more intense. I breathed in. I didn’t smell anything beyond the soap that I had scrubbed every inch of body with. I hated going into that realm. I hated Escorts. I hated reaching into them and pulling their evil essence out. At least I used to hate that; now, I just didn’t want the stench of sulfur on me.

  As hard as I had scrubbed, I was surprised I had any skin left. I tightened the towel around my body and let the one around my long, dark hair down.

  Just as I managed to get the tangles out of my damp hair, Aden appeared. That was another gift my cousins and I shared, along with Charlie: if we had seen a place in someone’s thoughts, we could manifest there. I wasn’t sure exactly how we did that, if we were moving our souls or just projecting a tangible image of ourselves. Either way, that was one cool aspect of being abnormal.

  Aden’s pensive, yet fierce stare dominated his deep green eyes. Even though Aden was an identical twin to his brother Draven, they were night and day. Aden was a hard-core drummer that showed no mercy with any beat he was given, but without his drums he was a philosopher, a deep thinker that often carried a concern with the words he spoke. Don’t get me wrong, he is very confident, fearless, but at the same time he is vastly overprotective to the point where he worries about crap that has not happened yet. I guess I kinda do, too. Maybe that is why out of the two of my twin cousins, Aden was the one I fought with the most and got along with the best.

  “Don’t tell me that I should have knocked because I have been knocking for an hour,” he said as he folded his arms across his broad chest and all but glared down at me.

  I stared blankly at him, trying to test my senses. I was almost sure I could feel his concern, but then again I could just be judging his outward appearance, the warm, brotherly embrace his energy was extending in my direction.

  “Don’t worry, there’s plenty of hot water,” I responded dryly.

  “I don’t want a shower, Maddie.”

  “I’m not a little girl anymore. Madison,” I corrected with no emotion in my voice.

  “You’re acting like one, hiding in the bathroom.”

  “I’m not hiding. I’m thinking.”

  “Then we are going to think together.”

  I let out a deep sigh. Before, when I began to say what was on my mind, grief and sorrow would halt the words from flowing. I couldn’t bear to walk away from the three people on this planet that I let get the closest to me, but my emotion of grief was on hiatus. “No, that is just it…I think we all need to go our own ways.”

  “Have you lost your freaking mind?”

  Yeah, that made him mad. I didn’t feel that emotion on the inside like I did before, more so on my skin; it was like a slight stabbing sensation. I could handle this far better than what I was enduring when I woke up this morning.

  “Not my mind,” I breathed. Oddly, it felt so good to let that out, to finally say what had been in my head for a while.

  The anger in his eyes faded and the concern took over as he took a seat on the edge of the tub. His dominant, square jawline flinched once. “What happened to you in The Realm?” I could see his green eyes shift to black, and I knew he was seeing the answer to his question; my perception of it anyway.

  I flinched, remembering seeing fire consume Monroe as I remembered having no regard for my own life. That girl was special, and my gut was telling me that the best way to protect her now would be to follow my own path.

  “Nothing,” I said as I prepared to su
m up what had happened. I didn’t want him to worry about me. Before, I would have seen his energy and felt his emotion, but now I could only judge his image, which was crystal clear without all the auras invading my line of sight. “I threw a few damned souls into the real world, was pulled into a war zone. Saw Monroe in trouble, saved her, and then—voila, we came home and I’ve been enjoying an everlasting hot bath.”

  “You hate water,” he bit out, choosing not to press me on the actions I’d taken or the results of those actions.

  I stared at him, trying to evaluate how damaged my insights were. Normally, I would see something like a movie playing out around him; now I could only see flashes of what he went through in The Realm. It didn’t seem like he’d had any more fun than I did. I kinda like this new way of seeing. I’m a deep analyzer; the more information, the more I analyzed. Flashes were good; less food for thought. They gave me just enough to get a grip on what was going on and not enough to distract me from the moment I was in.

  I smirked. It was no secret that I hated water, but no one knew why. Charlie would go off to meet Aden and Draven at random beaches for the summer. I rarely went, and when I did I kept at least two hundred feet between me and the ocean.

  Yesterday was the first time I had been on a boat ever, and when I agreed to play the role of a girl who was courting Drake to help fool the court he was at war with, I didn’t know there was a boat involved. When I figured that part out, it was too late to back out. Every time I tried, they all thought I was just scared of Drake, which was true, too, but I would have moved in with the boy just to avoid the boat. Lesser of two evils, if you will.