bocadelinferno (original) (raw)

My world was turned on its axis a month ago. My sister showed up in the middle of our village, naked, cold and confused. My sister died nearly eight years ago at the hands of a monster, a monster that had once been a man, he was also once a demon with a soul. A singular being amoung us all. Her neck was snapped, the coldest death, her body placed in the bed of her lover. Those were the things I was allowed to know when we buried her in the fields where we used to play.

I called my nephew, her son, the one she abandoned when she left this life and the rest of us behind. Funny how she left us all and yet kept the duty our clan convinced her was hers to carry out.

To watch a soul suffer.

I am still angry with my sister but this woman isn't the same woman who left. She can't imagine ever leaving a child she bore. She can't imagine leaving Borsa for a life she can't remember.

Clay came back days after my call, the one that ruined his birthday. My heart was heavy with the decision to tell him about Janna but I couldn't keep it from him. He deserved to know that his mother was alive again, that some dark magics had been implored to bring her back to this earth. He desereved to know her just as she deserved to know him.

I raised Clay as though he were my own. I suppose I could have lied and told him he was in fact my child. It's what I was told I should do but I still had an idealistic idea about my sister and I couldn't deny my nephew stories of the woman she'd been before she left us. She was an amazing woman, a gifted witch, on the path to take over grandmother's place but she left and she left him - us. And I was given that path instead, once my mother had left the earth Clay and I were free to return to Borsa. My mother wanted the power she thought my nephew had and I couldn't let that happen.

Now we're in London. Janna is resting and I'm trying to put the finishing touches on the spell that will hopefully lead us to some answers about where she's been or how to retrieve her memory. I'm not sure England was meant in the sense of the country but it was the only lead that we had and Clay insisted that we work from here. I can't really deny Clay anything in this. He's trying so hard to be accepting of Janna and not let the bitterness that permeated his being over the years seep into the relationship he's trying to build with her.

He wants answers, that much I do know.

It was all I could to keep from physically shaking all the time; I’d made a quick exit from the bar. How could I be so stupid flirting with Ambrose, there were so many red flags, and I ignored them. Abandonment wasn’t an issue I dealt with easily, and Clay’s flight on his birthday, felt like abandonment all right, I wasn’t angry, I trusted Clay, and if he just up and left, it was for good reason, he never did anything lightly, well hardly ever. He was just confusing, and his face was ashen.

Maybe there was some anger, what possessed me to go to a bar in the first place, I’ll never know, dad had taught me to be so careful and yet I let my guard down. Maybe I’m just being paranoid, but I feel like a mouse in some maze, and he’s the one watching me. Could have been those intense eyes? The more we talked, the more I knew he wasn’t human. Okay call me crazy, but he’s just different, even then I didn’t leave, I could blame it on the alcohol, partially it was because of he attraction, and partially because around him, I had this feeling of power, if you’d call it that, frankly I was a bit inebriated, and I don’t remember.

What I do know is he could have hurt me, I allowed myself to get in that place with him, and he didn’t. It wasn’t pity, it was more like a game, but as scary as it is to think, I think we connected on some other level, and that’s what made him hesitate, why are girls drawn to bad boys? And they always want to think that they meant something? That’s where I am, wanting to believe that I got to him. It’s not like many things get to him, by the end of the evening I could tell he was a cold fish, but as he looked at me, there was a deliberation, a conscious decision to kill me, or kill me and change me into something else to be with him. God, I sound insane, and how does one interpret feelings, but that’s what I felt, real or not. Maybe I just wanted to matter to someone.

I’ve had a long time to think about this, develop and discard theories as I lived through my day-to-day without Clay. His silence, his absence an obvious need to deal with his own demons, I’ve been there, but it hurt none-the-less, and his cryptic emails, gave me no clue to what was happening, and for the first time in my life, I began to feel isolated, yes, I began to isolate myself just for self preservation, only going to class.

I’m not sure when I realized I was being followed, it was more of an awareness I guess, a realization, the sound of footsteps behind you, the phone ringing, and when you answer it no one is there. On one of my few outings with friends, I caught Ambrose staring at me across the room, as if to taunt me.

So I ran, packed up and got out of Florida and began traveling North, stopping here and there, and just when I began to feel safe, the overwhelming feeling of being stalked, and terror slow overtaking me like a slow cancer eating one up inside.

I’d wanted to be self-sufficient, to take care of myself, but death followed me and in each town, a series of violent attacks, following me my wake and I felt responsible.

There was only one thing I could think of doing.

Shaking, I picked up my cell and pressed one on my speed dial.

Boston was cold and icy, cheerful signs of the season greeted me in every shop, and street corner, but now they offered no comfort. Like a little child moving up and down as if holding it in because he or she couldn’t find a bathroom, my feet flat, my body shaking as if to will Clay into answering.

Finally, his familiar voice “What’s up homes?” I had to giggle, hearing that it almost melted everything away.

All I could must was three little words, “I’m in trouble,” before the tears started streaming down my face. Thank the goddess he couldn’t see me.