Arianna's Awakening (Arianna Rose Part 1 & The Awakening Part 2) (13 page)

“I said what’s your hurry?” neck tattoo asked in a gravelly voice.

“We have friends inside.  Came out for a smoke and got locked out,” Arianna answered and tried to sound calm.

The man with the gray bandana stepped away from the man with the tattooed neck and approached Stephanie.  Arianna felt her heart slamming against her ribcage as he raked his eyes up and down their bodies, circling and stalking them like prey.  Neck tattoo advanced as well.  The closer he got, the more hideous he became.  Silver jewelry pierced the skin of his face and ears and jingled softly as he walked and he blinked often, his nearly lashless lids straining over eyeballs that protruded.  His tongue continually darted from between his thin lips like a snake sniffing out its next meal.  Both men looked as if they were high on something.

“Aren’t you both just a pleasant surprise?  So pretty to look at,” neck tattoo hissed and ran his serpentine tongue over his lips again.

“Thanks,” Arianna said flatly and slid a glance at Stephanie.  “But we’re leaving.  Our friends are waiting.”  Stephanie looked terrified and trembled so violently her large hoop earrings quivered. 

“I don’t think so,” neck tattoo warned and closed the distance between him and Arianna.  He cuffed her upper arm, his grip on it vice-like.  “They can wait.  We’re just getting to know each other.”

Arianna tried to wrench her arm from him and scream, but he clapped his hand over her mouth and slammed her against the brick wall behind her.  With the pressure of his hand pinning her face and head to the wall, he used his other to pull a small rectangular object from his pocket.  He pushed a button on it and a shiny blade appeared.  He pressed it to Arianna’s throat and said, “If you make another sound, I’ll slit your fucking throat.”

Arianna could hear her blood roaring in her ears.  The man pushed his knife against her skin and she felt the sting of skin breaking.  All the while, he stared into her eyes, his own completely devoid of any sentiment whatsoever.  From the corner of her eye, she saw Stephanie move, attempt to run.  But the man with the bandana grabbed her before she’d taken more than two steps.  He slammed Luke’s sister against the far wall and Arianna heard her head connect with the brick wall with a sickening thwack.  Stephanie slid down the wall slowly until her body slumped to the ground. 

“That’s all right,” bandana man said.  “She doesn’t have to be awake for this.”  He then crouched down over her and lifted up her miniskirt.

“Like what you see?” neck tattoo said to Arianna, and ran his tongue up her neck.  Bile rose in the back of her throat and she thought she might vomit, fear fighting to purge the beer from her stomach.  “Now you be a good little girl,” he ordered her and she felt his hands touch the hem of her miniskirt.  He raised it high and revealed her thong underwear.  “Oh, I like those,” he laughed approvingly.

Suddenly the sodium vapor lamps brightened considerably, transforming from a sinister, jaundiced glow to a bright, near-white hue that pulsed all around her;
through
her. The world suddenly buzzed and the fear she’d felt seconds earlier melted away.

“You think I’m gonna just let this happen,” she spat.

“I like it when they struggle,” neck tattoo said confidently, but the look on his face betrayed his confidence.  He looked shocked by her lack of fear.

Spurred, Arianna felt her muscles bunch and strain, burning to move despite the weight of his body against her.  An odd but not altogether unfamiliar sensation whispered through her body, gently at first then gained momentum immediately until it throbbed through her veins with more force than her lifeblood.  The man who sought to rape her had not noticed the changes that were occurring.  He did not sense Arianna’s transformation.  But she had
, in fact, transformed.  She no longer felt fear unlike any she’d ever felt before.  She no longer wanted to flee.  She wanted something else entirely.

Her stomach roiled angrily as if somersaulting over a slithering serpent that moved unendingly inside her gut.  The scent of garbage from the surrounding trash bins in the alleyway intensified
, but was overpowered by a different scent: Blood.  The metallic stench of blood hung in the air like mist, overwhelming her, fueling her.  Her vision, shrouded moments ago by tears and darkness, now saw clearly that blood dripped from a wound on Stephanie’s skull.   Fury shook her body and the urge to kill the man before her as well as the one who hovered over Stephanie overtook her. 
Kill or be killed.
The words passed through her with the tremors that shook her, vibrating and echoing through her core.  She shoved her hands forward with strength and energy she should not have had and the man launched backward.  She swept her arm up and to one side and the man’s body moved, as if he were a marionette on a string guided by her hand, and slammed against the brick wall of a neighboring building.  She heard loud snaps, bones no doubt, and several of them, when his body met with the wall.  In the instant that it had happened she’d wondered how she could possibly hear his bones yielding on impact.  But the thought had been fleeting.  The hum inside her encompassed any reason she’d possessed and drowned it out completely, and she was filled with the urge to punish the man she seemingly controlled.  She retracted her hand quickly and watched as he lurched forward, impossibly, his feet not touching the ground.  Then she flicked her wrist away from her body and he smashed against the wall once more.  A vile thrill of excitement trilled inside of her as his form met with the wall a second time.  She watched as the man with the neck tattoo fell to the concrete unmoving, his leg jutting out from beneath him unnaturally. 

Feeling her blood roaring through her veins, she turned her attention to the man with Stephanie.  Stephanie’s underwear had been torn from her body and the man with the bandana had begun to unzip his pants.  He produced his own blade and pressed it to Stephanie’s neck.  “One more step and I’ll kill the bitch,” he said.

At his threat, Arianna’s breaths came in short, shallow pants and she felt as though a black hole resided deep in the pit of her belly, one that could never be filled.  Her eyes burned with red-hot heat as if both were glowing embers.  Everything in her field of vision was bathed in crimson.  She saw the man crouched over Stephanie freeze.  He looked at her, shocked and confused. 

“What the fuck?” he shouted.  “You’re eyes!  You’re eyes are r-r-r-red!”  Fear laced each of his words, but Arianna felt nothing for him.  “Stay back or I’ll cut her!” he said again and pressed the point of the blade so that it produced a thin rivulet of blood.  Stephanie began to stir and regain consciousness, undoubtedly in response to the pain of the blade pricking her throat. 

The coppery scent of blood filled Arianna’s nostrils once again, burning the back of her throat.  All she wanted was to avenge her friend who lay littered on the ground like refuse, her skirt lifted to her waist and her underwear torn off.  The man had intended to rape her, to strip from her that which was not his to take, her dignity, her worth.  But Arianna would not let that happen.  Her body shook as a ripple of ire passed through her, flaring to the tips of her fingers, tingling and burning.  She raised her hands quickly.  As her fingers lifted to the height of her shoulders, heat flashed from their tips and felt like it was arching in a scorching stream.  The man rose to his feet, but not fast enough to evade her all-consuming rage.   Her scarlet sight watched as he burst into flames.  He rose to his feet and scampered away from Stephanie whose eyes fluttered, flames licking every part of his body.  He screamed and writhed, tried to pat the flashes of fire that rose and fell like the breaths of a great beast.  He howled in pain and pleaded for help as the flames grew larger and encompassed him.  But Arianna did not offer help and she did not want him to feel reprieve.  She wanted him to feel the fire of hell and burn.    

Arianna’s felt her own chest rise and fall, her breathing strained and labored.  She looked to Stephanie who had awoken to the sight of a burning man before her.

“W-what’s happening?” Stephanie asked groggily.

Arianna didn’t bother answering any questions.  She grabbed Stephanie and pulled her to her feet with strength th
at began to drain from her, leaving in its wake pain, indescribably intense pain.  Every part of her ached.  She tugged on the handle of the door they’d exited.

“It’s locked, remember?” Stephanie said.

Arianna yanked it as hard as she could and the felt the lock surrender.  Thumping bass poured out from the opened door and they stepped into the darkness.  The effort of opening the door had sapped what little strength had remained.  She shivered, panicking about what she’d just seen, what she’d done.  Her brain could not process what had just happened, her strength, her power.  The club began to spin in lopsided circles and disgust ate at her.  Had she killed both men?  In the moment, she hadn’t cared, had actually wanted them gone, permanently.  She felt the energy inside her waver and a swelling sting swept through her, tearing at her insides, branching from the center of her body and shooting out.  Stephanie let go of her hand and pushed through the crowd leaving Arianna alone.  The music and voices around her seemed to murmur, suddenly muffled as if she were hearing them from underwater, distorted and indistinct.  Her knees threatened to give way beneath her, stabbing pain radiating from her gut. 

She hunched and clutched her stomach about to drop to the floor and curl into a ball against the blinding pain she felt when a pair of warm hands cupped her face.  And just as suddenly as the pain had come, it receded like a wave.   She looked up to see who held her face and drew in a sharp breath when she saw him.  Tall and broad-shouldered with golden hair and blue eyes that penetrated the dimness of the nightclub, the man’s touch calmed her
, yet evoked a stirring of warmth in her torso that expanded and touched the tips of her fingers and toes.  Faint light from a roving spotlight shined behind him, haloing his exquisite shape, and if he’d whispered in her ear that he was an angel, she would have believed him. 

“Let’s get you out of here,” he said in a voice as beautiful as he was.

For unclear reasons, she did not fight or protest.  The man she’d seen on the side of the road twice, the same one she’d seen before she’d gone outside with Stephanie, took her hand in his and stepped forward. 

“Who are you?” she managed.  “What do you want from me?’

“You know who I am, Sola.  And who I am does not matter.  Who and what
you
are is all that matters.”

“What?  What does that mean?” she asked.

“Take my hand and I’ll show you,” he replied.

He pulled her close to him and the world around them disappeared, the club, the people, the tables, everything vanished from sight.  Light burst into her mind, brilliant white light, and she was on a roaring wave.  The warmth she’d felt moments ago filled her so fully she thought it would burst through her arms and legs.  Warmth, comforting, enveloping warmth charged the center of her being.  She was light. She did not feel pain or fear.  Her worries disappeared like grains of sand in the wind.  She was free. 

Chapter 12

Arianna found herself standing on unsure legs, surrounded by lush fields of green speckled with blossoms in vibrant shades of pink and purple.  The dimness and haze of the nightclub she’d stood in seconds earlier had disappeared, replaced instead with golden light that kissed and caressed the vivid landscape.  The incessant rumble and thump of bass in music that had blared had been silenced, swapped with a faint whisper of a breeze stirring tall grass and the distant sound of birds chirping.  The entire world she’d existed in moments ago had vanished,
she
had vanished.  Stephanie, Luke, and the group they’d been with, along with the rest of the club-goers
,
had gone, faded into an oblivion beyond her reach.  She was no longer with them.  She had been transported, impossibly, to a picturesque meadow.  And she wasn’t alone.  A substantial hand gripped hers, a hand attached to an equally substantial arm and body. 

The man that held her hand, the same one she’d seen watching her on the side of the road on two occasions, the one she’d noticed in the nightclub, remained with her, and towered over her, as glorious and golden as the sunshine touching the earth they stood upon.  She looked up at him and he smiled a kind, almost affectionate smile, and she noticed that her hand, the one he held, tingled.  The slight tingle moved up her arm to her shoulder, warm and pleasant, and spread.  It thrummed through her in time with her heartbeat for several seconds, a calming sensation that radiated from him in waves of energy so strong she swore they were tangible. 

She released his hand and felt the calm come to an abrupt end.  Everything that had happened rushed at her.  Suddenly, the sun felt strong overhead.  Her body heated and flushed with warmth.

“What the hell?” she shrieked.  “What the hell?  What just happened?  Where am I?  Where are my friends?” 

Panic began to sweep through her like fire through dried brush, racing and torching everything in its wake.  She wondered whether she were dead, and the field she stood Elysium, the fabled home of the blessed after death.  After all, the man before her could easily have been an angel.  Then she remembered what she’d done in the alleyway before staggering back into the club and realized no paradise would await her after death;  she was very much alive.  Anxiety filled her, burning and corroding any sense of reason she’d ever possessed.

“Shh, calm down, Arianna,” the man said and searched her eyes with his.  The brilliant blue of his irises was a shade she’d never seen and matched the hue of the sky
above, only more crystalline in their clarity.

“Calm down?  Are you
kidding
me?  What the hell is happening?  Am I dead, or drugged?  What is going on?” she shouted.

“You’re not dead, Arianna,” he said calmly.  “And you haven’t been drugged, though drugs were offered to you before you went into the Blue Ivy tonight, were they not?”

“Well, yeah,” she fumbled before realizing there was no possible way he could have known about Stephanie’s offer unless he had been standing right beside her when it had happened.  She and Stephanie had been alone.  “How do you know about that? And how do you know my name?” she asked and felt another flash of fright blaze within her. 

“I was with you.”

She stared at him incredulously, becoming more and more convinced by the moment that a hallucinogenic drug had been slipped into one of her beers, that levitating and thrashing one man into a building and setting ablaze another would all be part of a horrific, drug-addled memory in the near future.  And this beautiful man who spouted utter nonsense was a figment of her imagination, little more than brain garbage tangled in the effects of the drugs.

“Yeah, right,” she said laughing in a crazed way that was foreign to her own ears.

“I was.  I’m always with you, in a sense.”

“Okay, whatever you say,” she pacified going along with what she supposed was a delusion.

“I hear your mocking tone,” he said levelly.  “And whatever you think this is, a dream or hallucination, you’re wrong.  This
is
happening.”

Arianna did not know what to say or how to react.  If she were experiencing drug related delirium, nothing she said or did would matter.  She remained silent.

“Are you telling me I don’t look familiar to you?” he persisted in his serene tone.

“Of course you look familiar to me,” she replied.  I saw you just the other day when I crashed my bike, and the day before that.”

“And you saw me in the club,” he added.

“I
thought
I saw you in the club.  But that could have been the onset of whatever drug some asshole popped in my beer, the beginning of the freaking delusion I’m having right now.”

“You did see me in the club.  I was there, and you were not drugged.  No drug would affect you, not that I would have allowed anyone to drug you in the first place.”

“No drugs affect me?” she asked indignantly.  “I’ve smoke pot before and,” she said and her voice trailed off.  She did not complete her sentence, could not.

“And what, Arianna?” he probed.

She searched her memory for one time,
any
time, she had become high from marijuana she’d smoked, but came up empty.  She could not recall a single instance when she had succumbed to the influence of marijuana or any other substance she’d abused.  She couldn’t recall ever being drunk and had long since assumed her father, whoever he was, had an unusually high tolerance for alcohol he’d imparted to her.

“Nothing,” she lied.

“You’ve never gotten high from the pot you’ve smoked, have you?”

His words were more of a statement than a question. 

“And you’ve never been drunk either, though you’ve tried.”

“No,” she answered begrudgingly.

“Did you ever think that was strange?”

She had thought it strange.  Many things in her life had been strange.

“I’ve been with you your whole life, watching you, waiting,” he said not pausing for her answer.  “I know your life has been far from ordinary.”

The way he looked at her, his tone of voice combined with how he’d practically read her mind and anticipated what she’d say next, all of it was as compelling as it was disturbing.  Still, all of it had to be a dream of some sort.  He spoke so sincerely, so openly, it would have been easy for her to give in to his words, to believe them.  Of course, if he’d shown the slightest shred of sanity, he would have furthered his cause.  What he was saying was completely preposterous. 

“Been with me my whole life?” she echoed his absurd claim.

“Yes.  It is my mission to ensure your safety and guide you as you mature, as your powers strengthen.”

“All right, enough!  This crap has to stop.  Even if this is some kind of hallucination, it’s got to stop.  I can’t listen to this crazy shit anymore!”

“You’re saying all of this is crazy, but deep down, you know it’s true.  The moment you saw me on the side of the road, you knew.  You recognized me.”

She wanted to deny it, wanted to tell him he didn’t know what the hell he was talking about, but he was right.  Something had clicked when she’d seen him, something hidden deep within her had sprung forth like a sudden recollection from a vague dream or a missing puzzle piece appearing unexpectedly after days of looking for it.  He had appeared like the missing puzzle piece or muddled face from a long-forgotten dream.

“I don’t even know your name,” she said and decided not to refute his claim.

“My name is Desmond.”

“Desmond what?” she asked and expected a last name.

“Desmond, and nothing more,” he replied cryptically.

“What, so you’re like Cher or Madonna?  No last name?” she joked.

He did not laugh or smile, just stared at her with his crystal-blue eyes.

“Okay, this is awkward.  Don’t you know who those women are?”

“Yes, of course.”

“It was a joke.  I was joking.  You know, trying to be funny.”

“I know what you were trying to be, that you were trying to defuse a situation you cannot control with humor.  You do that a lot.”

The lack of emotion coming from his benevolent face seemed wrong.  Arianna felt heat prickle up her neck, anger partnering with it.

“Please save your armchair assessment of me, Desmond.  I was trying to be funny, that’s all.  No deeper meaning behind it,” she said and hated that she sounded so defensive.

“I’m sorry if I’ve offended you,” he said earnestly and she felt frustrated anew.  “But I think we’re getting off topic here.”

“Off topic?  Are you kidding me?” she railed.  “I didn’t even know there was a topic to be off of.”

“Yes you do.  We were talking about you, why I’ve been watching you, what you are,” he said evenly.

His calm demeanor was grating on her nerves, how he spoke so offhandedly alleging she had powers and
what
, as opposed to
whom
, she was.  She was Arianna Rose, just as she’d always been, and he was a crackpot figment of her drugged imagination.  

“Stop it!  Just stop talking about watching me and what I am.  I’m going to wake from this soon, so don’t bother trying to sell me your brand of crazy.”

“You set a man on fire back at the club,
you
, with
your
powers.”

She felt a fine sheen of perspiration collect and cover her brow.  Her palms slickened with sweat as she remembered the pure rage that had coursed through her veins before the man had burst into flames.  The man that had slammed Stephanie against the wall and drew blood from her head, the one who’d torn Stephanie’s underwear from her body and lifted her skirt like an animal before trying to rape her, appeared in her mind’s eye.  She had wanted him to burn for what he had been about to do, for what he’d done.  He had placed a blade to Stephanie’s throat and had threatened to kill her.  Arianna had felt fury flood her core so fully, it had drowned her.  Even still, the thought of him made her insides tremble with wrath.  His screams, his pleas for help, had meant nothing to her then.  But now, her wrath was tinged with another emotion, one she struggled to name.

“Yes, you are very powerful,” Desmond said staring at her unwaveringly, as if seeing the vision her memory produced as easily as she did.  “That’s the reason I’m here, the reason I’ve always been here with you.  You are the chosen one, the one we call the Sola.”

“The what?” she managed, her voice a strangled whisper.

“The Sola, you are the Sola.  You are the lone one, the most powerful one among us, who will unite us all.”

“Us?  Who’s us?”

“Some would call you a witch and me a warlock, but those are such ugly, hollow terms, wouldn’t you agree?”

“I’m a witch?” she gasped.

“I prefer to call you a seer.  Your powers are not of this world.”

“So I’m Arianna the Seer?”

“No, you’re Arianna Rose, the Sola,” he corrected.

Her head began to swim, reeling and whirling with conflicting emotions.  She had always been aware of her differences from others, peripherally at least, but had always attributed those differences to her mother’s lifestyle choices, as well as her own.  The fact that she’d escaped injury unscathed time after time and had avoided the effects of both drink and drugs further supported that she was unlike most people.  She found herself awash with confusion.  She wondered whether she was lucid, whether what was happening was real.  Desmond’s words had struck a chord.  They’d touched upon a yawning stretch of her being that had always ached for identification, for validation.  And now she finally had a name for it: witch. 

“Okay,” she murmured.  “So I’m a witch, I mean, the Sola.  I am supposed to unite all the witches and warlocks of where, and for what?”

“You will unite the witches of the world.  They will know of your coming of age, of the dawn of your true powers.  They will sense the shift in their own powers and they will know.”

Arianna was speechless.  What he was saying, as insane as it sounded, resonated within her.  All of her life, she had never felt as though she’d belonged.  She’d never felt as if she’d found her place among any of her peers, among anyone.  Lily Andrews, a girl two years younger than her who had been the closest thing to a best friend she’d ever had, had been the only person she’d felt remotely at ease around.  But her friendship with Lily had been brief, as brief as her mother’s relationship with Carl, and she’d been relegated to her usual station: feeling like a square peg being forced into a round opening; until now.  Desmond’s words resounded deep inside of her.

“And why do they, uh we, need to be united?” she asked and felt an instinctive sense of warning wash over her.

“Because we are being hunted,” he said and trained his sky-blue eyes on her.

“Hunted?  Why?  By who?”

“We are being hunted as part of a search.”

“A search for what?”

“For you.”

“For me?”

“There are many people who want you dead,” he said solemnly.  “They are killing off witches, one at a time, in search of you.”