Arianna's Awakening (Arianna Rose Part 1 & The Awakening Part 2) (4 page)

“
Excuse
me?” Arianna asked.  “What did you just say to me?  Did you just call me trashy?”

“I think you heard me just fine,” Cheryl said icily.  “I would get closer and say it right in your ear, but I don’t want to catch something from you.”

Incensed, Arianna fought to keep her tone calm.  She took several steps and stopped just inches from Cheryl. “You’re about to catch something from me right now, bitch,” Arianna hissed and stared into her eyes. 

Cheryl
’s face blushed deeply and she recoiled from Arianna, shrinking back a few paces.

“I’d back up too if I were you,” Arianna added. 

Cheryl refused to meet Arianna’s gaze and opted instead to stare at her feet before marching out of sight.  Arianna simmered as she watched her walk away and decided she needed a little fresh air.  Left alone with her map, she decided to take Cheryl’s advice and step outside for another cigarette.  After her interaction with the student council Vice President, she needed it.  She figured she had at least half an hour before she needed to report to Mr. Wood-without-an-s’s office.  That left plenty of time to smoke and visit the ladies room.  

She continued down the hallway and took her first left and stopped at a pair of doors.  She opened one, but wedged a rock in the hinge so that she wouldn’t be locked out.  A single step led to a clearing surrounded by trees. 
The treeline looked afire with rich fall colors.  Leaves in varying shades of red, orange and yellow blazed against the azure sky.  The scene would have been enjoyable, relaxing even, if she hadn’t been so annoyed by the Cheryl incident.  She sat on the step, took out her pack of cigarettes and her lighter and was about to light up when someone called to her.

“What’re you nuts!  Don’t light up there.  You’ll get suspended,” a male voice said.

“God, is that you?” she said and laughed.

The voice laughed as well then added, “I’m serious.  This is a smoke-free campus.  You don’t want to do that.”

“Funny, I didn’t see any signs,” she said and rolled the flint of her lighter.  Before the flame touched her cigarette, she caught sight of a figure near one of the trees.  “Oh shit, I guess it wasn’t God after all.”

She couldn’t see him clearly, but was able to make out that he was tall and dressed in dark clothes.

“Why don’t you save yourself from getting the boot from this dump and join me over here?” he said.

“What do you care if I get kicked out?” she asked.

“Huh,” he replied.  “I guess I don’t.  Good luck,” he said and disappeared.

Arianna couldn’t explain why, but felt compelled to meet the person who’d warned her.  She stood, slung her bag over her shoulder and walked across the grass to the tree he had stood near.  She looked behind it, certain she was at the right one, but saw no one.  She turned around and scanned the clearing.   As far as she could tell, she was alone.  She placed the cigarette she held between her lips and lit it, all the while wondering where the darkly dressed figure had gone.  She looked from left to right a final time as she exhaled a cloud of opaque smoke.  She fanned it with her hand, despite being outside.

“Looking for me,” the now-familiar male voice said behind her.

She spun, startled, and said, “Shit! Another ninja!”

“Ninja?  What?” he asked confused.

“Nothing; never mind,” Arianna said and waved her hand dismissively.

“O
kay
,” he said.  “You’re new here?”

“Yep, today’s my first day.”

“Shouldn’t you, I don’t know, be in class or something?”

“I’m supposed to be getting a tour from Cheryl Charles.  But we didn’t exactly hit it off so she gave me this,” she showed him her map then added, “and sent me on my way.”

“Lucky you.  Dodging Cheryl Charles is a good thing.  Prissy little bitch,” he spat.

“How could you say that about your esteemed Vice President?” Arianna said sarcastically.

“You’re funny.  I like that.  My name’s Luke by the way.”

“Arianna,” she said. 

“Arianna, that’s different.  Pretty, but different,” he said and lit a cigarette of his own.

“Thanks.  So where should you be right now?”

“Uh, that’s a good question.  Art class, I think.  I go so infrequently, I’m starting to lose track.”

“Are you a senior?”

“Yep, for the second year in a row,” Luke said and bowed.

“Ha!” Arianna added.  “I got left back too, but in first grade.”

“No elementary school story here, just cutting class and attendance bullshit,” Luke smiled.

Arianna liked his smile.  His smile was mischievous and pleasant; his entire face smiled, in fact, right up to his gray-blue eyes.  But his smile dropped almost immediately.

“Drop your cigarette,” he ordered her.

“What? Why?” she asked.

“Principal douche bag Wood just passed in that window,” he pointed to a large window on the building.  “He never comes out here.  How much you wanna bet that bitch Cheryl told him to check out here?  Come on.  Let’s get out of here,” he said and took her hand.

She allowed herself to be led, liked the feel of his hand around hers.  He walked quickly and navigated a labyrinth of trees and low-growing brush.  The strip of woods was narrow and they arrived at a grassy clearing which led to the front parking lot.  He let go of her hand once they were on the grass and Arianna felt inexplicably disappointed.  She was not the type of girl who fawned over guys.  She didn’t dare indulge in extravagances like teen romance and crushes.  She was all too familiar with what men did to vulnerable women.  And she did not allow herself to be vulnerable.

“We should be fine now.  I doubt he saw us, just that there were two people standing by a tree.”

She sighed.  “Well that would have been a record for me, getting kicked out of a school on the first day before I even made it to my first class.  My mom would have had an excuse to tie one on,” she mumbled under her breath.

“Sounds like our moms are a lot alike,” Luke said and surprised her.  She didn’t think he’d heard her.  “Mine goes from shitty boyfriend to shitty boyfriend with a glass of whiskey in one hand and joint in the other.”

“Shit, we should send them out together, my mom could be your mom’s sloppy wing man,” Arianna laughed.

Luke laughed too but stopped when he looked up.  Arianna followed his eyes and saw what he was looking at.  She was tall and thin with platinum-blonde hair.  She wore heavy eye makeup and a tight miniskirt that showed off nicely shaped legs.  And she glared in their direction.

“I gotta go,” Luke said and didn’t take his eyes off the mystery blonde.  He turned to her suddenly and added, “It was nice meeting you, Arianna,” then jogged toward the glaring blonde.

Arianna watched as he went to the waiting girl.  She felt a twinge of something, a faint pang of emotion she was uncomfortable with.  Jealously was too strong a word for it.  But it did vaguely resemble it.  It seemed ridiculous to feel jealous, even slightly so.  After all, she had just met Luke.  And he had not flirted with her overtly.  Yet, as she watched him approach the waiting blonde, she felt annoyed and a little sad at the same time.  He stood in front of the girl.  She could not hear what the girl said, but saw that she spoke animatedly to Luke, gesturing angrily to him then to Arianna.  He did not appear to argue back which surprised her.  She wasn’t sure why, but she did not see him as the kind of person who accepted reprimand readily.  Then again, she’d only known him for ten minutes.  Either way, she felt a fleeting sense of disappointed. 

She quickly brushed off the feeling of disappointment.  She needed to get back inside and meet with her guidance counselor.  She walked to the front of the building again and entered.  The hallway was deserted and she consulted her map to find the main office.  Her day, as well as her final year of high school, was about to commence.

Chapter 4

Howard Kane knelt upon the pristine, tiled floor before the altar of the Soldiers of the Divine Trinity Church and listened intently, waiting patiently for God’s instructions.  God had been speaking to him since he was a young boy, guiding him and directing him through life.  Though many people had claimed they’d heard God’s voice, he felt confident only a select few had.  The rest were narcissists who lacked the discipline to hear anything more than their basest impulses.  He was not like others who had alleged to hear God.  Howard had heard God clearly, and the Lord’s voice had not caused him to indulge his desires or whims.  To the contrary, he felt more rooted to his beliefs, compelled to dedicate himself fully.  He needed God, and God and his fellow worshippers needed him.

With his hands pressed together in prayer, he paid close attention to every subtle sound in the hallowed building, opening the sincerest, humblest channels to his soul to foster God’s voice. 
In a near-meditative state, he heard many things. Sounds of settling creaked and crackled intermittently.  Dried leaves rustled from a treetop beyond the stained-glass windows, likely caused by the departure of finches or sparrows that had remained too late into the fall.  But his Maker’s instructions did not echo in his head, did not breathe through him like a warm spring breeze caressing tender blooms as it had in the past.  All he heard was the sound of his own breaths, and the rhythmic pulse of his heartbeat. 

Days had passed since he’d heard God’s words, long days of strained silence.  But he felt neither frustration nor anger.  God would invariably speak to him.  He always had, and Howard doubted He would ever stop. 

With his hands still clasped in front on him, he closed his eyes and inhaled deeply and focused more intensely.  When concentrating as he was, his senses seemed to heighten.  Sounds were amplified.  His sight became sharper, and his sense of smell more distinct.  He filled his lungs, drawing in air through his nose.  Strong notes of pine infused the air and mingled with the slightest hint of lemon.  The average man would not have noticed the fresh, clean scents surrounding him, their subtlety; their depth.  But he did.  He had a divine appointment.  His followers knew of his blessing and one of them had undoubtedly scrubbed and polished the altar hours earlier.  His many gifts were not secrets he kept from his congregants, and they responded accordingly, heeding and abiding the ancient adage that cleanliness was, in fact, next to godliness.  He was, after all, the closest a human being could ever be to God, and his followers knew that.  For that reason, every surface of the church was cleaned daily in his honor, as well as the Lord’s.  As founder and leader of the Soldiers of the Divine Trinity congregation, in addition to having divine influence, Howard was the heir to a kind of sight only a select few in his family had possessed; sight that the naked eye was incapable of perceiving.  He could see evil, sense it as clearly as the notes of pine and lemon in the air.  His vision, his divination, enabled him to lead his congregation.

He preached daily at the consecrated dais he knelt before, reached out to his flock, shared his vision, and spread the word of God.  But God’s word was not as simple as other groups claimed it to be.  It went beyond Commandments and Sacraments, surpassed feasting, fasting and offerings.  His unique vision offered his devotees a singular experience.  It offered them opportunity to seek out and eradicate evil.  Other sects downplayed the evil that roamed the earth, romanticized it even.  But he did not.  He knew the truth.  He had the gift.

His gift empowered him and the Soldiers of the Divine Trinity to obey the Lord’s commands and protect the world from the vile minions of Satan.  God ordered them, through Howard, to root out servants of darkness.  They were anointed soldiers of light.  The devil had created warriors that roved about and wreaked havoc on humanity.  Howard and his followers were charged with destroying them before their numbers grew unmanageable and threatened humanity.  His church had become powerful with hundreds of devoted disciples worldwide, all committed believers in his mission, God’s mission.

Fighting evil was in his blood, quite literally.  His ancestors had been fighting the devil’s slaves for nearly three centuries.  Their battles dated
back to the days of the Salem witch trials.  It was his ancestors who had orchestrated the destruction of countless witches and had rescued humankind from an uprising of catastrophic proportions before it began, before the number of witches had proliferated and innumerable covens had been formed.  The witch trials of Salem had since been held as a benchmark of brutality brought on by mass hysteria.  But what the ignorant masses could never possibly understand, what their fragile minds could never comprehend, was the truth.  An uprising of evil had begun, but was thwarted by the Lord’s soldiers.  He, and his descendants before him, had fought and continued to fight to preserve light on Earth, the slaying of each fiend a result of his divine sight and orders from God.

Howard breathed deeply and enjoyed the purity of the air, of his surroundings.  He found that reflecting on the successes of his predecessors relaxed him and filled him with indescribable peace.  Remembering the sacrifices and trials of those passed opened the channels between him and his Maker.  He felt confident that his work, and the work of his servants, had been far-reaching and considerable.  Many witches had been exterminated.  They had been of little consequence, however.  Some had even claimed unawareness of their power.  Of course, he did not believe them.  Witches were liars, all of them.  Awareness of
one’s power was unavoidable.  He was living proof of it. To believe that a witch was unaware of her power was as ridiculous as believing a muscled man did not know of his strength; it was preposterous.  He knew the demons were conscious of their abilities, and that a herald walked among them.  She was referred to as the Sola in his ancestor’s scriptures.  Sola, or one who walks alone, had been long considered a harbinger of humanity’s demise, but she had not arrived yet.  For more than three hundred years, her arrival had been predicted, her power and capability for chaos warned about.   The Sola had been prophesied to possess the capacity to unite every witch on Earth and create an army of evil.  But no one had ever sensed her.  No one had felt her presence.  But of late, Howard had begun to feel her. 

In recent months, he had sensed her, felt her foul presence among humanity.  He was drawn to her in a way that contradicted reason, and instead of repelling her, as most polar opposites do, he was attracted to her.  His pull toward her felt almost magnetic in nature.  And each day that she lived, he could feel her growing stronger.  Her power was rapidly gaining strength, signifying that she’d either become of age for her powers to manifest themselves, or she had made an enormous stride in her dark art.  Either way, the potency of her energy had changed dramatically in recent weeks.  Her essence was connected to his.  His task of killing her pulsed and throbbed in him, summoning him with all its majesty.  God had linked him with the Sola to simplify the greatest challenge in his mission, so he could eliminate her, and the threat she posed against humankind could end. 

He had been close to her many times in months past.  He had been on her trail.  But she had eluded him.  He wondered whether she, too, felt his presence, that the fear of the Almighty existed within her instinctively.  After all, they were heritable enemies. 

He pictured her in his mind’s eye.  Though he had no idea of what she truly looked like, he envisioned a raven-haired enchantress with black eyes and tan skin capable of seducing and charming with wickedness.  He imagined her raven hair enveloped in flames, her black eyes weeping
as fire consumed her.   Her death would be his greatest tribute to the Lord.  The day could not come soon enough.  In the meantime, she still lived and retained the potential to join all evil on Earth. 

Howard shivered at the thought of the damage the Sola could cause.  If she were able to do as his descendants predicted, he worried he and his followers would not be able to stop it, that she would overtake humanity.  He rose to his feet slowly, but not before touching his hand to his forehead.  His fingers lingered there long enough to graze the charred and puckered skin, the same scarred skin that covered his entire face, before he dropped his hand to his navel, crossed it to his left shoulder then his right.  He breathed a quiet “Amen” and genuflected before heading down the center aisle of the church, out the door and to the
vestibule.  There, he dipped his fingers in the basin of holy water and crossed himself again.  He left not because he doubted God’s voice would fill his head, but because he needed to find her.  He needed to destroy the Sola.  And he believed he would succeed.  The worry and doubt that had plagued him earlier was a test, one of many tests he’d been subjected to throughout his life.  God would fortify him with the strength he needed for his task, as He always had.  God would not allow him to fail.