Ella Awakened (7 page)

Ella walked
and looked around; her eyesight picked up on the slightest movements.  She
found if she concentrated she could focus in on details with incredible
clarity.  She heard a woodpecker off to her right.  Looking in the direction of
his pecking, she caught sight of the movement of his head.  Even though the
bird was quite high up in the tree, when she focused she could make out the
most intricate details of its feathers.  This was almost unbelievable.

Ella ran
on.  She reveled in the way it felt to push herself.  She came to a stream and
ran along it opposite the way the water was moving.  Soon, the water widened
and she found herself standing at a pool that a picturesque waterfall poured
into.  Ella walked to the edge of a large rock that jetted out over the pool
and sat down.  The water was incredibly clear, and she could see small, fat
fish jetting in and out from under the rock.  She lay on her stomach, letting
her hands hover over the surface of the water.  Lightning fast, she grabbed a fish
about as long as her palm.  She laughed out loud, then put her hand back in the
water and let it go.  Ella felt like a child.  Everything seemed like a new
experience.  She sat up, took her shoes off, and dangled her feet in the
water.  She couldn’t recall ever feeling this good -
this alive.

She had
always loved to run.  She’d even lettered in track in high school but this,
what she’d just experienced, was incredible.  It was like nothing she had ever
imagined.  She wondered exactly how much her mother had known about her
father.  It would be some kind of hard not to share this with someone you
loved.  She searched her childhood memories, but couldn’t recall anything out
of the ordinary.  She’d had absolutely no idea that her dad had been
different.  There wasn’t even the slightest incident that a child’s imagination
could have run with.

    Ella’s
thoughts turned to Burke and the things she had seen him do.  She knew they
were different.  He’d told her there were warriors, healers, and common folk. 
She recalled him telling her that even the common folk from his world would
have a considerable advantage over a human when it came to speed and strength. 
She knew he was strong and fast, but he had said not as strong or fast as she
was now.  Sometimes she thought he was selling himself a little short though,
with all this talk of her being faster and stronger.  She had started out half
human; did that change anything?

Anatomy and
medicine came naturally to him, especially herbal medicine.  He’d probably make
one heck of a doctor or even surgeon.  Although he had to be careful with
displaying his abilities, just as she would now too, she supposed.  He could
tell how someone died by touching them.  She wasn’t really sure how that
worked.   Did he actually see what happened or just know somehow?  He said he
had touched Jill and known how she had died.  Didn’t he mention at some point
that he could actually
relive
someone’s last moments from a touch?  What
in the world was that all about?  Maybe she heard him wrong or misunderstood;
she had been pretty out of it during some of their first conversations.  She
still had a lot of questions.  Yesterday she had been in so much pain she was
becoming delirious then he had laid his hands on her. 
Glowing hands
. 
She’d been close to death, at least she thought so, and he had brought her
back.

Some
questions she knew she would probably never ask.  Like how he felt about her. 
What exactly was she to him?  He had kissed her this morning.  What did that
mean?  Was it an
OMG you’re alive, now we can save the world together kiss?
Or was it an
OMG I was so worried I was going to lose you, and I think I’m
falling for you kiss
?  She still needed to sort out for herself exactly
what she felt for him.  She knew one thing though, for her that kiss had been
both surprising and wonderful.  She closed her eyes and remembered how his lips
had felt on hers.  Incredibly soft, warm, and tender.  His lips had been only
slightly parted, full and moist.  He’d caught her off guard pressing them to
her mouth, and then ever so slightly pulling at her lower lip.  It had been the
perfect first kiss between them. 
First kiss between them? 
Did that
mean she wanted more?  Okay - dash it all- she wanted more.  I mean just look
at him.  He was incredibly gorgeous and sexy, not to mention the fact that he
had just spent the last few days devoting his undivided attention towards
making sure she was all right.

Surely all
of that attention wasn’t solely so she could help him with the Demon, or worse
yet, because she was the only one of
his kind
on this planet.  It was
obviously possible for someone like him to fall in love and be perfectly happy
with a human.  After all, her father had done just that.  For all she knew, he
did have someone else in his life.  I mean let’s face it, she had known him for
less than a week and she only knew what he had told her.  Hell, she didn’t even
know his last name!  She was allowing herself to get upset and frustrated. 
Really,
she thought shaking her head,
are you going to get this worked up over some
guy you’ve known less than a week?
 It appeared that she was.

Ella stood
up, took off her shirt and pants, and dove into the chilly water wearing only
her bra and panties.  It was exhilarating.  She swam over to where the water
was crashing down and let it beat on her neck and shoulders.  After a few minutes
she returned to the rock and lifted herself out to lie in the sun.  She was
startled out of a rather juicy Burke daydream when her phone unexpectantly
rang.  “I can’t believe I’m getting a signal out here,” she said aloud.  She
rooted around in her pants pocket for her phone.

“Hello?” she
answered.

“It’s me,”
Burke said.  “I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

“I’m fine.  I
was just thinking about heading back.”

“Do you have
any idea where you are or how for you ran?” he asked.

Ella sat up
and looked around.  “Well right now I’m sitting on a rock that jets out over a
pool by a waterfall.”

“Really?  If
you’re where I think you are, that’s about fourteen miles from here!  That’s
excellent Ella; you’ve only been gone a little over an hour.”

“I’ll check
the GPS on my phone.”

“So I’ll see
you in an hour or so?”

“Sure, I’ll
see you soon,” Ella was about to hang up then - “Wait!  Burke are you still
there?”

 “Yes, I’m
still here.”

“I was just
wondering what your last name is.”

“It’s
Gellar.”

“Gellar. 
I’d just realized that you never mentioned it.  I’ll see you soon, Burke
Gellar.”  Ella hung up her phone. 
Well
, she thought
, that’s one
mystery
solved and only about a hundred left to go.

She checked
the GPS on her phone.  He was right; she had come just over fourteen miles. 
She wasn’t even tired.  She was mostly dry, so she put on her clothes and
started heading back.  It was intriguing that she just knew the way.  Her
uncanny sense of direction must be another perk.

~~

When Ella
returned from her run, she entered the house through the back door.  There sat
Burke, waiting for her with a cake and two wrapped packages on the kitchen
table.

“Happy
Birthday, Ella!” he exclaimed.

“Wow,” Ella
couldn’t seem to get this ridiculously huge grin off her face.  “Did you bake
me a cake?” she asked incredulously.

“I told you
I had a few things to do, and this was one of them.”

There was a
single candle on top of the cake.  Burke motioned for Ella to have a seat at
the table then lit a match and held it to the candle.  “In honor of your first
day as a warrior,” he said.

He broke out
into an adorable, if off key, chorus of “Happy Birthday To You”.  Ella giggled,
and after the torture to her new acute sense of hearing was over, she blew out
the candle.

“Cake first
or presents?” Burke asked.  He tossed the used match into the sink and opened a
cabinet to get out two plates.

“Hold on a
second,” Ella said.  “Please don’t take this the wrong way at all, but it’s
almost noon now and I really need to get home soon.  It’s family tradition that
we go out to dinner for birthdays, and Aunt Rachel has made plans for us
today.  I’ve sent her a couple of elusive texts over the past few days, but if
I miss tonight I’m going to have a lot of explaining to do. 
Very
difficult explaining, if you know what I mean.  This,” Ella gestured towards
the cake and gifts, “is wonderful, but we need to decide what we’re going to do
now.”

Burke set
the plates on the counter then leaned against it.  “It’s okay, I completely
understand.  We can continue this tonight when you get back.”

“I’m not
sure I’ll be able to come back tonight.  I mean, what am I going to tell them? 
They know I took the summer off.  Up to this point they think I’ve been hanging
out with friends and crashing in the room with Sarah, but the plan was for me
to come home for the summer.  Aunt Rachel owns a little gift shop and I was
supposed to work there some.  She and Uncle Ben trust me and all, but I’m going
to have to give them some explanation if I’m changing plans.  It’ll need to be
good too.  They’ve never had reason to doubt my word, and I’d rather not give
them cause to now.  I get it that I probably shouldn’t tell them what’s
happened, at least not right now anyway, but I’m not sure what exactly I should
say.”

Burke knew
the -
you’re twenty now, you’re an adult -
argument wasn’t going to work
here.  Ella was very close to her family.  She and Rachel had more than an
aunt/niece, or even mother/daughter relationship.  Sure, legally she could hit
the road, but that just wasn’t going to happen.  There wasn’t a whole lot about
Ella that Burke didn’t know.  He knew there had been a sizable settlement from
her parent’s accident, not to mention the fact that their estate had been worth
a nice amount on top of that.  He also knew that Rachel and Ben were doing more
than fine financially, and that Ella’s inheritance hadn’t been touched.  They
had always taken care of Ella and treated her like she was their own daughter. 
They were paying for her college, and he figured that gave them some right to a
reasonable, if not exactly truthful, explanation.

“There’s no
way they can know about the awakening,” he finally said.  “Right now that would
just put your whole family in danger.  What would they do with the knowledge
that you now have superhuman powers, and you and some guy you just met are
going to kill a Demon from another world?”

“Well, when
you say it like that it just sounds nuts,” Ella smiled.

“Right.  Best
case scenario they have you committed; worst case scenario they
still
have you committed.” Burke returned her grin.  “How about this: you applied for
a couple of summer internships a few months ago, but nothing really panned
out.  You’re a science major; tell them an internship came available at the
Office of the Medical Examiners.  Just say the person who had originally gotten
the spot backed out for some reason.  Tell them you need to get back here
tonight because you start tomorrow.”

“How did you
know I had applied for internships?” Ella asked.

“Come on now
Ella, I told you I’ve been keeping an eye on you for the past ten years.  Does
it really blow your mind that I knew about the internships?” Burke asked.

“Not really,
I guess,” Ella replied.  “I just feel a little bit at a disadvantage.  I know
so little about you.”

“I’m sorry
it had to be that way.  It doesn’t have to be that way now, though.”

Again
with the cryptic,
Ella
thought.  She wished she could get a better read on what exactly he meant when
he said things like that.  There was no way she was willing to make an idiot
out of herself by jumping to conclusions. “I guess that’ll work, but what if
they want to know where I’m staying?”

“Tell them
you just got offered the internship, and you figured you’d hang out with Sarah
for a few days.  Tell them you plan on seeing if any of your friends who live
off campus need a roommate for the summer.  Maybe we can tell them I’m renting
you a room.”

“I don’t
think Aunt Rachel would be too thrilled about me renting a room from you.”

“Why not?”
Burke asked.

Ella just
stared at him and raised her eyebrows.

“Oh,” Burke
said.

“Yeah, oh,”
Ella repeated.

“Just stick
with the internship story to buy us some time; we’ll work the rest out later. 
It’s like you said, they trust you and you’re an adult.  Do you really think
they’ll look hard into what you tell them?” Burke asked.

“Not really,”
Ella replied.  “The internship is a good idea; will we actually be able to back
it up if we need to?”

“Don’t worry
about that, I’ll take care of it.”

“Great, we
have a story.  I’m going to hop in the shower and head home.  I’ll be back
tonight, but I’m not sure exactly what time it’ll be.  I’ll call you when I’m
on my way.  I’m sure you know the drive takes just over an hour.”  She couldn’t
help but tease a little.