Ignited (5 page)

Something about that rubbed me the wrong way. So, after years of thinking about what I would say to him—of all the things I should have said—I let my attitude get the best of me, and spit out a haughty, “What?”

He blinked and turned his attention to the road. He didn’t look at me again.

“Does your little friend know where you live?”

The accusatory tone of his voice put me on the defensive. I squinted at him, wondering what his problem was. None of my previous interactions with him had been like this, filled with this much hostility. He wasn’t exactly the amazing hero I had built him up to be my whole life. I certainly wouldn’t expect a guardian angel to go around threatening people with knives.

He’s not my guardian angel. That had been somewhat acceptable to believe when I was three. Not anymore, especially not now. It was sad, really, that my childhood fantasy was shattered after only a few minutes with this guy.

“Does he know where you live?” he shouted, interrupting my train of thought.

“Yes, he knows,” I answered quietly. Boy, was he intimidating. Not to mention, short tempered.  

He muttered a few choice words under his breath and sped up, negotiating the narrow streets heading into town faster than anyone safely should. As an afterthought, I strapped on my seatbelt, shut my eyes, and tried not to remember the last time I had been in a car going this fast.

A soft ringing pulled me from my reverie. When I peeked at him, I saw that he had his cell propped between his cheek and shoulder. He took a sharp turn skillfully, the phone not affecting his ability to handle the Jeep at all.

“Come on…come on…” he muttered to himself as the ringing continued.

I jumped a moment later, when he hurled the phone into the center console, and spit out a string of curse words. Apparently, he hadn’t gotten an answer.

He took another hard turn, ignoring a stop sign, and I was glad I had thought to put on my seatbelt. If anything, it had kept me from being tossed into his lap. He screeched around a second turn, and I had to grab the dashboard to keep myself from flying into the door. I shot him a nasty look. From the familiar houses I saw passing by his head in a blur, I determined we were heading for my house.I stared at the road in front of us as he turned into the development without slowing down, and the white split-level appeared in the headlights. I pictured Gran sitting inside, working on one of her knits or watching David Letterman. 

He brought the Jeep to a sudden stop in front of the house. My seat belt caught, keeping my head from slamming against the dash. He was already out, coming around to my side, and opened the door as I unhooked my seatbelt.

“Come on,” he ordered, and started up the walkway without bothering to wait for me.

He acted like he owned the place. I slammed the door behind me, and scurried to catch up to him. I froze half way across the yard when he opened the front door and strode on in exactly like he owned the place. 

Oh, Gran was going to love this. I couldn’t help but grin as I ran the rest of the way. I didn’t want to miss the look on his face when Gran got ahold of him. I couldn’t imagine what she would do, but I didn’t want to miss it.

The last thing I expected was for her to rise from her chair with a smile.

“Nathan,” she breathed as she rushed forward to greet him.

I hadn’t seen Gran move that fast, well, ever. So she knew him. And his name was Nathan? I made a face. That didn’t sound like such a bad ass name. For some reason, I had expected something tougher sounding. 

As she pulled him in for a hug right in front of me, I realized I was the oddball in the room. And I had no idea what kind of screwed up world I had been living in all along.

They dove into a rapid discussion with words I had never heard of before. Stunned from the start, I had a hard time following. One thing was for certain. I had not been randomly dropped off with Gran six years ago. He had chosen her, and Gran had known about him all along. I looked back and forth between them as they talked around me, and tried to make sense of something. Anything. Nothing clicked into place.

He asked Gran about “the boy” I was with for the third time and that did it.

“His name is Alec,” I snapped, “and he didn’t do anything. You pulled a knife on him.”

They both turned to me. His eyes looked capable of cutting through steel. Gran’s were as soft as always. She offered me a sad smile before returning her attention to him.

“I never met him,” she said with a shake of her head. “I never thought...” She trailed off, visibly upset with herself.

“I was watching. He’s not one of us,” Nathan muttered. 

I wanted to ask what Alec was then, but before I could turn the smart-ass-switch on, Nathan turned to me with another order. “Go pack a bag of some necessities, enough clothes for a few days.” He eyed my outfit critically. “You should probably change into something more practical, and comfortable shoes.”

Other than to fold my arms over my chest, I didn’t budge. I was starting to hate this guy as much as I hated being talked down to by him. This was my hero? The guy I have, literally, dreamt of my whole life? He was kind of a jerk. I glanced at Gran, who smiled warmly at me. Why couldn’t some of her sweetness rub off on him?

“Go on, honey. Pack quick,” she said, giving me a push in the direction of the stairs.

I glared at Nathan as I passed, making sure he understood it was Gran, and not him, that I was minding. From the look he returned, I doubted he cared—and maybe even found my blatant defiance amusing.

As I walked away, I heard Gran scold him for his behavior. As much as I wanted to hear his response—if he had one—I wanted a moment to myself more. I shut my bedroom door behind me, blocking out their voices.

I surveyed my room, and wondered where it had all gone wrong. The night had started off so wonderful. Night out with Callie, my first since the accident. Alec. The kiss. Then creepy-looking guys with scary eyes and one terrifying car ride later, I’m ordered to pack my bags. Not to mention my so-called hero ended up being an asshole.

Yeah, the night had definitely taken an unexpected turn for the worse.

Resolving to start somewhere before I was berated for taking too long, I picked my book bag off the floor and took out my books. My purple and yellow lily folder was the last to drop out. With a sad smile, I flipped it open to the inside cover, where in Alec’s choppy handwriting was scrawled the digits to his cell phone. He had written it there the day we met. “Need to make an emergency cracker run? Need a ride to school? Want someone to make you laugh? Anything. Call me. Anytime. I mean it,” he had told me with a wink. Never thought to add “crazy guy attacks us at knifepoint” to that list.

I dialed his number. His voice mail picked up, but I didn’t leave a message. I didn’t know what to say. How could I when I didn’t have a clue as to what was going on?

I moved fast after that to keep my mind off Alec. I changed into jeans, a t-shirt, and my gym shoes; threw the necessities—a few pants, shirts, socks, and changes of underwear—into my book bag. I moved to the bathroom, and packed my toothbrush and toothpaste, but left the shampoo and body wash. Most hotels would have the little complimentary bottles, and it wasn’t like we would be gone for long.

After all, I had school on Monday.

The first clue that there was a problem was the sound of shattering glass downstairs. The second was the angry unfamiliar voices. I ignored the one in my head that told me to stay put, and was half way down the steps before I realized what I was walking in to.

In the kitchen, to my left, Nathan was squaring off with the three guys from the parking lot. In front of me, between the kitchen and the living room, Gran held off another two with a butcher knife in one hand, a fire poker in the other. I recognized them as two of the boys who had been with Alec at the party earlier. The ones he had told Callie and me to stay away from.

He must have known something. But what? Who were they? And, more importantly—where was Alec? 

A flurry of activity in the kitchen reclaimed my attention. Two of the three that had Nathan cornered rushed him from opposing sides. Backed against the counter, he didn’t have many options. I was a heartbeat away from jumping in to help him, though I had no idea how I was going to accomplish that. Fortunately, it didn’t take long to realize my intervention was not going to be necessary. 

Nathan leaned his arms onto the counter behind him, raised his legs, and landed a kick to the gut of the poor sucker to reach him first. The impact sent the guy feet over head on his way to the floor, where he landed with a resounding thud. Nathan stunned the second one with an uppercut to the jaw, dropped his shoulder, and flipped the guy UFC-style to the floor beside the first one. He kept coming, knife in hand, and speared the third one in the stomach.

My jaw dropped, the scream of horror caught in my throat. Catching a glimpse of me over the man’s shoulder, Nathan frantically motioned for me to retreat upstairs.

I only had time to withdraw one step before freak number one clambered to his feet, fixed his eyes on me, and charged. Freak number two followed close behind.

I was vaguely aware of the two in the living room turning to me at around the same time. Distantly, I was aware of one of them falling to the floor, and Gran standing over him with the fire poker. My ears picked up what sounded like Nathan finishing off the one in the kitchen with the knife.

Death all around me. Three of them coming at me now. And, boy, were they fast.

Half way up the stairs, icy fingers gripped my ankles and jerked my feet out from under me. My face slammed into the edge of a step, and then was dragged across the coarse carpet as I was hauled back down the stairs. I dug my nails in, reached for anything to hold on to, but came up empty. Three sets of hands were on me, tearing at my clothes, pulling my hair, and scratching my skin in their frantic attempt to get to me. My legs flailed wildly, and I thought I connected with someone’s face before a pair of hands restrained my legs to prevent me from doing further damage. Another set grabbed my arms and maneuvered them behind my back. I looked over my shoulder at the culprit, just as another body moved into my line of sight behind him.

A formidable Nathan threw himself at the one who had my arms restrained, wrestled him off me. Next, the weight on my legs lifted, leaving me to scrap one on one with the last one.

I wiggled out from under him enough to scramble up two steps. I turned as he lunged for me, kicked, and connected with his nose. It was a hard kick, but his lips merely twisted into an angry snarl as he leveled his gaze on me. His eyes shone a dark shade of gold—empty, with nothing behind them—like tiny portals straight into hell.  

Behind him, Nathan impaled the one he had tackled, twisting the knife into his chest, where his heart should be. I screamed and looked away. Too late. The vision was etched into my mind forever—another one for the nightmares. I pushed through the psychological trauma, pulled it together, and prepared to battle with the golden eyed freak on top of me again.

Only I didn’t have to.

Nathan stepped behind him, hoisted him off me, and plunged the knife into his back. Blood dripped toward me in a steady red stream as I frantically tried to crawl out from under it, and then...poof. The body disintegrated into a cloud of vapor. And that evaporated into...nothing.

Nathan stood over me, the man’s blood on his clothes, his face, and his hands. No body. At the foot of the stairs, the body that should have been there was also gone.

He’d been stabbed in the heart, I was sure of it. So where was he?

My eyes met Nathan’s briefly before he turned to assist Gran. Together, they easily took down the last one, and he joined his buddies in their vaporized states. Or whatever it was that I had just witnessed.

I choked back the bile that rose in my throat and looked for something to lean against before I toppled over. As an afterthought, I opted to climb down the stairs first, before I fell down them.

Nathan stood over the body Gran had left on the living room floor. I had thought he was dead. He wasn’t. Not yet. Same with the first one Nathan had stabbed in the stomach. He was alive and groaning loudly from the kitchen floor. 

Scary men, dead and vanished. Others left bleeding to death on the floor. I felt like I was in a Hitchcock film. There was no way this was happening. People didn’t just vaporize. I shut my eyes and counted to five before opening them again. The two bodies were still there; the other three were still gone.

I sat numbly on the bottom step, my legs too wobbly to support me any longer. Maybe I was going crazy? This had been the last straw. My brain simply couldn’t handle anymore death, and I snapped.

And started seeing things that weren’t really happening? 

Gran came to my side and I looked up at her appreciatively. In my periphery, I saw Nathan plunge the knife into the chest of the man on the floor in the living room. Too late, I closed my eyes, trying to block it out. Gran’s hand rested on my shoulder, silently encouraging me to keep them shut as Nathan’s footsteps moved across the room. A moment later, the moaning in the kitchen stopped. I finally opened my eyes and wasn’t surprised to see that both bodies were now gone. Other than two pools of blood on the floor, and smeared all over us, no signs remained of the five men that had been in the house.