I thought about Jared. They hadn’t exactly been the best of friends. In fact, they’d torn a goodly portion of downtown Riley’s Switch to shreds soon after Jared first arrived. Could he and Cameron have fought again? I should have touched Jared when I had the chance, tried to see what he’d been up to. Not that I could control the visions in any way, shape, or form, but if he’d fought with Cameron, it was emotional enough that it could show up. And I swore to all things holy, if Jared and Cameron were fighting again, there would be heck to pay in the way of very sore shins.
“How are you supposed to practice if we keep having to work in all of our classes?” Brooklyn asked as we jogged along the forest floor, dodging tree branches and navigating the uneven ground. We’d had a dry winter, and leaves crunched under our feet as we did our best to stay vertical. This could not be in compliance with the safety guidelines set forth by the state.
“It’s crazy, right?” I asked her, my huffing breaths only slightly wheezy. “To expect such a thing from an establishment of learning.” I checked the pocket in my hoodie to make sure I’d remembered my inhaler.
Nothing screamed unattractive like a face bluing from lack of oxygen.
“Exactly.”
I had a feeling Brooklyn reveled in my prophetic status. She talked about it all the time and urged me to practice. To concentrate. To concentrate harder, darn it. Of course, she’d seen almost as much as I had when Jared came to town. She now knew there were things that went bump in the night. They were real and they were scary and they’d almost gotten us killed, so I couldn’t really blame her for her obsession.
Though I could complain about it every single chance I got.
“He’s still crazy about you, you know?”
I was busy concentrating on supplying my red blood cells with oxygen when Brooke spoke again.
Depriving my cells, I asked, “What?”
She shrugged, her long dark ponytail flopping over her shoulders. Her dark skin almost shimmered when rays of light would find their way to us. She was stunning. I was white. Chalk had more color than I did. And quite possibly more personality.
“Jared,” she continued.
I had to think to put her phrases into one complete thought; then I frowned at her. “If Jared were still crazy about me,” I said between huffs of air, “he wouldn’t have given in so easily to my grandparents’ demands.”
“How do you know? Maybe he’s just an honorable guy. He’s old school in so many ways. Like really, really old school. Like the beginning of time old school.” When I didn’t respond, she added, “He looks at you every chance he gets.”
I skidded to a stop, and a girl behind us slammed into me.
“Watch it, McAlister,” she said, pushing past me. I fell forward and caught myself against a tree trunk.
Brooke jumped to my defense, squaring her shoulders and jamming her hands onto her hips. “You watch it, Tabitha.”
“Please,” she said as three other girls ran past. “Like you could take me on your best day.”
Tabitha, also known as my archnemesis, just happened to be about seven feet tall to Brooke’s five. She smirked and continued her trek through the forest, her blond head bobbing up and down.
Brooke came to my rescue, offering a hand to steady me as I brushed leaves off my shorts. “How rude.”
“When is she not rude?” It was a sad twist of fate that Tabitha had PE with me, the person she most despised and most loved to humiliate. “But I did stop in the middle of the path.”
“Why? Did you have a vision?” she asked, her eyes glimmering with optimism.
“No, you’ve gone mad and I think we should seek help.”
She chuckled. “Jared does look at you. Every chance he gets. But not in a stalkery way. More like a pining way, like he misses you.”
I clasped my hands behind my head and breathed deep to slow my heart rate. “Brooke, he never looks at me. The minute I look at him, he turns away.”
“Exactly, because he was freaking looking at you in the first place. He has no choice but to turn away or get busted like twelve thousand times a day.”
Her words, insane as they were, gave me a spark of hope. Then reality sank in. “He’s looking at me because that’s his job. To protect me, the great prophet Lorelei.”
She snorted. “Yeah, keep telling yourself that.”
But something in the distance had captured my attention. I squinted past the line of trees. “What is that?”
She scanned the area. “Are you changing the subject on purpose?”
When I pointed deeper into the forest, we both leaned forward and strained for a better look. Two girls walked past, clearly having given up on the whole jogging thing. I was right there with them.
“Well,” Brooke said, “I don’t see anything, but the way this day has been going, maybe we should get back to the gym, just to be safe.”
But I had seen something. An outline. A shape that resembled a head peering from behind a tree about thirty yards away. I stepped closer as a ray of light glinted off a blade. A silver blade.
Before I could comment, something moved inside me. A ripple of displeasure. A quake of something dark and dangerous. Every molecule in my body came alive as I looked at that blade. At the sun glistening off it in the shadowy forest.
“Don’t you think?” Brooke asked.
I eased my hand around her arm and stepped back onto the path.
“What?” She looked into the forest again and caught on. In a hushed whisper, she said, “I still don’t see anything.”
“I do.” When the shape emerged from behind the tree, hunched down like a wild animal, I squeezed her arm tighter and whispered, “Run.”
RATS AND SINKING SHIPS
Thankfully, Brooke needed no evidence to follow my lead. We took off at the speed of light. Or, well, at about one three-hundred-millionth the speed of light. Give or take. Suddenly traversing the uneven ground and dodging tree branches became the least of our worries. We were running for our lives and we had adrenaline on our side.
But we came to another skidding halt when someone literally jumped across the path in front of us. The movement wrenched screams from our throats and we fell back, clinging to each other like victims in a horror movie.
“It’s Cameron!” Brooke said, throwing a hand over her chest to help catch her breath. We scrambled to our feet and watched as he flew through the forest toward the figure. Only then did we realize Jared was on its heels as well. He came from behind us and ran so fast, we could hardly see him. What I could see was a being that moved with the speed and grace of an animal. The fluid motion of a predator.
Jared yelled for Cameron to get us to safety, so he reversed and hurried back, stopping in front of us.
And while we panted and coughed and even sputtered a little, he stood there, completely calm, not out of breath in the least. Freaking nephilim.
Cameron Lusk was the other supernatural being at Riley High, only he was born and raised here. I’d known him since kindergarten, since he’d stopped Joss Duffy from pasting my eyelids together, but I only recently got to know the real Cameron. The half-human, half-angel who was created because of me.
Apparently, when the heavens realized I was going to be born and the impending war was becoming more and more impending, an archangel by the name of Jophiel had relations, as my grandfather called it, with
Cameron’s mother. And nine months later, out popped a little being who was almost as indestructible as a full-fledged angel and every bit as stubborn.