Avenging Amethyst (Immortal Eyes) (2 page)

I had never seen
this man before in my life, but something about him looked familiar. I was just
starting to make a connection when my mom let out a quiet moan. I jumped in her
direction, hoping to knock the man away from her but landed with a thud on the
ground. My mom and the mysterious man were gone.

A cruel laugh
sounded in my head, followed by the man saying, "You’ll never be
able to save anyone you care about. I’ll always find them, and make them
suffer.

I sat up in my
bed, gasping for air, with sweat covering my entire body. The thin hotel sheet
clung to my skin and I peeled myself out of bed. I walked to the bathroom and
splashed cold water on my face, trying to force the fog out of my brain that
the nightmares always seemed to leave.

I was trembling,
but whether it was out of fear or sadness, I didn’t know. I sat back down
on the bed with a glass of water in my hand and stared at the wall. I was numb.
I wanted to cry more but my eyes were dry. I wanted to scream but I had no
voice. Most of all, I wanted to get up and start breaking things around the
room.

It wasn’t
fair. Why didn’t I have a normal life? What was so special about me and
my mom that made us have to run from any normalcy that we could’ve had?

My eyes shot to
the trunk by the nightstand. All of my answers would be in there, but was I
really ready for them?

I looked at the
clock. It read just after three in the morning. Knowing that I only managed to
get three hours sleep made me want to cry even more. I wouldn’t be able
to sleep for another few hours, not until the unsettling feeling from the
nightmare lessened, so I crawled across the bed and pulled the trunk up next to
me.

I ran my hands
across the lid, feeling the worn leather straps and cold metal. This was it. I
couldn’t stall any longer. I opened the lid and pulled out the stacks of
cash, setting them aside. I wanted to count them but I didn’t have the
energy to do that now. The cash took up over half of the space in the trunk and
left me with a layer of loose papers.

Sitting on top
was an envelope with the words "Read this first" written on it. I
picked it up and pulled a piece of paper out of it. A square photo fell out and
landed back in the trunk. I left it there for the time being and focused on the
piece of paper. It was a letter from my mom, written to me.

My darling
baby, Avery,

If you're
reading this, then something horrible has happened to me and for that I am
sorry. I've tried to protect you your entire life and anything happening to me,
means I have failed. If I am no longer around or incapacitated then there are
some things you need to know.               

First of all,
they are going to come for you. They have always tried to steal you from me but
I wouldn't let them. Any time they got close, we would run and hide until they
came again. They will always come.

Now you must
be wondering who "they" are. Well, to be honest, I'm not entirely
sure myself. I've been told once, maybe even a few times, what they are but
when I refuse to give you over to them something funny happens to my memory.
All I know is that you must never let the ones with red eyes get to you.

Nine months
before you were born I used to be a "party animal" and went
clubbing regularly. I had taken an interest in a man who also showed up to them
a lot. He had strange red eyes, which I found intriguing at the time. It turned
out that he was not a nice man. He brutally attacked me, leaving me nearly dead
and pregnant with you. I have one picture of him that I managed to snap with an
old Polaroid I had at the time. It's not a very good picture but it will give you
some idea of what to watch out for. Now, there are also those with blue eyes
and eyes the same color as yours. I feel like they are not as bad as the ones
with red eyes but they wanted to take you away from me and that made me believe
they were evil. If they find you, you might want to hear them out, but never do
anything you don't want to.

There is
something else I must tell you about me. You might be wondering how I was able
to protect you so well throughout the years. You may also be wondering why I
seemed pretty unstable at times. I was born with a psychic power. I get
glimpses of the future in my dreams and I have an excellent ability to block
our psychic energies from anyone who might want to find them. It takes a lot of
energy to do this and tended to make my mind weak. Especially after we had been
found and I had to move us and block out any trail we might leave. I'm hoping
some of my psychic abilities were passed down to you and I am truly sorry that
I could not be around to teach you. I was planning on telling you after you
turned eighteen and teach you what I could so that you could finally go out on
your own.

Something
else I need to tell you is about your family. My mother and father, Maria and
Joseph, were very strict, religious people. They never believed in my psychic
abilities and any time one of my predictions came true it would terrify them.
They kicked me out when I was sixteen, thinking I was a child of the devil, or
some nonsense.  I made a living reading tarot cards and telling other’s
their future after that. I never spoke to my parents again and I never tried to
visit them. They never tried to contact me either. In their eyes, I wasn't
their child. They could still be alive, but I haven't kept up with them. I ask
that you try not to find them. They won't be kind. 

Lastly, I
want to repeat how truly sorry I am for keeping you so sheltered. I know there
were many times that you hated me for not letting you go to public schools and
have any close friends. I know you hated moving around constantly and feeling
like an outcast. It was for your best, and I hope you will forgive me one day.

                                                I
love you, baby.

                                                            Mom

P.S. This
money is for you. I have always kept up with my psychic jobs to pay the bills
and earn as much money as possible. I saved it for you so you wouldn't be
completely lost if something happened to me. Use it wisely.

My breathing was
shaky after reading the letter. The thing that stood out most in the entire
letter was that there were others out there with the same eye color as mine. I
was born with amethyst colored eyes, a strange anomaly that the doctors
couldn’t explain.

My mom’s
words made it sound like there were a whole group of people with strange
colored eyes and they were apparently all out to get me. The man from my dreams
flashed into my head, with his terrifying red eyes, and a feeling of dread
washed over me.

I picked up the
photo that fell into the trunk, turning it over with a shaky hand. It was a
dark photo of a man standing in the corner of a club, a grim look on his face.
It was the same man from my dreams and I understood why he looked familiar. My
hair was the same wispy blonde as his, only much longer, and my nose and eyes
were shaped the same. Luckily, I had my mom’s jaw line, giving me a more
delicate look to his stern one.

There was one
word written on the back photo:
Lucas.

So this was my
father and presumably the reason my mom and I spent our entire lives running
every few months. Now he was not only haunting my waking life but my dreams,
too.

So who was the
woman from the hospital? And how did she manage to disappear right in front of
my eyes?

I sat the
picture of Lucas on the nightstand and started rummaging through all of the
papers in the trunk, trying to find some information about the woman.

All of the
papers in the trunk were various news articles about people with strange
colored eyes. There were stories about people with red eyes kidnapping,
murdering and raping people. There were stories about people with purple eyes
doing nearly impossible things, like lifting cars off of people.

The one
similarity between all of the articles was that the witnesses could never
remember what the people looked like, only their eye color. There were a few
articles that speculated that they were two rivaling gangs with colored
contacts instead of bandanas.

Most of the
articles were from the Washington area, with a few from the area around the
Amazon and the mountains in Ukraine.

Nearly three
hours of reading and sorting later, I had no information about the woman with
auburn hair. I couldn’t remember what color eyes she had, but I knew she
was somehow related to all of these articles my mom saved.

I needed to know
more, though. I stacked all of the articles back in the trunk, carefully laying
the money on top, pulling a few hundreds out for emergencies and tucking them
in the pocket of my jeans. I closed and locked the trunk, stuffed the picture
of Lucas in my pocket next to the money, swung my backpack on and picked up the
trunk.

It was still
early in the morning and I was still sleepy, but I had to find answers. I had
to know who the woman who killed my mom was. I had to know why Lucas was after
me and my mom and why these people tried to take me away from her for all these
years.

Fifteen minutes
later, I was checked out of the motel room and starting the engine to my car. I
grabbed a map as I was leaving the motel and had it sprawled out on top of the
trunk in the passenger’s seat. I was going to Washington to try to hunt
down someone with purple eyes.

I knew it would
be dangerous and I knew it wasn’t what my mom would want, but I was tired
of running and I needed answers. It’s not like I had any family left
anyways, so if I got myself killed, it wouldn’t matter.

I drove the
whole seventeen hours from Jackson, Wyoming to Seattle, Washington, only
stopping for gas and food. By the time I pulled into another cheap motel, I
could barely keep my eyes open while I walked to my room. I dragged the trunk
with me, dumping it on the floor next to me when I collapsed into the bed, not
even bothering to take off my shoes.

I woke up six
hours later, terrified from another nightmare but feeling a lot more refreshed.
Six hours of sleep was the norm for me, even when I was a baby.

The morning
light was shining through the motel window but I wasn’t ready to get out
of bed yet. The empty hole in my heart from losing my mom was paralyzing. The
tears started flowing again but I didn’t even have the energy to wipe
them away.

When the
congestion in my nose was so bad I couldn’t breathe anymore I finally
pulled myself out of bed and headed for the shower. The steam cleared my
sinuses and my thoughts.

What was I doing
in a huge city like Seattle, searching for people I knew nothing about? I was
only eighteen. I knew nothing about being on my own and I barely had the social
skills to talk people into helping me.

How would I even
go about finding what I was looking for? Was I just going to start going up to
random people, asking them if they know anyone with purple or red eyes? My
mom’s letter mentioned something about blue eyed people as well, but blue
was a common eye color, so that wouldn’t help me.

I sunk to the
bottom of the shower, curling up in a ball while the water washed over me. My
anger was starting to overpower my depression. Anger at myself and my life, but
mostly at the woman who killed my mom. If I ever found out who she was, I would
make her pay.

My skin was
crawling from frustration. I half growled, half screamed when I stood up and
threw a punch at the tile lining the shower, shattering one of them.

My knuckles were
bleeding but otherwise unharmed. I stared at my hand as the water washed away
most of the blood, confused at my own strength. I had always been stronger than
I looked but this was unbelievable. The tiles had to be cheap and flimsy. That
was the only explanation.

I shut the water
off, dried myself off and wrapped my still bleeding knuckles in a wash cloth. I
walked out of the bathroom with a towel wrapped around me and saw a small piece
of paper had been pushed under the door to my room and was lying in front of
me.

I figured it was
just a pamphlet trying to get me to spend money on something the motel was
offering, but the words written on the paper made my blood run cold.

I know what
you are and what you’re looking for. Meet me at the coffee shop down the
street if you want answers.

 How? How
did this person know anything about me or where to find me? I shouldn’t
have come here. I should get back in my car and drive far away from here. Maybe
I could take a plane to Alaska and hide out there for a while. There
weren’t very many people in Alaska, right?

I sighed and sat
on the bed to start digging clean clothes out of my backpack. I knew I
couldn’t leave now. I had come this far and these people already knew I
was here. If I fled, they would probably follow me. I had to face the truth,
whether it killed me or not.

Ten minutes
later I was dressed and locking the door to the motel room. My hair was still
damp and the chilly fall air made me regret not blow drying it. I walked to the
end of the street and found a coffee shop buzzing with people. The biggest city
I had even been to was Cheyenne and I felt like a fish out of water being
around so many people. I hoped I was in the right place and I wondered how I
would find the note sender in such a busy place.