BREAK - A Bad Boy Romance (68 page)

A few minutes later, Sean came out of the kitchen with Emily holding his hand. He tried to look away from her father, but it was almost impossible to do. Dion could tell he felt uncomfortable. Also, he could tell they had been talking very seriously about something. The low voices, which came out of the kitchen, were an indicator. Dion had a sense what they were about to say and groaned on the inside. He was afraid this would happen.

“Daddy,” she said to her father. “We need to tell you something.”

He father went pale.

Dion could tell her father feared something terrible, but Dion couldn’t tell exactly what that might be.

“You’re pregnant,” Emily’s father said and dropped into a chair next to him. He turned and starred off into the distance.

“Daddy!” she yelled. “How could you think something like that about me?”

He father continued to stare away. “I should never have allowed you to visit your mother. It’s my fault. Is Sean the father?”

“Sir, would you snap out of it?” Sean said to him. “I haven’t done a thing to your daughter. Don’t you think highly enough of Emily to trust her? Haven’t you allowed her the freedom to choose the people she associates with? She’s eighteen and old enough to make her own decisions.”

“We’re going to get married,” Emily said. She turned to Dion. “I know, you wanted me to wait because you were told first and Lilly is in the hospital. But daddy should know. He’s been scared for a long time something bad would happen. We’ve had talks. I’ve had them with mom, too. She’s not as bad off as you might think, dad. She has her days, but I think she feels guilt for running off on us.”

“Congratulations,” her father told her. “To the both of you. Sean seems like a fine boy. You might be a little young, but there’s no reason for me to block it. If you really want to, I won’t stand in the way. When were you planning on going to the courthouse?”

“Soon. We have to tell Sean’s parents too. That will be the hard part.”

Sean looked at the floor.

“His mom is very religious, so be prepared for it.”

There were a few more hugs and Dion excused himself to go wait in the van. It seemed as if everything would work out. At least for them.

Sean opened the door and sat down in the front passenger side a few minutes later. Dion started the engine and backed the van out of the driveway. Next stop was Sean’s house.

“Sorry we popped that on you,” he apologized. “I know we planned to wait until all four of us could break the news to our families, but Emily wanted to tell her dad right away. She was worried about him.”

“I can see why,” was all Sean could say. He came to a red light and let the engine run for a bit. “Are you going to tell your parents when you go home?”

“No, we decided to wait. It buys you and Lilly a bit of time too.”

They were quiet until Sean saw Dion turn the van onto his parents’ street. “You’re still planning to go into that tower yourself tomorrow? Don’t you even want me as back-up?”

“I have to do it alone,” Dion said. “This is between my uncle and me.”

Sean nodded.

Dion pulled up to Sean’s house and told him good night as he watched his friend walk up to the door. The light was on when they arrived and the door opened before Sean was up to it. Dion could see his mother at the door. She hugged her son in relief when he walked inside the house. The door closed and patio light when out, which plunged the yard in darkness. Dion pulled the van back out of the driveway and onto the street.

He wondered how it was going down inside Sean’s house. Good thing there was no school tomorrow. He didn’t enjoy the idea of everyone asking him what happened. News traveled fast in this little suburb. It was amazing how many people knew each other when so many had relocated from somewhere else. Dion didn’t know too many people from California, but there were some at his high school. The local air force base had something to do with that.

He wondered about that air force base at times. It was very close to the entrance to the abyss. There had to be a connection. It wouldn’t be an obvious one as the abyss didn’t have a physical entrance in the way most people understood it. The abyss could be accessed in many different ways, but his uncle had found a means to lock it down into one location. Perhaps the first inhabitants of this area had known about it. If they had, they kept the knowledge to themselves.

It took Dion another half hour to arrive at his aunt and uncle’s house. The outside light was still on and he expected they would be waiting up for him. It was still only eleven in the evening, not too late by local standards. He would need to explain to them why he had to return to the mall tomorrow and enter the clock tower. Tomorrow would be the day of reckoning between him and his Uncle Seth. Tomorrow he would discover why his uncle had gone to such great lengths to keep him away from the mall. There was a lot happening beneath the surface right now and Dion intended to find out what it was.

Dion stepped out of the van when the light began to fade around him. There wasn’t a lot of it in the first place, but he knew someone wanted to take him somewhere else for reasons he could only suspect. This time it had to be his uncle. Good and fine, but he’d had enough of his uncle and his tricks. Time to make Seth Bach arrive here for a change.

Dion closed his eyes and resisted the transfer. He felt the light; no matter how little of it, return and he opened his eyes. He was still in front of his aunt and uncle’s house. Dion looked at his wristwatch. It was still close to eleven in the evening and the same date was on the inner dial of the watch. His uncle had failed to pull him over to his own time circle.

However, his Uncle Seth was standing in the middle of the driveway.”

“Glad to see you again, uncle. Is this a family visit? I do think it’s been a long time since you saw your brother and his wife.”

“You think you are so powerful, so talented, so brilliant,” his uncle snapped at him. “We’ll see how well you do tomorrow. Don’t you think I know what you’re up to? You do know, don’t you, that I can keep you far from the mall itself?”

“Why don’t you try and stop me?” You’ve tried to make yourself master of this universe and it hasn’t worked. You have something else in there you don’t want anyone to know about. You are afraid I’ll find out what it is, aren’t you?”

His uncle glared at him.

“And you couldn’t even bring me to your turf,” Dion concluded. “It would appear, uncle, your powers have their limitations.”

“We’ll see about that tomorrow!” his uncle growled and then disappeared.

Dion looked at the empty space his uncle had occupied. He was ready, that was for sure. Dion wasn’t sure what the best way would be to get into the tower. His uncle would be watching every clandestine entrance to the mall. Granted, he would have a new security company in place and they would be green. There were plenty of outside contractors who could police the mall for him. His uncle would make sure the guards would be on the lookout for Dion or anyone who matched his description. With his elemental power, Seth Bach would know the minute Dion entered the mall.

Dion continued to his aunt and uncles house, pulled out his key and unlocked the door. As he expected, they were in the TV lounge watching the news. Both of them jumped up as Dion entered the room.

“Are you okay?” his aunt ran to him and put her arms around Dion.

“I’m fine. Lilly is going to be all right, but they are keeping her in the hospital overnight to make sure she doesn’t have any head trauma. Or something like that.”

“Your Uncle Rich told me about your call,” she said as they sat down. Dion place the bag he carried into the room on the floor.

“What’s that?” his uncle inquired about the bag.

“Something I need to return to Hobbs. It’s a censer that can be used to trap fire elementals. I have my full fire elemental powers today and don’t need it anymore. I didn’t have to use it, so he can sell it to someone else.”

“And your uncle tells me you plan on going back to the mall tomorrow?” his aunt asked him.

“I have to. Uncle Seth has imprisoned not only my parents in that clock tower but the Fire Elemental Grandmaster too. I need to obtain the power of the fifth element to stop him and get my parents out of there.”

“Can’t someone go in there with you?” his uncle asked. “I’m willing to accompany you. After all, I am Seth’s brother.”

“It won’t make a difference,” Dion explained. “He’s out of control. I have to be the one who goes into there alone and deal with him. Nobody else but me can do it.”

Dion stood up. “I need to get to bed. Big day tomorrow.”

His aunt and uncle watched him leave.

“He didn’t say a thing about Jupiter Olympus,” his aunt said to her husband.

“Isn’t it enough that he knows? It’s one more thing on Dion’s mind. I didn’t think my brother would sink so low to tell him, but he’s desperate and will do anything. He hasn’t changed a bit.”

They turned back to the TV. Tomorrow was supposed to be a bright and clear day, according to the weather report with no storm clouds on the horizon.

A Bad Boy Romance

By Gabi Moore

The human body can descend from five stories into the water in just under one second. I worked the math out well after the fall had taken place, in an effort to reconstruct exactly what had happened.

When you go through your basic training, there is a lot that you don't think about.

You don’t think about what it’s actually going to feel like when you’re stranded from the other members of your team. You don't think about whether or not what you are doing will have long-term ethical consequences beyond the security of the nation. You don’t even imagine what it might be like to have a family, or a person that you would commit yourself to, beyond the desire to become a soldier.

For the most part, being a soldier means that you tend to be on one of a few different varieties of ego trips.

Either you think you know what is righteous and good, and therefore, you should be free to go about and become an enforcing member of society. Or, you believe that you know what a man is, and therefore must take action to become that man. Or perhaps still, you think you know what it is to seize power — independent of ethical constructs or gender identity, and as a result, you move toward the most powerful group of fighters in the free world.

I couldn’t tell you which one of the three I was when all of this started, but now that I look back, I can tell you that I saw a little bit of each one inside of myself, and still do.

The difference between training and being on a mission is that the premise of your work being a drill no longer has the total absence of emotional content that is built up during months of training.

When you kill someone, regardless of whether or not they deserved it, you now take the responsibility for that life with you throughout the remainder of your own. As for the defensive component of all of this, the lives that you fail to protect will haunt you as well. The latter happens to be one of the strongest forces in perpetuating either side of a given conflict. When you’re in the heat of it, politicians and morality tend to go out the window for most people. All you really want to do is get yourself, and your friends, home safely — though that doesn’t always work out as planned.

No amount of brotherhood mentality can offer the protection necessary to fail-safe a doomed mission.

We trained to be aware of eventualities and to prepare the foundational skills necessary to engage the unknown. As Navy SEALs, we were called to do things that most will only watch in the movies.

While all the world passively watched Hollywood’s fiction, it was our job to live the ugly truth, so the civilians could remain blissfully ignorant.

In the movies, you can’t feel the terror, or isolation. You don’t reach that edge of existence where you aren’t sure if you will ever return to ‘normalcy’. Most of my life I took that for granted. The ability to live life on the edge like that is what makes a good soldier, and an anxiety-ridden civilian.

In the moment, we are taught to keep calm in difficult situations. We are taught to anticipate, adapt and achieve. When the lull after the action comes in, and there is enough time for reflection, that’s when things get hard.

I didn’t have any time to think until after the fall, so that’s probably the best place to start our story.

The human body can descend from five stories into the water in just under one second. Problem was that my fall wasn’t graceful, and it wasn’t without molestation. I was snagged in the back of the head by a round on my way down to the water. I was lucky as hell, as the bullet only gave me a concussion, but head trauma is no way to start a five-story dive.

When you’re facing an absence of consciousness, you are spared the terror of impact, as well as the shock of the cold water. These things do not disappear completely. Instead, they tend to take form as echoes, or impressions more than concrete facts.

When semi-automatic weapons are firing overhead, and you’re outgunned, it’s a good idea to take the plunge regardless if you can see the water.

The positive thing about not being able to see the water at night is that anyone who shot after me wasn’t able to see very well either. They also clipped me in the shoulder, though I only remember that shot because of the scar.

I’m positive that if they had been able to see me, I would be a dead man.

When my body hit the water, the impact and the cold brought me back to my senses. The fact that I had just been hit didn’t mean much. My SEAL training provided an automatic baseline survival set.

Truthfully, there was little else going on, cognitively.

Can you move your limbs?
was an automatic question I heard within myself.

Some folks have out of body experiences. They get to watch themselves go through traumatic events and hope that they make it out on the other side.

There is an element of detachment and unreality in these scenarios. People often report a lack of immediate awareness of the fact that they are in fact dead. They think they might wake up soon, and they think about noticing things that are happening around them.

I’m no psychic, but I can tell you that if you have trained something into your mind for long enough, that information is there in the sub-conscious state, just waiting to be utilized. Sub-conscious internalization of procedure is the mecca for recruitment officers and cult leaders alike.

I had retained enough of my motor skills to swim, though I didn’t have anywhere to go. The longer I swam, the more confused I became. My movements were like I was operating my body from within the confines of a dream. The connection between my physical body and the mind which commanded the muscles was at a hopeless gap. I totally lost my sense of direction, as well as my environmental context. Keeping up the movements was exhausting, and eventually, my will failed to be enough to save myself. Sooner than later, my ability to move slowed, and eventually stopped altogether.

Your best bet in that sort of situation is called the ‘Dead Man’s Float’. A bit ironic, that name, though completely understandable.

Had I been in that position for any longer, I’m not sure I would have made it. The water was cold, dark, and I should have died. In fact, I’m certain that the only reason I’m alive is because of my training, sheer stubbornness, and probably more than a few neglectful moments from whatever fallen angels should have come up to claim my life.

While I was floating, I had lost consciousness. When I woke up, I didn’t have any memory of the night before, and I didn’t know where I was.

All around me were the simple accommodations of a house by the sea. We’re not talking one of those fancy playboy mansions. I mean an honest to goodness, wooden shack. I knew I was at the sea, because when I woke up, I could smell the saltwater in the air. I could hear the wave lapping up against some type of structure just outside of the building. The smell of the sea was the only familiar element in my entire worldview. Thank God that one ocean is just as good as another.

For someone who made it their life’s mission to work around the water, the similarities make it less difficult to get homesick.

There was nobody around the shack when I first woke up. As a consequence, I had a bit of time to investigate the surroundings. Looking out the window in the room, I was able to see that the buildings were built close together. They were small, which meant that I wasn’t in a wealthy area.

My clothes were simple, layered, and from the looks of it, second hand. I was dressed in thermals that were gray and off-white. There were a few holes in the clothes, but because I was wearing layers, the holes only showed other fabric.

I reached my hands up to feel my face, and my fingertips brushed against a thin scrub of facial hair.

How long have I been out?
I thought, reflexively moving my fingers and toes to make sure I retained a full range of motion.

I had shaved every day of my life since I was fourteen years old. I strained my head to figure out why I was there, but I couldn’t put all of the pieces together. I was alive, but so much of the other information was either scrambled or simply absent when my mind attempted access.

I was fortunate that I had ten uninterrupted minutes to take in my surroundings.

I stood up out of bed, and immediately felt weak. My shoulder had a severely limited range of motion. Upon closer inspection, I realized that not only had I been shot, but there was a scar on the outside of the entrance point of the wound which indicated that someone had performed surgery.

Damn, I was gone
, I thought, realizing that I had no idea where the wound had come from.

When I touched the scar, flashbacks from the evening came to me in my mind. I saw myself from a third person perspective, getting shot at while my body dove headfirst into the blackness of the water below.

The experience jolted me, and my heart started to beat heavily. Anxiety overwhelmed me, as I struggled to put together exactly why I had been shot, and who had done the shooting.

Was I thrown into the water? Or was that my decision?

Adrenaline coursed through my body, and I began to grow dizzy. I had to leave to find safety, but for some reason I paused.

Whoever brought you here could have killed you by now
, I reasoned.

I took a deep breath and resolved to stay put until someone showed up.

Helping myself to my feet once more, I wandered throughout the house. The home was little more than a fisherman’s shack. There were two bedrooms, though each of them were more like cubbies within the shack. The room that I woke up in had a faded photograph tacked on the wall, of a young woman with dark brown hair. She was smiling and standing next to an older man.

Grey beard, large brimmed hat, and a cigarette
, I muttered.

The older man was smiling, though the younger woman was a bit solemn in her expression.

The other bedroom was basically vacant, except there were a few tools that hung in their place on the wall. Hand tools mostly, and a couple of well-kept knives.

Without thinking, I grabbed one of the knives and began flipping it around in my hand. The blade moved with ease between my fingertips, and I watched with amazement at my instincts at work. Even with a wounded shoulder, I was able to manage the blade soundly with one hand; switching to the other wasn’t a problem either.

I walked into the kitchen and found a pot was on the stove, with hot water boiling. A radio was playing in the kitchen, and the station was set to classical music, which was interrupted by a voice which spoke the Italian language.

Without trying, I was able to pick up on the words that were spoken by the radio host.

“That song,” the voice said, “was performed by the classical pianist Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli, as he plays Chopin’s Piano Sonata Number Two, written in B-Flat Minor. The song is a fervent piece which reminds us of both the temporal nature of our lives, as well as the depth of love which punctuates our struggles. And now for--”

I heard a noise outside of the shack, and my attention snapped into focus toward the sound.

As the next song began to play, I positioned myself to the left of the entrance to the shack. The water was boiling, and steam began to fill the air, accompanied by a shrill whistle. The figure at the door placed their hand on the door knob, and my grip tightened around the handle of the knife.

I held my breath, and the door opened.