Destine (The Watcher's Trilogy) (19 page)

Sh
e yelled and turned her atten
tion away from Gabriel and
on me
.
She grabbed my wrist, as my hand still held onto her chunk of hair, and flung me across the room
. My back slammed
into on
e
of the stall doors
.
“You bitch, you’ll pay for that!”

She started across the bathroom towards where I lay in a heap on the floor
.
Gabriel was still attempting to get to his feet, but he seemed to be having a hard time of it
.
Sc
arlett knelt down
, and began to reach for me
. S
uddenly the cross around my neck began to blaze with a white light, and she fell back onto her butt
,
attempting to shield her eyes with her arm
.
She hi
ssed and scooted across the til
e floor
.
The light was bright to my eyes, but not
as painful as it clearly was to
Scarlett
.
When she reached the bathroom door she blindly reached up, grasping for the door handle
. S
he found it
,
pulled it open
,
and spilled herself into the hallway
.
As soon as she was no longer in the room with me the cross faded, and went back to its normal appearance
.

I lay on the floor for a few more shocked seconds before scurrying to my feet and rushing over to Gabriel
.
He was sitting on the floor with his back propped against the wall
.
I knelt in front of him and leaned in
,
attempting to see into his eyes
.
As I leaned in, his arm shot out and snaked through the back of my hair, he abruptly pulled my head forward until his lips forcefully met mine
.

The abruptness of the movement ca
used me to lo
se balance and I fell into him, his oth
er arm quickly
w
rapped around my
back and pulled m
e even tighter against him
.
He kissed me with such force
I thought my lips would bruise
.
I finally open
ed
my mouth to him
rather
than
cut my lips on my teeth
.
His tongue
slipped
into my mouth, tasting me, as if he were trying to drink me in
.
The tingling sensation that always accompanied his touch began to warm
.

Suddenly,
where our bodies met the pins and needles feeling began to warm and buzz, it was like an electrical current that ran between us everywhere we touched
.
I couldn’t help it, a moan escaped my lips and he shifted his body, so I either had to break the kiss or straddle his waist with
my legs
.
The
decision seemed instantaneous
.
One minute I’m leaning against him, the next I’m straddling his waist with his lips still pressed to mine and the hand that was on my back slowly beginning to climb up my waist and forward towards my chest
.

All of a sudden the bathroom door opened, and in walked Mrs. Still
,
the gym teacher
.
“Wh
at the hell is going on in here?
” she snapped
.

My head was fuzzy and I couldn’t think straight
.
I knew we were in trouble, but I couldn’t seem to care
.
Gabriel pulled his head back and looked not at Mrs. Still but at me
.
His colorless eyes swam with a mix of
emotions;
I swore I saw storm clouds or fog roll across his beautiful clear irises
.

Mrs. Stil
l was clearly not happy with our
response to her questions
.
She stomped over, and
grabbing me by the arm pulled me
off of Gabriel
.
“I said, what is going on here?
”
s
he asked for the second time
.
I’m not sure what response she wanted, after all it was pretty clear what was going on here, but our silence certainly didn’t help
.
Maybe she wanted us to deny it, tell her it
wasn’t what it looked like
.
As
she hauled me to my feet, I wasn’t sure my legs were going to hold
me and my heart felt like it was about to beat out of my chest
.
“That’s it! The two of you t
o
the principals office, now!”

Gabriel pulled
himself to his feet
. He
leveled his gaze at Mrs. Still
and
began to
walk towards her
.

“Stay right there, m
ister!” she continued to rant
.
“You are in serious trouble
.
What do
you
think you were doing in the girls bathroom like this?”

Gabriel
continued to hold eye contact with her
.
Then very slowly
,
i
n a soothing voice he said, “ You
didn’t see anything.”

Mrs. Still repeated, “I didn’t see anything.”

Gabriel
continued, “You were headed to the ladies’ room in the locker room, not the one outside the cafeteria.
”

“Ladies’ room in the locker room, not cafeteria,” Mrs. Still mumbled
.
The
n
she turned
and walked
out of the bathroom with
out a look back in our direction
.
I was too shocked
to say anything
.
I watched her leave, and then turned back to
Gabriel
and stared at him in shock
.

He cleared his throat.
“Sorry about that, I lost control for a minute,” he began then seemed to be at a loss for words himself
.
“I
was just
so afraid she was going to hurt you,
and I thought I was going to l
ose you.”

“Mrs. Still
?
You thought she was going to hurt me?” I asked confused
.
Clearly my brain had still not restarted from our make-out session
.

Gabriel laughed a good, deep rumbling laugh
.
I blinked in surprise, and shook myself mentally forcing myself to get with it
.
“No,” he laughed
.
Then he got serious.
“No, Scarlett
.
I couldn’t stop her
.
Her
voice
,
or aura
,
or whatever made me want to give in to her
.
I didn’t want to fight, but I knew I had to protect
you;
I had to stop her from hurting you
.
Then she flung you like that, and I thought this is it
.
This is all over, and you know what bothered me the most
.
Not that we had failed and doomed humanity, what bothered me most was that she was going to hurt you.
”

I let out a deep breath
.
I didn’t know what to say to that
.
All I could think to say was, “I didn’t want her to hurt you either.”

Gabriel
ste
p
ped forward and lowered his lips to meet mine, but this kiss was not like the last
.
This kiss
was
chaste and he pulled away while I was still wishing for more
.
He rested his hand on my chee
k and seemed to be searching my face for some answer
I wasn’t sure I had
.
He took a deep breath and a step
ped
back
.

“What is it you did to Mrs. Still?
”
I finally managed to ask
.
I was a little embarrassed it took me that long to get around to asking the question
.
God, he was distracting
.

“I just made her forget she saw us
.
I convinced her she hadn’t even come this way,” he stated
.

“What
,
like a Jedi? ‘These are
not the droids your looking for,
’” I asked jokingly
.

He looked at me quizzically.
“I don’t know what a Jedi is, but
it’s
one
of the
thing
s
I can still do,
one of the abilities
I didn’t l
ose when I
became human, like my dream walking
.
I can c
onvince people they didn’t see me, or that they were going to do
something else
.
It
’
s like using persuasion, you make the person think what you want them to think and then they believe it
.
”

“So she wont remember she saw us?” I asked
.

“Nope,” he replied with a smirk
.

“You’ve never used this “persuasion” on me, have you?” I asked in an almost panic
.

He looked at me sheepishly.
“I have tried,” he admitted
.
“When we were on the soccer field and you
didn’t believe what I was telling you, I tried
.
I only did it because I wanted you to understand, to believe me, but it doesn’t work on you
.
Your decisions about your destiny must be made without influence.
”

I let out
the
breath I had been holding in while
waiting for his answer
.
“So
you’ve never used it on me other than that one time?”

“Never,” he vowed.

I began to ask what we were going to do about Scarlett
and why my cross-glowed the
way it did
, but the bell rang signaling the end to second period
.
We quickly left the bathroom before any of the students spilling into the hallways could see Gabriel leaving the ladies’ room with me
.
Gabriel walked me to my locker, with the promise to see me at lunch
.
We had completely skipped second period, but that didn’t mean we could skip the whole day, although it was tempting
.
I was off to Western Civilization, with a lot more on my mind then the axis of evil, or maybe that was exactly what was on my mind
.

Chapter
10

James 3:16
For
where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there is disorder and every evil thing.”

I expected the r
est of the morning to p
ass in a shell of mock normalcy
while I waited to see Gabriel at lunch
.
Boy, was I wrong
.
On my way to Western Civilization I observed a very loud and graphic break-up between two sophomores I didn’t know
.
Not that
it was
strange on it
’
s own, but when a fist fight between two soccer play
er
s erupted in the middle of Western
Civ
class, and I had to jump from my desk before they came crashing into it
,
I started to notice a pattern
.
Then in pottery class an argument between a senior
couple
resulted in six
students’
pottery projects being broken into little shards
.
It seemed something or someone was riling the students at Sha
dy Lane into a violent frenzy
.
I had a guess as to the
who
.

But the sudden presence of lovers’ quarrels was not my only concern
.
I could not get my crazy, hormonal brain off Gabriel
.
At first
,
reliving the scene in the ladies’ room satisfied my brain
, but then my annoying brain had to go and ruin a perfectly good
fantasy
.
If Gabriel
were
merely a teenage boy I would have still questioned his interest in
a nobody like me, but the fact that he was several millennia old and angelic made it all the more unbelievable
.
I get being chosen to stop the
apocalypse, which sounds just like my luck,
but I’m sure what just happened in the ladies’ room after Scarlett left had nothin
g to do with saving the world
.
Crazy bitch attempts to kill me, check
, weird
religious relic around my neck glows, ok, super hot angel makes out
with me like I’m the last girl on Earth, nope now I’m lost
.
I know I had more important things to be worried about, but in true teenage girl fashion this was the issue that
weighted most heavily on my mind
.
I was sure that Gabriel had an ulterior motive, or maybe that was just my seventeen year old, jaded perspective on the world
.
Did angels have ulterior motives
?
I wasn’t sure, but I was sure that fallen angels could
.