Preternatural (Worlds & Secrets) (26 page)

“
Nothing will touch you, Aden. You have all these friends and family who are here to protect you and each other,” she reassured me.

I blushed and smi
led sheepishly. I looked out towards the training crowd but only saw Robbie practising martial arts with Jojo, mum and Jade working on their telekinesis and telepathy whilst Tammy reading attentively. Liam, of course, was still nowhere to be found – but I couldn’t see Jaden. All I saw that seemed to be out of place in this crowd was a griffin, but that was hardly suspicious.

Wait, what?

My mind quickly raced back and realised that I was staring at a giant, eagle-headed, lion-bodied, wide-winged, chestnut
bird
!

I jogged on over to it, looking down at me fro
m a staggering height. I turned around swiftly.

“
Where’s Jaden? He’s
got
to come and see this,” I said out of this oddity. With a sudden whirl and whip into the air, Jaden quickly morphed down in front of me from the Griffin. His eyes were a venomous yellow as he stared at me but quickly dimmed to hazel, unlike me whose hair and eyes were permanently blue.

“
That was amazing!” I beamed at him.

“
Thanks A.J.,” he replied, lightly punching me on my shoulder casually.

The night in Vernaesce was plain. The sky was a mixture of strong indigo and hints of violet. The clouds floated like gaseous silvery mercury in the sky, creating what seemed like a soft bed in the heavens. The large planets continued to bask us with their oversized presence. The calm whirring of the air conditioner was all that could be heard.

I felt
isolated but I wasn’t. My heart was throbbing from its constant pounding. I was huddled up in a corner. Everyone was dead. I don’t know how I knew, but I knew. It felt like I had been here forever to
know
that everyone wasn’t alive anymore. I was alone. I was timidly curled up in the corner of the wall behind the cupboard.

I wasn
’t hiding from anything – or anyone really. But I was frightened. I was two inches away from the large Vernaescian window in our room. Outside, there was hardly anything. Sure I could see the land and the seemingly endless fields, but that wasn’t the Vernaescian sky I knew. It was just dull, and lifeless. There was no wind. No sun. No clouds (it was now just a murky, ashy grey) and no life – just me alone in the world.

The
light whispers were omnipresent. That’s why I was coiled and felt crimped in the corner. Scenes of the house were shown to me, one scene slowly fading to the other just like a slide show. All the rooms were empty, but the whispers were so gently placed in each one of them in the house. And finally, with one sudden thumping heartbeat, the scene was changed to the bowing head of someone, sitting at the top chair at the end of the dining table.

His black hair was drooped over his face. He wore my uniform but all in black. He gently raised his head and stared at me with his b
lack eyes. And then, for the first time, the doppelganger smiled devilishly. He never said anything. Yet I felt that I already knew what he had said to me: “your assumptions are wrong. I’m not a ghost – I’m worse”. He cackled loudly and hurled a hand of vicious black flames towards me.

My eyes opened sharply. I looked around but everywhere was dark and the air was stuffy. I
thrust my hand upwards a little and felt something soft.
Ah, made sense – I was underneath my duvet.
The all-too-real dream seemed to have left me quite troubled and unsettled.

T
he beds were empty. Liam’s bed wasn’t made, I therefore assumed that he was out of it – basically, he was back from his disappearance. The sky was all sorts of grey and it was raining heavily. The winds weren’t tremendously strong, however.

I walked down the marble staircase after taking a relaxing shower and freshening up.
The damp brown branches with their stunning, wet green leaves projected around the house – I could see them through the windows in the living room. Something about the house being wedged into a mass of oak trees provided some form of security for me. Everybody was sat at the dining table – breakfast was already served. It looked splendid but I wasn’t in the ‘food-mood’ at that moment.

“
Aden,” Anne said, lowering her mug of coffee, “you’re awake. Slept well?” she barely gave me enough time to speak before she spoke again: “well come and have some breakfast dear.” Mum walked in from the kitchen with a tray of fresh croissants. She kicked the door shut behind her and advanced forward unhurriedly.

“
Morning, Jordan.” She kissed me on my head after tussling my hair, messing it up more than it already was. I sat down for breakfast next to Liam, watching him as he took spoons of cornflakes whilst biting down on the spoon, raking his sharp teeth on it and causing the static to raise the hairs on my skin. I ogled at him with sagging bags of tiredness beneath my eyes, looking utterly and
completely
zombiefied
.

“
Where do you go?” I asked him plainly. Still staring towards the back wall as everybody else cheerfully conversed, he sniggered.

“
Just…places,” he muttered casually.

“
Aren’t you going to eat?” Robbie asked me. I sighed and blew on my dangling blue strands of hair, turning white as they ascended and back to blue as they lowered.

“
Not really hungry,” I yawned. Suddenly, the doorbell rang. Anne separated herself from what seemed to be an interesting adult conversation and marched to the door.

“
Good morning, Dorian. Aden will just be along. A.J.,” she called, “Dorian’s here for your lessons.” I didn’t hesitate to quickly get up and walk to the door.

Dorian…Dorian…

“Alright, we’ll be under the canopy,” he pointed to the rustling shade of trees planted in a large circle in the corner of the house’s terrain.

Dorian wasn
’t really like Tobias and he most
certainly
wasn’t like Vala. Actually, the only thing alike between him and Vala was the fact that they both dressed as if they were still teenagers. He wore a tight fitted plain red t-shirt, outlining his somewhat large biceps; with black baggy black shorts and a pair of ankle-length red Vans. Dorian seemed very restrictive and seemed to keep to himself. He hardly spoke and his face looked like it had seen much sadness. His olive skin seemed a tad sickly – leaning more to grey than light beige – but his arms and forearms seemed closer to a fleshy pink, causing my mind to ponder about how much fire he had probably conjured in his life. Underneath his solid, burgundy red eyes were dark purple rings of fatigue. Despite looking as if he were in his mid-twenties, he looked as if he had been through and seen much in his existence. I kept wondering how old he was. Had he already passed his age-freezing stage? It was very fun to observe people in Vernaesce and guess how old they could be, seeing as lifespans here were different. I could tell he was a tad unsettled as he kept stroking the rough stubble on his chin. But, at the back of my mind, he reminded me of a gentle giant.

His rough
, shoulder-length red hair was tied in a ponytail and I couldn’t help but notice that his eyes were a much faded red than his bright red hair. His face was constantly grim and stern. Dorian was extremely quiet, only speaking when spoken to. He did not even hesitate to walk through the rain.
It was increasingly discouraging
. He gave the impression that he was the kind of person that one did not want to cross. The sky was still letting out a windless deluge.

“
Well, what are you waiting for, the next millennium? Come on, let’s go,” he said; looking at me shrewdly with his firebrick eyes. Funnily enough, I realised he had a strong Scottish accent.

My eyes squinted in bewilderment
, but I couldn’t shake off this perplexed feeling as he walked through the rain, head up and hands in pockets, in the aisle of oak trees with their branches stretched overhead and dripping rainwater on the stone path leading to the house’s front doors. It wasn’t the fact that he merely swaggered on towards the canopy, but rather the fact that each drop of rain that was meant to fall on him or close to him, at least, didn’t.

They quickly shone an orange-red and then evaporated as soon as they reached an inch away from his skin
. How much heat would you have to emanate to be able to
do
that? I walked through the rain, shuddering as he seemingly flounced through the angry weather. He stopped at the canopy’s entrance – the many tree trunks that went around in circles – and ever so gently placed his palm in front of the closest one. The slightest spark of red flames flickered in his fire holes, burnt into his palms. Suddenly, a translucent red dome of heat grew over the canopy and foliage of trees. If I wasn’t mistaken, it looked like it had faint flames sweeping over its surface. The shield was behaving like Dorian; evaporating all drops of rain before they landed on it. Surprising to say, the thermal energy didn’t burn anything on the inside. Possibly just make things warmer. Dorian gently walked through this dome with his hands held behind his back still bearing a grim expression on his face. He was outlined in flames and the shield ate him in.

“
Well,
do
come in,” his voice humbly spoke.

“
But what if –”

“
– you get burnt? You’re part Porto-Pyron. You won’t. Come in,” he bluntly said again.               I took a deep breath and walked through the dome. I should be more open to the fact that anything could happen in this world. A brush of heat caressed my body as I entered.

“
Oh,” I replied with a smile at Dorian. He looked at my smile, plain-faced, and merely ignored me. He was quite condescending, probably more so than mum or granddad – and
that’s
saying something. I became shamed as he looked down at his hands with no emotion apart from his apparent exasperation.

“
Right, do you have these?” He showed me his hands. He had the exact same fire-made holes in his palms; three on the main palm face in the form of a triangle and one at the top face of each finger – just like mine. I nodded timidly at his question.

“
When –”

“
Are you angry at someone?” I interrupted him curiously in my usual cheeky manner.

Dorian stared at me
plainly but with an intensity that burned like raging infernos in his eyes. I thought he was going to incinerate me where I stood. I gulped, my hair flushed to red and my eyes followed. Then, to my surprise, Dorian grew a faint smile.

“
You remind me of
me
,” I was confused, but I didn’t say anything that would capsize his improving mood. Dorian quickly collapsed himself on the grass with his legs crossed as he plucked out little strands of emerald green grass.

“
When were you born?”

“
August sixteenth,” I replied, less frail as I also sat myself down cross-legged.

“
That’s good then,” he mumbled.

“
What’s good about that?”

“
Well, you’re born under Leo – underneath the fire element.”

“
And,
so
–?” I asked, getting irritated at the prolonging of required information. Dorian sniggered.

“
So, Pyrokinesis will be the easiest thing you learn – apart from all the reflex changes.” My eyebrows tilted towards each other. I was lost. Why was Dorian so ambiguous? But I didn’t need an answer. My facial expression was enough for him to notice how completely adrift I was.

“
Are you telling me you haven’t had your reflex changes?” he asked again, this time with a slight hint of brashness.

“
Well, evidently not.” I was
starting
to get annoyed at his attitude. It’s true what they say: people believe that it is easy to get along with those that bear the same traits of characters as them and wish to meet more people like themselves in the process. But unfortunately, it’s the complete opposite. It is
impossible
to properly see eye to eye with someone that is your exact self character-wise. That was the problem with Dorian: he was me in a few years’ time. He stood up from the ground, his eyes fixed on me like a hawk.

“So you’re telling me you
haven’t
had your reflex changes?” he muttered again.

“Not that I’m aware of,” I said, folding my arms, and letting out a dramatic yawn.
He stood there, simply gazing
at me. Suddenly, in
one
second that elapsed, he sent out vicious sharp discs of what looked like compressed fire. I could already hear them cut their way through the air towards me.

Again,
my body
reacted before my mind understood what was occurring. My mind was stable, but my body took control – somehow
like an act of instinct. I ran up the closest tree as the discs crashed their way into the fire dome. In a split second, I stopped and kicked off the trunk, landing catlike with one leg outstretched and one tucked in.