Winter's Fury - Volume Two of The Saga of the Twelves (43 page)

Fucking gross!

Still though, in the back
of her mind, she wondered what the Lynn’s aunt had told Lynn and
Vanessa. Maybe she shouldn't have gone out with the rest of the
Franklin High School Party People. Maybe Denise had been
circumspect, vague like in the movies. Maybe she had strung
together clues of what the government knew on their own without her
having comprised her vows of secrecy. Maybe they had found
something out after all. Maybe they were insane with dire
news.
Oh god!
she
thought of a sudden.
What if they got
proof someone had hurt Andrew? Or killed him? Oh, poor,
Lynn.

She walked to her bed,
tossing a towel upon it satisfied with the dryness of her hair. She
bent, retrieving her panties and, with a well-practiced hand, put
them on one leg at a time. She unraveled the other towel from
around her body. She twisted to look into the full-body,
wall-mounted mirror toward her left. Her eyes darted over her
Philippine features. She lingered over her light brown irises,
above her broad nose and well-spaced cheekbones leading to a full
jaw. She liked the characteristic. It was distinct for a young
woman.

Her skin was
burnished-brown throughout the year, except when her and her family
went camping in the summer. Then, it turned near-black. She had
dyed her hair bronze a few weeks prior, its’ shade complemented her
complexion well she thought. She wore it parted down the middle,
flared at the sides and curled outward at the bottom.

Thoughts of Andrew
forgotten, she turned. She gazed again at her reflection in the
mirror, admiring her curves. The flare of her hips matched the
width of her shoulders to perfection. Her breasts were firm and
large, but not overly so. Though she did nothing to maintain her
body – its’ tone or perkiness – she had a flawless figure. She
allowed a small smile, continuing to turn, weight on her back foot,
the other with toes pointed at the carpet.

“
You still got it, girl,”
she muttered to herself, turning back toward the bed to gather the
clothes she had laid out. She had already decided. She was going to
walk over to Lynn’s house to see if her friend had made any
progress in her quest to find out what had happened to
Andrew.

Andrew
, she thought.
He’s nice enough,
just not for me. Still, I hope nothing bad happened to
him.

J.J. liked her boyfriend’s
built, good looking and a little dumb. That way she could control
them without them realizing she was doing so in the first place.
Andrew was good looking enough. He was handsome in a boyish sort of
manner. As far as she was concerned, he was just too skinny, too
much arms and legs. Maybe he would grow into his body one day.
Maybe then he should hit her up, if he was not still with
Lynn.

Yeah, if he filled out,
then he’d be my kind of guy
, she said to
herself. Aloud, she said, “Yeah, fat chance,” as she pulled a
loose-fitting, knit blouse over her head. She knew damn well if
Lynn got her claws into the dude, he would never leave until she
finished with him. Lynn might have a few too many pimples, but she
was tall with beautiful blond hair and a megalithic set of tits.
Andrew would be in heaven. He wouldn’t have eyes for any other girl
in like decades.

Besides, Lynn was
kind-hearted, somewhat of a prankster once you get to know her. But
still, she would have Andrew besotted within an hour of telling him
she liked him. J.J. knew this like she knew the back of her hand.
Lynn had the best of both worlds – a rockin’ body and a good
personality.

She wiggled into her
jeans, peering about for her socks. She was going to wear
comfortable shoes if she was going to walk the nine blocks to
Lynn’s house on Baltimore Street.

She thought she had left
them on the bed with the rest of her clothes, but now she could not
find them. She frowned as she finished buttoning, glancing about.
She made a full turn. She saw her slip-on, blue and white-colored
Nikes lying near her desk across from the bed. They were exactly
where she had kicked them off days ago. She had not recalled doing
so. She stepped to them, walking on her toes – something she tended
to do when barefoot and striding over carpet.

She was halfway when she
saw one of the cotton athletic socks lying on the floor, near the
threshold of the bathroom.

“
What
the heck?” she asked herself.
How in the
hell did it get over there? And how come I didn’t see it when I
came out of the bathroom?

She clicked the roof her
mouth, aggravated, ambling, her jaw set. She stooped to scoop it
up, but froze in place when her eyes caught sight of the boot next
to it. The shoe was no more than two feet away, resting on the
molding that covered the transition from her bedroom to the
bathroom. With her hand extended, she trained her eyes upward,
seeing the hem of what appeared to be a black robe. She craned
further upward, methodical, following the thick fabric. It seemed
to go up for miles.

Then, she saw its’ face.
And, right before her eyes, it melted.

She tried to scream, but
the blood-curdling sound never left her mouth. It remained stuck
deep in her throat.

Something noxious struck
her in face, smelling worse than a used pair of underwear. She
blinked and sputtered, moving back. But her feet tangled beneath
her and she flopped hard on her backside, her teeth chattered,
jarring her senseless. Through the gray-green fog enveloping her,
she saw the thing in the black robe saunter toward her, blotting
out her vision. It was huge.

“
Sleep,” it said. Its’
voice was so low, it resonated somewhere deep in the middle of her
chest.

Unbidden, Juanita fell
backward onto her elbows, unable to control her motor movement. She
blinked in rapid succession, trying to clear her vision to no
avail. Her eyes filled with tears. She gulped at the air, but for
some reason her lungs were no longer working. She could see the
blackness now, coming at her from all sides. She fought it like
mad, but still, it came.

“
You belong to the Seeker
now,” was the last thing she heard.

Please, don’t touch
me!
was the last thing she thought before
she spun into a darkened hole with no bottom.

*****

Nine-year-old Miller
Stanley was trying his darnedest to find something useful to do. He
needed something to keep him occupied, to keep the thoughts at bay.
Something!
Anything!
But, nothing was working.

First, he had tried the
obvious and played his favorite video game. It had become available
on Xbox One a while ago, but he had been able to download only a
few days prior. He had only just earned enough money from his
allowance and odds-and-end jobs around the house to do so. He had
played it for five hours straight on Thanksgiving and an hour
longer the following day. But now, the idea of walking around a
giant landscape, mining for minerals, hunting for food and building
shelters did not appeal to him. It was frustrating. Minecraft was
the perfect game to lose one’s self. What was wrong with him? He
should be blissful. His immersion in that virtual world of animated
skeletons and zombies, should have left him without a care. He
should have been an empty vessel of pure imagination. But, for some
reason, he had grown bored.

After that he tried
reading on his Kindle Fire, but found he could not focus on a
single word. So, he tossed it aside without bookmarking his page,
his irritation rising.

Next, he pulled out his
Legos. He thought if building in cyberspace bored him, then maybe
doing it for real would be enough to keep him distracted. Even that
had not worked.

I’m totally losing
it
, he admonished himself. What sort of
kid loses interest while playing with Legos? He must be a total
basket-case.

Crap! So now what do I
do?
He peered about, seeing a deck of
playing cards his parents had brought him back from Las Vegas the
last time they had gone. They were authentic, having seen use on
the floor of the MGM Grand at one point or another. His mother had
taught him how to play Solitaire with them. Maybe now he could find
some degree of peace by playing a few hands of that time-wasting
game.

Couldn’t hurt,
right?

He grabbed the deck and
began shuffling atop his twin bed. It was set against the wall
opposite his desk where his Dell XPS sat, complete with its’
22-inch HD monitor.

Miller was Caucasian. He
was a little tall for his age at four-foot-ten with rail-straight,
chestnut-colored hair. He wore it to his shoulders. It was a
Sixties sort of style, though he had no clue. He was far too young
to know that at one time famous individuals wore their hair in
almost the same manner as he. The Beatles, the Monkeys, even some
of the Beach Boys had worn their hair over the ear. Of course, many
other less well-known folks had worn it as well, but Miller would
not know this. To him, he liked the way it framed his hazel eyes
and pronounced facial features. This was because, even for one as
young as he, Miller had a hard look about him. His chiseled
cheekbones and a man-like looking cleft in his chin amplified that
aspect. They made him appear older.

He finished shuffling the
deck for the third time and began laying out the cards in the
appropriate manner. Halfway through the routine, the thoughts he
had been trying so ardently to banish returned. Almost at once, his
hands stopped moving.

Can it be true?
he thought.
Can all
three of them be gone?
They had been his
best friends after all. Though most boys his age would have balked
at having friends that were girls, Miller was not of the same mind.
He liked girls. He had for as long as he could remember. He liked
to make them laugh. He liked to see them smile at him. It made him
feel warm inside, and that was a good thing.

But now, three of his
closest female friends were victims of a kidnapping, stolen from
their families. Where taken? Only God knew now.

He stared at his hands,
willing them to move, but they did not. They remained suspended
above the playing cards and the bedspread. They shook from the
conflict raging inside him.

Gone. Can it be
true?

Marissa.

Mikalah.

Elena!

Is this happening? Please
make it change. Not you, Elena. Please, not you!

The cards dropped between
in fingers. The tears began to flow, the heaving sobs he had been
trying to suppress all day overwhelmed him in seconds. He let
himself fall forward onto the neat rows, feeling some of the cards
stick to his face when he turned to the side so he could breathe.
Why did this have to happen? Why did it have to happen to three of
the nicest, sweetest girls he knew? And why Elena? She was the one
girl he’d had been mooning over since first grade, but hadn’t the
courage to tell her. Why was she gone too? Why? Why did it have to
be so? Why?

He struck the bed, making
the cards bounce, angry at himself for not having the guts to tell
her how he felt. He should have done so months ago when he first
realized he cared for her in more than friendly fashion. He should
have written something, a note or put a few phrases in a card. He
should have been brave enough! She was a nice girl. She would not
have made him feel stupid or insecure, even if she did not feel the
same way he did. She would have been easy on him. She was too nice
to act otherwise. He knew this for truth as he lay there, mad over
his cowardice. Why hadn’t he seen this before? Why did he wait? Why
hadn’t he done something?

She’s gone now…

He rolled over, gazing up
at the ceiling, his vision blurred by tears, his face bunched with
the pain he felt in his heart. True, he was only nine years old.
True, he did not know what love was or what it was all about in
its' realest form. Yes, he was inexperienced, yet to witness much
about the world around him. All that was correct, an accurate
assessment, unfailing to be exact. But, in Miler’s eyes, there was
only one thing that mattered to him – he cared for her. Maybe it
was puppy-love. Maybe it was immature, lacking in depth and
meaning. Maybe. He
felt
it all the same, and that is what was real. The
anguish in his chest, the burning, in what he deemed could only be
his soul, was real. It was something no one older than him could
take or deny to him. It was his. What he felt for Elena was
his.

Gone…

He wiped at his eyes with
undo haste, already sick of crying. He hated it. The stuffiness,
the headache, the mucus – it was all so freakin’ gross.

“
Come on, Miller. Get a
grip,” he mumbled to himself, coming up to rest on an elbow,
running the sleeve of his t-shirt along his tear-soaked
visage.

“
Yes, you should pull
yourself together, young man,” said a voice at the foot of his
bed.

It was a deep, penetrating
tone that made the boy’s head snap toward it. Through the moisture
distorting his sight, Miller saw a giant shadowy figure he had not
known was there. In his room no less!