 
Shadow Riser

by

Deborah Barreto

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2012 – Deborah Barreto Hernández

All rights reserved.

Cover art by Joryson Lee

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are for your personal enjoyment only.

It may not be reproduced in any form

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###  Dedication

For my boys, Kenneth & Kayden...

Who give me reason to always see the good in life, no matter what.

You guys are the kights in shining armor that saved my life.

Also, for Mina,

my favorite cousin, the Super Girl.

Thanks for making Damien your dream guy

and stalking me until I finished the damned story.

And Kenny, because he actually read the story,

even when he didn't want to, and felt for Kennedy

like I'd hoped, but had never expected anyone to do.

"What would your good do if evil didn't exist,

and what would the earth look like

if all the shadows disappeared?"

\- Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita

Table of Contents

Prologue

1. Antisocial

2. Up for Breakfast

3. Lonely Day

4. Emergency

5. Kill All Your Friends

6. Read My Mind

7. Don't Fear the Reaper

8.Vertigo

9. Tie Your Mother Down

10. For a Pessimist, I'm Very Optimistic

11. Near Life Experience

12. Communication Breakdown

13. Road to Nowhere

14. To Live is to Hide

15. Sweet Little Sister

16. Point of Know Return

The Good Left Undone (Epilogue)

About the Author

Connect with Deborah

Book Two Preview

### 

### Prologue

Thick black smoke obscured her vision as she moved around blindly.

Her outsretched arms tried to find something solid to hold on to. She knew that she was searching for someone, but she couldn't remember who.

The foggy haze disipated by fractions.

Soon, what appeared to be the outline of a man could be made out. His features indistinct, darkened by the shadows of the still dispersing fog.

She walked closer wanting to see who it was that she needed so badly. The form shifted. It moved, getting farther and farther away from her with every step she took. She was frantic.

He couldn't go. He couldn't leave her!

"Wait!" She shouted desperately, but he just quickened his pace. She ran after him, nearly catching up to him.

Just two steps behind him, she reached out to touch him, to take his shoulder and make him turn to look at her. But, as soon as her fingertips made contact with the fabric of his shirt, the figure simply vanished.

He faded away into nothing and left her hands grasping at air as she ran them through the remaining smoke left in his place.

Her knees gave out. She collapsed, broken on the ground as the murkiness engulfed her once more.

And she fell, like a poor man's version of Alice through a dark and dreary rabbit hole.

Then, just like magic, she sat up on her bed.

### 1. Antisocial

"Please, come back!"

"Soon."

"But, everything here is so warm and sunny and extremely boring without you!"

"It's only been a week, Nedy." Lauren's voice reached her ear out of the cordless phone that she held in her hand.

"Yes, but a really long one." Kennedy whined into the phone. "I've done everything there's to do around here."

"What about the movies in Villa Grande?" Her friend suggested.

"Done it, twice."

"The mall, then?"

"Can't find anything worth spending my parent's hard earned money on."

"Museum?"

"It's not the same without you there to make fun of the exhibits."

"Beach?"

"Too crowded."

"Lagoon?"

"Too many bugs."

"Okay, I give up." Lauren concluded.

"Exactly!" Kennedy exclaimed, glad that she had managed to make her point. "When are you gonna put me out of my misery?"

"You know that I won't be back for another three weeks." Lauren reminded her. It just wasn't fair. What did her friend have to go on vacation to celebrate her eighteenth birthday with her parents for?

"No!" She cried, the dramatic effect of it lost on her friend that listened all the way from the other side of the receiver, on the other side of the island they lived on.

"Don't be such a crybaby. It's only a few weeks. How about El Gato Negro? I'll bet anything that you haven't been there since I left."

"I'm not going there by myself!" Was she crazy? She was truly appalled at Lauren's audacity at telling her to go to the local pub all by her lonesome.

"How does the saying go, misery loves company, right?" Well, that was how Kennedy felt, miserably bored out of her mind.

"You're my only friend, Laurie." It sounded so pathetic when she said it like that, but it was the sad and ugly truth.

She was the only one to ever stick by her, even when it meant that she would never be as popular as she wanted to be because of it. Lauren was the Freak Girl's sidekick. Because being her father's daughter made her the punchline to their jokes. By them, she meant that year's graduating class of San Miguel Arcangel's Bilingual High School.

"Then it would be a good opportunity for you to make new ones." Lauren urged.

"Easier said than done. I'm the Freak Girl, remember?" She couldn't keep the bitterness out of her tone.

"High School's over, Kennedy."

"Yeah, tell that to the douches that look at me funny every time I walk into the drugstore."

"Well, they're asses. But, not everyone went to our school."

"Enough of them did."

"Hey, you're going off to college in seven weeks."

"And?"

"Fresh start, new people. No more Freak Girl, just Kennedy."

"No more Freak Girl." Kennedy muttered. That would be a welcome change for once.

"Good. Now, I have to go. Stop contemplating the barrenness of your social life and go get yourself a really cold glass of your mother's delicious lemonade." With that, she was gone, leaving her to deal with the tediousness of summer vacations in that small town on her own. She should have accepted the university's offer of early admission.

"Fine." Kennedy grumbled as the line went dead. She hated to admit it, but Lauren was right. At that moment, her only choices were to hide out there on the far corner of the porch or to stay locked up in her bedroom upstairs.

She could always opt to spend the day listening to her father's lectures on paranormal investigations. They were fun to listen to around a campfire, but had lost their appeal to her after having heard them a hundred times over.

She felt bad for him. Kennedy never saw him with anyone apart from her mom either. Although, he would sometimes leave on one of his investigations for days on end.

Ever since she was a child she had always seen him spend all of his spare time sheltered in his office studying the occult and its meanings. And yet, she was sure that his most authentic encounter with a ghost had in all likelihood been a kid with a white sheet thrown over his head on Halloween night.

She couldn't help but giggle out loud at the thought.

Her skin flushed with laughter and the once soft fabric of her white top turned into rubber. It clung to her skin like wrapping paper.

She had come out of the house dressed in what her father liked to call her, "almost indecent", pair of denim shorts, with a cotton tank top to stay cool. Now, she would be going back in wearing a wetsuit. Her mouth felt drier than the Southern woods during wildfire season.

The heat was nearly unbearable.

Kennedy placed her bare feet upon the swing and readjusted her position so that she could support her head with the armrest. Her shoulder length brown hair danced in the air as she fanned herself with a hand.

Her parched tongue craved a nice cold splash of that lemonade that Lauren had mentioned earlier. But, it was in the kitchen. If she wanted it, she would have to either walk all the way around the house under the scorching rays of the sun and go in using the back door or go in through the front door. Meaning that she would have to go by her father's study to reach her goal.

The question stood, did she want that lemonade bad enough that she would risk being spotted by her Ghostbuster father?

She actually considered going through the back door. Then her eyes landed on her bare feet.

Great, she had no shoes on.

"Aw, Screw it!" She was so thirsty.

Kennedy got up. The seat swung forward after her due to the sudden absence of weight. She opened the front door as silently as she could and made her way down the hall walking on her tip toes.

'Thank God!' She thought. The door that belonged to her father's headquarters was closed. The sound of muffled classical music could be heard coming from inside. She kept on with her quest for refreshment before her luck ran out.

When she finally arrived at her destination, she found it empty. She looked around and spotted a piece of paper held in place by a small fruit shaped magnet on the refrigerator's door. Her mother's handwriting stood out in bright blue letters.

Kennedy placed the cordless phone on top of the kitchen counter and walked closer to read it.

" _Went shopping for groceries, be back soon. I love you both. P.S. Kennedy, you are hereby prohibited to touch the tray I've left cooling in the oven!_ "

The girl smiled triumphantly. She pounced on the stove, the lemonade forgotten for the moment. She opened the oven door, her face still adorned with a predatory grin, and discovered her favorite snack. A freshly baked batch of caramel topped, white chip brownies.

Memories of the sweet taste of the fudgey chocolate as it melted on her tongue when she bit into one of the small square cakes the last time that her mother had baked them assaulted her.

The note clearly stated that she was forbidden to touch the tray, but it said nothing about its contents. Pushing her conscience aside, she stretched a hand out to take a piece. She was just about to make her conquest when the cordless phone she had left quietly resting on the counter rang loudly.

She jumped in surprise.

"Ouch!" She cried out as she accidentally bumped her hand against the hot oven rack.

Even after she'd pulled it back, her thumb felt as if it were on fire. She looked down at her hand and saw that a red welt had already begun to appear just at the base of it. Kennedy blew on it and brought it up to her mouth to suck on, just as she used to do when she was little. It really stung.

And everything had been going so well.

The phone rang again, reminding her of the cause of her recent injury, and she instantly dove for it.

She knew that her father never answered the house phone when he was on one of his brainstorming sessions. He had his own private line in his study and always said that if it really was important, they wouldn't be calling the house line. But, she didn't want to risk it anyway.

Kennedy shook her head at her own silliness. She pressed the green button that read, "talk", and held the phone to her ear with her uninjured hand.

"Hello?" She greeted, there was a pause and then a stern male voice could be heard on the other end.

"Hello, may I speak to Mr. Riser?" The strange voice asked, in English.

"I'm sorry, but my father is busy right now. Would you like to leave him a message?" She had been expecting the usual Spanish that accompanied regular phone calls. The fact that the caller greeted her in English immediately let her know that it might be important after all.

"No, I'm afraid this can't wait. I've got something very important that I need to discuss with him." The unidentified caller's voice echoed her thoughts as it suddenly acquired a sense of urgency that concerned her.

"I'd like to help you sir, but he specifically asked not to be bothered today." She had already taken a tentative step towards her father's office. However, she was still debating whether the call was actually important enough to warrant a lecture.

"Just tell him that Archer needs to speak with him, he won't refuse." Kennedy hesitated, the man sounded desperate. Would her father really want to talk to him?

"Please, Kennedy, it's very urgent." Archer insisted.

"How–" She was starting to get anxious. How did this Archer know her name and why was he so adamant that her father would immediately accept his call? She finally caved and decided that maybe she really did need to get her father and ask him about it. "All right, just wait a second while I go get him."

"Thank you. Please, hurry." She just hoped that it truly was an emergency or her father wouldn't be very happy with her. Grave thoughts in mind, she made her way to the door of the study and nervously knocked on it twice.

She heard the music pause and her father's answer of a tired, "Yes?"

"Papa, there's a Mr. Archer on the phone and he says that it's very important that he speaks with you." She could have sworn that she heard him curse under his breath. The sound was quickly followed by the loud scrape of a chair against the tiled floor as he hastily got to his feet.

The door clicked open almost immediately and the offered phone was abruptly snatched from her hand. She looked up as the door swung shut on her face once more and didn't even have time to complain about her father's rudeness before his angry voice interrupted her.

She could make out a few of the muffled words through the closed door and by the sounds of it, he wasn't at all pleased with what this Archer guy had to tell him.

It appeared that her father was angry at the man for calling the house instead of his mobile or private number. Also, that he – she didn't know whom – had known the risks of doing something beforehand and that Mr. Archer, whose first name seemed to be James, needn't worry about it.

Kennedy's curiosity was piqued. The matter appeared to be a serious one and up until then, she'd never believed that her father might actually be involved in anything dangerous. He wrote the monthly weather column in the local newspaper for God's sake. It both worried and intrigued her.

She'd been so lost in her own thoughts that she didn't hear her father end the conversation and head out. The door opened so fast that she had no opportunity to move and she looked up to meet the disapproving stare of Steven Riser.

"I–" She didn't even know what she could say to justify her eavesdropping. It was like her brain had shut down momentarily and she was left a blabbering idiot.

"We'll talk about it when I get back. Tell your mother that I'm meeting with Archer." Having said that, he rapidly walked out of the house.

She stared at the now closed door for several passing seconds. Her stomach rumbled. The noise snapped her out of her stupor.

She wanted to take one of the brownies that waited alluringly in the oven, but she was afraid of the world ending the next time that she stuck a hand in there. Instead, and against her very nature, she made herself a tuna sandwich and followed it with that glass of lemonade that she had also been craving. Then, she headed upstairs to take a shower.

Before she could reach her private bathroom, Kennedy stood at the doorway to her room and regarded it pensively, just like she had done millions of times already. She knew that it was time that she started thinking of changing the room's décor. But, she never got around to it.

The walls were still the same pink color her mother had picked out for her when she'd been five. The paint was so pale and rosy that every time that she looked at it she was tempted to go, "blah!", and run out of the room.

Kennedy distinctively disliked pink, every cute and sweet shade of it. Far from the EMO cliché of it all, the color just made her feel out of place in her own space. To her predisposed mind, it spoke of femininity and poise and shiny cotton candy flavored lip gloss. None of which applied to her.

The floor was lined with a furry purple carpet, which she did like. It was probably the only thing that she had been able to decide on in her room, so it would stay.

Her mother could be very controlling when it came to the looks of her house. She had decorated every single room, even the cellar, all except for her father's study. It remained the epitome of nerdish bookwormness, if those were even real words, set in green and brown tones that could also be found dominating most of his wardrobe choices.

She sighed and made her way to the closet to get a change of clothes. All the while, she tried her best to ignore the flowers and butterflies print of her bed sheets. Her mother had said that she wanted her daughter to be more feminine, more delicate, when she had bought them.

Poor mama, instead of the little girl who liked to dress up as a princess that she had wanted so much, she got stuck with her, a tomboy that refused to even look twice at a skirt and was always elbow deep in mud when she'd been smaller.

Following that line of thought, she remembered the time when she had asked for an all terrain vehicle for her sixth Christmas. Santa and her mother had plotted against her and she got an extremely hot pink convertible – that to her horror played loud upbeat music while she drove it around – as a substitute.

It died from lack of use at the back of the garage.

She had been so disappointed that the following year she'd left the red-clad traitor some saltines and water instead of the usual chocolate chip cookies and milk that she always left. She figured that if he wasn't going to be nice to her, she was in no obligation to do so either, let him go on a diet for all she cared.

Kennedy smiled at the memory as she walked into the bathroom that adjoined her bedroom and placed her fresh clothes on top of the toilet's tank.

She stepped into the shower and turned it on at full blast, set the temperature to its coldest and let the water fall over her head.

The cool liquid turned warm as soon as it made contact with her hot skin, it flowed over her legs and down the drain. Then, colder water began to replace it as it kept raining from the shower-head above her.

Halfway through her shower, she heard the faint sound of a car coming up the driveway and the tell tale squeaks of the brakes as it came to a halt. Her mother was home. She hurried to finish cleaning up so that she could go help her mother carry the groceries inside.

Sure, she was a great daughter and the possibility of finding a chocolate bar at the bottom of one of the plastic bags was more than compensation enough.

She turned the water off and pulled the yellow towel to her. She wrapped it around her body and stepped out, letting out an undignified, "eep!", as she almost slipped on the cold tiled floor.

She got dressed quickly and left the bathroom without even stopping to look at herself in the mirror. But, when she reached the top of the stairs, she hesitated for a moment and toned down her urgency to carefully go down them.

She had been eleven years old when a bully at school, who had been making fun of her Freak Girl status, pushed her down a flight of stairs. Kennedy had ended up with a broken ankle, a few bruises and an even more wounded pride. It also made her paranoid when going down even two steps ever since.

By the time that she arrived at the kitchen, her mother was already on what seemed to be her second round trip to the car. There were three bags on the counter and the backdoor was open. She was tempted to go trough them then and there. However, she stepped out and headed to the car. She met her mother on the way and took the heavy bags that she was carrying off her arms.

" _Gracias_ , Kennedy." Her mother smiled her infectious smile as she thanked her and she couldn't help but to smile back. Kennedy watched her turn back around to get the remaining packages from the car.

Her mother was a very beautiful woman, whereas Kennedy considered herself a plain girl. The only extraordinary trait that she actually possessed was the weird gray color of her eyes.

It wasn't just Kennedy's perspective, people often commented on it. She was sometimes jealous that she hadn't inherited her mother's good looks. Her grandmother in Spain was always telling her how she looked so much like her father. She really couldn't see the resemblance to either of them.

She wanted so badly to please her mother, which may have been the reason why she let her decorate her bedroom.

Kennedy placed the bags on the counter besides the others and went to fetch some more. When she reached the doorway, she saw that her mother was already on her way back signaling that she was bringing the last of them.

She turned around excitedly and began taking stuff out from the bags. She kept an expert eye out for the candy bar that she knew her mother always bought for her.

"Has your father come out of his hole yet?" The soft Spanish accented voice of her mother startled her. Kennedy almost dropped a jar of grape jelly at her question.

She had forgotten all about the Archer incident. She looked up and smiled guiltily at her mom.

"He went out to meet with a Mr. Archer. Do you know him, mama?" Her mother's face paled at hearing the man's name. It made Kennedy even more curious as to what role this James Archer played in her parent's lives.

"Yes, your father has been working with him on some freelance project." She seemed to have regained her composure, but smiled a fake smile and made a point of sifting through her handbag without looking at her.

"Really? I didn't know that, you guys haven't mentioned it before." Kennedy wasn't fooled.

"Well, it's a freelance thing, as I've already told you, and you never heard it mentioned because you aren't interested in your father's research and you always leave the room when the topic arises in conversation." Her mother's tone had taken a chiding quality. Kennedy didn't buy it. It was no secret that she didn't approve of her daughter having anything to do with Steven's bizarre interests.

So she was going to play the guilt trip card now, was she? Let her keep her undisclosed information, she would find out about it soon enough.

"Anyway, he gave the impression that it was important. But, okay." She straightened up and crossed her arms over her chest. "Where's my chocolate?"

"Here, but wait for dinner first. You'll ruin your appetite." Her mother looked relieved at the change of subject. She took the bar from her purse and handed it to her, with a real smile that time.

"Mama, you know I can have chocolate for breakfast and down a plate of pancakes right after that as if it were nothing." Her mother shot her a caustic look, but assented and turned around with a wave of her hand.

"Eat it. But you better not leave even a single grain of rice on your plate."

"Yeah, yeah. You know I won't." She smirked and made a quick job of opening the wrapper. The sweet smell of the candy bar attacked her senses at once and her mouth was watering by the time that she broke off a very large piece and placed it on her tongue.

"Mm, bliss!" She squealed when a little chocolate escaped from the corner of her mouth. She wiped it away with her finger and licked it. Her mother rolled her eyes.

"Don't talk with your mouth full!" She scolded and gave her a light slap on the wrist. Kennedy made a show of looking hurt. Still, she shut her mouth. Her mom always had that power over her.

"Hurry and finish that so you can help me put all this away before dinner." She nodded and swallowed, folding the wrapper on the candy and putting it in her pocket to finish later. She moved to help her mother with accommodating the cans and non perishables in the cellar.

Kennedy hated cellar duty. Her mom was a neat freak and she wanted everything to be classified by contents and expiration dates. It took her almost half an hour to sort through and organize all of the items in their specific order. The new ones at the back after she'd moved the old ones to the front.

As soon as she set foot outside the cellar, she was met with the appetizing scent of her mother's cooking. She headed towards the kitchen to see if she could help her mother out with anything else. In truth, she was mainly going to see if she could steal a piece of that delicious smelling meat from under her nose. But, eh, tomato, tomâto.

She found her mom stationed at the sink with her back to her. It seemed that she hadn't heard her come in because she was still humming the familiar tune of the old lullaby that she used to sing her to sleep with under her breath.

That was her chance.

Kennedy moved stealthily to the counter besides the stove and extended a hand to the serving plate that was filled with the first piece of cooked meat. She could already savor the spicy taste of it.

"Don't even think about it." How did her mother do that? It was as if she had eyes on the back of her head. Her father would have a field day with that one if it were true.

"What? I was just going to cover it. We don't want a fly to stand on them, they vomit everything before they eat it, you know!" Maybe she hadn't been that stealthy after all.

"Uh-huh and I was born yesterday. _Por favor, Nena_." _Nena_ was her mother's nickname for her. A sweetened version of its original, _Niña_. It meant girl when roughly translated to English. Somehow it didn't sound that cute when you did.

"Okay, so I'm hungry! Can't we eat yet?" Kennedy whined like the little girl that she often liked to pretend she wasn't.

"You're always hungry. But, I guess we may as well go ahead, your father hasn't called yet. Did he say when he would be back?"

"No, he just told me to tell you that he was meeting that Archer guy. I'm gonna set the table."

"Okay, I'll just finish this up and meet you there." Her mom walked to the stove and began to take the remaining pieces of meat out of the pan.

To the untrained eye, her mother appeared to be fine with her father's rendezvous with Archer. Kennedy knew better, she could see the concern written in her eyes when she had asked about it.

She knew that if she pried, it was possible that she would have been able to squeeze a few details out, given her mother's state of mind. But, she decided that it was best to stay silent and let the whole thing play out.

One thing that she had learned while growing in that family unit was that patience and perseverance were the key to achieving everything. Unfortunately, those were two things that she didn't have in abundance.

She took out the plates, glasses and utensils that she would need and stacked them up so that she could take them all in one trip and proceeded on her way to the small adjoining dinning room.

After the table was set, they sat down to eat their _arroz blanco con habichuelas y chuletas fritas_ – white rice, beans and fried pork chops – and made light conversation between bites.

Her mother talked about their new neighbor, whom she had baked the brownies for as a welcome gift. That left Kennedy with a very limited amount of pieces for herself. She hated him already.

He'd moved in that very morning and she had yet to meet him. According to her mom he was ,"a fine young man in his early twenties, polite and well mannered."

All that, she had surmised after a thirty second greeting while she'd been watering her orchids.

She also asked about the movies that she had seen that week and Kennedy indulged her since she knew that she was just trying to keep her mind off her husband's whereabouts.

When they were done, she helped wash the dishes and told her mom to go ahead and take a well earned bubble bath while she finished cleaning everything up.

She took a small serving bowl and placed a brownie inside, heated it up in the microwave, carefully handling the dinner they had left out for Steven in the process and placed a generous scoop of vanilla ice cream on top of the warm cake. Then, she swirled some chocolate syrup in, a handful of chopped hazelnuts and topped it off with a cherry. It looked so perfect that it was almost a shame to ruin it by eating it.

Her dessert in hand, she headed giddily up to her room, opened the sliding door that lead to her private balcony and leaned on the railing while she enjoyed her delicious masterpiece.

The moon was full that night, it stood out in all its silver splendor against the inky sky. Kennedy sighed as a cool breeze blew through her chocolate hair. Her body shivered involuntarily in response.

It was beginning to get chilly despite the incredible heat they had experienced during the day. She looked up at the stars and couldn't help but wonder at their magnificence. It was truly a beautiful sight.

The loud roaring of car engine coming down the street shocked her out of her musings. She looked down in time to see a black American muscle car – that she would later learn to identify by the inscription on its rear as a nineteen sixty eight Dodge Charger – pulling into the neighboring driveway.

She chuckled to herself as she tried to imagine Mr. Nieves, their former neighbor, stepping out of the monster car, his bald head probably gleaming as much as its shiny rims. But, she knew that would never happen, Mr. Nieves would never be caught within ten feet of any car that looked like that. The machine was as loud as its appearance was imposing, simply beautiful.

She watched as out surfaced the most gorgeous being that she had ever laid eyes upon. Suddenly, the stars that had so captured her attention moments ago paled in comparison.

The man was tall, with a lean, slightly muscular built. He wore an army green tee shirt and a pair of faded jeans that adjusted wonderfully to his frame and to her dismay, he looked up as if he could feel her eyes on him.

She froze, her eyes wide.

Kennedy was mortified at having been caught staring at the dark haired stranger.

A few seconds went by, she started to feel silly. Still, she couldn't tear her eyes from him. She finally glanced away when her traitorous hand came up – almost as if by its own accord – in greeting.

She stared at it horrified.

When she dared to look back at the handsome man, it was only to watch him simply dismiss her gesture and go into his house without giving her a second glance.

Her cheeks burned with embarrassment and she was grateful that there hadn't been anyone else around to bear witness to her shame.

It seemed that her mother's abilities for reading people where way off, their new neighbor was as rude as he was attractive.

### 2. Up For Breakfast

"Wait!" Kennedy gasped.

She shot up on her bed. Her forehead glistened with cold sweat, the result of another one of her smoky dreams. Her limbs trembled with the remnants of her suffering and a slight feeling of loss lingered at the back of her mind.

She'd been having that dream for days now.

The sadness that echoed within her, even after she'd woken up, made her think of it as a nightmare. She could never get to the shadowy figure in time and the identity of the mysterious man was never revealed to her.

She peeled the matted hair from the back of her neck, turned the pillow onto its other side and laid down again.

Maybe she could force her subconscious to pick up where the dream had left off if she went back to sleep right a way. Perhaps there was more to it than she remembered or she always woke up to soon.

Either way, after a few failed attempts to fall asleep, she sat up and buried her head in her shaky hands. Kennedy hummed to herself. It was a thing, something that she did whenever she tried to gather her wits.

Her throat felt dry. It was becoming an issue with her, always feeling thirsty. She decided to get up and go downstairs to drink some water.

She peeked into her parent's bedroom on the way to see if her father had arrived and was met by the lone outline of her mother's resting figure under the covers. Her father had taken another one of his sabbaticals.

She got her water and was on her way up from the kitchen when she heard a faint thumping sound coming from the direction of her father's study.

She stared pointedly at the closed door and noticed that there was no light coming from under it. That meant that the room should be empty.

Being the coward that she was, Kennedy surprised even herself when she moved to check it out. Her mind swam with reasons behind the possible sources of the noise. Nothing that she could have imagined would have come close to what she found in reality.

She opened the door and immediately hit the light switch. Her eyes stung as they adjusted to the sudden brightness. But, she still managed to spot a small cloud of black smoke as it made its exit through the cracks of one of the room's windows.

She was petrified. Her thoughts ran back to her recurring dream and the thick black substance that filled them. It was so similar to what she'd just seen.

The remaining dark mist floated away rapidly. Kennedy stared dumbly after it.

What did she do?

Telling her mother was not an option.

Lauren would just make fun of her.

The only person that would give a rat's ass about her hallucinations wasn't home yet. She spent another couple of minutes staring stupidly at the now vacant space and decided to officially declare herself delusional.

Kennedy valiantly walked closer to the window, if only to prove her own imagination wrong.

As expected, there was nothing there except a little dust, a yellow-ish, funky smelling bit of dust. She brushed it with the tip of her fingers and brought them to her nose.

"Ugh!" The stuff was nasty, it smelled like eggs gone bad.

Her dad needed to clean that room.

She glanced at the grandfather clock in the corner and saw that it read a quarter past three in the morning. The dream's effect on her subconscious had been stronger than she had previously thought.

'Yeah, that's totally it.' A voice in the back of her head nagged.

Kennedy shook her head without giving herself any more time to properly analyze the strange events. She wiped her fingers on her pajamas and made a hasty retreat to her bedroom where she planned on diving under the covers and staying there until the sun shone high in the sky.

As it always happens, that morning welcomed Kennedy to an empty house and her plans of sleeping in were disrupted by a wave of insomnia.

Her mother had already left and she was still worried about her father. His absence normally wouldn't bother her. If it hadn't been for that mysterious call, she wouldn't have thought a thing of it.

However, her mother's concerned behavior during dinner bugged her a bit. Most of the times that Steven Riser disappeared, Teresa would go on with her life as if the fact that her husband left for days on end and then returned, sometimes beaten and bruised with no explanation, was the most normal thing in the world.

Somehow, Kennedy knew that this time was different.

Something felt wrong.

As she made her way downstairs, she was greeted by silence and the delicious smell of – if memory served her correctly – chocolate chip pancakes. Her mom had gotten up early and had fixed her breakfast before she left for work.

Either Teresa Martín-Riser was hands down the best and most loving mother on the planet or she felt guilty for keeping Kennedy in the dark. Whatever the reason, the smell was too enticing for her to dwell on it.

The newspaper was already unrolled and left to rest on the counter besides the pancakes. The words, " _Local College Professor Still Missing_ ", stood out in bold red letters from the heading of its front page. She glanced at the photograph of a stern-looking man underneath the title.

It was depressing to see how people kept disappearing on that small island. It made her fearful of her own father's whereabouts. She would go to the police if he didn't contact them in a week.

Kennedy shoved those thoughts aside and flipped open the newspaper, going straight to the horoscope. She didn't like to read or see the news, someone was always missing or found dead somewhere.

She found the page that she'd been looking for and went over the different signs with her index finger until her eyes stopped on her own.

" _Cancer_ _: Unexpected changes are coming your way. Embrace them. Don't try to control the events that take place around you. A little change can be a good thing. Your lucky numbers are_ –"

She stopped reading and closed the paper ignoring what she'd read. Why did she insist on reading that crap every morning? It wasn't like anything it told her ever did happen.

Kennedy put the paper aside and went to pick out a few pancakes from the fairly large pile in front of her.

She was in the middle of savoring a syrupy bite of pancake when the sound of a lawn mower distracted her. It came from the rude neighbor's house.

She knew that she shouldn't care what the guy did on his own property, especially after his impolite dismissal of her greeting the previous night, but curiosity got the best of her and she couldn't help to take a look at him from the kitchen window.

He was mowing the grass of his backyard, dressed in a pair of faded jeans and a gray tee shirt. Kennedy wondered if he had been raised in some scorching desert, it was probably over ninety degrees outside. She felt hot just by looking at him. Although, maybe it wasn't just because of the heat.

She turned to the black kitty on the kitchen wall. Its eyes and tail moved in time with the passing seconds and the clock in its tummy told her that it was only seven thirty in the morning and already he was almost done with his yard work.

She looked back outside to see that he had stopped what he had been doing and looked around, again, as if sensing her eyes on him. She immediately ducked under the kitchen sink and crawled to finish eating her most likely cold food while she wallowed in embarrassment.

The lawn mower started to move again. Soon, she was done eating and washing her used plate. Then, she heard the sound of the lawn mower moving closer to the sliding doors of the kitchen's back entrance.

He was mowing their yard!

Kennedy ran to the glass doors and peeked through the blinds in time to see him push the heavy machine across the end of their back porch.

There was no fence dividing the properties, but surely he knew where his ended and theirs began? She stared at him for a few seconds as she took in his appearance.

Under the flattering sunlight, she could see that his hair was so dark that it could be called black. It gleamed in various places as the light shone on it contrasting beautifully with his tan skin. Stray wisps of it fell on his face as he moved.

Another few seconds passed and she found herself walking to the remaining pile of pancakes without realizing she had decided on it. She served a few on a clean plate to be heated. Then placed it on a serving tray, along with a saucer of syrup, a pitcher of lemonade, a glass full of ice, some napkins and a fork.

Kennedy walked out to the back porch with the tray in hand and wondered if the heat had affected her brain in some way, because she would've never done something like that in her right mind. At least, that was what she kept telling herself as she set the tray down on the outdoor table and turned to find him looking at her.

She had never heard the mower stop.

"Good morning!" She sounded like a fool, but what else was she supposed to say?

He just stared at her as if trying to decipher what she had said. It occurred to her that she wasn't speaking in the island's native tongue. Maybe he didn't speak English. So she tried again, in Spanish that time.

" _¡Buenos días!"_ Kennedy smiled expectantly, but her cheeks hurt after a while and the guy just stood there looking as if she had spoken in some unknown language. She could feel her face start to redden in shame and headed back into the house.

"Good Morning." She stopped dead in her tracks. So the guy could speak English after all? She turned back to find him standing near the bottom step of the porch.

"Uh, hi." Way to go Kennedy! Now he was going to think that she was retarded or something.

"Hello." Judging by the slow way that he said it while he gestured with his hand in mimic of a greeting, he definitely thought her mentally challenged. She wanted the ground to open at her feet and swallow her whole.

"Yes, well I thought you might be hungry after all that work so I brought you some pancakes, just in case I was right." The whole sentence came out in the huff of one breath and he stared at her as if she was crazy.

She inhaled deeply and continued. "Because I saw you were mowing our yard too and I wanted to say thank you, but now I see that you'd rather not be disturbed, so I'm gonna shut up and go inside and never bother you again." Kennedy wanted to cry. Lauren always told her that she didn't make any sense when she was nervous, but that had bordered on ridiculous.

She needed to get away before she broke down, but she spun around so fast that her feet tripped on the raised edge of one of the floorboards.

It was amazing how in just half a second her brain had time to register the fact that her face was on it's way to become well acquainted with the wooden boards that paneled the outside deck.

A sharp tug on her arm let her know that the guy was faster. He'd caught one of her flaying arms in time to pull her back so she stood balanced on her feet again.

"Thank you." She stared dumbly at his hand. It's touch was an alien burning on her forearm. He quickly removed it and shoved it into one of his pockets. Her skin tingled strangely where his hand had been. She wanted to flee, but was afraid of moving at all as her eyes started to water.

"I'm sorry. You caught me a bit off guard. I did not expect anyone to be home. Are you well?" The way he spoke was so proper, like the gentlemen in the old black and white movies that her mother liked to watch, and he did look like one too. She couldn't help but to be mesmerized by his deep voice and the undecipherable accent that it held.

"Miss?" Crap!

"Yes, I'm okay." No, she wasn't, she had blanked out in front of him.

"Excellent. So, pancakes, you said?"

"My mom made a big stack before leaving. They'll probably go to waste if you don't eat some."

"And you will not? That seems awfully ungracious of you." Had he just called her an ingrate? She wanted to slap him but she wasn't sure.

"I already had some and as I told you, it was a big stack. More than I could eat. So I thought I'd share instead of throwing them away. But, if you don't want them, then I guess they're going in the trash." Kennedy huffed and picked up the tray angrily from the table.

He snatched it away before she could even blink. She stared stupidly at the empty space that the tray had occupied between her hands.

"When you put it that way, I think that I can make room for a few of these mouth-watering pancakes." He moved around her to sit on a chair in front of the table and put the food down on it. He gave her a crooked smile as he took the first bite.

"Mm, delicious." He made a fuss of rolling his eyes as he savored the mouthful.

Kennedy stood in the sun, not knowing what to think. Sure, he was extremely good looking. He was also uncouth and obnoxious. Nevertheless, the heat of the sunlight was getting to her, so she moved to sit down on the chair across from him.

There, under the cover of the colorful umbrella's shadow, she allowed herself to relax a little. He ate in silence while she tried to look at anything besides him. She didn't dare set her eyes on him again, scared that she wouldn't be able to tear them away afterward.

"Do you always welcome strangers so warmly?" Her eyes shot up to his as an involuntary response to being addressed.

"Not really." It was the honest truth, and she had no idea why she said it. She wasn't really interested in the reason behind her actions, but rather the intense blue shade of his eyes.

"Is it because I am so handsome then?" His direct question snapped her out of her gawking and made her flush. Apparently, modesty was not one of his greatest attributes.

"I don't know. I mean, whatever good looks I might have thought you had disappeared the second you opened your mouth." He was sarcastically frank and so she could be as well.

"Ouch. I guess that I should say that the feeling is mutual, but I think it would just lower your opinion of me even more." She was almost positive that there had been a compliment hidden somewhere in that sentence.

"It's not like I'm grasping at straws here. I'm just going by what I see." Kennedy kept her head high and tried to appear as confident as she sounded. In truth, her hands were balled into sweating fists that rested hidden on her lap under the table.

"And what you have seen so far is not very flattering at all. I guess that I can understand why you would think me rude." He actually looked like he was considering his actions. She didn't know what to make of him.

"Not exactly rude, more like overly blunt." She tried to take the sting out of her earlier implication and was amazed at how sincere she actually was.

"Whatever your impression of me, it sure is not a good one. I apologize for my discourtesy. I am not a very sociable person."

"I can see that." He raised a sharp eyebrow at her muttered comment.

"Even so, your gesture is well appreciated." He said and Kennedy let out a very unladylike snort in response.

"Where do you come up with this stuff? Nobody talks like that anymore, at least not since the nineteenth century. You sound like you swallowed a dictionary."

"Well I do, don't I – he added a contraction to his sentence – would you rather I spoke in the same vulgar speech as you?" That did it!

"Hold on a minute. You have no right to insult me in my own house and vulgar is something that I am not!" She didn't care how handsome he thought he was, she sure as hell wasn't going to let him talk down on her like that.

"I did not say that you were vulgar, I was referring to your verbal communication skills."

"Great, so now I'm stupid too."

"Your words, not mine."

"Listen mister, I don't know who you think you are–"

"Damien."

"What?" She was stunned. There she was, telling him off in the middle of an angry tirade while he just stared calmly back and said a name.

"You said that you did not know who I was and that is my name, Damien Leoni."

"Oh." Damien Leoni, even his name had a pompous sound to it. She tried ineffectively to suppress a laugh.

"And as delightful as our conversation has been, I believe it is time that I head back and finish the yard. Unless you want it to be left like that?"

"It's not so bad. We can say that a visionary landscape architect found a way to express himself through our grass and flower beds."

"Fine then, it was a pleasure." He started to rise from his seat, but stopped, turned and addressed her once more.

"A word of advice though, you should learn to breathe in between sentences – she sputtered and began a retort that died in her lips as he spoke again – I expect we will meet again, Kennedy." He stood and headed back to continue with his earlier task.

It wasn't until later that she realized that he'd never explain why he was on their yard and that she had never told him her name.

Kennedy spent almost the majority of the day cleaning up the house, steering clear of her father's study. It still gave her the creeps after that weird dream she'd had that morning. Helping out with chores was the least that she could do if her father was MIA and her mom practically lived at her job.

When she was done with the lower level of the house, she went upstairs – a fairly large cardboard box in hand – and started off with her bedroom. It was time to take out the things that she didn't use from her clustered closet.

She was sorting through her long forgotten and extremely dusty bitty babies collection when her cell phone rang. She put down Yuyo, her favorite gorilla doll from when she had been a kid, and went to the nightstand to retrieve the device. Lauren's name could be read in the small screen. She quickly pressed the accept key.

"Hey, Laurie!" She was filled with joy at talking with her best friend.

"Hello there, baby girl!" Lauren seemed equally delighted to speak with her. Something told her that it was more than happiness at hearing her voice.

"What have you been doing, anything exciting happen? You sound very happy." There, she knew that her friend had something to tell her, she could hear it in her voice. So, she opened a window of opportunity for her, which she took without preamble.

"I met a guy."

### 3. Lonely Day

A week had gone by so quickly that Kennedy had barely even noticed. There was still no word from her father and she saw less and less of her mother.

Every time that she approached Teresa on the subject, the latter would be purposefully evasive. She suspected that it was, at least in part, the reason as to why her mom was almost never home anymore.

She closed the book that she had been reading and placed it on the side table. She then took her cell phone out of her pocket and stared at the same skeleton background that she had for months now.

No calls.

Lauren barely called her anymore. He friend had retracted to the occasional text message here and there. She must have been spending all of her time with Nathan, the guy that she had called to tell her about.

Her friend's brain had temporarily gone out of business, it shut down allowing only pink heart shaped bubbles to go in now and then. The Lauren that she knew had been swapped, and in her place they left her a giggling, love sick girl that acted three years younger than she really was.

She remembered that her father had once told her some lore about Changelings as – according to her mother – an inappropriate bedtime story. They were supposed to be children or infants that were switched by some kind of evil fairy or something.

Okay, so Lauren was no kid, but maybe that was what this new girl was. It certainly would explain why rational, responsible and smart thinking Lauren was traipsing around with a total stranger, no worries whatsoever.

And it definitely would explain why she had forgotten about Kennedy. She, her supposed best friend.

If she could tell Steven about her suspicions, he would undoubtedly laugh his heart out. She never even considered any supernatural rationalization for any weird occurrence in her life, nor accepted his. Now, there she was, imagining some nonsense explanation for her friend's falling in love.

By Lauren's description on the phone the prior week, Nathan sounded like a nice guy. Hell, he sounded like the prefect guy. But, judging by her behavior, her view of the situation might be biased. She wished that she could be there for her friend.

On the other side, she felt bad. Maybe Nathan was the perfect man, perfect for Lauren. Maybe she was just letting the green monster of envy whisper in her ear because she was afraid of losing her one and only friend.

Kennedy convinced herself to give the unknown stranger a chance to prove himself before she jumped to any more silly conclusions. She stood from her seat on the living room couch and went to the kitchen for a drink.

She was putting the water pitcher back in the refrigerator when she realized that her mother hadn't left any food prepared.

It wasn't that Kennedy expected her to be her servant, but it was so out of character for her mom to forgo the house chores that it made her worry. It was undeniable proof that Steven's absence had affected Teresa more than she let on.

Acting on impulse, she reached in and took the ingredients that she would need to prepare her mom's favorite dish. Kennedy feared that she might be losing touch with her mother too and that scared her to death. She didn't like to feel alone.

Her mother was an amazing cook, and she had taught her how to prepare a decent meal. It wasn't that she didn't know how, it was just that she didn't want to. Her mom had always made sure that there was food on the table every day and to her chagrin, she had gotten used to it.

That night would be different. She would welcome her mother with a nice homemade meal and try to repair the growing rift between them.

She turned on the radio and listened to music, humming along as she set to work on the surprise.

After the food was done and a tray of freshly baked cupcakes cooled in the oven, Kennedy went upstairs and fished through a box full of pictures that had survived the raid to her closet the week before. She looked for a recent one of her dad.

She planned to make a flyer to post around the nearby towns. Maybe somebody had seen him and they would call. Even if it was to find out he had simply abandoned them, Kennedy didn't care, she just needed to know.

She went through the box's entire contents and came out empty handed. She hadn't realized that her relationship with her father had been damaged to the extent that he didn't show up in any of her family photographs, not counting those from her fifteenth and up to date, last birthday party.

There was a lot she hadn't been realizing lately.

She was almost positive that if she had been paying more attention to the comings and goings of her household, she would have had a clue as to what was truly going on, because she was definitely not swallowing her mother's excuse of a freelance project that she had never heard of.

She had had enough of self-pitying and decided that it was time to take some proactive action. Smiling, she recalled that she did have a recent photo of Steven in her digital camera's memory card, if you could call last year's neighborhood old hallows eve bonfire recent.

She remembered that night with such bittersweet longing that it shocked her. Every year, some of the neighbors got together and headed to the local beach and built a bonfire. They would all sit around it telling horror stories and urban legends. It was the only day of the year when being the Freak Girl was actually considered a cool thing.

Each year, the last of the spots was specially reserved for Steven and his fascinating tales. All, except Steven himself, considered them fun though make-believe.

Last year's gathering had been particularly spooky. The usual people were there and even some new faces that they had not seen before. One of the neighbors had passed a bag of marshmallows and some wooden sticks around the circle and Teresa had taken it upon herself to make a very detailed photo account of the events.

Kennedy inwardly celebrated the fact that although she had been too lazy to import the old pictures, she had also been too lazy to delete them. She flipped open the camera's card cover, took it out and quickly inserted it into the corresponding slot in the computer. She waited for the auto play window to appear.

Once it did, she clicked on the view pictures option and scrolled down the different images until the arrow pointer of the computer mouse stood on the one that she had been looking for.

The one besides it caught her attention. It was one that her mother had taken of her father and her as they shared a log together in front of the fire.

She almost didn't recognize the girl that sat besides Steven in the photo. She glowed from within and the sad thing was that she might never glow like that again. Try as she might, she couldn't help but think that maybe she wouldn't get to see him again and she was afraid that it wasn't because she was going away to college in two months.

She created the flyer, printed a mock-up to show her mother and went downstairs to watch TV while she waited for Teresa to come home.

The hours passed and she fell asleep on the couch.

Kennedy came to, mildly disoriented. She opened her eyes warily, trying to adjust to her surroundings.

It was already dark out and she was momentarily confused by the shadows emitted from the TV's illumination. They were cast randomly throughout the room giving it an eerie feeling. Her eyes felt as if they were full of sand. She rubbed them furiously trying to make the sleep go away. The constant blaring of a siren hurt her ears.

She looked to find that the source of the shrill sound was some cop show that played on the forgotten television set, it was probably what had awoken her. She reached for her cell phone, pressed one of the keys and watched as the screen light up. It was twenty minutes past ten, she had been asleep for more than four hours.

Normally, Kennedy couldn't fall asleep during the day no matter how hard she tried, except under strenuous circumstances. She wondered at her sudden narcoleptic episode, but then realized that she really hadn't been sleeping all that well lately.

Even before Steven disappeared she had been having that same recurrent dream and kept waking up anxious as if it had some important meaning that she just couldn't grasp, the effects of it were starting to seep through to her waking life.

Her ominous dream aside, what really nagged at her was the fact that her mother was not home yet. She moved groggily from the couch and made to get up, but a sudden pain in her back stopped her. She opted to sit instead and cursed the uncomfortable half sitting position that she had been dozing in.

Something tickled her cheeks, her ponytail had come undone. She took out the dangling elastic band and pulled it back into a messy bun. Her back muscles ached as she stretched them.

It was as if a large truck full of bricks had ran over her. She was starting to regret taking the nap in the first place, it had left her feeling more tired now than she did before.

She turned off the TV and got up. Kennedy walked across the room. her hand reached out to move aside the blinds to look out the window and checked to see if Teresa's car was in the driveway. Maybe she'd been so deeply asleep that she hadn't heard her come in.

It wasn't.

She let go of the blinds, they fell back into their previous position hanging over the glass window as she tapped around the wall with her right hand, looking for the light switch. She found it right away and flicked it up with a finger, squinting as the brightness of the bulb invaded her senses.

She waited a bit for her eyes to readjust to the change in lighting and stepped out through the hallway and into the kitchen, turning on the lights there too as she went.

Everything was as she had left it, indicating that her previous conclusion of her mother's absence was true. A bitter wave of anger started to rise inside her, but it was quelled instantly by a stronger feeling, a powerful hurt at the idea that her mother would rather stay at work in the company of strangers instead of coming home to her.

Kennedy swallowed back the urge to cry and hit something. She busied herself with putting away the untouched food. Even though she hadn't eaten at all in the entire day, she didn't feel hungry anymore.

She only took a couple of cupcakes and a glass of cold milk and went outside to sit on the porch swing. When she got there, she settled on the steps instead.

She placed the cupcakes and the milk besides her on the floor.

Kennedy felt, rather than heard a small rustle in one of her pockets as she sat and reached a hand into it. Out came the hand with a folded piece of paper clasped within it, the flyer she had made earlier. With a surge of anger she closed her fist around it and crumpled it into a tiny ball.

What was the use? Her mother was so far gone in her denial of her father's disappearance that she would have never accepted it anyway, just as she had prohibited Kennedy to involve the police in the matter when she had tried to approach her on the subject.

She didn't know how long she sat there, looking aimlessly at the vacant street before her and listening to the chirping sounds of the crickets and the singular call of the coquí frogs in the background, her mind a complete blank.

There was a sudden change in the atmosphere. The night had gone deathly still, even the crickets had quieted their melodies and the silence was deafening.

Something moved in her peripheral vision. She turned her head to see Damien walking in her general direction. Kennedy tensed in expectation. What reason could he possibly have for approaching her at that time of night?

She stared wordlessly as he came to a halt at the bottom step and extended his hand towards her, what seemed to be a chocolate bar was held securely in it. She was sure that her face looked as surprised as she felt because he shifted his hand so that its palm faced upwards. The motion allowed the candy bar to rest lightly on it.

She looked between his face and the offered hand in confusion. He sighed.

"Peace offering." He spoke at last, a bit of exasperation in his tone. She shivered at the sound of his deep voice.

"What for?" Kennedy instantly regretted her stupid question as he raised both his eyebrows and looked at her, a bemused expression adorned his handsome features.

She already knew why, with what she had gathered, in her last not so pleasant conversation with him, she knew that he was an intelligent man. For that same reason, she also knew that he recognized that he had been crude to her, but was obviously not voicing it any time soon.

Men can be unfathomable idiots.

"I honestly don't understand why you care, but offering accepted." She took the proffered chocolate bar, replaced it with a cupcake and watched as the ghost of a smile began to form on his full lips.

"We are going to be neighbors. I felt that I needed to smooth out some rough spots that had arisen between us." Trust him to find the blandest explanation for his chivalrous action. She thought about what he had said and found a fluke that, she was confident, he hadn't measured.

"Actually, we're not going to be neighbors at all – he sent her a dubious look and she proceeded to explain what she meant – I'm leaving for college in august." Which was roughly about eight weeks from then. He took in that bit of information before he replied.

"Well, I will be having my chocolate back then, if you will?" He extended his hand as he asked her with mock indignation, at least she hoped it was feigned.

"I will not. You can't take back a gift, much less a peace offering! It would be rude and that would mute the whole point of it anyways." He did something totally unexpected then.

He smiled, a bright, beautiful smile that she was sure would've made her knees give if she hadn't been sitting already.

"Very well. I did get this tasty looking cupcake in return. I suppose that has got to count for something."

"There, see? All settled." She opened the wrapper of her peace offering and presented him with a piece. He looked at her intently for a few seconds before he finally reached out to take it.

"What is that?" He asked, pointing to the furrowed ball of paper that had been clutched in her hand all the while.

She glanced silently at the damaged flyer and handed it to him without explaining. Damien unfolded the crumpled ball and looked at the wrinkled paper.

" _¿Ha visto este hombre?_ " Have you seen this man? He read out loud and stopped at that, he got the idea and gave it back to her. "Is that your father?"

"Yes, you wouldn't know him, I guess. He left the day you moved in next door."

"Left – he mulled over the word – you say that as if he has abandoned you and yet you plan to put that out to find him?"

"My mom doesn't want me to. She refuses to even consider the thought of him leaving us." Leaving her, she thought to herself. She felt the anger return when she spoke of her mother. It didn't go unnoticed.

"You are angry with her." It was more a statement than a question.

"Yes, no, I don't know – she covered her face with her hands and blew out a breath before talking again – I know it's stupid and I know that I'm being stubborn about it. He's a grown man and he'll come home when he wants to, but this time it feels different somehow."

"I gather that he has done it before?" He asked and she nodded her head in affirmation.

"I needed to do something. I couldn't just sit around and wait for his call."

"And you should not have to, I am sure that your mother will understand." His vehemence sparked a little hope inside of her.

"Maybe, but I don't see how. She practically never comes home from work anymore." The bitterness was back in her voice.

"Is that why you are sitting alone outside this late into the night?" He seemed to know the answer to every question that he had asked her so far. It disconcerted her.

"I don't want to be inside. I can feel the emptiness all around the house and it's massive. Does that make any sense?"

"Very much." His assertion warmed her. She was about to open her mouth to say something, but she forgot what it was. Something in her back pocket vibrated.

"You are chiming." He said seriously and she almost burst out laughing. She had just received a text message.

"Excuse me." She said and he nodded as she took out her cell phone and unblocked the key pad to read the message.

She frowned, it was from Lauren. It asked how she'd been since they had last talked.

Kennedy was tempted to reply with a nasty message about ungrateful people that ignored their proclaimed loved ones, then desisted of the notion, she knew that directing her frustrations at Lauren wasn't fair and it would not help their friendship in the slightest.

"I will take that as my cue to leave." Damien interrupted her thoughts, her head shot up to meet his ocean blues. She wanted to say something, but what could she say that wouldn't sound like a pathetic plea for his company? Absolutely nothing, and that's why she kept quiet.

"You should go back inside. I am sure that your mother will be here soon enough."

"All right – she waited for him to be the first to move, then added as an after thought – why are you being nice to me?"

He contemplated his answer.

"I do not know." It was the truth. She could see it on his face.

"Would you have liked me better if I truly were an ill mannered prick?" And he was back.

"That peace thing didn't last you very long." She smiled at him. He gave her a smirk in return.

"Why, I have no idea what you mean." He tried to look as clueless as possible and if she hadn't been a witness to his crude wit, maybe she would've believed him.

"Yeah, okay and I'm the Virgin Mary."

"Are you really?" He exclaimed in pretend astonishment.

"No and I'm sure you're no saintly angel either, so lets just say good night and leave it at that." He gave her a you have no idea look and smiled again. That time it was the same crooked smile that he had given her the morning that she had served him pancakes. It made him look roguish and yet in some strange way, it fit perfectly with his features.

"Good night, Kennedy."

"Night." She got up and watched as he retreated to his house, never once looking back.

She playfully thought of suing one of the writers of the paperback novels that her mother loved to read for giving her so many high expectations.

That hadn't been romantic at all.

She sighed and went back inside.

Kennedy took a long hot shower and slipped into her favorite Cracker Monster pajamas.

She was moving around her bedroom, getting ready for bed when she remembered that she still hadn't texted Lauren back.

She walked to the bedside table where she had left her phone charging and picked it up, disconnecting the charger cable as she did.

She replied to her friend's message with a simple, " _am ok hope u r 2 :)"_ , and stared at the phone for a while.

The temptation to call her mother was almost overbearing. She wound up dialing her father instead. The line rang once, twice and was picked up after the third time.

"Papa," She started hopefully and was interrupted by the voicemail recording.

"Hi, you've reached Steven Riser. I can't answer right now. If this is an emergency, call the archer." Her father's words were quickly followed by a shrill beep. She ended the call.

Disappointment and confusion warred in her mind. The word archer stood amidst them.

That had been the name that the stranger that had called right before her father left had given her, and now her father mentioned it in his new voicemail greeting. It was the only reference that she had.

At least she knew that he was still alive.

A car pulled into the driveway. Kennedy looked at the time, just another minute until midnight. Her mother was finally home.

### 4. Emergency

Kennedy had the feeling that things between Teresa and her would never be the same again.

She remembered her mother's worn face when she'd arrived last night. She was tired, both physically and emotionally.

Teresa had given her a weak smile that had made her forget ever being mad at her as she passed by her bedroom. Kennedy had wanted to run to her and hug her and tell her that everything would be okay. But, that would be a lie and they'd both know it, so she simply smiled back and her mother had kept on her way.

It was late morning now. Kennedy was in her bedroom wrapped in only a towel. She'd just gotten out of the shower and was looking in her closet for some clothes with Lauren on the phone.

They started showing a new horror film at the movie theater that week and she was thinking of going to see it that afternoon. Maybe a couple of hours of fake blood and unrealistic CGI would help keep her mind off things. If she kept worrying like that, she would be crazy by the end of the month. She smiled to herself.

"Nedy? Kennedy!" The sound of Lauren's voice on the other end of the line returned her to the present. She had zoned out again.

"What?" She asked, trying to sound innocent and failing.

"Are you even listening to me?" Lauren was miffed. Kennedy tried fruitlessly to recall her friend's earlier words.

"Yes – her answer was met by expectant silence – okay, no. But, I'm listening to you now."

"If this is a bad time, I can always call later." Lauren's tone was less indignant now. She sounded concerned.

"No, don't! I'm sorry, Laurie. I guess I just spaced out – which wasn't a lie – you know how I am. But, I want to hear your story, so I'm all ears now."

"Okay, if you're sure – but she didn't wait for a reply. She went on with her tale and didn't ask for a recount of what she'd said.

Kennedy inwardly berated herself.

She was a ditz, a bozo and a poop-brain dodo.

But, most of all, she was a rotten friend.

Lauren talked animatedly about her week with Nathan and, as her best friend, she was supposed to share in some of the excitement. But, all she could think about was her own crumbling life.

Her father's new voicemail greeting kept going around in circles through her brain. She sat down on her bed and listened to her friend's chatter.

She payed as much attention as she could, lest she be caught letting her mind wander again. Lauren's words slowed, her voice acquired a dreamy sound and Kennedy picked up the words hotel and bed in the same sentence. She was suddenly alert.

"Oh, Laurie, please tell me you didn't do it!" She pleaded, although she knew the answer already. That was the reason that Lauren had taken time off her blossoming relationship with this Nathan guy. She wanted to tell Kennedy that she had given her virginity to him.

"And what if I did? I'm eighteen. You're my best friend. I thought that you of all people would be happy for me." Lauren sounded hurt and immediately became defensive, at least that part of her friend hadn't changed yet.

Now that she was sure that she was treading on familiar territory, she felt compelled to give her opinion.

"That's right. I'm your best friend and it's my job to act as the voice of reason whenever I think you're being reckless." Lauren didn't reply. She could hear the sounds of cars driving by in the background. It sounded like she was somewhere outside.

Kennedy looked for something to say that would soften the edge of her words.

"Look, I don't know anything about relationships. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe you'll end up marrying him and rubbing it in my face. I love you, you're more of a sister to me than if we actually shared the same blood and I don't wanna see you get hurt."

"You don't know him, Nedy." Lauren's voice was but a whisper. It sounded like she was trying to reassure herself rather than her friend.

"You're right, I don't. It's just that the whole thing sounds like a summer fling to me." Lauren went silent again.

"Hey, it's your body, your life and ultimately your decision to make, but you've only known him for a few weeks. What guarantees do you have that he's even going to be around after this?" Kennedy waited out the long silence that followed. She hoped that her friend would be okay and that she wouldn't begrudge her that conversation.

"You sound like my mother would – Kennedy was tempted to ask if her mother knew about it and felt stupid just for thinking it – but you're right. I know that you're right. I just can't stop feeling what I feel."

"And no one asked you to, I only want you to be careful and think things through before you do – Kennedy was going to say, 'something you'll regret', but that would have been redundant so instead she said – anything else."

"I know, I'm sorry for going all defensive on you, Baby Girl. I guess I knew all of that already, but I needed to hear it from somebody else to able to accept it."

"Well, I'm sorry I had to be the one doing the eye-opening."

"That's why you're my friend. Besides, someday it will be my turn to the return the favor. I promise I'll talk to Nathan tonight and establish where we stand relationship-wise."

"Good, but be subtle about it. You don't wanna scare him away if he really cares. After all, he is a man and I hear they're naturally dumb when it comes to matters of the heart." Lauren giggled heartily and though her heart ached for what her friend had lost and would never regain, Kennedy beamed.

The changeling was gone.

Kennedy was left mentally exhausted after her long talk with Lauren and was tempted to just lie back on her bed and shut out the rest of the world. Then again, she'd been doing a lot of that lately and she was positive that to keep doing it wouldn't be the most healthy thing that she could do.

She had a few hours to kill before the movie. But, she got dressed anyway.

Kennedy pulled on her favorite washed up jeans and a black tee shirt that read, " _I'm a vampire. See me sparkle_ ", in big glittery letters.

She sat at the edge of her bed to put on her black pair of worn out converses, she wore them so much that her mother often joked about how the shoes would come after her if she ever left the house without them.

She glanced out her balcony doors. The curtains were pulled back and tied at the edges. One of the glass doors was open by an inch and she could hear voices coming from the neighboring driveway.

Damien's driveway.

Slowly, she opened the door the rest of the way and settled into one of the white plastic chairs of her balcony. She sat there and made a project out of going through her phone's image gallery. She tried to act as nonchalantly as possible while eavesdropping. It didn't work, she couldn't hear a thing.

She peeked into the adjacent driveway from the corner of her right eye and saw Damien arguing tensely with another man in front of his car. Their voices were angry whispers that she couldn't make out.

From where she sat, she could see that the man was taller than Damien. He was fair, from the pale shade of his skin to the nearly white roots of his extremely blond hair. His eyes couldn't be discerned from that far away, but she would've bet anything that they were a light color.

Green, maybe? Or blue, like Damien's.

He gestured elegantly as he talked. Kennedy was instantly reminded of the picture that she had once constructed in her imagination of how her prince charming would look like. But, that had been a long time ago and she had put those useless fantasies behind her.

She preferred them dark and broody now.

Although, she had to admit that this newcomer was very handsome in parallel to Damien. They both possessed good looks, but in greatly different aspects.

It was like trying to compare the beauty of night and day. Where one was dark, the other was light, but both were beautiful in their own ways.

She unconsciously turned her head in their direction and looked on. One for each eye.

Kennedy stared openly. The argument had died down. They spoke slowly, though still in hushed voices. Damien's visitor began to leave.

He turned and walked towards what she presumed to be his car, a classic red corvette that Kennedy couldn't believe that she hadn't noticed before.

How could she have missed that? It stood out like a sore thumb in contrast to the dull colors of its present surroundings.

He paused when he reached the glossy car, his hand on the door handle and she watched as he angled his head to say something from over his shoulder. Whatever it was, it sure didn't thrill Damien, whose hands balled into fists in reaction.

He began to walk calmly in the blond man's direction. The new stranger smirked – an eerily familiar smirk – and got into his car. Her neighbor made an angry gesture at him, but it was dismissed as the other man started the engine and flipped him off as he drove away.

Damien spun around on his heels and went seething to his own car. For a moment, she thought that he would follow the man. Instead, he popped open the hood and walked into his garage. He resurfaced a few seconds later holding a red tool box, his face set in an angry mask. It was the biggest show of emotion that she had seen from him so far.

Impulsively, she got up from her seat and went out of her room. She was headed for the house next door and had reached the front entrance of her own house when she became conscious of what she was doing. If the guy had been so boorish to her when he'd been in a good mood, what could she expect from him now?

That didn't slow her down. Kennedy stopped walking only when she was about three feet away from him, still in the grass besides the cemented rise of his driveway. At last, she realized the tiny glitch in her purpose.

She had no idea what to say.

If they gave out trophies for the most idiotic people in the world, she knew that she would have the honor of being nominated for one.

One of these days she would walk straight to her death and notice it after her soul was on its way to the afterlife.

Kennedy cleared her throat, but Damien – who was currently bent under the hood of his monster car – didn't even move or appear to detect her presence at all, unlike he had the times that she had been caught staring at him.

Kennedy shifted uncomfortably, unsure of what to do.

She just stood there and watched him work on his car for what seemed like hours, but were in fact only minutes. When he finally emerged from under the hood, he looked at her wordlessly and moved to get a tool from the weathered box that lay on the ground by her feet.

He went back to what he was doing as if she weren't even standing there at all!

She didn't know how to feel about what happened. He hadn't opened his mouth to insult her as she had anticipated, but his lack of expression unnerved her. He just ignored her. She decided to take it as a sign of how pissed he actually was.

She went against her instincts – that screamed at her to leave – and did the most moronic thing that she had done so far.

She sat on the ground next to the red metal tool box.

They spent the remainder of the afternoon that way. Kennedy stared silently as Damien worked on his car. He looked at her a few times, never once speaking, and it was the most comfortable she'd been in over a week. Until finally, she remembered her earlier plans to catch a movie.

She got up and picked at some stray bits of grass that suck to her jeans with her fingers. Damien looked up in time to see her leave. He gave her a small smile and then focused his attention back on his former task.

There was a fairly long queue at the ticket booth when she got to the theater. Most of the people that waited in line were families with small children.

There was one in particular that had a small boy that jumped and wailed playfully all the way to the front. The sound was like nails on a chalkboard and Kennedy hoped against hope that they were there to see the new animated film and not the one that she planned to see.

She liked kids, just not as they screamed at the top of their lungs to compete with the theater's sound system. She let out a breath of relief when the couple in possession of the especially shrill bundle of energy bought three tickets to Journey to the Bottom of the Toy Chest.

Three toneless, "Next", from the obviously unhappy employee later and it was finally Kennedy's turn. She got one ticket for I Know What You Did Last Spring Break and went inside.

The air conditioning was a soothing luxury compared to the heat that they still experienced outside. She headed for the concession stand where she bought a small bag of popcorn, a large soda and a candy bar. Her hands were completely full so she held her ticket in between her ring and pinkie fingers.

She went to find the screening room and paused at the entrance of the small hall filled with Coming Soon movie posters to let the attendant take her ticket. He broke off the corresponding piece and placed her stub back where he'd found it, wedged between the fingers of her packed hands. She smiled at him, grateful that he hadn't made her give it to him and went inside the doors that he had signaled.

There were only a handful of people scattered about the room. She walked giddily towards the middle row and accommodated herself in one of the reclining seats right at the center. She sighed in contentment as she placed her drink in one of the holders at the end of the armrest and settled to watch the movie. The previews started rolling.

The film was hilarious!

It was supposed to be a horror flick, but the ineffectual suspense music added to the squirting blood that looked more like fruit juice than anything else made her laugh out loud.

Every time that the killer would come out waving his machete at the unsuspecting teenagers, Kennedy began to laugh anew. It had been so long since she'd laughed like that.

She was thankful that the theater wasn't full, because she was sure someone would've complained and they would've probably thrown her out. Although, she did receive some disgruntled looks from a couple that snuggled two rows away.

For the first time, she didn't care.

Two hours, twenty five minutes and some seconds later, the credits rolled on the screen and Kennedy walked back to reality out of one of the lamest movie going experiences of her young life.

Her light mood changed as suddenly as she exited the theater.

It was already dark and since she'd been the last one to go out, she found herself alone in the bleak alleyway behind the building. She considered how rational it would be to be afraid of the dark in those circumstances. But, she wasn't scared of the dark.

No, she was just a little spooked by the moans that came from behind the dumpster in front of her.

The heavy exit door of the theater shut at her back. It's bang echoed in her bones.

The large dumpster began to shake and Kennedy began officially freaking out.

A now familiar cloud of black smoke seeped out from underneath the metal structure. Again, her mind forced her to notice the irregular way that it moved. It was as if the thing had its very own sense of direction and knew exactly where it wanted to go.

She watched as the shapeless mist ascended until it hovered a few feet from the ground. It floated out of the alley, turned left at the corner and disappeared from her view. Her eyes bugged, then moved to rest back to where the dark fog had come from.

A cold feeling of dread settled in the pit of her stomach.

Kennedy finally got a reaction from her legs and started to edge away. She never let the thing out of her sight until she was almost at the end of the alley and faced the dumpster from a different angle.

She could have sworn that she saw an unmoving hand sticking out from behind it and a dark shape bent over the body that it belonged to.

She paused for a moment to get a better look. The dark shape straightened out and assumed the form of a very large and burly man.

A very large and burly man that turned and pierced her with his gaze. He was bald, with sharp features and a goatee. But, what really got her attention were his eyes.

They were black.

Entirely black as the cloud of smoke that she had just seen floating away. The man grunted in her direction.

Her stomach dropped.

Her survival instincts finally kicked in and she ran the few paces left to reach the sidewalk. Her limbs felt like rubber. Her breaths came out in sharp huffs. She was scared out of her mind.

Now that she was out in the open and she could see the line forming in the ticket booth a few meters away, she ventured a look back into the alley.

The frightening man was gone, but the hand and it's deathly still owner remained.

She turned around in a full circle, taking in everything around her to make sure that he wasn't in the vicinity. There was no sign of him anywhere near.

When she felt safe enough to talk, she took out her phone and dialed 9-1-1.

" _Nueve uno uno. ¿Cuál es su emergencia?_ " The operator picked up after the second ring. Kennedy answered as calmly as she could.

" _Hay un cuerpo detrás del basurero en el cine de Villa Grande._ " She waited there until the police arrived. The police, an ambulance and some other official vehicles that she didn't even recognize.

She was in a daze. Lights flashed. Colors shifted with every blink. White, blue, red, orange, white, blue, red and orange, round and round the colors went.

She leaned back against the alley wall. Her eyes closed on their own. People hurried busily all around her, but she couldn't hear anything. Somehow, she had unconsciously blocked all of the sounds and every noise had fallen to the background as the same scene played like a silent movie over and over in her head.

She vaguely remembered that the emergency operator had made her go and check if the person that laid on the ground was still alive.

She remembered seeing the lifeless body of a young woman and touching it to make sure that it didn't have a pulse.

She remembered how cold the deceased girl's skin had felt as her fingertips came into contact with it and she would never be able to forget the lifeless stare in her unseeing eyes.

It was one thing to hear about death, to see it portrayed on screen, but it was an entirely different matter to witness it firsthand.

She was grateful that there wasn't any evident cause of death anywhere palpable. If it weren't for her open eyes, the girl would've appeared to be sleeping. Kennedy wanted to bash her head against the asphalt for even thinking that.

She heard a faint calling and she realized with a jolt that someone was speaking to her. Her eyes opened and refocused to take in the form of the male police officer that now stood before her.

" _¿Está usted bien señorita?_ " He asked awkwardly.

"Yes, I'm fine." Although she understood perfectly the question in Spanish, she had answered in her native English without even realizing it. She stared mutely at the officer and took in his badge. The word _Rodríguez_ was stitched with black thread into his blue uniform.

She'd been speaking Spanish ever since she was a toddler. But, she just wasn't in the mood. It happened every day, she thought in English, but had to speak in Spanish. She did it well, it was just mentally exhausting, that's all. To her relief, the man replied in kind.

"It would be understandable for you to be indisposed by the situation. I would like to ask you some questions if you don't mind." Rodríguez spoke with a thick accent, forcefully enunciating the r's and the t's.

Years of living there had helped attune her ears to the many different intonations that were present on the small island and she understood him very well. She would have liked to refuse his request and excuse herself, but she knew that would have only postponed the inevitable.

She nodded silently and let him guide her to an empty police cruiser. The door to the passenger's side was open. He motioned for her to sit.

Her thighs ached. The muscles of her legs relaxed greatly after she sat and she was amazed that she had been standing without protest all that time. He asked her to recount the evening's events as slowly and detailed as she could.

Kennedy did as he asked. But, when it had been time to describe the man she had seen, she opted to leave out his pitch black eyes. She simply described them as dark. Naturally, she was afraid that they would think that she was insane. Though they would probably just chalk it up to nerves or some kind of post traumatic stress.

She sat there in silence after she was done and Rodríguez was considerate enough to tell her that she could go home with just the usual, "call if you remember anything else", that she had so often seen in cop shows. She thanked him and got up as he nodded good bye.

"Kennedy!" She heard someone call out her name from across the street.

Her head snapped up and she saw her mother running through the avenue, practically dodging moving cars to get to her. She didn't know if she should laugh or cry. It had taken the discovery of a dead girl for her mom to finally give her the time of day, or night as the case may be.

Teresa was hysterical. She fussed over her like she had done when Kennedy was seven and she'd scraped her knee while roller skating. Kennedy tried uselessly to calm her down.

In the end, she agreed to let her call one of her coworkers and ask her to drive Kennedy's car home while she was forced to ride in her mother's car like an incapable child.

Contrary to what she had expected, Kennedy slept like the dead that night. No pun intended.

Her eyes closed instantly as her head touched the pillow and she wasn't aware of anything until the sun shone through the glass doors of her balcony the following morning.

If she'd had the dream, she didn't remember it and she liked to keep it that way. But, she did feel a little guilty for not being more traumatized. It made her think that maybe there was some kind of problem with her.

Maybe there was someone that she could talk to about getting Jiminy Cricket to be her conscience because hers appeared to have taken a holiday.

Although, what happened to the girl wasn't her fault and she didn't even know her, Kennedy felt as if she should have been more impacted by what she'd seen. Instead, she was just numb.

### 5. Kill All Your Friends

According to Sor Inés, the nun that they had teaching third grade science at her school, we exist because God created us. That had been a sore subject for Kennedy when she was growing up.

Stupidly enough, it had also been the reason that had made her stop going to church with her mother. Because if she chose to believe without proof that there was one being powerful enough to originate life out of nothing, then she would have to accept that maybe her father's beliefs were not that far from reality and those beliefs were the main reason behind the cruel tauntings of her classmates.

Even though she had tried her best not to, Kennedy still believed in God. It had been ingrained in her system ever since she could remember. Her mother was extremely catholic. But, she had decidedly ignored the issue until then.

Now, as she cuddled on the sofa with her head resting on her mother's lap while Teresa watched TV, Kennedy thought a lot about the meaning of life and death and the reasoning behind it all.

So far, all she had was the same, working in mysterious ways, nonsense that clueless people always say to justify the situation in moments of grief.

An incredible pressure had settled deep inside her chest, but the tears wouldn't come.

She wished that her father were there. He would have known what to do, because she sure as hell didn't.

What if the man from the alley came after her? She had seen his face.

"His eyes were black." She blurted out.

"What's that, darling?" Teresa's hand stilled in her hair. Kennedy sat up and faced her.

"The man in the alley. His eyes were all black with no white parts." She didn't know why she had told her about it, but there was no going back now.

"How were you able to see that?" Her mother asked to herself. She had expected surprise or incredulity on her mother's part. But, Teresa had not been surprised at all, not in the way that Kennedy had anticipated.

"What?" Instead of being surprised at her daughter's hallucinations, she was worried that Kennedy had seen that at all?

That was the last straw. The camel's back broke. It finally convinced her that she was missing something.

"What?" Teresa echoed her question.

"What aren't you telling me?" Kennedy prodded, she was tired of being kept in the dark.

"What do you mean?

"You must know something that I don't, 'cause I just can't see why you would be so calm otherwise." Why was she palying dumb?

"Either you tell me what's really going on with dad, with everything, or I'll go file a missing person's report right now."

"That wouldn't do us any good."

"Why not?" She challenged.

"Because he's not missing."

"Then you know where he is?"

"Yes." Kennedy's insides screamed victoriously. She had finally gotten a straight answer.

"Where?" She waited. But, that time, her mother didn't answer. It angered her beyond measure.

"Tell me!" She hadn't meant to yell, but it was already done. She had screamed in her mother's face. Kennedy straightened and waited for a slap that never came.

"I can't." Teresa whispered. She averted her eyes, clearly regretting not telling her for once.

"Why the hell not?" That hurt more than if she had actually been hit. What could be so important that she had to hide it from her own daughter.

"Watch you're tone, young lady!" Teresa's eyes blazed when they found hers. But, the fire in them died as quickly as it came and her mother drew into herself again. It was obvious to Kennedy that she was conflicted about something.

"Where is he, mama?"

" _Nena_."

"Please."

"I can't tell you now – her mother's hand came up to let her know that she wasn't finished talking yet – but, I will."

"When?"

"When Steven comes home."

"And when will that be?"

"I don't know. But, I promise you that we'll talk. The three of us together as a family."

"And you'll tell me everything?"

"Everything that you need to know, yes." That didn't leave her with much. Teresa knew how to choose her words carefully.

"Fine." Kennedy relented.

"Good, now I have to go into the office for a bit, but I'll be back before you know it."

Maybe she shouldn't have told her mother about the black eyed man. But, at least she had gotten something out of it. Now she knew that she had been worrying about all the wrong things and she knew that Steven would be the only one who could make things clear for her.

In the back of her mind, Kennedy hid the real source of her panic. She had never been dedicated to her father's research. But, she did pay some attention to him once in a while and the thing about the black smoke and dark eyes rang a very loud bell in her mind.

She knew what it was, but just like many other things, she decided to ignore it in favor of whatever rational explanation was available to her.

If her father were there, he would explain without ever once thinking her delusional. But, he wasn't and she was beginning to fear that he never would be again and there she was, alone in the house again as her mother left for work.

Kennedy looked down at the cordless phone that rested in it's cradle on the side table. She had tried calling her father several times since last night – when she had found a menacing looking man bent over the dead body of a young girl – but the call went straight to his voicemail every single time.

She was getting desperate. She couldn't just wait for him to decide that it was time to go home like her mother asked. She dialed the number again and got ready to talk. She would leave him a message.

Just as she'd expected, the line went straight to voice mail and the message she now knew by heart greeted her. She swallowed hard and spoke after the beep.

"Dad? I don't know where you are or if you'll even get this message." She inhaled deeply.

"Dad, I saw something. I found a dead girl and there was this man..." A tear escaped her eye. She felt it run down her face.

"He had these eyes." Her voice broke.

"Look, I'm sorry I never believed you. But, I need you to come home now. Papa please!" She ended the call, angry at herself for being so weak.

The tears had come at last. She wiped furiously at her face wishing that she could be stronger. She missed the numbness that she had felt before. To make matters worse, the evening news report was on and they were talking about the dead girl that she had found.

Kennedy put the phone back in it's cradle and looked at the TV, a picture appeared on screen as the news anchor's voice gave the report over it. The girl's name was Brandi Carter and she'd been nineteen when she died.

She looked different in the photo. Her hair, although a bit longer, was still the same red color that she remembered and her eyes – those unforgettable lifeless eyes – were a vibrant shade of green.

Brandi, the face had a name now.

In the picture, she smiled brightly at the camera as if that moment had been the happiest of her life. According to the reporter, she was last seen walking home from campus in her hometown of Miami, Florida about a little over six months ago, before she was found murdered last night.

The story went on to show some interviews with the deceased girl's family. Kennedy turned it off and went out of the house.

She didn't want to remember that night. But, it had forever been painted into her memory, a portrait of death in flashes of red, blue and orange. She would never be able to look at an ambulance or a police cruiser the same again.

She didn't know where she was going, but she didn't want to hear any more.

So she walked staring at the ground and found herself standing on Damien's front porch, muttering to herself – still debating whether she should go ahead and knock or turn back.

The door opened abruptly.

She gave a little jolt in surprise and her hand went straight to her chest. To say that she had been startled would be an understatement. With so many scares over the past couple of weeks, she could be sure that she didn't suffer from any unknown heart conditions.

"A bit jumpy, are we?" Damien smirked and took one step outside, leaving the door only inches of being closed behind him.

"I'm sorry, are you heading out?" She suddenly regretted being there.

"Actually, I saw you walk up to the house."

"Oh." She saw his mocking half smile and knew that he thought that it was amusing when her cheeks instantly flushed pink.

"Was there something that you needed?" He asked, after a brief uncomfortable silence where she just stood and looked at everything but him.

"No. I just– I don't wanna be alone right now." She looked at him then, her eyes huge and pleading. He sighed and moved aside to let her in as he pushed open the door with one hand. Kennedy gave him a relieved smile and went inside.

The entry hall was exactly as she'd remembered it. She had gone over with her parents to visit their former neighbor lots of times. It struck her as weird that everything was the same, right down to the creepy religious decorations that Mr. Nieves had adorning every corner of the house.

She heard Damien step in after her and close the door behind him. At that point, she half expected to hear the lock click, followed by the sound of his evil laughter. Seeing him walk past her and into the living room, sending her a questioning look, made her want to slap herself for being so paranoid.

So he had bought a furnished house. He wouldn't be the first person in the history of the world to do something like that. She needed to get a grip on her nerves. Kennedy swallowed and followed him.

The sitting room was also as she had remembered it, a wide space with a few indoor plants here and there, an antique chandelier hanging from the ceiling and a set of rattan seats that faced each other. They were separated by a beige colored rug that was placed underneath them at the center of the room.

One of the walls was mostly windows in its entirety, made of a special tempered glass that reflected on the outside so you couldn't look in, but you could look out. Like the one-way mirrors that were used in interrogation rooms. On the rival wall there was a tall set of shelves that were filled with lots of different books of all colors, shapes and sizes.

Damien gestured for her to seat and without another thought, she did. He took out one of the books from the shelf closest to him and sat in the seat opposite her.

He opened the book and began to read mutely to himself.

Normal Kennedy would have complained indignantly at his rudeness, but Numb Kennedy sat silently and looked at her hands as she tried not to think.

She didn't know how long she sat like that. Except that she kept the same position for so long that her legs fell asleep. Now, she waited for the numb sensation to spread throughout the rest of her body.

"All right, I will bite. What is wrong?" Damien closed his book, marking the page with a finger and stared at her. Kennedy wanted to talk, but hesitated.

She couldn't just out a Haley Joel and say, "I saw a dead girl". He would laugh at her. Damien cleared his throat to remind her that he waited for an answer.

"You must have a reason for coming here. What is it?" He asked again.

Kennedy sighed and began, "Last night–", her voice faltered and she bit her lip.

That peaked his interest and he made a motion for her to go on. She told him about going to see the movie after she'd sat on his driveway and watched him work on his car.

She told him about how crappy the film was and he laughed softly at her recounting of it and as she'd never heard him laugh before, she felt something in her alleviate. But, the feeling didn't last long.

She was soon at the part where she'd seen the strange man and just like she did with the police, she left the intimidating black eyes out of the equation. She didn't want him calling her a freak like the kids at school used to do. Kennedy didn't think that she would stand it coming from him.

She watched his expressions change from amused, to weary and then, when she reached the subject of Brandi, she saw his expression turn guarded for an instant, before it was quickly replaced by concern.

She had seen the slip, or she had thought she did. She hated to second guess herself so much. But, after last night, she couldn't be sure what was real and what wasn't. She felt like she was going insane and Damien's condescending look wasn't making it any better.

"I am sure that it must have been a horrible experience for you, I am assuming that this was the first dead body that you have seen?" She looked at him incredulously. How many dead bodies had he seen? He dismissed her look. "Even so, you need to get a hold of yourself."

They were both quiet for a while until she broke the silence, her voice almost a whisper as she tried to word her distress.

"It's hard to just stop when you're spinning around so fast on your feet that you think you might fall over at any second." She noted, after she had spoken, that it was truly how she felt. She felt like she was spinning rapidly and the events were so dizzying that she would crumble if she lost her footing.

"Then you need to find something solid to hold on to or you will get sick, Kennedy." The sound of her name on his lips gave her a warm feeling at the pit of her stomach. She absently noticed that he had stayed with her analogy and smiled.

"What are you reading?" Kennedy fished for a change of subject and was immensely grateful when her poor attempt at a diversion was taken into consideration.

"Paradise Lost." He humored her with an answer. The title of the book seemed familiar. She remembered seeing a copy of it in her father's study once.

"Are those Mr. Nieves' books?" She asked and pointed at the shelves on the wall behind him. He nodded.

Just as if he'd read her mind he added, "I bought the house along with everything else inside of it. I guess that I just have not gotten in the mood to start throwing things away – he smiled to himself and said – this Mr. Nieves of yours must have been a colorful fellow."

"If you call religiously fanatical colorful, then yes, he was – she laughed. Then asked, signaling to the book that he held in his hands – what is it about?"

He held out the book to her but she refused, "No, I'd rather have you tell me."

Damien was still for a moment. Then, he opened the book on the first page and began to read out loud.

Kennedy was instantly drawn to his voice. She tried to figure out where the accent that sometimes crept into his speech hailed from. His last name sounded Italian in origin and at first she'd thought that was it. But, then he would start a new sentence and there was a slightly different enunciation every time. The pliable cadence of his words mixed all of them together.

She was fascinated and realized that it probably showed on her face. He smirked as he looked at her from over the book that he was still reading to her. She blushed furiously and locked her gaze on the floor. He kept on reading, never once remarking on the incident.

The small, old fashioned clock that she now noticed resting on the corner table chimed, it announced the beginning of yet another hour.

Kennedy looked at the intruding object as Damien shifted his position on the couch. One of his legs grazed her arm lightly and she realized with chagrined horror that she was sitting on the floor with her back against the couch and her knees pulled up to her chest unaware of ever having moved in the first place.

There was a blank spot in her recent memory where all she could recall was the peacefully hypnotizing feeling that she experienced as she let the comforting sound of his deep voice wash over her. All thoughts of dead sightless eyes were carelessly forgotten, even if for a short while.

Damien paused reading and tilted his head in the direction of the dining room. She looked at him, confused for a moment, until she heard the unmistakable sound of her name being called.

"Kennedy!" She heard her mother call from the front porch of their house.

She jumped away from Damien as if he were on fire and ran out to his own porch to answer her mother. An inexplicable feeling of guilt stirred inside of her.

"What were you doing in–" Her mother stopped short and her gaze shifted to look behind her. Kennedy heard as Damien came out of the house.

She knew how her presence in the neighbor's house would look to her mother. Teresa was very proper and always asked Kennedy to behave accordingly.

An unmarried woman should never place herself in compromising situations and being alone with a man inside his house fell into that category.

" _Buenas noches_." Her mother greeted calmly, too calmly for Kennedy's taste.

"Mrs. Riser." He replied, just as calm.

Her mother raised her eyebrows at her, wordlessly demanding an explanation. Kennedy looked apologetically at Damien and descended the front steps with her head down. She worked on the rationalization that she would give as she made her way to her mother's side.

When she finally looked up, Damien gave her an encouraging smile. Her mother didn't miss it. Oh, her ears were already ringing from the sermon that she was about to receive.

"We were just talking." She said under her breath as she reached her mother.

"Get inside, now." Teresa commanded. Kennedy obeyed.

She dragged her feet slowly inside the house feeling more like a seven year old child than the young woman of seventeen that she really was.

Teresa followed her into the house and closed the front door behind herself. She stood before it, her arms folded across her chest, regarding her sternly. Her hard look made Kennedy feel slightly ashamed. But, then her mind cleared and she spoke.

"We weren't doing anything – she said vehemently and at her mother's doubtful stare, she added – I promise! You know me better than that." She was almost an adult and she hadn't been doing anything that she should be ashamed of.

"I thought that I did." Her mother's disappointment was hurtful, but even more so was her distrust.

"Mama, how can you say something like that? How many times have I brought a boy home or gone to one's house?" She cried indignantly. Teresa sighed.

"Okay. I'll give you that one, but either way, I don't want to find you alone with him inside that house again. Or any house, for that matter." Her tone made it very clear that she would not make any exceptions.

"You don't need to worry, mama. He's very respectful."

"He may be. But, he's still a man, Kennedy."

"Mother, I'll be eighteen in a little while and besides, we're just friends." She remembered the mildly insulting banter that they had shared and questioned her words. Were they truly friends?

"You say that as if you don't like the idea." She admired her mother's insight, but it could sometimes be a nag. That moment was a perfect example.

"Well, we are just friends." Kennedy hated the hesitation in her own voice.

"But, you'd like to be more than that." Her mother stated, rather than questioned, and Kennedy knew that her answering silence spoke volumes.

"See, you've just made my point for me. No more unsupervised visits with him –Kennedy opened her mouth to protest but, Teresa continued – at least until you're eighteen. I'll figure out some other excuse to restrict your male friends after that." Kennedy smiled and hugged her, feeling that the storm had passed.

"Okay, mama." She would just limit her visits to Damien's house to her mother's working hours, which were long and plenty.

Kennedy turned to go upstairs. She considered what Damien might think about the matter. After all, she was the one that had invited herself to his house and forced her company on him.

Although, she thought with hope, he didn't seem to mind.

### 6. Read My Mind

"If the multitude of mankind knew of my existence, they would do as you do, and arm themselves for my destruction. Shall I not hate them who abhor me?" Damien was reading to her again and being more prepared for it this time, she tried to hide the beguiling effect that the sound of his voice had on her senses.

He was almost done with their second book, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, and Kennedy suppressed the unfounded feeling of dismay that crept over her at the notion that there would be no more after that one.

It was stupid. There were tons of books where the first two had come from. Still, she feared that he would stop reading to her altogether once he was through with that text.

She wanted to ask him what book they would be reading next, but she didn't want him to notice her eagerness to be in his company. Though she was sure that he had noticed the result his presence had on her and silently enjoyed the small boost to his ego.

They had spent a few afternoons together so far, but already she felt incredibly comfortable being at his side. As if sitting in that living room and listening to him read to her was a habit that she had developed years ago instead of the three short days that had gone by in reality.

His amity had been to her like a drizzle of cool water in the middle of a drought, refreshing to her parched soul. When she was with him she could let the disappearance of her father and her mother's out of character neglect slip from her mind, albeit if only temporarily.

She wasn't sure exactly when she had started to regard him as a friend, but Kennedy was thrilled and weary of the concept. Sure, he was behaving nicely to her now, but she remembered what their first encounters had been like.

She was still secretly waiting for the rude Damien to return at any given moment. She decided that she really wouldn't mind if that happened. In fact, she was starting to think that she would welcome it. Any Damien would be better than no Damien at all.

"Where are you?" Startled out of her thoughts, Kennedy looked up at his question. She was sitting in her usual spot on the floor in front of the couch.

"What?" She answered dumbly, not quite understanding what he meant.

"Your mind, you seemed to be elsewhere." He replied.

"Oh." She was used to her lack of eloquence when talking to him.

"Where you thinking of your father?"

"Not really – It wasn't entirely a lie, she had been thinking about how she could not think of Steven when Damien was around – does that make me a bad person?" She finished out loud.

"No, Kennedy, that makes you human." His tone was derogatory, as if her being human displeased him. Which was an absurd concept since he was human himself.

"Somehow, I don't think you meant that as a compliment." She finally looked up at him and saw him staring at the now closed book that rested on his lap.

"You cannot be expected to worry about him every second of every day. You have your own life to live and the fact that you let other thoughts invade your mind does not diminish the love you may hold for him."

"I know – she stared at the book too and asked – are we going to finish it today?" He looked at her and she watched transfixed as his trademark crooked smile took hold of his features.

"Kennedy, I had been reading the afterword and bibliography before I interrupted your failed attempt at astral projection." She could feel the heat literally rise up to her cheeks and knew that her face was red. Damien chuckled softly at her dismay.

"I had been paying attention – she said defensively and then added softly – somewhere along in there."

"I am sure that you were riveted." He said mirthfully, which showed how little he knew about his influence on her sanity. "It is almost seven." He remarked on the hour.

She was grateful that he was thoughtful enough to remind her to stay out of trouble with her mother. However, she didn't like that it was him who always pointed out the inevitable passing of time. The fact that she had come to depend on their meetings as a normal part of her day scared her. Any moment now, he would put an end to it and she would be left with that empty space inside of her again.

"Yeah, I noticed." She lied through her teeth, knowing that he knew.

"Your mother will be home soon." He stated the obvious which meant that he obviously didn't want her there anymore.

"Okay, okay. I'm leaving." She said in an annoyed tone and stood up.

He caught hold of her hand and she felt it to the core of her being. It was as if a pleasant shock of something that she didn't exactly recognize shot through her veins in a rush.

Her stomach flipped over as her eyes went straight to his, inquiring. Had he felt it too?

"I am not throwing you out." His electric cerulean orbs held her gray ones for a few seconds, then lowered to rest on their still joined hands.

He let go of her slowly, lifting finger by finger as if he was afraid that she would crumble with any wrong movement. Kennedy wanted to say something, anything, but her voice died in her throat and she merely nodded as his eyes came to rest on hers again.

"You might end up under lock and key if she finds you here again." Damien cleared his throat and stood up way too close to her.

Had she truly never noticed how tall he really was before? Standing besides her like that, he almost looked like a giant. The crown of her head barely reached his shoulders.

She stepped back and let him walk her to the door. They reached the front entrance of his house in silence. Always so proper now, he held open the door for her. Kennedy walked by him, the hand he had been previously holding clenched tightly at her side.

She inwardly debated whether to ask him about reading another book. He spoke, almost as if reading her mind.

"Tomorrow, then?" She looked quizzically at him and tried desperately to conceal her excitement at his question. "I am almost sure that I can find another thrilling book somewhere in those shelves, but I will not make you any promises."

"I'd like that." She beamed up at him, but she didn't mind if he noticed now, he had asked her to come over again.

"Good night, Kennedy." He whispered as he closed the door.

"Night." Kennedy let out a breath that she hadn't known she'd been holding and set to walk back to her own house, fighting the strong urge to look back all the way.

Four hours later, Kennedy sat on her bed already showered and ready for sleep. She dialed her father's number on the house's cordless phone. It had become a nightly ritual and just as every time before that, the call went straight to voicemail. She now knew the greeting by heart.

She ended the call and glared at the blameless device on her hand as if it could do something about her problems. Kennedy was getting tired of talking to answering machines and she felt like she was starting to develop some ugly abandonment issues.

She cursed her stupidity at not writing down Archer's number from the Caller ID when she'd had the chance. He was the only lead that she had so far, and unless her mother came clean about things, she had no way of contacting him.

The muffled sound of the music tone she had designated for Lauren reached her ears. She hummed along to the song as she snuck a hand under a pillow to take out her cell phone, glancing at the digital clock on her nightstand as she set the house phone besides it.

"Indecent hours." She said into the phone and earned a snort in reply.

"It's only eleven thirty, sit your lazy butt up and tell me how you've been." Lauren tried to kid, but Kennedy heard the concern in her voice.

"I was awake. Is everything okay?"

"I should be the one asking you that, I'm a lousy friend."

"What's wrong, Laurie?"

"I was reading the newspaper."

"And?" She urged her friend on.

"There's an article following up the investigation of a murder case."

"And?" Kennedy had a very good idea as to where this was going.

"Kennedy, you're listed as the person that found the body!" Lauren exclaimed horrified.

"Oh, that." She had been right.

"When where you planning on telling me?" Apparently indignation won over concern in that particular case.

"When you finally decided to answer the phone when I call you." She played the indignant card too.

"I'm sorry." Ha! It always worked. The wonders of reverse psychology.

"How's Nathan?" She couldn't help it. As long as she had the upper hand, a few more nails in the coffin wouldn't make it any less depressing.

"I'm sorry."

"It's okay Lauren, I'm a big girl. Tell me, how's your vacation going so far?"

"I feel horrible. First, your dad leaves and now this, I wish that I was there for you." Kennedy knew that she meant it and it made her feel horrible in return, she was acting like a bitch to her only friend in the world.

"Believe it or not, I've been dealing." More like drooling over Damien, but that was a shame that she wasn't ready to share yet.

"Good, we'll deal together then. I'm coming over tomorrow."

"What happened with your summer romance thing?" She doubted that she really wanted to know but she had to ask.

"Nathan went back to his father's home in England this morning. We exchanged info and he said that he'll keep in touch. I guess we'll see."

"That sucks." Lauren sounded too nonchalant about Nathan's departure. It made her worry for her sanity. There had to be something more to it. Her friend couldn't be that well adjusted.

"A little, but it was beautiful while it lasted and I'm okay with it." There! Lauren had always had something to complain about. She was being too nice about the whole situation which meant that inside she was not all that together after all.

"What about your parents?"

"They're staying over here for another week. I told them that I'm staying with you until then, I've been neglecting our friendship." Sad excuse, but true nonetheless.

"At least you've finally seen the error of your ways."

"Better late than never." Her friend said.

"Useful proverb."

"See you tomorrow then?" Lauren asked. Kennedy thought about Damien and their reading.

Payback was a bitch.

"Yes, you can stay at my house for a week. Now shut up and let me sleep, I'll tell mama in the morning." Hopefully before Lauren arrived. She hung up and went to bed.

The following morning Kennedy woke up to the delicious smell of coffee and the tell tale sounds of pots and pans banging around in the kitchen. She lay back for a moment and relished in the welcome feeling that those noises brought her.

Then she realized what the sounds meant.

It was Wednesday, her mother's day off, the one day that she wouldn't be able to go to Damien's house. She had completely forgotten about it when she had agreed to go over that day.

A wave of consternation flowed through her body, that was still in the middle of the process of waking up. She felt guilty about keeping her visits to Damien from her mother, but she wasn't prepared to stop them.

She needed to come up with a way of seeing him today to explain what had happened. She'd rather he thought her a ditz than have him think she didn't want to be there.

Kennedy remembered her brief conversation with Lauren just before she went to sleep. Her forgetful nature had gotten her into a pinch this time.

She got up and went into the bathroom to brush her teeth.

She tried to figure out how she would sort out that mess. Easily enough, she thought in the midst of splashing cold water on her face. She would tell Lauren about Damien and get her to make her mother think that she wanted to meet the new neighbor.

Sure, Teresa would find it fishy, but since Lauren would be with her, she would have no valid reason to object. Kennedy looked at the clock. It was only eight thirty in the morning and she had it all sorted out.

She was brilliant!

But, first things first, she had to go tell her mother about Lauren's stay with them.

"You know that I don't mind, Kennedy. Lauren can stay with us for as long as she wants." Her mother said when she told her. Things were going as smoothly as she had planned.

"Thank you, thank you, thank–" The doorbell rang and Kennedy smiled widely from ear to ear. Lauren was there.

Teresa, who was closest to the door walked out of the kitchen to answer it. Sure enough, the door opened to reveal a sun tanned Lauren, clad in a green summer dress with orange flowers printed at the hem.

Kennedy was not a big fan of that dress, but the bright colors complimented her friend's normally olive skin, that was actually a few shades darker than it had been the last time she'd seen her. No doubt from lounging at the beach all day.

Lauren smiled courteously and removed her white oversized sunglasses. She pulled them back on her head in mimic of a tiara. Teresa embraced the new arrival warmly as they exchanged pleasantries.

Kennedy looked on as her best friend and her mother conversed at the door. Something in Lauren had changed. It wasn't anything physical, other than her obvious exposure to the sun. It was more in the way that she carried herself. Her movements were more graceful, her words softspoken, her eyes more certain somehow.

She acted like an adult. Like a grown up woman. She had just turned eighteen, but Kennedy didn't think that was the reason behind Lauren's sudden behavior modification. It was as if her brief experiences with Nathan had made her a different person.

Was that even possible?

Kennedy blinked away her assumptions. Maybe nothing was different, perhaps the fact that she knew about what had transpired between her friend and the Italian stranger made Kennedy all the more aware of things that she normally wouldn't pick up on.

The conversation at the front entrance quieted as Lauren's eyes finally found Kennedy. The girl dropped her tangerine bag onto the floor and broke into a short sprint until she reached her long time friend and immediately encased her in a bone crushing hug.

Kennedy hugged the mass of trembling curls back with all of her might as they both cried happily. She knew how her friend felt, like if they had been appart for years instead of weeks, but she was there now and things seemed to be slowly falling into place.

They jumped up and down together all the way to Kennedy's bedroom like a pair of overgrown toddlers high on caffeine.

Kennedy was ecstatic. She couldn't believe that she was ever mad at her friend. They were like sisters and she couldn't wait until they were alone in her room talking about their time apart.

As they got there, Lauren got to talking and never gave her the chance to tell her about Damien or to even try to think of an excuse to go over to his house.

All that Lauren talked about was Nathan and Kennedy listened halfheartedly to all that her friend had to say. Partly because she felt that it was her duty and partly because she felt guilty for wanting to be at Damien's more than she wanted to be there with her best friend.

Although, she was sure that the situation would have been pretty much reversed, had Nathan still been on the island. That eased her guilt a little, but not so much as to make her stop Lauren from her story. Parts of which had just risen in rating and Kennedy warred with herself.

Did she really want to hear that?

"Then he gently started to unbutton my jeans and I felt like dying. It was the most torturous and satisfying feeling..." Of course she did.

Kennedy's face went red as Lauren's tale – the details of which will not be disclosed in here for matters of privacy and such – progressed.

Then, she got to the part where he left and it broke her heart to see her friend hurting so badly. It wasn't as if she could be angry at the guy, he had just been there for vacation and Lauren must have known what would happen if she followed her feelings through to conclusion.

Still, Nathan went back to England and left her to deal with a snotty Lauren who was currently choking the filling out of Mr. Feeney – her stuffed elephant – while she bawled her eyes out.

Kennedy heaved out a long sigh as she moved to group hug with Mr. Feeney and her friend.

That was going to be a long night.

### 7. Don't Fear the Reaper

For what appeared to be the hundreth time, Kennedy found herself in front of the closed door that lead to her father's abandoned sanctuary, debating whether to go in or run away.

It was a little after three in the morning and she had just woken up from her usual smoke filled nightmare.

Lauren's crying exhausted them both and they had fallen asleep in an awkward position across the bed. Her back and neck hurt again and she doubted that her nervous system could handle another one of those floating clouds of black smoke that her brain had taken a liking to conjure up lately.

She'd never been brave, but her skepticism had always been a useful tool against scary situations.

Unfortunately, after the things that she'd seen recently, her disbelief had taken a sick leave. Still, she knew that running up to her bedroom and hiding under the covers would be of little use if there were a real perpetrator in the house.

She made up her mind, took a deep breath and extended a tremulous hand to open the door.

The lights were off. Her father's study room was shrouded in darkness.

As her eyes adjusted, she saw that a familiar figure stood over her father's desk. It held a few papers in its large hands.

Fear's cold fingers gripped her heart and Kennedy froze in shock.

It was the man from the alley!

The black eyed man that had in all probability murdered Brandi. The same enormous man who was headed straight for her at that very moment. She swallowed the scream that had been building up in her throat and turned to run.

She crashed directly into Damien.

His hands held on to her shoulder's to keep her from falling and her hands fisted on his shirt as she looked up at him with terrified wide eyes to tell him to run.

He wasn't looking at her.

Damien's gaze was set calmly on the big man that should have reached them already. Kennedy ventured a small peek behind her and saw that the man had stopped to look expectantly at Damien.

"Wait outside." He said coolly to the man, who gave a start, but paused to look at her.

"Leave us." Damien spoke again. His tone held an authoritative note that was not lost on her.

She was both amazed and alarmed at the obedience that the brawny man showed him as he left the room giving her a menacing smile before closing the door behind him. She could see his shadow obscuring the small crack of light that should have been coming from under the door. He hadn't left.

Kennedy was frantic!

First, she'd found the mysterious man that she'd seen emerging from behind the dumpster rummaging through her father's desk drawers and now it turned out that Damien seemed to know him somehow.

What was worse, he let him walk away with just a dismissive nod. She had been gratefully relieved when she had turned around to find Damien there. Then, it dawned on her, what was he doing in her house at three in the morning?

"What's going on, who was that and what the hell was he doing in my father's study?" And most importantly, why are you here? She added in her head and was instantly terrified of the answer to her silent question.

"Nobody – he said and at seeing her incredulous expression, he supplied – just a colleague." Kennedy waited for him to explain. He didn't elaborate.

What had he meant by calling the man a colleague?

"Well, I've seen him before." She was getting impatient. That man, who to her better understanding was a killer, was still in her house and things didn't make any sense.

"Really, when else?" His unconcerned question angered her.

"Last week, walking away from a crime scene!"

"Kennedy, you–" She moved to interrupt him as she noticed the condescending expression that he held as he said her name like if he were talking to a small child.

"Please, don't lie to me. Something is wrong and I want to know what it is."

"You have no idea what you are asking for and even if you did, you would not like the answer."

"I don't care!" She stopped herself as she realized that he was right to have addressed her as a child. Because she was behaving like it and a really petulant one at that. She only needed to stomp her foot down and the picture would have been complete.

Kennedy calmed herself, took a deep breath and tried again.

"Damien, it might seem like it, but I'm not stupid and I've seen enough of papa's paranormal research to suspect that the man I just saw leave this room is something more than human." He opened his mouth to say something, but closed it again.

A whole minute of uncomfortable silence went by before she gave it another shot.

"I'm not blind either and I've noticed that there have been a lot of weird things happening around here lately. I feel like I'm stuck in a cheesy horror film and I'm starting to freak out!"

"You do realize that you sound like a crazy person?" He said, like a true skeptic.

"Oh, don't give me that crap! Did you get a good look at his eyes?"

"Yes, but you need to calm down and think rationally abut this."

"No, what I need is for you to stop evading my questions and give me a truthful answer." All of her father's stories about beings whose eyes turned pitch black rushed to her conscious mind.

One word stood out from the muddled mess of thoughts and images. But, after all the time and effort she'd spent trying to escape her father's views of reality, was she really going to believe in that? Damien seemed to have come to a decision and looked grim as he turned to address her.

"Very well, but remember that you asked for it. Now, go sit down and do not scream." He gestured to the tall chair behind the big mahogany desk.

"I'd rather stand." She folded her arms across her chest and waited.

"Have it your way then." He took a few steps back from her and stood straight. His hands hung clenched into fists at his sides.

Tick-tock...

Tick-tock...

The low ticking of the grandfather clock that stood in the corner was all that could be heard in the room. Kennedy waited patiently for him to start explaining, but no words came from him, just silence.

She looked up to urge him on and realized that he wasn't telling her the answer.

He was showing her.

One look into his eyes and she understood. Her stomach plummeted as she saw his eyes grow black, the dark color shaded everything, including the white parts. The air left her as she asked, though she already knew the answer.

"What are you?" He hesitated for a second, his head moved as if he were looking at the ground and then back up at her. The severe look on his face never betrayed his thoughts.

"Demon."

It was a mere whisper, but in the silence of her expectation that one word held as much sound as a scream would have, and that was what she wanted to do, scream and run. But, she just stood there, rooted to the spot, unable to move as the being in front regarded her with caution.

Apart from the eyes, everything else about him seemed unchanged. He appeared to be the same Damien that had spent those easy evenings keeping her company and reading to her. Bewilderment ruled her brain.

"Kennedy?" The word interrupted her inner battle. His voice was laced with longing for understanding. All the hairs on her body stood on end. Try as she might, and against her better judgment, Kennedy couldn't bring herself to feel afraid.

All she felt was a small amount of betrayal at him having lied to her and the strong urge to wrap her arms around him and have him hold her back. That last thought terrified her more than she let on.

"What, Damien, if that's even your real name?" She was instantly regretful of her cutting tone as she saw the hurt expression that flashed briefly across his face before it was quickly replaced by the stoic mask once more.

"I know it is a lot to ask for. But, Kennedy, do not be afraid of me." What did he expect from her? The guy just told her that he was a demon and then asked her not to be scared. Did demons reason differently than humans?

Or maybe it was she who reasoned differently, because knowing that she should be fearful of his proximity she still wanted him near her.

"To be honest, I'm not. But, do I need to be? Scared of you, I mean." She realized that she truly wasn't. She was more afraid of her feelings for him than anything else at that moment.

"No. You need not be frightened of me." He said this with such conviction that she felt somewhat assured.

"Am I the only one that can say that?" The way that he had emphasized on the words, you and me, made her wary.

He placed both of his hands inside his pockets while he shifted his weight from one foot to the other once, his full lips set in a tight line.

"I am a demon, but a part of me is human. My kind are often called, Nephilim." She could tell that it was a difficult subject for him. "It is complicated."

"What does that mean?" She couldn't let it go so lightly.

"Do not ask me any more about it. I do not want to damage you anymore than I already have."

"Damage me?" She echoed, it stung. He had done nothing wrong to her during these past few weeks. Why would he say something like that?

"I would give anything to spare you the pain that is soon to come. But, I need you to understand that if I leave now, another would take my place and I fear that they would not be as partial to your feelings as I am." His words confused her. The knot in her stomach grew tighter with each passing second.

"Wh – her throat closed around the word that she was trying to form and she was furious at herself for allowing the slip. She swallowed hard and tried again – why are you here then?" What would another have to take his place for?

He shut his eyes tightly for a moment and opened them again. Sighing, he walked to the window. He stared in silence out into the darkness for so long that she thought that her question would be left unanswered, then he spoke with his back facing her.

"You need to be aware that I was sent here on an assignment. One I undertook before I knew you. But, then – he paused and changed his stance, she could now see the painfully perfect profile of his face – then, I met you and everything changed. The way you accepted me, the way that I could talk or not talk to you so easily, all the time that we have spent together has altered my view of things. You are unlike any human girl that I have ever encountered."

The word evil popped into each one of her thoughts like a warning, but her stupid heart believed him instantly and against all logical reasoning. Her poor brain didn't stand a snowball's chance. She wanted to speak up, but nothing coherent came to mind and he continued.

"I now find myself at a crossroads – he smiled at the phrase as if it had a special meaning to him, but the significance of it escaped her – and I am afraid that I am unable to decide on which path to take. Either way, I am condemned." She tried to grasp the hidden meaning behind his words, the things that he left unsaid for her sake.

"What are you here for?" Kennedy's brain was still stuck processing the concept of demon, but her curiosity wanted to be satiated. She expected yet another evasive from his part when a dark expression took over his handsome features.

He turned to face her completely and opened his mouth to speak. She braced herself for the answer that, judging from his frown, she would most definitely not like.

"Your father." Her knees faltered. It felt as if a large weight had been placed on her shoulders.

A thousand frenzied thoughts ran through her head. Kennedy was truly afraid then. Terrified – not for herself – but for Steven. What had he done to have a demon sent after him?

"No – what – why?" She tried to convey her shock and fear at the same time and what came out was a jumbled mess that made him take a step forward, his hand outstretched towards her.

She instinctively took an answering step backwards, instantly regretting it as he froze. He appeared to have been taken aback for a moment, but then nodded and retook the position that he had been in before he moved. He stood about six feet from her with his hands in his pockets again.

"Kennedy, your father's research has earned him a death warrant – he raised a hand to silence her and continued at her panicked look – I will not harm him, I give you my word."

"But others will, others of your kind, is that what you're saying?" Her chest ached and her eyes burned.

"It is a definite possibility. I was sent here to gather information and report my findings, if his research were inoffensive, he would be allowed to keep his life."

"Then don't say anything!" She begged him and was dismayed at how pathetic her plea had sounded.

"I was not planning to, but your father has been helping out a notorious hunter and word has already reached them."

"A hunter?" The vivid image of a stern man holding a shotgun with a pointer dog by his side invaded her mind. She shrugged it off, amazed at her overactive imagination.

"A demon hunter." Oh, right. Now he was surely going to start spewing out some Scruffy the Vampire Slayer nonsense. "Your father is one too."

Right. Why not?

"Let's pretend for a second that I believe that and let me ask, is that why that man was here?" She tried to understand. Kennedy wasn't panicking anymore. Her father's ramblings about the paranormal and mysterious injuries were starting to make sense.

The strange numbness had settled inside her again. She figured that it was her body's way of dealing with pain, it directly shut it out.

"Yes." He said.

"What's going to happen now?" She honestly couldn't see any way that the situation could be resolved without them being exposed to real danger.

"I do not know, but you cannot stay here any longer. Could you stay a friend's house until I figure this out?" She looked at him, her eyes let him know what she was thinking. How would staying at somebody else's house help when demons were after them?

"What about my mom, Damien? I can't just leave her here." It occurred to her, that perhaps this was what Teresa had known and wouldn't tell her about. Somehow, she wasn't very mad. She just wanted her parents to be safe and out of harm's way.

"Then you both must go. Ask her for a vacation, lie if necessary. Go where no one knows you and tell no one about it." Unbelievable. Was he for real? It showed how little he knew about her mother, to think that she would agree to something like that in their current financial status.

"But they will find us." She was going to tell him about her mother's stubbornness, but decided to state the obvious instead.

"It will be temporary, until I figure out what to do about it. Perhaps I can convince them to leave you be if I can make them think that your mother and you had no knowledge of the situation." He made it sound so rational that she almost believed that he could do what he said.

But, what about her father? He hadn't been mentioned in that little arrangement.

"Damien if we just pick up and leave all of a sudden, we'd be proving for a fact that we do know. Maybe if we stayed and ride it out?" He considered her words for a minute.

"Yes, all things considered, that would be a better option. Kennedy, do you think that there is a possibility, even in the slightest, that your father may return?" She was alarmed. No matter how much she wanted to trust Damien, that question made her suspicious of his true intentions. He seemed to have read her mind.

"I have already given you my word that I will not harm him, but I need to know, for your sake." Kennedy regarded him and even though she knew that it may be a terrible mistake, she decided to trust the beautiful dark man before her.

"I know that he's alive. He changed the voice message on his phone, but I don't think he'll be coming home any time soon."

"That would be best. It will keep all of you safe for the time being." She sighed in relief. He seemed truly interested in her well being.

"What if I go up to the big scary guy outside and tell him that I don't know anything? Maybe that might work." Kennedy tried to lighten up the atmosphere, successfully hiding her real fear.

"That is not funny." He said blandly.

"No, I guess not, but I'm retarded remember?" She meant it.

She thought that she saw a smile begin to appear on his face before he asked, "Why are you taking this so lightly?"

"What else can I do? I doubt that going hysterical would help me. I think that if you wanted to hurt me, you already would've." Her words made her sound a lot braver than she felt.

"You should not be so trusting." Kennedy knew the hidden meaning behind his words. He meant to say that she shouldn't trust him as easily as she did, but her mind was made up.

"Was it all an act then, just part of a big lie?" She hoped that his answer wouldn't prove her wrong.

"No, at least nothing of significance was. I have been honest in my opinions and feelings towards you." His voice had taken on a soft quality.

"Feelings?" Her gut twisted, but not in fear.

He averted his eyes to the floor and responded."I am still the same Damien that you met that day in the yard." He stood so close to her now, only a breath away.

When had he moved?

His eyes reverted to their usual azure tinge and her hand reached up, almost as if by its own accord, to caress the side of his face. His eyes searched hers imploringly.

"Yes, yes you are." She wasn't surprised to find that she truly believed it and if that was what it felt like to be damned, then they could drag her to hell for all she cared.

Damien let out a heavy sigh and then she was pulled roughly into his arms. The sudden embrace startled her. Nothing had ever felt so right.

There, within the hold of his strong arms, she felt safe, invincible, as if nothing could happen to her while he held her like that. It was a bittersweet notion, because even though she would be safe, her father might not run the same fate.

"Kennedy!" Reality called – more like screamed – at her.

Lauren's terrified scream filled the silence of the house and reminded her of where she was.

Kennedy jumped away from Damien and retracted into herself as if she had been burned. He glared intently at the door.

Lauren must have encountered the big shady guy guarding the door to her father's office. He turned to look at her and gave a brief nod in the direction that the sound had come from. She went reluctantly to silence her frightened friend before she woke up the entire neighborhood.

Damien watched her go without a word.

She walked out of the room to find Lauren about to scream bloody murder once more. Her friend's shriek stopped abruptly when she saw her. Kennedy watched as she looked comically between the giant standing stoically by the doorway and her.

Lauren appeared to be speechless and rightfully so. Her sun darkened skin had acquired an ashen quality, it made her brown hair seem black in comparison. Kennedy remembered the cold fear that she had felt when saw the intimidating man for the first time. She tried to reassure her friend.

"I promise that I'll explain later." Her words only seemed to make things worse. Lauren didn't look the least bit appeased, but she gave a silent nod nonetheless. She let Kennedy know with a severe look that she understood her need at the moment and would be expecting a detailed explanation soon.

Kennedy turned to the tall man that impersonated an English Queen's Guard, he was only missing the red uniform and black furry hat. She snickered a bit as she conjured the amusing picture in her mind's eye.

She highly doubted that he would stand as still if she were to poke him. That sobered her up right away and she wondered idly if she was going crazy at last. She stared at his rigid posture with slight apprehension and wondered whether she should speak to him or not.

Kennedy had enough sense of self-preservation left in her to realize that even though she knew in her gut that she could trust Damien, trusting this man was a completely different matter.

To her immense relief, Damien appeared at the door besides her.

The space was limited and Kennedy's senses went haywire at his proximity. Even though it was neither the time nor the place for such epiphanies, she realized that letting Damien go that night without making sure that they would see each other again would be yet another calamitous event in her life. But, maybe one she could prevent after all.

She wasn't as immature as to harbor any dreamy notions about a serious romantic relationship between her demonic neighbor and her. Even so, she couldn't deny the fact – at least to herself – that she had come to care deeply for him and relied on his presence as a beacon of light in her shadow packed days.

She saw Lauren's eyes widen in appreciation at the sight of him and a sharp uncalled pang of some strange emotion that she was shocked to recognize as jealousy filled Kennedy's chest. She knew it was senseless to feel that way, especially when the person in question was her almost sister whom she personally knew would rather gauge her eyes out than knowingly ogle her best friend's boyfriend.

Then it occurred to her that first, Damien was not her boyfriend. Second, he was nothing near that and Lauren didn't know of her attraction towards him and third, any hot blooded woman would stop and take her time to admire Damien's perfection, no matter the circumstances.

Kennedy was ashamed to find that she was greatly pleased at noticing that Damien was either totally oblivious to Lauren's awing or he chose to ignore her in favor of looking sternly at the other man.

"I told you to leave." He said in the same cold commanding tone that he had used earlier in the study, but the man just looked at him wordlessly and didn't move. Damien scowled, the expression giving him an air of menace that did not ugly his features.

"Wait for me at my house, that is not a request." He finished dangerously, the authoritative note in his voice sent chills throughout Kennedy's spine. She decided that she found this new side of Damien thrilling, thus finally convincing herself that she had truly lost her mind.

The other man turned and left her house using the front door. He seemed very familiar with the way out of the house, as if he had taken that same route some time before. The thought unnerved her.

She looked at Lauren to see her staring at his retreating back, so she finally turned to Damien who waited silently for her to acknowledge his presence. His current demeanor was a great contrast to the one from seconds before.

All the coldness had seeped from his eyes, eyes that turned the deep color of the ocean after a storm as they clashed with hers.

"I must leave now as well." He stated plainly, but his gaze told Kennedy that he would rather stay.

"Okay." She hoped with all her might that her eyes showed him how she really felt. He gave a nod in return and prepared to walk away when Kennedy's voice stopped him.

"Damien, can I – she thought better and rephrased – should I tell them about it?" By them, she meant Lauren and Teresa.

"Due to the circumstances, it would be best that you speak thoroughly with your mother about the matter. Your friend, I leave at your discretion." He caught on pretty fast and the silent meaning of his words struck home.

If she brought Lauren into that mess she would only be placing her best friend in danger. She had to find a way to keep her out of the loop, but it would be a nearly impossible thing to accomplish after what she had just witnessed.

"I understand." She told him and avoided Lauren's eyes at all costs.

"We will talk about it tomorrow. That is, if you still want– " His sentence trailed off, his words holding a small note of insecurity that almost melted her heart.

She had a hard time placing this soft spoken Damien next to the detached imposing one. It was difficult to believe that they were one and the same. One of his personas had to be a carefully practiced act. The frightening question was, which one?

"Of course!" She flushed. It came out a little more enthusiastic than she had planned. He smiled.

"Very well." He nodded in agreement, crooked smile still in place, and exited the house tracing the steps the defiant giant had taken just moments before.

It was her turn to watch him leave and she did so with a heavy heart and an even weightier sigh. She would be a complete idiot to expect their quiet evenings to remain the same after what had transpired that night.

The optimist in her, which was hidden very, very deep down in her consciousness tried its hardest to make her hope for the best. To her left, someone made a fuss out of clearing their throat. She flushed deeply in embarrassment.

She'd been caught letting her mind wander and forgetting all about her friend's presence for the second time that night. Kennedy turned to look at Lauren with a guilty expression. She waited quietly for the barreling of questions that was undoubtedly going to come at any moment now.

However and to her unmasked surprise, Lauren just looked her over seriously for a few seconds before she returned upstairs in silence. Kennedy was stunned at her friend's self-control, she knew that Lauren was dying to squeeze every last detail out of her and she was extremely grateful that she had been considerate enough to give her some time before doing it.

She was at odds with herself for not being more apprehensive about Damien's confession and she still didn't know what she would say to her friend about what she'd just seen.

What possible, credible explanation could she give?

Lauren wasn't easy to fool and she hated having to lie to her, but she was certain that she couldn't tell her the truth. She wouldn't be responsible for putting her in danger. It would be devastating to lose her only friend when it was within her power to save her.

Kennedy finally understood that to protect Lauren she might have to lose her friendship.

Her heart sank as she walked upstairs herself, though she wanted to run down the opposite direction. Her face set in a grim mask, Kennedy made her way into the room where Lauren sat stiffly on top of the flower printed sheets of the twin bed.

She gathered all of her resolution and looked up at the waiting girl, determined to make their high school drama teacher proud. It was already decided, she would keep her best friend out of harm's way and even if it meant that she had to push Lauren out of her life, she would do just that.

"I know that you're about to lie to me." Lauren said with strange calmness.

"What?" Kennedy feigned ignorance and tried to buy some time to come up with something believable enough. Just as she'd expected, her friend raised a well groomed eyebrow and looked at her skeptically.

"We've known each other since we were seven. I can tell what your every facial expression means by now."

"Then you know that I'm torn between feeling comforted and creeped out by what you've just said."

"I'm not joking!"

"Neither am I!"

"If I weren't sure that you're trying to create a distraction I would be very mad at you for that comment."

"What are you talking about?"

"You were going to lie to me to cover for that guy."

"I–" Could she deny the truth?

"Give it up. You're not good at hiding your feelings, Kennedy. Your eyes give you away." She had always loved Lauren's insight, she knew the right thing to say and when not to say anything at all.

"He–" Right then, she wished that her friend didn't know her all that well.

"You like him a lot. He said that he left telling me at your discretion – she emphasized on the last three words, mocking his accent – and I can see the resolve on your face."

"You don't know anything because you weren't here, you selfish bitch!" She finally got a complete sentence out and just as the last word had left her mouth, she wanted to take it all back.

Lauren's head reeled as if she'd been slapped and Kennedy wanted to go to her and hug her and say how sorry she was, that she didn't mean it. The truth was, that she did mean some of it and her friend knew it too.

"Well, if that's how you truly feel, then I don't know why you let me into your house in the first place." She put up a strong front, but Kennedy could see the small glimmer of unshed tears in her doe eyes.

"Lauren, what are you doing?" She asked as she saw her pick up her bag and head for the door.

"I'm going home." Lauren called over her shoulder as she walked out of the room. Her wild curls bounced with each step that she took.

"You can't leave now, it's almost four in the morning!" Kennedy said in a screamed whisper – as to not wake up her mother, who had miraculously slept through Lauren's screams – and ran downstairs after her.

"Watch me." The angry girl rebuked as she paused at the front door and turned. She took a small gift box out of her bag and threw it at Kennedy, it bounced off her arm to land at her feet.

"Happy birthday, friend." Lauren walked out, slamming the door shut as she did so. Kennedy stared blankly at the closed door for a second.

She had completely forgotten about her birthday. Today she turned eighteen and what an awesome way to celebrate it, friendless and alone.

That day was coming along nicely and to her delight – note the sarcasm there – it was only just beginning.

Her birthdays were always memorable, but not for the reason that one would believe. Just the mention of any intent of celebrating the day of her entrance into this world had become a bad omen for her. Asides from the fact that her classmates only attended the parties to make fun of the Freak Girl, something horrible, embarrassing or horribly embarrassing always happened at the event.

Her last attempt at a party had been when she'd turned fifteen. She threw it at her mother's insistence, turning fifteen for her mom was like sweet sixteen in the States, a big deal in latin culture.

It had been extremely sunny all week so they had decided to have the party in the backyard. Only an hour before the party was about to start, the clouds blew in and a small drizzle began. The drizzle grew into a shower and the shower turned into a full blown downpour. Suffice to say that all the decorations got blown away and she somehow ended up sitting on her cake. That very day she decided, no more birthday parties for Kennedy, ever.

In fact, she had pushed the whole concept of remembrance out of her mind.

She wanted to go find a hole to crawl into and stay there until that day was done. Tears burned behind her eyes and she realized that she was getting tired of that feeling.

Kennedy crouched to pick up the box, then arose and turned from the door. She towed her feet all the way to the living room, where she flopped down heavily on the couch.

She lifted the top lid on the small box that Lauren had thrown at her and looked inside. Her heart constricted. There, resting on top of a soft piece of white gauze, was a silver bracelet with a charm in the shape of the left half of a heart with the word, "Best", engraved on it.

It was a friendship bracelet and Lauren must have had the other half of the charm hidden, ready to show it to her when they opened her gift together. She felt wretched, but wasn't that what she'd been aiming for?

She'd hurt Lauren's feelings. But, Kennedy could bear having an angry Lauren rather than a dead best friend.

She put on her present and spent the following hour admiring the shiny bracelet as it dangled on her wrist, trying to convince herself that she had done the right thing.

It was already five in the morning when Kennedy traded the empty gift box for the remote control that lay on the side table and turned on the TV.

Late night programming sucked, they were re-running a paid program that sold a cream that claimed that it could erase all of your wrinkles in just ninety seconds.

"Interesting, that is if I had any wrinkles." She traced the corner of her eye with a fingertip and kept flicking through the different channels until she was too exhausted and finally drifted off into a fitful slumber.

### 8. Vertigo

"Good bye, Mr. Doodle!" A high, squeaky voice sang by her ear. She was having a nightmare.

Had the demons come and dragged her to hell while she slept?

She wondered if she had imagined it when she heard the overly cheery music and was horrified.

"La, la, la, la..." No, she wasn't in hell, it was even worse, Redso's World!

Kennedy sat up and looked frantically for the remote. When she couldn't find it, she bolted from the couch and ran, jumping over the coffee table and knocking down one of her mother's ceramic bowls in the process, to turn off the TV before her brain fried.

Teresa came in at that exact moment to find her daughter on her knees in front of the television set, heaving a relieved sigh. Kennedy sent her a sheepish grin and her mother, who was about to say something, shut her mouth and rolled her eyes before walking back out of the room shaking her head while muttering to herself about crazy teenagers.

Kennedy sat on the cold tiled floor of the living room while she gathered her bearings. She lifted a hand to run it through her untidy morning hair, the muscles of her neck and back screamed in pain at the movement. That's what sleeping on the couch got her. She should have known better by then.

She ignored the stiffness in her body as she stood and made a beeline for the stairs. She yearned for the firm, yet soft comfort of her own bed.

It was late afternoon when Kennedy finally emerged from her bedroom where she had been holed in all day. That was by far one of the less eventful birthdays of her life and thank God for that.

She had spent over eight hours lying in bed, staring at the ceiling as a form of entertainment. She discovered that there were approximately three hundred and fifty six small dents and a stain in the shape of a garden gnome in the stucco. Fascinating stuff.

She had gone to the bathroom once or twice, but only to return to her lethargic position again. It wasn't until the delicious smell of pasta being cooked reached her nostrils that she realized how hungry she truly was. Her stomach came alive and growled at her to go find where the enticing smell was coming from.

She went downstairs after splashing cold water on her face, her mind still foggy with the remnants of her previous comatose state. She could already hear her mother's humming as she neared the kitchen. Her brain finally crashed back into her head. She halted as she remembered Damien's words about speaking thoroughly to Teresa about the demons that want to kill her father.

Kennedy sighed deeply and called out to her mother as she stepped into the kitchen. "Morning! Or afternoon, or whatever."

"Happy birthday, _Nena_." Teresa greeted kindly, but hesitantly. She knew and was witness as to why and how much Kennedy detested any type of celebration on her birthday.

Kennedy stood at the archway that lead into the room and stared, her eyes took in each movement that her mother made. She tried to gauge exactly how much this person knew about the things that had only recently been brought to light before her.

On the outside, the woman in front of her appeared to be the same loving, yet strict, mother that she had known all of her life. But, Kennedy now knew the ugly truth about how deceiving appearances could be and so she looked on, trying to convince herself that her mother was just as ignorant of the situation as she had been up until a while ago.

She knew better. Teresa's evasive answers and lack of presence in the house told her otherwise.

"Is something wrong, darling?" Teresa stopped fussing over a pot of sauce that she had going on the stove and turned her full attention on her daughter.

Kennedy wanted to ask so many things. Where was Steven and when was he coming home? But, that had gotten her nowhere before.

Why hadn't he called, why hadn't he answered her calls, why he was gone in the first place, why were demons sent to watch him and why was her mother lying to her about it?

Why?

Why?

Why?!

So many questions battled to get through all at once that the only halted word that she could get out was, "Papa–", she supposed because he was the main source of her concern. She watched as her mother's eyes widened slightly at the word.

"What about your father?" That did it! Normally, Theresa would've said, don't worry, he'll be home when he's home, or something like it.

"Be honest, Mama."

"What are you on about now, Kennedy? I've already told you that we'll talk about this as a family when he gets back." Kennedy didn't know what to do, she didn't want to push an argument with her mom, but she had to know what the hell was happening around her.

Admittedly, what she did next may not have been the best way to go about it.

"Okay, okay. Let's do it your way. I already know that Steven isn't who you both make him out to be. But, would you at least mind explaining what possible reason could a man possessed by a demon have to break into Steven's study?" Teresa's eyes had widened when she'd heard the word demon, but she actually took a step back as if she had been physically hit when Kennedy finished her question.

Her mother was so shaken that it made her feel a little bad to have dropped the bomb just like that, though she didn't see any better way to do it. In front of her, Teresa's mouth moved soundlessly like fish out of water as she tried to form words that wouldn't come out.

"I didn't mean it to come out like that, but you gave me no other choice. What I do want you to tell me, Mama, is exactly how much longer did you plan to keep it a secret from me?"

"How do you know about that?" Teresa's voice caught in her throat as she asked.

"Forget about how I know. The real point is, why I had to find out about it from a demon instead of my own mother?"

"I was just trying– I wanted to protect you." She pleaded.

"By lying to me?"

"No, by keeping you safely away from a world full of evil beyond your understanding!"

"And whose fault is it that I'm not ready to defend myself in such a world? Isn't that just as bad, letting me go around oblivious to what's really out there, trusting everyone I shouldn't?" Kennedy knew that there was logic in what Teresa was saying but her pride wouldn't let her acknowledge it.

"Maybe, but I did what I thought was best at the time. Please understand, Kennedy. I was so young and he was so perfect. Then in the blink of an eye, I found myself alone and practically helpless. You need to believe that Steven does love you as his own, even if he's not–" Kennedy reeled back as her mother broke off realizing that the conversation had gone in a very different direction than it was originally intended.

She failed to register her mother's words for a second, then just as fast, her whole world crash landed on top of her.

Her legs threatened to give out.

"Even if he's not, what? Go on, finish it! Are you saying– do you mean he isn't my real father?" No, she wouldn't believe her that time.

Lies, more lies, it had to be a lie.

"I thought– but you said that you knew. Oh, I'm so sorry darling!" Teresa clamped a hand on her own mouth to keep from saying anything else.

"No." That was not happening, any moment now she would wake up and see that that wasn't happening, that it was just another nightmare.

"Kennedy–" Her mother's hand slid down to her own throat and she tried again, but Kennedy would not, could not let her go on to say anything else.

"No! I won't listen to any more of this bull– I can't. Forget I asked, I don't want to know anything." She backed away out of the room.

"Kennedy!" Teresa came after her and reached out to touch her arm, but Kennedy swatted her hands away.

"No, I'm leaving! Thank you for the wonderful birthday present." She slammed the front door behind her as she stormed out of the house.

Outside, Kennedy hesitated. She flinched at the muffled sounds of her mother's sobs coming from inside. She considered going back in and telling her that she was sorry. However, the guilt was immediately drowned out by the sharp stab of betrayal that she felt as the memory of Teresa's recent confession rushed around her thoughts.

She almost took a step back, but willed her feet to move forward instead.

She took one doubtful step, then another. Soon, she found herself running down the steps and onto the sidewalk, away from her house.

For a while, the rush of adrenaline, the wind blowing through her hair and the wild beating of her heart were enough as she tried to block out all thoughts of demons, the man that she had always thought to be her father and the heart wrenching sounds of her mother's sobs.

But, her feet gradually slowed down and her pace settled.

Somewhere in the back of her mind, she was aware that her breath should have been coming out in harsh pants from the exertion of running so fast, but it wasn't and she had no interest in questioning that fact right then.

She hooked both of her thumbs on the belt strings of her jeans and walked, not caring where she was headed. She stared aimlessly between the rows of houses lined up to the sides and the ground beneath her feet.

The familiar rumble of a car engine made her look up to see as Damien's Charger slowed down until it almost came to a stop next to her. He took of his metal square sunglasses and threw them carelessly on the back seat.

As it was now customary, they exchanged stares.

He smirked and tapped the passenger seat, motioning for her to get in the car with him and even though she knew that she should have been afraid of him, of what he was, Kennedy got in the car without thinking twice about it.

As was also custom, Kennedy snuck a few glances out of the corner of her left eye and secretly drank him in.

He wore his signature attire consisting of a plain white tee shirt and faded jeans. His feet were hidden from her vantage point, but she would've given that nosy left eye if they weren't clad in his black work boots that weren't actually worked in.

"Where to, Miss?" His strange accent made the words that she had once heard in a movie and found stately sound enthralling. Kennedy thought for a moment, she had no idea where to go, all that she knew was that she didn't want to be at her house.

"I don't know, anywhere, just not here." Bless him, he understood her completely and got the point that when she had said not there, she wasn't referring to their actual location.

Instead of turning around in the direction of their houses, he kept going forward, out of the neighborhood and into the town.

Her eye ventured back up to watch as the wind played with a stray wisp of raven hair that fell in and out of vivid blue eyes. It danced in the flowing breeze that came in through the lowered car windows.

She gratefully appreciated how Damien didn't try to make idle conversation, that he understood her need to flee.

Damien extended his hand towards her, his cellular phone in its hold. She looked up inquiringly.

"Music always helps." He turned the phone over in his palm, glided his thumb over the touch screen a few times and held it out for her to take it again. When she took it, she saw that it was on the media player menu screen.

She nodded and scrolled down with her index finger, looking for something familiar to play. There were a few songs of which the names stuck out, but the rest were mostly unknown to her. She noticed that he was big on classic rock, judging by some of the names of the artists. She resigned herself to listen to whatever he had in there. She was curious to know him.

Kennedy tapped her finger lightly against the random play option.

A track began to play out of the cell phone speaker. She watched as Damien's right thumb came alive a few seconds into the song and started to drum along to the beat on the steering wheel as he drove.

She turned her head to look out of the window and watched the scenery fly by. Despite the obviously gloomy irony in the lyrics of the unknown song, she took in the sounds of the music and fell in love with it.

Ten minutes into the drive, they were halfway through a third song when Damien took a left turn and started down a less populated road away from the center of town. With both confusion and satisfaction, Kennedy realized that they were headed towards the beach.

Another song came on, he really seemed to like that one because he started to hum along to it as they went.

He settled the Charger into a spot near the edge of the beach's parking lot. The place was relatively empty and Kennedy had an inkling suspicion that he had planned for them to be there ever since he had picked her up.

Damien killed the engine and stepped out of the car just as she tried to figure out how to turn off the music on the phone.

Kennedy was surprised at her own surprise when she felt her own door open and saw a strong broad hand move into her line of vision. He was offering to help her out of the vehicle.

Ever the gentleman, he sure made it very hard for her to remember his dark nature when she was with him. Then again, that could have been his evil plan all along. Sobered up by that last train of thought, but not derailed in her amazement of her body's chemical reaction to his proximity, she took his hand and let him help her out.

Taking a concealed breath, Kennedy braced herself for the delicious shock that she knew would come from his touch.

Just as expected, the familiar current of feeling spread through her every nerve ending as their hands connected.

She stepped out of the car carefully. Her legs felt like jell-o and she was afraid that she would end up flat on her face in front of him. She let go if his hand as soon as her feet were steady on the ground.

He gave her that trademark raised brow and crooked smirk of his in response as if he knew the reason why she had let go so quickly.

Daring to look into his eyes, she silently asked again if his body reacted the same way to hers.

It was ridiculous, but Kennedy suddenly found herself wishing with all her might that it were true. For all the good that it would do them, she knew that they shouldn't – couldn't – be together in a romantic way. Still, it was as if she needed the reassurance of knowing that not being together would torture him as much as it would her.

The echoes of soft rock music reached her from below and she remembered that she had never turned off the music player on Damien's phone. She smiled sheepishly and handed it to him. He took it and instead of shutting it off, placed it with the music still playing inside his pants pocket and began to walk away.

He stopped after only two steps as if to wait for her, his head turned slightly in her direction. She followed.

They walked towards the shoreline, Damien leading the way with Kennedy just a few steps behind him. For a moment, she thought that he wasn't going to stop until he was in the water and then, just as he was about to reach it, he veered to the right and kept walking.

She silently traced the deep imprints that his booted feet left in the damp sand. Her senses danced to the strange, yet pleasant, collision of the smells of salt water and barbequing meat somewhere in the distance.

Why didn't she come to the beach anymore? She used to like it so much and she loved the sound of the waves breaking against the– hard surface?

She looked up to see Damien climb up the big boulder that divided their tiny bit of beach from the violent waters of the Atlantic ocean.

She took in the massive form of the uber rock in front of her with the three white crosses painted on the stone base by the locals in remembrance of those who'd died there. Seeing them made her think of her own predicament.

She wasn't as daft as to believe that she was impervious to harm. After all that had happened, she was sure that there were still more suffocating problems waiting just around the bend for her.

Those crosses were painted there to remind climbers about the terrible fate that might await them if they tried to go over its height.

Luckily for Kennedy, her tomboyish tendencies had led her to climb that same boulder countless of times before. The real problem was, did she trust her companion enough to be alone with him and the fifty foot drop on the other side?

She hesitated for a few seconds, then thought, what the hell? If he had wanted to kill her, she would have been dead. Heaven knew that he'd had an innumerable amount of opportunities already.

On that morbid note, she climbed up after him while picturing a hundred different ways to kill Kennedy on the way.

Ten minutes, one fall and two scraped knees later, she joined him as he sat on the topmost part of the rock contemplating the navy blue ocean that appeared to meet no end, it's deep color mingled with the grayish blue of the sky at the horizon line.

The dark blue color of the water reminded her of his eyes and just like that, she became acutely aware of his presence besides her as he took his phone out of his pocket and finally turned off the music.

Her eyes fixed themselves down on the spot where the waves crashed against the rock and sat there staring at it as if her life depended on it. Judging by her earlier thoughts, she would no doubt find that extremely funny if it weren't for the nervous train wreck that took place in her stomach.

"A dollar for your thoughts – Damien interrupted the relative silence that surrounded them and she looked at him – I embellished a bit, a penny seemed a tad stingy, what with the ongoing recession and all."

"Birthdays suck." She replied, muffling some laughter.

"Ah." He said knowingly.

"Sorry, it's tradition for me not to do any kind of festive thing on this date. But, today my usually dark birthday cloud just took a ridiculously evil turn." She made a mental recount of all that had gone wrong since the clock had struck twelve that morning, from finding the Stone Cold Austin look-alike in her house, to her mother's merry news about her parentage and every single kink and sore muscle in between.

"Is there anything else that you would like to share?" Damien's query was met by silence as Kennedy wallowed in her own misery.

"I stopped celebrating my birthday's as well. Come to think of it, my last acknowledged one was about fifty four years ago. My mother died that night." She took in that bit of information. She had just learned of what he was, but the thought of him not aging hadn't yet crossed her mind.

"And I will stop my pitiful self-pitying as of this moment." She went over what he'd said about his mom and decided that she would stop thinking that she had it rough.

"You should, it is pathetic." He said with his bug Kennedy smirk.

"Well, I will!"

"Good."

"Way to spare my feelings there, friend." She pouted with a feigned sniffle. Her stomach turned into itself as she realized what she had just called him.

"I try." He replied, either not seeming to mind or completely ignoring her slip.

"Try harder."

"How can I, when you leave yourself open to my every sarcastic remark?" That was very true. She was beginning to believe that she did it unconsciously just to keep him talking to her.

"In case you were wondering, I'm giving you the silent treatment." They both knew that it wouldn't last very long.

"What a relief." He mocked.

She snorted and turned away, unsuccessfully giving him the cold shoulder.

The call of a seabird attracted her sight back to the water. It was no longer blue, but colored in deep hues of red, orange and violet. The sun had begun to set. She heard some rustling and looked down besides her to find him struggling to take something out of a bulge that she hadn't noticed before in his left pant pocket.

Kennedy sent him a quizzical look but he signaled for her to wait. Finally, when his hand managed to extricate whatever it was that he had stuck in there, she watched as out emerged a yellow Twinkie, still in its wrapper. The poor thing had been squashed to an inch of its cream filled life.

He tried to open it by taking hold of both sides of the clear wrapper with the tips of his index finger and thumb. It fell out of his grasp and bounced off of a slight piece that stood out jaggedly from the rock. She almost laughed, so much effort to save the thing only to have it splatter on the sharp stone surface.

Damien recovered his golden sweet, his cheeks turning a light shade of pink as she looked on, marveling at the enormous contradiction between what he was and how he acted. That bashful, awkward guy was a part of him that she hadn't gotten to see before, a way more vulnerable one than what she was used to and one that she liked a lot.

"Close your eyes." He said, finally looking up at her. She was a little confused to say the least, but obeyed.

With her eyes closed, she worked hard to focus her sense of hearing and figure out what he was up to. She heard more rustling, then it was muffled by the sounds of the waves crashing on the boulder down below.

The wind whistled by her ears so loudly that she failed to make out the rest of the noises that he made before he gently commanded her to open her eyes.

Her eyelids lifted to reveal his cupped hands in front of her face, the beaten Twinkie held safely within their grasp. What appeared to be a toothpick was stuck out of it, it's top end aflame. How it stayed lit up with all that wind blowing around was a mystery.

He looked at her expectantly as she studied the cradled sweet closely and felt a little stupid when she finally understood its meaning.

He was improvising. They were celebrating her birthday. She fought back the urge to cry for the hundredth time that day.

### 9. Tie Your Mother Down

"Make a wish." She looked dumbly between the makeshift candle and him as he waited for her to do as he said.

"But, you didn't sing, everybody knows it doesn't work without the song." She tried to hide a smile at the thought of him singing for her. She was sure that he wouldn't do it.

Kennedy hadn't met many demon-human hybrids in her life, but she knew that no matter how much he claimed to like her, Damien would never lower himself to sing that goofy song for any human.

"Happybirthdaytoyouhappybirthdaytoyouhappybirthdaydearkennedyhappybirthdaytoyou." Okay, so she knew squat.

It was hurried and muttered in one toneless breath, but he did sing for her.

"There, now go ahead and make your wish so that I may go jump into the murky depths of the raging ocean in humiliation." She still couldn't believe that he had sung for her.

She lowered her head towards her crushed birthday cake and briefly closed her eyes as she blew out the flame, making her wish silently in her head.

She wished for her dad to come home and for their lives to go back to the way that they were before all that mess with the demons began. Okay, so it was actually two wishes in one. She just hoped that fate felt a little charitable that day.

"Do I dare ask what it is that you wished for?" He asked mirthfully as he split the yellow cake in half and handed her the biggest one. She ate it gleefully and he did the same.

"Nope, your beguiling charm won't help you out this time, Mr. Leoni." Had she really just said that, and with her mouth full? She swallowed.

Oh, she wished that the rock would crack open and let the ocean take her away. But, dammit, she had already spent her one birthday wish.

"You wished for a more extensive vocabulary?" He didn't seem bothered by her retarded attempt at flirting.

"You're right. Oh, poo. Now I'm talking like you!"

"You should be so lucky."

"Oh, shut up." Yeah, Kennedy should learn to take her own advice and shut up herself from time to time.

"Hey, it is flattering to be found beguiling. Although, I do have to ask, do you even know the meaning of the word?"

"As well as you know the meaning of shutting up."

"I see." That last comment was followed by silence, no doubt as a way for him to prove his point, which Kennedy didn't see much of.

Something that she did see a lot of was the ocean. It spread to the far reaches of her eyesight and beyond making her think, yet again, about her probable untimely demise. She couldn't help herself, ever since she had arrived at the beach she had been filled with a dense feeling of dread. It was as if something fatal was about to happen and it was all out of her hands because she didn't even know what it was.

A sigh sounded to her side and she turned to witness as Damien pulled yet another thing out of his pocket.

"Wow! Are those bottomless like Bernie's magical toy bag?" She asked and signaled to his pocket after a fit of mortifying giggles.

He made a face, but didn't reply.

The sun was halfway down to its nightly resting place, but there was enough light left for her to see well as he gave her the bundle of burgundy colored cloth that he had in his hand. She took it and her sense of touch let her know that he had given her some kind of hard metal thing that felt a lot like a knife wrapped inside the cloth.

The cold feeling of dread that she had been fruitlessly trying to fight off for the better part of the evening came back. She slowly unwrapped the thing with a very tremulous hand that she stupidly hoped he didn't notice.

When the final piece of folded cloth gave way, it revealed a shiny blade attached to an intricately designed handle shaped like a dragon holding a red jewel between its claws.

She was amazed and close to panic, but it did look very cool. Hurriedly and messily, she folded the cloth back around the dagger.

"This is a knife, you gave me a knife." Her tone was flat, but the fact that her statement was more of a question was not lost on Damien.

"The proper term is Athame – he corrected and continued – and the stone at its hilt is infused with my blood as well as my power. It is for your protection. I was going to give it to you anyway, but it is fairly fitting as an impromptu birthday present." He shrugged.

"You gave me a knife." She repeated. Her words reflected the incredulity that she felt inside.

"Yes, but it is such a pretty knife." He couldn't think of a better way to explain it at the moment.

"What if the one coming after me is stronger than you are?" She asked seriously.

He had some power, she had seen him order that bald brute around, but he had also made it clear that there were those that could order him around and the sole idea of that was enough to freak her out all over again.

"Then we pray." For all the good that it would do them.

"Well, there's a comforting picture." She heaved a weary sigh.

"I do not know what happened between your mother and you, but you should not let it drive you apart, especially now that your father is missing." Kennedy looked up incredulously at that. She couldn't believe that he had just gone there.

That's right, he didn't know! She screamed in her head.

"Wow, that was a drastic change of subject." Sarcasm dripped from her every word and informed him of everything she held back from saying.

"I can tell that you are angry– "

"Understatement." She interrupted rudely.

"My mother was a wonderful woman." He said then, a soft tone taking hold of his voice. Kennedy was stunned into silence. He'd never spoken about his past like that. He had never spoken about his past at all.

"She used to bake me cakes to celebrate all kinds of occasions. From birthday's and baseball victories to a silly high mark on a school assignment. She was human, as you may have figured."

Kennedy nodded and he went on to tell her how Amelia – that had been his mother's name – had raised him all by herself as a single mother in old fashioned nineteen forties Romania, where such a thing was greatly frowned upon. Even more so at that time.

In spite of his unlikely origins, he had been well accepted within the lower class society that his mother had surrounded herself with after his birth.

He told her about how she left her skin working at a rope factory during the week and as a waitress on the weekends just so that he could have everything that she thought he deserved and about all of the times that she would sit and talk with him until he fell asleep even if she was almost dead on her feet herself.

Then he told her what he could remember about how she died the night of his thirteenth birthday. He had been awakened suddenly by his bedroom door slamming shut and sat up in bed to see a terrified Amelia leaning against it.

She was spilling what appeared to be the kitchen's salt on the wooden floor. He called out to her and wondered if he was dreaming it all when she gasped and threw open the door, running out into the living room.

His eyes misted over, but no tears fell. Kennedy wondered if his tears had already been spent after so many years of grieving. She wanted so much to comfort him. Her hands ached to touch his, to let him know that she was there. But, she was afraid that one touch would be too much, that it would shatter his composure and make him retreat back into himself. So she sat still and let him go on with his story.

Damien confided in her that he had been very scared and confused as he sat there waiting for his mother to return. Then he heard it, the unmistakable sound of malicious male laughter followed by his mother's choked scream. His mother's cry made him run to her aid.

When he had gotten to her, it had been too late.

Amelia lay on the floor with her neck twisted at an odd angle and an athame sticking out of her chest. Her beautiful brown eyes were open, unblinking. The dark shape of a man loomed over her with his back to him and his hand on the hilt of the murder weapon.

Fury rose in him unlike anything he had ever felt before. A wave of something hot and cold rushed through him, starting at the pit of his stomach and spreading to the palms of his hands.

Then he felt it, it was like a dam had burst open and suddenly he was screaming, tackling the man that dared to hurt his mother. The force behind his impact was such that both of them went flying over the living room couch and landed on the floor on the other side.

Blinded by his rage, he failed to identify the energy blasts coming out of his hands as they were practically harmless to his opponent. A man that, he would later learn, was his half brother from his father's side and that looked dumbfounded at him as if he were some creature from outer space.

He heard somebody shout to the man. He hadn't even noticed that there had been other people in the room. The man that he knew then as Dante grabbed him by the neck with one hand and lifted him effortlessly from the ground. His legs flailed at the air underneath them and his pride screamed at his futile attempt to avenge his mother.

They had wanted to have him killed too, but the man that had shouted, Buer, his now mentor, convinced them not to. He said that Damien had showed promise and that he would take it upon himself to train him properly.

Dante dropped him harshly and Damien wasted no time. He threw out another energy ball. His effort was for naught, because the object of his fury had disappeared from the room, leaving the attack to land on the wall.

He felt all the air rush out of his lungs as something hit him in the back of the head and made him see black.

He woke up at Eden Manor, Buer's mansion in England, after tha. Thus began his second life as a half demon lackey to the Lillake Brethren. It was one of the many demonic brethrens that formed the Great Circle of the Fallen Covenant and Damien was sworn to serve them, always bidding his time until he could finally exact his revenge.

Kennedy felt the warm path of a tear run down her face. It was quickly followed by another. She didn't move to wipe them away. If he for some reason couldn't cry for the tragic loss of his mother, then she would do it for him.

She sniffled, it was an absentminded reflect. He looked at her then. Damien saw her tear stained face and was lost to the world.

She cried for him, for his pain.

That was something that no one, save his deceased mother, had ever done. He saw as his hand moved by its own traitorous will to wipe away a stray tear that made its way down her cheek.

"I'm sorry." She whispered sadly.

Damien came back to reality, he finally understandood what Buer had meant the many times that he had warned him about being carried away by his human emotions.

"There is no need, it all happened long before you were born." He said in a bitter tone as he removed his hand from her face none the gentler.

It hurt her to see that he would react that way to a few kind words. She wanted to be in his arms so badly that she felt the need to run away, jump into the water or just do anything else to stop herself from pushing him too far.

"It's different with my mother." She said just as bitterly as he had. He shifted, moving a little farther away from her on the rock. The skin of her arms broke out in goosebumps. She felt cold.

It was dark now and the little flying bugs that pinched harder than mosquitoes began nipping at her legs. She doubted that they added those in the informational brochures that they gave out to the unsuspecting tourits when they arrived on the island. She swatted them away with one hand.

"Even so – Damien followed her conversational path – she is your mother and you should be spending your horrible birthday being comforted by her with a real cake instead of sitting here getting brilliantly crafted knives from me." There was the brave mask again.

"I thought you said it was an athame." She tried to be funny, more for his benefit than her own. His unfeeling act made her understand that the Damien that she knew was just a filtered version of the real man that hid behind those stormy blue eyes.

"Whatever." A version filtered thinner by the second.

"Well, look who's catching up on his slang!" She played along, hoping to find another way to get closer to him.

"I can be vulgar when I want to be." She didn't doubt it.

"Don't, I've gotten kind of fond of your proper way of speaking and my world has been shaken enough for one day." What she really meant to say was that she had gotten fond of him and she wasn't prepared to have that taken away just yet.

"What about your big bald colleague?" She asked, seeing as he was in a sharing mood.

"Tyler is my shadow, that is what we call the possessed humans that work for us." Damien explained. Perfect, because using humans as slaves was way better than doing the dirty work themselves. The whole thing still felt a little unreal to her.

"Kennedy, go home and make up with your mother or at least call her and let her know that you are safe. She sounded pretty upset when you left." On any different occasion she would've been angered or hurt by his insistence for her to leave, but this time she knew that it was really because he wanted her to get along with her mother.

She reached into her own pockets looking for her phone to call her mother. She did it to appease him, rather than to make up. Both of her hands came out holding nothing but lint. She must have left it on the night stand besides her bed.

"Can I use your phone? I left mine at home." She asked.

"No."

"But–"

"It would be better if you did it in person." It looked like she was going home after all.

The ride back took less time that she had expected. Damien pulled the Charger to a stop on his driveway and left her to walk the few remaining feet to her own house.

The door to the car creaked loudly as he got out. She grasped the handle of her own door, but stopped herself from opening it as she saw him go around the car to get it for her.

How could he not expect her to develop fluffy feelings for him when he kept doing stuff like that?

"I will be right here if you need me." He told her as he moved to the side when she rose from the passenger seat.

For all his gentlemanly ways, he did seem a bit skittish around her ever since that awkward moment after he'd confided in her at the beach. Kennedy cursed her tears. They wouldn't come out when she needed them and they would spill over for no apparent reason at the worst possible moments.

An epiphany struck her, she was such a girl! Who knew? There may have been hope for her yet.

"Thank you for the – she said as she held up her burgundy clad athame into his line of vision – and the birthday cake was pretty awesome too." He chuckled slightly.

"Good night, Miss Riser." He was always the first one to say good night.

There was nothing wrong with saying good night. Only that when Damien said it, it sounded too much like a good bye. Like if every time that he said good night to her he wasn't sure if it would be the last.

"Night." She replied as she battled with her feet. They appeared to be cemented onto his driveway and she had to force them to start moving towards her house, where her mother was probably up waiting for her.

It must have been pretty late, everything was so peaceful and quiet that it bordered on eerie. But, she was used to everything going quiet whenever Damien was around.

"Go on." The half demon in question urged her, nodding with his head in the general direction of her house.

"Yeah." She chuckled nervously as she took a step backwards, before ineptly waving at him and practically power walking the rest of the way.

"I'm home!" She called out as she opened the front door to her house and looked around wearily.

Kennedy half expected to find her mother camped out on the sofa waiting for her. Teresa's car was parked in the driveway, but every light in the place was off. Taking a tentative step inside without closing the door, she tried the light switch on the wall besides it and flicked it twice. Nothing happened. The power must have been out.

She looked back and saw that there were a few houses on the block still had their lights on. Had their economic situation really reached a level so low that it would end on their electricity service being suspended? Even the lamp post in front of their house was working.

"Mama?" She received no reply.

She thought of going back to Damien's, but that would only make things worse. Teresa must have been sleeping and even if Kennedy was pissed at her, she still felt bad about disrespecting her mother's rules.

A senseless notion, considering how many of them she had been bending over backwards lately. Nevertheless, she closed the door behind herself. The click as it shut was quickly followed by the loud sound of glass breaking. It came from inside Steven's study.

A knot formed in her stomach and her knees turned to jelly at the noise. She was starting to abhor that room. If she went in then and everything was okay, she was definitely talking Teresa into closing it off for good.

The house was pretty dark, but she could still distinguish a few shadows and shapes. Besides, she knew the way around her own house by heart.

When she got to it and reached for the handle, she noticed that the door to Steven's hideout had been left ajar. Swallowing big, she pushed the door open and went into the room. She didn't make it far.

As soon as she'd taken two steps inside, she slipped in some kind of puddle

Her knees were the first thing to to touch the ground after her athame fell with a clang. It was quickly followed by both of her hands, palms down, bracing her against the hard surface. A sharp pain traveled through her knees to the small of her back, it hurt, but she tried to get up.

The gooey substance that she had slipped on made a funny squishy noise as she stood. It smelled kind of funky too, but she couldn't make out what it was in the dark. Kennedy cursed her stupidity at rushing thoughtlessly out of the house without her phone. If she had the damned thing she would've at least been able to shine a little light on whatever it was.

'Eureka!' She thought as she remembered the battery operated push lights that her mom had saved in one of the kitchen drawers for such an occasion.

She went to get one and came back to stand in front of the despised room's open door. Counting to three, including the odd two and a half number, she closed her eyes and pushed the center of the round light thingy.

The light that glowed from the contraption that she held made her eyelids seem red. She held her free hand up to her face and slowly opened her eyes. Red was still all she saw, but that shade was a deeper, almost burgundy color. Realization hit hard as she identified the coppery smell that filled her nostrils.

Blood, it was blood.

Breathless, she looked down and saw a pale hand laying limply on the floor. Horror-struck, she followed the hand down it's arm and found the body of her mother attached to it.

There was blood everywhere, the sticky substance that she had slipped on was her mother's life force. It pooled on the floor, undoubtedly from some horrible fatal wound that she was thankful that she wasn't able to see.

Her head moved with robotic pause as she scanned the area for something, anything that would give a reason to what was happening. For once, no clouds of black smoke could be spotted anywhere.

She wanted to scream. But, when her mouth opened, no sound came out. Her mother's eyes were closed and it was difficult to tell if Teresa was breathing from where Kennedy stood.

She flashed back to the night when she had found Brandi's corpse behind the dumpster and knew that the only sure way she would have of knowing if her mother was in fact dead was to go over and check her pulse.

Her legs felt as if they were lined with lead as she slowly stepped around her mother's body and tried to get close to it without standing on the blood. She looked down at herself and realized the idiocy of her actions. Her hands and legs were already covered in it.

She walked decisively towards where Teresa lay and knelt besides her body. She placed the push-light on the floor and her hand trembled uncontrollably as she reached out to touch two fingers to the side of her mother's maimed neck that, she could now see, was the source of the flowing blood. She pressed down and waited.

Nothing happened.

Her shaky breath was the only sound that could be heard then.

The faint glint of something caught her eye as she retracted her bloodied hand. She looked down to see a small section of a silver chain hanging from her mother's closed fist, inside the hand that was clutched tightly to her chest.

Acting on impulse, she pulled on it and was a little stupefied to find that it was a silver key. A very fancy key that looked like an ancient heirloom, one that she had never seen before. It dripped blood. She looked down and finally saw that Teresa was dead.

Her mother was dead!

Her mother was dead and she couldn't even find it in her to scream or cry. It felt like the oxygen that she tried to draw in didn't make it to her lungs. Still, not a single tear declared its presence. How could she not cry when her mother lay lifeless just a few inches in front of her?

She was a terrible, terrible person.

Not knowing what else to do, she dropped back to a sitting position on the bloodstained floor.

Anyone else would have surely called the police, the paramedics or something. Any other person would have called for help.

Kennedy just sat there. Her eyes fixed on the crimson pool beneath her feet. Talk about crappy birthdays and that one definitely got the cake.

### 10. For a Pessimist, I'm Very Optimistic

Damien felt like a stalker.

He had gone in and taken his usual perch at the big windowsill in his dining room. He used to do this almost every night since he moved into that house. But, he was doing it under orders before.

Now it was different, wether he wanted to admit it or not, everything had changed.

He had found an ally. His first real friend in over half a century since he came into his demonic heritage. Sure, he didn't act like it to her. The truth was that he just didn't know how to be one. Even more so when his new friend came with an expiration date. With her being a frail human that could drop dead at any minute and all.

The gist of the matter was that he was no longer posing as a spy for the Brethren. Granted, he still spied, it was just that now he didn't know why.

Whatever he saw, he had decided not to forward it to the Brethren. However, they still needed to believe that he was their lapdog so that he could get his shot at revenge.

He wondered idly how the Riser girl fit into any of that. Trust him to make a mess of something as simple as an observe and report job.

Looking out the window from his spot behind the green colored courtains, he noticed that things were too quiet at the Riser's. It had been nearly an hour since Kennedy had gone in and still no light was turned on and no yelling could be heard.

He had grown accustomed to not even having to make an effort to listen in on their conversations, given that every one that they had during that past week had been a very loud argument.

He found himself wishing that he had asked his new friend for her cell phone number so that he'd have it to dial right then, a thought that led him directly to his next conundrum.

Before agreeing to take on that stupid job, he had been living in comfortable terms with his anonimity. He had even come to depend on it, somewhat like a safety blanket.

Nowadays though, he often found himself wondering longingly what his life would have been like had he never known of the darker side of his bloodline. He'd probably be a very old and very wrinkled man with maybe a grandchild or two to his name.

He mused about how great his life would be like if all he had to worry about was taking his high blood pressure pills and eating enough fiber. But, there he was, enjoying his extremely fullfilling existence full of pointless staring and babysitting shadows.

Speaking of which, he remembered that Tyler – the shadow that he had been saddled with in that job – wasn't being very compliant to his comands, rather than someone else's.

He was most likely planted as a spy on him or as a means of mockery, no doubt appointed by Dante himself. Come to think of it, he hadn't seen or heard from Mr. Cueball since he'd dismissed him the previous night. What could his contemptuous little minion be up to?

The gears in his brain clicked.

All of the lights in the neighboring house were out. Everything was a little too quiet for his liking and he hadn't seen or heard anything from the Brethren's appointed minion ever since he himself had ordered him to leave Kennedy's house and wait for him at his own place.

Damien cursed loudly. How dense could a person get in such a short period of time?

If he hadn't been so preoccupied with thoughts of Kennedy learning of his true nature, he would have stopped to think what the dissapearance of the disobedient shadow meant for him, for them.

He imediately faded out with a growl. His destination, the Riser home. Damien just hoped that he didn't get there too late.

He faded in right before the front door, in case that he was just being paranoid and Kennedy had gone straight to bed. His hand roamed the wall, searching for the light switch that he knew was there somewhere.

"Aha!" He whispered triumphantly as he found it and flicked it up then down again.

His victory was shortlived as nothing happened, even after he repeated the motion two more times. He dropped his hand. Someone had cut the power and he had a very good idea as to whom.

He strained to hear something in the silence. The low sounds of a femenine voice huming a tune like some sort of nursery rhyme reached his ears. It came from inside the same room where he had talked to Kennedy, her father's study. He walked over to it.

The singing grew louder as he got closer to the room, the words became clearer, it was Kennedy's voice. But, it held a darkness that he had never heard in it before. Damien went in.

What he found in that room made his blood run cold.

He wasn't as old or experienced as most of the other demons that held active positions within the Circle similar to his own. Yet, he had expected that after a fair amount of years of witnessing carnage after carnage, not to mention having been the bringer of it once or twice himself, he would have been less affronted by the bloody sight that greeted his eyes.

Kennedy sat in a shallow pool of blood. Her body rocked back and forth with her knees hugged tightly to her chest as she hummed to herself while she stared at her mother's dead form without blinking.

Up until that moment, Damien could have sworn that no heart beat in his chest, that every single warm feeling that he had once harbored had been drowned by the ever growing darkness that settled inside of him.

However, although he was filled with the sudden urge to kill and maim something, it wasn't for the reasons he would have expected.

Kennedy was in shock, but when the time came and she awoke from that state of numbness, she would be utterly destroyed. Damien felt the need to spare her those dark feelings.

He warred inwardly against the strong and irrational desire to storm out and blow away every single person that had ever hurt her. It made absolutely no sense to him. He needed to keep a cool head if he was to protect her from those he served. Letting himself be torn between wanting to rip someone's head off and taking her somewhere safe wouldn't help.

Reaching some sort of stalemate with his battling emotions, he moved towards Kennedy, who appeared oblivious to his presence. He picked her up, not really caring if he got blood all over himself as he did, and faded back to his house.

He didn't breathe until they were safe within the religious surroundings of Mr. Nieves' old home. He faded into the master bedroom's bathroom. Which, believe it or not, was also themed with crosses as a creepy pattern on the tiles.

The stunned Kennedy that he still held craddled in his arms kept humming her woeful song. He looked down at her blood drenched clothes to make sure that none of it was her own. Then, he set her down gently on the closed toilet seat and grabbed her face between both of his hands.

He touched his forehead to hers.

"I am here." He told her without knowing why.

He just needed her to know that she wasn't there alone, that he knew what she was going through. The singing stopped but there was no other indication as to her mental status other than her sudden silence. He began to truly worry when her eyes didn't respond to his closeness as they usually did.

Damien let go of her face and stepped away slowly. He started the shower and graduated the water's temperature, moving mechanically as he regarded her through the corner of his eye. He abselty mused about that being what being possesed felt like. Going through the motions, seeing yourself doing things that you would not have done otherwise and being unable to stop yourself.

Would she start screaming or bawling any time soon like most other humans that he had known throughout his long years?

He had seen grown men break down over less. Not Kennedy though, she just sat there staring at the pictures depicting the Passion of the Christ that where painted onto the tiles on the wall opposite of her.

He knew that she loved her mother, thus he came to the conlcusion that she was either extremely well adjusted or very deep in shock. He sat on the latter theory until proven otherwise.

When he decided that the water temperature was just right, he turned to look at her completely and mentally called Dante every ugly and offending word that he could think of for ever sending him on that damned job.

He then thought about who would have helped Kennedy if he wasn't the one there. She probably would have not even made it alive that long.

He felt guilty for ever thinking that, then wretched for being able to feel guilt in the first place and then guilty again for not wanting to feel guilty.

He would have most likely gone insane if he weren't certifiable already. Just another day in the pathetic life of Damien – the bastard demon hybrid – Leoni.

Catatonic Kennedy's eyes wouldn't leave the spot that they had fixed themselves onto, not even when he shook her softly. Taking in her still form, he was certain of one thing, the blood needed to come off.

Weary about her possible reactions and confused out of his mind by a set of bodily reactions of his own, he gently took her from where she sat.

Demons, or rather nephilims in his case, were certainly not celibate. In fact, their whole existence was plotted in the begining to ensure the survival of the species. In the crudest form, they had been originally intended merely as breeders to keep the fallen watcher's bloodlines alive.

As the centuries went by, the nephilim proved their place within their family's heirarchy and are as of today considered almost as powerful, in station and abilities as their forefathers. Almost, being the operative word.

Damien himself, much to Buer's dissapointment, had never been romantically involved with anyone. Not for lack of trying. There had been a girl, one of his classmates back when he was still ignorant of everything else. But, they had barely gotten past the hand holding phase when the crap hit the fan and he was taken from his home.

Even then, a few years after his training, he had tried to make a go of dating. Fortunately for him and them, no one stuck. Or more like, he never stuck on anyone. He had thought that he just wasn't very comitted to trying at first. But, that was before he realized that whatever part of him that had been able to love once had died in that living room alongside his mother.

So he got into that shower with Kennedy.

All of their clothes were still in place and he willed his body to stay quiet as he genlty manouvered her under the spray to wash away the already dried up blood that covered her arms and most of her legs.

It was when he was getting a stuborn clot that stuck to the skin a little ways above one of her knees that his traitorous body began to speak.

Damien looked up horrified, checking to see if she hadn't noticed. Kennedy's eyes were closed as the water fell on her face and cascaded down her neck to the rest of her body. Her head rested against the tiled wall.

His gut tightened, looking up was not the best thing he could have done.

"Damn it." He hissed under his breath before he caught himself.

The last thing that he wanted to do was to alert her to his state. He had never been more thankful for anyone's shock as he was at that moment. The girl had just lost her mother and she trusted him, only God knows why, to help her through that.

Shame on him. He needed that water to be ice cold.

Kicking himself mentally one last time, he put his thoughts on check and tried to get some kind of reaction out of his grieving friend. Whom he had just mentally sullied. He needed to get out of there, fast.

"Kennedy?" He called out to her.

His voice, louder than he had intended, echoed within the walls of the small bathroom. It did the trick. She slowly opened up her eyes and looked at him as if waking from a dream.

"Hey." She whispered.

"Hey there, you went away for a while – he whispered back – I was not sure if I would be getting you back any time soon."

"Sorry, I didn't mean to bail on you like that." She spoke calmly, too calmly.

"Do you remember what happened?" He had seen cases where people developed some kind of selective amnesia after a very traumatic event not unlike what she had just been through.

He truly wished that wasn't her case. He really didn't want to be the one to tell her that her mother was dead. The answer to his whispered question was affirmative. However, she didn't speak that time. She just nodded.

He knew that her calm words were just a front. He hated that she felt like she had to pretend to be brave with him, but it was better that way. It was necesary for what he was about to ask her.

"Did you see anything, or anyone?" He asked softly and she shook her head. Nothing, as he had expected, but he already knew.

He was convinced, that Tyler had reported to the Brethren and that they had comisioned the kill. The alarming part was that he had no idea what the shadow had to say and what was worse, they hadn't contacted him yet.

That could only mean that his subordinate had managed to drag his name into whatever web that he was spinning for the Circle, no doubt under Dante's command. He shook his head as well and tried to shake off the uneasiness that had settled over him.

"It is fine." He lied. Nothing was fine, not a single thing. She knew it too, but she nodded anyway.

"I need to go take a closer look at – his voice faded – will you be allright by yourself? It will only be a few minutes." Another nod from her.

"Right, then, I will leave you to finish off in here. My bedroom is right outside.You can put on whatever you want when you get out." With that, he faded from the shower. Not missing Kennedy's gasp of surprise as he went.

Back in Steven's study, Damien materialized with a squishing noise. He wasn't sure if it was the blood that covered the floor or the water that dripped from him. He probably should have changed first before going there. Whatever he did, he had to do it fast.

Now that Kennedy wasn't around, he could focus more clearly on his surroundings.

Teresa's body was gone. There were traces of sulfur evident in the air. The foul smell of it reached his nose, confirming what he already knew. A shadow had been there as recently.

The girl had been lucky not to have been there. That brash attack meant that she, just as her deceased mother, had been tagged a liability. She would be the next in line to be killed and if he so much as got in their way, he would finally give them the reason that they had so desperately been waiting for and mark him for destruction as well.

Somehow, he found that he truly didn't care. No harm would come to her while he breathed. He picked up and pocketed the athame he had given her that very afternoon and faded up to her bedroom where he packed a few random articles of clothing and got her cellular phone from her nightstand before fading back to his house once more.

He faded into his living room figuring that Kennedy would still be in his room cleaning up. The image that greeted him would forever be impressed in his mind.

The girl – no, the woman, definitely a woman – was sitting on his sofa, clad in a pair of red plaid boxer shorts and a single white tee shirt that left barely anything to the imagination and jumpstarted the workings of his own dirty imagination. Oblivious to his presence, she played with an old key attached to a silver chain.

He shook his head, his mind's eye fixed on the very cold shower that awaited him upstairs.

The movement startled her and she looked up at him expectantly. Her cheeks went pink nearly instantly. He dropped the bag that had been dangling from his hand and walked out of the room.

"Where are you going?" She called after him.

"Shower." Was the only thing that he said. He went upstairs.

Damien came down dressed in some dark jeans, a black tee shirt and his boots. He was ready for the road, but Kennedy was not where he had left her.

He found her in the kitchen making a sandwich out of two chocolate chip cookies and half a slice of american cheese. She smiled at him and took a bite.

He looked on with a disgusted expression but she continued to eat her snack as if it was the most delicious thing in the world. Sure, everybody ate chocolate with cheese. Maybe the events of the day had finally unhinged her.

Kennedy had changed out of his clothes and into her own while he showered. She donned a very colorful combination of an extremely pink tank top with flowers on the front and green polkadot pajama bottoms. She glowed like a neon sign.

"What?" She asked self-conciously as she picked up another one of the little sandwiches that she had lined on top of the counter.

"Nothing, that looks tasty." He said in the usual sarcastic tone he had come to reserve just for her.

"I'm hungry! That piece of Twinkie you gave me earlier was the first and only thing I ate today." She popped yet another bite of cookie sandwich into her mouth.

As nasty as the bizarre food combination appeared, he realized that he was getting a tad hungry himself. But, there wasn't a moment to waste. It was a matter of time until whoever the Brethren had sent decided to make their move and Damien didn't want to be caught off guard again.

"Get whatever you want from the pantry and put it in your bag." He told her as he steeled his body against its need to feed. It wasn't like he would die from going a day or two without meals. He was half immortal, that had to count for something.

"We're leaving?" Kennedy stopped eating.

"Yes."

"What about my mom?" She asked helpessly.

"The body is gone." He hoped that she wouldn't break on him now.

"Is she–" The hope in her bright eyes physically hurt him.

"They took it." He informed her warily. Her eyes darted around, they misted over and settled on the floor.

"Right." Was all that she said, he saw it as his chance.

"We are heading out." They had to get out of there while there was still time.

### 11. Near Life Experience

The door creaked ominously as it opened slowly. It gave them access to the darkened room that led into the rackety old house.

Damien had wanted to head out as soon as possible, giving Kennedy hardly any time to put some shoes on before he dragged her out the door and practically shoved her into the Charger. She was still excruciatingly hungry, but at least she had managed to get the rest of the cookies and a bag of chips into her backpack to eat when they reached their destination.

Once they were on the road Damien had asked her if she had a place that she could hide where no one would think to look for her. She almost yelled his head off for dragging her out in the middle of the night without even so much as the beginings of a plan.

"It's either this or certain death." He'd said. Effectively shutting her up. It was hard to argue with his logic when he put it that way.

"What's happening?" She had asked, not sure that she wanted to know the answer.

He told her that he was convinced that Tyler, the possessed great bear of a man that worked for him had probably reported back to the Brethren, those were the people that he used to work for before he decided to help her, and now those same people had ordered her family's death. He still wasn't sure as to why.

It was a lot to take in all at once, but Kennedy's hard drive was already on hibernation mode. She just stored information to be analyzed when it decided to start working again.

So far all she had was: People, bad. Damien, pretty.

According to her saviour, they had to go into hiding. But, his definition if hiding sounded like complete exile to her. She wasn't allowed to talk to anybody. Not any strangers, not her only living grandmother in Spain and most definitely not Lauren until he figured out their next move.

"They have the darkest powers of hell at their disposal. Anything or anyone can be used against you." Damien explained.

Then she remembered, her late grandparents – well, Steven's parents – had left her a house. She was supposed to come into it when she turned twenty one. It had been unlived for a few years now and no one but Steven and Teresa had known about it besides her. She doubted that Lauren would even remember that the place existed.

No one would think to look for her there. She told Damien and directed him towards the place. It was about three counties away. A ninety minutes drive through the mountains that he cut by half in his monster car even after he drove around a little to make sure that they weren't being followed.

Kennedy had to practically scrape herself from the passenger seat when they finally made it there.

Everything seemed so different to her. Possibly because the house had been abandoned for over five years. There was no electricity and one of the windows was broken, leaving the old house partially open to the uncaring world outside.

She stepped on something that crunched loudly under her weight as she went in. Damien entered right behind her. Kennedy kicked the thing that she had grinded around a little trying to see what it was.

All that she could make out was a dark shape on the ground, right next to another similar dark shape and that one, in turn, was next to another. The entire floor appeared to be covered with them.

They had gone in through the kitchen entrance, Kennedy had wanted to. Even back on the days where she was just a kid, she had always gone in and out that side of the house, always ignoring the front entrance that lead into the living room. It was a stupid thing to remember, but as she walked further into the crumbling structure all that she could think about was how she used to love to sit on the edge of that doorway for hours to watch her abuelita work on her vegetable garden.

Both of her grandparents were dead now. Misery and death seemed to follow her wherever she went. She wondered idly if they had died on her birthday too, it all seemed so long ago. She was begining to think that she was cursed.

As her eyes adjusted, she noticed that the dark shapes were in fact decomposing leaves that had undoubtedly been blown in through the broken window of the dining room. The putrid smell of decay overwhelmed her nose. She rubbed it and held back a sneeze.

Behind her, Damien stepped into a water puddle that she had somehow missed, splashing her legs with the murky water. Two days ago she would've been grossed out by it, two days ago she would've complained, but two days ago Steven had been her father and Teresa had been alive.

Kennedy didn't feel like the same girl that she had been those couple of days ago. She didn't know what else to feel but numbness. Heaven forbid, she didn't want to feel anything at all right then.

She was thankful for the cover of darkness, Kennedy doubted that she would like to know what the neglected place looked like in the daylight. She would see it tomorrow. Right then, the only thing that she wanted was to eat some more cookies and lie down.

She heard Damien shuffle loudly through the dry leaves. Stealth didn't seem to be his strong suit. How he'd made it all those years as a spy for that Brethren thing he'd tried explaining baffled her. Kennedy watched as Damien pressed a key on his cellphone to light his way around the abandoned house.

"There's an app for that, you know?" She told him.

"Excuse me?"

"An application – she said as a matter of fact – for your phone to work as a flashlight." She was met with the constant reply for almost every comment that she made lately, his raised eyebrows.

The light from his cell reflected off his face as he kept pressing it. Kennedy imagined that most people would find that creepy. Instead, she found the way that his features were partially iluminated by the soft bluish glow to be incredibly alluring.

The way that the light bounced off the already cobalt iris of one of his eyes made it seem as if it glittered, it made him look ethereal. Unnatural, yet unequivocally human at the same time.

It was that very contradiction what fueled Kennedy's need to trust him with her life. Because she had to believe that someone that could make her feel so safe in the midst of what had happened, someone that could make her think in poetry like he did, couldn't really be all that bad.

The most tomboyish snort left her.

"Oh, never mind, just give me that." She walked over to where he stood and took the phone from his hand before he could give it to her. "I know where I'm going."

What was wrong with him? How could he not see how his closeness affected her? Was he really that dense or was he playing dumb for some reason? Maybe he didn't feel the same. What would a hot guy with superpowers see in plain, raggedy Kennedy?

The answer was obvious to her. Nothing, he saw nothing.

That was why her closeness didn't seem to affect him at all. She grudgingly pressed one of the small buttons on the side of his phone. The screen lit up and she led their way through the cluttered kitched area and down the hall towards her old room.

She was conflicted. She didn't like being on the run, but she didn't want to go back either. Her home had never felt like home to her. She'd always thought that her family belonged somwehere else, like if they were out of place in their quaint little suburban town.

She had never been fond of her quiet misfit life back in Villa Chica, but the horrific way that it had all been ripped away made the hole in her chest ache for the dull familiarity that came with it. At least she would find something familiar there too, she loved her old room at her grandparent's house.

That, she couldn't wait to see. Her grandmother had given her free reign of the room and at eleven years old, Kennedy had gone all out. Her room in that house was Teresa's worst nightmare.

There were _My Chemical Romance_ posters, complete with their usual array of blood and skulls, everywhere. They had always been her favorite band. Their songs had practically saved her life more times that she could remember. Her high school years were a pretty dark period in her life.

She went into the room. It couldn't be seen in the dark, but mostly every single piece of furniture or fabric in there was colored in assorted shades of purple, gray and black.

Her favorite thing though had always been the bookcases that lined the entire wall besides the window with a big upholstered windowseat that she would spend countless hours reading or making up scary stories about monsters and ghouls on. Stories that always got her into trouble at school and therefore, with her mother as well.

Steven never seemed to mind it at all, he had been proud of his little storyteller. That was before she realized that that kind of attitude would only just make things worse for her, so she gradually left bits and pieces of herself behind as she grew.

But, not there, she could always come back and find herself in that room. It was no wonder that when she had tried to think of somewhere that she would feel safe, that house had been the first thing that came to mind. She never realized that she had missed it so much.

She threw her bag on the bed and hoped that there weren't any roaches on it as she followed it closely by herself. It was better that way. What she didn't know wouldn't hurt her. If she couldn't see what she was lying on, maybe she could actually sleep for a change. She would deal with everything else in the morning.

"Welcome to casa de la Kennedy, my window seat is your window seat." She said when she heard Damien come in. She returned his phone and laid on her back with her arms behind her head.

She thought that maybe he would have night vision or something, but no such luck. The only actually out of the ordinary thing that she had ever seen him do – other than his super speech abilities – was disappear into thin air. Which was extremely cool by itself, but was nothing compared to all the things that she'd seen demons do in comics and films.

"Nice, very avant-garde. I like what you did with the leaves, it is likely that you will never have to clean again." He said in a fake english accent that Kennedy didn't think was fake at all.

"I know, I was going for the more grimmy and natural down to earth approach." She replied as if she were being interviewed.

"Trust me, you have achieved it successfully." They both laughed.

Did she unknowingly suffer from a bipolar disorder or something? She had been on the verge of a breakdown a few minutes ago and now she was laughing and making jokes as if nothing was wrong. But, she guessed that if they were going to have to stay there, then the least that she could do was to try and make the best of it.

"I could stay outside if you preffered." He said, a little more serious.

"Would you mind if I asked you not to? I kind of hate being alone." She replied.

"I gathered as much." He made his way to the cushioned windowseat and moved a few of the throw pillows around before taking his place on it. They were silent for a while before Damien's low chuckle echoed in the room.

"What's so funny, dummy?" She couldn't help but ask and then giggle at the little rhyme. He thought for a moment and then answered her.

"If I make it out of this alive, I swear that I am buying a house with windowsills that are not more than an inch wide." She grunted in reply, the humor of the situation clearly lost on her.

Morning came and was greeted by a bleary eyed Kennedy. She had tried and tried restlessly, but she just couldn't find it in her to fall asleep with Damien lying only a couple of feet from where she was.

In the silence of the room, all that she could hear was his rythmic breathing. From her position, she could make out the alluring shape of his outline iluminated by the slivers of moonlight that sneaked in through the musty windowpane.

It made Kennedy overly self-aware. She could actually feel her body's response to his every move from those few feet away. Damien, on the other hand, didn't seem to be affected by her presence at all.

He had gotten up very early and announced that he was heading into the little town that they had passed on the way there for a food and supplies run.

She didn't even bother to ask if she could go too. His macho tone as he enunciated the word, "I", when he said it left no room for argument. She was to stay there and enjoy her exile while it lasted.

That was totally peachy if you asked her, peachy f-ing keen.

Kennedy busied herself with picking up leaves and tidying up the bathroom and kitchen. She got some water from the old well that stood besides the house to do it while Damien was away.

It was only a couple of hours, but she was so ravenous by the time he'd made it back that she had even considered, if only for like ten seconds, sneaking into the neighboring farm and going all Hannibal Lecter on poor old Mrs. Pérez and maybe her husband too.

He found her giggling evily as she plotted her coupe while she sat on one of the kitchen stools.

Damien's edible bounty consisted of a few cans of pre-cooked pasta, some bottled water and two protein bars. He also brought a couple of flashlights and some batteries, but either way, she wanted to throtle him.

All day – okay, two hours – waiting for him to bring home the bacon and all that he showed up with were three cans of canned spaghetti that he expected her to eat cold?

Where was the soda, where was the beef jerky, where were the damned sweets?

Maybe she was wrong, maybe he had been trying to slowly kill her after all. She should have made him take her along. All the if's and maybe's didn't change the fact that Kennedy ended up eating her disgustingly cold meal.

"I don't run on batteries, Mister." Kennedy planned on talking Damien's ear off about the necessity of elevated quantities of grease and refined sugars as a part of her nutritious daily diet after having to eat the same thing for dinner too.

"I'm a growing girl and canned pasta isn't a sufficient source of energy for me."

"Here – he offered his fork – go stick this into that power outlet over there. Maybe there will be some remnant charge flowing through the wires that will provide all the energy that you need to shut up."

"Someone's in a crappy mood." She sang, balancing on the stool that she sat on. "You mean to electrocute me?"

"If only." He muttered as he hid a smile.

He was playing with her!

Kennedy threw a balled napkin at him, it missed his head by nearly two feet. He looked at the small ball of paper that lay on the floor and back at her with a raised eyebrow.

It was time to face the facts, her aim sucked.

"See? I'm so weak that I can't even throw a napkin!"

"Look, if I promise to get you some chocolate the next time that I go out, would you stop talking about it?"

"Yes."

"I will do it, but right now let us just go to bed, okay?" He placed his plate in the sink and walked to her windowseat.

"Fine." Kennedy followed suit and actually managed to catch some Z's before she was startled out of sleep by an acute sense of uneasiness that she couldn't shake off.

She layed in bed for a while before she finally gave up and got up. Damien remained oblivious to the world.

"Some bodyguard." She muttered to herself as she went by him. In reality, she was relieved that at least one of them could sleep.

She went out of the bedroom with a flashlight in hand and made her way down the hall to the backroom where she'd been a few times to watch her grandfather create the most beautiful things out of old pieces of wood to sell in his shop.

She'd been admiring the details carved into a forgotten table clock when a great thud followed by the sound of slpintering wood cracked loudly throughout the hall. It came from the direction of the living room. She nearly jumped out of her skin in reaction.

Kennedy's first instinct was to hightail it out of there. Then, she remembered that Damien was still asleep in the first room down the hall.

She made a move to go to him, then stopped to think that Damien could probably take care of himself. But, her conscience would never let her be if she left him like that. Besides, she would most likely be killed in the first thirty seconds that she was out there on her own.

Another thud resounded. It brought her out of her stupor.

She dropped her flashlight on the floor and ran towards her old room. Damien rushed out before she made it there. Their eyes met for a second in the darkness before he was intercepted by a huge shadowy form.

The big shadow threw Damien up against the wall and turned its sole attention onto the pretrified Kennedy. It moved in her direction, making wierd shirping noises as it went. She thought that she could recognize the shape. But, it was impossible, wasn't it?

The thing looked like an enormous bug, a praying mantis to be precise. The floor shook with every step that it took.

Kennedy stood with her feet glued to the floor. She fought against the need to go and see if Damien was okay as well as the urge to turn and escape through the back entrance of the house.

The creature took another step forward and she settled between a strange mixture of the two.

"Damien!" She called out to him as she ran in the opposite direction. As if on cue, the man in question jumped on the gigantic insect's back. Some kind of glowing knife materialized out of nowhere into his hand and he used it to he chop the thing's head off.

The body landed on the floor with a sickening sound and the head rolled to a stop right against Kennedy's feet. She had ceased her retreat and stared in awe at her rediscovered hero. She would never think poorly of his supernatural abilities again.

Kennedy heaved a big sigh of relief just as the recently decapitated head snapped at her bare feet. She let out a high-pitched scream as she jumped on the head in reaction and squashed the stinking ick out of it until its beady eyes popped off.

When she was sure that all of the remnants of the severed head were splattered beyond recognition, Kennedy surged forward, going by Damien who was busy cutting up the rest of the creature's still moving body into a million tiny pieces and headed outside at a dead run.

She stopped only when she had reached the old well. Her mission, to wash all of the sticky gore off her person. She didn't care if anyone else saw her or if her actions made Damien think that she was weak.

She had beend almost eaten alive by an overgrown insect from hell and she was entitled to a little girlishness. So what if she didn't like the feeling of warm sticky demon goo clinging to her skin? Sue her.

Damien gathered all of the parts of the demonic bug that he could find and wrapped it up inside the living room's carpet. He took it outside to be cremated in a rusty garbage can that he found on the front lawn.

"To prevent it from reconstituting." He said, as if the thing wouldn't stay dead after you squeezed it's head to the point of becoming bug juice.

As of that moment, Kennedy hated anything that had to do with bugs. The sloppy thing had forever marred what was most likely the only good memory that she had left of her childhood.

What she would definitely never forget was the sick feeling of the thing's brains giving way under her pounding bare feet or the disgustingly horrible smell of it as it burned inside its corroded funeral pyre.

Obviously, they had to leave as soon as Damien made sure that the thing really caught fire, as if the smell wasn't a dead giveaway. Undoubtedly, somebody in one of the neighboring farms would notice the smoke or the smell strong enough to induce a nosebleed and call the authorities.

"Let's go." He closed the door on the driver's side of the Charger and waited for her to get in. Kennedy just stood there and stared at the smelly bonfire.

"We're heading out, Riser." He repeated with authority, letting her know that it wasn't open to discussion.

"Here we go again." She sighed, not even paying attention to his recent change in speech and sent one last longing look at what was supposed to be her old life.

Kennedy got into Damien's car and didn't really care where the hell they went that time.

### 12. Communication Breakdown

"How are we doing back there?" Damien looked through the rearview mirror at Kennedy as he drove.

"Are you kidding me? I am never looking at bugs the same way again." She answered in a very sarcastic, yet truthful way from a half sitting position resting her back against the right armrest in the rear section of the car.

They had been driving around for over two hours and those were the first words that she had spoken to him since before they had left her grandparents house. He wondered if it was because of something that he might have done.

The stupidity behind that notion didn't escape him and neither did the irony in the act of him setting such great importance on one mortal girl's opinion of him. But, he did and he was sure that that would be the very cause of his undoing if he didn't put a stop to it soon.

He was haunted by the memories of Buer's lectures as he told him of his father's weakness when it came to the subject of human beings. He'd put a lot of weight on their opinions, held them in a much higher esteem than he had done his own race and in the end it was that same mistake what had cost him his life and indirectly Amelia's as well.

Damien had vowed early on that he would never let himself be swayed by his human instincts, that he would be a better demon than his father had ever been. But, ignoring his emotions had never proven to be an easy task and it had become even more difficult after meeting the girl who currently sulked in the back seat of his car.

If Azazel could see him now he would probably laugh his head off at his unknown son's expense and Damien wouldn't blame him, he would poke fun at himself too if the situation weren't so bloody pathetic.

He sneaked another glance at his passenger and saw her put her cell phone to her ear. Anger filled him, he had warned her about cutting off communication with anyone. Something in the deep set frown of her expression kept him from saying anything.

His instincts were right. She ended the call a little too violently and muttered something about a freaking archer before she threw her phone at the back of his seat, it bounced and ricocheted towards the floor of the car where it stayed for the rest of their journey.

"What about an archer?" Damien braced himself in case that he were in danger of getting smacked by a blunt object as well.

She grumbled to herself and went silent after that. Just when he thought that she would rather not talk, she spoke in a small voice that reminded him a lot of a scared child. He looked at her again through the mirror.

"Steven won't answer his phone – she looked down at her hands – I've left him messages, even about what happened the other night, but he never calls back."

"Kennedy–"

"I know you told me not to call anybody, but – she sighed dejectedly – it doesn't matter anyway. All I ever get is that stupid message to call the archer. You'd think he'd at least give you the forwarding number." She was clearly annoyed.

"What do you mean, the archer, is that all that it says?"

"Yeah, it's a new message. If it's an emergency, call the archer. He changed it after he went to meet with that James Archer guy the day he disappeared."

"James Archer, from the Golden Archer?" He asked and gave a whistle. "So that's where your father has been hiding at."

"You mean Steven, he's not my father, you know."

"Come again?" Having snooped on almost every one of her yelled conversations with her mother, he already knew about it. He just wasn't prepared to admit the extent of his treachery to her just yet.

"Teresa told me on my birthday, Steven isn't my real dad." There was a brief pause where Damien considered what he could say to that.

"Do you know who is? Your biological father, that is."

"No, I walked out on her before I could get the whole steamy story." Her jaded tone warned him against pushing the subject.

"I see." He understood why she had been so angry with her mother.

Kennedy said nothing more after that and Damien respected her silence. He tuned the car's stereo on to a local station instead. He wouldn't burden her with unwanted conversation. Her mother had died before she could make things right and she probably related her father's absence to their lack of actual blood relation.

He figured that at the present time, she thought little of what it meant for them to be on the run. But, now that he knew with certainty where Steven was, the entire game plan changed.

Steven was a hunter, and a very experienced one at that, so he had never expected him to be hiding in the most obvious place that he knew that people would look for him if he disappeared.

Locating the Golden Archer would help Kennedy get to her father, Damien still considered him that, and it would also help with finding protection against the Brethren's minions in the process. Talk about killing two birds with one stone. But, finding that place might be more difficult than it sounded.

The Golden Archer was a hunter's based sanctuary that offered shelter and safe passage to all supernatural beings and humans alike. It was a neutral place on witch empowered grounds that were guarded by a powerful spell that kept anyone that harbored ill will to any of its occupants from entering.

It was easy to find someone that claimed to know of its existence. The real problem would be to find one that had actually been there. That left him with only a name and nothing else.

"Where are we going?" Kennedy questioned.

"To the mountains, to find the Golden Archer." He figured that she should at least be aware of the basics before she was dragged deeper into that mess.

"Do you know how to get there?" She exclaimed hopefully.

"No, but I'm sure that I can find someone that does." He lied, for her sake. He would tell her, just not right then.

Damien took them into a small village-like settlement at the foot of Briton Peak on the east side of the island. He parked outside a bar called _Vermögen_ , it was an ideal place to find a source of information of a certain type. At least, that's what he remembered that Nathanael – Buer's son – had told him.

"Wait here for me – he said in a very comanding tone that she didn't appreciate – I mean it, Riser."

"Yes, master." She ground out.

"Don't call me that." He nearly groweld in reply.

"Whatever." She rolled her eyes at him as he got out and closed the Charger's door. It was obvious that she wasn't happy at being left behind in the car, but he would risk her anger if it meant ensuring her safety.

He felt the weight of the place's protective spell settle on his shoulders as soon as he entered the building. Having expected a neutral bar such as that one to be under the vigilance of witches, he thought nothing of it and walked further in.

Damien's eyes scanned the entire area for possible threats before heading to the bar that stood to the right. He sat on a bar stool and continued to look around.

There were four men playing cards in one of the tables on the opposite side of the room. A couple swayed slowly in the darkened dancefloor at the back. He noted that there was an exit door on the far left, in case he might need to use it later.

Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. He turned around and signaled for the bartender to come over.

"What will it be?" The young man behind the counter asked in clear English with a smile while throwing the white rag he'd been using to clean the bar over one of his shoulders. The rancid smell of pineapple attacked his senses and Damien was glad that he never drank.

"I'm looking for Andy – he gave the name that Nathanael had given him – I understand that he is the go to guy around these parts."

"Really?" The man said, his voice too skeptical for his liking.

"Is he here or not?" Damien let out through gritted teeth. His hand twitched on the counter's surface itching to wipe off the smug smile from the moron's face.

"Yes, Andy's in, let me get him for you." He watched as the bartender dropped the rag on top of some glasses and walked away.

He disappeared into a door that Damien hadn't noticed before on the right back corner. Nathanael had said that place was usually crowded by witches, demons, shadows and bored hunters looking for some game.

Had he gone into the wrong bar? Maybe it was a slow night. Then again, he doubted that there were too many places with a German name on that island. He was about to go after the snipy bartender when he saw the man in question returning with a red headed woman by his side.

"What can I do for you, Mr. Anghelescu?" She addressed him in a low but sensual rasp that carried a strong german accent.

The alarm bells in his mind blared, complete with flashing lights that pushed him into action. His eyes darted around, prepared to ward off an iminent attack. Who was she and how did she know to call him that? He hadn't gone by that surname since before he had been taken by the Brethren.

Damien cased the distance that sepparated the other men from where he stood, meassuring how long he would have to dispose of her and the kid before the others where upon him.

"Please, no violence, Nephilim. The charm will expell you before you land your first blow."

"You know what I am?" He asked carefully.

"I know many things, Lion." Indeed, the woman seemed to know too much for her own good. She had a mystical air about her. She must have been a seer.

"Then you know why I am here." He stated blandly.

"Yes, but I'm afraid that I can't help you without breaching the Covenant, I'm terribly sorry." She didn't look nearly as sorry as she said that she was.

"To hell with the Covenant, this is a matter of life and death." He didn't care about their pretend peace treaty. The anger at her quick refusal rang in his voice.

"So impatient – she said in a mournful tone – it always is with you Children of Lilith."

"I hold no relation to that abominable creature." He growled as she clucked her tongue and waved a hand in dismisal. "So you will not help me?" He finished.

"I will, but not in the way that you want."

"Then you are of no use to me." He began to leave.

"Be that as it may, know that you're on the correct path to fulfilling your destiny." She said ominously at his retreating form.

"What is that supposed to mean?" He turned back at her pedictable attempt at regaining his attention.

"It means, that you are your father's son and that you need to remember that blood is thicker than water." Like he'd thought, predictable, but efficient.

"Would you stop speaking in riddles, Woman?" He scoffed at her vage prediction.

"Lady Scmidt, my name is Andrea Schmidt, but you may call me Andy if you like." Damien looked at the kid who had gone back to bartending as they talked. That was why the guy had been so rude before, when Buer's son had given him the woman's nickname, he had naturally assumed that it belonged to a man.

"Take the girl and leave, Lion, before you're made by the wrong person here."

"Thank you for nothing." Damien's words were spiteful and although it felt petty, he believed that it was rightly so.

"See you tomorrow." He heard her say as he walked away.

He found Kennedy asleep in the back seat of his car. She had bunched up both of their bags and was using them as improvised pillows.

Vermögen was a dead end, instead of finding the answers that he'd been looking for, he had walked out of there with a whole new set of questions to which he saw no stopping any time soon.

He drove them to a motel back at the start of town where the word Windmill flared in bright yellow letters on top of a red vacancy sign. The parking lot was nearly empty so he took a spot close to the office's door and went in, leaving the slumbering Kennedy behind again. He found the front desk to be empty too.

"Figures." He grumbled, before ringing the rusty silver bell on top of the counter.

A mousy man with a pointy nose and beady eyes came out of the backroom. He wore a wool jacket over a striped button up shirt that looked like it was on the run from a clothe's iron. On the jacket, he had a pin that read, "My name is, Rey."

" _Sí?_ " Rey spoke, flashing a crooked row of yellowing teeth and a mouth full of what Damien hoped was chewing gum.

" _¿Habla Inglés?_ " Damien asked in Spanish, wishing that the man could talk with his mouth closed, yet knowing that it would be an impossible feat unless the man practiced ventriloquy as a hobby.

"What can I do you for?" The ratty man said again with a local accent, giving him a moldy smile that would have made a normal person shudder in disgust.

"I would like a room for the night." He told him and handed over a hundred dollar bill, it would keep the guy from asking too many questions. He needed to hurry, Kennedy could wake at any second and find herself alone in the car again.

"Two twins or a queen?" The grossly absurd man asked with another nauseating grin after holding the bill up to the light to make sure that it was real.

"Two twins." Rey turned to the wall lined with about sixty small keychains and took down the one with the number 18 engraved on it.

"Here you go." He handed it to Damien without asking for any additional information.

"Thank you." He took the key and held up a hand before the clerk could give him the change. "Keep it."

"Have an excellent night, Sir and call me if you need anything, anything at all!" The old clerk cried excitedly, judging by the vacant parking lot, Damien had probably made his night.

He'd almost turned back to sleep on the car when he saw the floral wallpaper that lined the room and the dusty heart shaped cushions that adorned both beds. Damien finally understood why no one besides them was staying at that place.

He carried Kennedy into the room and tucked her into one of the beds, not even receiving a nod in reaction from the girl. She was dead to the world. He didn't blame her, her entire life had been turned upside down in a matter of days.

Damien hadn't the slightest idea or had ever witnessed any indication that revealed if God cared enough about his existence to listen to his prayers. Either way, he sent one up as he lay on the twin bed next to Kennedy's. There must have been someone out there who gave a damn or else they wouldn't still be alive.

Plus, he thanked him for at least having a decent bed to sleep in for once. Only, he didn't sleep at all. In the silence of the room, his body became concious of her every movement. Reacting every time that she drew in or let out a breath. He refused to accept the obvious and got out of bed.

He walked to the round table besides the room's door and sat on one of the two small chairs. It was only two in the morning and he spent the remainder of the night browsing through his phone's internet, searching for some kind of lead that could at least hint in the direction of the Golden Archer.

He thought of maybe going to the bar again that night, but after the soldier demon's attack, it was obvious that it was no longer safe for them to stay in one place for too long. That, and he didn't want to give the seer the satisfaction of being right about him going back there.

There weren't that many options left. It wasn't safe for him to fade. His energy would leave a trail behind and make it easier for them to be followed. He needed to talk to Buer to find out exactly what was going on, the problem was that there was no way to contact him without others finding out.

He found an old sticky note pad and a slight splinter of wood that was supposed to pass for a pencil and left Kennedy a note stuck to the lamp on the nightstand telling her to stay put, order anything from the menu if she got hungry and to go find Andy at Vermögen if he wasn't back by sunset.

He got in the Charger and drove around. Almost no shop in town was open for business yet. Damien stopped at the first pay phone that he saw. He was midly surprised to actually find one in working order since they were fast becoming an extinct breed.

He walked into the aluminum carcass of its booth and pressed the cero key. When the operator answered, he gave her the numbers to his rechargable debit card and Nathanael's emergency number and waited for the call to go through.

They had established a refference point that either of them could reach and have their call forwarded safely to the other in case instances such as the present one ever arose. He left a message in code that he thought that Nathanael could decipher quickly, hung up before a minute went by and waited again.

One.

Two.

Three.

Four.

Five minutes went by.

Finally, the phone rang alerting him to what he expected would be the answer to his message. He picked it up and held it to his ear.

"St. Nicholas Church. Graveyard. South of town." Nathanael's voice came out from the ear piece.

Damien hung up and went to meet Nathanael at the graveyard that the message indicated. It was still early morning and the weather was so cold at that altitude that the place was still full of dispersing fog. It made it hard to make out Nathanael's form in the gothic array of gravestones and statues. But, he managed to spot the man's unruly mane of wavy chocolate hair as he walked deeper into the yard.

"Nathan." He greeted the other man as he got closer and shook his head at the guy's depressing choice of attire.

He was all decked in black, trenchcoat included, as was the Circle's customary approach to undercover missions. If asked, Damien would say that they should try thinking of other more inconspicuous ways to blend in with the rest of the human population. But, only if they truly wanted to go unnoticed.

"Damien." The nephilim acknowledged him as they went into the nearest mausoleum to talk.

"What in the nine circles of hell is going on, Nathan?" Damien asked outright. There was no need for pretenses between them.

Nathanael Eden was Buer's eldest and Damien's friend. If you could call it that. He only realized it after meeting Kennedy and getting to call her his friend. He was the closest thing that he had to a brother, his own blond counterpart notwithstanding.

He had always been around his training years at the manor and served regularly as his sparring partner of choice. They often bantered playfully, but whenever it was time to stand up for Damien, he was always present at his side, no matter what any member of the Brethren had to say about it.

Nathan didn't have a life mate of his own. Being nephilim, his lack of one was not questioned as long as he agreed to breed with the females of their race. Which he did, often, or more like he engaged in the practice of it.

"Your shadow – brief pause at Damien's growl – he barged in during one of our sessions and demanded to be heard." Damien wasn't surprised. He nodded at Nathan to continue.

"He said that Riser had made direct contact with his daughter and that you were so preoccupied with romancing the girl that you had lost your handle on things."

"And Buer believed that?"

"It doesn't matter if he believed it or not, Damien. You know how these things work." He was right. If Buer had turned a deaf ear to Tyler's allegations simply because Damien was his pupil, it would have made him look weak.

"Father did the only thing that he could do, he motioned for a vote." Nathan made a you know face. Indeed he knew, nothing good ever came from those.

"A hit was ordered on the Risers and a captured alive warrant for you."

So, he was to be brought in before the Circle's elders for judgement? He doubted that they only wanted to question him. Buer still held some power over the meetings, but Damien was sure that even the son of the Elder wouldn't be able stop them when they decided to execute him.

"I see, then it won't be long before Dante can sway them all to accept Lilith's ideals with his cunning use of twisted reasoning." Nathan shook his head at Damien's words.

"I can assure you that Dante is not involved in this." That was by far the one thing that Damien found extremely hard to believe. He pinned Nathan with an incredulous look. He of all people should know of the bad blood between his half brother and him.

"It's true, Damien. Tyler must be working directly with Lilith on this one." He took advantage of Damien's angry silence to make his point.

"Look, your animosity towards him aside, it was Dante who pushed for a motion of safe passage for you through the Circle's meeting grounds, father only seconded it." Damien trusted Nathan enough to know that his friend believed what he was saying.

It didn't change the fact that he might have been misled by Dante's acting skills.

"All the same, what I really need from you right now is the location of the Golden Archer." He saw that there would be no changing Nathan's mind at that moment, so he decided to go ahead and ask what he had gone there to ask. There had been enough talk of Dante for one day.

"What for?" Damien's answering silence made it clear that he wasn't going to say anything more than that. "Okay, be like that. After all the trouble I went through to sneak out of the manor and come see you."

"There's a lot more at stake here than just your fading privileges, Nathan."

"Fine then, but you know that the whole brooding and mysterious thing only works on girls, right?" Damien rolled his eyes at him. He didn't have time for jokes.

"I'll go to Reconnaissance and try to see what I can find." At last, something sensible came out of the nephilim's mouth.

"Thank you."

"Don't thank me yet, just be at Vermögen tonight. I'll send word for you there." Perfect.

Damien wanted to strangle him. He understood the need for secrecy and intrigue but he just hated the idea that he had to prove the damned seer right after all.

It was dark when Damien got back to the motel. The meeting with Nathan had taken longer than he'd expected. He was already anticipating Kennedy's tantrum and decided that he wouldn't try to escape it. She had every right to fume and vent her frustrations and he would let her. Mostly, because he was the cause behind many of them.

If someone had told him a couple of days ago that he would have been wary about facing a scrawny teenage girl, he would have punched them in the face.

Now, he just braced himself before going into the room where said fuming girl awaited.

Her shouts of, "Finally! I have been going crazy trapped in this cheap ass motel room all day long!", and, "Are you like my jailer now?", greeted him as soon as he walked through the door.

Damien was grateful for having the right mind to refuel the Charger and buy her a few candy bars and some soda before heading back or he probably would have been vanquished by an eighteen year old human girl on chocolate withdrawal. Then, where would they be?

Her angry tirade didn't last long. As soon as she saw the cocolate that he held in his hand, she smiled greatly and changed her tune.

"You can't always buy me with candy and soda pops, you know?" She mumbled and instantly contradicted her own words by taking the chocolate bar and opening the wrapper.

"Sure I can and when that stops working there will always be popcorn, cookies, cotton candy–" He trailed off at her murderous look. He used to be so cold, uncaring.

If Buer saw him now he would probably have an aneurism.

That did it! Kennedy wasn't the boss of him and he definitely wasn't a schoolboy for her to reprimand.

"Look, there was something that needed to be done and it was best if you stayed." He ran a hand through his midnight hair. She made him feel so old and young at the same time, it was exhausting.

"What, do I cramp your evil style?" She squared her arms in front of herself and shot him a fiery look. It dared him to assent.

"Okay, I am going to pretend for a minute that I understand half of the things that come out of your mouth and say that, no, it was not that." He moved to sit at the edge of the bed as he talked. "It was just safer for you that way."

"Please, don't do that too." Her eyes softened. "Don't keep me in the dark with my safety as an excuse. It doesn't work and I'll be better prepared to deal with things when I actually know what's going on."

"All right then, sit down." He patted the spot next to him. She complied without a fuss. "I am telling you what I know. But, you have to promise me something in return."

"What?" She asked looking up at him.

He shifted his gaze to the wall behind her head. She had special eyes, that girl. They were the color of quicksilver and shone like cooled iron every time that she looked at him for longer than it was appropriate. He'd seen eyes like those before, but he never thought that he would see them on a human.

A single look from those eyes and already he was willing to face whatever punishment the Circle held for him. He would never tell her that, it would give her too much power over him.

"That you will do as I say if I ever ask you to stay behind and that you will run if I ever tell you to run, no looking back." She didn't answer, but followed his line of vision to the wall instead.

"Kennedy?" He placed a hand on top of hers to get her attention.

Big mistake.

The places where his skin made contact with hers hummed. It was greater than a static shock and it was clear that she felt it too. Her eyes shot up to his the moment that their hands touched.

"Yeah, okay." She whispered, unconsciously edging a little closer to him.

His body ached. It yelled at him to close the distance between them. She was right there. All he had to do was lean a few inches, but he couldn't.

She was an innocent that he needed to protect and to do anything other than that would only drag her further into that mess. He refused to give her a reason to follow him into the shadows.

So he let go.

They were silent after that. Damien went to stand guard behind the curtains of the big window while she moved about the room picking up everything that she had strewn around during her time cooped up in there.

When it was time to leave for Vermögen, Kennedy insisted on going with him and just because he didn't want to give her another reason to distrust him, he agreed to let her go and filled her up on the way.

Andrea Scmidt had already given word to her bartender, the same snippy kid from the previous night, that she was waiting for them, much to Damien's distaste. They had gone into her office to find her reclined on the big leather chair behind her old fashioned oakwood desk, smoke rose from a lit cigarette clasped between the fingers of one of her expertly manicured hands.

There was animal print fabric everywhere, tapestries, rugs, seat cushions, window treatments and even painted furniture tables. Kennedy felt sorry for the entire jungle of animals that had to die in order to decorate that gaudy space.

"We meet again, Lion." She greeted in her raspy voice and sent him a bright smile outlined in blood red lipstick.

She ignored Kennedy's presence in the room. It made the girl wonder if the woman was plotting to have the man she'd just called Lion added to her endless collection of animal print garbage. Damien bit back the urge to insult her and went straight to the point.

"Have you any messages for me, Seer?" He asked coldly.

"I will never understand why human women fawn all over your kind. You're such cold, insensitive people. But, such is life." She handed him a folded piece of paper.

"Here's your message." Damien practically snatched the note from her outstretched hand and quickly unfolded it.

It read, in very familiar loopy handwriting, " _The trail to the Archer is hidden on the back road that runs through the Cloud Forest_."

"Who gave you this?" He folded the note and stuffed it in his pocket. He already knew the answer and hearing it wouldn't make it any less harder for him to accept.

"Well, your brother, of course." She said, like if the fact that Dante wanted to help him was the most normal thing in the world.

"He said that you shouldn't try to contact any of them anymore until the human was safely within the sanctuary and also something about Eden not being safe at the moment. But, I didn't quite get that last bit, he seemed to be in a hurry."

Outwardly, he was calm and aloof. Inwardly, Damien was reeling. He couldn't see what Dante's angle was.

If what he said was true and Eden Manor wasn't safe anymore, it could mean only one thing, Lilith herself had surfaced. It was a bold move on her part that indicated that she was taking matters into her own hands.

Kennedy, on the other hand, was about to blow a fuse. The Cougar Lady kept looking at Damien through hooded eyes while she talked with her stupid sensual voice. She glanced between Damien's stoic stance and the lady's too calm demeanor and wondered if they were secretly communicating in some way.

"You're looking for enemies where you should be looking for allies, Mr. Anghelescu."

"Stop calling me that, the sad boy that you refer to is dead, I go by Leoni now."

"So you do, but what's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet – she recited theatrically – a name doesn't change who you truly are."

"You quoted Shakespeare at me – he said incredulously, then gestured to Kennedy and himself – we are leaving now." Damien finally turned to look at the neglected Kennedy and was confused when he saw the anger reflected in her gray eyes.

"Leave, so soon? We have yet to know each other." Andy vouched for his attention.

"Yes, leave. Get over yourself, you crock!" Kennedy exploded at last. She instantly regretted the jelous undertone in her words.

"Don't presume to call me names, little girl." The seer appeared to notice her presence for the first time.

"I'm not little, you scamming old hag!" She screamed.

"Kennedy, she is on our side." Damien interceded a little too roughly.

"No she's not! She'll probably tell whoever it is that's behind us where we're headed right after we leave, for the right price." Kennedy disliked feeling that way.

Those emotions were so alien to her that she found it hard to control them. She hated not being able to refrain from making a scene and knew that she was only succeeding in embarrassing herself.

"That's enough, I will not sit here and be insulted in my own place by a childish girl that doesn't even know what she is." The seer interrupted. Her voice was calm despite the ice that laced her words.

"I know who I am." She clenched her jaw as to not let another word come through.

"Really? You'll notice that I said what, not who." Kennedy said nothing.

Andy looked straight into her eyes and whispered, "Witch."

"Screw you." Kennedy growled out and stormed from the office. She went straight to the bar to wait for Damien.

There, she saw some guys with pitch black eyes, all dressed in black clothing, having drinks. The bartender was talking to them and smiling as if it were the most natural thing in the world. She was taken by the all too familiar instinct to run, but she grabbed the edges of the bar stool she had chosen to sit on hard and held on for dear life until Damien came to get her not a minute later.

"Care to tell me what was _that_ in there?" Damien said as he followed her out to the bar.

"Seriously?" She hunched her shoulders in a dismisive action and looked the other way.

"How can you decide to completely insult someone after barely a minute of conversation?" He insisted.

"You mean, the conversation that I wasn't a part of? Well, that was easy peasy, lemon breezy." As if! Didn't he insult her the very first time that they had met?

"Am I supposed to know what that means?"

"It means easy as pie, dumbass." She tried very hard to keep from lashing out, but his insistence didn't make it easy for her.

"I do not know what is worse, your tragic misuse of the english language or the dirty nature of your name-calling."

"Can we just go?" She asked tiredly, finally meeting his eyes. There, he saw what was really wrong and just like with the previous night's sleepless realization, he firmly denied it and shoved it away.

"Very well." He acceeded.

They went out using the back entrance where the car was parked. Damien thought absently of switching cars. His Charger made them all the more noticeable and easier to identify.

He just couldn't find it in himself to be sepparated from his baby. He'd had it for so long. He even had it brought into the island by boat when he temporarily moved there.

Just as they reached the car, the back door of the bar opened behind them and two of the black eyed men that had been sitting at the bar stepped out.

Damien reached into his jacket pocket and took out the dragon athame he had made for Kennedy. He tossed it at her, it slid along the car's rooftop to meet her hand.

"Take it and stay back!" He told her in a comanding tone that sent chills down her spine. The evil pair spared no time at engaging Damien.

He muttered something that sounded like, " _Asmodai_ ", under his breath and the same glowing knife, or athame that she had seen him use to kill the giant cricket materialized in his right hand.

He clutched the dagger tightly and surged forward against one of the men. He made sure to block their way to her as he did so.

Kennedy watched as he feinted right then surprised his opponent with a left hook, successfully sending the man – or shadow, she still had a little of a hard time tying it together – crashing to the ground five feet away, only to turn and do some of the same with the remaining one.

The evil things didn't give up. No matter how many times Damien threw them down, they kept getting back up and going after him. Watching them fight was mesmerizing. Damien's eyes glowed bluer every time that he retracted his arm to send a punch and she could've sworn that she had even seen him smirk when one of the men had managed to land a solid blow on his jaw.

She grasped the car's door handle tightly in excitement as she watched him punch, dodge, swing and kick, never appearing to get tired. It was like watching a coreographed fight sequence in a martial arts blockbuster. She was sure that her mouth must have been hanging open.

Where was her camera phone when she needed it? Oh, right. Somewhere in the back of Damien's car.

Strong heavy arms wrapped around her. A wide chest blocked her movements as she tried to step back. She had been grabbed from behind and was forcefully held in place between her assailant and the Charger's door.

She desperately looked at Damien for aid and saw that he was busy tackling both shadows at the same time. Frightened, she tilted her head back to look at her captor and saw that she was within Tyler's hold.

"Damien!" Brave Kennedy screamed in reaction. It momentarily distracted the battling Damien who subsequently left himself open to one of the shadow's oncoming attacks.

The small window allowed the thing to stab his midsection with an athame of his own. That one not glowing, but looking a lot like Kennedy's.

Damien roared furiously. His eyes turned as black as night. He took out the big knife that stuck out from his gut and threw it angrily on the alley floor. A glowing ball of energy formed in his hand and, at close range, it blew up the offending shadow like it was nothing.

The guts of it showered the alley along with everything in it, including themselves. It was then that Kennedy realized that he had been holding back, making sport of the unlikely villians as he did his best not to kill them.

Could it be that he was actually concerned about the fates of their human hosts?

She tried fruitlessly to defend herself with the athame that Damien had given her, but her opponent was too strong and slapped the weapon out of her hand without the least bit of an effort.

Damien destroyed the other shadow in a blink and turned back to Tyler. He assesed the situation.

He tried to figure out why Kennedy wasn't dead yet. Unless, it was really true what Nathan had said, that he was going over the Brethren's orders and aiming for the bigger fish, Damien himself.

"Release the girl and I will go quietly." He tested his theory and, just as he had suspected, the shadow nodded and gave a grunt in agreement.

"No!" The hostage in question yelled desperately, but he would hear nothing of it.

Her mortal life was more valuable than his own to him. He surrendered his blade, letting it fall to the ground before them instead of dematerializing it to show that he spoke the truth. He waited for Tyler to let go of the girl.

Lost in the the desperate feeling of wanting to survive without him having to offer himself in exchange, Kennedy somehow called Damien's athame to her from the ground.

The thing wooshed through the air to land in her open hand.

It glowed.

She turned back inside the shadow's grasp in a flash and stabbed the perplexed Tyler.

The burly shadow's eyes flashed a fiery orange color before a black trail of smoke erupted from within the vacant ears, nose and mouth. The empty body fell lifeless to the ground while Damien and Kennedy stared dumbly at the glowing athame clasped in her trembling hands.

What had she done?

How had she done it?

She threw the glowing knife at him, wanting to get rid of the dirty feeling in her hands as the stinky powdery substance that Tyler had expelled along with the smoke covered them.

The athame fell to the floor with a loud clanging noise. It stopped glowing and Damien picked it up silently as two more shadows came out of the bar's exit door.

"Get in the car!" He killed them quickly too, they had no time to waste. For once, she did exactly as she was told. Kennedy wiped her hands roughly on her green pajama pants and got in through the driver's side of the Charger.

"Damien!" She called out to him in a panic as she fired up the engine. Vermögen's exit door had opened again and out poured more black eyed men.

Damien was instantly covered by them. Kennedy reved up the engine. She had determined to run over the black eyed bastards or die trying when a bright flash of light burst from under the pile of wrestling men.

She stared open-mouthed as they were abruptly thrown back in all directions and a scowling Damien came out through the mob. He ran to the car and got in through the passenger's side.

"What are you waiting for? Go!" He yelled as he closed the door.

She snapped into action and backed the hell up out of that alley, screeching tires and everything like in a bad action movie. Kennedy directed the car into the night at a dead run and left the unconsious shadows behind.

"Are you okay?" She asked worriedly when she remembered that he had been stabbed before the whole thing got really ugly.

"I'll live." He answered blithely as his eyes went back to their original blue color. She looked on as he lifted the front end of his bloddied shirt to gauge the gash that marred the lower part of his abdomen.

"Head to the Cloud Forest down route ninety three." He told her while exherting himself by trying to conceal his power so that they wouldn't be followed. The car went over a pot hole and Damien hissed out in pain.

She didn't care what he said, he was clearly injured.

The pain was unmatched by his anger. He was furious with himself for being so careless. He'd been so worried about Kennedy that he had been completely blinsided by the shadow as it attacked from behind him. And for what? The seer had been right about her. She hadn't even needed him to save her life.

Why would she keep something like that from him? Stupid mistakes like those, were the cause for the downfall of even the most powerful of beings. He would heal in a few hours, but that was just because he'd merely been lucky, that time.

### 13. Road to Nowhere

"Well they certainly weren't kidding when they called it the Cloud Forest." Kennedy muttered to herself as she drove.

Damien was leaning back on the reclined passenger seat listening to the low sounds of music coming from the cell phone on his lap. The color was finally coming back to his face.

She understood that he was injured, but what did he think she was, a human GPS? How was she supposed to find the stupid way out of that back road when she could barely see a foot in front of the headlights?

She knew that she was on the right path to the Cloud Forest, if the dense fog was any indication. It grew thicker every mile that she went deeper into the thinning stretch of rising road. She prayed for the absence of any oncoming traffic because that would be the end of it and all their running and fighting would have been for nothing.

She'd been driving for hours but the combination of dense trees and mist left her wondering if it was still night or if it was morning already.

"There, look at that!" Damien sat up so quickly that his hand flew to hold his stomach in reaction. She was so busy trying to stay awake that she had almost missed the small detour onto a dirt path that was marked by a medium sized wooden sign with he black shape of a man down on one knee holding an outstretched bow and arrow at it's center.

An archer.

Kennedy hit the breaks, the tires slid a little on the moist asphalt. She made the left turn.

"Do you really think this is it?" She asked after a while.

"Either that or that was a sign indicating open season for hunting back there." Damien's attempt at being the comic relief was too forced but Kennedy knew how truly worried he must have been. It showed in his ever present frown.

The fog began to fade gradually as they went further in. The dusty shortcut lead them to a dead end formed by a semi circle of tall leafy trees with a small abandoned cabin in the middle of the seemingly forgotten place. There appeared to be nothing else around, no other way out save for the way through which they had come.

"Maybe we should stop here for a little while before we go back." Kennedy was extremely hungry and Damien's wound needed to be tended. Maybe the people that had previously been there had left something that would be of use for her to treat the gash in his stomach behind.

Kennedy slowed the Charger to a stop before the frail looking shack and killed the engine. She was about to place her right foot on the very first step of the thing's beat up porch when the front door snapped open.

She jumped back, half expecting Leatherface. A feeble looking old man came out. His long wispy hair bounced around as he shook a wooden stick at them with one of his spindly hands.

" _¿Qué rayos quieren?_ " The man that she thought looked like an old hermit asked gruffly.

Right, because fragile old men who could barely walk often chose to live in crumbling houses at the middle of nowhere.

" _Disculpe, Señor, pero estamos perdidos. ¿Podría decirnos si hay un lugar llamado el Golden Archer por aquí cerca?_ " She asked the man for help.

Who knew? Maybe he could direct them to where they needed to go. He seemed to be considering something before he glanced at Damien sitting in the car and burst out screaming like a lunatic.

" _¡Largo, fuera de aquí chiquillos impertinentes!_ " He shouted at them to leave in his funny squeaky voice before he was cut off by a nasty coughing fit.

That's what he got for yelling at them at the top of his frail, elderly – and by the sounds of it, also ephisemic – little lungs. He was probably a psychotic schizophrenic whose family had dumped there to die because they were tired of dealing with his psychiatric outbursts.

The scrawny old dude recovered from his near death experience and started to wave his walking stick around again like the mad man that he most likely was. It looked like he could hurt himself by doing that more than anyone else that got in his shaky way.

Damien ran out of the Charger and tried his best to disarm him without using brute force. He got smacked over the head with the homemade cane a few times before he managed to take it away from crazy grandpa's grip.

He held it over his head while the guy jumped trying to reach it. It wasn't a fair draw either, forget for a second that the ancient man looked like he had a thousand years on Damien. The latter was still over a foot taller than the poor old guy.

"A little help here, Riser?" Damien called out to her with one hand on the old man's forehead to keep him distanced while the other held the cane over both of them.

"Nah, you're on your own, Lion." She said, emphasizing on the nickname Andy had given him in between laughs. The elderly man stopped struggling.

"Riser? Why didn't ye say so in the first place?" He asked, speaking in english that time.

"Well don't just stand there gaping like idjots, come on in!" He flashed her a toothy grin as he turned and limped back into the crappy little house.

Kennedy looked at Damien and nodded to the side signaling that they should go in after the man. He just gave her a look. Perhaps she was a little crazy after all that had happened, but the guy appeared to be genuinly happy to hear her last name. Besides, Damien could destroy him with a flick of a finger if he tried anything. She raised her shoulders in dismisal.

"Well, I'm going in." Damien was forced to scramble behind her to make sure that nothing happened to the pigheaded girl.

Inside, she was surprised at how cozy the place looked when compared to the uninviting neglect that decorated the outside. She could see the attempt at creating a home out of the tiny living space.

It only had a single average sized room, much like the berth of her mother's living room and everything was meshed together in that one space. It gave way just for a small door on the left hand corner which she figured would be the bathroom.

There was but one lone rocking chair in the house. It looked like it would give at any minute as it stood over a circular woven rug in ascending shades of green that looked more like woven blades of grass than fabric to her.

She stepped closer and realized that what was covering the splintery wooden floorboards, really was grass. There was a chopped piece of tree trunk close to a very old looking furnace that the old man was currently using as a seat as he took out a blackened teapot.

"Tea?" He offered.

"No, I'm good." Kennedy declined the beverage. God knows what he had in there.

He motioned for her to sit on the small cot that lined the only wall with a window in the room and she gratefully accepted. Damien opted to stand by the door.

"He's been injured. Do you have something we can use to stich or cauterize a wound?" She asked the old man as she pointed at her own stomach, signaling where Damien had been hurt.

"I am fine." Damien protested, she was about to refute when he held up the end of his shirt.

"See for yourself." He showed her that it was true. What had once been a deep cut was now a fading red line. It probably wouldn't even leave a mark. "It stopped bleeding a while ago."

Okay, so she already knew that he didn't age. Now she had to add super healing abilities to the ongoing list of reasons for Damien's perfection?

"If ye need to go to the tinkler, it's right through that there door." The old man said directly to her as he pointed a long crooked finger to the small door that she had correctly identified as the bathroom's, assuming that's what a tinkler was.

She pounced on the opportunity to get away from Damien's scrutinizing stares for a while. He'd been looking at her funny ever since the incident with Tyler in the alley. He had gaped at her as if she'd suddenly turned into damned Criss Angel and had just freaked his mind.

It wasn't as if she could actually give him any answers about why that happened. He knew as much as she did. She was a normal human girl with a dead mother and a missing nerdy father. Her grandparents where regular people and so was she. At least, she had always thought that she was.

She wasn't so sure anymore after her unexpected magic trick. She could still hear the echo of the Cougar Lady's words in her mind. She had called her a witch before any of it happened. What if the woman wasn't a crock after all?

Kennedy splashed some water on her face and tried to chase unwanted images of ugly women with black teeth, warts and pointy hats from her brain.

It was working, right up until she heard a hushed slurping noise. A flash of lime caught her eye. She totally forgot her previous thoughts as she turned her head slowly to face the green lizard that stood on the shower pole. It gave her the evil eye.

The creature's slimy tongue darted out and stuck to her forearm.

"Aah!" She ran from the room. Damien blocked the entryway ready to tackle whatever had made her scream.

"There's a _thing_ in there!" She said hurriedly while pointing back into the bathroom. He looked between her and the malevolent gecko. Damien snorted and moved away shaking his head.

"Oh, ye met Cuca!" The old man exclaimed happily, as if meeting the little green monster was the greatest thing.

"You named that thing?" She asked incredulously.

"One day I was walking home from scaring some fool tourists away and Cuca jumped onto me shoulder from up a tree and there ye have it, she lives with me." The man declared proudly as he beamed at her.

"You're insane." Her spine still shuddered in disgust at having been tasted by the lizard.

"So people say, but I like to view meself as an eccentric." He replied in a snit.

"You're not rich enough for that – Kennedy told him, looking around the small house with it's lonely trinkets – trust me, Sir." The man's eyes popped out and for a second she thought that he would attack.

"Excuse me blasted manners! Puck's the name, gate keeping's the trade." He waved a hand energetically as if he were seeing her for the very first time.

"The gate to where?" Damien interjected, having retaken his spot by the door.

"Well, to the Golden Archer, of course!" Puck said as if it were the ultimate obvious thing.

"Wow, so we actually found it. Where is it?" Kennedy was afraid to believe anything anymore until she could see it with her own eyes and even then she wouldn't be sure.

"Aye, ye found the gate, ye just have to follow the rocky trail behind the big oak tree at the back and ye'll find the place. The barrier will let ye in. No work. But, 'tis I that decide who can or can't go through." He answered while looking seriously at her companion instead of her.

"So can we?" She asked, wanting to remind him that she had been the one to ask and not Damien.

"Ye can – he pointed at Kennedy and then moved his arthritic index finger to Damien as he spoke – he can't."

"Why?" Kennedy exclaimed a little to forcefully.

"Ye do know what he is don't ye, Missy?"

"A hero and my friend. He's helped me out a lot!" He'd saved her life.

"What's to say he wasn't helping himself to the location of the place." Puck asked her with great hand gestures.

"No, he's good." That was what she felt in her gut, but her mind told her to think about it. What Puck was saying did make a lot of sense.

No. Just, no.

Damien had only been thinking of her when he'd brought her – or directed her – there. He'd almost died to protect her. How much more proof could she ask for?

"He may be good to you, Miss Riser, but one good deed doesn't make up for a thousand wrong doings." The elderly man said, his voice suddenly stripped of the weird dialect that he'd been using.

"What happened to the nice old man that invited me in for tea?" It was clear that the whole cooky old man act was just that, a clever act that he put up to fool strangers that ventured into that part of the forest.

"Smoke and mirrors." Damien said bitterly. "You can rest easy – he told Puck – I have no intention of going in. I just wanted to see her here safely." He turned around and walked out of the house.

"What are you talking about?" Kennedy jumped and followed him out. She caught up to him before he could reach the car.

He couldn't actually be thinking of walking out on her after all that they had gone through to get there.

"I have to go back and face the Brethren." He confirmed her worst fear, he'd never intended to stay with her.

"But, they're after you too. They tried to kill you!"

"All the more reason, they will be so busy chasing after me that they will forget about you and your father for the time being." He reasoned.

"No, you can't leave me – and she meant it, she would die if he left now, but she covered it for both their sakes – alone in that place." Damien hadn't missed her hesitation.

"I must–" He started to say, but she cut him off.

"No!" She launched herself at him and held on as if she were drowning and he were a lifeline.

She had been adrift ever since Steven had left. Damien was the only thing that had kept her from going under more times that she could count and now he was going to leave her too.

"Let go of me, girl." His voice had gone cold. It was as if her touch disgusted him and she wondered if maybe she had crossed a boundary that she shouldn't have.

He pulled her arms from his waist and she let them fall nimbly at her sides. Kennedy tried hard to think of something, but she didn't know what to say after that. Actions spoke louder than words and his actions had finally told her that he didn't want her to touch him.

"Good bye." His words betrayed nothing of what he felt inside.

Kennedy's whole body shook as she fought against the need to go after him again. Her hands clasped tightly around the silver key that hung from her neck.

Her hero was going away and there was nothing that she could do to stop him.

Damien took one step, then another.

He hesitated for a second before he turned back abruptly to take her face in his hands. He pulled her to him none too gently and kissed her, taking her lips with his own like a man starved.

The kiss was rough at first. It could be the only chance that they had. His hands were everywhere. Every single one of his senses overrode the thoughts of how wrong that was. His brain weighed the long list of reasons he'd made up for not doing it:

\- She was too young, but he would soon be too old for any human woman.

\- He wasn't supposed to want a human that way and still, he had never wanted anyone more than he wanted her.

-They would kill her if they found out, but they wanted to kill her already.

Everything slowed down. His mind went blank as the faint tingling sensation that he'd been experiencing at the begining spread throughout his entire body. It made him shudder.

The intensity of it all was something that he'd never encountered before and those treacherous frenzied hands of his went into little spasms as he tried to settle them somewhere in between the start of her waist and the small of her back.

Damien's lips had been hard on hers, almost bruising. He slowly let the pressure go until they were just touching, waiting for her to make a move. She didn't, so he began to pull back.

She pushed her lips just slightly against his.

Shy. Hesitant. Testing.

All was lost again as he felt her unsure response. He nibbled lightly at her lower lip and felt her body tremble. Surprisingly, it made Kennedy grow confident and she finally gave in. She kissed him back in earnest. A strong current of heat traveled throughout every nerve in his already scorching body.

Her hands sought refuge within the soft strands of his hair at the back of his neck and he marveled at how a simple human girl could do all of that to him with just one kiss. But, Kennedy had already proven that she was anything but ordinary.

For Kennedy, it was a dream.

Damien was probably halfway to hell by then and she was alone in the cloudy mountains making like a fish at the air. She opened one eye to sneak a peek and make sure that she hadn't gone off the deep end and was imagining it all. She wasn't.

It was as real as she was breathless and Damien freaking Leoni had finally kissed her. Her hands pulled on his shirt as she felt him start to break the embrace again. She kissed him with renewed passion.

Kennedy never wanted to let him go. She knew that their sad love story had ended before it ever began.

"I have to go." He murmured between kisses.

She nodded wordlessly, but never ceased her actions. He moved his lips to kiss along the line of her jaw. It made her sigh.

"I will come back for you." He whispered in her ear. She pulled back to look into his eyes, those deep blue eyes that always enraptured her and that now burned a hole into her soul.

"Promise?" Her voice broke as she finished the word.

"I promise." The way that he looked at her made her want to die inside.

He would come back for her if he lived. The coldness of dread at his unknown fate made a permanent home in her stomach after that. She took off the chain that held Teresa's mystery key and placed it in his hand.

"So you'll have another reason to return, because I will definitely be wanting that back." She explained. He gave it back to her.

"Will you put it on for me?" He lowered his head to give her access. Kennedy stood on her tip toes and clasped the chain around his neck. Damien took advantage of the situation by placing one final kiss on her forehead. Her hands grazed his chest as she let go and forced herself to take a step back.

"Go." He told her. It reminded her of what he'd told Puck about wanting to see her safely into the Golden Archer.

"Be safe." She pleaded. He gave an assuring nod.

Kennedy walked towards the big tree as Puck had instructed. She found the stone trail that he'd told her about just after the tree line.

The Charger's door gave it's usual loud creak as it closed. It was followed quickly by the loud roar of its engine coming to life. Kennedy took a deep breath and dared to look back once more, only to see as the black outline of the monster car disappeared in the distance.

Damien was really gone.

### 14. To Live is to Hide

"Crap!" Kennedy yelled out in frustration as she dusted off some dirt from her green pajama pants. She stumbled on a pebble for the sixth time since she had started to climb up the steep hill.

The path was covered with fallen leaves that made it hard for her to spot the sharp rocks that stood out from the ground underneath. Fifteen minutes into the trail that senile Puck had told her about and she still didn't see anything that barely resembled human life.

She thought that she had seen an little green man a while back, but it had turned out to be a mossy tree stump. Kennedy was begining to think that maybe it would have been better if she had asked the looney old man to escort her. Then again, it didn't look like his body could survive the strain. She didn't even know if she could survive the sodden trail. Her lungs burned every time she tried to draw in some air. There was such a dense humidity all around her that she felt like she could hardly breathe. It also made the unleveled ground squishy and slippery, which was not good for her uncoordinated feet.

No work her ass!

Kennedy hummed to herself as she often did when she was nervous. She tried hard not to think about all of the news reports that she had heard along the years about people getting lost in the Cloud Forest.

Tourists would stray from their groups and get lost all the time. The problem was that most of them had never been found and those that had, were found floating face first down stream of the raging river that pushed its way through the middle of the mountain. It was always chalked to alien abductions by the more sensationalist public.

Now that she knew the truth about what went bump in the night, it didn't show a very promising outlook for her. Plus, she was getting hungry and she had to pee. She should have gone to the bathroom back at Puck's, slimy lizard or not.

The aching in her leg muscles lessend and she gratefully noticed that the path seemed to reach a point where it started going forward at a level plain. She finally relaxed a little. Her breath evened out. Walking didn't feel like such an impossible thing anymore.

"Ooh, _guayaba_!" She sppoted an almost ripe guava fruit hanging from a tree at the edge of the trail.

There was a green one closer to her, but she wanted the yellow one that she knew would be sweeter. Her stomach roared at her to take it.

She stood on the tip of her toes and tried to reach it. Her right arm stretched so tight that it nearly popped out of its socket. A satisfying feeling of victory filled her as her fingertips brushed against the rough surface of the fruit. She almost had it. She only needed to lean a little more to the right.

Her feet moved an inch and she slid on her chest. She had slipped on some wet leaves and lost her footing. She panicked as her face met the wet leaves on the ground. They were cold and the weird smelling slime that coated them made them stick to her cheeks in a grossly uncomfortable way.

Her arms flailed blindly, grasping at the first solid thing that they could find. Her hands found something, it was long, rough and kind of brittle and she didn't think twice about closing her fingers around it, whatever it was.

She swung on the thing, her hands kept their painful hold on it as her body continued it's fast descent until the weight of her body encountered the resistance and bounced back up with momentum. Her legs clashed against each other painfully and she was left dangling in the air.

Kennedy waited for her stomach to settle and her heart to go back to its proper place inside her chest cavity instead of its current spot near her feet before she opened her eyes. She looked up to see that she had ended up hanging from a flimsy tree branch on the verge of a very long fall.

The tree had grown sideways on the edge of the mountain. Her limbs went stiff, her stomach plumetted again as she tried to think of how she could reach the edge of the ravine withouth plunging to her death in the savage body of water that awaited below.

The upside? She looked to the right and saw that one of the tree's yellowing fruits hung right besides her head.

Kennedy explored her options.

She could either fight to survive or try to take the fruit by snapping her mouth around to see if she could actually get a bite out of it and probably die trying.

She found herself thinking again about how she should have agreed to the University's offer of early admission instead of deciding to spend the summer with her parents and what a wonderful summer it had been so far. Now she was surely going be turned into another number in the statistics of the people lost in that foggy place.

She was scared that she might fall off completely if she tried to swing her body towards the ground – relatively speaking – that stood in front of her. Maybe she'd have a better chance if she managed to grasp onto one of the tree's sturdier roots.

"Oh, God!" She let out a final prayer as her fingers began to slip off the branch one by one. Her right pinky was the first to go.

The worst of it all was that Damien was currently on his way to play the sacrificial lamb for the Brethren to buy her some time while she was about to die there and all because she had to get the prettiest fruit on the sideways tree.

In one last attempt for survival, she swinged her body forward and managed to secure her grasp on the branch again. But, it seemed that the reaper wanted her badly, because the sudden movement was too much for the weak branch and it broke off with a loud crack.

She shut her eyes tightly and accepted her tragic fate. Perhaps she would meet her mother on the other side.

The air rushed fast by her ringing ears as she fell. Her spine tingled and her skin became hot. It burned in contrast to the cool temperature of the wind that brushed past it. Kennedy waited for the blow as she met the jagged edges of the river's rocks under her.

Then she crashed to the bottom of the– leaves?

She hit the ground on her back with a terrible thud that took out all the oxygen from her lungs. She coughed desperately to regain the breath she had lost.

Was she dead? No, she couldn't be. Everything hurt too much for her to be dead and if she was, then being dead sucked.

She dared to open her eyes and saw that she was lying on the cold wet ground of the stony trail she had been transiting before. Her throat tickled as laughter bubbled up inside her.

Kennedy began laughing like a crazy person. Either she had lost the final screw that held her mind together or the Cougar Lady's words where true and she was a witch.

Whichever way she looked at it, none of it made any logical sense. If she really was a witch, then she should be able to get that damned fruit without having to die while doing it. Her eyes sought out the yellowing guava fruit again and stared it down.

"Come to me fruit." She said in a deep mysterious voice.

Nothing happened. She burst out laughing again. It was official, Kennedy Elizabeth Riser had gone insane. At least she didn't have to pee anymore. No, she hadn't peed on herself. Well, almost.

A cold drop of water landed on the tip of her nose and it was all the warning that she got. The skies opened a second later and poured down all of their blessings on her.

"Great, just great." Maybe death was so pissed off because she hadn't fallen into the river that it was trying to drown her on the not so dry land?

She didn't try to run, it would be useless. Kennedy walked, thinking that she wasn't lost, she was only slightly deterred. She just needed to find her way to that stupid gate, that was all.

She began to hum to herself again. The tune turned into full blown singing when she'd realized what it was.

"She'll be coming 'round the mountain when she comes, she'll be coming 'round the – no wait – she'll be running from the demons when she comes, she'll be running from the demons when she comes, she'll be–" Kennedy trailed off as the foliage began to give way and the top end of some kind of sharp metal structure could be seen.

It was the gate!

She felt like she had just won Survivor and all without even having to lie about a dead grandma to do it.

She hurriedly walked further into the now descending trail until she found herself face to face with an enormous wrought iron fence that spiked sharply at the top. Its bars twisted and looped elegantly to form the letters G and A at the center of each gate.

Good, so she had made it to the gate, the closed gate. Now how in the world was she going to get in? Puck had said that there was a barrier that would let her in without effort, so unless the old man was lying, all she needed to do was to find it.

Everything around was just trees and metal and she didn't see any way around the tall monstruosity. The trail led directly to the gate and continued its narrow path beyond it and both remaining parts of the fence disapeared into the severe slopes at the sides. Only a crazy person would dare to try and follow it and Kennedy wasn't that broken, yet.

Her stomach growled again, her feet still ached and the list of things for her to whine about was endless. Exhaustion won over everything else. She hadn't slept in over twenty four hours, although she didn't have her watch or phone for her to confirm it.

She finally noticed that her mind had been so busy worrying about Damien and how she would make it out of all that alive that it hadn't had the chance to register that she had left her bag and her phone in the Charger's back seat.

She was stranded in the middle of a rain forest with no immediate means of communication and nothing but the dirty clothes that she wore.

Awesome.

The rain eased. She could see that it was still daylight through the moving clouds. Resigned, she sat on the damp ground and leaned into the gate's bars to at least get some rest while her poor overworked brain figured that riddle out.

She didn't have to think about it long. Just as her back made contact with the iron of the gate, it began to move. She scrambled to her feet and turned to see it open slowly by itself.

"Please tell me I didn't do that." Her rehtohric plea was met by silence, but she didn't care. The gate was open and she was running through it as fast as her skinny legs could carry her in case it started closing again.

Kennedy wondered once more if she hadn't died back at the guava tree as she walked out of a cloud and into an entire different dimention.

About half a mile later, the path began to grow wider and the trees smaller until she could see a Gothic mansion complete with parkland, cobblestone paths, home farm and outbuildings getting closer with every step that she took.

The Golden Archer looked more like a Victorian estate than a sanctuary to her. It all seemed so out of place to her. It looked like it belonged in some distant British countryside and not hidden in the cloudy mountains of the rain forest on that small Caribbean island.

It stood in wooden seclusion within two small valleys, separated by a thin branch of the same river that coursed through the Cloud Forest.

She didn't meet anybody on her way to the main entrance of the nearest building and once inside, she found that contrary to her expectations it was just the rip-off of a fairly unusual bed and breakfast.

The place did look ancient with walls lined in wood and a molded ceiling. How did they manage to keep it so smooth and shiny with all the humidity that hovered around?

It felt homey, with it's warm colored walls and fixtures, but all of the history appeared to have been stained by modern splashes of furniture and art that uglied the way inside.

She walked towards what seemed to be the front desk or information booth of some sort and stood there in silence looking at the young woman that stood behind it. She was unsure of what to say.

" _Categoría?_ " The blond haired girl asked in a very nasal voice.

"Huh?" Kennedy replied unintelligently.

"Oh, English then?" She asked politely with a British accent. Kennedy just nodded dumbly, doubtful of what the girl was going on about. What category?

"Your status, what is it?" The girl asked again, confusing her even more. What did she mean by, status? Because when Kennedy thought about what her actual status was, all that came to mind was, pretty much wrecked.

"Wrecked." She voiced her thoughts.

"So, I see – the nasal blonde murmured as she looked her up and down and took in her mismatched outfit before continuing to speak – but, what I meant was, what kind of creature are you?"

Kennedy was slightly taken aback at the girl's question. She hadn't been able to look into a mirror in a while, but she didn't think that she looked that bad. At her shocked face, the girl spoke again.

"Clearly, there's a bit of a communication problem here. What's your species, luv?"

"Human." Was she blind?

"Oh. Sorry, we don't get a lot of fellow Homo Sapiens around here. Well, what's your name then?" Kennedy thought of how to answer. It wasn't safe to use her real name. She was on the run from demons that seemed to be everywhere.

"Lauren Torres." She gave the girl her ex-best friend's name.

"Okay Lauren, my name is Brittany Archer. What seems to be your situation?" Now, what did she say to that?

The girl wrote something down on an oversized notebook that sat on top of the desk. Judging by her surname, she must have been related to the owner of the place.

"Don't worry, this is a neutral place. Nobody's judging." She added at Kennedy's hesitation.

"I'm being hunted by demons – she finally said – I don't know why, but they killed my mother." Saying it out loud made it more real. Before, she had been trapped in a nightmare. Now, reality weighed down on her.

"You poor thing, but you came to the right place. Go on over there to the common room – Brittany said as she pointed to a large sitting space through an opening on the wall – and I'll find you a room."

"But, I have no money." Kennedy said, embarrased. Her eyes itched and her cheeks turned hot.

"Nonsense, we don't charge for protection here. We offer you a place to stay, but you'll have to earn your keep if you can. Help around with chores and such. The spell will keep you safe." Kennedy nodded dumbly.

"Now, let me go and find you that room – she took in her appearance once more – and a change of clothes?" Kennedy nodded again.

"Alrighty then." Brittany said as she came around the desk and nudged her through the opening.

Kennedy was almost blinded as light reflected off the glossy surface of the blonde's knee high white vinyl boots.

She hoped that she had truly gone blind, that way she wouldn't have had to see the rest of the girl's ensamble.

Brittany had a regular white dress shirt on with an extremely short pink plaid skirt and white fishnet stalkings – yes, you read correclty – that disapeared under the shiny boots. Her blond hair was done up in a messy bun, held in place by a pen.

"Whoa, total nineties flashback." The girl was probably the one in charge of decorating as well. It explained the tasteless paintings that lined the foyer and the lobby walls.

"I know, right?" She was so perky that it was frightening.

"Yeah..." She was almost dead on her feet, but she had enough energy left in her to feel sorry for the girl.

Brittany was very nice and Kennedy felt bad for having been mentally slandering her when she settled her in one of the big brown couches on the sitting room and walked away. Kennedy sat there wringing her hands while she contemplated the bleak view of her future.

A door opened to her left. The tall blond man that she had seen arguing with Damien on the day that Brandi had been killed stepped out. He wore a black silk shirt and black slacks. What was it with demon's and black?

She fought the urge to shoot to her feet. The man hadn't seen her that day so there was no need for her to worry. She just had to act normal and keep her head down. But, he – like Damien had done so many times – sensed her looking at him and focused his gaze on her.

A chill went through her when she saw recognition flash across his elegant features. He smirked, that same eerily familiar smirk that had made her stomach squirm that day.

"Miss Riser." He greeted as he made his way towards where she sat. She stood up defensively, ready to bolt.

She wished that she hadn't lost the athame that Damien had given to her as a birthday present in the alley the other night.

The man stared at her for a moment. He took in her dishiveled appearance and had the decency to not say a word about it.

"Where'd you leave my little brother, did you dump him in the river on your way here?" He spoke with the same mixture of accents and undertones that Damien did. Yet, his voice was different somehow. It had a husky velvety quality that left it to stand out on its own. It made him sound regal, only his speech was less formal.

She noticed that, unlike his younger brother, he added contractions to his words.

"By the way, I'm Dante, Damien's older brother." The handsome stranger introduced himself.

Wait, wasn't Dante the name of Damien's evil half brother, the one that had led the group that murdered his mother?

"He dropped me off at the begining of the trail." Kennedy told him, leaving out the part where he'd vowed to return for her.

"That masochistic fool. I didn't tell him that I would be waiting here for him because I knew that he wouldn't have come if he knew that I was." He clucked his tongue and shook his head for dramatic effect. "Kids these days."

"You killed his mother." She was so angry at his noncommittal attitude that it just slipped out. She took a step back, fearful of how he would react.

"In a way." He was suprisingly calm.

"So you didn't kill her?" Kennedy didn't buy it, but she gave into her need to know more about Damien's past.

"If Damien chooses to believe that I did, it's not my place to set him straight." He said as if that would be the most logical view of things.

"Why?" She inquired once more.

"Well, aren't we nosy – she was being mocked – wait a minute." He told her as he looked closely at her eyes. His own narrowed at whatever he found there.

Dante took her hand, palm side up, in his. Kennedy wondered what he was doing when all of a sudden a knife materialized in his free hand and he slashed the pad of her thumb before she could draw her hand away. The knife disappeared from his grasp.

"What the hell?" She yelled at him.

He snatched back her hand and leaned in to smell her blood. Her precious life source dripped to the floor and Kennedy couldn't help but think that maybe Brittany wouldn't be okay with the mess that it made.

"Who's your father?" Dante asked forcefully. It snapped her back to the present.

"Steven Riser." Kennedy answerd without thinking about it. She had imagined that he already knew that.

"Who's your real father?" He looked directly into her eyes that second time.

She had been right to assume that his eyes would be light, they were the color of cut glass, a blue so pale that it reflected every color around the room back at her like a prism crystal.

"I– I don't know." She stammered.

"You're telling the truth." He stated, but disbelief laced his words.

"You cut me." She said with no small amount of disbelief herself. Hers was directed at his indifferent attitude after what he'd just done. How was he able to hurt her if there was supposed to be a spell that kept people from causing harm to each other in that place?

"Yes, I did." He accepted like it was nothing.

"You. Cut. Me!" She repeated, enunciating each word.

"Yes, I believe we've established that fact." He said it like it was normal for him to go around cutting people to smell their blood.

"And then you smelled my blood!" She was a little freaked and grossed out. She wanted no part in any of his sick demonic habits.

"Don't be such a girl. You've already healed, see?" He pointed at her injured thumb and she followed his line of vision to see that it was true.

He had cut her thumb. It had bled profusely, the evidence of it still stained the carpet below.

Now the cut was sealed, leaving only a thin red line where a bleeding gash should have been.

"How?" She flexed the almost healed thumb in front of her eyes.

"You mean that you don't know?" She could see that he was honestly surprised.

"Know what?"

"Hm." He made a noise as he thought.

"Know what?" It worried her that he seemed to know something about her that she didn't know herself.

"It seems that we have a rogue in our midst – he said, more to himself than to her – if you'll excuse me."

"But, what don't I know?" He couldn't leave without telling her!

"It's not important – he said with a shake of the head, but she didn't think so – as for my brother, don't expect to see him again. He'll be as good as dead if they find out that he helped you." Having said that, he left, fading out.

"Wait!" She yelled after him, but Dante had disappeared. The dreadful feeling that resided at the pit of her stomach spread to her chest at his cold words.

Brittany came back a few minutes after that. A beige canvas tote filled to the brim hung from one of her arms and a brown paper bag that held wonderfully smelling food rested on the other.

"You'll stay in the staff quarters tonight. You can meet the Keeper tomorrow and discuss what will happen." She handed her the bag with the food in it and directed Kennedy down the hall and two flights of stairs to what was going to be her room for the night.

The first thing that Kennedy did after eating was to shake off all of the leaves that had sneaked into the back of her ponytail. She took an extremely thorough bath and immediately jumped into bed, skipping the counting of the sheep and going straight to la-la land.

### 15. Sweet Little Sister

Kennedy sat on her substitute bed.

The same nightmare that she'd been having for days before she left home came back with a vengeance. This time, she could see her mystery man's face.

His bright blue eyes were the only light that broke through the darkened atmosphere.

It was Damien.

She realized that she hadn't had that dream in the nights that she had spent with him sleeping those few feet next to her.

It all clicked into place. Her recurring dream had been an omen for their abrupt separation. She lay back and stared at the molded ceiling.

People began to move around the hallway outside the closed door of her room. Sunlight shone from under the curtain of the small window. It was morning.

She washed up with the things that Brittany had been thoughtful enough to put in the canvas tote that she had given her.

Kennedy put on one of the ridiculously colorful dresses that the blond girl had also put inside the tote which were unequivocally hers.

She would have never been caught dead in one of those things, but they were a step up from the frumpy pajamas that Damien had brought along from her house.

Trust a guy to take clothes from the one drawer where she had stashed the ugly clothes her that mother sometimes bought for her.

Her pajamas lay ruined in the waste basket. She never thought that she would be sorry to see them go. They used to be so bright that it made her eyes hurt when she looked at them. Now, they were filled with so much dirt and grime that she could barely tell that they were green anymore.

She hated them. They were ugly and girly. But, her mother had given them to her, so she also loved them in a way.

She made the bed and stepped out of the room.

The perky blonde was already stationed at her post when she got to the lobby. She was attired in an outfit similar to the one that she had worn the previous day, this one had a blue plaid skirt.

"Good morning, it seems that we've got ourselves an early riser." Kennedy flinched at the word.

She knew that she had nothing to worry about since she'd given her Lauren's name and hoped that Brittany wouldn't notice it as she replied in kind.

"You have no idea – she'd been awake since before the sun came up – good morning."

"The Keeper wanted me to ask you to go into his office when I saw you." The blonde said as she scribbled something down on a piece of paper.

"All right, where is it?" She hadn't thought about what story she would give the keeper of the place. Clueless, Brittany smiled brightly.

"It's through that door over there with the family crest embedded in it." She pointed at the door that Dante had come out the day before.

Kennedy had been so surprised to see him that she hadn't had the chance to register the ornate crest attached to the door. It had a gilded outstretched bow with an arrow at it's center. Undoubtedly the sigil for the house of Archer. It also explained how the hidden compound had received its name.

Brittany knocked on the door once before immediately opening it and sticking her head in.

"Uncle Jim, I've brought the new girl." Kennedy heard her say before she stepped aside to let her in.

She walked in to find a man with graying chestnut hair waiting for her. His warm brown eyes and strong chin hinted to a once handsome youth. He sat reclined in a tall black leather chair behind the office's desk.

"Take a seat, Miss Torres." Kennedy stiffened as he talked.

She knew that voice. Jim, that was what Brittany had called him. Jim was often used as a diminutive for James. Could he be – yes, she was one hundred percent positive.

She stood face to face with the infamous James Archer. The cause behind many of her headaches. The one with whom all of that mess had started.

"My mother is dead." She spat out. He had the gall to look concerned for her. She remembered that he still didn't know who she was and her anger receded a little.

"I'm sorry for your loss. Have we met before? You seem strangely familiar." He spoke with the shadow of a British accent to his voice. It was so faint that she hadn't caught it when they'd spoken on the phone.

It was nearly unnoticeable, but it was there, as if he had originally spoken in old English, but had spent so many years on the island that his speech had been corrupted by the language of the place.

"No, we haven't, but we've talked on the phone."

"Is that so? Then tell me, what led you to find this place?"

"I'm looking for my– Steven Riser." She nearly gave herself away. She was lucky to never have wanted to pursue a career in acting because she was extremely bad at it.

"Well, I'm afraid that you're about two days late." She watched as Jame's face fell. He dropped his head into his hands and sighed heavily. When he finally looked up, she could see barely contained tears shining in his eyes.

"Please sit down, Kennedy?"

"What?" She asked incredulously.

"I knew that I recognized your face, you look so much like your mother and your eyes, how could I have not recognized those eyes?" He asked himself, his tone wistful. No one had ever told her that she looked like Teresa.

"You knew her?" It was a redundant question that just came out on its own.

"Yes, I met both of your parents when we were barely adults. They actually met each other here." He added.

"They did?" Her insipid questions kept on coming.

"Yes, they were married in the great hall and you were born a few months later."

"Here? I don't understand, my birth certificate said I was born in–" She stopped speaking as he nodded.

Her birth certificate named the town that she had been born in, not the place and it actually said the name of the town that the Golden Archer was situated at. It was she that had assumed that it had been at a hospital.

She had let her sentimentality stir her mind elsewhere. She had gone there to find Steven and that's what she was going to do.

"So you knew that he wasn't my father then?" James nodded again.

"Yes, Teresa's family in Spain sent her to us. Her sister had just married my brother and they thought that this would be the safest place for her to be, judging by her condition." The way that he said, "condition", let her know that it was something more than just her being pregnant.

Kennedy wanted to know about her mother's younger years. But, first she needed to know about the man that she had grown up believing to be her father.

"Do you know where he went or if he's coming back?" She drew attention to the subject of her missing Steven once more.

"He's out hunting with my brother, Joseph. They're usually back in just a couple of days, so I'm guessing that we'll be seeing them soon. Does Steven know about Teresa?" Kennedy shook her head.

"How did it happen?"

"I came home to find her dead."

"How did she die?"

"She was killed by a shadow."

"How do you know this if you weren't there?" He asked doubtfully.

"I killed it." Kennedy had enough common sense not to bring Damien into any of it.

Archer might be a family friend – hell they were actually related by marriage – but, he was still a hunter and Damien was probably his favorite kind of game.

"How?" He was clearly interested in her answer. She watched him place both of his elbows on the desk and intertwine his fingers as he leaned forward.

"Athame to the chest." She didn't elaborate. He didn't pry.

"Well, well, it looks like you've got some hunter in you after all. Steven told me that you hadn't been trained." He sat back, reclining into the leather chair again.

"I was fighting for my life." And Damien's, but he didn't need to know that.

"Either way, there aren't many girls that could do something like that while still untrained and live to tell the tale. I shudder to think what you could accomplish after you've actually been taught." Taught, trained? He made it sound like they were in some sort of battle camp and not a safe haven like Damien had described the place to be back when they where leaving the Windmill to go meet the Cougar Lady.

He had said that it was a place where every kind of creature, no matter their origin or nature was offered security and protection in cases of emergencies like their own. But, if it was founded by a family of hunters, how unbiased could it be?

Damien had also told her that no harm could come to her while she was within the grounds and look at how well that had turned out. Although, her thumb did heal rather quickly, too quickly for it to have been a normal thing.

"You will be safe here." James assured her and explained how the spell that regulated the place worked.

Anyone was allowed in, as long as they harbored no ill will towards any of the place's inhabitants. Once inside anyone who purposefully caused harm to anyone would be magically expelled from the grounds.

He also explained that there was a loophole around the no harm clause of the spell. You could be able to hurt someone without actually meaning them harm. Like if you needed medical attention and they needed to operate – there was an infirmary in the main house – they could cut and stitch without a problem as long as it was done with the intent to help.

There was also a training center where she could learn how to defend herself against all kinds of supernatural dangers and even partake in a bit of what Archer called, "friendly sparring."

All of that explained how Dante had managed to hurt her. What she still couldn't wrap her brain around was the reason why he hadn't done it to hurt her if he was truly evil in his heart. A question that would have to wait until they met again, if they ever did.

She wanted to inquire after the reason behind Dante's presence in his office yesterday, but that would open an entire line of questioning that would lead to Damien's involvement being revealed and she wouldn't have that. She was just anxious to understand. Because Damien had said that Dante was the one leading the shadows that were after them, but if he had been waiting there for them all along, then why wasn't she dead yet?

"You must be patient, Kennedy. All will be cleared when Steven returns from his hunt." James voice reminded her of where was.

Frustration crept back into her. She was tired of being told that all would be right when Steven came back. She had heard it so many times already that she was sure that her subconscious had internalized, recycled and was ready to reuse it any time now.

She would break her own mouth if she ever heard those words coming out of it.

"For the time being, you will be moved to a new room. One on the resident's wing of the main house. You're family after all." Kennedy groaned as she realized what that meant. She was probably related to Brittany by blood.

"Am I related to the girl that brought me here?" She asked James.

"Well, yes. Brittany and her younger sister, Marina, are your aunt Veronica's daughters."

"Great." No! How could she be related to those people? An entire family of women that stayed at home and made themselves pretty while the men were out risking their lives by hunting nightmares.

"It's a real pity that you've never met them before. I'm sure that Marina and you would get along splendidly."

"Yeah, pity." She didn't really think so, but she wanted to leave. "Can I go now?"

"Yes, yes, I'm sorry. You may leave the room, but not the compound." He informed her.

"Okay." She accepted her house arrest well enough. Her father would be there soon.

"This is your home, Kennedy. You're free to do as you wish in it, within reason."

"Thanks." Home? She didn't have a home anymore.

"One more thing." Oh, come on! She was hungry and she had already agreed to stay put. Why couldn't he just let her go?

"Yes?"

"No more Lauren Torres, you'll go by your real name from now on."

"Fine." She begrudgingly cumplied and walked out of there before he could think of anything more to say.

Kennedy toured the halls and passage ways for such a long time that she thought that she had gotten lost in the castle-like house.

Every hallway looked almost exactly the same as the one before it. She wouldn't have been able to tell the difference if it weren't for the unique abstract paintings that lined the walls. At least Brittany's bad taste in artwork would be useful in helping her find her way around the place.

She was in the middle of shaking her head at a bad depiction of two people intertwined in a loving embrace when the echoes of voices in the distance reached her ears. Kennedy walked towards the sounds.

The smell of something like chicken stew slapped her stomach around and she remembered that she still hadn't eaten breakfast.

She did like the fruit hoops bird and followed her nose until she had found her way down to the mess hall. She knew it because it was labeled with big bronze letters that stuck to the wall at the top of the archway that formed its entrance.

"Food!" Kennedy exclaimed as she made her way through the archway.

What appeared to have once been extensive cellars were now the heart of the dining area. The refreshment bar to the right, opened onto a pretty courtyard with a few small tables settled on it and the mess hall, with it's many rectangular tables, had a beautiful view of the forest beyond.

The serving bar was to the far left of the room. People were lined up with trays in their hands to get some food. She made her way towards the end of the line.

A wooden frame chalkboard hung in the wall behind the buffet table. In it, the word _Cuban_ was written in both English and Spanish. She thought it weird, but not as weird as the almost black rice that she saw in one of the serving trays when she looked down at the food.

Super. Breakfast was already over but at least she had made it in time for lunch.

"It's _congrí_." A feminine voice came from behind her. It made her almost fall into the buffet table in surprise.

She turned around to see a plump girl with reddish brown hair regarding her with mirth in her also brown eyes. She was wearing a very snug pair of ripped jeans and a blue tee shirt with a picture of a popsicle at it's center that read, " _Melt this!_ ", in a speech bubble.

"Easy there." The newcomer said with a British accent that was similar to Brittany's. She extended her arms to steady her.

"I'm fine." Kennedy took a self-conscious step back and straightened the ridiculous dress that Brittany had lent her.

"Okay, whatever you say, Flower Child. I was just trying to help you out." Kennedy felt bad instantly, she hadn't meant to be rude.

"I know, I'm sorry. It's just that I'm not feeling too comfortable right now." She pulled at the hems of the floral dress that insisted on riding up on her thighs.

"Brittany's?" The girl asked, looking at her dress with obvious dislike.

"What gave me away?"

"You look like you just fell out of a clown's bag of tricks." She choked on some laughter. "No offense, but only my colorblind sister could pull something like that off."

"Get out, you two are actually related?" Kennedy asked in astonishment.

"Well, I've always fantasized about her being adopted but I've never been able to find the proof to back it up. It's not completely her fault though. We don't get out much. I blame the fashion network." The girl joked as she took two metal trays from the cart besides the table and handed one to her.

"So, you're Marina?" Kennedy took the tray and stepped in line behind the girl.

"Yeah, how did you know?"

"I'm Kennedy. Your mom is my aunt."

"That means we're cousins then." She seemed to be rolling the idea over in her mind. "Brilliant!" Her face lit up.

"Wow, this place must really be boring if you're that excited over meeting _me_."

"Well, you do look ridiculously hilarious in that outfit."

"Thanks."

"But, I was thinking more along the lines of, no more long tedious days spent in solitude, floating in this sea of dull creatures." She said theatrically while holding up the back of her hand to her forehead and letting out a sigh at the end.

James had been right about one thing, she could see a chance of hitting it off with her youngest cousin. Kennedy found herself laughing at the girl's antics as they went along the bar putting food into their trays.

It turns out that what Marina had called _congrí_ was just rice stewed with black beans. It was supposed to be an original Cuban dish. So said the cooking lady.

The grayish color that it acquired after it was fully cooked made it look somewhat disgusting, but being as hungry as she was, she would have eaten rocks if they'd thrown some salt on them and go figure, the rice and beans mixture was kind of delicious.

They were talking animatedly about Planet Sailors, a Japanese anime show that they both loved when they'd been growing up, when Brittany sat besides them with a tray of her own.

"Hey – she greeted Kennedy – I see that you're making friends already." She made it sound like it wasn't such a good thing for her to befriend Marina.

"Hullo there, Brit." Marina greeted her lively sister with a wave of her hand and a spiteful tone.

"You're about done there, right?" She asked turning to Kennedy. She nodded, speechless.

There was obviously some kind of love-hate sister thing going on there and she wasn't about to get caught in the middle of it. She'd had enough drama to last her two lifetimes already. Marina picked up both trays and walked over to the waste bin without another word to either of them.

"Never mind my uncouth sister. Uncle Jim wanted me to tell you that he's moving you into your mum's old room. The one Uncle Steven has been staying at, Kennedy." Kennedy had the decency to look ashamed at being made.

"Yeah, I was going to tell you when I next saw you." But, she had beaten her to the point.

"No worries, I get it. Let me finish this and I'll show you were it is." Brittany said nonchalantly.

"I'll take her." Marina arrived back behind her and stared at her older sister with both hands on her waist.

Brittany looked at her. Kennedy looked back and forth between the quarreling siblings. How did she always end up being pulled into these kinds of messes?

### 16. Point of Know Return

"We got here when I was six." Marina said as she showed Kennedy to her new room.

"Why did you come here of all places?" She had been practically raised within the confines of the compound. It was hard to believe that someone would choose to be locked there over any other place in the world.

"We had to leave Spain and this was the safest place for us."

"But, why?"

"Our house was burned down by some witch hunters." There was nothing that Kennedy could say to that.

"We're alive. That's all that matters." It looked like her cousin was one of those glass half full people.

"Yeah."

"We're allowed to leave the grounds, you know."

"Not me."

"You will be, on the condition that you stay close. You'll see. Uncle Jim will warm up to the idea soon enough." Still, that left her with nothing but one shopping mall – with one small movie theater in it – and a whole lot of woods as options.

"I never thought I'd say this, but I think I miss _Villa Chica_."

"I don't know, this place kind of grows on you after a while."

"Maybe I won't be here long enough for that."

"We were homeschooled, so we mostly kept to helping around here after our daily lessons." Marina steered the conversation. No gloomy talks with her cousin, check. The girl kept talking about their lives in the compound.

"Brittany, selfless and unambitious as she is, has decided to make a career out of it. She stayed after she turned eighteen four years ago and assumed the role of helper, full time."

"Meaning, that she lives off the family's money." Kennedy supplied.

"Ha! I couldn't have said it any better." They laughed.

Marina, on the other hand, was itching to go away to college as soon as she reached the majority of age and at seventeen, she made it very clear that she couldn't wait to get out of that place.

The youngest of her newfound cousins had a brilliant mind. She had a witty answer for every single question or comment Kennedy threw at her and she was like a walking encyclopedia when it came to the matter of her family's history and the secrets behind the founding of the Archer house back when her first ancestor's had arrived from England in the early nineteen hundreds.

The rest of the family joined them after the German bombing of their homeland during World War Two. Going by what she had told her, the Golden Archer had over one hundred rooms, all situated in and around the main grounds.

The main house – also known as Dover Hall – had twenty, in addition to the Keeper's quarters and all of them were reserved for the permanent residents and staff members. Also there, were situated the infirmary and eating facilities.

Nearby, the Sierra Palm, Oak-leaf and Cypress Hall Annexes – the last one previously being a farm outbuilding set in a country style garden – were set on a level three hundred yards away from the main building and housed the rest of the rooms for long term guests and refugees.

The Converted Barn that stood behind the main house was now the training center with sparring grounds that stood before it and the old Farmhouse was used as a storage facility for all of the place's needs.

The halls that led to her new room were not long enough for everything that Marina had to tell her about the place. From what she had gathered, the members of the Archer house had been mostly hunters drawn to the large amount of supernatural activity that took place on that small island.

The family's view of things changed throughout their years of living in that mystical place and they ended up limiting themselves to hunting only the truly evil things and helping out everyone else.

Their acceptance reached such levels that they had even allowed one of their sons to take a witch – her aunt Veronica – for a wife.

Kennedy was shocked to find that the Martín family – her own mother's family, original to Spain – was part of one of the largest covens of witches that hailed from the motherland. It branched out into hundreds of different surnames throughout the old continent and the Americas.

It was all so fantastic that Kennedy had trouble believing any of it was real. But, what she really couldn't believe was the fact that she had made it all the way to the resident's wing of the house while being able to ignore the tacky works of art that hung from the walls.

Marina insisted that they stopped by her room. Kennedy waited at the door while she went in to get something.

When she came out of the room, she gave her a leather wrapped book of some sort that had obviously been bound by hand. The letter T had been marked by heat in an elegant font on the lower right portion of the front.

"It's your mum's grimoire." She said as Kennedy studied its worn out cover.

"It's something like a journal. It contains her innermost thoughts and a few spells that she created along the way." Her cousin explained. "Mother gave it to me when I turned thirteen. The day that I came into my powers."

"So why are you giving it to me then?" She was holding her mother's diary in her hands. Her mother's diary that now belonged to her youngest cousin. She tried not to be angry at the girl, it wasn't her fault.

"It was aunt Teresa's. It's only right that you should have it now." Kennedy rolled her eyes.

"What do I need it for? I have no powers of my own." In fact, she had yet to accept that her mother had been a witch and that in turn, she could be one too. "I'm a dud."

She hadn't even known about her mother being a witch until her cousin had told her and she'd never done anything remotely witchy until just a few nights ago.

"That's probably 'cause your mum bound your powers."

"And now she's gone so I won't be needing this." Kennedy waved the grimoire in her face and Marina's eyes widened in surprise at her declaration. Of course she wanted her mother's diary, she was just mad that someone else had been privy to it's contents.

"I'm sorry."

"It's okay, you didn't know."

"Still... But, if she's gone that means that your powers will be coming back any day now."

"Great." That explained why they had only appeared after Teresa's death. They reached their destination just two doors down from Marina's room. Her cousin excused herself at the door.

"This is it. I've gotta go, I'm late for my self-defense lesson." She looked at Kennedy with pity in her eyes. It made her furious. She didn't want anyone's pity.

"Will you be okay?" Kennedy nodded and turned to go inside. Her cousin left without another word.

She was hit by a bittersweet wave of nostalgia as soon as she stepped through the door. The room looked so much like her parent's bedroom back at their home in Villa Chica. Every item visible around the room screamed, Teresa!

The main piece of furniture was, of course, the enormous king-sized bed that occupied the center of the room. It was covered in embroidered floral bedspread and had carved pillars that held up a cream colored canopy.

Three scented candles in descending sizes had been placed next to a photograph of a younger version of her parents on the bedside table.

She looked around the room and found that there were pictures of her parents and her as an infant hanging from the walls all around. There were pictures of her leading up until she had been about three years old.

There was one in particular that she fell in love with. It was one where Teresa lay sideways on a blanket set on the grass under a tree outside. She was reading and Steven sat besides her, feeding a baby Kennedy. They looked so happy. She was suddenly mad that she couldn't remember anything from the time they had lived there.

She recognized Steven's brown leather jacket. It hung from the settee at the foot of the bed. He rarely ever went anywhere without it. She picked it up and walked to the closet to hang it up. Kennedy didn't even know why she had been surprised to find some of her mother's old clothes hanging in the closet.

One of the items in there really caught her attention, a green trunk with silver details rested on the floor underneath the hanging clothes. Like with the grimoire, her mother's initial adorned it's lower right corner. It had a weird padlock, with some kind of loopy symbols similar to Chinese characters engraved on it. She pulled at it twice. It wouldn't open easily.

She tried to move the chest out of its confinement to get a better look at the inscriptions. The thing was as heavy as a bunch of cement blocks. She looked around for the key to open it and found nothing that barely resembled one.

She looked longinly at the chest. It beckoned her. She needed to see what secrets it held inside.

The golden gleam of a candlestick gave her an idea.

"It's always better to say, I'm sorry." Kennedy said to the empty room. She took the heavy candlestick from the dresser and attacked the lock.

Her hand reeled back as soon as the hit connected. The loud ringing noise that the objects made vibrated painfully through her entire arm. Okay, she wouldn't be trying that again any time soon.

As fragile as it appeared, the silver lock wouldn't budge. She knelt down in front of the trunk and traced the keyhole. It held a familiar shape. The memory of hanging an old key on a long silver chain around Damien's neck came back to her.

"Well, that thing is staying locked for good." Kennedy kicked the chest in anger for good measure. The sudden blow made it slide back and hit the back of the closet.

"Oh, now it moves!" Something hit her over the head. Whatever it was bounced on her shoulder and fell to the floor. She looked down to see a small pink book by her feet. It must have been on the top shelf.

Curious, Kennedy picked it up and realized what it was.

A baby book. There was an oval shaped opening in the middle of the cover. It let a picture of a very pregnant Teresa be seen through a yellowing plastic sheet.

Kennedy stared. The image of her mother got even more blurry the longer she looked at it. She wiped it with her thumb and it came out wet, only to become blurry again.

Where was that damned water coming from?

She looked up to see if maybe there was a leak on the ceiling and felt the hot liquid slide down her cheeks and onto her neck. It was her. She was the one that was leaking, crying.

She was finally breaking down.

She hugged the little pink book to her chest as the pain that she had been denying to accept poured out of her. It streamed down her face to land on her hands as her grief spilled to the floor in the crystal form of her tears.

Her legs gave out under the enormous weight of her suffering. She cried and sobbed like a toddler left in preschool missing her mother.

"I'm sorry... I'm so sorry, Mama!" Her choked cries came out in hitched sobs. Kennedy reclined her head on the locked trunk and let everything out until it felt like there were no more tears to spare.

A puffy eyed Kennedy made her way back to the mess hall to eat dinner. Clad in a navy blue woolen dress that had once belonged to her mother, she felt years away from the awkward girl that she had been just a couple of weeks ago.

She had let her hair down. It bounced against her shoulders as she walked. Usually, it just fell flat against her neck. The humid atmosphere of the mountains was doing wonders for it.

When she got to the mess hall, she was surprised to find it practically empty. She spotted Marina wiping one of the rectangular tables clean and made her way towards the girl.

Her cousin smiled brightly when she saw her coming. Kennedy arched her eyebrows and extended her arms to signal at the empty room in question.

"Dinner's at six, you've missed it. But, you've really done it. Uncle Jim never comes down to eat with the rest of us lowly peasants." Her cousin gossiped with mirthful eyes.

"What are you talking about?" Kennedy didn't see what that had to do with her.

"He joined us for dinner tonight. The poor guy kept looking at the entrance every time that someone came in. My guess is that he was waiting for you."

"I truly don't know why. I haven't done anything. Besides, you guys are Archer's and I'm not." Thank God, she thought while remembering Brittany. Only to also remember that the colorful girl was in fact related to her as well. She held back a groan.

"Yes, but he sees us every day. You're the cool new girl now."

"I am everything but cool. Now, shut up and get me dinner."

"Where are your manners, girl?"

"I left them at home, along with my dignity and my mother's disappearing corpse."

"Alright. Jeez, talk about harsh." Marina held up both hands defensively. It made Kennedy feel bad about her behavior.

She was turning into a grade A bitch. It wasn't her cousin's fault that she was hurting. The girl's gaze softened as she noticed the regret in her eyes.

"It'll get better." She added in a softer tone.

"How can it?" Kennedy asked, no longer caring if she saw how truly broken she was inside.

"I dunno, but you know that old saying that goes, this too shall pass? Well I have it on good authority that it's actually very true."

"I guess we'll see, won't we?"

"Right, you should know that before all of your snippy attitude, I had saved you some dinner since I figured that you would be getting hungry at some point. Now, I'm not entirely sure that you deserve it."

"Oh, thank God! I thought I would end up having to eat grass to survive."

"The thought is appealing." Marina joked and Kennedy resisted the urge to smack her in the arm as she would've done with Lauren. They didn't know each other that well yet.

"Sit down, in one of the tables that I haven't cleaned, please. I'm gonna get your food and maybe spit on it first."

"Gross!" Kennedy yelled after her.

"You do not wanna get on my bad side, ask Brittany." She mocked a cackle and ended up snickering as she went. No doubt remembering some tasteless prank she'd pulled on her sister.

Those two were the epitome of sisterly love. Although, she wouldn't know, she didn't have any sisters of her own.

Marina took her sweet time getting back and Kennedy made a show of thoroughly inspecting the plate of mashed potatoes and fried steak that she had given her.

"Oh, come on, just eat it! The heat kills off any remaining bacteria anyway." Her cousin joked with that kind of dark humor that they both shared. However, a very hungry Kennedy failed to appreciate it's funny side.

She ate her meal as Marina cleaned the rest of the room, making light conversation here and there. Then was showed into the stainless steel kitchen – it looked liked it belonged more to a hip restaurant than to that old mansion – to wash her own tray.

"You should go by the common room. They're showing an old war movie for the grownups in a little while." Her cousin told her.

"No, that's okay. I think I'm going to bed early tonight." Kennedy didn't feel like socializing so she excused herself and went back to her parent's room.

As much as she tried to be stealthy and sneak through the halls, James caught up with her on the way.

"You're not eating?" He asked in manner of a greeting as he leaned against the wall with both arms crossed over his chest.

"I ate now." She answered flipantly.

"Dinner's at six." He was clearly upset about her attitude.

"Forgive me, I wasn't aware that we operated on a schedule. I'll try to be more punctual the next time." Bitchy Kennedy was back. It was getting kind of hard to keep tabs on her multiple personalities.

"You're doing okay then?" He asked and to his credit, he did look sincerely concerned for her.

"Why wouldn't I be?" He raised both eyebrows at that.

"Look, I'm fine and I don't want anybody to be walking on eggshells around me. I lost my mother. It sucks, but I'm neither the first nor the last person to go through something like that."

"I don't buy it, not even for a second." Kennedy rolled her eyes at him.

"It's not good to keep it all bottled up like that. You need to deal with it so you learn how to face the hardships that will come after this." He insisted.

Whatever it was, Kennedy thought, it couldn't be worse than the losses that she had suffered already. She would never say it out loud though. In the movies, whenever someone said something along those lines it all ended up taking an even more unexpected turn.

She'd accepted that what happened wasn't completely James responsibility. There was so much history that she still didn't know about. That was enough dealing for one day.

"All right, I'll deal with it in my room. If that's okay with you?" She wasn't the least bit sleepy, but she figured that way no one would come looking for her.

"You're free to come and go as you please, Kennedy." He sounded tired.

James didn't look like such a bad guy. She just didn't feel like having him pity her as everyone else seemed to do. She started to walk again.

"Good night then." James' words made her miss Damien.

It was strange, how a common phrase like that one could hold such a special meaning to her now. Her chest ached.

"Night." She didn't look at him, she just walked to her parent's room.

She lay on her back in the oversized bed when the door to her room slammed open.

The abrupt noise interrupted her mental self-annihilation and revealed a wide-eyed Steven on the other side. She sat up in surprise. She had gone to the Archer to look for him, but he was the last person that she'd expected to see right then.

"Kennedy." He let out a breath and reached her in two long strides, pulling her roughly into his arms.

"Oh, Kennedy." He whispered as he stroked her hair as he used to do when she'd been small and had just woken up from one of her nightmares.

But, she wasn't that child anymore. Kennedy pulled herself out of his embrace a little too violently. He gaped at her with bloodshot eyes.

"Where were you?" Her tone was accusing.

He had the gall to look confused and Kennedy could see that he was desperately looking for something to say, something that he probably thought would excuse his absence.

He tried fruitlessly to hug her again. She wouldn't let him.

"She died and you weren't there – she said scornfully as she slapped away his hands – you weren't there!"

"If I had known–" He cried out as he hung his arms at his sides in defeat.

"I called, almost a hundred times and I had to leave you messages, but you never called back. I thought you were dead." She couldn't believe that she had actually made a flyer to look for him. She would never let him know that.

"Let me explain–"

"Mom died and I was almost killed and you never came." No matter what he said, there was no way around that.

"I didn't know!" He yelled, clearly grief stricken.

"I don't care!" She yelled back.

Kennedy had never dared to speak to him that way before. The man that she still viewed as her father, even though no blood actually tied them together, had always evoked a deep feeling of respect in her. So much so that just one hard look from him would shut up even her thoughts.

Her current behavior had nothing to do with the fact that he wasn't her father and all to do with the fact that he'd practically abandoned them.

She shut up and kept her bad feelings to herself after that. She knew that if she so much as opened her mouth she was going to say something that she would end up regretting.

Steven let himself fall onto the settee and placed his head in his hands as his shoulders shook with the force of his silent sobs. Kennedy kept silent. She understood his pain because it was mirrored in her own. But, she couldn't stop feeling angry.

She needed to be angry at somebody. Because if she stopped feeling angry, then she would be left alone with the empty void that ate at her insides. Feeling angry was heaven compared to not being able to feel anything at all. She knew that all too well already. She held on tightly to her rage as he explained why he had been gone so long without word.

"The day that James called, it was to tell me that Joseph had gone out hunting something that was killing homeless people on the streets, leaving their hollow corpses to be found." He paused to look at her and Kennedy nodded at him to continue.

"He'd been missing for over a week and Veronica, your mother's sister was getting desperate. She'd driven James crazy with pleas of getting me to help. Joseph and James are my longest childhood friends."

"And you guys go on regular hunts together, yeah, I know." Her tone was sarcastic. Steven didn't bother to hide his shock. How could he find her there and expect her not to know?

"That still doesn't explain why you didn't answer your phone or called back." She challenged him. She wanted to see how he would justify his long absence.

"Cell phones have no reception on the mountain." He said as if that was something that she must have also known.

"They rely solely on landlines here." Kennedy chose to believe him on that account. She didn't have her phone with her.

"I went to look for Joe and ended up trapped in the cellar of a Santero gone psycho for over two weeks. My phone was lost, but I checked my voicemail as soon as I got here. I tried to call home and your cell, but no one answered." Kennedy thought about the last time that she'd tried to call him before she had thrown her phone into the bottom of her bag to be forgotten.

The timeline added up, not to mention his unkempt appearance and growing beard. They were major indicators of the rough few weeks that he'd had. His ash colored hair stuck up in all directions. It looked like it hadn't seen a brush since he'd left their home.

The Steven that she knew had always been neatly combed and shaven. It was hard to recognize him within that grungy familiar stranger. He looked weary, older somehow.

"I went back to _Villa Chica_ with Joseph. The house was empty and sparkling clean." Yes, the demons had been careful in covering their tracks. The only loose ends left were Damien and herself.

She wouldn't tell Steven anything about her half demon friend either.

Now, how did she go around that when she had to tell him that a prominent demonic brethren had made them fair game?

She had to have done something extremely evil in one of her past lives. Kennedy felt like the new poster girl for bad karma. It was hard to accept that all of the horrible things that happened since the day that Steven had left were just just the result of extremely bad timing thrown together with a very unfortunate chain of events and not a part of some malignant plot.

Steven's story explained why he'd been absent, but it still didn't cover why the demons had decided to end their lives. She had the gut feeling that it had to be more than just because he was a hunter.

The only person who could answer her questions was out of her reach and she was afraid to death that it would stay that way for good.

Whatever happened, she'd already decided.

Kennedy would stay and wait for Damien. He'd promised to come back for her and, heaven help her, she believed him.

In the mean time, she would accept James' offer to train her and learn all that she would need to defend herself. She would hunt the demons that were after them too.

She thought back to Dante's cold words about Damien being as good as dead if they found out that he had helped her.

Now that her mother was no more and Lauren was out of her life, if Dante's words proved to be true and she learned of Damien's demise, she'd have nothing left to lose, no other purpose in the world than to seek evil out and destroy as many of those bastards as she could before she went down as well.

Anger boiled inside of her. She wanted revenge, craved it like a man thirsted for water in the middle of a scorching desert and she vowed to herself that she would have it.

The hell if they thought that she would just sit on her ass and wait to be rescued.

"Jim told me that you killed the shadow that got Teresa." Steven's voice broke through her melodramatic inner monologue.

"With an athame?" His green eyes were set on her mother's grimoire, which lay opened page down by her side on the bed. His face held an incredulous look.

"Yeah, about that..."

### The Good Left Undone

### (Epilogue)

"You know not what you speak of." He really wished his mother's killer would go away or choke on his own tongue.

Damien was getting tired of hearing all of the nonsense that came out of the angelic looking demon who currently tried to get him to stop drinking.

He never drank – alcohol, that is. But, he was drinking now. Life was too messed up and since he was already going to hell, what difference could a small beer make? Or six, for that matter.

He'd been driving to Eden Manor from the docks, having managed, after no small amount of bribing, to get a boat that would take both him and his car back to England with no questions asked. There was no way that he was leaving his precious behind too. If he was going to die, then he would do it in style.

He went home the same way that he'd gotten to the island where he'd found and lost his heart. Then Dante faded into the passenger's seat of the Charger, making him almost swerve off the road in surprise and dragged him into a local bar.

Damien still couldn't believe how the nuisance had managed to find him like that. He'd asked him as much and the egotistical blond's answer had been, "I'm your brother, we share the same blood, I always know where you are." Well, if that was true, then how come he hadn't killed him yet?

"Sure I do – Dante replied to his earlier hateful words – you think that you're being noble by assuming the role of martyr. But, did you ever stop to consider that you aren't doing your new friend a favor by leaving her alone? You do know what she is, don't you little brother?"

"Don't call me that, and whataya mean?" He slurred.

The cryptic question, added to the name that he had taken to call him angered Damien even more. He knew that he only did it to spite him and he hated that he was gullible enough to fall prey to his taunting every time.

"Would you look at that? Being the rebel is truly working wonders for you. You're even speaking like regular people now." Dante joked.

"If you truly don't know, then that's an answer best left for another time. I'm still not completely sure myself." Dante was speaking, but his words made no actual sense, Damien thought.

Until he said, "Either way, you should know that Lilith has placed a price on the witch's pretty little head."

"She has nothing to do with her father's work." Damien blurted defensively as he spilled almost half of his beer because he'd been waving the index finger of the hand that held the bottle in Dante's face as he spoke.

"You disappoint me, little brother." He shook his head sadly and wiped some of the liquid that had landed on his chin. "This is so much bigger than a simple demon hunter."

"Speak clearly, damn you!" He was about to lose his temper. If it was hard to control his rage when sober, it was ten times more difficult with lowered inhibitions.

"Lilith's seer showed her a vision. The girl will be the Brethren's undoing." It couldn't get any clearer than that.

Unless he was too drunk and he'd been hallucinating the argument. Although, he doubted that, if given the chance, his inebriated mind would conjure up images of Dante of all people.

A pair of pale fingers snapped in front of his eyes.

"You're pathetic, pay attention." The owner of the annoying snapping fingers told him. Damien wanted to slap away the horrible look of pity that he found on the older demon's face.

"You lie." Kennedy wasn't anyone's undoing, except maybe his. He'd finally acknowledged it as he saw her retreating form reflected in his rearview mirror.

He knew it in his dark heart to be true. One way or another, he would find a way to be at her side again.

"I'm afraid that this is just the beginning for your dear Kennedy Riser. Unfortunately, the circle was in session when your wayward minion decided to make his appearance and I had no way of silencing him without awakening their suspicions. You understand our need for you to start kissing some serious ass. Don't you, little brother?" Dante pulled a very familiar athame out of his inner coat pocket and offered it to Damien.

It was the one that had been used to kill his mother. Every groove, every welt had been ingrained in his memory in that one instant that he'd looked at it the night that she was taken from him by the unscrupulous being that stood before him.

"It's not mine." His father's eldest finished.

"What are you playing at, Dante?" Damien's voice as well as his hands trembled with barely contained rage.

He hoped that Kennedy could forgive him for breaking his promise. He didn't care if he got killed. He was going to try his damned best to rip the vermin's throat out.

The demon's next words made him stop.

"You want to bring down the Lillake Brethren."

"So?" Damien challenged, still plotting murder. Dante looked straight into his eyes and spoke.

"I want to help you."

###

### About the Author

Deborah Barreto is a writer, movieholic and extreme chocolate junkie

that enjoys living in quiet seclusion within the misty mountains of Puerto Rico.

A hopelessly unrealistic mother of two

beautifully well adjusted boys that spends all of her free time

sitting in a corner either inmersed in a book or trying to write one.

Ever the eternal daydreamer, she can almost always be found

with her head stuck in the clouds.

Shadow Riser is her debut novel, and the first book of her Shadow series.

~*~*~*~

### Connect with Deborah!

_To learn more about the books, or just to follow her rants, you can visit her blog at:_ http://www.deborah-barreto.blogspot.com

_If you wish to contact her, please send an email to:_ barretoshadows@gmail.com

### 1. Fallen

### (Book two: Shadow Magick preview)

"Why are you doing this?" The Shadow asked imploringly.

It had been inside that Vacant for so long that it's once lost humanity was beginning to slither through the darkness.

"Because there is some higher power that hates me and takes pleasure in mocking my poor attempt at a life." He answered as he raised his right hand and placed it against the center of the Vacant's chest. The Shadow's eyes widened in terror.

He saw no problem in venting out his frustrations on the sad excuse for a minion. He was only seconds away from handing it a one way ticket to the burning cesspool it was so desperately trying to escape. First class.

"I'll go into hiding, please don't make me go back there!" The thing pleaded as it let out one of many pathetic sobs.

"It's for the best, you don't belong here." He cursed his human side, he was tempted to say that he was sorry before he wielded the fiery cold power that his demonic half endowed him with and willed the compromised Shadow back to the pits it hailed from.

It had already served its purpose and there would be no point in letting it linger.

Black smoke emerged from every available exit as his own power surged forward and left a simpering mess of tears and sobs lying at his feet. The once possessed human took one look at him and fainted. This one was unfortunate enough to be alive.

He would definitely not envy the horrible nightmares that it would have, for he had experienced them all too well himself.

Damien Leoni bit back the urge to scream in frustration as he had painfully learned to do so many years ago. He grew tired of this, fifty odd years of killing off bits and pieces of his soul so he could avenge his mother and he still wasn't strong enough.

Perhaps, he would never be.

He felt the Shadow's presence recede completely. A bang resounded around the corner from where he stood. Someone was coming, he took that as his cue to leave.

He took one last look at the crumpled heap that lay out cold on the dirty ground and faded back to Eden Manor, his mentor's mansion in England. Somehow, being there, listening to Buer's first hand accounts of the famous battles that he had only read about at the Circle's library, gave him a false sense of belonging that helped him cope.

It was ironic, being able to relate to the Shadow's senseless need to cling to a fake life. Especially as that life meant for him to yearn for Dante's uncle's approval. But, Damien knew that although they shared the same genes, they were nothing alike. Just as he had nothing in common with his mother's murderer, save the fact that they shared the same father.

Dante insisted that he hadn't killed Amelia, but Damien didn't believe him. He had spent too many years hating him. It was the only thing that had kept him alive, he couldn't lose that now.

But, he did have something else to look forward to, didn't he?

He looked at the room that he had faded into and saw that it was not the familiar library that he always chose. This pointed to the state of his unstable emotions. But, he couldn't think of her.

Not until he finished what he started fifty five years ago.

He needed to vent, but there was nothing in sight that he could getaway with breaking.

As he made his way to the room's massive gilded doors he noticed that, true to its namesake, Buer's green house looked like what he imagined the Garden of Eden would be.

It took up an entire wing of the mansion and was filled with small forests, flower patches and ponds – complete with waterfalls and live fish.

Why the man needed all that inside his house escaped his understanding, but even he could learn to appreciate the peace that could be derived from such a place.

He exhaled as he reached the exit and stepped out of the room, headed for the previously intended library across the parlor.

Damien walked with decisive footsteps, thinking about asking Buer for a sparring session. Maybe the ancient would be in a charitable mood that evening and indulge him.

He caught a glimpse of his youthful reflection in one of the decorative mirrors on the wall. A low growl escaped him before he could even think about it. To the untrained eye, he still looked to be in his early twenties. However, if you were to take a deeper look, you would be able to catch the glint of weariness in his blue eyes or the tiredness of his expression.

His human half – his mother's blood – appeared to have no weight on his aging process. He was already in his late sixties and his physical appearance was that of a man one third of his age.

When he first arrived at Eden – being only thirteen years old – he was told that after he became of age, he should expect to age differently than normal humans would. But, he had been mostly sheltered by his mentor given the circumstances of his birth and so he hadn't had many opportunities to mingle with others of his kind.

Nephilim, that was how Buer referred to them.

What some people called the offspring of angels, were – in his experience – basically demon-human hybrids.

His body changed naturally. His black hair still grew as it did when he was but a naive fatherless boy oblivious to the evils that inhabited the world.

He often wondered what his mother would think if she saw how long he had let it get now. She had always made him crop it close to his head.

"As a gentleman should." She would say as she took him to the local barbershop.

Thinking of his mother made him snap back to reality as he remembered the events that lead to his arrival at Eden Manor.

He was grateful to Buer for having bargained for his life. He'd given him the illusion of a home. But, he could never forgive or forget the fact that his mother had been assassinated in cold blood, by the same secretive society to whom he worked for now, for the simple act of loving his father and bearing him a son.

The big mahogany doors that lead to the library opened by themselves as he neared them.

He hadn't done that.

Buer must have sensed him fade in, a skill that would come in handy if Damien could ever learn to master it.

"I see there is no need to ask how it went. Another success to add to an ongoing list." His savior greeted him.

He found him standing by the fireplace with his elbow leaned against the ostentatious mantlepiece. He held a cup of Amontillado Sherry from his personal stock in his other hand and a small plate full of Spanish olives rested close to his elbow.

They locked eyes and Damien found that he wasn't able to speak for fear of disrespecting him.

Buer was everything if not a father to him. He had taken him in the night of his mother's murder and kept him protected from those members of the Brethren that thought that he should be killed.

More so, Buer took it upon himself to raise him as if he were of his own kind and taught him as one of his children.

"I take it the Vacant still lives, seeing as you are not off breaking one of my precious vases somewhere." Buer spoke again and his words filled Damien with both warmth and great shame at having his weakness known so well by another.

"I can only fathom what living like this while being saddled with human emotions must be like. However, I am sure that I have taught you better than that." Damien's eyes stuck to the floor like glue on a post it as he received the accustomed speech. Buer placed the half empty cup on the mantlepiece and walked towards the room's desk.

"You must not act upon them, that is a luxury that you cannot afford. The Brethren would have your head in an instant. They wait impatiently for a reason to do so and now, after the Riser incident, they have the perfect excuse. Do not make me lose yet another of you like that, Damien." That last comment stung and he knew that Buer could see that in his eyes too.

He was used to his mentor's long lectures about his behavior, but he knew that when he talked about losing another one of them he was referring to Azazel, Damien's father – one of the original Fallen, which was supposed to be a big deal around their kind – and the way that he had let himself be swayed by his feelings, emotions that had ultimately led to his demise.

Damien did not presume to dwell on delusions. Being one of the ancients himself, Buer was Dante's uncle first and foremost. After all, his mother's murderer was the offspring of two of their own. One of the few full blooded demons that exist to that day.

His golden blonde hair and pale icy eyes were a testament to his origin. The firstborn, and only, son of Azazel and Lilith together. His half brother was something akin to royalty amongst their people.

That made Eden something similar to neutral territory, like one of the safe houses hunters used as sanctuaries.

Buer did favor Damien, although the latter couldn't really see a reason as to why.

"I'm doing my best." He finally found it in himself to reply.

"I am clear on that. You are still young, in time you will begin to see why it is that you must keep those feelings at bay."

"Am I that transparent?"

"Only to me – and to your brother, Buer added silently – but, if it keeps up, sooner rather than later, the wrong person might catch a glimpse of your remaining humanity and that would be the end of it." He didn't dare ask what the end of it was, deep down he already knew. "What has happened to you?"

Damien stayed silent.

Could he tell him about Kennedy, the small slip of a girl that had stormed into his life with her empathic tears and unguarded smiles and turned it over on itself?

No, he couldn't. He wouldn't compromise her. If Lilith really wanted her dead, then she had to remain anonymous to as many of them as it was possible.

If the Brethren could ever prove that there was reason enough to doubt his loyalty and standing in their society, not even Buer could stop them from finishing what they had started all those years ago. It would be the end of life as he knew it. His life.

"I would not want to rain on your self-pitying parade, but an envoy came for you whilst you were away." His mentor relented and gestured to a beige envelope that sat on top of some papers on his desk. The blood red wax seal could be seen broken in half, no doubt, by Buer himself.

"Let's have it then, what do they want?" As always, Damien was already used to have him screen all of his communication with the Brethren. It helped him, that way he knew that he could truly trust his thoughts on the most important matters.

"I took the liberty of reading it." Buer said out of courtesy as he handed him the opened envelope. As usual, but he already knew that he didn't mind it at all. He would've told him what it was about anyway, if only to ask for his advice.

Buer recited the first three sentences as he read along, "Assuming that your involvement with the Turpin Shadow has concluded successfully. I – speaking as the sole representative for the Lillake Brethren in this matter – hereby assign you to a new case. This one better suited for one such as you..."

Buer handed him the letter.

Damien gritted his teeth as he read the instructions that were written in the intricate script on the parchment paper. He didn't fail to understand the blatant insult that his half brother made no effort in trying to hide within the missive's contents.

"Now, Damien, hear me out before you go and blow it off at the Circle." Buer interrupted his ward's murderous thoughts hurriedly.

Damien – who was already shaking – raised his now pitch black eyes to look at the closest thing that he had to a father and already knew what he was going to say...

~*~*~*~

Liked it?

_*_ _Then, keep an eye out for Shadow Magick,_

_book two of Deborah's Shadow series, coming Soon._ _*_

