100 reasons to love our lives

The half human

Nico

Hazel's golden eyes were still a little glassy, looking over to the officer. "Oliver", she greeted him and he tapped an imaginary hat. "Praetor."
"Can we go down and give it a try?", my sister asked, sitting a little more upright as she was called by her job title.
"Of course", Oliver said.

"Are you sure you don't overwork yourself?", I asked Hazel and she nodded. "I'm almost in training again", she reassured me and took my hand. "Now come on."
Energy ran through my body as I jumped up, suddenly feeling strong again. My tiredness, my anger vanished and got replaced with that nervousness, that excitement. Hazel didn't say things just to lead people on.

The mortals around us didn't even care; still working on transporting the other victims. They had put floodlights all over the place, making it seem scientific and even more creepy. Really, I liked the pitch black version better.

Will was still frozen in his place, his soul weak, but full of terror.
Suddenly, I remembered something else: Simon's dream, the one time I had peeked into months ago...

"Now Simon, please stretch your arm out."
"What is it this time?"
"Oh, just a little serum for your nerves."

I shook that thought away and jumped up on the marble podest, up to my boyfriend. "Hazel will get you out of here", I promised. "But I will need your help", my sister said. "This isn't a task I can do alone."
"What do you need?", I asked, a little too fast. She took my hand without saying anything more, her other hand covering the scarred arm of my boyfriend.

The world seemed to slowly tilt upside down as I felt the way Hazel needed me. For a second, I floated; my feelings, my energy, my struggles getting sucked out of me as if they got caught by a riptide.
Normally, she didn't exactly need that to charm, but the real powerful spells had the disadvantage that they were very exhausting.

She used my strength until my legs gave up underneath me, the world snapping back to it's place, but also suddenly missing some pieces. Black danced in front of my eyes.
Hazel continued by herself, her surroundings buzzing with energy.

I was kneeling to the feet of my boyfriend, struggling to sit upright. Hades, I had to be the strong one in the next second, but I was too numb to feel worried about that. The stealing-of-feelings Hazel did was pretty effective. Not that feelings wouldn't come back after a short time; but for now, I was just tired.

Still, hope rose up in my body as I suddenly felt warmth next to me, coming from my boyfriend's body. Slowly, the cold stone of his body smoothed, got soft and warm.
And then he fell; I raised my aching arms to catch my boyfriend as he let go out a surprised scream.

For two seconds, he was shaking on all his body, his eyes opened wide in hesitant fear.
Then they closed again, and he passed out.

~~~

It was wonderful to hold him in my arms again.

He was awake now; it was already late at night and we sat in our McDonald's. William had nuzzled his chin against my shoulder and his arms wrapped tight around my waist, not even caring about the group of typical heterosexual drunk guys calling names at us.

And, I had to say, it was easy to ignore them. Hazel had left three hours ago; after another nap to make sure she got back to her little family safely. In that time, the police had checked on Will - they marked him as the one victim who survived. He was diagnosed something akin to 'overstimulation'; which they told me came from him being in an isolated, dark room for two weeks.