The Bloodstone Prophecy - Book 2 (complete)

Chapter 19 - Chris's Story

A little Linkin Park to kick this chapter off. Enjoy!

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Chris stepped back a few paces, kicking up sand as he walked. The sun beat down mercilessly on them. Kami wiped the perspiration from her forehead with a sleeve and drank a big swig of water. The cool liquid felt good on her parched throat.

Kami put the bottle in her backpack and picked up the necklace. She needed to get angry. Problem was, her whole life she'd been told to control her temper, to deny the emotions, to pretend like the problems didn't exist. Rosa had recognized the danger, had seen the anger bottling up inside her and showed her ways to release it. But even she had always acted like anger was an undesirable thing, a weakness to be purged. Now, when she had to become angry on purpose, she discovered it was more difficult than she'd imagined.

An image of her father flashed in her mind, still and cold in his coffin. The cancer had whittled the robust man into a pale, emaciated shadow of his former self. His face was at peace, released from the pain that tormented him for several long months. But she felt no peace. She saw herself as a little girl dressed in black, trembling under the weight of the loss, clinging to her mother.

"Kiss your father," her mother had said. Kami shook her head and buried her face into her mother's stomach. Her mother had crouched down and whispered fiercely into her ear.

"Kiss your father. Everyone's watching."

"That's not my father," she'd sobbed. "Baba's gone. Baba's gone."

Kami had pushed her mother away and ran from the room and down the corridor, hiding behind a couch in the foyer of the funeral home. She could still vividly remember the maroon flowers on the upholstery blurred by her tears, could feel the scratchy texture of the carpet against her cheek.

"Why him? Why take my Baba from me? I need him," she thought over, and over, and she felt the rush of heat as her fear and anger grew and grew until every part of her trembled with anguish. She tapped into that anger now, could feel it flowing through her. It folded over her in waves as she relived painful memory after painful memory. Her mother too sick from an alcohol-induced illness to take her to the school Christmas concert to sing her solo. Bobby Allen taunting her because her pant legs were too short and her mother kept forgetting to buy new ones. The woman who brought them food, then loudly criticized her mother for being a charity case. Humiliation, shame, fear. They brought these and other memories too painful to dwell on. Memories she usually locked out to protect herself, but she let them come because it heightened the anger that started the day her father died.

She could feel the power again, flowing up through the bloodstone into her arms. Kami directed the power toward the cage and was about to issue a command when she heard yelling, someone yelling. She resisted it. She was in now, and didn't want to be distracted from seeing it through.

Then it registered that she knew that voice. It was Chris's voice. Why was he yelling? She wanted to finish, needed to finish, but Chris wouldn't be yelling unless there was a good reason. She spun her mind back down and came out of her heightened state.

"What?" she asked.

Chris pointed to the cage. The little creature lay motionless on the cage floor. Chris pulled out a pencil and poked it through the cage bars. Nothing.

"Did I ... kill it?" Kami asked.

"I'm not sure they die. They just ... disintegrate," Chris said. "I've seen them go down before and you won't believe, wait. Watch!"

The little creature dissolved into pile of black dust, which was picked up by the wind and carried from the cage. Kami dropped the necklace like it had burned her. She felt sick inside.