DYING MOURNINGS, original

eight : demon blades

┌─────━┿──┿━─────┐

𝐄𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐓 : 𝐃𝐄𝐌𝐎𝐍 𝐁𝐋𝐀𝐃𝐄𝐒

└─────━┿──┿━─────┘

I woke up early the next morning still on the couch but the fire had been turned off. I silently thanked whatever ghost had passed through to keep me from somehow accidentally burning Crow's precious cabin down.

Sitting at the kitchen counter eating cereal, I finished up some assignments that were due today and tomorrow mostly because I had a good feeling that training later this afternoon would take up more time than we'd all want. The only thing keeping me from not crawling into bed was the exciting thought of actually working on the biology project Blondie, Winker, and I had been assigned. It was a wanted distraction.

Plus, behaving like normal teenagers meant we'd have to go to school, anyway. It meant we had to study and take exams (which meant I had to take one for French today) and attend boring classes when all three of us wished to be in the basement of Clandestine instead.

I drove nearly silently to school, only the sound of Crow's car humming under my fingers and legs filled the air. I wanted to keep my focus on what I needed to finish for homework but the majority of my thoughts kept going back to my mother.

She took her own life because it was the only way to keep true to the prophecy. But I'd seen my first ghost after so many years before she died but she still didn't want to take the chance. If it had been my own child, destined to save the world from this greater evil, I probably would've done the same or hoped I would've.

The air conditioner felt like ice against my face and my eyes began to water from the chill, but it felt comfortable. It felt familiar, that freezing cold crawling over my skin. I'd felt it when Beatrice first appeared to me, felt it when I walked into the cabin last night. I was afraid that cold would not protect me when it came down to it.

I had only four days after today to prepare for some mysterious package. A different array of ideas sprang to my mind for what the package could be and some of them included: a dead body, an explosive device, a body, someone to kill me, or something really, really dangerous. The things I was hoping it wouldn't be with everything in me: John, Ace, a demon there to kill me, John, the devil, or John Walker. Basically, I was terrified of John or any of his goons showing up on the cabin front porch ready to stab me.

I parked in the high school lot and grabbed my bag, clutching my biology textbook to my chest as I walked into the school. It'd only been a weekend but it felt like I'd been gone for ages. It felt different here, like it always did, without Pandora or Ace. But as I turned the corner to head to my locker, I saw Blondie and Winker standing near the wall closest to my row of lockers. Blondie was leaning back in a pretty skirt and Winker was chatting with a smile before his head turned and saw me. He offered me a smile and then a wave, Blondie's face lighting up more as she turned to notice me.

I gave them a smile and waved back and realized, even though Pandora and Ace were both gone, I still had them. I would always have them.

~

We went for a run around the block until Macabre's car rolled into the backlot. We had just finished our agonizingly slow paced fifth lap because Winker insisted Blondie and I try to get our stamina out like the asshole he was but we, of course, were dumb enough to listen, when we noticed his car.