Set Fire to The Rain -- Completed

Chapter 9

“Set Fire to the Rain”

2011 © All Rights Reserved

Chapter 9

Liam was lying on the old worn out couch in his basement staring up at the ceiling.  His mind was seemingly deep in thought.  That particular couch was the one thing that he had left in this world where he could  still feel a connection with his mother.  She used to sit on that same couch with Liam perched on her lap when he was a small child and she told him stories about their kind and their people.  What is was like back home and how being a Lyric was something special.  Those times were some of the best times in his life. 

Then the Special Forces came into their lives turning them upside down.  Somehow they managed to capture his mother when she had left for a simple grocery shopping trip and took her away from Liam and his father forever.  To add to his misery, only a few weeks after his powers awakening that same vengeful group gunned his father down on their own front porch.

Now Liam was completely alone.  Just the way that he liked it.

Or was he?

An image of Hope Masters and the stricken look on her face after the discovery of her newly awakened powers made it’s way into his mind and he immediately clenched his back teeth in frustration.  This was not the first time that Hope had wormed her way into his mind today.  Somehow, she has managed to infiltrate his every other thought.  He didn’t like feeling the strong compulsion that he was experiencing to go to her.  He was a loner, an outcast and that was the way that he liked it.  

But it was still there.  Like a forbidden fruit calling out to him, he was inexplicably drawn to her.  Something in his chest ached without her near.  He felt empty and lost.  He needed her and that little fact was a hard pill for a guy like him to swallow.

“Dammit!” he screamed and sitting up he punched the side of the couch. “Why?” he asked throwing his hands up in the air.  “Why do I feel like this?  Why me and why now?”

Is this supposed to be some kind of messed up way of fate thanking me for helping out one of my own kind?  All because I did a good deed for once in my life.  Liam snorted aloud mockingly.  If that's the case, then the jokes on me.  All I ever wanted is my own piece of happiness and I had that by being alone.  Not with Hope Masters, that just wrong on so many levels.

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It was Monday morning and Hope dreaded going back to school.  After her sudden disappearance from her own party on Friday night, she could only imagine the rumors and questions there would be all over school today.  

Then there was Joey.  He stayed camped out at her door again all through Saturday night and most of Sunday but Hope continuously refused to talk to him.  He finally left late yesterday but promised that he would be here this morning to pick her up and drive her to school.  

Hope felt like she was going crazy.  In a span of forty eight hours her life was spiraling out of control and there was no safety brake to pull in order to stop it.  

The things that Liam had told her about who and what she was had blindsided her.  Before that fateful night Hope was fine.  She was happy, care free and genuinely pleased with the way her life was going but now, now she didn’t know what to think other than she wasn’t the same girl that descended the steps minutes before her birthday party.  

No, now she was different.  She was a freak, a whole different species.  She was from another world for crying out loud and the people that she believed to be her parents for eighteen years were evidently not even her real parents.  She had another mother and another father out there, somewhere roaming around.  Did they not want her?  Was she that much of a burden?  There is always so many questions and not enough answers.