Rebirth (Tattooed Angels Trilogy 1)

Chapter Three

At first, the muffled sounds in Hotan’s ears came in the form of a tunneled shout down the longest hallway ever. There was no sense of time as he strained to focus on the words. Whoever it was, it sounded urgent and horrifyingly desperate. Shivering, the coldness his body felt did nothing to pull him from the frozen darkness he sat in. Something warm and wet hit his cheek.

Wiping it off his face, he looked at the clear liquid a moment in confusion. He rolled it between his fingers fascinated by it. More started to hit his face, like tears falling from invisible eyes. The voice had stopped yelling its words and simply sobbed. If these were not his tears, than whom do they belong to?

Who is crying? Why are they crying? What does that have to do with me? There’s no reason to cry over someone like me…

“HOTAN!” His heart skipped a beat when he heard the voice loud and clear. “Please! Wake up, Hotan!”

Shellie!

He struggled to gain the strength to open his eyes as he ran from the pitch-black prison. As his vision regained its focus, he stared into the brightest green eyes. For the first time, he was seeing her eyes and face in full color. The emerald green of Shellie’s irises was phenomenal. They held small specks of gold that added to the rich earth tone of the green, but the tears falling from her flushed face made his heart ache. “Shellie?”

“Hotan! You’re awake! He’s awake!” She hugged him tight as her tears rained down on him. “What happened to you? I thought you were dead! You were so cold when I found you and I… Did someone do this to you? What happened?”

Attempting to sit up, the cathedral tilted and spun around Hotan as an agonizing pain hit his head. Looking back to Shellie’s distraught face, he watched as the colors melted away. The rosy peach tone of her skin, the natural pinkness of her lips; it was all fading away. His miracle had come and gone so quickly that he felt a throbbing in his chest. He opened his mouth to say something, but the words were lost in his sorrow. “I…”

“The ambulance should be here shortly, Shellie!” Kyle was shouting as he walked into the cathedral with Hisota close behind him. “Oh man, what a relief! He’s awake!”

“Jesus, he looks pale.” The surprised expression on Hisota’s face let Hotan know how bad his current state looked. “What in the hell were you doing?”

With the help of his friends, Hotan managed to sit down on a pew. His head was still spinning as he struggled to remember how he got there. Another wave of shivering crawled across his skin as the sounds of distant sirens drew near. It took all he had to focus his thoughts, but all he remembered was leaving Shellie’s house.

Looking up, and past his friends, he looked around baffled. “Where am I?”

“The church by the school… You don’t remember where you are?” Shellie’s words lingered in his thoughts as his stomach twisted into knots. They all looked at one another as their faces showed growing concerns from his bewilderment. Shellie continued, “You come here all the time, Hotan…”

 The church? The broken place I come to all the time? Where I come to think? When… but this can’t be the same place? I must be dreaming…

 “The… church?” Hotan’s eyes scanned over the clean bright marble, the unbroken stain glass window, and lastly, the breathtaking Crucifix statue on a wooden cross behind the podium. “But, this can’t be…”

When did someone renovate this place?

 “How long have I been missing?” A surge of panic was flooding his mind as cold sweat raced down his back. “This isn’t how I remember it! This can’t be the same place! How long was I missing?”