No one truly knows themselves until they've got a knife in their hands, my teacher had told me. That was just the way of the world.
There was something so raw and human in its balance, the sharp edges, the way it's handle fit so well across the palm. The way you wrapped your fingers around it, an intimacy only known to man and blade. Craftsman and tool. But it was what you chose to do with it, he said, that determined the side of you you'd never find anywhere else. The answers you seek are at the tip of a knife.
I slammed the blade with a vengeance into an old wooden table, piercing through the yellowed papers strewn half-hazardly across its surface. It swung back and forth like a plucked string, until time forced its stop. I buried my face in my hands and tore at my hair and panted. Paced. Cursing under my breath.
Time goes on, Avella. Can you stop it?
"I can't, I can't"
Blood. They wanted it.
"God help me, I've forgotten how to breathe..."
They are coming.
"Control your anger, Jenna. You know it's what's holding you back. Angels burn with holy fire, but never let it scorch themselves."
Words, again, from My uncle.
I fell onto the chair in a heap, holding my forehead with open hands as I peered down into the riddlish words of my books. Letters blurring together, a language I had known so well now seeming foreign through the muddled waters of my spinning head. I let out a sigh.
Think Jenna, think.
Miraverano was more than I could handle alone. Face on, she was an entity I wasn't ready for, her army enough to wipe me out in an instant. Every vampire in Deadwood, packed together on a single night to tear into the school. To devour.
They were devouring my mind already. Eating up what was left of my sanity as the desperate need for help hung in the air, dangling, its answer just out of reach. Matías Avella would have known what to do. Matías could have helped me.
But I was grown and ready and left to my own means. I was the only Venator in Deadwood, I had to play my part. It was only a small struggle on the road to glory, when I looked back on it all.
But this could leave a mark in your history.
I pulled the knife out and spun it over my fingers.
The mole.
There was a mole, right? Someone who didn't belong. Something inhuman hiding among the numbers of mortal students with clean blood running through their veins. I'd sensed it, hadn't I?
But when?
It wasn't the boy in social studies, head deep in a washed out mid-day slumber. It wasn't hidden in the group I had sat nearby during lunch, whose heavy voices stung my memory. It wasn't the redhead girl next to me in math, sheltering under the curtain of that small, insignificant worry that everyone around was judging her every move. Watching and waiting for a slip-up, a mistake, a reason to think of her any other way.
I thought hard.
There was the vague memory of someone who used to belong, residing in the ranks of the popular groups and the after-school parties. Never left behind, never forgotten.
But something had changed.
I hadn't seen the change but I felt it. A new attack, a new Lamia?
I forgot his name, but I knew who I was looking for. My conscience would guide me, like it always had. I could stop him, maybe that would change the outcome of their attack. Throw off their plans.
And if I failed?
I knew where to turn, whether I liked it or not. Plan B came in the form of a slippery dealing, a person of interest with a shady past and a moral code still in question.
Even the name had a bad reputation, a sort of stain to it that left traces of disdain wherever it was said.
Devin Lockshire.
I could turn to him, if I had to. I only hoped it wouldn't come to that.
_______________________________________
A.N. Honestly I can't wait to introduce Dev... hes my favorite by far I'm sure you'll like him too :) Anyway, thanks for reading! Be sure to vote/comment and share!
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
