A Nameless Dark

Chapter 4

It was raining when I stepped through the motel room door and into the morning stillness. Aaron and Samuel were arguing again, angry voices echoing off the bare walls of our room. They had been at each other's throats since our narrow escape from our former home. Samuel insisted we stand and fight, while Aaron was convinced we should run. The tension in the small space was thick and confining.

I needed to get some distance.

I stood under the overhang of the single story motel, sheltered from the cold sting of November rain, but feeling exposed in a way I didn't really understand. Our house was gone. It was the only home I had ever known and represented the only stability in my life.

My mother died when I was very young. Now my Father was gone as well, taken from us six months earlier in a freak accident that shouldn't have been able to kill a man with that kind of power. He was probably the first Holder of Light ever to die in a car accident. None of us believed it was possible, but the police found no evidence of foul play, and when Aaron snuck into the police impound to investigate the car himself, he came away empty handed. Our dad was simply gone.

The loss had broken our family and left us all in a state of self-imposed solitude. I found myself wandering the house aimlessly, staring out the windows into the countryside, unsure of what I was looking for. I knew in my head that my father wasn't coming home, but I couldn't stop the feeling that I was waiting for the missing fragments of my life to fall back into place. Uncle Aaron stayed sullen and drunk most of the time. Samuel kept everyone at arm's length, busy under the hood of a car. Even Lara would sometimes look at me with an unexplained pity in her eyes, as though she could read loneliness on my face and knew she could do nothing to ease it. Close friends and extracurricular involvements at school were out of the question. They drew too much attention to the family, and attention was dangerous. The Achesons had to keep a low profile, blending in and concealing our abilities. Often that left only the house for company. It was old and drafty, but my family had taken good care of the property, repairing any damage and polishing every floor. It was like a warmhearted friend, always ready to place a comforting arm around my shoulders. I loved that house.

And now it was ash.

The tunnel that provided our escape from the house had ended at another ladder topped by yet another hatch. This one opened into a thorn-riddled thicket. The overgrowth, intended to conceal the opening to the tunnel, provided a painful exit and extracted muttered curses from both Aaron and Samuel. As I climbed my way out and joined the others at the edge of the thicket, I saw the wicked glow of the fire in the distance. It hovered on the eastern horizon, casting a crimson framed silhouette to the trees along the river. Fingers of angry red stretched into the night sky, foreshadowing a fate that I felt pressing into me like the heat of the fire itself. Maybe we would all burn down. Just like the house.

Standing outside the motel hours later, I let the quiet cool of the rain wash over me, working to center my thoughts. I knew I should be focused on the danger at hand, but my mind kept wandering back to the moment that started all this. I could still see Trent's battered body, buried in the broken earth. It was the first time I'd seen death with my own eyes, and I had been the one who caused it. Even with the gun, Trent had never stood a stance, and that guilt was like a pile of bricks heaped upon my soul, driving me lower than the loss of my house or my fear of an impending doom.

I dug my palms into my eyes, shaking my head.

The door behind me closed gently and I turned as Lara stepped up beside me.

"It's brutal in there." She shivered slightly in the chill air, hugging herself and bumping shoulders with me.

"Yeah, well," I looked back toward the muffled voices filtering through the door. "They're upset. And afraid. This is how they deal with it."