Inferno : Elements Series Book One

Gwen

It’s day three after my weird bout of unconsciousness and I can’t avoid them anymore. I’m back to training. I’ve been pretending I’m not home when someone knocks on the door, unless it’s Hank. He’s only stopped by once though, the rest has just been peace and quiet. I feel guilty. I shouldn’t have avoided them but I had to get my head on straight. At least that’s what I told myself on the first day. The last two days have just passed without me noticing. I’ve been drawing continuously, my head just stuck in my sketch book. I didn’t even look up until last night and found that I was covered in graphite and that it was two days later. It’s not the first time it’s happened, but it’s just as inconvenient now as it was then. That’ll be fun to explain to Derek. It’s not easy accepting the fact that someone can just break into your mind and start re-arranging the furniture. It threw me for a loop, but I’m back. I’m strong enough not to sit around and obsess about this and I have important things to do. Today’s training will be with air. It should be fun but also, according to Erin, not stressful, just simple stuff that won’t take up a lot of energy. Everyone seems to be walking on egg shells, treating me like I might break at any moment but that’s not me at all. I hear a knock at my door and I know its Derek. He’s here to take me to training. I walk over and open it, nervous about how mad he is with me. I’m sure he figured out that I was avoiding him.

“Morning,” he says.

“Hey,” I say. Smooth Gwen. “Uh, come in. I’m almost ready to go.”

“We have a while, I came early.” There’s a bit of an edge to his voice and it makes me a bit nervous about the can of worms he’s about to open.

“Oh. When do we have to leave?” I’m stalling. I’ve apparently abandoned my whole personality over the past few days and become a coward.

“We have just over an hour,” he says. I can feel him staring at me as I walk into the kitchen. I think he’s assessing me, figuring out my mood.

“Oh, any reason for such an early start today?”

I did it. I gave him a way in. Let’s just hope he doesn’t start yelling at me or something. It’s way too early for that, seriously, it’s only 8:00am.

“Well, I thought I’d ask where you’ve been for the past few days. I’ve knocked but it appears you haven’t been home.”

Liar. He knew I was home. He wants me to say it.

“You knew that I was here. You’re being formal and reasonable and it’s weird. Just get mad at me or something.”

I didn’t think I wanted an argument but he’s acting so calm when he’s clearly worked up and it’s eerie.

“Okay then, if that’s the way you want it. Since you’ve clearly been here the whole time I can only assume that you’ve been avoiding us. What the hell?! We’ve been worried sick because none of us have seen you in days. After everything that happened we kept thinking that you’d gone and passed out somewhere again and that no one had seen you because no one had managed to find your body yet.”

I’m sure my surprise is written plainly on my face but he continues.

“And of course, there’s the fact that we’re assuming that someone is after you thanks to that little bout of mind-fuckery while you were unconscious. So we’ve also been worried that maybe you were kidnapped. I’d certainly appreciate an explanation because we’ve been having a three day long aneurism! And to top it all off, you’ve been blocking me, so I couldn’t even look into your mind to see if you were alive or not!”

I didn’t know they’d be so worried. None of these things occurred to me at all. I thought they’d be mad simply because I avoided them, not because they thought I was hurt.

“You knew I was here.” Wrong words, Gwen, wrong words.

“That’s not the point! I’ve been going out of my mind for days, so for the love of every damn deity in existence, would you tell me why?!”

“I’m sorry, okay? I didn’t know you’d be worried. I kind of had a lot to work through you know!” I’ve found my temper. This is just going to make things worse but he’s talking to me like I’m something to be protected, like a child, and it’s infuriating!

“I get that, but would it have been so hard for you to just open up your damned door and just tell us to piss off?! At least then we would have known you were alive!”

Doesn’t he get it? Of course he doesn’t I haven’t told him yet.

“I didn’t have time,” I say to myself. Unfortunately I said it out loud and Mr. Mad heard it loud and clear.

“You didn’t have time? You were here in your apartment for days without ever leaving it, but you didn’t have time to get up and put me out of my misery?! That’s bullshit Gwen.”

Crap.

“No you don’t get it. I was only avoiding you guys on the first day. I didn’t know the last two days had even passed until last night an-“

“So you were avoiding us! That’s just-“ he pauses, finally hearing the rest of the sentence. “What do you mean you didn’t know two days had past? Did you black out again? Are you okay?”

He’s gone from mad at me, to mad at, and worried about, me. That’s my Guardian.

“I’m fine, I didn’t black out, well I sort of did, but not like I did before. It’s hard to explain, I just kind of, well, I sort of-“

“Spit it out Gwen!”

“I don’t know!” I yell. “Are you happy now? I. Don’t. Know. It’s happened before but only a few times and it hasn’t happened for a few years now.”

I’ll have to show him my books and walls. It’s the only way he’s going to get it. I don’t want to though, he’s going to think I’ve gone off the deep end.

“I don’t get it.” From mad to confused.

“Just,” I sigh, giving in to the inevitable. “Just come with me.”

I lead him to the bedroom and walk in. I haven’t had time to clean it yet or make it look less like The Joker was locked in there for a week. He gets the full impact. There are sketches strewn all around the place, some even floating on top of the pond that makes up my bedroom floor. The walls are covered and some are still floating in the air, held up by the remnants of the magic I used to pin them there.

Derek freezes the moment he steps into the room. I try to make a joke. Looking into his mind I say;

“You still in there.”

He gives my earlier words back to me.

“Yeah, I’m still here. Just give me a minute.”

He’s still shocked but I get a little smile out of him anyway.

He walks further into the room, examining pictures as he goes. I decide to sit on the bed and wait. It takes him a few minutes but, eventually, he starts talking again.

“Do you know what you’ve drawn?”

“Yes, I didn’t just black out and start drawing like a crazy person,” I roll my eyes. “I started out trying to sketch the guy from that weird mind-rape thing while I was out. Then everything just started to flow, I guess, and when I looked up it was ten o’clock last night. I was covered in graphite, there was paper everywhere and I realised I’d lost forty-eight hours. Also that I was starving, incredibly thirsty and really had to pee…but that was probably too much information and we can disregard that last sentence completely.”

He laughs; finally the guy calms the heck down.

He comes to sit on the bed next to me.

“Okay, you’ve got me. Show me what the guy looks like.”

I pull out my sketch book, which is now full (damn it, I’ll need a new one) and flip to the clearest sketch I managed.

“I told you that I never really got a clear look at his face but other than that, this is him.”

He looks at the sketch for a while. It’s morbid; I sketched in colour with water pencils. No shortage of water when you sleep on top of a lake. It shows him floating above me, looking down on me while I choke and gasp for air. He looks completely superior and terrifying and I look weak and pathetic. It’s the most accurate sketch I managed of what happened.

“Is this what happened or how you felt?”

“It’s what happened,” I flip back to the beginning of the sketches. At least in the book I managed to do them in chronological order, starting with the cliff and ending with Lake Lava. Everything is in full colour and has as much detail as I’m capable of putting into my art. No wonder it took me a full two days.

“Well, I guess I can forgive you for the past few days. You were definitely a little tied up,” he looks at me as I relax. I’m genuinely relieved that this fight is over, I don’t have the energy for a prolonged disagreement.

“Thanks, I really didn’t want to fight,” I say as I lie back on my pillows and relax for the first time in days. I cover my face with my hands and rub my eyes. The lack of sleep is catching up to me and I’m hoping Erin keeps her promise of today’s training being low energy.

“So, does this happen often? Should I be worried about you continuously disappearing for days on end?”

I smile up at him, hoping to reassure him I guess.

“No, you don’t have to worry. It’s only happened once before this. The last time it happened was because I was working on a portrait that was going to be auctioned off for a local charity and I was running behind schedule. This time I think it was just stress. Me trying to put a face to the bastard who got into my head and played with my mind, it’s maddening.”

“I can imagine,” he says as he leans back on the other side of the bed. He’s wearing another one of his fits-like-a-glove t-shirts. Funny how a little over a week ago I was kicking him out of my house and wishing he’d just disappear. Now I’m letting him lounge around in my bed. It’s nice, having him in my bed that is.

“What?”

He snaps me back to reality, I must have zoned out.

“What do you mean ‘what’?” I ask.

“You were staring at me. Do I have something on my face?” He wipes at his chin looking for something and I laugh.

“No, there isn’t anything on your face, I just spaced for a second. I was thinking.”

“Oh,” he drops his hand back onto the bed. “Thinking about what?”

I feel it, I blush. Damn my traitorous cheeks.

“Nothing,” I lie. “Hey don’t we have to go meet Erin?” I go to get up, knowing full well that it’s almost forty minutes too early to be heading off to training. I feel a hand wrap around my wrist and I get pulled back down onto the bed.

“Not a chance. You blushed, you never blush, and you were staring at me,” he says. My face betrays me again; can you learn to control blushing? I’ll have to look that up. He sees it and a smart arse grin breaks out on his face.

“You were, I hit the nail on the head with that didn’t I?. Come on, tell me what you were thinking.”

“It was nothing,” I say as I try to get up again. He doesn’t let me. He pins me down, his body on top of mine and my wrists caught on either side of my head. The mood between us shifts, tension building like it did the other night. This is not how I expected my morning to go.

“It was something, or else you wouldn’t have blushed and you wouldn’t be trying to run,” he says. I stay quiet. Honestly with the position I’ve found myself in I don’t think I’ll be able to talk at all.

“Come on. After the other night I said you weren’t allowed to freeze up on me ever again. Out with it,” he says in his unique Some-sort-of-European accent. Honestly I still don’t know what it is and right now I really don’t care.

“I was thinking,” my voice wavers. Could I be any more transparent?! “I was thinking that just over a week ago I was kicking you out of my house and now I’m letting you into my bed. I was trying to figure out why. Are you happy now?”

He grins, damn him. I try to push him off and get up but we both know that if I really wanted him to move then he’d be well and truly off me by now. As I try to get up he bends down to kiss my shoulder, letting go of my hands as he does.

“We both know that I’m here because you want me to be, you haven’t admitted it to yourself yet. You’re too damn stubborn,” he says in my mind. He kisses his way across my shoulder and collar bone before making his way up my neck. He gets to my jaw and pauses.

“No witty remark? I just called you stubborn and you haven’t responded at all. Is something distracting you maybe?”

I feel him smile against my cheek, smart arse.

“You know exactly what you’re doing. Bastard,” I say. It’s a weak response. He laughs again and begins kissing his way along my jaw but I’ve come out of my stupor now and found some sort of confidence that I never knew I had until right this moment. Two can play at this game. I splay my hands across his chest and begin moving them down across his stomach. When I reach the hem of his shirt I grab hold of his belt and pull him all the way down onto me. He gasps in surprise and it’s my turn to laugh.

“Didn’t think you were the only one capable of playing this game, did you?”

“Not at all, I just thought I was the only one who wanted to,” he replies.

How wrong he is. I move my hands up his back, exploring his well-toned shoulders… well everything is well-toned actually. He takes his weight on one arm and uses his other to hitch my leg up over his hip. He’s trying to one-up me, I can’t let that happen. I gently dig my nails into his back and move so that my lips are at his neck. He makes a sexy growling noise and I know I’ve won this round. I take the lead and run with it. Using a little air magic I flip us over so that I’m on top and lean down to give him some of his own medicine. He rests his hand on my hips as I kiss my way up his neck, moving excruciatingly slowly. He tries to take me by surprise and kiss me, but I’m not done yet.

“No you don’t,” I say to him as I move my face just out of his reach. “I’m not done having my fun yet.”

I flash what feels like a wicked grin, because I know I’m being just a little bit evil and loving it. I have no idea where this confidence came from. It certainly wasn’t here a minute ago when I was a blushing fool trying to run out of here. I may as well just go with it, who knows when I’ll have this opportunity again? I sit up, my thighs straddling his hips and without taking my eyes off his, I slide my fingers beneath the hem of his grey t-shirt. His mouth opens in a small gasp and I seize the advantage. I move slowly, letting my nails graze across his abs, taking my time and slowly hitching his shirt up as I go. Finally there isn’t any more of his shirt to lift and he abruptly sits up to pull it over his head, this time taking me by surprise. He lies back down just as fast, with me still on top and I appreciate that he’s letting me take the lead. I continue exploring, my hands tracing his scar, knowing full well that he’s watching everything I do. It’s a heady feeling, to be in control like this. I’ve never had it before and it really is something else. I bend to kiss his stomach and he makes a sound in the back of his throat. I look up at him from beneath my lashes, enjoying this little game. I start working my way up his stomach and when I reach his chest I use his scar as a guideline, kissing my way across the winding mark until I reach the little dip at the base of his throat. I stop there because I’m starting to torture myself with all this waiting, not that I’ll ever tell him that.

“You don’t have to tell me that,” he says, surprising me. He has such a sexy accent. “I’ve been in your head the whole time.”

And with that he pulls me back down to the mattress and kisses me like his life depends on it. I stay like that, letting him claim my mouth, running my hands against his stubble. He starts to take my shirt off and…my stupid alarm chooses that moment to start its incessant screaming. It’s time to go meet Erin. I don’t want to go, believe me I’d much rather stay here, but I decide a little more teasing isn’t going to hurt anyone. I roll us back over so that I’m on top and smile mockingly down at him.

“Time for class,” I say. “Guess we better get going. Don’t want to keep Erin waiting.”

He sees straight through my game. He sits up quick as a flash and kisses the stuffing out of me, leaving me dazed when he pulls away.

“I guess we better go then,” he says. He doesn’t get to win this. I push him down and put my hands against his abs, grazing him with my nails in a way that makes his breath catch in his throat. I hand him his shirt and stand up.

“You’re right, we should go.”