CHAPTER 16
The next two weeks were like cruel and unusual punishment as I waited for some extraordinary, earth-shaking sign from someone to signify the slightest bit of information in regard to Allen, but nothing ever came.
Considering money was not something I needed in the slightest bit, I began working shifts at Spirits, putting all my personal tips into the register since I was getting more rewarded by keeping my mind busy and off of the inevitable. Lorenzo stopped by every afternoon to bring me homemade lunches, and I would sit and eat with him after making us tea. That was the most rewarding payment anyone could give me at this point! I looked forward to one o’clock every day from the time my eyes opened! I could practically taste and smell the food hours before Lorenzo ever showed up.
Working the shifts as much as possible during the weekdays left me exhausted on the weekend, so I usually stayed home and exhibited every known sign of laziness ever recorded. Avan and the guys did their performance on Saturday nights, but I just lacked the motivation to go. I really had no good excuse not to, but I guess if I was honest, I was depressed that we still heard no word about Allen. I felt like whatever he was going through was all because he had tried to protect me and this was my fault just for being born! I could hardly handle the thought, but it always stayed in the back of my mind, no matter how often Avan tried to convince me this wasn’t my fault.
The weeks soon turned to months, but fall was dull this time, lacking the beauty it usually brought. I had still heard nothing from Lena or anyone who had been such a large part of my life before Avan stepped into it; it was as if they had vanished, leaving only their memory. Every time I built up the courage to drive by the huge house where I had lived with Lena and her dad, it looked the same as it always had from the outside. More than once I pulled into the driveway, but I never managed to work up the nerve to go to the door.
I wondered if Lena had ever been looking out the window and seen my car. Surely she would have at least attempted to text me and tell something or told me to die if she had. Then again, there was no telling what she was up to after graduating. Whatever it was, I was positive it was something that made her the center of attention.
Avan and I kept busy doing a lot of work, trying to figure out what abilities I had been born with and how to control them. The list got longer and longer as far as what I was capable of doing. The strange thing was that all I ever had to do was use the power of my mind to concentrate and focus on what I wanted to do and it happened. The harder part was controlling the abilities. This too happened with my mind, but if I allowed myself to become distracted with thoughts of Allen, Lena, Damron, Cheryl, or Ian, I had the unintended habit of blowing things to pieces, starting fires, causing storms with dangerous lightning, and other unpleasant things.
At one point during the late summer we had been on the beach, testing out a few different things like making big waves, controlling the clouds, and talking to some dolphins to get them to jump for me when I thought I had caught a glimpse of Damron’s Hummer along the highway. I hadn’t even noticed what I had done until Avan pointed out how far back the tide had swelled! I quickly had to refocus on doing damage prevention and prohibit the fifteen-foot wave from crashing into beach area, causing serious repercussions for the cars and unnoticing sunbathers. There was no escaping the haunting thoughts of Damron and Cheryl kidnapping me. Every time I saw anyone who reminded me of him or her, I became angry. I wondered if Lena knew anything about the past. She never let on that she had the slightest hint. It would really hurt her to find out the father she adored had only used her to his own advantage. The bad thing was that I knew the truth! I knew every answer to every question I asked myself.
If I were to analyze mine and Lena’s entire relationship, I had to say that she never realized she was anything more than her daddy’s little, entitled princess. I had always been under the impression that she was special for some reason, making me special too. In reality, I could now see that since the day I had met Lena she had been blind to her entire past the same way I had. It was as if she lived in a fairytale world with no knowledge that nothing was real. From the way she bragged about all of the things she had and everything she got to do, to the way she always stuck me with her date’s friends when we went out rather than actually setting up a double date with a guy I was interested in, she was always the one in the dark.
It seemed the more time I spent with Avan the more in tune we became with one another. I could sense when he was stressed, I could feel when he smiled, I could hear exactly what he was thinking, I could see in his mind as though our vision was connected somehow, and I could even tune into conversations he was having with others just by focusing on him. Surprisingly, he now had the ability to do the same things with me. These days we knew without a doubt that our minds were open territory with little to no privacy when it came to one another, and we welcomed it. Our connection was so deep and intimate that it no longer felt like an invasion but rather a safety measure.
I knew each time he sensed I was driving anywhere near the places I used to go with Lena. When I drove by her house alone I made him incredibly uncomfortable. I could feel his breathing become shallow and his thoughts race while he devised plan after plan of what he would do in the event that something unplanned should occur. Each time I would try to mentally console him, with little to no success whatsoever. Confused as to why, thoughts of Allen were usually what prompted me to drive over to Lena’s. I needed to figure out what Damien was up to, and without talking to Lena, I had no idea how. I did not even care that Avan knew I was thinking of irrational ideas of how to gain ground in our war against the dark evil influences who had taken Allen.
I gained a great amount of confidence since the day I had discovered what and who I was. Uncertain if it was because I felt empowered and somewhat entitled or if it was because I knew I really did possess the power fight against the spread of evil in any way that only I could to protect those I cared about the over-the-top ideas of bringing the most hated and feared trash that ever walked the planet took over most of my daily thought processes noted by Avan having a direct line tapping into all of this information he kept Bradley, Trev, Dorian, Alex, and Declan in the loop to some degree. Counting on the fact that if at any moment I ran into a bad situation these first responders were ready to take out whatever anyone threw in their direction.
I also knew that each of them was represented by a charm that dangled from my bracelet. They were the ones Avan had given me as one of my gifts on my birthday. All I had to do was take the charm representing them in my grasp and focus on my situation and they would come to help me as soon as they could. Even if all I needed to do was simply give them a message or convey some information of some sort, they would hear me immediately and respond if they needed to. The awesome thing about it was that it didn’t matter how far away I was from the other angels I needed to get in touch with, it always worked perfectly without fail.
I still wasn’t sure how it worked, considering the hearing other angels’ thoughts was only possible when you were in the same vicinity under most conditions, and if they didn’t want a thought to be known, they could ask you to leave it alone. The way the bracelet worked was very unique; it was like a direct connection that couldn’t be interrupted. I was glad about that because I wasn’t sure how much longer I could sit and wait in silence to hear someone break their cover and brag about how they caught one of the good guys who was protecting the special hybrid angel! I was becoming a liability and a danger to everyone around. I would not sit and do nothing while everyone else was hunted down.
The worst part of it all was even though I knew I was born to overcome evil with abilities no other angel could imagine, I was still in a human body affected by humanistic desires, feelings, emotions, and afflictions until I could obtain my wings. Dark thoughts often entered my mind regarding guilt over Allen’s disappearance and grew into overwhelming bouts of depression. They weighed down every element of my personality into a dark cloud in my mind until I was not much more than a shell. I knew this did not just affect me and pull me down; it pulled Avan down right along with me.
What was even worse about that was how Avan was a heavenly angel, which meant he was not familiar with dark feelings that had this effect, so as pure as he was, his defense against it weakened due to his bond with me. Thankfully, the dark feelings did not consume him to the extent that they consumed me. I felt awful, watching him try to empathize as he did everything in his power to try and make the situation better for me.
Nearing the point to where it was almost painful to force a smile, laughter had been unheard of for a while and optimism was a word I wished I did not know the meaning of. I felt empty and alone, just as I had felt when my parents died. I knew I had Avan and that he would never go anywhere, but I had succumbed to the negativity and pessimism that my mind played on, which told me no one would be dead or in a terrible, potentially fatal situation if it were not for my existence. At one point I had even considered that if there were a way to die, it would be in the best interest of everyone I had ever met, as each of them could be jaded just by being in any kind of affiliation with me. I suppose this was just one of the things you had to deal with as an immortal.
By the time I had a breakthrough, I had stopped going to Spirits completely. I had not even thought about how I had just suddenly quit my lunches with Lorenzo and refused to charge my cell phone in weeks. Considering angels had their own way of communication, it defeated the idea of a cell phone anyway, but I had kept it for so many years it was more of a habitual thing to carry it. I was not sure how long it had been since I had gone almost antisocial, but when I woke up this morning, it was as if all of that had just melted away as I had slept.
When Avan brought me breakfast, just as he had done for as long as I could remember, he looked at me as if he were looking at me for the first time. I knew this was a side of me that he had not seen in a long time, but I never expected it would throw him off guard this much. I knew from the look on his face that I would have to have some kind of an explanation of my odd behavior over the past month or so. I also knew I needed to explain why it had vanished into thin air without any rhyme or reason. As I analyzed it, the only thing that came to mind was that today, for the first time, I had woken up with the feeling of hope for Allen.
I could not be sure if the message was being sent to my heart from another angel, from heaven, or maybe even from Allen, but I knew with every part of my heart and soul that Allen was still okay. I could not make myself form the words to tell Avan what I was feeling verbally, so I just brought him into my own thoughts as I let the tears and a large sigh of relief take the weight from my shoulders.
Understanding from feeling my thoughts, he dropped the sack he had been holding from the little donut shop down the street and embraced me in a hug that I never wanted to end. It had been weeks since I had let him come anywhere near me; now in his arms I realized how much I had truly missed the feeling of them being around me. The way he smelled so clean, pure, masculine, and like his favorite cologne all at the same time always had a way of sending my thoughts and emotions right over the top!
Being this close to him made me relive every moment and thought of how I had felt every time he had walked past me before we had ever officially met. I remembered how my heart always skipped a beat and how I would inhale slowly and deeply, making a mental note of every curve of his face and every fleck of color in his eyes. Yes, this is what I had missed the most over my time of solitude. I missed him. I knew now what it would be like to be without him after being with him every day. Even though he had been there, I had not, and that was a feeling I never wished to feel again. I would not allow anything to come in the way of being able to be this close to Avan ever again.
Returning to Spirits, I fell back into the swing of things as I took orders, had lunch with Lorenzo, and other daily things around the coffee shop. It was a busy Friday, which was excellent in helping my state of mind, but what I loved most about it was how everyone went about business as usual rather than focusing on my breakdown. Lorenzo made one of the most amazing lunches I had ever tasted, and no one asked if I was better or insinuated that I had become a nutcase. Instead, everyone just said how great it was to see me and left it completely alone.
Judging the way that I had to overcome the feelings I had been afflicted by for so long had really given me the mother of all wake-up calls. I now realized the darkness Natasha and my father had referred to that I must overcome would start as being as small as a feeling and I had no idea just how large it could become. If I was unable to depend on my own strength in order to overcome pessimism and darkness within my own mind, how could I ever expect to overcome anything? I must rise above the circumstances surrounding me that had pulled me into the dark, desolate place of loneliness that I came out of by chance alone.
I knew that I would have to get serious about protecting myself and gaining strength to battle whatever evil would be coming for me. It was evident that whatever it would turn out to be, it would be more powerful than I ever expected. I could never give into anything that was from the other side. My eyes opened to the fact that even though I had been born to overcome evil, it was still a choice.
Until now, I knew stories about what I was and how I needed to be careful not to fall into darkness. Now seeing firsthand how deeply it affected me, had I been in the wrong situation, the dark angels could have overtaken me with ease. They had nearly accomplished precisely what they had set out to while I wilted like a flower without water during a drought!