EVIL

Chapter Three

Dew still stuck to my car. The morning was chilled. A light smattering of chirping birds could be heard in the background as I arrived at school the next morning. I took a moment and remained in my seat. I wasn’t quite ready to face another day as a Braden. It didn’t use to bother me so much, but…things had started to change, somehow, unexplainably.

Pulling the mirror over, I sat back and studied what I saw.

I had a heart-shaped face, with slightly reddened cheeks that came naturally. My cheekbones seemed to stick out, which drew the eye to my lips. A curve filled out on my top lip, and the bottom was slightly plush. And my eyes, dark eyelashes over frostbitten green eyes, and coal black hair that framed each side of my face.

I looked good. I knew it, but I didn’t care. Giuseppa was gorgeous. She was one of those golden Greek goddesses, and she loved it. She used her looks to get anything she wanted, and if her looks didn’t work, she’d use her powers. She’d probably slept with half of the guys in school, and most of them didn’t even remember. Gus was the ultimate female player, but no one even considered slamming her with labels such as “slut” or “whore.” Gus was just Gus, and she wasn’t considered on the same level as the human girls, who would call each other “slut” or “whore.”

Gus used them, enjoyed them, and made them forget. There were no ramifications afterwards.

I wasn’t sure, but I assumed Vespar did the same thing. He was just more discreet about it.

And Kellan…Kellan slept with who he wanted. If he changed their memories, that was up to him. No girl dared make any demands after a night with him. She wouldn’t have lasted long enough for the words to even escape her lips. His look alone would’ve filleted her, but I knew he altered some memories. I’d felt it in the air, like he’d felt my power last night. I always assumed that his s****l exploits, the ones that turned bad, were the recipients of erased memories.

Maybe, maybe not.

Matt Rettley’s scamper was the same as everyone else. No one wanted to mess with Kellan. If they did, those people tended to be changed for the rest of their life.

And me…I stared in the mirror. I looked different from them. I felt different from them. But was I different? I had the same powers, more powers, but I rarely used them. I felt like I couldn’t, like I hadn’t a reason for them, not yet.

I eyed my clothes. I always chose black, though I wasn’t sure the reason. And I always covered every inch. Sometimes I wore jeans, like I was wearing today. They were faded blue that I paired with a tight black long-sleeved shirt. Why did I cover my skin? It wasn’t because I was pale to my siblings’ tanned skin. No, it was because something new had started to arise in the last year, something that I didn’t dare tell a soul, especially my siblings.

I pushed up one of my sleeves and looked down. My wrist was pale, like normal, but three inches above, a black circling tattoo had formed. Some days it was there, and other days it wasn’t. I hadn’t asked for it. I hadn’t performed any spell for it. I had no idea what it meant, but it was on my arm anyway.

It scared the crap out of me. I was the only one with it.

“Hey!”

I looked up in time to watch a body thrown across the front of my car. It bounced and dropped to the ground outside my door. I hurried out and saw the body was a skinny boy with scraggly blond hair. He looked like he hadn’t showered in a week, and there were two holes ripped in his red T-shirt. The jeans were skin tight, not designer tight, but washed too many times tight. They rested an inch above his socks and sneakers.

He looked up in horror, and the look doubled when he saw who I was. As I closed the door and stepped to the side, two athletic-looking guys raced around and braked at the sight of me.

I was a Braden after all.

“Sorry, Shay.” One of the guys rushed out, his chest heaving underneath a blue polo shirt.

The other guy ran a ragged hand through his own brown mop of curls. “Yeah, sorry. We didn’t know you were in the car. We weren’t thinking.”

“So, if it was someone else’s car and someone else had been in it, you’d still have thrown the boy? Do you do that a lot? Throw people at cars?”

The first guy flushed. “No, I mean…look, this isn’t…I mean…”

“Shay.” Kellan stood on the other side of my car. He’d materialized like he always did. As he gazed questionably at the two guys, he came around to join us. When he stood above the boy on the street, Kellan looked once at me, confused, but the look disappeared. He was amused, and he only leaned against the car, just behind me. As I looked from my brother to the other two, images of a panther keeping company with hyenas came to mind.

It wasn’t too far off from reality.

“Um, I mean…hi, Kellan.”

“Pete.” Kellan tucked his head, content to let me handle the situation. Whatever situation it was, I wasn’t quite sure.

“Look, you can’t throw people at cars.” I decided what the situation was. The boy was an obvious victim. The two idiots were bullies, and I was the one who needed to stop it.

A part of me cringed, knowing that Kellan wouldn’t have cared either way.

It didn’t matter. I’d just decided my role, and I clarified it again as I repeated, “You’re bullying him. How old are you?”

Pete looked like his mouth had become glued shut as his eyes skirted from me to Kellan and back again. The other guy had yet to make a noise since my brother’s appearance.

“His name is Scott,” Kellan informed me. He didn’t move from his leaning stance.

I kept my back to him. “Why would you even throw—what’s your name?” I turned and glared my question. The boy seemed to tremble, but I wasn’t sure if it was because Kellan’s feet rested just around his, entrapping him, or if my attention was too much too handle.

“What’s your name?” I repeated slowly.

Pete jerked forward. “Look, uh, this is just…ah hell.”

I was starting to get irritated. “What’s his name? Does he have a name?”

Scott came alive. “His name is Luke. We were just…we didn’t mean anything bad by it. The kid was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“Like my car?” My irritation was growing, and in the back of my head I knew that Kellan was enjoying it. That sparked my irritation into anger.

I drilled holes in Scott and Pete, but something paralyzed them. They couldn’t move, couldn’t speak. They just stared, in horror. Luke had been sniffling during the entire exchange, but even that quieted. Everything just stilled, and my anger was nearing its exploding point.

It was like a battle had been waging inside of me. I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do. And then I decided to do the right thing, to save the boy, but nothing was happening. They wouldn’t talk. I didn’t know what to do because I knew Luke would be bullied again the next day, maybe even the same afternoon.

Kellan was loving it.

I took two threatening steps toward Pete and Scott. “You will leave Luke alone. You will be kind and courteous to him from now on. You will befriend him. You will do this, and you will be loyal to him, to each other, until you die.”

I felt a spark ignite from my hand and explode in the air. Just as quickly as everything had quieted, everything slammed back into reality.

Pete and Scott’s terror morphed into friendly smiles. Each helped Luke up and threw an arm around his shoulders. As they walked toward the school, Kellan noted, “That was…a nice thing to do.”

“We’re nice people.” I grabbed my bag and headed toward the school.

Kellan kept pace beside me, his hands stuffed in his jeans. “We’re not nice people, Shay.”

“Shut up.”

“We’re not people, Shay. And what you did just there, a normal person couldn’t have done that.”

“Shut up.” I didn’t want to hear about what I’d just done. I didn’t know what had come over me.

“You just bonded those three guys for life. You did it with magic, Shay. You don’t ever use that stuff.”

“Shut up, okay?” I shrugged him off, but Kellan caught my elbow. We turned a quick corner, another, and he shoved me against the wall.

“What is your deal?” I pushed back at him. “I thought this is what you wanted. You want me to use my powers, like you do, right? Like Gus and Vespar? Isn’t this what you wanted last night?”

Annoyance flashed over his features before he gripped my arm tighter and leaned close. “You’re on edge, Shay. Your powers don’t come naturally to you like they do to us because you don’t use them. We use ours all the time. I’m not going to accidentally kill someone if I get a little angry.”

“Yeah, you wouldn’t want to kill someone…on accident.”

Kellan stiffened. I grew wary as fury formed in his eyes.

“You have something you want to say?” He grew quiet. Too quiet.

A chill slithered down my spine. “You’re right, Kellan. We don’t do nice things. You’re a demon. We’re all demons.”

His eyes pierced mine. “We’re not demons, Shay.”

“No, we just come from demon blood. There’s a big difference, isn’t there?”

Kellan pulled me from the wall and against him. “Our mother was conceived by a demon. Yes, we have demon blood in us, but that doesn’t make us demonic or evil or murderers. It just makes us not nice people, but we’re not demons, Shay.”

I kept quiet. He was reassuring himself, too.

Kellan took a breath, brushed some hair away from my face, and tried to compose himself. He added, forcing a lighter tone, “And you’re wrong. This isn’t what I wanted last night. I want you to stop denying who you are. It’s dangerous. You snapped just now. You altered those guys for the rest of their lives. If you’d stop denying yourself, you wouldn’t have done that by accident. You need to control yourself.”

Holding my breath, I unwound Kellan’s grip from my arm and pushed him back a step. He teetered backward, then took another step away.

“Fine, you’re right.” My voice was unsteady in the wake of such intensity. “I’ll…practice my powers. I won’t do something like that again. I promise.”

Kellan didn’t say anything. He turned and nodded once, with his back slightly turned from me. He ducked his head and pushed his hands into his pockets.

I knew what that meant when he took that stance. He was off, and he needed to re-center himself. I shook my head, more to clear my thoughts than to deny what had happened. But then again…what had just happened?

Kellan shook his head. “I’m not really sure.”

“What?” I looked up, confused.

“You just asked what happened. I don’t know why you snapped. What were you feeling?” He swung those composed sapphire eyes to me again. The old Kellan was back, smooth, controlled, and oh so dangerous. He wasn’t riled any longer.

I narrowed my eyes at him, thinking it hadn’t been hard to push Kellan’s buttons.

He doesn’t get that pissed with me.

Gus was right when she’d said those words.

“Shay?” Kellan prompted.

“Oh yeah. Uh…what was I feeling?” I shrugged, “I don’t know. I guess…I wasn’t sure actually. I just wanted—I was frustrated. I wanted to help that kid, but I knew I really couldn’t. Those guys would be beating him up later this afternoon and then you were there…I don’t know. I just ‘snapped,’ I guess. It won’t happen again.”

Kellan nodded and pulled me in for a hug.

I closed my eyes and rested my head against his shoulder for a second. He was a lot of things, probably none of it was good, but he was my brother. And I knew that Kellan would do anything for me. Anything.

“Anyway,” I pulled away and muttered awkwardly.

“Go ahead.” Kellan read my mind and gestured around the corner. “I’ve got some things to do. I’ll see you in humanities.”

Humanities it was. That wasn’t until seventh period, the only period I shared with Kellan and my other siblings. Kellan was a senior. I was a junior, where Gus and Vespar were both sophomores—twins. We tried to share one elective class a semester, and humanities was the chosen class this time.

I turned and left. I didn’t want to ask what he’d be doing the entire day. I didn’t want to know. And really, a big reason why I snapped was the pressure I always felt from Kellan. It was for the best if he was gone, for right now.