• Lying to Yourself

    Tory


    No, I thought, I won’t be like that, a feral uncontrollable monster. I just wouldn’t be like that.
    ‘It would make you feel so much better.’ A wolf appeared next to me.
    It sat with its head at my hip, black-grey coat like smoke with four white socks, one on each foot. Its left ear was on fire, all legs had fire anklets and its tail was entirely made of fire. My fire spirit, it was unusual because it is a fire wolf; a phoenix or fox would be understandable, but a wolf?
    It was hazy and the colours were faded, I would have mistaken it as a ghost. The flames had the most colours; the big, bright, orange-yellow, flickering flames that seemed to move with the slightest bit of wind.
    I couldn’t touch it, I couldn’t feel the heat coming off of my wolf but I just knew that if I did touch I would get burnt. It was like a ghost that didn’t like the person that it was bound to and if it could hurt me, it would jump at the chance.
    I passed a glare at the wolf, it knew I would never do that; never let the fire go out of control.
    ‘Now, now, fire user, don’t look at me like that,’ the wolf said, rolling its eyes at me.
    “Don’t try to make me lose control then, seems fair,” I said back, taking a step away.
    The spirit didn’t like me; I had a too tight of a leash on it for its liking. Fire was fierce and strong, it wanted to show its skill to the world; it didn’t like the leash, it was shown as weak and mild.
    ‘What would be fair would be for you to let go… Or to get rid of me all together,’ it said, watching me with its glowing red eyes.
    I pointed at him from where I was standing. “Look, wolfie, I’m the user here so shut up!”
    Wolves couldn’t glare but this one did, the glare it sent me told me that if it could rip me to pieces, it would in a second.
    ‘You will lose control one day and I’ll be here waiting,’ it said before I stormed through it and disappeared. Yanking the door open, I stalked inside to the kitchen and was going to go to the locker room but was stopped by none other than a very mad Penny White.
    “What do you think you’re pulling here, Kane?!” she practically yelled at me.
    I just stared at her, I really didn’t know what to say to make things right and to get her off my back. The only thing I could possibly think of was to tell her I was quitting and to get lost, but was I quitting?
    “Answer me, Kane,” she said as she put her hands on her hips.
    I looked around, people from the diner were staring at Penny and me but my eyes went to one person. Seth. He was watching us with curious grey eyes, eyes that had seen me last night and in the past so many times but also eyes that didn’t know me now.
    “Kane, look at me!” A hand came from in front of me, just to hit the side of my arm.
    I spun away before Penny’s hand could make contact with my arm and glared at her with my full rage.
    “Don’t ever try to hit me again,” I said through gritted teeth.
    Her eyes were wide and her mouth slightly parted with surprise. “Kane, I wasn’t– you don’t think –”
    “I don’t care,” I snickered at her; there were a few surprised gasps from the staff around me.
    “There is something wrong with you, Kane, something seriously wrong,” she said as she took a step back.
    “Looks like you won’t have to worry about me any more, Mrs. White, I quit,” I said and stalked off.
    Penny avoided eye contact, any contact at all, with me when I came out. I said good bye to the few people I considered friends and made my way to the front doors.
    Out the door, I took a breath of fresh air and sighed. Thank God, I was out of there at last, I thought, time to go home. I went to walk in the direction of my home but something pulled me back. I looked at my arm to see there was a hand holding on to it, looking up I saw the person I longed to hug. Seth.
    My mouth dropped at him holding my arm, his eyes were hard as I remembered them but he didn’t look as young. He had aged a lot, although he wasn’t that old but it must have been from stress and worrying too much. He needed a little touching up around the edges to get rid of the grey hairs that had started to sprout.
    I blinked a few times, realising that I was staring at him and that it was strange for me to be staring since I hated prolonged eye contact.
    “Er… I’m sorry, can I help you with anything?” I asked.
    “Yes. I need to ask you a few questions,” he said, still holding my arm.
    “Questions…?” I asked, playing the dumb blonde.
    He blinked, almost like he had lost his focus on the subject but it couldn’t be that since Seth never lost his focus on a mission or investigation. Ever. He was the most focused person I knew. Had known.
    “About last night?” he said, it was question more than a statement. He was confused.
    This would work for me, making him unsure of what he was doing would help me get away but it was weird. Seth was never unsure of himself and he certainly didn’t lose his focus on a mission…but maybe that was the old Seth, not the new one.
    “Last night, last night… Nope, don’t remember that. Sorry I couldn’t help you,” I said as I tried to pull my arm out of his grasp.
    His hand tightened. “Just some general questions then.”
    I gave him an irritated look. “How do I know you’re not some axe murder? Or a freaky rapist?”
    He laughed once. “Here, is this enough proof for you?” He pulled out a federal badge with photo ID of him on it.
    s**t, now I had no excuse to say no, I thought as I glared at him from under my hair, pretending that I was looking at his badge
    “Looks real, I guess,” I said, handing it back.
    “It is, thank you very much.” He was back to his surly self when he took the badge.
    “Fine, I guess I have time to answer a few questions of yours,” I said distantly, as if to seem not interested.
    “I'd like to do it somewhere in private. There is a federal building not far from here and it’s also not far from your home. If it’s okay with you, I’d like to go there.” In his formal Drake agent voice, the mask had come back.
    I shrugged, pretending not to care where we went but, really, I was terrified at the thought. Going back to a Drake building was the worst thing I could think of; if there were other people at the building someone might recognise me. Although I was pretty certain that no one would, there always is that possibility.
    “It’s not far, ten minutes maybe, we can walk it,” he said taking a step in a direction.
    I shrugged again taking a step after him in the same direction, making sure he knew I was coming along with him.
    “Right then, let’s go,” he said in a dismissive tone.
    Following along behind him, we went into parts of town that I hadn’t dreamt of going to before. The streets were lined with people that were dressed in either slutty clothes, pimp outfits or barely any clothes at all. This was the downtown area. I would shy away from the people that tried to talk to me, skip around people that begged for money and shoved through people that wanted something I didn’t want to give to them.
    Seth just wove through them; people didn’t bother to talk to him because he looked scary enough to deter anyone. Sometimes a brave enough prostitute would casually walk next to him and start talking but he would just wave her off and she would go her own way; they eventually learnt not to go near him.
    Heels clicked on the ground next to me, I was going to ignore the latest person that wanted something.
    “You’re lucky to have a man like that,” a tall blonde said from next to me.
    I glanced at her out the corner of my eye. “What are you talking about?”
    She nodded in front of us. I looked, completely forgetting that it was Seth that was the one in front. My mouth dropped in surprise, she thought that… him and me? Ew, that was just plain gross. My facial expression turned from surprise to disgust.
    “You think… him and me? You’ve got the wrong idea, lady!” I said, speeding up my pace.
    “Sure,” she said with disbelief dripping from it.
    Seth and I? Did it look like we were together? That’s almost like incest, he was more of a father than anything and I wasn’t in to that sort of thing.
    Ignoring the sights and sounds of the people and street around me, I watched as Seth turned up a path of an old building with a wrought iron fence enclosing it. I followed him to the front door; the place gave me the shivers, it looked more like a prison than a Drake Building, which wouldn’t surprise me if it was a prison.
    I just bet the inside looks like a hotel, I thought as I watched Seth key in a code for the door to open. Guess what, I was wrong. It didn’t look like a hotel; it looked like a ******** palace.
    From what I could see of it, it looked super decked out and extremely expensive, the foyer had chairs along the side of the walls; the walls had red hanging material on it with paintings over the top of them. There was a tiny desk in one of the corners and a few feet from the desk was a massive staircase. On each side of the room, one next to the desk and one next to the staircase, there were huge doorways
    One of which a little petite woman with brown curly hair walked out of, she was in a white, ‘stick to you’ dress and black heels that didn’t make her quite as tall as me.
    She spotted us, or Seth, since I was half hiding behind his big figure, and smiled a bright smile at him.
    “Evening, Mr. Bryce, may I help you with anything?” she asked, setting a few papers she was carrying down on the desk.
    “No thank you, Matilda, I’m just going to my office with Miss Kane for a few questions,” he said with a nice smile at her.
    I looked at him surprised for two reasons; one, that he just openly told her what I was here for and two, he never smiled at me like that before. I felt a little jealous and left out; I crossed my arms and waited to be led to his office, barely containing my pout.
    The woman, Matilda, looked around Seth to me and tried to smile sweetly but that was only met with a half-hearted glare. Her eyes flickered back to Seth; he waved his hand at her as if to signal her that it wasn’t a good idea and went to the staircase.
    I followed closely behind, very well aware of the eyes that were on me from down stairs.
    Hitting the top of the stairs, it was exactly like the bottom floor with the red hangings and the paintings on the walls. It was then that I noticed that the paintings up here were of people; the ones I was now noticing were. But they weren’t just any people, they were dead Drake agents.
    I swallowed at the lump that had formed in my throat all of a sudden; please let it not be Drake agents that have been lost in the last century, please, God, no!
    All my wishing was for nothing as we stopped at some office doors, the painting across from them was a painting of my mother and father, Avalon and Tristan Jordan.
    I turned from the picture quickly, not wanting to see any more of it and bumped into Seth’s back as he was unlocking the door.
    “Sorry,” I mumbled.
    “That’s alright, seeing the dead is a bit daunting,” he said as he unlocked the door.
    I took one more glance over my shoulder at the painting; they looked so happy then, when none of this was the trouble. I turned back to the office doorway and stepped in.
    It was bare, all but a few books on the bookshelves and a desk with some handheld items on it. A sad, sad life was here; from what I could tell anyway.