under the circumstances, and she might not be aware of it
but he was not going to be pulling over, even if a police
officer tried to stop them.
"We call it 'The Island' and my family, well I guess
the closest thing I've ever had to family, we all live there.
Or at least call it our home base. Year round, the house is
occupied by Dot, she's kind of Veli's, well I guess he's kind
of my unofficial Uncle, housekeeper. She's much more than
a housekeeper. She was the closest thing to a mother any of
us ever had. Veli found her in Colorado while we were
living in Vale. She had just lost her family in a terrible
accident, well maybe it wasn't an accident…"
Kal realized he rambled when all she had asked was
where they were going. He tried to take a deep breath and
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calm himself. He wasn't worked up about having tangled
with the Darkness. He just couldn't get the feeling of
kissing Isabelle out of his mind and it was making him feel
twitchy.
Her body had been all soft curves and her mouth
had been sweet and beyond tempting. He was terribly hard
and his zipper was causing him no end of pain. He couldn't
remember the last time he had felt this sexually
uncomfortable.
What on earth had possessed him to bring up Dot's
family tragedy? He could remember it vividly as if it had
just happened and not almost two decades earlier.
Leonardo had said that they needed to handle the
situation themselves. They were never going to grow up
and be men if they couldn't handle this one little
interference by the Darkness. Kal had felt like arguing that
they were only ten years old and they weren't supposed to
be men yet but Veli had started addressing them as "sir"
and "young man" instead of "boy", so he supposed that it
was written somewhere that Outsiders grew up at ten years
old. Leonardo knew things like that and admitting that he
didn't know them would be admitting that he never paid
attention when Veli spoke. That might earn him a good
beating by Veli and he had already had one that week and
didn't think he was up for another one.
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The woman had claimed that her house was
possessed and that her neighbor had gone insane and was
holding her husband and children hostage. Veli had heard
about it because, not surprisingly, they had been living next
door to the couple at the time. The Darkness still hadn't
perfected his aim at them and was consistently
manipulating the lives of the people who lived around them
or near them. Veli had told them that this would stop
because as the human body that the Darkness inhabited got
older, so would the power that the Darkness possessed
grow.
They might not have much time left at all before
they would have to basically disappear off of the radar or
risk being destroyed altogether. It was bad enough that the
Darkness knew where they were and taunted them.
The woman had been frantic and begged for help.
The police had taken her statement and sent her home.
Again, not a strange behavior from the local authorities in
regards to things involving the Darkness. While they would
take regular human crime very seriously, they seemed
compelled to dismiss anything that was supernatural, even
if it was in the guise of so-called normal crime.
Veli had sighed and insisted that they had to run,
yet again. Even at ten years old, it had been obvious to Kal
that it was clearly against Veli's nature to keep running and
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never turning around to fight, but he insisted to them, time
and again, that they were his first priority and he had to
keep them safe. He had suggested that maybe it was time to
up.
The rest of them hadn't felt so compliant. Marina
might be willing to accept what little scrap of life Veli felt
like giving to them and the constant need to run but they
did not. Charma had gotten particularly exasperated,
feeling the pain from the woman next door who had started
pounding on her front entrance, yelling and screaming.
Leonardo had felt it was high time that he and Kal took
care of things themselves and started living up to what he
kept calling their birthright. Kal knew he was supposed to
be the warrior and Leonardo some kind of spell casting
enhancer. Already full moons had started to make him feel
a little twitchy.
They had snuck in the back door of the neighbor's
house thinking they were so grown up and competent, like
avenging angels sent to fight back the forces of Evil at the
meager age of ten. In retrospect Kal would realize that he
had not heard the chanting that day, but at the time, he
hadn't understood that he was supposed to hear it, so they
had tried to confront their neighbor holding the poor
woman's children hostage. The abductor had seemed
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deranged, standing in the room pacing back and forth in
front of the girls and their father, all tied to a wooden chair
made for just one person. The girls were bound, the
smallest one on top of the older one and both of them
attached to their father. It had obviously not been a very
well thought out plan. In his hand the lunatic held a .45
caliber handgun. He was muttering gibberish and forming
nonsensical words.
Leonardo had stepped out of the shadows first with
Kal standing next to him as protection. They had silently
decided that this would place them in a position of power
while talking down the assailant who Leonardo recognized
as another neighbor. It would be the first time either of
them had seen firsthand the Darkness take over a person
from a distance, actually control their mind and free will.
The girls had looked desperate and their father was quasi-
unconscious from a bump he had obviously taken on the
head, obvious by the welt that resembled a baseball
growing from his forehead. He had struggled to raise his
head and looked at them with desperation in his eyes. That
was when their deranged neighbor had lifted the gun at
them.
Leonardo had turned two shades of grey in panic
and in a moment of clarity Kal had somehow managed to
find his supernatural predator speed years before it would
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really develop. He had pushed Leonardo to the ground,
throwing his body on top of him, then had silently begun to
scream for Veli, calling him, pleading with him, and
begging him to hear him and come and save them.
Telepathy would become easier for him to do around
puberty but sometimes he could make it work and he was
desperately hoping it would work at that moment.
The gunshots had continued, two each into the
children and their father. Why hadn't he continued to fire at
them? Kal would never understand what had happened to
make the gunman do that, but Veli would later suggest,
rather harshly, that the Darkness had wanted them to suffer
by watching the destruction of innocent lives. Kal had
suffered. Big point for the bad guy that day.
The gunman, and Kal had never wanted to know his
name, now almost out of bullets, had then turned himself
towards the two boys huddled on the ground. Kal was still
shielding Leonardo who seemed frozen to the floor
although his eyes had turned a swirling shade of grey. He
had raised the gun and Kal had found himself sending out a
silent apology to the universe that he would never be
around to perform his sacred duty, the one he knew he was
supposed to complete, and a second apology to the
unknown person who was holding the other half of his soul
that he would never grow up and get to know exactly what
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that meant. Those were the days when he'd still believed he
could find her.
He was terribly sorry and not embarrassed about the
tears that had formed in his eyes. In a furious speed such
that Kal had never seen before, Veli had appeared at the
doorway calling all the strength of the heavens down on top
of them as he blasted their delirious assailant into the next
world and whatever Fate would bestow on him. All that
had been left were splatters of their opponent on the walls
of the house.
The silence that had filled the room had been
palpable. Leonardo had risen first, prepared to take the
blame, it had been his idea after all, but it was Kal who
would later that night take the most painful beating of his
life. Veli would teach Kal about pain and disobedience with
no care or love behind his intentions. His fists would teach
Kal what it meant to really feel pain—all earlier and later
physical altercations between them were, and would be,
pale replicas of the beating that he took that day. Veli's cold
eyes would teach him about his place in the world. It was
okay for Leonardo to make mistakes, he was cerebral and
still learning, but Veli would not accept such pathetic
attempts from him. As far as Veli was concerned, Kal was
the disposable one.
Veli was not his father and did not hold any of the
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paternal feelings for him that might stay his hand or calm
his temper. Even as Kal had heard Leonardo pounding on
his bedroom door begging to help and take the punishment
instead, he had known he was alone in the universe and
would never know the peace that came with love and
acceptance. That night he decided that even if the Fates had
given Leonardo, Charma, and Marina a soul mate, they had
not given one to him. He would be alone with only the
responsibilities for his people to sustain him until he died.
That was the day that Kal had grown up, that was the day
he had really become the cold-hearted, desperate being that
Veli had always assumed him to be.
They had found out later that the man who had held
the gun and gone deranged, their neighbor, had been
beating his wife for years but even she couldn't account for
what had made him go crazy but they knew—it was the
Darkness that had done it. Kal had known it was laughing
at them and always would be.
The horrified woman who had lost her family to the
possessed neighbor down the street had been Dot and she
had been their responsibility ever since. Charma had
absolutely refused to leave her behind and Veli had blamed
the boys for her troubles as he felt that had they just left
things to their natural course the neighborhood would have
returned to normal. They had all agreed that perhaps they
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needed another adult to watch after Kal and Leonardo.
Kal could hardly ever look at her without
remembering what had happened and he never stopped
asking himself the hard question about her fate. Would her
deranged neighbor have stopped and left them alone if only
Kal and Leonardo had listened to Veli and moved away
silently in the night? Would her daughters have grown up
to have lives, husbands, jobs, and children? Was he
responsible for all of it? Shaking his head, Kal pounded on
the steering wheel, wishing he hadn't been quiet for so long
a time. Isabelle must already think him insane without him
drifting off into thought.
"I guess Dot could see that Veli wasn't handling
things very well with three almost teenagers," Kal
continued his story. "And she offered to come and help him
and not ask too many questions. Over the years I'm sure
she's seen things and suspected things about us but she has
never, as far as I know, asked Veli what was going on and
she took good care of us, sometimes she pretended to be
our Aunt. She would know Veli was going to move us
before the rest of us knew. We would come home from
school and there would everything be, boxed up and ready
to go. I think she was trying to make it as easy on us as
possible. She's half in love with Veli but he will never love
her back."
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Kal was surprised that he had shared so much
information so quickly with Isabelle, even if he hadn't filled
her in on the whole truth about Dot. The truth was that as
much as he was culpable for her children's deaths, it wasn't
his story to tell her. It belonged to the quiet, dark-haired
woman who had somehow forgiven them for all of their
faults and helped them try to find joy in their lives, even as
she found almost none in her own.
Usually he tried not to talk about his family at all. It
was easier to say nothing than to try to explain. Growing
up, he had lots of pretend stories to tell people about his
family. Every new place created a new story—sometimes
he was Veli's son and Charma and Leonardo were his
cousins; sometimes he was the cousin. When Marina came
she just fitted into the made-up stories. Veli was lucky to
not have gotten all eighteen of the babies because then they
would have looked like a traveling circus troupe. They
would make it up as they went along and Veli didn't much
care what they said as long as they were temporarily safe.
Money was never a problem; Veli could conjure it and if he
forgot to then Leonardo would.
"Why won't he love her back?" Isabelle asked in a
sad voice as she shifted in her seat.
"Because Outsiders only love once and if we lo
se
our loves then we can't feel that level of emotion again for
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anyone else. There's only one true love and it sustains us
through time even when it's gone," Kal repeated the
explanation that Veli had given all of them when he could
be bothered to discuss mundane things like life and love
and not drill them with tales of battles and responsibility.
"If we don't find love we're not much interested in dallying
with the opposite sex." Had he really just said dallying?
Talking about Veli was making him sound like Veli.
"Is that what you are? An 'Outsider'. It sounds like a
novel I read when I was a teenager. What does that even
mean? Is it some sort of weird cult? And since you brought
it up, what was it that you did back there and what was that
weird chanting? I heard it when you were taking care of
that crazy man but then it got louder when you were kissing
me," Isabelle questioned loudly, getting animated and he
couldn't blame her. Her frustration at not knowing what
was going on must be palpable. Also, if he were in her
position he would blame the whole thing on her. In fact,
Kal wandered if that was just what she was doing.
She was so adorable, he wanted to brush the dark
hair out of her eyes but stopped himself. Her vibe was
screaming 'personal space' and he intended to honor that.
"You heard that chanting too?" Kal clenched his
jaw. He had heard it his whole life whenever his powers
were being properly used. Veli had told them it was the
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Spirits of the earth joining them to aid in the correct use of
magic. If their purpose was correct, the Spirits would help
them. Hearing them when he had kissed Isabelle had been a
surprise and Kal was very aware of what the ramifications
of that chanting had meant—soul mate. That was startling