A Mark Unwilling Page 3

  As I sit and ponder, a sharp pain fizzles to the surface on my wrist. I bring my offending wrist to my face, seeing that my Mark is now speckled with red. Just my wrist. The remainder of the Mark that travels along my body is still black.

  Huh.

  Call me psychic, but I’m guessing this isn’t good.

  Chapter Two

  Classes the next day are somber. Almost no one smiles, and no one laughs. Students shuffle along, clutching their bags and phones like lifelines. The campus is quiet. A few recognize me—some try to talk to me, but I either pretend I don’t hear them or say I don’t want to talk about it. During my third class, psychology of abnormal behavior, I get a call from an unrecognized number. I send it to voicemail.

  It’s probably the president of the university, wanting to talk to me. Or some random press. Heck, maybe it’s Special Agent Awesome. At this point, nothing would surprise me.

  I don’t want to talk to any of them; hence the reason I’ve been avoiding all cameras and microphones.

  As I leave the building, I realize I shouldn’t have thought that nothing could surprise me. That’s just like saying nothing can go wrong or wearing red in movies. Things you just shouldn’t do or say. Unwritten rules that if you follow, you tend to live longer.

  I cross the quad, earbuds in. My bag with my notebooks was recovered. The voicemail said the president has it and wants to give it to me and meet with me about the gunman and my heroic actions. Not on my agenda anytime soon.

  As I mentally wrestle with myself over it (it is my favorite Jack Skellington bag, after all), I ram shoulders with a girl whose stature is even smaller than mine, dressed in an ensemble of not-so-colorful hues. She tumbles back, her notebooks flying every which way. Papers scatter.

  Pulling out an earbud, I say, “Sorry.” I help her gather her stuff when I see that notes aren’t what’s written on the pages. They’re drawings. A seven-headed beast wearing crowns on each gruesome head. A dragon descending to earth. A group of four horses.

  Before it registers, she snatches them from me, muttering softly, “Those are private.” Her retort is cut short when she meets my gaze. Her wide, innocent eyes flicker with resemblance, her orange hair flapping in the wind that picked up in the last minute. “You…it’s you.”

  I blink, too busy with the girl to see that a man with a hood stands in the center of the quad. “Yes, it’s me. If you want to talk about what happened the other day, sorry, but I don’t—”

  “No,” she replies, pulling away from me, a look of horror on her face. “It’s you—you’re his.”

  Does she mean the Mark? I have a different leather jacket on, and skinny jeans coupled with my ankle-high boots, so it’s definitely covered. How could she know about my Mark?

  A scream rings out, and both the girl and I turn to look at the hooded man. Wielding a large knife that resembles a dagger, he lunges toward the nearest college student, stabbing a girl in a Star Wars shirt, cutting open her abdomen in a garish display of blood and guts. Before anyone can run, he grabs another, slicing the boy’s throat. He throws the boy down, letting him bleed out on the grass, and the man’s hood falls. The man has a tattoo on his forehead—the same tattoo as the shooter. He seems to stare directly at me and, despite the chaos and screaming around me, I have a crystal clear view of him raising his knife and impaling himself, directly in the tattoo.

  “No!” the girl cries, pulling away from me. “No!”

  All other students run, frantically calling the cops, but the girl with the strange drawings and I stay. Out of fear or something else, I don’t know. We watch as the cloaked man falls. His blood mingles with the other two students, and I hear sirens in the distance. Campus police are coming.

  The girl beside me turns, whispering, “Oh, my God.”

  I follow her line of sight. A pool of dark blood grows where the dead lay, and out of it rises something from a horror flick. A four-legged being, nothing but tendons and muscle, and a rider who is much the same. As the animal shakes off the blood, it steps forward, now a pure, white horse. Its rider, though in the shape of a man, remains bloodied. A helmet covers its face, a dark, soulless black pit. In its skeletal hand is a bow made of bones, held together by gruesome flesh stitched together. The bowstring is a tight tendon.

  I naturally step between the girl and the horse. Even though she knows something, I’m the one that’s next to invincible, not her.

  The horned helmet tilts as its black, eyeless face watches my protective stance. On the street, a campus police vehicle skids to a stop. Before the officer can step out, an arrow crafted of old, gnarly bone soars through the air, breaking through the windshield and impaling the young man who was only trying to do his job.

  As my mouth falls, and I try to put two and two together, the rider aims another arrow at the girl. I move between them once I realize it, and to my shock, the rider slowly lowers his drawn arrow.

  He won’t shoot me.

  I must have my Mark to thank.

  Like it hears my thoughts, the Mark on my wrist burns. The very same spot that hurt last night, only this time, the pain goes halfway up to my elbow. Well…great.

  The white horse exhales a puff of smoke, and with a dash, it and its frightening rider are gone, galloping away.

  Watching it go, my shaking hands reach for my phone, dialing David. He picks up almost instantly. “David, we might have a slight problem.” He remains quiet, probably knowing what I’m about to say. “I think I just met the first Horseman of the Apocalypse.”

  He sighs into the phone. “This is what I was worried about.”

  “The end of the world?” I offer. “Yeah, that’s something you should’ve mentioned last night.” I turn to the girl, remembering that she drew pictures of what just happened. But the girl took off running. I see her turn down a sidewalk, already a hundred feet away. “Hold on. I’ll call you back.” Sliding the phone into my butt pocket, I run after her.

  I catch up to her easily. Somehow, I feel stronger, faster than ever. I feel like I could run an entire marathon and not get tired. My Mark. It has to be.

  “Wait!” I yell for her. She tries darting through the music hall, but I grab her arm before she gets in. I pull her to the side of the building, away from the doors and windows. Sirens signal that more cops have shown. Campus would be on a lockdown soon if that Horseman isn’t caught. She struggles against me, but I’m stronger than her by quite a lot. “What do you know?”

  Her eyes brim with tears, and for a second, I believe that she hates me or fears me, or some combination of the two. Which is ridiculous, because she doesn’t know me. “Nothing,” she tries to say.

  “Please don’t lie to me,” I tell her, holding her shoulders.

  “He’ll come for you,” she whispers, fighting the urge to completely break down. “You can try to run, but he’ll find you. You can’t hide from him.”

  “From who?” I practically am bursting at the seams. “The Demon whose Mark I have?”

  The girl shakes her head. “You mean…you really don’t know? I thought…I thought you’d know.” She now acts ashamed, regretful. “I thought you wanted it.”

  “Wanted this Mark?” I let her go and tug down a sleeve of my jacket, showing a part of the tattoo to her. “No. I never asked for it. My parents sold my soul before I was born. So you see, I didn’t really have a choice in the matter.”

  She wipes a tear from her cheek. “Oh…I’m so sorry. That’s terrible.”

  “Yeah, I—” As I speak, I hear a thunderous galloping. Both the girl and I turn towards the street, where a horde of flashing lights zoom by. They slam on their brakes. Some get out and point their guns at the figure approaching them.

  Of course, the Horseman doesn’t stop. Why would he?

  “Conquest,” the girl says quietly.

  The white horse leaps onto the first car in its path, ignoring the gunfire. The bullets simply bounce off. It weighs more than it seems, or it commands unearthly strength.
The car buckles as if it is made of papier-mâché. The cop using its door as a shield jumps out of the way, but the rider shoots an arrow into his chest. Car after car falls under its hooves; officer after officer meets an untimely death at the hands of the rider.

  Conquest, the girl called him. If he’s the first, then there’s three more.

  “They’ve been trying to start it for weeks,” she goes on. “Now it’s too late to stop them.”

  Was that what that shooter was trying to do? Kickstart the apocalypse?

  “Don’t say that,” I tell her, grabbing her hand. She clutches her notebooks in her other arm. “You’re going to be the Robin to my Batman. We’re going to save the day and look hot doing it.” I drag her around the back of the building, away from the cops and Conquest. I take us to the parking lot. Most other students are hiding, told to find shelter by campus authority. Run, hide, fight.

  I bring us to my car. She doesn’t fight me; she simply gets in, as if it’s inevitable. I figure saving the day might be easier with a prophetic sidekick.

  As I back the car up and head out, I turn to her and say, “Aren’t you going to ask me where we’re going?”

  The girl shrugs. “I have a feeling I already know.”

  I shrug too. I’m taking things for face value, right now. “I’m Lexa.”

  “Deb,” she says softly, gazing steadily out of the window.

  “Sorry I don’t have better people skills, Deb,” I tell her, realizing that what I just did would be considered kidnapping.

  At that, she faintly smiles. “It’s okay. I don’t have good people skills, either.”

  I nod along, agreeing with her. I do my best not to replay what just took place, but my mind doesn’t listen. I see Conquest in my head, his black eyes. That is a soul-less being. Way different than me. I’m supposed to have one, to own my own. It’s a right for every Human, but my parents took that from me.

  Conquest never had a soul. It was born (or made?) like that.

  Right?

  It takes us a few hours to drive to Lakeview. My phone buzzes in my pocket countless times, and each time I feel it, I turn up the radio. We are in the year of the dance music, apparently. My fingers thump against the wheel as we speed on the highway. More and more cars are doing the same—although a lot are going the opposite way, maybe going to the campus to pick up their kids.

  The song ends, and the radio host starts talking about the freak horse and murdering rider galloping across campus. I quickly change the station, finding that each station is talking about it. At least twenty police—city and campus—are dead.

  The nation is in shock, as am I.

  “So.” I strum the wheel, passing a rusted car that is going the speed limit. Who the heck does the speed limit on the highway? Like, no one. At least not in America. I’ve never been to another country, even though my parents have all the money they could want. I never liked using it. “Want to tell me what’s with those drawings?” I sneak a peak in Deb’s direction, seeing that she began the preliminary process of a rough sketch. “You some sort of psychic?”

  We hit a bump, causing her pencil to make a random line in the center of the paper. Sighing, she slips to a blank page and begins again. “There’s no such thing as psychics. Fortune tellers aren’t real, either.”

  “Who peed in your cereal this morning?” I mumble at her attitude.

  Her face softens. “Sorry. I just…I thought I had more time.”

  More time for what? “One last question, and then I promise we can sit in silence until we get to Lakeview.” My knuckles tighten. “Is this really the end of the world?”

  Deb’s light eyes flick up, away from her sketch, to the horizon that stretches before us. “It’s the end of the world we know.”

  I stifle a groan. Great.

  In another hour, we make it to the outskirts of Lakeview. It’s named, obviously, for the giant lake in its center. My parents’ house is one of the lucky few on lake front property. The houses are more like mansions, even away from the lake. The entire town doesn’t have any discount stores or Dollar Generals. Nope. In Lakeview, residents prefer to pay top dollar for pointless stuff, like cashmere or Prada.

  I’m more of a clearance rack kind of person—yet another reason I stuck to myself while growing up. Don’t get me wrong, I talked to classmates in school, worked with them on projects when I had to, but I never hung out with them outside of class. I didn’t want to. Not really. I had videogames and books, not to mention the general anxiety that came with knowing a Demon was going to come and claim me at any time.

  Yeah, especially that last one.

  We turn behind a shop, pulling into its back parking lot. The space could hold five cars at most. Other cars had to park on the street. Not that David’s shop is ever that busy. In Lakeview, it’s one of the peculiar shops. Rich people go to it asking for love potions or ridiculously overpriced Buddha statues. Other races also frequent the place—Fairies, Trolls, the like. While a lot of his products are for show, some of it has real magical properties. David’s really good at making invisibility potions, I hear. Those cost a hefty price.

  I park beside his vehicle, and Deb and I get out. The back door is locked, which forces us to wander around to the front. The closed sign is flipped; the open light unlit. I knock on the glass, knowing he’s in there. He not only runs the shop, but he also lives in the apartment above it.

  The door unlatches and swings open by itself. Deb and I step inside. I hurry to lock the door behind us. Before I’m finished locking it, I hear a meow and turn to see Xena running up to me. She stands on her back paws, meowing again, stretching her arms up. I catch her, taking her into my arms and hugging her.

  “Xena, baby,” I talk to her in the overly-nice, somewhat childish voice I always talk to her in, “what are you doing here?”

  David appears in the doorway, a plate of spaghetti in his hands. “When I heard the news, I portalled to your apartment, thinking—I don’t know—I’d find you there since I told you to stay put. All I found was her, and before I could leave, she decided to come with me.” He lifts a forkful to his mouth. “I brought cat food, too. So you’re welcome.”

  I can’t help but smile and hug Xena closer. After all, David knows me well enough that he should’ve known that I wouldn’t stay put. If I’m awful at laying low, what makes him think I’d be good at staying put? I was never put in the first place.

  He peers around me at Deb. “Who’s the chick?”

  Deb is quiet, staring at the floor, at her ratty tennis shoes, holding her multitude of sketchbooks for dear life. Her red-orange hair covers her freckled face. She bites her lip, looking embarrassed.

  “Oh, this is Deb,” I say, bending to let Xena go. She trots happily back to David, rubbing against his leg. I walk to him, snagging the plate from his hands and plucking the fork from his grip. “I might’ve, like, kidnapped her or something.” I walk into the back room, where most of his secret stock is, along with a table and TV.

  Deb follows me, sitting beside me as I eat some spaghetti.

  “Kidnapped or something?” David echoes, aghast. He pulls my jacket’s collar, taking me out of the backroom.

  I see Xena hop onto Deb’s lap, purely for the sake of getting closer to the food. I point to the plate, and as I chew, I tell her, “Don’t let her eat any.” While Deb nods once, Xena turns her wide, innocent gaze to me. The sheer size of her black pupils tells me exactly what the cat’s intentions are. She licks her chops, and I lift two fingers to my eyes and flick them to her.

  Once David has me alone, he whispers harshly, “Tell me you didn’t kidnap her.”

  “Well, she didn’t struggle,” I add, “too much.”

  He’s even more shocked than he was a minute ago. “What in the hell were you thinking? Bringing her here? Now we have to babysit some girl. Here I thought we’d find a way to stop that thing that’s currently massacring the National Guard.”

  “We don’t have to babysit her,�
�� I tell him. I then go into detail about how I ran into her and saw her pictures, what she told me. It’s me. I’m his. She knows things, knows who my Demon is. “She can help us.”

  “How?” David isn’t convinced. “By drawing us some pretty pictures?” He takes on a mocking tone, “I’d like a demonic horse, please, slathered in blood. I’d prefer it with real blood, too, so I can get that metallic, ghastly effect…” His statement trails off when he sees that I’m not amused.

  “I’m serious.”

  “And so am I!” He shouts in a whisper. “What good does drawing a picture do? We need to figure out a way to stop this from continuing.”

  “She doesn’t draw what’s happening now,” I clarify, “she draws what’ll happen in the future. She drew that horse and rider perfectly—the exact way it rose out of the ground. Is that a coincidence?”

  “I—”

  David’s cut off by Deb who walks into our heated discussion, cradling Xena like a spoiled princess, rubbing her chin. “My grandfather was a Warlock,” she states. “Father always said I get it from him.”

  Hearing that, David’s back straightens. Warlocks don’t typically mingle with Humans. It’s looked down upon. Too taboo, I guess.

  “Any ideas on how to stop this, then?” David’s voice still holds traces of annoyance.

  Deb shakes her head. “No, it’s too late for that, but another picture is coming to me.” She hands Xena to me. “Here. She won’t stop going after the food.” She turns and walks back into the other room, presumably to draw.

  David sighs. He knows better by now than to argue with me. Besides, Deb is here now. There’s no going back. “Fine. While I go make more food, since apparently I’m having guests for dinner, I think you should call your parents.”

  I blink. What a terrible child I am, to completely forget to call them and let them know I’m okay, that the horse and rider hadn’t killed me on campus. Not that I could be killed, but that’s beside the point.