The Girl with a Hidden Gift

“Mom, I’m leaving.” I yelled, slipping on my jacket.
My mother appeared from the kitchen. “Where are you going, Hazel?”
“There is a party in the next neighborhood.”
“How are you getting there?”
“I’ll walk through the cemetery.” I said turning to face her.
“No, I’ll drive you.” She replied wrinkling her brow in disapproval.
Mom started reaching for her car keys but I quickly stopped her by placing my hand upon hers.
“If you drove me come Monday morning I will be the laughing stock of the school.” I laid my hands on her shoulders, rubbing them lightly to console her. “Don’t worry so much.”
“You might be eighteen now but I’m still your mother. Worrying is my job.” Telling by her glaring eyes, my attempt at consoling was unsuccessful.
“Please mom.” I put my hands together, this time going for sympathy. “This year has been hard enough having to move across the country.”
At first, I thought my second attempt at going to the party alone had failed. But after a long sigh and an eye roll, she agreed to let me go but not without rules and a final demand. “Do not forget your bracelet.” She ordered, and pointing towards the coffee table.
When I was six, my mother handed me the silver charm bracelet. It held a cross, a pentagram, and many other religious symbols. I had no clue what most of them stood for.
“As long as you have this on, the closet monsters can’t hurt you.” She would say to me.
Fallowing a quick hug and a goodbye, I was at the door, and walking ten steps to get the piece of jewelry seemed too much effort. So I left it. What could it hurt? I thought.
Between my neighborhood and the next was a small, dark cemetery. Abandoned years ago, it was left alone to take the beatings from local kids. There was no grounds keeper; he died long before I was born and was the last to be buried here.
Wet leaves crunched under my boots, releasing subtle hints of dirt. As I walked between broken tombstones, the air around me became thicker and laced with fog. Chill bumps quickly crawled up my arms; the hair on the back of my neck stood on end. Something felt wrong, so I began to walk faster.
Behind me, a twig snapped sending echoes through the cemetery, and turning whatever calm feelings I had left into fear. My heart raced in my chest. I didn’t want to stop and look back but I needed to.
When I focused my eyes on what caused the noise I no longer felt fear but embarrassment. Against a tombstone, a few feet away, a small opossum with fierce eyes hissed a warning.
Taking the hint, I started walking again. In front of me, an opening in the tree’s showed the next neighborhood. I was almost there, twenty feet to go. But another twig snapped behind me.
“Stupid opossum go away.” I yelled, turning back.
This time there wasn’t an animal. It was a haggard, middle-aged man, covered in soil and leaves. Mud was smeared across his face and clumped in his short, blonde hair. His clothes were torn in places, revealing bloody scars.
The man’s head tilted to the side like a curious dog’s when a sigh escaped my lips. His mouth formed an evil, brown smile. At first I thought he was a homeless man wanting to take something from me but then I actually looked at his teeth. He had fangs and they weren’t brown, it was dried blood.
“Are…Are you a vampire?” I asked.
“I’m hungry.” He chuckled.
My eyes grew wide and my throat lost its ability to form words. One word flashed in my mind a million times, run. And I did. The opening of trees was not far, all I had to do was get to the other side and I’d be safe.
When I managed to look back at my pursuer, the lump in my throat grew bigger. The man was joined by two others like him. On his left was a barefoot woman wearing an old flappers dress. The man on the right looked the oldest but I turned back around before I could get more detail on his looks.
Since I was looking at the creatures I didn’t see the broken grave marker. I tripped and went down. My forehead collided with a sharp piece of limestone, instantly giving me a migraine. A thin wound about two fingers wide formed above my right eye.
My world swirled around in my head. A few attempts at moving resulted in falling back to the ground. I waited for the vampires to grab me. I didn’t want to die. But nothing came.
When my eye sight became clear I looked in front of me; the three zombie things were still ten feet away. They were standing as if someone paused them in mid-run but they were still able to growl.
“Get up, Hazel.” A woman’s voice came from above me.
The woman was about my height with long black hair. There was no white or color remaining in her eyes, they were black pits. She was dressed in tight jeans, knee-high boots, and a coat to her ankles. In her hands was a black sawed-off shot-gun.
“Who are you?” I asked while pressing my hand to my bleeding cut.
“Victoria.” Her eyes never left the enemies. “Now get up! I won’t be able to hold them long.”
I fulfilled her request and scrambled to my feet. When I almost fell again Victoria steadied me.
“What the hell are those?” I asked frantically. “Zombies?”
Her serious face turned to mine, focusing those black eyes on me. “No, but they all die the same.”
Her face turned away from me and within seconds she pulled the trigger at the three creatures. The blasts of the gun echoed throughout the cemetery, forcing me to cover my ears with my hands.
Their heads were completely gone, leaving behind unfrozen corpses that fell to the ground. Pieces of flesh and blood rained down everywhere, including on both of us. Instantly, I tried to wipe the stuff from my face but Victoria told me to stop because I would only make it worse.
Her facial features looked stressed and she flexed her hand as if she were in pain. But when she looked at me she once again had those black eyes and hard stare. “That,” she pointed towards the dead bodies, “is why you always wear your bracelet. Those things will always come after you.”
“What are they?” I asked again wanting to know exactly what they were.
“Goyles.” She informed me, placing her shot-gun back inside the coat. “They are what you get when a careless vampire refuses to take care of a freshly bitten human. Within weeks, a goyle loses his humanity and crave dead flesh. The only reason they are in this cemetery is because they are chasing you.”
“But I’m not dead.”
“Damn.” Victoria said looking around.
I fallowed her gaze to see the over two dozen goyles walking out of the woods. Some of them still had color in their faces.
“Don’t you need your gun?”
“There are too many for modern weapons.” As she pulled the gloves from her hands, she constantly looked between her hands and the surrounding creatures.
I looked around the cemetery looking for a place to run but Victoria continued to stand in place. “What are you going to do?”
“You ask too many questions.” She turned to me. “Hazel, I can’t do this on my own. I need your help.”
“I can’t do anything.”
“Yes, you can.” Victoria said, gripping my arms tightly. “That voice in your head, the one that talks back and never shuts up. You aren’t schizophrenic. The voice is your soul talking to you.”
I never thought someone else would know my secret other then my mother. Since I was a child there have been two voices in my head, my own and the voice of Leda.
I started shaking my head, refusing to believe her.
“You can disagree all you want but right now you must let her protect you. There are too many of these things and I can’t handle them all.”
Victoria let go of my arms and behind me to stand back to back. The goyles formed a circle around us. Every one of them looked hungry.
Behind me I heard pops like burning wood, and then came the heat and smell. I looked back for only a second to see a green ball of fire developing in Victoria’s hands. The bigger it became more colors formed in the center of the softball sized sphere. Blue, orange, and in the center was translucent heat.
“I don’t know what to do.” But as the sentence left my mouth I could tell I was wrong. In my head something, or someone, told me I could do this. I could defeat these things if I just let her use my body. A power on the edge of my skin rumbled and sounded like thunder. This energy tingled on the edge of my finger tips like electricity. This feeling inside of me felt uncontrollable. “What is going on?”
Victoria’s voice sounded different, less casual and more sensual but sinister at the same time. “Because of your father you were born with a demonic soul. Let her take over your body and protect you.”
“How do you know I have a demonic soul?”
“My name is Scarlet, Victoria’s demonic soul. I was sent to look over you on the first full moon after your eighteenth birthday.” Victoria, or Scarlet, pushed the flaming ball towards the goyles in front of her. It exploded against one goyle, engulfing four nearby creatures in the flames. Their bodies quickly burned and fell to the ground in a help of smoldering flesh and ash.
Three hissing goyles grabbed my arms, gripping me tightly enough to cause pain down to my fingers and up towards my neck.
One part of me wanted to scream for help but pressure started building in my stomach. I felt Leda rise inside my soul, stretching into my veins, muscles, and eventually settling in my limbs, taking over my body entirely. My eyes were taken over last. The world in front of me became black and grey and the only colors I saw were auras around the goyles.
“Just relax,” the voice inside my head told me. “I’ll take care of everything.”
Without permission, my left hand raised in front of me. My other hand also rose. The pressure I felt in my stomach flowed towards my hands. Tiny lightning bolts struck from my right hand, landing in the palm of the other. The world around me held thick electricity in the air.
With Leda taking over my body I had double vision. While she looked between my hands and the goyles I was completely focused on the ball of lightning in my hands. It was like watching a movie, my hands pushed the lightning away from me. Light blinded me when it connected with the remaining monsters, their bodies turning to ash then blending into the earth.
I looked around at the empty cemetery. My eyes were back to normal the voice in my head was gone.
“Are you alright?” Victoria asked turning me around by my shoulders.
“She is a curse,” I stammered, my eyes stinging with tears. “When will she leave my soul?”
Victoria shook her head. “Never. Learn to live with her.” She turned away from me and began walking off.
“How did you know I was here?” I yelled.
“Your mother called me.” She stopped, looking over her shoulder. “You are one special child, Hazel. Go home. Your mother has a lot to teach you.” Then she faced me. “Never forget your bracelet again, or what happened tonight will become a common event and I won’t be here to save your butt.”
Like Victoria instructed me, I went home and forgot about the party. I swore to my mother I would never be without my bracelet again. And tomorrow I would begin learning about my demonic soul.