Charcoal Tears (Seraph Black Book 1) Read online

  Charcoal Tears

  Jane Washington

  Copyright 2015 Jane Washington

  The author has provided this ebook for your personal use only. It may not be re-sold or made publically available in any way. Copyright infringement is against the law. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  www.janewashington.com

  Edited by David Thomas

  ISBN-10: 0994279531

  ISBN-13: 978-0-9942795-3-8

  Table of Contents

  Dedication Page

  Chapter One: The Beast

  Chapter Two: Down Will Come Baby

  Chapter Three: Call me Daddy

  Chapter Four: The Oddities of the Ordinary

  Chapter Five: The Paired People

  Chapter Six: The Questionable Sanity of Silas Quillan

  Chapter Seven: Rules of Engagement

  Chapter Eight: Shopping with the Devil

  Chapter Nine: Piercing Insecurities of Parting Inferences

  Chapter Ten: The Dichotomy of Unwilling Want

  Chapter Eleven: Action and Reaction

  Chapter Twelve: Grounded

  Chapter Thirteen: Borderline

  Chapter Fourteen: This is not the Protocol

  Chapter Fifteen: The Searing Light of Day

  Chapter Sixteen: Beware the Adair

  Chapter Seventeen: Girlfriend Insurance

  Chapter Eighteen: Notoriously Sexy Zevghéri Bastards

  Chapter Nineteen: Peek-a-boo, I Found You

  Chapter Twenty: The End of the Beginning

  Chapter Twenty-One: The Messenger…

  Letter to the Readers

  “Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”

  -Friedrich Nietzsche

  1

  The Beast

  There is a place inside my mind that doesn’t belong. It is overruling and underrated all at once; it is the place that I try my best to ignore. I make excuses, satiating its unspoken need to flee recognition and stalk, unseen, so that I don’t have to claim those things that define me in their darkness. I cage the wild beast that tugs at my heart, and it doesn’t like it. It wants to be used. It wants to be leashed, claimed, and ruled, so that it can make its viciousness my courage.

  What if it succeeds?

  I will use bricks instead. I will build them up solidly, block by reassuring block, until a garrison stands guard and only the curious battering of my heart against the drying mortar can be heard.

  You see, there is safety in simplicity… in a life of simple peace, where the electricity doesn’t dance across the backs of my eyelids, and the sparks don’t slither over my consciousness. Only asinine peace, where my paintings don’t seem to paint themselves, leaving me with terrible feelings of premonition and a chill beneath my fingernails.

  Peace.

  I made vicious strokes with the brush, ignoring the paint that splattered to the floor, marking my sneakers. I didn’t even know what colour the shoes were supposed to be—black, or dark blue, maybe. It didn’t matter. I had bought them at a garage sale years ago, and they barely even fit anymore.

  The watercolour outlines dripped down the paper and I flicked the brush onto a rickety wooden table beside me, reaching forward to smudge the paint into place with my fingers. The table was propped up with two good legs and one half of a broken baseball bat, and it housed all of the brushes that I was currently abandoning in lieu of my fingers. I made soft flicks upwards and coaxing, easy nudges toward where I wanted the paint to stain. People generally didn’t understand this thing that I did. They didn’t understand how it could look like I was damaging my art into existence. Every one of my works should have been a mess by the time I finished with them, but instead they grew into delicate and precise visions. Then again… people consisted of my little brother Tariq, my dead mother, and my art teacher—Quillan. Nobody else cared.

  The first coat finished, I quickly washed my brushes and tipped them all into an empty jar. I shucked my painting shirt—an old sweatshirt of Tariq’s—and pulled the plain blouse that I had thrown off earlier over my singlet. I didn’t waste any effort on my hair, I didn’t bother with any fancy makeup and I didn’t check to see if my blouse was inside out, back-to-front or rent clear down the middle.

  I simply grabbed my book bag and left the garage in my chameleon sneakers.

  The garage door groaned as I pulled it down, protesting all the way until it landed with a sighing whump against the concrete. After it was locked, I re-hid the key under a rock in one of the bushes to the side. I had gradually turned the space into an art studio over the last two years, and my father still hadn’t noticed. I didn’t know why I bothered hiding the key in the same place. Habit? What would happen if he spontaneously decided to take a stroll around the boundaries of our underwhelming, insignificant rectangle of land? Even though the alcohol pumped through his system thicker than blood, he still had a brain in his head, and it still worked—at least half of the time. He might not remember that we owned a garage, but he would certainly know what one looked like.

  I should probably move the key.

  My progress toward the small, double-storey, faded-brick house was marked with caution, my eyes flicking occasionally up to the half-open windows, examining the torn curtains that snaked outside to tangle with the faint morning breeze. I planted myself by the window to the kitchen for a moment, but didn’t hear any activity. The house seemed to be sleeping, but then again, our house always seemed to be sleeping. Not that anyone had ever asked me, but I was firmly of the opinion that it was the quiet things in life that boasted the most menace: the silent people, the unspoken words… the sleeping houses. Deeming it safe, I entered through the front door and passed by the cracked linoleum and water-stained walls that decorated the kitchen, climbing the staircase to the second landing. As soon as my father’s snore shook through the house I relaxed and ran the rest of the way to Tariq’s bedroom. Tipping the door open, I peeped inside.

  “Hey.” I stared at the back of his head, a shaggy mess of dark hair reminding me that I needed to give him another haircut. “We have to go. You ready?”

  He turned, his eyes still glued to whatever he had been reading, and nodded without actually looking at me. “Yeah, sure. Ready.” He spoke lowly, almost a whisper.

  I rolled my eyes and pushed myself further into the room, easily grabbing the book from him. “Pay attention,” I admonished.

  “Sorry.” He unfolded himself and stood, suddenly looking down at me, rewarding me with a dopey smile. He ruffled up my hair with a hand. “Is the beast still asleep?”

  The brief flash of comfortable happiness drained out of me in an instant, but I turned so that he didn’t have to see it. I nodded, and he left it at that. We descended the stairs and gravitated toward the kitchen. There was an apple left over from the small collection of fresh fruit that I had bought the week before. Nothing else. Tariq searched anyway, like he did every morning.

  “Where’d the crackers go?” he asked, smacking the last cupboard closed a little too heavily.

  We both paused, waiting.

  “Gone,” I said, after another snore rumbled down the stairs.

  “Have you eaten anything?” He narrowed his green eyes on me.

  I hated when he gave me that look. He had been doing it too often lately, like he could tell every time I lied to him. He was supposed to be the younger sibling.

  “Yes,” I lied, turning away from him. “I got up early to do some painting.”

  “Oh really?” This seemed to brighten him up, and he dropped
an arm over my shoulders as we moved toward the front of the house. He began to munch on the apple. “I’m glad, Seph. I was worried there for a bit.”

  His words had been spoken casually, but I could tell that he was both relieved and tense in significant measures. I knew because I felt the same way. We walked to the roadside, and I fell quiet again. He didn’t mind so much; he was used to me not talking. We jogged to the end of the road and then picked our way over the crumbling fence of the old council meeting hall. My mother’s beat-up old sedan was parked on the overgrown grass, safe from my father. He had already crashed his own car too many times, and since he refused to look at anything that used to belong to my mother, he didn’t seem to care that her car had gone missing. Most likely he either forgot that we used to own a second car, or he thought that someone had stolen it. If he knew that we were using it, he would have sold it by now. I unlocked it, slid behind the wheel and tossed my bag over to the backseat while Tariq took care of the side gate. There wasn’t much point in keeping it padlocked, but at least it was a mild defence for anyone who wanted to steal the car and didn’t happen to have bolt cutters or a lock pick in their backpack. The drive to school attempted to console me with its own brand of routine; Tariq hummed softly to the crackled music over the radio and I stared ahead, stoic.

  I hadn’t touched paint for almost a month, but that morning something had changed, and I wasn’t sure if I liked the sudden turnabout. I loved painting, sure, but I didn’t love things happening all of a sudden without tangible reason. Especially since the sudden burst of creativity had ending in me painting our house burning to the ground. A lone figure had hunched by the roadside to witness the flames, and I didn’t know if any of my family burned within. It was an empty dream, and I had abandoned the painting without a second thought, starting on another.

  I parked at school and Tariq flashed me a parting grin, already flying across the parking lot to meet up with his friends. I envied his laugh as it carried to where I still sat, but I couldn’t begrudge his happy act. School was his escape. I grabbed my bag, slipped out of the car and locked up, my mind snagging with inexplicable nervousness as I started across the lot.

  Perhaps I shouldn’t have painted that morning.

  Perhaps I should have eaten at least half of the apple.

  Perhaps I should have taken better care of my sneakers.

  Perhaps I should have moved the key.

  Perhaps…

  I didn’t hear the car until it was too late, and instead of spinning away I turned toward it. There was no particular reason, other than it had shocked me. Maybe my instincts were broken. I caught sight of the face behind the wheel, bright blue eyes and a mouth open mid-shout. I still didn’t turn, and I still didn’t run. I didn’t even flinch.

  The boy had hit the brakes and the car was skidding. An arm hooked around me in the instant before the car would have hit me, tilting the world off-kilter as I was spun around and propelled forwards. I fell to the ground, a heavy mass dropping over my back. Someone grunted in my ear, a car door slammed, and then all of the feeling swept back into me. There was no pain, but I was shaking so hard that my bones were threatening to dislodge, and whoever was slumped over me was cursing roughly. Footsteps approached, pulling him up. His arm tightened around my waist and he pulled me with him. I scrambled to my feet, my face twisting with mortification as the students started to gather. Some guy had his phone out and was recording us, or taking pictures.

  I mumbled a curse, glancing at the two people who stood before me as I backed away.

  The driver was angry—no, furious. The one who had fallen with me was grimacing in pain. I didn’t examine them anymore than that, my brain too shocked to absorb excess information, but I got the impression of broadness and height from the both of them. They were probably on the football team and I’d just pissed off one of them and injured the other. Now I’d have the whole jock scene on my back. I tried to control my reaction, but I was stuttering. Without thinking, I stumbled back another step, and then another.

  The driver matched my retreat with a step forward but the other boy held him back, words mumbled beneath his breath. Maybe it was his anger, but I couldn’t look away from the driver. A moment more, and he began to gain definition in my frazzled mind. His eyes were delicate and fierce all at once, like orbs of porcelain sharpened to angry peaks. The colour reminded me of the unreachable point on the horizon where the blue of an ocean morphs with a balmy summer sky, forming a formidable wall of turquoise. I could sense the turbulence roiling beneath, and the glare of brilliance reflecting off the surface. I flinched away from him, focussing on the injured one.

  “I’m sorry.” I managed to force the words from my throat. They came out a croak, too weak.

  He opened his mouth to speak, but I spun on my heel, hurrying off before my shaking legs could collapse beneath me. I could still feel the glare of his eyes, and the image of them was seared so firmly into my brain that it seemed like my neurotransmitters had gone and printed propaganda posters of him to hang up around the place. His eyes, like those of the driver, had been memorable. They had briefly reminded me of the spill of rich coffee, heady amber alcohol or pulled toffee. In short: addictive, and brown. Maybe it was the adrenaline, but what details I had noticed wouldn’t dislodge from my brain. Usually eye-colour was simple: blue, green, brown; flat, distinctive; light, dark. Was the sudden distinction of their features my own fault, or theirs?

  Someone shouted out, but I didn’t catch the word. I broke into a run.

  Once I was inside the halls I ducked through the masses of people, blessedly invisible once again. I disappeared inside the bathroom and shoved myself into a stall, collapsing immediately.

  Car… eyes… could have died… my panic tried to manifest in thought, but the words tumbled over themselves in their haste to be examined, and I ended up clutching my head until the racket quieted.

  I stayed like that until the bell rang, and then I forced myself to my feet. I splashed cold water on my face and ran to homeroom, heading toward the back row of seats with my head down. Mr. Thomas was already there, but he didn’t even seem to notice me as I sat down. After a few minutes, the door opened again and Mr. Thomas paused this time and looked over. The class fell silent and my heart thudded against my ribs, beating a pattern of trepidation. The boy with golden-brown eyes walked in, handing a note over.

  He was a new student—of course—but Mr. Thomas didn’t bother introducing him; he looked at the note, frowned, and crossed his arms. “You’re late, Cabe.”

  Cabe’s smile stretched, becoming easy and charming. Despite the fact that it wasn’t aimed at me, I found myself almost relaxing. It had that effect.

  “I got hit by my brother’s car.” He said it like the whole incident amused and perplexed him all at the same time.

  There was a scattering of laughter about the classroom, and I wasn’t surprised that most of the kids already seemed to know about the parking lot incident. The gossip mill was a mysterious system to me—it existed independently of whatever link in the chain I might have been able to provide, but I’d born witness to its velocity and power all the same.

  “You look fine to me.” Mr. Thomas didn’t sound too impressed. He turned and scanned the small congregation of students all staring at Cabe and whispering to each other like a singular organismic blob of secrets and judgements—all breathing and exhaling together as one festering thing—and then he waved a casual hand at… me. “There’s an empty seat next to Seraph over there, don’t be late again.”

  No there isn’t!

  My head snapped up and my spine straightened in an almost painful way, my teeth clamping together. Cabe looked toward the seat, and then his eyes shifted directly to me, pausing. The reaction was brief enough that I almost missed it: a slight arch to his brow, a curve of the lip, and then he was moving. Every other person tracked his progress as he sank into the seat and turned his attention to the front. I glared at the wall behind Mr. Thomas
’s head as he worked to get the attention of the class again. I didn’t move until the bell rang for the next period, and then I jerked out of my seat, hastily gathering my books. I was ready to race out of the door before anyone else, but a tanned hand slapped lightly against my desk, and that was all it took. I stopped like he had concreted my shoes to the floor and blinked at his hand. He didn’t move, didn’t speak, until the students filed out.

  The hand was broad and long-fingered; clean nails, cut short. It moved toward me, a gentle touch at the base of my elbow.

  “Are you okay?” His voice had a slight accent, becoming more pronounced with his soft tone. I couldn’t pinpoint it, like it didn’t belong to any one place in particular. The most likely scenario was that his parents travelled a lot.

  My eyes snapped up, quickly taking in his face. His jaw was sharply prominent, his skin a dark tan that contrasted heavily with his white button-down shirt. His hair was dark brown, shorter on the sides and flopping over his forehead in soft curls. His brows were elegant, arching with masterful shadow to draw together a darkly appealing mien, softened by the hint of amusement that he attempted to hide from me. I would have labelled him a typical romance-book-Adonis, if not for the gentle humour that radiated off him. He wouldn’t have been able to muster a brood to save his life.

  I was staring at him, not answering, and Mr. Thomas had finished gathering his paperwork. “Hurry it along you two,” he prompted, heading for the door.

  “May I walk you?” Cabe asked, his eyes warm and full of gentle question.

  I managed a nod and he steered me for the door, maintaining a slight touch at my elbow. It switched to my back as we cleared the classroom, hovering but not really touching. It caught me off-balance, sending a foreign trickle of feeling along my skin—like someone had gently scratched up my spine with a bristly leaf—and causing my step to falter.