Chapter I:Olivia dragged her hand through her hair and sighed. Another exam was spread out before her eyes. The questions were already blurring. So many tests in such a little amount of time, though some people were worse off. The girl a few rows down was on her seventh pencil, the predecessors had all been broken in two or chewed into bits. There was also a boy who sat two seats behind her whom had once threatened, albeit under his breath, to inhale the test. She was not the worst she just couldn’t focus. The text kept blurring in and out of focus like her eyes were some sort of camera, and then the talking started.
“Please no, not my baby!”
“Come here.”
“Answer A or B?”
“It’s the damn drink again. It’s always this is the last time.” It was as if the people were speaking but with the volume turned down. They had all the emotion with out the particular sound that came when one was whispering.
“Did you think you could hide Malachi?”
“Wow, I can’t believe you got that for me? It’s perfect!” The voices became slowly cluttered, one sentence cutting into the other and then both running along at the same speed. It jumbled the words and soon more sentences came merging into one monstrous echoing sentence. Olivia felt her body go rigid, her muscles wouldn’t respond to any command. Even as the voices became harsher and louder, all Olivia wanted to do was move a muscle raise a hand to ask the teacher if she could leave, as if her voice would work as well.
And then just like that, darkness over came her. A darkened shape of her desk coming to meet her face was all she remembered until she awoke in the infirmary. The nurse was conversing with someone on the phone and sounding rather worried as she did so. Her body was shaking as she spoke.
“No! I need to contact Mr. Holt immediately!” Olivia was about to speak up and say she was alive when a darker figure entered the room. His eyes gleamed golden, unnaturally so. He held a hand to his lips and once again Olivia felt her body begin to seize up. It was like her muscles had locked. The man was staring at her face and for some reason his appearance was becoming stranger. Still his golden eyes were distinguishable. The man leaned down and touched her brow. Her vision was becoming even stranger; it seemed like her entire sight was wrapping around the man.
“I shall meet you again I suppose,” the man’s voice was low and smooth. He smiled, but it only made Olivia feel worse, but this was only topped when he placed his entire hand on her cheek. It felt like her body was on the fritz and then there was nothing. The voices were finally silent.
*
When Olivia woke up from her dream she was panting and covered in sweat. She was also no longer eighteen. Instead of being a young wide-eyed girl, she was now thirty-two and a divorcee mother of a hyper eight-year-old boy. But for a moment, just a moment, she felt like she was eighteen with the terror that the dark man had instilled in her with just being near. Which was silly, she tried to reassure herself. Nothing about the man was that scary to send her into a cold sweat let alone make her wake up panting at five o’clock in the morning, she had automatically checked the clock like she always did when she awoke.
Olivia stretched her legs out trying to relieve the cramping that had begun in her calf when a limb brushed her own. From the feel it was another leg, however the leg was considerably smaller than hers and could only belong to one other person. Glancing over to her left, Olivia saw her son sprawled out on the other side of the bed, though he hardly kept to his side of the king sized furniture as he was sleeping diagonally with his on of his arms above his head and the other resting on his belly. She nearly giggled at the sight and was sorely tempted to ruffle her son’s ever so curly black hair, which he had inherited from her.
The distraction her son had given was enough to lift the panic that had clutched onto her lungs, and in turn released the image of the dream man her mind had clung onto. The only reasoning she could come up with as to why she had been so panicked was because most of the dream had been a memory of when her gift had first awakened.
The voices had scared her so much that she had locked up her body while trying to shut down her gift, not a good idea she now knew, but at eighteen she was still rather unaware of her family’s peculiar legacy. But it had even taken them a while to figure out she had awoken because unlike her elder brother, Artemis, hers hadn’t been much of an explosion.
Glancing back at her son she smiled softly, wondering if he would inherit one of the gifts. Most of her family did have gifts and so it could be odd if he didn’t. Though Olivia was sure that no one would care that he couldn’t feel and influence emotions or wield electricity. If he were normal by human standards they would all still love him, as she knew she would. Plus he was so innocent and lively, she couldn’t help but beam every time she thought of him or spoke of him. He was just a sweet little boy, when he wasn’t being mischievous.
Her thoughts of her son, led her to glance at her clock on more time. It was now five-thirty, and she wasn’t in the least tired. Swinging her legs over the side of the bed, Olivia had already come the conclusion there was only one thing for her to do this early in the morning, go jogging. She could probably get in a good run before Elijah got up, and if he did by some sort of miracle wake up before seven she always wrote a note and took her cell phone with her. Plus after her run she could always make them a nice big breakfast before she dropped Elijah off at her parents and then go to work. With the whole day planned out Olivia changed into her running clothes and slipped on her tennis shoes, her dream the farthest away from her mind it had been since she awoke.
