Sneak Peek: Chapter Two

After the responses from chapter one I figured it would be almost cruel not to give a few more sneak peeks as your enthusiastic reactions to the prologue and first chapter have certainly given even me a burst of excitement. There will be a post later today talking about the process that these first few chapters entailed and the specific issues that I experienced when it came to starting a story so tune back in if that stuff interests you.

In the meantime, I hope you enjoy the second chapter.

Chapter Two
A Familiar Stranger

Jaden stared across a scarred wooden table in the corner of the dark campus coffee-house. The smell of chocolate and roasting cocoa beans should have painted an atmosphere of calm but he shifted in his uncomfortable chair, looking across the circular table at Gwen. Her pale skin seemed luminescent, ethereal in the low glow of the intimate shop.

His chest felt tight and heavy. Here he was, finally sitting across from Gwen in a cozy, intimate place. Just the two of them.

But this was not how he had imagined it.

“Jaden, I need to tell you something,” she said.

“You think?”

She eyed the front door.

“I’m not who you think I am,” she said, her blue eyes piercing his, “but neither are you. So you need to trust me because we don’t have a lot of time.”

“Um, okay,” he said shifting in his seat, not quite sure if he wanted her to explain after all, “so this is where you tell me what on earth is going on?”


They sat at a small table in the very back corner of the small shop, away from the front door and ceiling-high windows. He was trying to stay patient, anticipating her forthcoming explanation but she hadn’t said anything on the entire trip from his mother’s house to the across campus shop, which had only made him wonder what was going on even more.

She leaned forward, scanning the room every five or six seconds as her breathing picked up pace, drumming the wood tabletop with her fingertips.

“Gwen,” he said, “Why did we have to leave my mother’s house? I don’t understand what’s happening.”

“Where is he?” she said under her breath, checking the door again, “He was supposed to be here by now.”

“Gwen, this isn’t funny. And this isn’t like you to—”

“Look,” she said, “no matter what I say or however ridiculous you may think it sounds I need you to let me finish, all right?”

Jaden nodded, a conditioned response. Why was she acting like this?

“All right,” she said with a heavy sigh, still eyeing the thick mahogany door every few seconds. “All right…”

Her voice grew hushed and Jaden had to lean forward to hear her. She placed her blonde hair behind her right ear, like she always did when she was nervous. It made her look cute. At least he thought so twenty minutes ago.

“I don’t know where to start or even how to say this,” she said, “of course that was never my responsibility. But sometimes circumstances call for protocol to be breached and we can’t wait on him any longer.”

“Gwen, who are you? I’m starting to get a little freaked out.”

“Oh, well here,” she said, grabbing his wrist and placing her hands on top of his. The moment her hands made contact with his skin he felt calmer, like a warm ray of sunlight had just broken through a dark and overcast sky of rolling clouds.

Yes, everything would be all right.

“Do you feel better?” she said, pulling her hands away.

The clinking of stirring spoons inside clay mugs resonated throughout the coffee house and the music did sound soothing and harmonious.

“Yes,” he said. And he did. He felt much, much better. But he couldn’t explain why. “So, what were we talking about?”

She took a deep breath, “Well, I think it’s time that you—”

“Sorry bout that, it’s been kind of crazy in here tonight,” said a short brunette with spiky hair and highlights, “but I guess you two probably enjoyed your alone time with one another, huh? Am I right? I saw those roving hands! And I totally couldn’t help but notice the way you two were gawking all over each other.” The waitress made a tractor beam noise and widened her eyes at Jaden. A loud snort and cackle followed. “So, do you two want to share an espresso or maybe ginger cappuccino or wait, I can—”

The waitress stopped mid-sentence and Jaden noticed that Gwen was not looking at him anymore but staring at the waitress, whose pupils seemed somehow larger. A few seconds passed with Gwen not breaking eye contact with the waitress.

“I—yes, I do need to check on the other tables and not worry about coming back to this one,” the waitress said, looking disoriented. “Excuse me.”

The waitress turned and walked away, never bothering them again.

“Man, what a weird waitress, huh?” he said.

“Um, yeah,” Gwen said, her slight smile fading, “Now where was I? Oh, right. Well, Jaden, it’s just, I’m not really, well, but neither is, I really don’t know how to tell you this. You see—”

A loud smash pierced the confused silence and Gwen shrieked. Two mocha-colored mugs crashed to the tile floor, staining the ground with coffee and clay a few feet away. A flustered waiter that now held an empty tray scurried to find paper towels to clean up the mess.

Gwen regained her uneasy demeanor, checking the door again. The feeling of calm inside Jaden dissipated like he had just been plunged into an ice bath. What was going on?

“I’m not just some random girl you met in one of your classes and just happened to form a friendship with the last six months,” Gwen said in a rushed, hushed voice now, “you didn’t meet me by chance. I was sent here because of you.”

He scooted his chair back a little. “What?”

“I’ve been observing you for six months now,” she said, “watching you closely. I know how that sounds but we had to, Jaden. It’s time. We’ve stayed back for so long, just watching over you but recently, there’s just no denying it. So I’ve been waiting on you to show us—something. And you have, you displayed enough characteristics that necessitated some closer contact, more intensive evaluation.”

He tugged at his collar. Something about the word intensive didn’t sit well with him.

“And on the sixth day of our thermodynamics class, the really snowy one, I knew we were right. I knew you were different,” she said.

“Different? How might I be different?” he said, his throat constricting. He didn’t want to be here, with this person he only thought he knew. He wanted to be back home, helping his mother clean up their devastated kitchen. Had Gwen just been acting that she liked being around him this whole time?

“You caught the book that fell off your desk midway through class, don’t you remember that Jaden?”

“So?”

“You were turned the other direction. You caught it without seeing it drop,” she said, “without knowing where it fell, without thinking at all, as if you just knew where your hand had to be. Like how you usually know which elevator is coming before it arrives when you walk me to Biology.”

“There are only two elevators in that building,” he said, “it’s fifty-fifty.”

“But nine times in a row? You don’t find that just the least bit odd?”

“No. It’s just dumb luck.” He now found himself eyeing the door, eager to escape from this conversation. “And I still don’t see what this has to do with my me or—”

“Well after that day,” she said, ““I mean, you displayed the signs. You could have even had the other talents so I had to see if it could be true, that you might possess more abilities. I had to see if he was right.”

“What abilities? If who was right?”

She hesitated.

“Your father.”

His mouth was dry and he couldn’t find his voice.

“There’s no way you could have known my father. He died when I was four, Gwen. This isn’t funny. It’s sick.”

She reached across for his hands but he pulled them away.

“You’re right,” she said, “I didn’t. But others did. And he, your father, thought that you may be someone worth watching over long before—I mean, he knew that someone needed to keep an eye on you before he—”

“I don’t believe you,” he said, his frustration and anger growing at the notion that Gwen could somehow know more about his father than he did. This wasn’t happening.

“We, I, knew I had to evaluate you on a more intimate level,” she said. “To be certain. And so I introduced myself in our next class, telling you that I needed help with my research essay. From then on, I’ve watched your every move. Made sure I was always around you whenever I could be without raising suspicion, all the while wondering, waiting on you to show your true colors.”

Tap-tap-tap. Her fingertips fluttered faster on the smooth wood grain of the tabletop.

“Gwen, why would you have been watching me? Has this whole thing, our friendship, our—relationship, it’s all been a lie?”

“I had to,” she said, her cheeks pink with color, “And I did. I started caring about you, started to hope that we were wrong. That they’d never come for you. That you could just go on living a normal life and never raise their suspicions but, that can’t happen. I wanted to protect you, didn’t want to be right about you but there’s no doubt now, Jaden. It’s true.” Her voice faltered and she rubbed her trembling hands together.

“Gwen, you’re not making any sense. Who knows what?”

Despite her ramblings, despite the overwhelming urge to panic and run away he could see that she was genuinely upset. And his mother had told him to trust her. But what if his best friend was nothing more than an over-protective, delusional stalker? Albeit a pretty one.

“I let my feelings interfere with my task,” she said, “but the more time I spent with you the more and more I realized that there could be no other explanation. And then after tonight, after what you did to that piano, moving across the room in the blink of an eye and catching your mother like that, I knew I had to get you away from there as soon as possible.”

“I didn’t do anything,” he said, trying to stay level-headed and keep his voice down despite not understanding yet another enigmatic explanation. “I told you, both of you, that it was on wheels and an antique. And that I was clearly on an adrenaline rush because I was scared she was going to get hurt. What does any of that have to do with why we had to race out of the house? Look, I’ve got to—”

“Because they’re coming for you,” she yelled, grabbing Jaden’s shirt across the table, tears filling her eyes. “You’re in trouble and I can’t stop them. What you did in that house, they will know what you are. Who you are. And where you are.”

The sight of Gwen in tears elicited the most peculiar response from Jaden.

He believed her.

“I didn’t want to be the one to tell you this but I can’t protect you here any longer. I can’t keep delaying what has to happen just so you can live a normal life.”

She looked terrified—but not for herself.

“Because you’re not, Jaden. You’re not normal.”

“Tell me,” he said in a quiet voice, desperate to give her the benefit of the doubt like his mother had, “just tell me what you’re trying to say. How am I not normal?”

Gwen let out a long exhale, her shoulders still tensed.

“Haven’t you ever been a little surprised at some of the things that you’ve done recently?” she said. “That you are able to do?” Her words seemed to amplify throughout the small coffee shop. “I know you like to rationalize everything but some things simply defy logic. There are some things that exceed explanation.”

“Give me a for instance,” he said.

“How about being so intuitive that it’s almost as if you can sense another person’s emotions and thoughts? Do you even know how many times you’ve asked me something that no person could ever know? Like if I was worried about the anatomy portion of my biology test on Friday or told me that you didn’t think my hair looked frizzy despite the humidity? Normal people can’t know the exact same thing at the exact same moment that someone else is thinking or feeling.”

The bronze-colored walls of the shop seemed to close in around him. Each example Gwen listed Jaden remembered, the memories forming an odd mental collage of things he had never given a second thought to—until now.

“So we think alike? So what? Isn’t that what friends do?”

“And last time I checked,” she said, “the average man can’t send a baby-grand piano shooting across a floor with such force that he caves in the front of it on sheer impact.”

“It was old,” he said, “unexplainable accidents like that happen all the time.” But Jaden wasn’t even sure if he really believed what he had just said. Gwen had a point, no matter how much he wanted to disregard it and the more examples Gwen gave him the more he started to doubt if he could be the one who was wrong.

“You shattered a piano, Jaden. And destroyed a kitchen island that was fifteen feet away, while somehow simultaneously catching your falling mother in the blink of an eye.”

The image of the splintered piano and the crushed kitchen island flashed before his eyes, ivory keys and chunks of cracked wood begging him to reconsider her position.

“I’m not even sure I saw you leave the couch,” she said, “I’m not even sure I ever saw you move at all. You were sitting there and then your mom tripped and fell through the banister and then the next thing I know you’re holding her in your arms. I never saw you hit the piano or—I don’t think I ever saw anything.”

“So, what?” he said, feeling very self-conscious and exposed in the open coffee shop filled with fellow students and potential classmates, “You were probably watching my mom fall and lost track of me. That doesn’t mean—”

“No,” she said. “I know what happened. I know what you are.”

His temper rose and his face flushed with a warm frustration of fear.

“Then what am I, Gwen?”

She leaned across the table as if she was going to whisper something to him, her blue eyes looking straight through him as the scent of lavender in her hair saturated his senses. But Gwen’s lips never moved.

One of us.

Silence.

He couldn’t move, like some frozen hand had clasped his heart, the thuds in his chest growing louder and faster. He shut his eyes.

Couldn’t be.

Jaden, look at me.

Not possible.

Jaden…

He opened his eyes. Gwen’s lips were still pursed and her stare steady. He must have imagined it. There’s no way he had just heard her voice echoing in his head. He couldn’t reign in his weighted breaths and heaving sternum. This was too much.

“Did you just—”

She stared at him, a pitying look in her eyes. “I knew it,” she said aloud.

“I, I,” he said. “That’s not possible.”

He crumpled into his seat, panting, struggling for breath. She fixed her gaze on him. If you can hear me then that proves what I’ve told you. It proves what your mother feared and what we have to do. It proves that you are in danger.

Her lips never moved. No matter how much his mind rejected it, he had heard her voice inside his head as if she was speaking straight into his ears. She reached for him but he didn’t want to be touched. A small part of him did wish he could hold her hand again; he could have used the calmness. And her skin had felt so smooth back in the living room when she was still the girl he had liked for six months, holding her hand by his mom’s glowing fireplace. But she wasn’t that person anymore. His throat felt dry and scratchy each time he tried to speak.

You need to calm down.

The voice, Gwen’s sweet voice, sounded forceful. A powerful sense of pressure emanated around his sinuses, making his eyes water. The thought that it would be wise to calm down intensified.

I'm not trying to scare you.

He shivered. This wasn’t happening.

“I’m here to help,” she said aloud, “So please, calm down and listen.”

He couldn’t move. Who was she? What was she?

“How,” he said, “I don’t understand.”

She drew in a deep breath and nodded to herself.

“I know,” she said, her voice soft again, “and I'm sorry about that. But you don’t need to understand right now. You need to trust me. The answers will come. But all you need to know right now is that you are one of us. Maybe even the one we’ve been—”

A shadow moved across her face and Gwen went white, the color drained from her fair skin in an instant. A strong hand grabbed the back of Jaden’s shoulder and kept him in his chair. He stopped himself from turning around to look.

“Maybe the one,” a powerful and coarse voice said from behind him, “that we’ve been hoping to find.”

Gwen’s entire demeanor changed and after a few moments she let out a relieved sigh. Jaden felt nothing but a mortifying panic. The immense and powerful hand still gripped his shoulder, keeping him planted to his chair.

After a few moments he forced himself to look up past the scarred knuckles of the hand holding him. A rock of a man stood beside him. A strong jaw covered in black stubble and dark, fiery amber eyes met Jaden’s hesitant gaze. A thick black raincoat hung atop the man’s shoulders, almost covering him from neck to toe. Even sitting down Jaden could tell that this man was quite tall and very broad. He could feel this man’s strength in his fierce grip, which remained like a vice on Jaden’s shoulder.

But something about him, something about those dark and fiery eyes seemed oddly familiar.

“Do I know you?” Jaden said, trying to place where he had seen those eyes, seen this man before.

Yet in a flash the man was on the other side of the table, standing between Jaden and Gwen, cracking his knuckles.

“Merrick,” Gwen said, “I’m so glad you’re here. Where have you been? Is everything safe?”

“Not quite,” Merrick’s coarse and forceful voice bellowed out, studying Jaden.

Staring at this man was like looking into the face of a tiger on the hunt.

“You mean…” she said.

“Yes,” he said without taking his eyes off of Jaden. “You were smart to remove him from the house the moment the ripple was sent. Even I felt it and I was at least fifty miles away. He is in danger and it’s time for us to leave. He’s coming for you, Jaden Montgomery Scott, and we don’t have much time. We can no longer keep you safe out in the open. Follow me.”

Jaden tried to respond but his tongue felt swollen, sticking to the roof of his mouth.

“That wasn’t a request,” Merrick said.

Gwen motioned for Jaden to get up.

The front door slammed open and Gwen gasped in fear, turning her head and balling up her tiny fists. A group of boys wearing Beta fraternity shirts entered the coffee shop laughing.

“Who are you?” Jaden said to Merrick a little louder than he had intended, noticing that people were glancing over at him.

“Shut up,” Merrick said.

Jaden obeyed, blind-sided by the blunt command.

“You have every right to doubt who I am and what Gwen and I’ve told you,” Merrick said, “but the simple fact of the matter is that you are in way over your head. And time is running out. We’re leaving.”

A suffocating silence seemed to pulsate around the small table. The air in the coffee shop felt still and dense, like a mausoleum. Gwen stared at the door again after hearing Merrick’s brutal assessment of the situation. “Are they outside—”

“I don’t know,” Merrick said, “there’s no doubt that the Legion felt the ripple from Sarah’s house. I can sense they are near. Our best bet is probably out the back.”

“How do you know my mother’s name?” Jaden said, feeling oddly angry that this strange man knew so much about him and his mother. “I’m not going anywhere until you tell me that.”

The wisps of rising steam from mugs of mocha and carefree chattering around them made everything seem so surreal. But Jaden would not budge, his jaw clenched and his determination resolute.

“I know your mother’s name,” Merrick said, “because I knew your father, Jude.”

That was too much. Jaden couldn’t do this anymore.

“I’m sorry,” Jaden said, avoiding Gwen’s eyes and heading for the front door of the coffee shop, “but you’ve got the wrong guy. I need to get back to my mom. I don’t have time for this. This is crazy.”

“Wait,” Gwen said, “stop! You don’t understand!”

Merrick turned towards him but Jaden ran for the mahogany door and pushed it open faster than he thought possible, breathing in the crisp nighttime air out on the sidewalk.

The moment the door creaked to a close behind him a faint and distant swishing noise resonated around the street. He looked up and spotted a large shadow speeding across the sky towards him, blocking the shining stars along the way. The front door creaked open.

“Jaden,” Gwen said, her panic audible, “it’s not safe. Merrick, please show him—No!”

The swishing noise grew louder.

“Move!” Merrick said.

Jaden felt a tremendous force impact his chest as Merrick’s bear-like hands shoved him and Gwen clear of the entrance like they were as light as paper. An enormous object slammed into Merrick, sending him back into the front of the coffee shop, the collision collapsing the concrete and brick entrance of the cozy store.

Merrick’s voice roared from the dust and haze, “They’re here!”