The Megidda: First Daughter of Heaven

Chapter 5

Jess pushed open the front door and hurried to her room; she didn't have it in her to face her mother quite yet, and she only hoped Barb hadn't called her mom to tell her what happened.

What did happen?

Though she'd run a good eight miles, she was breathing normally, dry as a piece of stale toast, and as energized as when she'd begun her sprint from the women's shelter. Her body sang with a new kind of power she couldn't describe, but if it meant she'd never get winded, and wouldn't sweat or get tired, she'd describe it as pretty freaking awesome. It was amazing, this new power. She felt like she could do anything—she could climb a mountain, arm wrestle the Kraken, take down any dipnozzle who tried to hurt her...

That thought dragged her down from her high. She had taken down a seriously large, angry, mean dipnozzle in the parking lot of the building she'd just fled like a criminal running scared. She'd stepped up to that man like she was ten times taller and stronger than him, had faced him down, and had downed his face—she punched the dude square in his nose and broke it.

How did I do that? Why did I do that?

Jess wasn't in her room for more than a second when a loud bang rang out from somewhere in the house.

"Whoa!"

What was that?

She pulled open her bedroom door and listened.

Maybe her mom blew up a storage container in the microwave again.

"Mom, you have to take the lid off first," Jess yelled toward the kitchen, still iffy about facing her mother, but now a slow, creeping wariness spread into her heart and mind.

When her mother didn't make a snappy reply as Jess had expected, that wariness in her heart dug in deep.

"Mom?" she called.

A sharp, strangled cry penetrated the hush in the air, but it was cut off quickly.

"Mom?" she called, again, this time taking a step toward the kitchen only twelve feet from her bedroom door.

Another step closer and Jess held her breath, trying to listen for any other sounds that could tell her what to expect when she finally reached the kitchen at the back of the house.

Another step. Lightheadedness forced Jess to let out the breath she'd been holding and suck in another breath, as quietly as possible.

A knock at the front door simultaneously stopped her heart and made her gasp, which made her lightheadedness worse.

The knock came again.

"Who-who...is it?" Jess's voice wobbled, a tell-tale sign of what was going on in her body—the fear and alarm mashing together to snatch her strength.

"It-it's me...Briana Baylor...from school." A soft voice called out from the other side of the bright red oak door.

"Oh!" Jess exclaimed, surprised at her visitor.

Why is she here? Maybe she wanted to tell Jess how her parents were suing her or how she was now the laughing stock of the school.

Jess dreaded opening the door and the conversation that would follow, but she didn't back down from a dipnozzle, she wouldn't back down from little Briana Baylor.

Jess opened the door and blinked down at the brown haired, chubby cheeked Briana.

"Hey, what're you doing here?" Right to the point.