The Otherkind Book One:Heart

~*~ 23 ~*~

~*~ 23 ~*~

She opened the stall door just as an older woman came into the bathroom. She looked shocked and affronted, as if she had just seen lesbians in a lover's embrace or something. Simultaneously we put our arms around each other as we walked out laughing.

The waitress who was standing at the counter looked relieved when she saw us both and that I wasn't in need of anything. She went in back to the kitchen and then met us at our table with hot, fresh fries when we sat down.

"Glad to see you are okay ma'am." She smiled at us.

And we both snorted in laughter after she left.

"Bet she wouldn't be calling you ma'am if she'd seen your little melt down in the bathroom! She'd be calling 911 if not the men in white coats!"

I poked my tongue out at her and then popped a fry in my mouth.

That dark feeling had dissipated. Everything felt normal again, as normal as the two of us could be anyway. What on earth had I been picking up on?

"Don't do it Rowan." Sarah looked suddenly somber.

"Do what? I wasn't doing anything!" I protested.

"You were, you were getting that faraway look in your eyes again, like you were going to start picking up on ghosts or something. You know? Wasn't there a movie where a lady could hear and feel ghosts? Could that be your knew lot in life?" She ate another fry while wiggling her eyebrows up and down. "You could be a ghost whisperer or something!" She burst into peals of laughter.

I threw a fry at her. It felt good to laugh. It kept the darkness at bay. A darkness that I could tell was not really gone, just pulled back. I had a feeling Sarah was right. If I thought about it, it would come rolling in again, like some great dark fog bank. Maybe I should go talk to Mira. "Want to go to Mira's after we eat?" I offered. "We still have time."

"You are insane Rowan, absolutely insane."

"It's not been certified yet!" I stabbed at the air with another fry.

"That can be arranged." she said gleefully.

Her laughter ended abruptly in a startled strangled sound as I jerked to a half way upright position, all color draining from my face as lights flashed wildly into the diner.

"Rowan?"

She was scared, I could feel her fear vibrating around us. A feeling of imminent danger enveloped me the same time I became aware of another flash of light. I saw him striding quickly and purposefully toward us, his long trench coat fluttering out behind him like angry bat wings. He began to run towards us, his eyes fiercely determined and more than enraged!

"What's wrong?" Sarah turned to look behind her just as there was booming crash that reverberated through the entire building.

Bryce was there at that precise instant shoving us both roughly under the table at the same time, one hand on each of our heads pushing us further beneath it. "Get down!" he snarled as he leaned over the table. The room glowed from a very bright light, headlights?

Everything happened so fast. The front end of a truck came rocketing through the diner's front door and plate glass windows with a roaring engine. Everything tilted in my head, screams from other patrons, from Sarah, from me. The sound of glass imploding into the diner showering the diner in a violent and wickedly sharp maelstrom of dangerous glass shards.

His trench coat was spread out over both sides of the table draping down keeping the glass from hitting us. Sounds were thundering in my head impossibly loud. The trucks engine began over-revving, choking on something that had been rammed into the engine. Painfully the sound grew into a shriek, finally dying completely with a few harsh grinding noises. The breaking glass, metal twisting angrily in protest, electrical lights popping, sparking, and smelling of ozone. Everything happened in the blink of an eye and was all jumbled up out of order. I couldn't comprehend it in its entirety. I could still hear the roaring in my head, even after it had quieted down to soft hissing, ticking sounds as the overheated engine cooled. And I could feel his anger. In huge crashing waves I could feel it.