Immortal Tales #Wattys2020

Chapter Twenty Two

Emily

The mist people wanted her dead.

That shouldn't have been surprise, and yet it was. They were willing to bend the rules to allow a mortal to destroy her. Nature knows what they had planned for the rest of their friends. She had to warn them.

-You haven't killed me yet - she said carefully.

The guy winked. -Never intended to - he replied leaving her with her mouth hanging open. -Whoever deals with murder as a currency cannot be trusted. Plus, I was curious as to who was the person who could anger such gods. -

He moved forward to her ropes with a key in his hands. She heard the lock clicking and her hands were free an instant later. Emily touched her scratched wrists and ankles and felt the rush of magic flowing through her veins.

She was breathing normally again. She hadn't realised how much being trapped weighted on her shoulders.

Instinct flew in her limbs and she threw herself at the mortal, faster than a leopard. She put her entire weight on his body to keep him down, locking his shoulders in place by putting her elbow in between them.

To her surprise, he did not fight back.

Their thread of light was obviously connected, shining so bright it lit both their faces. His eyes were following the profile of the string, right into her own heart.

-You can see it too! - she said surprised. Not one of her immortal friends had shared her ability of seeing paths. She released her grasp a little to allow him to talk, but still keeping him in her power. It felt too nice to be in control.

-Yeah I told you already - he gasped. -I found you because you shined brighter than the sun, Luz -

Luz. Light in Spanish. She should have understood it sooner.

Their faces were inches away, so close she could smell his salami breath. She focused on that instead of the shape of his lips. Because that didn't matter.

-And honestly, Luz? Having you this close makes me all kind of uncomfortable, so if you don't mind ... -

The girl lifted her weight from his rib cage but offered him no hands in getting up. Just to keep things straight, she lit a fire in her hand as a warning.

Mat's pupils dilated in fear and excitement. -That is pretty cool -

She extinguished the flame. She hadn't meant for it to be an attraction.

Emily moved through the drawings and calculations spread over the table. There were maps of America, Italy, Russia, France, all traced with a pen and scrabbled with notes. The writing was a mixture of Spanish and English. Real looking IDs were laying on the desk in a tidy pile, but Emily had no doubt they were all fake.

More drawings were hung next to the bedside table, portraits of mundane scenes. There was a group of women at the groceries, a single man sitting on a bench in the park, children playin by the seaside. All of the were crossed by lines of yellow, going from person to person, heart to heart. Someone else would have thought the drawings ruined by the addition, but the girl found those lines beautiful. They showed the paths of the human world.

-So ... you are immortal? - he asked tentatively.

She ignored him and grabbed the mobile phone on the desk. She quickly typed Andre's phone number that she had memoried.

-Yes? Who is this?- asked a female voice on the other end.

-Andre, it's Emily. - she said. Mat didn't seem too bothered by the call and had laid down on the bed again, loudly eating a second sandwich.

A stream of words to fast to be understood were spoken by her friend. It was something on the lines of "I will kill you for scaring me this much" and also "what the hell has happened to you".

-It's a long story - she said simply. If she had revealed that Mat had kidnapped her, the boy would have not lived another hour. -But I need you to come to this address, we might have a problem bigger than we anticipated. -

...

Author's note: And if you like the story, do not forget to live a like! It helps the book being seen by other people!