A/N:
Hey guys! If you look up top in the media section there is a video. This is Revenant's awesome theme song. Take a listen! The lovely voice singing the song is a gorgeous cover by thesongist , originally Take it All by Ruelle! Trust me, check her out, she is truly amazing :) <3 Thank you so much, girl xxxx
~~**~~
REVENANT
Chapter One
Control
"Hey, come on buddy, move!"
Clara heard the angry shouts of some pretty impatient jocks, who never seemed to manage the common courtesy to even wait at the back of the line. The main man jock- who sported a nice set of muscles and had striking good looks for his own good- had pushed everybody, including her, out of the way to get up to the front of the line. "What does it take to get some decent freaking service around here?"
Clara could see the cute, green-eyed and stylishly ruffled brown-haired guy working his way at the coffee station, his motions fast and his jaw tense. She saw that he was trying his best with ignoring the jocks whilst he worked away at the machines, even though how entirely impossible it seemed to be. Clara admired his courage.
"Come on, man." The core jock called, three people separating him and his friends from the counter. "Some of us have an actual life and need to get to class. It's not that god-damn hard to make a coffee."
The guy behind the counter didn't so much as glance at him, but Clara could see – six people away from the counter, not including the core jock's side men – that he was definitely tense. She watched with close observation, as his jaw flexed in the tinniest movement. He has some good self-restraint, she thought.
Clara – as observant and blatantly curious as she was – watched him as he took the coffee he was making from under the caffeine machine and screwed the foam cup lid. He handed the cup with a smile to the customer who had asked for it and the shirt-and-tie man handed him three dollars, thanked him and walked away to a nearby table.
The coffee station guy kept working away at the machines, ignoring every attempt of words the jocks shot at him – then it came to be their turn to be serviced. "So, obviously someone didn't finish their high school years." The core jock laughed and leant against the counter. "Seeing as you're like a woman; slaving away behind a counter making coffees for a living."
Clara couldn't help but snort, despite how unladylike it might have seemed. She said, "That's a very sexist thing to say." She didn't realise she spoke so loudly until all the buffers and the core jock spun on her, his eyes narrowed when he looked at her.
"What did you say?" His question came out harsh, but his eyes...Well, let's just say she didn't like the way they searched her from head to toe in wild vehemence. She shivered and looked away. She heard the sneer in his voice when he said, "well?"
Clara looked up into the coffee station guys green eyes. He stared back at her. His eyes were a blank mask, thick walls covering any detail of emotion in his face. Her view was suddenly blocked by one of the buffers. "Hey, little girl, my friend here is asking you a question. When he asks, you answer, here me?" The buffer guy was standing above her, almost a couple of heads – it seemed – taller than she was.
"Fine. Whatever." Clara said, making sure she at least sounded bigger than she was and like she didn't care. She gave them what any teenage girl would bring, if someone said something sexist around them; she gave him attitude. "You want to know, you sexist pigs? You said that he," she pointed past them and at the coffee station guy. "Was like a woman slaving away behind the counter making coffees. I just believe that that was a very chauvinist thing to say and—"
"Chauvinist?" The core jock interrupted her, laughter in his voice. "What are you, like, a nerd or something? What the hell?"
His group of boys all laughed at her, as the jock kept a satisfied sneer on his face.
She wasn't about to back down, just because they decided to pick on her advanced choice of words. She put her hands on her hips.
"Yeah, chauvinist. Any idiot should be smart enough to know what that meant." Clara gave him what she hoped was a small innocent smirk and looked at him, as if he was a small child – despite how very much taller than her he was. "Unless, of course, you never graduated from infantry."
Now it was the group of boys turn to laugh at their leader. From the way he looked at them and glared, he didn't like that very much. He turned on Clara will an angry scowl and she realised, it probably wasn't the best idea to stay with him in the line anymore. She took a large step away from him, bumping into the person standing in line behind her.
She quickly apologized, turned – forgetting about her caffeine fix for the day – and pushed herself out of the line. She sat at a table, unfortunately still needing to study for her physics exam next up. She made sure to sit where the people in the line blocked her view from the jocks. Though – she noticed – it did not block her view from the counter and she locked eyes with the green eyed boy behind it. She watched as the corners of his mouth turned up into a small smile and she quickly looked away.
"Is there something you want?" A voice came from the chair in front of her. She jumped. Clara looked to see a girl with long and incredibly straight flowing blonde hair and pale blue eyes seated in front of her. "Because I tell you, Hun, that I am not going into that line for nobody. Not even for a freaked-out looking girl like you."
"No, I –" Clara looked over at the jocks as they came out of the line, looking angry. The core jock had a paper towel in his hand, rubbing at a damp spill down the front of his shirt that went all the way down to the front of his pants. Clara frowned, looked over at the green-eyed worker and caught him in a wink, seemingly directed at her. She soon realised what happened and smiled at him.
A hand suddenly went in front of her face, fingers clicking. "Well?" The girl opposite her asked, but she didn't seem to sound impatient or the slightest bit irritated at all. In fact, she sounded like she was straining herself from laughing. Clara looked across the table at her.
"I just came over to do some studying." Clara said and bent down and retrieved a book, her textbook and a pencil from her grey shoulder bag, to emphasize. She slipped them onto the table.
"You do know there is like a half a dozen other tables that you could have sat at, right?" The girl asked, but once again she sounded calm and unbothered by the fact that Clara was sitting there and, well, she wasn't exactly kicking her out or anything.
"Well," She opened her textbook up, onto the page about kinematics Displacement, velocity and time. Clara wanted to groan, thinking how much she couldn't wait to be done with high school and move onto the better things. She wasn't a slacker, but she didn't particularly praise school either. "This seat just seemed to look the most comfy at the time." She looked up at the girl. "But, look, if you want me to move..."
"No, no, it's fine." The girl said and shrugged. "I just thought you wanted something."
"Why would I want something?" Clara asked her.
"Oh. I don't know. I just saw you talking to Caiden and everything and thought you might have wanted me to fetch your order for you. Or, like, kick me out of my seat or something."
Clara gave her a confused look. Why would she ever kick someone out of their seat? Then Clara thought about it for a moment – realising that the girl meant the core jock and his buffers – and got the impression that the girl across from her thought she must have been one of the popular girls from school.
"Oh. I'm not one of them." Clara told her and the girl smiled and nodded.
"Yeah, I kind of realised that, considering I am still sitting here in my seat." The girl smiled and extended her hand toward Clara above the table. "My names Tiffany Rosenberg."
Clara extended her hand across the table and shook Tiffany's. She couldn't help but notice how cold hers were, but she didn't ask about it, not wanting to sound rude. "I'm Clara. Clara Anderson."
Tiffany smiled. "It's nice to meet you, Clara." She took a sip out of a red bottle that she must have brought along with her. Clara had no idea what liquid it contained in it and wasn't all that curious enough to ask about it. "So, are you new in town? I haven't seen you around here before."
"New?" Clara shrugged. She didn't believe herself all that new, considering she has been in the Capricorn Coast of Emu Park, Queensland for almost a month tops. "I suppose you could say that."
Tiffany opened her mouth to ask what Clara thought would be another question, when a shadow fell over their table, interrupting anything Tiffany was about to say. Both girls looked up to see a guy, who Clara recognized as one of the jocks who had been in the line a couple of people in front of her. Despite how much Clara knew he was probably a jerk like the rest of the jocks, she thought he was cute.
He had golden blonde hair that licked over the front of his forehead and crystallized blue eyes. His skin had the perfect shade of color that matched his golden hair perfectly and his build was definitely the appearance of an athletes. Clara could see that he certainly fit in with his stereotype.
"Hi." He said, looking at Clara.
"Hi." Clara said back, not knowing what else to say.
"So, what do you want?" Tiffany said after a moment's silence. She didn't sound exactly kind and Clara realised that that was the impression she wanted to give.
"Well, I just wanted to apologize to..." He looked at Clara, clearly asking for her name. She told him. "Clara for Caiden's behaviour. He can be a dick at times and I'm sorry you were his target, Clara."
Clara didn't know what to say. Hey, don't worry about it or that's fine, it's not your fault your friends are total douche bags? Clara was just about to stick with saying that it was fine and don't worry about it, when Tiffany spoke. "Apology not accepted. If all of your friends are dick's than that makes you a dick undercover. Seeing as all your douche bag friends are looking over here, then it clearly speaks to me that you were sent over here in the hopes that Clara would forgive Caiden. Well, not happening. My friend here is not interested in him or his bed, in that matter. So turn that skinny ass of yours around and go be a messenger for Caiden to bother someone else."
Clara stared over the table, at what clearly was her new friend, in bewilderment. How quick this girl was to stand up for Clara shocked her almost out of her seat. She looked back up at the cute Caiden's-supposed-messenger guy and watched as his once-upon-a-time kind face twisted into one of fury.
"Number one, I was not talking to you." He said and Clara flinched at the harshness in his voice. She felt kind of scared and shocked at how quickly one can just change their emotions like that- like a switch board. "Number two, I am not a dick nor am I a messenger. And number three, I will kill you if you ever speak to me like that again, bitch."
Tiffany shrugged, unaffected by his anger as if she saw it coming a mile away. "At least I will die in triumph." She said and looked across the table at Clara. "Do you want this asshole here anymore, Clara?"
Clara looked up at the guy and watched as his expression changed again, into the kind guy who had only moments ago apologized to her, in what she thought was mere kindness. When she looked into his eyes though, she did see the angry jerk of a guy that had burst through when Tiffany spoke to him like he was the asshole he is.
"No." Clara said. "Can you please leave?"
His face screwed up in anger again and he turned around and stomped off without a word. Clara looked after him and watched as he sat down with the jocks who had been so hideously cruel to her before. Never in the town before this had she considered that people were going to be such assholes like this. Ever since she moved into Emu Park, Tiffany seemed to be the only nice person she had met.
"Anyway," Tiffany said, looking at her again with her pale blue eyes shining in warmth. "What were we talking about, before that asshole rudely interrupted?"
Clara only just took in how pale Tiffany really was, even under the warmth of the sun shining on them brightly through the window. The only thing that was keeping the suns heat off of them, was the tinted windows of the Degani Bakery Cafe that seemed to have their table right next to.
"Um..." Clara couldn't remember.
"Oh, yeah." Tiffany obviously did. "Oh, wait. Never mind. You have to study for that test next, don't you?"
Clara looked down at her textbook, suddenly remembering the physics test she had coming up next in school. She then checked the time on her watch and saw that she still had twenty minutes left, knowing she only had a ten minute drive to Yeppoon High and an extra ten minutes to spare. Considering Clara pretty much knew she was going to ace the test anyway, she decided she could sparingly talk to Tiffany for the rest of her lunch break.
"No, that's fine." She closed her textbook and put it all back into her shoulder bag. "I could talk for another ten."
"Okay, then." Tiffany smiled and folded her arms, leaning slightly closer to Clara. "Do you see that guy behind the counter?"
Clara nodded, glancing at the green-eyed cutie, who was watching them with focused eyes. For some strange reason, Clara couldn't bring herself to be totally creeped out by that at all. He just didn't seem to give her any of those vibes.
"I just wanted to tell you..." Tiffany raised her voice so loud as she spoke, that Clara swore the whole Cafe could probably hear her. "How much of a douche he is!" She finished.
Clara looked around, suddenly uncomfortable, but relaxed a little as she realized that no one seemed to be paying them the slightest bit of attention. All except the green-eyed counter boy, who was now smiling over at them. Or, well, at Tiffany anyway.
"I told you," He called back to her, as he made a customer a coffee, the line gone down now to only two people. "I'm only a douche on Thursdays! Friday is Zombie Slayer, Saturdays is The Party Beast, and Sundays...hmm...probably The Chillaxer. The rest I am just totally awesome, even when I smell like coffee beans. Get it right, Wonder-girl."
Unbelievable. They were calling out to each other from across a coffee shop and, yet, no one seemed to care or listen. Clara couldn't believe this town.
"It's Wonder-woman, excuse you!" She called back to him, a slight 'duh' in her voice.
Clara saw him smirk, as he placed donuts into a container, and that was the oddly loud conversation over, it seemed.
Tiffany went straight back to slurping her red stuff and smiling, shaking her head. Clara didn't realise that she was staring, until Tiffany raised her eyebrows at her and said, "What?"
Clara shrugged. "That was...cute. Are you guys, like, a thing?"
Tiffany suddenly choked on her drink and began coughing, a gurgling sound between coughs as Clara soon recognised as laughter.
"What? You mean, 'zombie-slayer-on-Fridays' over there?" She jerked her thumb in his direction, quoting the 'zombie slayer' with four fingers in the air. "Psstt, gross. Never."
"Really?" Clara said, keeping any sort of enthusiasm from her voice. He was cute, that's all.
"Yeah. Yuk." She made a funny face. "It would be like dating my brother. He's just neighbours to me at my apartment block. Him, Rachel, me, and Daniel are the only ones occupying it – Oh, but with just one room to spare. The girl who used to live there – well, that's a long story."
Now Clara was curious. "It's okay, you can tell me what happened." Clara had a feeling that whatever it was, it wasn't going to be a pretty story with kittens and lollipops. Then Clara stopped dead, seeing the look on Tiffany's face. "Oh, oh – I'm sorry. I mean, it's none of my business."
Tiffany smiled, sadly. "It's okay." But she didn't speak.
They sat in silence for a brief moment.
Clara almost jumped when she heard Tiffany speaking to her again. Tiffany laughed, half-heartedly.
"Don't you have a class to get to?" She said, a warm smile spread across her lips, but her eyes were still faintly sad.
"Oh, yeah!" Clara stood out of her chair and turned to grab her shoulder bag from under the back of the chair, when she came almost face-to-face with someone's chest. Clara looked up to see a guy – twenty, at the most – standing before her. His skin was paler than her own and the dark circles around his eyes almost made him look sickly. His pupils were a little smaller than the normal size and his lips were thin and almost a dark lipstick red.
The corners of his mouth turned up into a small smile, almost menacing. "Why, hello there, little girl."
Little girl? Clara thought. "Uh – hi."
"Leave her alone, Marcus." Tiffany said from behind her. She could hear the scrape of her chair and knew she must have been standing up. Clara didn't turn to look, because she had a very bad feeling that turning her back on this guy would not be the smartest thing to do at all. Which was slightly odd, considering it wasn't often she got a bad feeling about someone she had just met.
"Why, Tiffany, how nice to see you here. In the broad of daylight." It didn't sound like he meant 'nice' in the nice way at all. "No need to worry, I was only saying hi to the sweet girl."
Clara didn't like being called 'sweet' almost as much as she disliked being called 'little'. She ignored it though.
"I'm pretty sure that that's not the only thing you were looking to say." Tiffany said, intensely. "Now buzz off before a butt-kicking from me will be the least of your worries."
Clara didn't quite get what was going on here. Enemies was the word that seemed to spring out to her but, somehow, it seemed like there was more to it than that. Or, at least, more to the guy then just a sickly face and a menacing smile. Wearing a long black coat in the midst of a summer heat wave, without a bead of sweat on his forehead, didn't seem quite normal either.
The man seemed to shrug Tiffany's threatening comments off without a worry, and looked Clara, straight in the eye. "What is your name, dear?" He asked.
There was something odd about the word 'dear' coming out of the mouth of a twenty year old. At least, this century it did.
"Clara." She told him immediately, without thinking about it first at all.
"Sit down, Clara." He told her.
Something washed over her and she immediately sat back down in her seat. She blinked, dazed. Why did I just do that? She wondered to herself.
"I told you to leave her alone." Tiffany hissed at him, leaning over the table and staring at him in her own menacing way.
"Now why would I do that? When she's just so...vulnerable." His mouth turned from menacing to amused. "Now shut up, before I make you my afternoon amusement."
"Go ahead." She warned. "I'd like to see how your afternoon ends then. Besides, you can't compel me." She lifted up her thick blonde waves and showed him a dark purple cross tattooed on the back of her neck.
His eyes turned dark, but the smile stayed etched on his face. He pulled up a chair and sat beside Clara and opposite Tiffany.
"What's that mean?" Clara asked, the daze finally fading and her ability to focus coming back.
The man turned on her. "That's none of your concern, little girl." The man said. "Now do not speak. Unless told."
Clara suddenly found herself unable to speak and she suddenly felt scared. How was this happening? What was this guy doing to her? How was he doing it? Her mind was racing with a dozen thoughts and she couldn't voice any of them. All she could do was watch everything unfold in front of her. Being in this coffee shop was more dramatic than being in a high school cafeteria.
"Stop doing that." Tiffany hissed at Marcus, her voice slightly pleading. She sat back down in her seat, opposite Clara and leaned forward to take her hand. "Clara? Are you okay?"
Clara tried to open her mouth to speak, but it was like something stapled it back shut.
"Uh-uh-uh." Marcus waggled his finger, sitting back in delight. "She will not speak unless I tell her too." Marcus ran his hand over Clara's thigh. "Will you, darling girl?"
Clara shook her head, unable to stop herself. She felt a horrible sick feeling in her gut and she started to feel slightly light-headed.
"I would take your hand off of her, if I were you." A voice warned behind them. All three of them turned to find the green-eyed guy behind the counter, and Tiffany's apartment block roomie, behind them. He looked both furious and deadly, even with a kettle of boiling water in his hand.
Marcus laughed, but he did remove his hand. "Oh? What are you going to do, boy? Throw hot water on me? How...frightening. In case you haven't figured it out already – I'm a Revenant. You can't hurt me."
Now it was the green-eyed guys turn to laugh.
"Oh, yeah?" He said. "But I bet Valentina could."
Marcus's smile dropped then. "Valentina?"
"Oh, yeah. You know who I'm talking about, don't you?"
Clara didn't, but it wasn't like she could ask. She could only stare between the two and wait.
"Of course I do." Marcus said, as if he was offended by the question. He still didn't look happy, then his smile returned as if something had occurred to him that was funny. "Why would Valentina ever hurt me? She wouldn't care about the three of you. You're just a bunch of cookies in a jar. Don't hover over me with empty threats, boy."
Tiffany stood up and went over to the green-eyed guy. "He's right, Nathan. Valentina couldn't help us. She has better things to concern herself with. After all, she is one of them." Tiffany gestured to Marcus at the last part.
Marcus grinned. "Back down, boy. Your threats are useless."
Nathan looked at Clara, who looked back at him. She tried to open her mouth to thank him for trying, but she just couldn't get the words out and her mouth just snapped shut again. This time it was painful and she winced. He had nothing else to bargain for, not that she had any idea what he was bargaining. She barely even knew what was going on.
Nathan's eyes narrowed in fury as he watched her and he turned back to Marcus.
"I don't think my threats are useless at all." He defined. "Actually, kinda think of it, they stand pretty tall. Think about it; Valentina is all about control, isn't she. I doubt she would let any one of her people – especially ones like you – go around preying on innocent girls for an afternoon chew-toy."
Marcus blinked, obviously – well, not stunned exactly, but just a little surprised by the concept of what Nathan was saying. "What are you proposing, boy?" Marcus scowled. "That you're just going to simply call her and she will come running to your rescue, just because I was messing with a little girl's brain?" He leaned over and tapped Clara's temple, his fingers cold.
Clara nearly reacted by flinching away, but she stopped herself.
Nathan stepped forward. "Hey, don't touch. Or I'll snap those filthy fingers of yours off—"
"What he was trying to say," Tiffany interrupted. "Was that Valentina doesn't play nice with Revenants – or people – who disobey the law, or her rules. If she were to receive a call right now saying that you were preying on the new girl in town – who has no idea what is going on around here, by the way – she wouldn't hesitate to disvalue you, or come to our beck-and-call, for that matter."
Marcus seemed to be really thinking about it. He didn't seem like the type that did much thinking at all, just...doing.
"We're not afraid to call her." Tiffany said, pointedly.
"Or kick your ass." Nathan added.
Tiffany elbowed him.
"Ow." He rubbed his lower arm. "What?"
"Shut up, idiot."
Clara mentally smiled.
She looked around, wondering if anyone was looking over at the hectic situation they had on their hands. No one seemed to be paying them the slightest bit of attention. She did notice, though, that a few of the people were glancing at the corner of their eye, as if it would be very bad if they were caught staring. She also noticed that there were a lot less people in the coffee shop then there was only minutes ago. Well, curiosity did kill the cat, she thought to herself. And she was convinced that that's why over half of the customers left.
"Very well then." Marcus said, standing up in his seat. Clara was surprised. "If you want to play dirty, then so be it." Clara wasn't sure if anybody else noticed, but that last part almost sounded like a threat and she would be lying if she said she wasn't kind of scared.
She still couldn't pin-point it, but she knew that there was something very, very off about this situation she found herself in, as well as the town and the people in it.
Marcus looked at Clara and gave her a secret wink, then turned to leave.
"Wait!" Tiffany almost yelled.
Marcus looked at her, quite impatiently now. "What is it?"
"Give Clara her voice back."
"Very well." And he said, "You can speak now, Clara."
She opened her mouth and took a deep breath, as if she had been suffocating. Clara looked up to tell Marcus off, even though she had no idea how he had done what he had done, but he had vanished.
"What the hell?" Clara practically squealed at the two concerned looking people standing behind her. "What the hell just happened? Who was that guy? What did he just do to me? Why couldn't I speak?"
The questions just uncontrollably kept rushing out of her and, when she finally stopped talking, Tiffany and Nathan shared a look between each other.
"Uh – How about you take a visit to our place?" Tiffany asked her, sounding both unsure and guilty. "How does tomorrow sound?"
Clara nodded, wanting answers. Her physics exam was well and truly forgotten.
Tiffany and Nathan, seeming doomed, told her their address.
"We'll drive you home." Nathan said, looking outside at a shadow reflecting on the ground, coming from the side of the shop.
"No, its fine, I—"
By the look on Nathan's face, she realised it wasn't an option. Whoever that Marcus guy was that threatened them, seemed serious about his comment on 'playing dirty'.
"O-okay." Clara mumbled. She looked at Tiffany. "You think I missed that exam?"
"Oh, yeah, you missed it. It would have started about thirty minutes ago." Tiffany looked truly apologetic. "Sorry about that, by the way."
Clara shrugged as if to say 'shit happens'. She caught Nathan smiling at her then and smiled back.
"Let's get you home." He said to her. Then he suddenly wrapped an arm over Tiffany's shoulder, then the other (hesitantly) around hers. He held them both close. Clara looked under his arm over at Tiffany, questioningly.
She smiled. "Protection." Is all she said.
Then they walked out the doors of the shop and Clara understood.
Marcus was standing just down the street, in the shade of a large tree, with a gang of other guys, just talking. He stared over at them as they opened the back seat door of the black SUV. The smile on his face was terrifying enough, and Clara swore that she saw his eyes turn a horrible bright red, but she was sure she must have been imagining it. You're just scared, she convinced herself.
Nathan covered them as they slipped into the back seat and he closed the door behind them, running around to the driver's seat at a jog.
"Wow. Is Marcus that bad?" Clara said to herself.
"He's even worse than your thinking." Tiffany replied to her, anyway.
Nathan slipped into the driver's seat and slammed the door. They sped off at a speed that Clara was sure wasn't even legal on a secluded street like this, but didn't say anything.
"Where do you live?" Nathan asked in a soft voice.
She told him and she swore it was less than a minute and they were there, in front of her old, decrepit looking house. She still didn't understand why her Aunt would buy such a thing. It was embarrassing.
"Do you want me to walk you to your door?" Nathan looked back at her.
"No. I think I'm fine now." She told him. He nodded and turned back to face the front. "Hey," She said and he turned to look back at her. "Thank you guys for your help, even if I have no idea what just happened. I have some common sense to know that it wasn't good, though. So, thank you."
"You're welcome." Tiffany told her, as Nathan said, "Anytime."
She smiled at them and remembered their deal. "Oh, and I'll see you tomorrow."
She said it as a promise and hoped that they got the message.
"I know."
She caught their sad expressions towards her, as she closed the door.