Fighting, Anaya Phoenix [best affordable ebook reader .TXT] 📗

whoever she was lying next to and slowly walked out. Her hair was pulled into a ponytail and her face was set.

“What is it you need to show me?” She said, her tone low, but still strong. I nodded my head towards the end of the hall and started walking. She waited until I got a few steps in before following. We got to the end of the hall and I opened a portal to Eternal, it’s shimmering white almost refreshing to see.

“You want me to go through that?”

“You went through a portal to get here.” She shut her mouth as I walked through, I knew that she would follow so I allowed myself to enjoy the transitioning. I stepped out onto the Eternal grass and moved out of the way for Izzy. She stepped through and her boyd was reasonably more relaxed.

“This is Eternal.” I ssaid, closing the portal after she stepped out of it. She squinted and sniffed, looking around and letting her eyes adjust slowly.

“Kinda bright.”

“Sorry about that,” Gaia’s voice sounded around us and I folded my arms “our old eyes need it to be as bright as possible. Izzy looked up, her eyes calculating and aware; she didn’t very much like surprises. She’d been born with that talent, I just expanded it.

“Don’t worry Isabel, you’re not under any harm. I think I know why Luna has brought you here; actually, I know. You can go on ahead and show her, I’ll stay out of your way.” Gaia shot Izzy a small smile and me a wink before she disappeared.

“Who the hell was that?” Izzy asked, her brow furrowed and her eyes on the place where Gaia disappeared from in wonder.

“Don’t worry about it for now, I’ve gotta show you something.” I took her hand in mine and led her further into Eternal, making it bend into what I wanted it to be. The blinding light slowly faded away and a stone tunnel appeared in front of us, the wooden door to enter it old and heavy. Izzy squeezed my hand once and I stopped, she didn’t want to go through. The Olden in her knew where we were going and it made her feel uneasy, her eyes scanned the door and the tunnel that seemed to have no end.

“Where are you taking me, and why do I feel like I’ll hate you after this?” She didn’t pull her hand away, she just stood her ground and stared at me. It would take hell on her heals for her to move, she knew I knew that.

“I’m going to give you peace.” She stared at me a good while before her eyes lit up with anger.

“So I can fight in your stupid war?” She tensed up and her hand was so close to being yanked ut of mine.

“So you can keep living on. You’re my friend first, Iz. I’d protect you even if you didn’t need me to, think of this as that.”

“Can I not fight?” I clenched my teeth and pushed down the anger.

“You may not want to fight, but you’ve got a whole other person in there that cannot not fight. I can’t keep anybody from the war, I can’t seem to fix things without fucking them up more, so I don’t want to tell you definitively no and then you have to fight. That’s an honest answer, I’m sorry if you don’t like it.” The anger was still in her eyes, but her body calmed down.

“What do you want me to see Luna? I don’t want any more games, I just want to go back to my family. That’s an honest answer.” The honesty burned me to my core and I squeezed her hand before opening the door and pulling her through the hallway.

               

                Warmth enveloped us and the environment shaped around my mind, I chose the only place I knew Izzy would be comfortable, and that was her living room. The wooden floors had clothing and toys on them, pieces of paper and pieces of home littered the ground. The couch had a quilt that her grandmother had knit by hand, one that she would always remind me of when I told her no female in her family had ever been girly. The walls were beige and held battle scars from each of the McReery children youth. Drawings that their parents could quite clean out, and stains that just wouldn’t come out. Her hand slid out of mine and she walked to where a family picutre of them hung up over the fireplace, her eyes wide and her body visibly shaking. Her hand reached up and touched where her parents stood, next to each other and holding a baby Zena in their hands while the rest of their children hugged their legs.

“I almost don’t remember.” She said faintly, a whisper that I had to struggle to hear.

“It’s the Olden in you, protecting you from whatever called its sprit to you in the first place.” I said softly, folding my hands together and watching patiently.

“I want to see it.” Her voice was slightly stronger, but her eyes hadn’t met mine yet. She was still looking at her parents, soaking in their smiles and the color of their eyes. I could see her memories flit by in her brain, it was hard not to, as she was searching for the memory herself.

“I want to see it.” She said again, her voice strong as she backed away from the painting and closed her eyes. The scene in front of me warped, the color was gone and the living room looked cold. The windows were boarded up so only fractoins of light seeped through and onto the floor, outlying the cold wood.

“Izzy, what are you-”

“I need to see it.” She said, her eyes now open and silver. Her parents rushed down the stairs as the noise from outside started to bleed in. It was deafening and it was all around us, it took my ears a while to seperate one sound from another. There was definitely a helicopter, or two from the way it was all around us, and there were people outside. Some of them bystanders booing the household, but most of them were armed; heavily. The amount of metal and sulfur in the air almost drowned me, but I reminded myself it wasn’t real. Her parents looked… off. Their laugh lines seemed to be almost non existent and fear had hunched their spirits, desperation wafted off of them and it made my wolf whine for them.

“Mom, Dad.” Izzy whispered, taking a step toward them but not bothering to take another step. Her father opened the door but stood in front of her mother.

“For the last time, we don’t know where they are.” His voice, normally strong, had lost its strength and sounded hollow. I heard the guns cock and my heart jumped, I knew what would happen but I still didn’t want to see it. I didn’t want Izzy to see it either, but she was in control of the psyche world.

“Mr. McReery, let me explain something. You’re making it very difficult for me here. I’m in charge of were-affairs, when they all disappear off of the face of the planet… you can see how we’d all be stressed. You’re the only close human contact any of them had, and when I say any I do mean any. They’d had to have told you something so, here, I’ll make you a deal. You tell me where they are-”

“God, are you always this dramatic. We don’t know where they are.” Her mother spit out, standing next to her father and crossing her arms. When he spoke again it was in clipped tones, the allusion of a passive voice.

“Just tell us where they are.” I could smell the resolve in the air, but only watched as they grabbed each others hands and squeezed.

“No.” I closed my eyes and used magic to close my ears, but I knew Izzy was watching. After I knew it was over I opened my eyes and looked at them, even though I didn’t want to. They still held each others’ hands, they were still together even in death. She stood there, motionless, her eyes were back to their hazel color as she stared at her parents.          We watched as her siblings ran down, surrounding the bodies of their parents and mourning. The only person that was missing was her.

“I knew it had happened, I just couldn’t come downstairs. Something was stopping me. I could hear them crying, I had heard the shots, I’d felt the sound in my heart. I just, I was stuck on my bed and I couldn’t move.” She fell to her knees and I had full control of the environment. I let it slide back into the happier living room, the one where life hadn’t turned sour.

“It’s not fair, we didn’t- they didn’t do anything wrong. They weren’t fighting in this war, we were just protecting you.” She hiccuped, before she turned to me. Her eyes were molten silver, her face was strong and her strength was deadly.

“Our whole lives we’ve been outcasted, and turned away by our own just for you.” She stood as the world turned to the blinding light that was Eternal. She had kicked us out of the hall of the redeemed and now Goddess knew what she was capable of now.

“You became my friend.”

“You chose me! You knew I was strong-”

“And you are, look at what you’re capable of.” I said, pointing to the realm that we were in.

“My parents are dead! That means nothing to me! None of it!!” Her screech filled the air and stuck, her breathing was hard and her fists were shaking with the amount of effort it took her to hold back her strength.

“Iz-”

“For you, for your stupid war. Your stupid, stupid inane need to destroy everything around you and strip everything away from people closest to you as long as it means they’re strong enough to fight for you! For you, my parents died and left me to protect all of us. They will not have died in vain, I’m fighting in your war but I’m not fighting for you or with you. I’m only fighting for them, don’t ask anything else of me, because I won’t give anything else.” With that she tore me from the world of Eternal and left me in my room with a gaped mouth.

 

 

 

                Ander snuck into my bed that night, his hand sliding onto my hip right before his body was pressed against mine. He shoved his nose in my hair and took a deep sniff before pulling me closer to him, impossibly.

“Izzy’s the Fallen One, she has to fight with us and her parents were killed because of us.” I let a tear fall down, and for some reason the rest of them thought that it was perfectly ok to follow. I put my face in my hands and sobbed, my entire ribcage wrenching around my lungs and making it hard for me to breath. His arms wrapped around me and he kissed the back of my head, but I didn’t need that. Not now, no. My mind went back to when Brandon died, how determined to be strong I was and how weak I actually was. Nothing had happened to me, I was just a brat who wanted everything to go her way and Is till was. It was just that, now, I had reason to be hurt. I had a reason to cry and to complain and to hate. I wouldn’t cry though, I wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of more tears. My world was spinning apart and the only thing that I felt I could do was watch and, ultimately, cause more damage at the end.

“I need to dance.” I whimpered, sitting up and wiping my face. He sat up with me, his hand rubbing soothing circles on my back and occasionally squeezing the nape of my