We didn’t exactly bruise easily.

The closer she stood to me, the temperature continued to drop, and I felt her malevolent evil all the way to my spine. But at the same time she still radiated this healthy glow of Light. She did not make sense and it only made my head swim, trying to understand her.

“You look tired,” I commented. “Do you also have bad dreams?”

Before I could protect myself, her hand had lifted and slapped me soundly across the face. Her sharp fingernails caught my skin as they dragged down in painful slices. I gasped at the sudden sting and felt the trickle of blood as it dripped down my chin and onto my t-shirt.

She lifted her hand but only to catch my pony tail. Her hand grabbed fistfuls of my hair and yanked it hard so I was forced to look up at her, “What do you think, little Star?” Her voice rasped aggression. I was tougher than a hair pull, but her grip was so firm that I couldn’t extricate my head from her hands without losing handfuls of hair in the process. “Of course, I have bad dreams. Not quite evil… not quite good…. Seth and I have that in common, you know? There’s no coming back from either though. It’s only a matter of time before Seth sees the…. light.” She laughed at her own joke- an airy, tinkling sound, that under any other circumstances would have sounded pleasant. Then she trailed a long, bloodied fingernail over my exposed throat.

“Seth is not like you,” I croaked out. “He will never be like you!”

Her expression immediately softened- the exact opposite reaction I expected. Her scraping touch became light and gentle; she lowered her face even closer to mine. It was this side of her that terrified me more than anything else.

“I just love that you care so much about my brother,” she cooed in my face. I could feel her hot breath wash over me; I could smell the mint of her toothpaste. “He needs people in his life to take care of him, to scare all the bad monsters away.” Her voice was a singsong of sweetness. I shuddered as I felt the bile rise in my throat. “It’s so sad that you don’t get to stay around. You’re probably the only person that could save him.”

“Save him from what?” I gasped as her grip became tighter and her fingernail started to dig my jugular. My arms fell limp at my side. I could fight back- I would fight back. But first, I wanted her to talk as much as possible.

“From himself,” she growled, her voice dropping low and somehow shrieking at the same time.

“There you are, my pet,” Aliah’s deep voice called from nearby. “I’d started to worry about you.”

Seven’s expression immediately softened but not before her nail cut the skin at my throat; I felt more blood as it dropped down to the collar of my shirt.

“Hello, Aliah,” she called in a perfectly normal sounding voice.

“Hello, Darling,” His voice was lightly accented and as I looked past Seven I could see he looked perfectly normal too. In a sharp navy-blue suit with crisp white oxford underneath and yellow tie, he actually looked more than normal- he looked amazing. Bastard. “Having some fun?” he asked, clearly sounding amused.

“So much,” she grinned without taking her eyes off me.

“Well, I hate to interrupt you, but why don’t you let the boys do the dirty work. We don’t want you losing that luminescent Light of yours, now do we?”

As if in a trance, Seven’s eyes went vacant again; she shook her head carefully. My stomach churned with a violent nausea, and tears pricked at my eyes for her. I felt sorry for Seven! How messed up was that?

She dropped me immediately and skipped to Aliah’s side- with a childlike quality returning at his presence. She latched onto one of his arms and laid her head against his shoulder, while I stood up and ran my hand against my throat, wiping the blood away. It smeared across my palm, and I had to assume, the skin on my neck too. My face still trickled blood from her scratches as well, and dripped into the corner of my mouth, coating my tongue with metal and salt.

“Stella,” Aliah greeted me casually. “How lovely to see you again.”

I didn’t say anything. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.

Seven rocked back and forth next to him, clinging to his arm, but her eyes still remained trained on me. She looked so much like Seth, but so different at the same time. And there was something more to her than even her bipolar personalities let on. She was childlike and out of her mind crazy, but she was also evil and twisted. Still, there was something beyond even that.

I just didn’t know what.

Aliah picked up on my interest in her. “She’s special, Stella. Surely you’ve noticed that already.”

“She’s a little bit bat shit too,” I mumbled before I could stop myself.

Aliah broke out into a huge grin, pleased with my insult. “Such a lovely mouth on you, Starling. What would your parents think?”

The same thing. But I didn’t say that. I needed to think of a way to get out of this, or at least away from the practices happening just around the corner. If coach sent someone to find out what was taking me so long, they were going to get pulled into this and I could not let that happen.

So I did something that went totally against everything that I believed I was. I stomped down my instincts and swallowed my pride. And I ran.

Or flew rather.

I was off the ground in a moment. I shot upward in a ball of brilliant Light that I felt in every inch of me. My entire being became blinding Light; my breathing stopped for lack of need. My eyesight became like night vision as Light even swallowed my eyeballs. I was as close to my true essence as I ever had been before and I wasn’t naïve enough to believe there wouldn’t be a very negative impact on the atmosphere around me but my main concern was to get Aliah and his goons away from the high school. And maybe even me.

I was somewhere else in a few seconds. I was moving too fast to figure out exactly where I was, but I was not over Nebraska, maybe not even over the US anymore. I loved flying with the wind, the cold air against my hot skin, the freedom and complete independence of the air. But not in these kinds of circumstances; now, I just felt disoriented and lost.

And afraid.

Something hit me so hard in the side that I was knocked off course and sent plummeting to the ground thousands of feet below. Because I was letting off so much Light, I wasn’t breathing and therefore couldn’t scream- even though I wanted to. Instead, the panic and hysteria ignited in my blood like wildfire, consuming every last inch of me so that I suffered in silence.

The something I could now identify as a body- an aggressive body that wanted me to die- was unrelenting with his pressure, with his assault. I fought against him, arms hitting solid body, hands clawing at his tight hold. But he didn’t give up an inch.

He was forcing me to the ground, and I was helpless to do anything but wait for the impact.

Suddenly my body hit the hard earth; every molecule in me screamed with brutal pain. Dirt, rocks, the soft mud below surface level skyrocketed around us like we were a bomb that hit the ground. Fountains of gritty earth erupted toward the sky like mighty geysers; we dug into the earth as if we would become one with it.

My Light faded as I flickered back and forth between human-form and Angel. Every single bone felt broken; every inch of my skin burned from the scraping impact. My head felt like it was split in two. I almost wished that it would detach from my neck, so I didn’t have to suffer a moment more of this agony.

The Fallen that had taken me down slowly detached himself from me when the dust settled around us and struggled to his feet. I took most of the impact, but not all of it. He was suffering too.

Good.

His face was streaked with red dirt and his clothes and hair completely dust-covered. I assumed I looked just as stellar, but I couldn’t find the will to care. I couldn’t even find it in me to get up and fight this guy.

My body finally settled on human form as I sucked in a choking breath filled with polluted, dusty air. It immediately set me off coughing and sucking in oxygen to sustain consciousness. I was barely succeeding when he stumbled toward me and kicked me in the jaw.

I was dug deep into the ground, propped up in a crater of my own making. When his boot connected with my jaw, my head snapped back and hit the corner of a rock before falling forward again. My head snapped back and forth like an elastic rubber band.

Blood ran from my mouth now, too. I wondered idly if my teeth would fall out, and if so, would they grow back like my bones? Or would I be toothless forever?

A hot stream of blood spewed from the back of my head, down my neck, soaking my shirt. He- Saul, I recognized Saul- lifted his boot again to wind it back for another swing. I tried to block it with my hand or at least soften the blow to my face, but my right arm was completely out of socket; I couldn’t even drag it around on the ground it rested on. It hung next to me, completely useless.

Before I could even contemplate checking out my other arm, his foot connected with my neck this time. I felt my trachea compress in my throat. I couldn’t breathe for long, gasping moments as I struggled to retain consciousness and to breathe again.

I discovered that my left arm worked well enough to claw at my throat, encouraging it to work again, fighting for it to open up and send air in and out of my lungs. Finally, after what felt like forever, I started to receive oxygen; they were painful, burning breaths, but there was no better feeling.

Saul stood before me and unsheathed the sword he kept strapped to his side. The afternoon sun glinted off the silver blade, blinding me momentarily. He moved slightly so I could see his face as the sun lit up the horizon behind him, like a brilliant spotlight on all his evil deeds. He studied me in a detached, curious kind of way. And if I wasn’t already delirious with pain or half-unconscious, I probably would have had something very snarky to say.

As it were, I focused on my scarily raspy breaths and not passing out. I, at least, wanted to see this- see what he was going to do with me.

Vaguely I realized I wouldn’t be able to get up, to even have my honor, when he beheaded me. My hip, or pelvic bone or something sitting at my waist was absolutely shattered, not giving my legs any kind of ability to move. I was trapped.

And he was determined to kill me.

There wasn’t even anything I could do about it. My body was beyond the ability to turn back into its natural state, and my mind was too confused by the searing pain, to figure out a defensive strategy.

Saul took a step forward and raised his sword. He crossed it over his body with two hands and didn’t even offer any wise goodbye words. I expected something from him, at least an acknowledgment that he was about to kill me.

Instead, his face contorted into a mask of hatred. He screamed out a battle cry so fierce and raging, spittle dotted his mouth and cheeks, and a long strand of drool hung from his bottom lip.

I tensed, anticipating the impact; my eyes shut naturally. Then the pain became unbearable; behind the dark shades of my eyelids, a blinding light burst into life. I began to hallucinate.

I felt like my eyes opened and instead of meeting Saul’s sword across my throat, I saw Seth instead. He landed on his feet with the force of a semi-truck and a sword already in action. Before Saul could even turn to his attacker, Seth had sliced his body in half with one fluid motion. Blood exploded from the clean cut like a geyser coating my body and Seth’s beautiful face.