Chapter 6
Chapter six
That night, I dreamed of my first meeting with Emma.
I clenched my jaw as I pushed the end button on the phone call as my chest rose and fell.
I wanted to rip their throats out one by one if they hurt her.
I needed her, yes, for she was of no use to the plan if dead.
I threw the phone across the room, shattering a framed photograph of a particularly gorgeous sunset I'd taken. I stepped through the glass, shouting for one of the soulless to clean it up as I walked outside and into the garage. I pulled the door up with one hand and looked inside. I had a metal-cutting saw that could help in case the accident had been severe enough. I assumed from what they had described that I needed to cut Emma out from the car frame. Spotting the red power saw, I took it and placed it inside my trunk, then got into my car. I drove faster, of course, than the speed limit allowed, but I was not from Earth and wasn't bound to their irritating rules. The streets were mostly quiet. It was late, past ten o’clock, which meant that the dinner Emma and her parents had attended ran later than expected. Most of the time, Emma and her parents arrived home promptly at nine, usually no later. At that time, I didn’t know for sure that Emma was the one I was looking for—but I had a hunch, because the knight, Rykerian Dallard, was from a well-groomed line of knights from the Kingdom of Torren, and I couldn't see a real reason for him to be so close to Emma, Lamont, and Ara, unless he was keeping Emma safe.
So, at the same time, I believed she was the one—she had to be the one who could heal Terra; I became convinced of it.
She would save the Terran lands from the corruptor, and I was almost certain that she was the girl who I had seen in my dreams while I was imprisoned in the Dungeons of the Mist. She had to be the girl who was bathed in light.
I shook my head, shaking away the green-blue eyed, blond haired girl who I had always wanted to find.
More than anything in all the universe, I hated those vile things that the corruptor created from corrupted people.
I hit the steering wheel when the light suddenly turned red, right before the main freeway exit.
Emma’s melody was so loud that it would have alerted any being that could sense souls, even from realms further away than Terra.
It was that powerful—that strong, and at that moment, it was in extreme torment.
As the green lights glinted off the windshield of my car, I turned onto the freeway, driving and waiting to see the car which I knew would be on the side of the road.
I pulled up to it when I found it. I glanced behind me and then ahead of me, realizing that no emergency vehicles had yet arrived on the scene.
A soulless, one who had been with me for the past few weeks, walked shakily up to me.
I thought his name was Tennyson, or something with a “T.” I couldn't remember, and it didn't matter.
“Sire, we didn't mean to—” I pushed him away, not wanting to look at his pale face. I walked around and saw a blond woman several feet from the car, her body on the pavement, her blond hair moving in the wind from the cars passing by, but there were no other signs of life, and so much blood.
“She is dead; we checked.”
I didn't look back to the soulless. I walked around the car and saw Lamont in the driver's seat.
I saw his face slackened. Emma was screaming, her melody roaring loose inside of her—for the first time in her life, if I guessed it correctly.
She had been a prisoner in that way—a soulless person like me for all her life because of her father.
“Please help me,” she screamed, her golden hair spilling around her, splattered with blood.
“You are okay. I will get you out.” I turned to the soulless who handed me the electric saw from my trunk, and I cut away the window frame from the door until it broke it off and fell away.
Emma stared at me, a flash of green in her eyes, and it brought a hope to me that I didn't know I still held, spilling up to the surface.
Her face was cut and already showing bruising.
She was mumbling as I pulled her out, her entire body shaking uncontrollably.
“His watch!” Emma said, her hands clutching my wrist. Perhaps, she wanted to keep her father’s watch.
She could request it at the hospital, I was sure.
Right then, I needed to keep her calm. “He is—” she said.
She took a short glance at Ara, her mother, before I turned her around and stood before her.
“We will call someone to come help you,” I said, wrapping my jacket around her shoulders. She shook her head violently.
I felt like shaking, too.
Could it be her? Could she be the girl from my dreams? I wondered once more.
“Are they really gone?” she whispered.
I didn't say anything because, at that point, I didn't think it was really a question that she wanted an answer to.
Her shock was all consuming. I looked at her, closer than I ever had before.
Previously, it was just a hunch I had about who she was, but at that moment, there was something about those round, green eyes that made me want to be near her, to know her.
I shook my head. That was insane; there was no getting to know anyone, even if she could be who I thought she was.
I had a job to do, first, before getting closer to her, and I would do it.
It was unfortunate that her mother and father had to be lost at the hands of the idiot soulless who I had tried to make useful.
As far as parents went, I could see that they had actually cared for her, although I didn't agree with their extensive methods of care.
Soulless? They never turned out to be very useful. Once I heard the sirens getting close, I left her. I could not be discovered. She was well.
I called for the soulless to come. No one was a soulless like I was, or as Emma had been, or like the humans of earth always were.
No, the soulless I had created had an expiration date, unlike Emma and myself–although she was not a soulless any longer, and neither will I be, soon.
I whispered inside myself with a soft smile as I walked away from her and the crash site.