Chapter 14 #2
I felt it building, and there was too much akrasia in my blood for me to stop it now. I gritted my teeth, grasping wildly at any thread of control I could still pull on, but they were all slipping through my fingers.
One instant, I was throwing a punch across the other angel’s face.
The next, I was throwing myself backwards across the room, wings out as I slammed into the concrete wall. I shut my eyes, agony tearing through my muscles. Even though I couldn’t see, I could sense that all the other angels had already gotten the fuck out of here, knowing what was about to happen.
A single, shaky inhale through my nose.
It felt like every single one of my veins was being flayed open.
Fractures raced through my consciousness, lightning-fast, splintering like glass.
I jammed my head back, skull cracking the concrete.
The light came an instant before the sound, a blinding bright white, a flash of pure electric energy.
And then everything around me shattered into a million pieces.
It was sheer chaos, utter destruction, concrete and steel mangled beyond recognition, a giant hole drilled through the entire building, and I was sitting in the center of it all, chest heaving, skin on fire, mind churning through the most complete darkness in existence.
Thrausian.
The most powerful. The most unstable.
I was trying to come back to myself, clawing through the darkness and rage swallowing my brain while stumbling to my feet. This was what happened when I spent too long trying to suppress the unbridled power flooding my body. It exploded without my control.
At least the entire building hadn’t crumbled into dust.
I grabbed the shredded fabric hanging loosely around my torso and ripped it off—the remnants of my shirt and jacket that’d torn when my wings came out.
The fabric fell into a dark heap on the decimated gravel below my feet.
Pain still buzzing through my body, I tried to stretch my muscles, work out the tension enough to make the discomfort stop.
But I couldn’t do it. The feeling spread, like a cramp.
This was the other reason Thrausians were hated. Because we had a severe lack of control over our abilities. It would’ve been better had I not already had so much akrasia in my blood; I could’ve honed it, possibly harnessed the explosion somewhat. Bur it was a little late for that now.
It was also extremely difficult to get a grasp on that control again once it’d been lost. I was breathing hard, trying to get as much neon into my veins as possible, to get as far from death as I could reasonably expect to be right now.
But my thoughts were still swathed in anger, in suffocating darkness.
Electricity webbed across my skin, each point where it anchored to my body a bright spark of agony. Slipping farther into the abyss, I fell to my knees, planted my palms on the cold ground. Fissures spread from my fingers, zipping across the stone.
He isn’t here to help you this time.
Sweat was dripping down my back and beading on my forehead as I tried to pull everything back into myself, to find an anchor, to seal up the fracturing.
The longer it took me to get back in control, the harder it would be, the deeper the darkness would dig its claws into me.
It’d happened before; I’d gone weeks like this, blindly following my power and fury, a walking explosive with a hairpin trigger.
A face drifted through my thoughts.
Not the face I’d become so accustomed to clinging to, but someone new.
Dakota.
It was like being doused in cool water, the second I was able to latch onto the thought of her. Green eyes, sad eyes. Dark-painted nails, always chipping, digging into my neck. Her little body, fighting me, arching into me. A quiet voice that everyone else spoke over.
I shouldn’t be thinking about her now.
I shouldn’t let her bring me out of this.
Because I’m never letting her walk away from me now. No matter what she wants. She’s mine. I won’t let her go.
Panic gripped my chest.
I couldn’t let her become him.
She was going to end up hating me like he hated me.
Don’t think about it.
She won’t leave me. She can’t.
I opened my eyes and shook out my arms, my muscles still aching.
I flexed my wings, then turned to look at all the damage I’d just caused, able to appreciate the extent of it more now that I could think straight.
The physical fighting, the lingering akrasia, the lack of an anchor, they’d all contributed to that lapse in control a minute ago.
It was only a matter of time before I lost myself to all of this.
Before the fractures spread too far and too deep in my soul, and I couldn’t stop them.
From the moment I was born, my clock was ticking, a countdown always in the back of my head. All Thrausians felt this way to some extent, but I knew I tended to be worse than others. In this and in other things.
I grabbed my phone out of my pocket, tucking my wings close to my body as I typed out a quick message to Dakota, even though I knew it was a bad idea. I’d given her enough space.
Me : Hey. It’s Mason
Then, I shoved the out-of-control feeling to the back of my skull and walked back to my apartment shirtless, my wings replaced with their scars and cool wind scraping over my skin.
None of what just happened should’ve happened in the first place, for a vast multitude of reasons. But I couldn’t be bothered with it now.
I simply didn’t care now that it was over.
My apartment wasn’t too far from the abandoned building where I’d found the other angels, and I showered quickly once I got inside, rinsing off any tinges of smoke and sweat.
Then I tugged on some underwear and flopped onto my bed on my back.
The deep grooves digging from my shoulders to my spine were aching, as they often did whenever I rapidly conjured my wings without planning to.
Which was what’d happened in the middle of my fight.
I’d been trying to cling to the fragile line of sanity, of control, while still spending some excess energy. But I could feel the instant I lost that line, and I flung myself across the room so I wouldn’t hurt anyone when the inevitable happened.
Yes, the only way an angel could fully die was by losing all the neon in their body, but that didn’t mean it was pleasant to be torn apart. It’d also make you more easy to kill.
A notification popped up on my screen.
Dakota : I don’t want to talk to you
I squeezed my dick over my pants, picturing her in that shitty trailer. I pulled up the photo I’d taken of her for her contact image, blood rushing to my cock.
I liked how she was looking at me behind the screen instead of the camera. It made her eyes look bigger, reflecting a tiny gleam of moonlight, her pupils wide in the darkness. Her irises looked dark too, but still green.
Mason : I want to talk to you, though
She started typing, then stopped, then started again. Stopped. Started. I was fully hard now and tenting my briefs. I wanted to bring her over to my place, have her here in the bed next to me. Under me. On top of me.
Dakota : No
Mason : Tell me something I don’t know about you and I’ll leave you alone
Dakota : I like strawberries. Bye
I would’ve been irritated by her short response—that I felt avoided the real answers I wanted—but there was something so cute about what she’d said that I let it slide. She likes strawberries.
I wanted to know everything else she liked, everything she didn’t like, everything she pretended not to like.
When I’d told her that her soul had been tormenting mine for years, it wasn’t a lie.
It wasn’t that I knew the feeling tugging in the back of my head was her, not until a few days after the first time I’d seen her.
But now that I knew, I wanted to unravel that thread completely, discover what it was about her that connected to me.
I had a feeling I’d find it in the darkness.
My hand pushed down the waistband of my boxers and I grabbed my cock, lightly stroking my entire length, my body tightening with the thought of her doing this instead. She’d be so perfect in my bed, naked and soft, afraid of herself, afraid of me.
Memories deepened the fantasy. Her head bobbing between my legs, tears down her face, the ocean behind her, dirty blonde hair wrapped around my fist.
I wished I knew what her most messed-up desire was, so I could think about it now while I got myself off. Think about doing it to her, whatever it was. My fingers tightened around my dick.
I’ll figure it out one day, baby, and then I’ll make all your sick little fantasies come true.