Black Heart Inertia - 4. Chapter 4: Frozen

A number flashed on the screen that she’d never saw before. Maybe Clark was using the boy’s phone. “Hello?”

“Kyra.” It was not her son. “This Henry Shatterheart, Chance’s father.”

She started to panic for a moment but she remembered Clark was driving his car out of state. “Yes, I remember. Can I help you?” Her tone very even.

“Is Chance over there? His friend said he went over there to interview you and your husband.”

“Yes, he came.” Henry sighed in relief. “But he left quite some time ago.”

“Do you know when?”

She looked at the clock, “He left at a quarter to seven. Did something happen to him?” She feigned concern.

“He’s gone missing too.”

She gasped, “Oh no, is there anything I could do?”

“There’s another search team heading to the forest since that’s where they found Noel’s car since it’s in between your area and Main Street, we think we might be able to catch the kidnapper and find him.”

She smiled to herself. “I’m coming right now.”

“Thank you.” She hung up, heading to the door and left a note for Clark. All she had to do was keep them away from the house a bit longer and they would be safe. Soon, she and her son would be gone.

* * *
Blake jogged through the house to find the colonel waiting in the sun room, staring at the mirror. “Colonel, what are you doing?”

She spoke without looking at him. “I’m calling in tracers. Civilians can’t handle this.”

Blake stared her in bewilderment. “You don’t think that’s a little bit much? You know how tracers are; they’ll keep everyone who can use the Nexus.”

She faced him sharply, her eyes deadly. “You don’t make a decision. You lost him! He could be with the Court right now! DO you know that you could’ve just handed over, not one, but two Nexus Hearts! I’m going to do everything I can to find Chance.” She typed the rest of the command into the small device as the mirror began to ripple. “I advise you to find him before I program the tracers.”

Tracers were dangerous to normal people. They were machines to find Nexus users but with all their updates and new software they hunted the people down and if they resisted the tracers would kill them and move on. If she let them lose, she could very well kill Chance but that would be better than the Court having two Hearts, right?

He couldn’t worry about what might happen. He needed to find Chance.
* * *

There’s was nothing around me that I could cut the duct tape from my hands. The cellar windows were taped over and had burglar bars on them. The only thing in the room was a table with a blown out candle and some paper. I couldn’t scoot over without falling. There’s no way I could escape by myself. I just hope Sam is doing something.

It had started to rain a few hours ago, or minutes, I’m not such which, but it was getting pretty heavy. Water leaked through the window and spread across the floor. But it wasn’t enough to at least wash the blood from the ground, it only made it smell worse.

My thoughts were interrupted by footsteps. The door opened and shut and the stairs creaked like an elephant had stepped on them. My heart started to beat hard enough to make my head hurt. He wore some torn jeans and brown hoodie. It was Clark Dervings. I had a bittersweet feeling about seeing him. On one hand, he wasn’t dead but on the other, I was about to be.

He smiled when he was five feet away from me. He was a plain looking guy with dirty blonde hair and almost amber green eyes. He wasn’t wearing a shirt underneath the hoodie to show his pale skin. “Hi.” I didn’t reply but I couldn’t anyway. “Oh, the duck tape.”

His hand came closer and I jerked back. “Calm down, I’m just removing the tape.” He pulled my head effortlessly and ripped the tape off.

“Dammit!” I cursed as my lips bleed slightly.

His finger swiped some of my blood and sucked on it. “Hm, God, you taste so sweet.”

“What the hell are you?” His smile grew wider.

“Me? I’m Clark Dervings.”

“Then why did your parents fake your death?”

He shook his head and grinned again. “I did die. They just brought me back to life.”

“That’s not possible.”

He scoffed at me. “It is. A day after I died, my parents were visited by a man who promised that he could bring me back to life but for a price.” He waited for me to say something but I didn’t. “He asked for my allegiance in order for me to come back to life and I agreed.”

“So why are you killing people?!” I shouted, making my voice crack. I was tired and cold. It was becoming difficult for me to stay awake. The spot where she hit me was starting to bleed again thanks to my fear.

He looked at the bloodstains and shrugged his shoulders. “I had to eat.” I felt my eyes grow wider and my heart pick up speed, fighting to get out of my chest. “Yes, I have to feed on people to stay alive. And you’re next, but I like to play with my food to work up an appetite.”

His nails grew longer and sharper into black talons. He shredded my shirt with ease and his hand reverted back to human. I didn’t have to look at his face to know that his eyes scanned my chest. “Wow, I never knew you had this type of body but I was never into swimming that much.” He said quietly and his lips met my skin. I stifled my scream and the urge to vomit.

I shook violently, trying to get his lips off my shoulder. He growled at me and showed his true form. His jaw elongated with his teeth turning into shark’s teeth. His hands morphed into talons, shiny and sharp. But his eyes were the scariest things I’ve even seen in my life. They were black, completely black with no such remnant of light ever being there. He was a hollow, evil creature.

His voice was distorted and ominous. “Don’t move again or I’ll have an early dinner.” His features shifted back to the mask of a human as his hands rubbed my shoulders as he told me to relax. He leaned in closer, inching our lips closer together. My breathing started to pick up again and cold tremors rocked through my whole body as I wanted him off me.

He let out a fierce shriek of agony, pulling his arms away as though my body was the sun. I looked at his arms in awe. They were covered from the fingertips to his shoulders in ice. He flexed and the ice shattered like glass. He faced me again. Enraged, he raised his claws and the house rocked.

* * *

Nico fired another pulse at the house, waiting for the beast to come out and it did. It crouched on the ground, naked and shaking with rage because something interrupted its meal. Nico never saw what a Class D looked like before. Symbols were etched on in its skin in bright red, probably blood. Xion had succeeded in making a low level Replica.

It charged him, thinking Nico was too petrified to move. As it jumped in the air, Nico raised his arm, engulfed in black flames. “Embers of Abyssian.” The fire lashed out, sending Clark backwards into the trash. He wasn’t dead, just unconscious.

Nico wanted to check on Chance but he needed to have him use Black Heart. He drove off to meet Sam at the search party.

* * *

Blake jogged back to the rendezvous point, He checked his watch, and only 30 minutes left before the colonel would set loose the tracers. Henry looked a complete wreck, his eyes bloodshot, his body trembling with rage and fear. Blake couldn’t walk over to him and say he could find Henry’s child, the one he swore to protect. He turned away from Henry and began walking back to his car.

‘Maybe the tracers will find him in time’, he thought to himself.

Blake looked back at the forest as though something was calling him. He closed his eyes and listened. He could hear the rain pellet the ground with a heavy spray, animals taking cover in hollow trees, and someone crying. Heavy sobs with a parched throat. He had found him. He sprinted back into the forest, not caring if someone saw him moving like a human locomotion.

The sobbing drew loser and he had begun to hear wails but it wasn’t Chance. Sam sat on the rock, crying with her head into her knees as the rain drenched her clothes but so didn’t move. “Sam?” He croaked but she didn’t move.

“Sam!” He shouted over the rain. She peeked from under her arms, her eyes glassy. “What are you doing out here?” His voice concerned. “Come on, we’ve got to get you out of the rain.”

“No.” She said jerking away.

“What? Why?”

She stared at Blake for a moment. She didn’t know what to say. She looked back at the ground ashamed. “It’s my fault.” She whispered like a prayer.

“What?”

“It’s my fault!”

“Why?”

She chewed her bottom lip, her eyes searching the ground. “I lied.” She paused. “About Chance.”

He moved faster than she thought, his hands gripping her shoulders hard. “What do you mean?” He said curtly.

She tried to shrug his hands off but she couldn’t. His eyes were starting to scare her. They had changed from the perplexed hues to violent violet. She wanted to take a step back but she couldn’t.

“What do you mean you “lied”?”

She cleared her throat, trying to yell over the rain. “You remember when you found me, searching for stuff on Clark.” He nodded. “I wasn’t. Chance asked me to see what all the missing kids have in common.”

“What?”

She paused again. “They all claimed that they used magic. And Noel was going to the Dervings to hold a séance but someone got her.”

“Okay, what does that have to do with Chance?”

“At the funeral, before Chance passed out, he said he saw Clark.”

His body started moving before he understood everything. He grabbed Sam and started zooming back to his car, settling her next to Henry and Kyra. “I know where Chance is.” He whispered as he passed Sam off to Henry.

Kyra eyed him suspiciously, as he drove off. “What did he say?”

Henry beamed at her, “He says he knows where Chance is!”

* * *

Water began pouring down the steps into the cellar where I was being held. Clark had yet to come back after that last crash, which I was grateful for. The wound on my head finally stopped bleeding but the headache remained. I began to wonder how much longer I would be down here, if I lived. But me being my pessimistic self, I’m probably not going to make it.

Death, huh, a subject I never liked talking about. It scared the hell out of me, like most people, but it’s always been at the back of my mind after Balmier Lake. It’s ironic how ice could save me now when it wanted my life not so long ago but it took my memories as a substitute. In a way, it did take my life…and my mother. I started to realize I really had been alive for roughly 4 years.

Learning everything again at an unprecedented speed had taken its tax on everyone, which caused my extended family to excommunicate my father and I. Heh, I remember that day well.

Sebastian was over to my house and he fascinated me. He was about 5’9” back then. His puffy blonde hair was combed that day and he was wearing a t-shirt and some basketball shorts. He had arrived with Sam to check on me. I was at the level of sixth grader then and everything seemed so new to me. He was just so hot. I mean I never saw someone so hot. I mean Sam was pretty but girls just didn’t make me respond the way he did. His puffy blonde hair, bright blue eyes, and pouty lips were just so beautiful. His shirt was tight enough that I could see abs starting to form and his pecs. It was my first “boner”, as my dad called it when he decided to have “the talk” with me after my grandmother saw me walking around with one few months ago.

After he left, I raced upstairs to relieve myself like my cousin, Terrance, had told me how. As I climaxed for the first time, I didn’t notice that my door wasn’t completely closed. I was thinking about Sebastian just kissing me, not a heavy French kiss just a kiss. I came almost shouting his name when my grandmother burst in, cursed me out, and told me I was going to hell while asking me “Why would you want something like you?” I didn’t know that my parents were keeping my sexuality a secret from the rest of the family. And with that, we were excommunicated and Dad said, “I don’t give a lovely fuck what you say.” It was the first time I had heard him curse or even say anything mean to my grandmother.

It took me another year to actually be able to be a sophomore in high school. My first day at school was a nightmare. There were too many people and I could not find Sam to save my soul. I really didn’t know how Sebastian found me shaking in the janitors’ closest at the other end of the school but I was grateful. He wrapped his arms around me and told me everything was going to be okay. I felt safe, and happy in his arms, I never wanted to leave them.

We started dating in the summer by accident really. One day he said he wanted to go to the movies, just him and me. I was ecstatic but so scared at the same time. He didn’t know I liked him and he already knew I was gay so I didn’t want to ruin our friendship. So I went with no expectations of anything happening.

It was raining when the movie was finished and we had to rush to his car, when I settled myself in the car, trying not to get it wetter than it already was, I turned to see him staring at me with his bright eyes.

“What?” I said. He never looked at me like that before.

He smiled faintly, moving closer and pulled me with him. He took my face into his hands and he wiped some of the water off my lips and cheek. “So beautiful.” He whispered before our lips touched.

The kiss was perfect. His lips were soft yet slightly demanding. I could still taste the sugar from the candy he had eaten, blueberry something. His right hand kept our faces together while the other held the small of my back. To this day, I hate the rain; I despise it with a passion like no other, well except for spiders. They’re demons, you know.

A few months later, a couple months or three, he broke up with me, kind of. One particular school day, Sam asked him how we were doing because she had gone overseas to visit her eldest brother at Oxford and hadn’t been able to call that much. He replied, “Chance is happy.” She asked was he not happy and he said he loves me but his body just won’t respond to me in that way. I kind of knew that already because we would never French kiss, or when kissing his hands stayed glued to the back of my head and the small of my back, no roaming. Whenever he touched me, it was on the shoulder or he nudged me with his elbow like I was just his friend.

Sam told me and I was distraught. But I guess most people are when their first love breaks up with them. After that, I cut my hair, which was a huge mistake. A black kid with short white hair doesn’t look good at all but I didn’t want it to go back to where he liked it. So I cut it at a medium length, before it straightened itself and long enough not to be too curly.

And I cut him off, and all our other friends, save Sam, off because they didn’t side with me but that’s understandable too. Technically, they were his friends before mine. I hated him from that day on because every single time he looked at me I felt like I was being judged or he knew my thoughts. Or, if he didn’t even look an inch towards me, I would think he never cared and that I was only an experiment. Or he might be just as bad off as I felt but I threw that option out the window when he started talking to Blake with all the touching and hushed conversations like we used to do.

“Chance!” Someone shouted as my train of thought ended. “Chance!”

“Hey! Down here!” I screamed. I couldn’t help but smile when I saw Blake. “My god, it’s been hell down here. You know Clark is alive!”

He rushed to me, checking the wound on my head. “Yeah, I know. Sam told me. Are you okay?” I stared a bit into his eyes; they were so pure, so light and kind.

“Yeah, but my arms are killing me.”

He grinned and began unwrapped the tape on my right hand. “I’m just glad I got here in time.”

“Me too. Did you know that Clark’s parents had been feeding him people?” He nodded again. “How’d you know?”

He looked up at me with a serious look on his face. “I know because he’s a Replica, a meager one at that.” He said and went back to unwrapping what seemed to be miles of duct tape.

“What’s a “Replica”?” I asked. Before he could answer, I heard an inhuman growl. Clark stood at the top of the stairs, in full demon form. “Blake-.” And before I could warn him, Clark threw him across the room without a sweat.

Clark began to circle around Blake as he lay there, helpless and groaning from the blow. He sniffed the air and smiled. I started jerking against the tape. My hand was almost free; I just needed a little more time. I shivered as another chill raked down my arm. I heard something shatter and my hand was free and outstretched at Clark. Time seemed to slow as a glyph pulsed to life on the back of my hand.

Ice shot out of the water striking Clark twice. The biggest ice shard appeared as he turned to rush me. The ice shot across the basement, too fast for him to avoid. It stabbed its target into the wall. A dark liquid spurted from his mouth as he struggled to get the ice shard out but he lost too much blood and he eventually stopped twitching. I didn’t wait for answers. I started to unwrapped myself rush to the half drowned Blake.

* * *
Kyra crept into her house slowly, looking for her son. She saw Blake’s car parked outside but her son was going to be alright.

‘He’s a smart boy’, she thought herself.

“Come on, Blake. Dammit, you’re heavy as hell.”

She peeked to see Chance pulling the unconscious Blake from the cellar. She grabbed the rolling pin that sat on the counter and let out a bloodcurdling scream as she ran full speed towards Chance. He turned too late again and the rolling pin hit him in the jaw. He dropped to the floor, spitting out blood. She looked down the stairs to see her child pinned to the wall like a fly. She screamed again and she began hitting Chance harder and harder on his stomach and ribs. He tried to protect his head as she was about to land the final blow. Nothing.

He looked from under his arms to see her just standing there. She was frozen, not in ice but she didn’t move. The rage and pain were still present on her face and the rolling pin held high enough to break his skull when she brought it down. He stared at little closer, flames. Black flames rose from her shoulders but there were no symbols on his hands. He pushed the question away and landed two kicks on her abdomen, bringing her to the ground. As her head landed on the floor, his heel smashed into the side of her skull.

He sighed when she didn’t move. “Bitch.” He spat as he pulled himself up to call the police.