caught off guard again.
“Get whatever you want from the pantry and put it in your bag.” He told her as he steeled his body against its need to feed. It wasn't like he would die from going a day or two without meals. He was half immortal, that had to count for something.
“We're leaving?” Kennedy stopped eating.
“Yes.”
“What about my mom?” She asked helpessly.
“The body is gone.” He hoped that she wouldn't break on him now.
“Is she–” The hope in her bright eyes physically hurt him.
“They took it.” He informed her warily. Her eyes darted around, they misted over and settled on the floor.
“Right.” Was all that she said, he saw it as his chance.
“We are heading out.” They had to get out of there while there was still time.
11. Near Life Experience
The door creaked ominously as it opened slowly. It gave them access to the darkened room that led into the rackety old house.
Damien had wanted to head out as soon as possible, giving Kennedy hardly any time to put some shoes on before he dragged her out the door and practically shoved her into the Charger. She was still excruciatingly hungry, but at least she had managed to get the rest of the cookies and a bag of chips into her backpack to eat when they reached their destination.
Once they were on the road Damien had asked her if she had a place that she could hide where no one would think to look for her. She almost yelled his head off for dragging her out in the middle of the night without even so much as the beginings of a plan.
“It's either this or certain death.” He'd said. Effectively shutting her up. It was hard to argue with his logic when he put it that way.
“What's happening?” She had asked, not sure that she wanted to know the answer.
He told her that he was convinced that Tyler, the possessed great bear of a man that worked for him had probably reported back to the Brethren, those were the people that he used to work for before he decided to help her, and now those same people had ordered her family's death. He still wasn't sure as to why.
It was a lot to take in all at once, but Kennedy's hard drive was already on hibernation mode. She just stored information to be analyzed when it decided to start working again.
So far all she had was: People, bad. Damien, pretty.
According to her saviour, they had to go into hiding. But, his definition if hiding sounded like complete exile to her. She wasn't allowed to talk to anybody. Not any strangers, not her only living grandmother in Spain and most definitely not Lauren until he figured out their next move.
“They have the darkest powers of hell at their disposal. Anything or anyone can be used against you.” Damien explained.
Then she remembered, her late grandparents – well, Steven's parents – had left her a house. She was supposed to come into it when she turned twenty one. It had been unlived for a few years now and no one but Steven and Teresa had known about it besides her. She doubted that Lauren would even remember that the place existed.
No one would think to look for her there. She told Damien and directed him towards the place. It was about three counties away. A ninety minutes drive through the mountains that he cut by half in his monster car even after he drove around a little to make sure that they weren't being followed.
Kennedy had to practically scrape herself from the passenger seat when they finally made it there.
Everything seemed so different to her. Possibly because the house had been abandoned for over five years. There was no electricity and one of the windows was broken, leaving the old house partially open to the uncaring world outside.
She stepped on something that crunched loudly under her weight as she went in. Damien entered right behind her. Kennedy kicked the thing that she had grinded around a little trying to see what it was.
All that she could make out was a dark shape on the ground, right next to another similar dark shape and that one, in turn, was next to another. The entire floor appeared to be covered with them.
They had gone in through the kitchen entrance, Kennedy had wanted to. Even back on the days where she was just a kid, she had always gone in and out that side of the house, always ignoring the front entrance that lead into the living room. It was a stupid thing to remember, but as she walked further into the crumbling structure all that she could think about was how she used to love to sit on the edge of that doorway for hours to watch her abuelita work on her vegetable garden.
Both of her grandparents were dead now. Misery and death seemed to follow her wherever she went. She wondered idly if they had died on her birthday too, it all seemed so long ago. She was begining to think that she was cursed.
As her eyes adjusted, she noticed that the dark shapes were in fact decomposing leaves that had undoubtedly been blown in through the broken window of the dining room. The putrid smell of decay overwhelmed her nose. She rubbed it and held back a sneeze.
Behind her, Damien stepped into a water puddle that she had somehow missed, splashing her legs with the murky water. Two days ago she would've been grossed out by it, two days ago she would've complained, but two days ago Steven had been her father and Teresa had been alive.
Kennedy didn't feel like the same girl that she had been those couple of days ago. She didn't know what else to feel but numbness. Heaven forbid, she didn't want to feel anything at all right then.
She was thankful for the cover of darkness, Kennedy doubted that she would like to know what the neglected place looked like in the daylight. She would see it tomorrow. Right then, the only thing that she wanted was to eat some more cookies and lie down.
She heard Damien shuffle loudly through the dry leaves. Stealth didn't seem to be his strong suit. How he'd made it all those years as a spy for that Brethren thing he'd tried explaining baffled her. Kennedy watched as Damien pressed a key on his cellphone to light his way around the abandoned house.
“There's an app for that, you know?” She told him.
“Excuse me?”
“An application – she said as a matter of fact – for your phone to work as a flashlight.” She was met with the constant reply for almost every comment that she made lately, his raised eyebrows.
The light from his cell reflected off his face as he kept pressing it. Kennedy imagined that most people would find that creepy. Instead, she found the way that his features were partially iluminated by the soft bluish glow to be incredibly alluring.
The way that the light bounced off the already cobalt iris of one of his eyes made it seem as if it glittered, it made him look ethereal. Unnatural, yet unequivocally human at the same time.
It was that very contradiction what fueled Kennedy's need to trust him with her life. Because she had to believe that someone that could make her feel so safe in the midst of what had happened, someone that could make her think in poetry like he did, couldn't really be all that bad.
The most tomboyish snort left her.
“Oh, never mind, just give me that.” She walked over to where he stood and took the phone from his hand before he could give it to her. “I know where I'm going.”
What was wrong with him? How could he not see how his closeness affected her? Was he really that dense or was he playing dumb for some reason? Maybe he didn't feel the same. What would a hot guy with superpowers see in plain, raggedy Kennedy?
The answer was obvious to her. Nothing, he saw nothing.
That was why her closeness didn't seem to affect him at all. She grudgingly pressed one of the small buttons on the side of his phone. The screen lit up and she led their way through the cluttered kitched area and down the hall towards her old room.
She was conflicted. She didn't like being on the run, but she didn't want to go back either. Her home had never felt like home to her. She'd always thought that her family belonged somwehere else, like if they were out of place in their quaint little suburban town.
Sh
e had never been fond of her quiet misfit life back in Villa Chica, but the horrific way that it had all been ripped away made the hole in her chest ache for the dull familiarity that came with it. At least she would find something familiar there too, she loved her old room at her grandparent's house.
That, she couldn't wait to see. Her grandmother had given her free reign of the room and at eleven years old, Kennedy had gone all out. Her room in that house was Teresa's worst nightmare.
There were My Chemical Romance posters, complete with their usual array of blood and skulls, everywhere. They had always been her favorite band. Their songs had practically saved her life more times that she could remember. Her high school years were a pretty dark period in her life.
She went into the room. It couldn't be seen in the dark, but mostly every single piece of furniture or fabric in there was colored in assorted shades of purple, gray and black.
Her favorite thing though had always been the bookcases that lined the entire wall besides the window with a big upholstered windowseat that she would spend countless hours reading or making up scary stories about monsters and ghouls on. Stories that always got her into trouble at school and therefore, with her mother as well.
Steven never seemed to mind it at all, he had been proud of his little storyteller. That was before she realized that that kind of attitude would only just make things worse for her, so she gradually left bits and pieces of herself behind as she grew.
But,