Into the Dark

Chapter 13

"Any excessive hair growth?"

"No."

"Any craving for blood?"

"No."

"Any unusual tingling of senses?"

"Again, no."

Kade sighed with frustration and covered his face with his hands. We had been at this for almost an hour, him trying to figure out what kind of supernatural I was. But any of the symptoms he tested me for always came back negative and led us farther away from our goal.

Forbes, the old guy that was behind the bar when Kade and I arrived a few days ago, handed us both glasses of water quietly and continued on with his next customer.

"You'd think you'd exhibit some type of behavior, especially with the mixture of presumed supernatural DNA," Kade mumbled to himself. I nodded in agreement and feathered my hair back slowly with a deep breath. When I did, Kade suddenly reached forward and grabbed my wrist before I could put my hand down, and studied it with wild eyes. He ran his thumb over it, making me flush slightly and resist against his hold.

"Where did you get this?" he asked harshly, meeting my eyes and forcing an answer. I looked down at my wrist and studied what he was talking about, finding only a burn mark just below my right palm. It was diagonal, not very long but not too short either, and was intersected by another burn mark shaped almost like a crescent moon. The two formed a crooked 'X', something I had gotten used to ignoring.

I squinted in confusion and shrugged slightly. "I don't know. I asked my mom and dad about it a long time ago and they were just as baffled as I was. Said it was there when I was born," I answered carefully. Kade continued to scrutinize the mark, seeming to ignore me, and stayed drifted in his own little world. His thumb rubbed over it a few more times as his grip tightened.

He called Forbes over suddenly and held my wrist up for him to see. "Forbes... do you recognize this mark? Or am I just going crazy?" he asked.

It took a few seconds for Forbes to react and when he did, the glass in his hands fell and shattered on the floor, making me jump and the people around us go quiet. His eyes widened with either shock or fear, maybe both, and his mouth fell open.

"Why... t-that's the mark of Heaven!" he stuttered breathlessly as another man, who happened to be another Freelancer named Erik, came over. When he saw the mark, his eyes widened too.

"Oh my," he breathed. "I can't believe it." The three men exchanged glances as I began to realize what they said.

Mark of Heaven?! What the hell?!

"I've only seen it in books! Only heard legends!" Forbes exclaimed as he also grabbed my wrist and pulled it to his eyes. I leaned back uncomfortably on my stool when all three men started taking closer looks. But something in my stomach started to twist. Reluctantly, I turned over my other arm and put it under their gazes.

"Well what is this one?" I asked, examining the the 'V' shaped burn mark on my left wrist. The end of each line was curved outward and then downward, also forming near crescent moons. Down the middle was a straight, vertical line which made the whole mark appear as some sort of trident.

Both burn marks always scared the crap out of me when I was young and was the reason I always preferred wearing hoodies and long sleeves. People would stare at them and make me feel awkward (I also have my eyes to thank for that), so I felt that the only way to fix that was to cover the marks, hide them from the world. Mom and Dad had continually asked doctors about them but even they were speechless; no one knew where the 'burns' came from, especially since I was born with them.