"She craved his twisted darkness, the same way he grasped at the light in her shattered soul."
Natalie Gilbert has spent her entire life putting everyone else's needs before her own. So much so, that it ended up costing her the one person she couldn...
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NATALIE
I observed our surroundings nervously as Kai let the car come to a rolling stop, turning the key in the ignition so the headlights went out, the steady hum of the engine going silent as we stared at the blank field of wilderness before us,
"Home sweet home." I looked on in confusion at the empty grass, my eyes circling the perimeter of trees,
"Home?" I questioned, after deciding that I definitely wasn't insane, there really was just nothing here.
"Well if we're being completely accurate, we can call it the bottomless pit of despair that I just happened to have spent 22 years living in." He said, shrugging in the face of my concern, "But I figured calling it 'home' might make things easier for you."
He popped open his door, and stepped outside. I followed suit, relishing in the cool air that wrapped itself around my skin the second my feet touched the ground.
After being in a stuffy car for almost two days, the pure Oregon air, and smell of pine was a welcome change.
"There's nothing here Kai." I sighed, soaking up as much of our surroundings as possible before he realized we were in the wrong place and packed us back into the car like a pair of sardines, "Are you sure you didn't take a wrong turn somewhere?"
He seemed to think on that for a moment, staring at the empty space in front of us like he was seeing something I couldn't,
"Well that is a good possibility considering I haven't been back for almost 18 years, but I'm thinking we're exactly where we need to be." He stepped forward, pine needles crunching under his converse, "My coven always goes out of their way to make sure no one can find us." He explained, beginning to walk away from the car.
I followed him curiously as Kai walked farther and farther into the field, looking side to side before nodding in agreement with himself that he was standing in the correct spot,
"But thankfully since they're not here to be a bunch of paranoid freakshows...I can finally show it to someone." He grinned, crouching down low to press his palm against the cool grass.
His hand glowed red for a moment, exceptionally bright amidst the total blanket of darkness we were covered in. There was a shift in the wind around us, rustling the forest as I realized he was siphoning magic from the very ground we stood on, but just as fast as the glow appeared it was gone.
He stood up proudly, dusting his hands off in accomplishment, at sucking the magic off some minor spell.
I waited a few moments, looking around expectantly waiting for something to happen, and when nothing did I turned on him,
