Destine (The Watcher's Trilogy)

Destine

The Watcher’s Trilogy

Book 1

Written by Katherine
Polillo

All rights reserved.
Published by Anchor Group.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher.

Copyright 201
2

Published by Anchor Group
Publishing

Edited by Melissa Ringsted

Cover by
K.C. Designs

Acknowledgements

I want to extend a thank-you to my Anchor Group family for all the kind words and support.  Thank-you especially to boss lady Stacey Rourke and our fearless editor Melissa Ringsted for all the hard work and man-hours put into this book, and for believing that it should be published. 
Thank-you to Christy
Sloat
who never turned down the chance to have a conversation about fictional characters as if they were real people, and kept telling me to believe in myself when I wanted to hit the delete button for good.
  Last but not least thank-you to my husband who never called my hours spent in front of the computer screen, a waste of time.

Dedication

To my husband, Andrew, who taught me to not let the fear of striking out prevent you from stepping up to the
plate.

Prologue

Revelation 1
; 19
: “Write the things which thou hast seen, and the things which are, and the things which shall be hereafter;

My name is Michelle Cross
. I’m
a seventeen-year-old high school senior
.
When my summer vacation ended I was plain average Michelle; when my senior year began I was the human vessel for the Archangel Michael and I had to defeat Satan himself
.

A wise man once said, “High school is h
ell.
”
Now
,
I have no idea who this man was, but I’m sure some wise man somewhere once uttered those words
.
I would not only agree with the above sentiment, but I would venture to say that my high scho
ol experience was beyond hell. I
t was earth shattering, world ending,
and
apocalyptic. I’m not talking the usual mundane problems,
from a bad haircut, to
a
prom
dress that’s too tight
, or
even failing a chemistry test.
Actuall
y,
up
un
til
my se
nior year that was the hell which
was my high school existence,
I was a normal, average (although socially irrelevant) seventeen-year-old girl, growing-up in a small town
. A
nd then my best friend decided to become popular and that’s
what set
my world crashing down around me
. S
o how did I find my
self fighting to save humanity while the rest of my
classmates studied for finals?
It all started with a boy
, d
oesn’t
it
always? Well
two boys to be truthful, one sent to help save humanity and one sent to destroy us all
.

Chapter 1

Revelation 1
; 8
: “I am Alpha and Omega, the begi
nning and the ending […]
which is, and which was, and
which is to come, […]
”

Where had summer gone
?
I
t
was as if I blinked and the promise of ten weeks of freedom slipped through my fingers, and I was left with a measly five days till the first day of school
.
Admittedly
,
my social life did not put the weeks of summer vacation to good use
.
While the other would
-
be seniors were off at the lake swimming and sun bathing during
the day, and waiting
until
night
f
all to have yet another bonfire
complete with beer and wine coolers
,
I was babysitting for the neighbors and filling my nights with endless books
.
My eventless summer was spe
ckled with the occasional sleep
over, complete with Dori
tos and mint chocolate chip ice
cream
,
and my best friend
,
Cami
.
Of course our nights of endless Johnny Depp movies and swooning over why we could
n’t
f
ind a guy cool enough to pull off
guy liner
were pretty lame in comparison to the
drunken rowdiness of our peers, but puking
fuzzy navels into the bushes
was never my style
.

I wouldn’t consider Cami and I losers
. N
o
,
that’s too strong of a word, invisible may
be more like it
. O
f course
,
in a town like Shady Lane
,
that was no small feat
.
Shady Lane had one high school and it housed only about four hundred students from grades nine through twelve
.
Our senior class was the smallest of the four grades with only seventy-five students
.
Managing to remain invisible was impressive when you have been going to school with the same seventy-five people since kindergarten
.
Granted
,
people knew my name or at least
m
y
face, but I was so not one of the pretty people invited to drink stale beer in the middle of the woods while perched upon some musty couch taken from an unknown basement or curb
.
Not that I wanted to, but it might be nice to be invited.

I suppose my situation as social miscreant was my own fault, and Cami was right there beside me
.
Ever sin
ce the first day we met
we had been inseparable
.
The event that
bound us together happened the
very first day of kindergarten
.
The teacher, Miss Joyce, had passed out scissors for us to cut out our very first art project
.
In my excitement to complete the project and take it home to my parents I was hurriedly cutting away
.
While
,
unbeknown
st
to me
,
a very unsupervised little boy was preparing to cut an enormous chunk out of the back of my waist length auburn hair
.
As soon as the scissors
clamped down,
I
heard the decisive snip and felt the tug of tension,
and suddenly
I knew what had happened
.
I immediately spun around and looked into the eyes of a very amused boy named Greg
.
He seemed pleased with himself and the fist full of reddish-brown hair he now held
.
I promptly burst into tears
.
Miss Joyce came hurrying over, but the damage was done
.
I proceeded to cry
for the next forty-five minutes,
straight through snack and into recess
.
It was during recess
,
as I sat defeated by the monkey bars
,
that Cami approached
.
I looked up with my horribly hacked hair and saw a silver gleam in her hand
.

“I snuck these out, don’t tell on me,” Cami whispered
.

My eyes widened
.
“We are gonna get yelled at if Miss Joyce finds out,” I squeaked
.

“Don’t worry, I’ll put them back when I’m done,” Cami replied with a shrug
.

And before I could ev
en ask “Done what?” i
t was over
, and Cami stood holding a fist full of her own blond hair.

“There
,
now we’re twins, don’t be sad.
”
Horrified,
I
star
ed at her and then erupted into
a fit of giggles as I looked at
her chopped hair
.

When recess was over
we went back to class
, and of course Cami got caught
with the scissors
. H
er
new
hair
do
left little room fo
r denial
.
Miss Joyce se
n
t us both home at the end of the day with Ziploc bags filled with our hair
.
I
,
to this day
,
don’t know what s
h
e expected us to do with those Z
iploc bags
. R
eattach the hair
?
Of course poor Miss Joyce had probably had better days as well
.

The following day
,
when I arrived for day two of kindergarten with my newly bobbed hair, a blond
e
with a matching bob met me
.
Cami smiled with a mischievous grin, and it was done, best friends forever
.
Playground love never dies
.
Since that day we have consoled each other over many a bad haircut, and several catastrophic dye jobs, but at least we never went through that “Lets cut each other’s bangs!” phase
. Thankfully
we got that out of the way in kindergarten.

So we embarked on our school years together, hand in hand
.
It was wonderful to have a best friend I could share everything with, but it left little room for others
.
We conquered elementary school wi
th desks next to one another,
sharing crayons and milk money
.
We struggled through middle
school with lockers acr
oss the hall from each other
.
Awkwar
d
,
self-consciousness
,
and
with
very questionable wardrobe choices
.
Then we found ourselves in high school, and before we could really understand what had happened, we were socially irrelevant
.
Our inseparable friendship had separated us from the rest
of the student body
.
So that is how I found myself
only
five days f
rom the first day of school,
the entire summer between junior and senior year spent babysitting, readi
ng, and gaining five pounds from
mint chocolate chip ice cream
.
 

I awoke on the Wednesday before the first day of school to the sound of Mr. Wright cutting his grass
.
I groaned and rolled
over, to my horror it was only
six
a
.
m
.!  “Dear God!
I only have five days left to sleep in and he
has to cut his grass this early?
”
Knowing that there was no hope in going back to sleep with
all that
racket outside my window, I dragged myself out of bed and headed to the kitchen
.
As I round
ed
the corner to the kitchen I was hit with the smell of freshly brewed coffee
.
“There is a God,” I murmured to myself as I splashed black coffee into my favorite neon green mug with pink palm trees painted on the side
.
It smelled st
rong and I took a large gulp, enjoying
its
heat as it
seared my throat
.
“Hmmm,
” I mumbled to myself
.

“What are you doing up so early?” Dad inquired
.