I smiled at him. “You don’t have to tell me.”
Eran had an uncanny way of knowing what I was feeling and in turn I could often feel his reactions in me. We knew when each other was nervous, excited, or sad. I had never been able to explain it other than to assume it came from lifetimes of knowing each other. Amusingly, I’d seen this sometimes in others when people have met and share an instant connection with one another and I often wonder whether they knew each other in past lives as well.
I then added teasingly, “I know what you are capable of…”
He gave me his trademark arrogant smirk and replied, “You haven’t seen anything yet.” There was a glimmer in his eyes that told me that I hadn’t and I had to calm my stomach from its flip flops. In truth, I wasn’t sure I wanted to ever learn what he was referring to; knowing he only used his exceptional abilities when they were needed to defend. If he were to use them, it would require a scenario in which fighting was involved and that I never wished to see. “We’re here,” he pointed out.
I noticed the sign over the door reading Calculus II and said slightly disappointed, “Yes, we are.” I wanted more time with him.
“Don’t worry, Magdalene. You’ve lived your youth without me. You can make it through another hour.”
But that was before I knew you existed, I thought, watching him turn and head towards his next class.
He peeked over his shoulder, saw me still standing in the doorway, and shooed me to enter.
This was the routine for the next few classes. Eran would meet me outside the door, escort me to my next class, and then gesture me to stop ogling him and go inside. Clearly, he had no idea how challenging it was to do it or he wouldn’t have asked.
My classes would have been far more interesting if I hadn’t been acutely aware of the clock’s impossibly slow movement and the fact that each lingering moment was agonizingly keeping me from seeing Eran again. I hoped, for the sake of my sanity not to mention my grades, that this desire would dissipate some as time went on, but I doubted it.
I was beginning to feel confident that Marco had been wrong or untruthful and that no more enemies would be showing up any time soon. Against Eran’s wishes, I relaxed some and simply enjoyed the time I could spend with Eran between classes, becoming more oblivious to my surroundings with each hour.
Then lunch break arrived…along with the familiar prickle of hair standing up on the back of my neck.
CHAPTER FOUR: A TEST
There were two areas to the cafeteria, an inside seating area and a patio. With the thunderstorm pummeling the patio and grassy area beyond, every student congregated inside. I didn’t know whether it was because of lack of seating or because it was the first day back and group cliques had lessened over the weeks away but those who wouldn’t ordinarily share their table were doing it today.
Eran and I made our way through the lunch line where we bought ham sandwiches, chips, and sodas before making our way to a table across the lunch room. Because of the rain, it hadn’t been possible for me to bring my preferred sandwich, a muffaletta which I bought at the same deli every day, so we had to settle for stale bread, processed meat slices, and near-plastic cheese.
“So you like your classes?” I asked weaving my way around a chair left in the middle of the aisle. Eran smoothly moved it out of the way for me.
“I do,” he said, diligently keeping himself aware of all the potential threats he saw, which went virtually unnoticed by me. “The teachers are capable. The lessons are somewhat limited but for that I blame myself. I think that I’m aware of so much more than what they plan to cover that I’m slightly disappointed.” It was admirable that he didn’t fault the teachers for being unable to keep up with him. With centuries of knowledge, he would be a tough student to please.
“Yes,” I replied, lowering my voice. “It would be hard to cover five hundred years in a single semester.”
He glanced back to address my teasing with a suppressed grin. “And you?”
“I think I’d like them more if I could keep my mind on them,” I admitted.
“Maybe we can work on that…” he suggested. The fact he used the word ‘we’ told me that he’d understood I was passing my time thinking about him.
“I’m not sure that is possible but I’m open to ideas.” I drew in a breath to laugh when my nerves flared and my voice released a moan instead.
Without delay, Eran turned to me, aware of what had just happened. He waited for me to single out whomever it was causing the reaction.
I was already scanning the room when the cafeteria door opened and a boy and girl, each with bright blonde hair, entered. I noticed they had the same facial features with distinctly Swedish traits as they stopped just inside the door. Their eyes crossed the room slowly until they landed on Eran and me.
The irritation at the back of my neck spiked suddenly and I heard the silverware rattle on my tray as a result.
As arch enemies, we stared across the cafeteria, daring the other to make a motion. If something did happen, if someone were to take an offensive stance, I was certain that chaos would ensue and cause injury, not only as a result of the raging battle but from the stampede that would follow as students tried to escape the cafeteria. There was no telling how many people would be hurt.
“Who are they?” I asked Eran, keeping my voice low, which also helped prevent it from quivering.
“The Kohler twins. Haven’t seen them since Germany.”
My immediate thought was that if these Fallen Ones hadn’t shown themselves in the last few hundred years and they’d suddenly walked through the door in to our lives now…Marco had been telling the truth. More Fallen Ones were arriving. If that part of his message were true, it also meant that someone was preparing for a battle against us, one that he’d forewarned was said to be vast.
I knew Eran was thinking the same thing. His expression was still glowering though, I noticed.
Very briefly, my nerves spiked and I knew the Kohler twins were projecting hatred our way. I dug my fingers further into my tray, trying to keep my soda from tipping. It seemed to help a little.
Concentrate, I thought. Concentrate on something else. My mind became erratic then and I noticed nearly everything in my close surroundings at once but locked on nothing in particular. I saw the half-eaten apple on the tray three tables over was browning already, that one of the girls to my right had dipped her sleeve in spilt chocolate milk, and that the vent across the cafeteria had just turned on and spewed a puff of dust into the room.
“Magdalene,” Eran said, anxiously. “Magdalene?”
That seemed to break through to me and I refocused on him. “Let’s sit down,” he insisted, quiet and calm.
I raised my eyebrows at him.
“It doesn’t look like they’re interested in us,” he mused. “Not yet at least.”
Amazed, I refocused on the Kohler twins and found them moving through the lunch line, neither one addressing us any longer. They now appeared to be normal students interested in nothing more than their choices between black or refried beans.
Eran took my tray – before I dropped it – and led me to a vacant table near an exit door. Considering it led to the outside and into the rain, I figured it was probably locked but with Eran’s strength he could push through it at any time if we should need it.
“It wouldn’t be good to leave right now,” he was explaining, setting our trays on the table. Luckily, no one else seemed to want this particular table as it was in the far corner and beneath a broken light fixture. That gave Eran and me more privacy. “It’ll make us look unprepared and we don’t want to appear that way. I can handle them should they attempt anything. They’re not very skilled in the art of fighting so they can be easily overcome.”
I was trying to process all that he was telling me but having difficulty with it. My hands were still shaking.
He paused and his voice grew soft, warm. “Magdalene, are you all right? If not, we
can
leave-“
“No…no.” I drew in a deep breath, settling myself. “This is good practice…to calm my nerves.”
He watched me steadily, not quite believing what I said. “It’s your call. We can go any time you want.”
I shook my head, taking a second to pause in the Kohler twin’s direction. They’d taken a seat at a table close by, on the route out of the cafeteria, and were now sneaking peeks at us too.
“How…” I shuddered and refocused myself. I was determined to control these nerves better than they controlled me. “How do we know them?”
Eran was taking a sip of his soda and trying to appear at ease. He swallowed before answering. “They found us during the Germanic Peasant Wars or rather we found them,” said Eran matter-of-factly. “They were drawn to the strife the peasants were encountering to prey on the defenseless. We thwarted them and they retaliated – though not well. I’m not certain, but I wouldn’t doubt that they still hold a grudge regarding it.”
“Well…how did they prey on them?” I persisted, my food remaining untouched, mostly because I was still battling my nerves.
“They entered the wars under the pretext that they sided with the peasants and would then take the lives of the peasants while no one else was present, blaming their murders on their adversaries.”
“Hmmm…” I said, thoughtfully. I shook it off and added, “How did we find out they were murdering the peasants?”
Eran lifted his eyebrows. “Through you.”
“Me?” I asked, stunned.
He shrugged as if it wasn’t surprising. “Yes…Well, actually, through your messages. You delivered a message from one of the dead notifying us to what they were doing. That message instigated the only manhunt for someone from the same side of the battlefield in the history of those wars.” Almost without a break, Eran added, “We should eat or it’ll appear odd.”
Following his own suggestion, he took a bite of his sandwich and grimaced. “This is the food they serve in school nowadays? It’s…It’s…”
“Atrocious, or was horrid the word you were looking for?”
“Both,” he said, chewing slowly. “It’s no wonder dropout rates are a concern.” He shook his head.
We nibbled at our food from that point on until nearly the end of the lunch hour. Conversation was limited to superficial topics such as whether we’d been burdened with homework already and when our first exam would be. The Kohler twins barely ate as well, I noticed. They were probably having the same reaction to the food as Eran but they did remain in their seats and continued their surveillance of us.
When the bell for the next class was about to ring, Eran stood and suggested that we get moving.
By that point, the cafeteria crowd had thinned with most students preferring to carry their lunch break into the halls. Yet, it was still fairly crowded so when the incident happened a good sized audience was watching.
One moment we were walking unassumingly towards the door and the next a chair came sliding across the tiled floor so rapidly that I didn’t see it until it was nearly at my side. Made of a wooden back and metal framework, anywhere it had hit would have hurt. As it was, Eran intervened, fluidly stopping the chair before it reached me.
He asked tensely, “Are you all right?”
I almost asked why when I saw his palm against the chair’s back, where he’d placed it to break its slide.
“Yes, thanks.”
“You’re welcome.” He hadn’t moved his eyes from the Kohler twins.
It only took a second for me to realize the chair had come from them. They sat at the end of the open aisle where the chair had slid, each wearing a smirk.
The cafeteria was now still. No one spoke. No one moved. The sound of the rain hitting the pavement outside seemed to have increased in decibels. All eyes were either on us or the twins. I was certain their surprised expression would have deepened if they knew they were viewing the extension of a conflict that had started five hundred years ago.
From my position, I could make out Eran’s tightened lips and narrowed eyes. The message he sent was simple: That…was a mistake. He didn’t seem to acknowledge anyone else in the room but the twins.
Then, with an almost undetectable jerk from Eran’s palm, the chair slid back towards its original direction, at a speed far greater than which it had come. The twins barely escaped its path, each throwing themselves in opposite directions just before the speeding projectile reached them. The chair slammed into the table where the twins had been sitting, shoving it and ejecting all remaining chairs around it several feet away.
Gasps resounded throughout the cafeteria as all eyes turned on Eran. His retaliation had clearly sent a signal that he shouldn’t be provoked – by Fallen Ones or by humans.
We left the Kohler twins picking themselves up off the ground and the rest of the crowd scrutinizing us as we walked out the door.
From the corner of the room, Marco and his cohorts studied us too but didn’t make a move.
Eran was shaking his head as we made our way toward my next class, his anger still riled, making me reconsider twice about asking my question. It wasn’t until his paced slowed some that I voiced it.
“I thought they wouldn’t attack if others were present?”
“That wasn’t an attack, Magdalene,” he explained almost inaudibly, bowing his head towards mine so others wouldn’t hear as we passed them in the hall. “They were playing with us.”
We didn’t speak again until we were just inside the classroom door. What he then recommended I immediately rejected.
“I feel it is necessary for you to leave the city.”
“Eran,” I scoffed. “That…that…whatever you call it…playing around back there did not scare me.”
We paused until two students passed by on their way to their seats.
Before giving him a chance to respond, I continued, keeping my voice low, “And it wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t been there. We stayed because you were there to protect me, remember? If you hadn’t been there, the moment I sensed them I would have left the cafeteria, giving them no opportunity to…to play with me.” He and I both knew that wouldn’t have happened. I would have stayed, refusing to be run off. He opened his mouth to oppose me so I added, “This isn’t the time. I think you would agree.”