Evelyn Earth Part 47

It coursed through us like electricity. Every capillary, every tendon absorbed the darkness. I shook my head back and looked upwards towards the blue sky. The power was overwhelming me the same way it had after I took in the vengeance from the railway line. The greed that was within me then still lurked inside my body, it didn’t want to stop the connection and spill a drop of darkness.

                I needed it all.

                I screamed up into the sky and shook my head harder. My mind had to be stronger than this. I was my own person. If I let us self-destruct now we would have accomplished only one part of our destinies. I wanted to live to see the new world. I wanted to be part of its reconstruction. Who would be there to stop people like Audrey? Who would be there to monitor mankind’s intentions?

                I felt Sebastian’s vice grip tighten. He had less power within him so logically he should be able to hold more. I forced my head to the side and looked at his profile. His jawline was clenching periodically, I could see the muscles spasm under his layer of ebony skin. He wasn’t doing any better than I was.

                 The darkness swirled on the surface of his body, undulating in and out of his pores. I closed my eyes and summoned the image of the Earth Mother once again.

                “Don’t let us die, not yet” I whispered. It was useless though. She had relinquished all control of our destinies the moment she allowed us to link with her vengeance, we were on our own.

                I let out a cry of pain. The amount of power that we were taking in had been so condensed and thick that it felt like we were being cemented from the inside out. No wonder Audrey couldn’t get it to leave her body, it would have taken tremendous effort just to coax it out of its dormant state, let alone manipulate it to do what you want.   

                Once again I willed myself to disconnect, to let some of the power go, but the greed was so deeply ingrained into my DNA that I simply couldn’t do it. We were programmed to want this kind of end—to want to burst with vengeance and use our bodies to create a new world.

                We both dropped to our knees at the same time. My hand fell away from Audrey’s forehead. We had absorbed everything she had.

                Sebastian’s grip slackened. I tried to hold onto him, but I had lost all motor control. We fell. I went sideways and he tipped forward. My mind was becoming numb. Why had I decided to take Audrey’s power? I knew that we had needed it, but in the back of my mind I also knew that there was no way I could absorb any more of the Mother’s vengeance without bursting.

 As my eyes rolled into the back of my head and delicate foam came out of my mouth I realised that it had been Her intention that drove us to the point of suicide.

                We were not special. Our lives were not different to the lives of regular human beings; we were disposable tools to be used to fulfil Her angry purpose. I let out a despairing sob and choked on the fluid build-up in my throat.

                I had been so willing to do everything she wanted. I had felt so aligned with her thinking, so in touch, but that was why she had chosen me wasn’t it. She had chosen someone who would sympathise with Her plight so much that they would never stop and question Her.

                I wanted to live.

                I didn’t want to die for her pain.

It was the one thing that connected all humans, the hunger for life and the fear of death.

                Images of my life began to systematically wind around me spinning me into nostalgia. My first pet, the first time I could tie my shoe-laces, the first time I ran away from home, the first boy I had ever kissed and the first rose I had ever received. The last time I would eat an apple, the last time I felt loved, the last time I slept peacefully.

 All of these images started off so vividly, but as they wound and wound around me they began to be punctured by faded yellow holes. Each hole grew in size until it shone through the image, obscuring it completely until I was surrounded not by my life, but by a ring of sickly yellow light.

                I grimaced at the ugliness of it and tried to escape to another recess of my mind, which was tinged with colour, but I found that it wasn’t in my head. My eyes were seeing mustard light and my brain rebelled at its presence.

                Later when Travis, Sloan and Izwan told us what had happened I didn’t believe them. I wasn’t one to believe in coincidences; not in the way that they told it.

In the moment when Sebastian had impaled Audrey and all three of our powers had combined two angels materialised before the maple tree where Izwan, Travis and Sloan were cowering. They all knew that this was the end and they had pressed themselves up against the tree, hugging it and each other.

                When Sebastian and I fell to the ground the angels sought to protect the three men by beaming them away from us. As their illuminating powers manifested themselves we had stopped convulsing and lay perfectly still. Hesitant, the angels turned to us thinking we had died—fizzled out before blowing up.

                I remembered the feeling of a foreign entity it incited an anger in me that was all too familiar. The darkness that was ripping me apart now had a target other than my soul.

                The boys having seen the calm before the storm turned and ran as far and as fast as their legs could take them. First one angel and then the other were destroyed in an over-abundance of dark energy that had matched and cancelled out the light. Where the two powers of equal might and divinity met they both obliterated each other leaving nothing in their wake.

                If we were to have gone up against these two Sun soldiers on a normal day, a day when we weren’t bursting with power, we would have used up our own stores of darkness—leaving us high and dry. This was the perfect coincidence. You could even call it Fate.