"Turn the light on," I whispered. The closet was so dark I couldn't even see my own hand inches from my face. The fear crept into me, thick and fast. It consumed me, chocked me. "Turn it on, turn it on, turn it on," I screeched.

"I'm trying," Hunter muttered, oblivious to my escalating panic.

I didn't like the dark; I didn't like the feeling of helplessness, or the memories that came with it. I never used to be this way. I hated the person I was forced to become, and I hated Silas for turning me into this weak, terrified little thing. His suicide meant nothing to me; he got the easy way out. He didn't have to live with the emotional wounds or the physical scars I had to carry with me for the rest of my life. He didn't live, period.

Breathe, I told myself, I have magic, I can do something, I am not weak.

Swallowing my terror, I stretched out my palm the way Nana taught me and whispered, "Fire."

Instantly, the heat swarmed to my hand and a little fireball whooshed into the center of my palm. My little light illuminated only about 10cm in diameter. It wasn't large by anyone's standards, but it was enough to calm my racing heart.

"What the fu--" Hunter stumbled away from me and tripped, tangling himself in the mops and fell to the floor with a resonating thud.

"What!" I snapped, feeling more like myself.

"You're a witch," he said, disbelief coloring his tone.

I waved my fireball under his face. "Yeah, I thought you already know that. What with the marking on your arm and all." A sudden thought rushed through my frazzled mind. "Hang on a second, you were more surprised to find out that I was a witch, rather than the existence of magic. Why?" The fear slowly ebbed back into me. What if he was working with the Seventh Sanctum? Nana never said much about them but from what I gathered, they were extraordinarily powerful. If they got wind of Damien and I, we were in serious trouble.

I pushed myself back in the confined space, trying to get as far away from Hunter as I possibly could. Not that it would help if he did turn out to be one of them, but it made me feel slightly better nonetheless. I scowled at him, angry at myself for being so foolish.

His eyes widened in realization of something and he pushed himself up off the floor, just as wary of me as I was of him. His hand hit a switch on his way up, and the dim room was bathed in a sickly, pale yellow glow. I blinked my eyes a few times, trying to adjust to the swift change from darkness to light.

Suddenly, he was in front of me, wrapping his large hands around my small shoulders and slamming me into a shelf of disinfectant products. They clattered to the floor with a bang. The blow came without warning, catching me off guard.

I groaned, my head reeling from the blow. My arms fell limp by my sides and my legs faltered under me. If Hunter wasn't holding me, I would have fallen to the floor like a worn out rag doll.

"It was you! You invaded my dreams, you made me kiss you. You...you cast a spell on me!" he hissed. "Undo it! Undo it right now or I will..." he didn't finish his threat, simply shaking me instead to get his point across.

My head flopped to the side from the jarring motion but Hunter didn't care. "What's your agenda, huh? Make me like you and then what? Steal my family? My friends? Why can't your kind just leave us alone? We didn't want any trouble."

I shook my head to remove the ringing in my ears and blinked blearily up at him. What was this guy on? Or maybe it was the headache making me hear things and he was kindly checking up on me?

"What are you going to do, huh? Are you working with the Seventh Sanctum, is that it? You want us to be experimented on, find out what makes us tick?"

Or not.

My jumbled brain latched onto those two words, 'Seventh Sanctum.'

"What a bold statement," I mumbled, offended. Or as offended as I  could be with a head trauma. "I am certainly not working for them, they killed my parents." Not something I should be revealing to this dude. He could be anyone. Just because I dreamt him, doesn't make him an angel. Case in point; him shoving me into cleaning supplied and shaking me till it felt like I was going to crumble into itty bitty Abigail pieces. Also, why the hell did he know the Seventh Sanctum?

"Prove it," he spat.

"Prove that they killed my parents?" I said, not completely with it.  One of the perks that came with my witchy ancestry was the advanced healing. Sadly, it only worked when my body was seriously damaged and seeing as Hunter didn't shove me hard enough to cause that kind of damage, I was stuck with the human healing pace. My mind was still clinging onto the few strings of lethargy, making concentrating difficult. "That's going to be sort of hard, what with them being six feet under and all."

"No, that you're not with them." Wow, he was the first person to say nothing after hearing that my parents were dead. But then again, he seemed ready to kill me. I hardly doubted he cared about my dead parents when he was clearly more than willing to book me a one way ticket to see them.

I sighed, "Look Hunter, even if I was with them, which I'm not, I'd never hurt you because I kind of owe you after you saved me in the bathroom  with that weirdo, Lake."

"You mean Luke?"

"Same thing," I said, brushing it off. "Speaking of," I continued, "whatever was the point of saving me if you were going to hurt me yourself?"

He frowned. "I'm not going to hurt you."

"You just did." I glared at him. Who the hell did he think he was, anyway? Throwing me about like that. I'll show his sorry bi-polar ass what hurting meant.

I shut my eyes and imagined my power building up, bubbling around me. It pulsated, thick and sweet, coating my body like a tight glove. I thought about it moving towards his hands, writhing up as if it were alive, and striking him.

He cursed, jerking back and letting go of my arms. His green eyes opened wide and he stared at me, open mouthed.

My body thrummed with the power. I felt it rushing through my veins, in every pump of my heart beat and every blink of my eyes. I felt invincible.

"You messed with the wrong girl, buddy," I said, giddy. High on power, I suppose.

Hunter froze, eyes calculating my every movement. I was sure I looked a sight, and I could imagine that my scared face only added to the 'crazy psycho' look. In that moment, I didn't care.

Deciding he had too much crazy for one night, Hunter edged towards the door.

"No!" I yelled, throwing a burning ball of fire at the door to block  his escape. He pulled back his hand and watched the small, pinhead sized ball bounce off the door and roll harmlessly to the floor. It  fizzed out in a puff of smoke the moment it made contact with the  ground. Hunter raised an eyebrow, a half smirk playing on his full lips. 

I coughed. "That wasn't supposed to happen," I said, scratching my head in confusion. Yeah, real smooth, Abigail, I berated myself.

"I figured."

I felt tired, using magic sucked up all my energy. Nana was right to warn me to not over exert myself in practice. I sat on the cold, tiled floor, leaning my back against the empty shelf. "You brought me here to talk. So talk." I crossed my legs under me and shuffled around until I found a more comfortable position.

Hunter followed me down, still wary. Probably wondering if he could duck quickly if I lobbed another fire ball at him. Or maybe not, considering my first attempt was a fail of epic proportions.

"I'm sorry I hurt you, before," Hunter said softly, looking at me through sooty lashes. "I thought you were with them."

I waved off his apology. Now that we cleared up that I wasn't the devil incarnate, he had questions to answer.

I narrowed my eyes at him. "How do I know you're not in cahoots with the them"

"I'm what?"

"You know, cahoots. Working for them."

"I'm not."

"Prove it," I said, using his words from earlier.

He pursed his lips, contemplating. "Fine."

"What are you doing," I stuttered, "why are you taking your clothes off, stop it." But my eyes were transfixed on the golden, taut flesh of his stomach as he pulled up his shirt.

He pointed to a faded white scar just above his navel. "See this?"

What was it about abs that made me weak at the knees? He wasn't that hot. Okay, who was I lying to? He was totally that hot.

Be still my beating heart. "Yes," I all but squeaked. Finally pulling my eyes away from his muscles, I looked at the scar. It wasn't big, maybe two inches or so.

"They gave me this as a reminder."

I didn't want to sound insensitive but..."How do I know it's not from some biking accident or something?"

His upper lip curled into a smirk. "I don't bike. But to answer your question, you don't. I guess you have to trust me."

"A reminder for what?"

"To stay in line," he said ominously.

I was burning to ask 'from what' but I refrained myself. We had more pressing matters to deal with, like our matching marks.

"Lemme see your mark," I said. I pulled off my cardigan, revealing mine. Hunter followed suit, removing his hoodie and rolling up the sleeves of his shirt.

I crawled over to him to get a closer look at his marking and gasped softly. They were exact mirror images of each other. Two halves of a whole. I put my arm next to his, trying to match them together. It didn't fit.

"Let's try it this way." He wrapped a strong arm around my waist and pulled me gently between his legs, nestling me against his back. This time, when we raised our arms, the marks were aligned.

The heat from his body crawled into mine, burning me in a good way. I wanted to melt against the feel of him but I stopped. Against my will, my mind flashed to the dreams and I felt the color rise to my cheeks. Ignore, ignore, ignore. Good thing my back was facing him or that would have been very awkward.

"Well come on then! Put your arm next to mine."

I didn't move.

"Are you scared?" he asked dryly.

I scoffed. "What me? No!" My arm was inches from his. "What if something explodes in a blinding flash and we go flying or something"

He laughed a deep belly laugh that rumbled through me. "That's the lamest thing I've ever heard."

I glared. "It's a genuine concern, Hunter. Don't be too quick to dismiss it. It could turn round and bite you in the ass."

He didn't respond, still guffawing at my comment.

"Fine. Whatever!" I retorted. "Do it! But if something goes bang, don't say I didn't warn you."

He closed the gap between our arms, joining the two together.

I watched in awe as our marks flared to life, his a bright green and mine a deep purple. The petals joined, tip to tip, bleeding into each other. It swirled, meshing and changing, sometimes turning one colour before fading out to nothing and starting up again. Eventually, it stopped. All that was left was what we originally started with.

"See, nothing went bang," Hunter whispered in my ear, his tone condescendingly sweet.

Without warning it started up again, stronger and more powerful than before. I felt the rush of power buzzing through me, connecting me to Hunter. I tried to control it but it was too much, and before I could shout out a warning to Hunter, we were flung away from each other two magnets repelling.

I slammed into the wall and fell to the floor with as much grace as a baby hippo taking its first steps. I was paralyzed, unable to move or talk. Blackness claimed my vision and I succumbed to its cold embrace.

When I came to, I was on the floor on my back.

"What did I tell you!" I snapped at Hunter in exasperation. My back ached and I was sure it was going to leave a nasty bruise for me to deal with.

I heard Hunter's feeble groan somewhere to the left of me. "You didn't tell me you could see the future."

"I can't," I said. "I'm a witch; things tend to blow up around me." I shrugged and instantly regretted the movement. "Ow!" I wheezed.

"What!" He said, outraged. "And you couldn't tell me that before?"

"Well...I forgot," I said diplomatically, as I flopped onto my stomach and pushed myself up onto all fours. I breathed in deeply through my nose and waited for my vision to return to normal, before pushing my aching muscles into sitting position.

I turned around, ready to check on Hunter. When I saw him, I screamed. "Why are you naked?" I yelled, covering my eyes.

"Did you see anything?" he demanded, making no attempt to cover his goods.

"What do you mean 'did I see anything'?" I shrieked, "I can see everything."

Before he could respond, three of his friends came barging in, making the already small room even stuffier. It really wasn't meant for this many people all at once. The one I'd met last week, I think his name was Nate, and the one Kat had a crush on, scowled at me. The third one brushed a cursory glance at me before helping Hunter to his feet.

"Here, man," he said, handing him what looked like a pile of rumpled, black fabric. "It might be a little tight on you, but it was all I had," he said apologetically.

"It's cool, thanks." Hunter clapped him on the shoulder. The three boys created a barrier between Hunter and me, allowing him the privacy to put on the clothes.

Where did they come from? And how the hell did they know he needed clothes?

When he was dressed, he pushed through them and smirked down at me. "See you around, Bambi," he said, shooting me a wink.

Then, the four of them made a hasty exit.

What in the bleeding hell just happened?

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Well, well, well! That was an odd chapter 😋

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