Millennia by Raven Slake (free books to read .txt) 📕

it was, returning again to haunt me in my sleep. Just as I thought it was over, the darkness swallowed me up in its cold blanket.

 

Eternal Red

 Soft green grass surrounded me. It was everywhere, and there was nothing man-made to be seen. The sky was clear, clinging onto its beautiful blue color. A shining sun blinded me at first, but as I sat up, I diverted my focus to the sounds around me. Branches broke as a rabbit hopped around, looking for food. Birds chirped in the distance of happy songs and everlasting joy. It was impossible though. Nothing last forever, and real joy was hard to come by.

I shot up, throwing blankets and sheets everywhere. The only other people in the room leaped towards the wall, farther away from me. My awakening was sudden and had scared them, it was written in their faces. Nothing was more obvious than fear and cowardice. As I scooted up the bed farther to check on my gut that was still aching, I spotted the bloodstains. I had lost a lot of my blood, and I was alive. Humans were known for resurrecting others but not when they lose most of their blood. Just as I thought about the gash that was supposed to lie beneath the hole in my shirt, I noticed a lack of scars. All of my scars were gone, even any fresh wounds that were inflicted when I had been shot.

There was only two Lakes in the room. One male, and one female. The girl, Lindsey, seemed less surprised than the boy, who looked quite young for being over eighty. (Maybe about nineteen, he does not age very much.) In her mind, Lindsey was laughing at his reaction constantly picking on him and using his name repeatedly; Ansel. So many of their family was so old yet appeared so young but none of them were lycans.

"How are you feeling?" Lindsey asked. Renewed, I thought, but I did not speak. Everything felt new all over again. Death was not working out for me, not very well anyway. As I jumped out of bed, I collapsed on the ground. "Careful, you are not done regenerating, so you may need to take it easy for a few more minutes." Regenerating? That was probably the reason I am alive is because of her strange regeneration technique that I really do not want to understand. I will just leave it at that and never return to that topic again. Ever. Lifting myself back onto my feet, I let myself stand for a few seconds before grabbing onto a nearby dresser. I was wobbly, but that was not going to stop me. Only one thing was.

Kaire ran into the room and leaped onto me, playfully. He did not want me dead for dying, good. However, pain exploded in my back when I landed on the supposedly soft bed tha Emberlynn owned, which was now covered in my blood. Just as I scoched up slowly, he leaped onto my lap, spreading pain to my legs.

"Kaire, that hurts. Give me a minute to 'regenerate'," I said, mocking the term that Lindsey had used not too long ago. Regardless of my humor, Kaire backed off and hopped onto the floor. He was worried and was getting desperate, not wanting to lose me ever again. Our eyes met, and I could tell that he was afraid. It was always me getting hurt in battle, I always took the most damage. Everytime I did though I came back, as if it was impossible for me to die, but it wasn't. Allen had just proved that wrong. But even that was not enough to comfor any soul, not even a battle-born one like my own.

Lindsey and Ansel led me back onto the ground level, and there sat the whole family waiting for me to return back to the living.

"You look well," a male said from my left. He was young, a spawn of Allen's, who preferred his mother anyday over his father that was always ready to kill the first thing he saw as a threat. His mother had even named him on her own, she had known before hand that the man that would father this child would not be around too much to raise him. Thus she chose Simon, a biblical name that she believed to keep him safe from people like his father. "Very well in fact." Admiration was coating his voice, in human terms that usually meant that he was attracted to me, or as they called it he was "checking me out". "Shame what happened, the eyes were nice." One of the other Lakes glared at him, as if they were waiting for the right time to tell me that they had done something to my eyes.

A woman that appeared to be Emberlynn's mother shook her head, muttering something under her breath that I barely caught. She was the one that changed my eyes, and she too felt guilty about it. The thing was, I did not care as long as I kept Kaire safe until we both died.

"It always happens. When someone dies they need part of their genetics re-ordered for them to reanimate," she said. "It can be anything from their skin tone to something as big as their entire physical appaerance. For you, it was just your irises, which is considerably lucky compared to the other DNA strands I had to shuffle around." I nodded, half listening, half pretending like I understood what she was talking about. "Let me re-say that." Just perfect. "When someone dies, something about them needs to change otherwise their body will not support the return of that ten percent of the body that regular humans have unmapped. It differs from person to person and for you, all that needed to change was your eye color." That time I actually was able to comprehend at least part of what she mentioned. Otherwise I already knew it.

"Tell me more about this ten percent thing," I replied keeping my mind open about anything strange that was still yet to occur.

"Scientists have mapped out ninety percent of the human body," she started. "That other ten percent they are struggling to pinpoint. However, the families with mutated genetics know exactly what lies there." I looked at her like the people do on the television. "Everyone has a special...knack I guess you can say. When fully developed, it can turn into what regualr humans call a talent, or it becomes a genetic mutation that is passed on from each and every generation and can easily become contagious." She paused to let that sink in for me. "Like a wolf bond in a pack, it lasts forever unless there is someone who can take it away. Mainly though, when a 'mutant' bonds with a regualr human, it turns them. Forces their still developing knacks to become to equal strength as their 'soul mate'. Do you understand?" I just nodded. I really did understand what she was talking about, I just did not want to get into explicit detail. "Good, because it gets really complex if you do nto understand the basics. But let me keep this next part pretty simple." She walked towards me until we were face to face. "Someone did a lot to you in order to ensure that you developed at much faster rate than anyone else known. You better not fucking die, or there will be a whole lot more than you think hitting everything you have ever known." She looked over at Elise, the know-it-all, who nodded. The first woman, Emberlynn's mother Muriel, was good with genetics, and Elise knew everything. They were the perfect combination. And both of them had pretty much given me too much information. I needed to sleep, let my brain process everythin instead of me doing all of the work.

A teenage girl holding the young boy, Ashe walked towards me. This family was strange, welcoming an infected wolf into their relative's house willingly. Then one of them gasped, there was a mind-reader amongst them. But that did not tell me why Ashe and his sister were coming to me. The answers never came the easy way, if only they could.

The mind reader began to argue with Elise and Muriel. Ashe's sister was still walking to me, but she had set him down. She was good at blocking off her mind, which prevented me from learning her name. She placed her skinny hand on my cheek gently, as if feeling my temperature. Making me wonder what I did this time to get touched by a strange human. The screaming continued to grow more intense, but I was so focused on this girl that I was barely noticing. She recognized me, and she felt familiar. Yet I knew that i had never met this girl before in my life.

"Do I know you?" I asked, still feeling like I had met her somewhere. She smiled and disappeared, only to re-appear behind me. 

"Yeah, I guess you can say so. Do you remember anyone?" she whispered. "Ruby? Joseph? Pedia? Mathias? Anyone?" I shook my head.

"I cannot remember them from before I got back with my pack. Mathias, though, I have met up with him once," I answered, keeping to a low whisper. She snickered, whether it was good or bad I was confused. 

"You will, in time, remember our friends, maybe even me one of these days. And maybe even the bastard Doctors that did this to you." After that, she was gone, and she never re-appeared like last time. The girl was gone, just like Emberlynn.

Emberlynn! All this time I was having cozy conversations and she was still out there with Hamilton. She was in danger and I waited in safety for her return. I could not get her back if her family was here, and Sullivan would not like the sight of fifty mutants in a small cramped room. They needed to leave and not come back until Emberlynn was completely safe back at home. The mind reader picked up on what I was thinking. She told everyone else about it, and oddly enough, they all agreed. In five minutes they had packed up and left the property. They would be watching over the house while no one was inside, when we hit Hamilton's safehouse. But it was still four days away, and it was dragging by despite my death and reanimation and regenerating. how did humans pass the time so easily? I was going to have to learn to kill time as well as I kill living beings, and fast.

Technically my First