Siphon (Siphon Chronicles, Book One) (14 page)

I grabbed one of the chocolate treats left on my pillow and headed out to meet Daniel.  I had a feeling this was his room and worried at first he was sleeping here with me with the comment made by his father, but I stayed alone all night.  I could tell the sheets were fresh, but his scent couldn’t escape me.  Daniel’s things were in the closet as well as bathroom, so I knew it had to belong to him.  A little happier knowing I would see him in a minute, my cloud of gloom lifted.  I smacked straight into him coming out the door.  Had he been standing guard?

“How long have you been standing here?”

His face brightened the second my door opened as his hand ran over his stubble covered face. 
              “All night.”

“Why?”  That was troubling.

“One.  I want you safe.  Two.  It’s expected of me.”

I wanted to ask, but was worried it would make us argue.  I didn’t like all the “tasks” he was sent on surfacing around little ole me.  I reached to pop my chocolate in my mouth.

His hand slapped mine and I watched it fall soundlessly before me. 

“Why did you do that?” I frowned staring at the sweet morsel staring at me from the floor.  Astounded by his abrasive response, I bent to retrieve it and he stopped me again.

“Where did you get that from?”  His face went ashen as he pulled my chin up with his fingers.  He searched my eyes like they might turn vampire red or something. 

“Um, my pillow.”

He barged into the room and stormed straight to the bed.  He grabbed the other chocolate I was saving for later, walked into the bathroom, and threw it in the trash.  As I stood horrified by his actions, he did worse.  He bent down and pulled the thing out of the trash and dropped it in the toilet.  He disappeared around the corner and returned with the soiled candy that he knocked out of my hand.  The toilet flushed and I still hadn’t said a word, but my mouth was catching flies.

Daniel paced outside the bathroom door.  After a few more moments of silence, he told me what it was.  Apparently, chocolate makes me eager to go sing, or more descriptive, depletes my energy to urge me to siphon. And now that he added that I had another trait to woo men, I was losing all my bravado.  That my eternal makeup includes a form of female bribery that can screw with a man's head is crazy.  I have eaten chocolate all my life, but I would have to look back and time the occurrences.

I remember Foster giving me chocolates just before I kissed him...
              “Are you saying that I am like a fairy?”  As if siphon wasn't weird enough.

“Not exactly.  A sylph is a variation of in our world.  The chocolate is an unwanted side curse that affects even the best siphon but a powerful enough sylph who isn't aware of the chemical my father had added to the chocolate will take us all out.  Long before any of us even remember or have recorded, the sylph line existed.  Associated with the air, your mother passed into you the ability to call on it.  I believe the prophecy means just that.  If you, and only you, sing the song you speak of, it affects our kind and who knows who else, to do your will.  Combine a siphon and a sylph, you sing.  I just didn't remember that part before today.”

“How can they be real?  Sylphs, I mean.”

He bit his lip.  “Aren’t you?”

“Yeah, but I’ve known myself all my life.  I just found out there are hundreds more like me or mostly so.  Am I to assume that other things exist?”

“A few.”

“What?” I asked getting restless with just standing in the middle of a bedroom discussing my lineage that was only new to me.

“It is not important right now.  If a sylph has infiltrated our council from the past before even your mother, this is bigger than I can handle.”

My mother?  “Why would they be here?”

“To create you.”

Many, I am told, tried to make the prophecy child.  That’s why interrelations were outlawed in the law book long ago.  It’s been tried and failed to our knowledge so far.

“A prophecy was made a long time ago, before mine or your parents were even born.  It was made when a council psychic predicted a corrupted council.  It is etched into the brains of every young siphon before the age of five to be on the look out for
her
. 

“Beware the one

the light will free.

Repeat thee and

lose thee

Sing thee and

lose thee.

Repeat thee.

Repeat thee.”

“Like a nursery rhyme, we all heard it.  I never considered it real.”

Or her real.

"How did they know it would be a girl?"

"A sylph has only ever been female which explains why every male in this building salivates at nearing you."

I leaned in forcing her back against the wall suddenly remembering the cameras and vowed to check before the night came.  I hated to think that my room would be bugged, but for security sake, I would whisper the next part.  To distract her fear that surmounted in her eyes, I kissed her neck and made my way to her mouth.  I called myself distracting her, but it was working on my own brain and other parts in terrifying ways.

I forced myself to stop when her sigh was heavy and her breath was picking up a rapid pace.  In her ear I whispered, “I can’t say this aloud in case we are being heard by others, but my father knows what you are and doesn’t believe you to be indifferent.  He doesn’t trust your loyalty yet.  If you are the prophecy holder, you are in more danger than I originally thought.  He will use your power for evil.  No matter what, no one is to know if you can hear the song and under no circumstances are you to sing it.  Don’t even acknowledge you’ve heard of it until the first mention of it.”

I kissed her neck below her ear.  She grasped my forearms. 

“I didn’t want to say something that could scare you, but I will do anything to save you Lark.  Know that I am with you one hundred percent no matter what I do next or what happens.”

I pulled far enough back to see and read her eyes.  They held fear, but something else that resembled hope.  I wanted that hope to be about me.

“I’m sorry if that scares you, but I don’t intend to let you go.  For now, we take it day by day.  Just know I don’t want another man’s hands anywhere on you.”

I wanted her to know she was mine regardless of how stalkerish I was starting to sound.

Her mouth parted then closed.  When she didn’t say anything I feared the worst.  Had I pushed her away?  Not having experience with girls in this way made me stupid in front of them.  Or at least her.

Her knee came first.  Against my thigh she leaned and then this beautiful siren kissed me.  The energy restored and shared was virtually the most amazing feeling in the world.  Well, next to what I’d also like to do to her, but that was far down the road.  I would never taint this girl.  Ever.

When the kiss broke, I held her up by the arms and shoved my nose into her hair to capture even more of her scent.  “I have good news and bad news.”

Breathless she asked for the bad news first.

“My father expects all newly expected siphons, as well as the acquainted ones, to be well energized.  If that is hard to have without access to the proper means, he offers it through steroids and various other drugs.”

Lark started to freak.  I held on to her arms that attempted a shove off and pushed my face into hers.  “The good news is I told him you don’t need them.”

She flipped her hair back and waited with resignation in her eyes.  She had yet to say much.  “How then?”

Sheepishly, Daniel smiled and let go of my arms.  He ran a hand through his dark hair and let out a slow breath.  “I have a plan.  Normally you would need another to take from and it can be done here, but painful for you.  I know my father doesn’t know all of it and I also know that only the two of us know that we can feed each other.  So—

He stopped and faced the bed.  He looked at the bottom of it where I’d tangled the sheets from my mummified state of sleep the night before. 

“We feed on each other in secret so we don’t have to take from others and no drugs.”

His stare still in place, I was scared to be so bold but he’d just done the same. 

“One problem, Daniel.  That involves kissing.”  I knew I was the one blushing now, as well as held a hum that led me off down the rabbit hole of euphoric bliss.

He nodded.

"And you want to
hide
out
, to rejuvenate?" I asked almost in a stutter.

His smile slide into a mischievous, but boyish grin.

“That is one way to phrase it.  So are you’re saying you
do
want to meet under the bleachers several times a day,” he wiggled his eyebrows up and down.  His face was priceless.

I dropped my own mouth, but restated the obvious.  “So we meet and make out when no one is looking and all will be good to go?”

He dropped his eyes like I did to my mouth, feeling embarrassed now that I was the one who said it aloud.  I know sometimes I copied his actions based on what he did first.  I’ve done it with others for years.  I liked to term it my safety net for knowing the other person is okay with what I’m doing.  With Daniel, I second-guessed my actions too often. It was the other times—when I impulsively reacted—that had me baffled. “Yeah.  It’s seems like the better plan.”

My inner girl was shouting a big hooray!  My outward appearance was playing the ever present prude.  My inner voice won out.

“Okay.  I’ll do it.”

His eyes went wide with surprise.  I misinterpreted my own words saying them back in my head hearing the way he did.  “Um, the kissing part, I mean.”

Feeling like the air left the room, I felt my temperature raise a notch with the look in his eyes.  They glazed over briefly before returning to something with less fire and ice brimming over.

Once again, I couldn’t fear a lack of attraction for either of us.

“Okay then.”

“So when do we schedule these...make out sessions?”  I could barely get the words out and the hardest part was over.

“Um...well, we could play it by ear.”  He was as nervous as I was.

“Sounds like a plan.  I am filled to the brim with energy at the moment, so where are we off to?”  It was a little funny to see him frown at that comment, but he did. It was as if he took it as a dig on him and maybe I didn’t want to kiss him.  I may have read it wrong, but I wouldn’t ask either way.

“Let me tell you a little about the ring?”

With all the making out talk, I couldn’t help but linger on the siren comment he’d made earlier.  He called me a siren before and all the stories I’d ever heard didn’t make them so nice.  Things like
they
were irresistible to others, they swallowed you up, and ended you before you could blink.

Daniel said something else about fighting in the ring, but I didn’t hear.   “Is that the only reason you like me?”

“What? What reason?  And I like you for many reasons.”

“The part where you found out I am this siren/sylph/siphon thing.”

Daniel rolled his head backward, “I only found out you were part sylph yesterday.”

“So.  Does it not mean you were not enticed by my sylph pheromones or some weird karma?”

“I am going to tell you something and I do not want you to get offended.”

Who asks a girl that?  “”I’ll try.”

Daniel sighed.   “When I met you, I was attracted to you immediately.  No guy would walk by you and not notice you.”

I smiled tentatively.

“But I hated you.”

This was turning south fast.

“I hated what I was there for.  I couldn’t get past the fact that you have messed up my life.  I ran instead of taking you that day.”

“If there is a point to making me feel worse, I think you should make it.  I’m not comfortable with you telling me I’m dirt.”

Daniel’s face turned angry.  “I didn’t say that.”

“Just get to your point.”

Both Daniel’s hands settled over my shoulders.  “I was not under some spell.”

“Not that I believe you yet about sylphs and other beings, but let’s assume it is true.  I meet you and you’re not affected therefore making me not part sylph at all.  Then I come here and you say every siphon around wants a taste therefore making me this sylph/siren, which by the way, is gross.  I was also called here to be thrown into a lion’s den and expected to prove my worth.  Now you say it’s because I’m not fully like all of them and they want me to die if I’m not up to par.  I think par needs to be redefined.  If I exist, then other “mixes” exist too.”

“Maybe you have something there.  What if others do exist?”  His fingers went to his chin, yet another signature Daniel Crawford move I knew already.

“Yeah.”

His other hand stayed on my shoulder as if holding me in place.  I heard the sound of his fingers pulling over the scruff.  Not resisting temptation, I ran my hand over his other cheek to feel it myself.  I could bottle that feeling. 

His silent sighs came when he closed his eyes and let me do it for a lot longer than I thought I’d get. 

“Your spell has nothing to do with being a sylph,  Lark.”

“How can you be sure?”

He dropped his hands, and the reposing face, and went to stand on the other side of the room. 

“Say something. A command.” 

Okay!  “I want you to come back over here right now.”

He stood still and blinked a few times. 

“So?” I asked.

“If I were affected, I’d not be able to resist.  A sylph registers some kind of crazy feeling in the affected ones.  Chocolate enhances it by weakening you.  Dulls the senses. I’ve tried it once to know the effects.  I have only heard of a few who use it for an advantage but mostly I see it as a way to make someone siphon another.  You rarely push it out it seems.  Only when you have a certain feeling.  Around others I’m not comfortable admitting yet. Most do not live a long life.  If a sylph crosses a line with the ability to control another, it can drive them mad.”

“How?”

“The affected become obsessed as do the sylphs.  You have to control it.  You didn't with Foster.  It’s only a guess, but I think you can control the amount with practice.  If your mom was a sylph, I am guessing she was only half since it isn’t as pronounced as the stories I have heard about her.”

There were stories about my mom? 
That
I would ask about later.

“But then why would you be attracted to me?” I asked sounding even more lame with the sound of the words.

He narrowed his eyes as if in anger again, “I have told you how I feel, Lark.  And it has nothing to do with being a sylph or even a siphon.  You’re doubting me even now?”

Kind of. “No.  Just want to be sure.  Why do you think you’re unaffected by the sylph thing then?”

“Not sure, but I will find out what I can.”

I half-jumped across the room.  “Okay, I get it for now.  But if you ever tell me again that you can resist me so easily, then I’m going to do something drastic.”  I do not know what came over me.  I did not want to present myself as completely taken by this boy, but the sudden urge to be happy that someone likes me
for me
and not the power within made me ecstatic.  Deep down, I have known for a long time that what I did to Foster wasn't natural for even what I was.  I was forced to believe it when Jason told me girls didn't react that way to him.  Girl thing, guy thing, or whatever--it wasn't natural.

“Like I said, your power over me isn’t magical.”

I liked that. A lot.

“So what happens when I win?” I asked as he moved a stray tendril of hair from my face. He better not be lying.

“You walk out of there and tell them they can all go to hell,” he popped off flushing with fisted anger.  He was so matter of fact with his solutions to everything.  Coming right after a stroke of tenderness just made him such a guy.

“That will go over well.”  In mock humor I faked, “Hi, I’m the one you have heard about.  The one you want dead and all.  Sorry, no can do.  I’m not sure I want to die today.”

His face darkened to near lethal.

“Never mind.”  For the next hour, I heard every move listed that I would need to be skilled in.  I was not a fighter and I didn’t know how I would ever be able to do what he was asking of me.