Dominion (Guardian Angels) - By Melody Manful Page 0,21

fight Gideon, but I was determined to do whatever I could to survive.

“I’m not afraid!” I lied again, pushing myself off the ground and standing.

My lungs burned from my panicked exertion. My feet throbbed with cuts and blisters. I limped a few steps and then stumbled again. I tried to stand, but this time the pain stopped me. I tried to crawl, but my hands were raw and bleeding.

“I’m still not afraid of you,” I said through my tears.

I was about to shout out to Gideon again when I heard footsteps. I thought about giving up, but I realized I didn’t want to die in the middle of nowhere. My body was still, streaks of blood oozed from scrapes and scratches on my skin. I sat on the hard soil, tears running down my face.

“Don’t ever entertain strangers, Abigail,” I heard my father’s voice say in my head. I wished I’d listened to him.

I felt movement around me. Someone was coming forward, closer and closer, step by step. I turned around and there he was, standing in front of me as if he had been there the whole time. Without warning, my body flew into the air and then slammed onto the ground. Pain raced through my limbs, and I groaned.

Gideon approached me. “You’re a brave one, aren’t you?”

I struggled to catch my breath.

“Still not scared of me?” he asked.

Before I knew it, my body was forcibly lifted again. This time, Gideon’s right hand clenched my neck. He choked me, and his blood-red eyes fed on my pain. I struggled uselessly. I folded my fingers around his hand, but I had no strength left to stop him.

“Let me make it easier.” He threw me into a tree. I cried in agony as my broken body crumpled to the ground.

I couldn’t stop coughing as I fought to regain my breath. I shifted my eyes back to his. As I stared at him, his hands began to glow with red-hot fire, and without warning, he hurled a ball of flames toward me. I cried out as I saw my own refection in the flames, and then—

I died.

STRANGER THAN FICTION

“One ought to fear those things

only that have power of doing harm,

the others not, for they are not dreadful.”

Dante Alighieri – ‘The Inferno’



“Abigail!” my mother called, jolting me from my sleep.

As I regained consciousness, I felt the aches in my body, pain from last night’s training. It was a dream. The party. Gideon. All of it.

I opened my eyes, wheezing and sweating on my bed, my heart still raced. Had I been…burnt to ashes?

I exhaled as I realized I was safe in my room. My bed sheets were damp with sweat and looked as though someone had spritzed water all over them. I tried to fight down the panic as I inhaled a few deep breaths. For a second, I ignored the worried look on my mother’s face. I moved my hand to my head, feeling the lingering pain caused by the limo’s wreck. A sense of danger still pervaded the air.

I tried to remember what happened in the dream, but the more my mind grasped at the remnants, the faster the dream faded.

“Bad dream?” my mother asked concernedly.

I nodded. “I think so. I don’t really remember what it was about.” Was I still dreaming? When I looked outside my window, the sun was setting. “What time is it?” Had I slept through the party?

“About ten minutes until we leave for the party,” my mother answered. She sat down beside me on the bed. “You all right?”

I wasn’t all right, and for some reason I felt uneasy, but I knew the perfect answer to her question. I faked a smile, looked down from her gaze, and then said, “Yes.” It was a lie I hoped wouldn’t come back to haunt me.

I got dressed for the party with the help of my mother, and we left. My friends attended the event, so the evening as a whole wasn’t as terrible as I originally thought it would be. I only had to be careful that no one spotted me wincing whenever someone hugged me, because I didn’t want to deal with any overly curious questions.

After the party, my mother made us hot chocolate, and we sat and drank it in the living room while watching cartoons.

We spent the rest of the weekend relaxing and watching girly chick-flicks. She was happy about the positive reviews she received on her pre-spring collection, so we went out for dinner