Ember X (Death Collectors) - By Jessica Sorensen Page 0,11

up on a chair. “Alright, guys! Are you ready?” She motions her heavily inked arms at the band. “Give it up for Breaking Up Mayhem!”

The guitarist flares at the guitar strings and the singer shouts. “Is everyone ready?!”

Okay, time to bail, before things get out of—

The band begins to play a raging song and everyone goes wild. The house rocks and bottles rattle against the hardwood floor. Elbows and shoulders smack into me. Death courses through my veins.

“I can’t breathe.” I rush toward the door. Blood. Pain. The silence of a heart… the shadow of trees… the blackened lake. Bones breaking. Someone can’t breathe. It hurts… there’s so much blood. A last breath is strangled away. A red “X” stains it all. An empty hourglass. Murder. My body twitches. I seek the faces of the people nearby, but I can’t tell who the death omen belongs to. I trail my fingers along bodies. Hospital bed. Old age. Broken heart. Sacrifice. I can’t endure it any longer. I knock people out of my way as I run for the front door.

“Hey, watch it!” someone shouts.

I burst through the door, gasping for air. Two guys are drinking beer on the front porch and I shove them out of the way, ignoring their death omens, and sprint across the trashed front yard. I stop in the middle of the lawn, panting and dripping with sweat, vomit pressing at the back of my throat. The moon is a bright orb against the sky and the stars cut it like diamonds. The trees surrounding the cabin sway with the wind and kick up leaves across the grass.

I hunch over, brace my hands on my knees, and slow my breathing. “Get it together, Ember,” I whisper to myself. “Death is death, in any shape or form. You can’t stop it.” Inhaling, I collect myself together and head back to the log cabin, ready to find Raven and tell her it’s time to leave. Between the stranger bailing on me, and the death omens, I’ve had enough partying for one night.

Cars are lined bumper to bumper down the driveway, making it nearly impossible to get out, but a rusted black Cadillac drives around the line, the wheels moving onto the grass. As it passes me, I spot a bubblegum haired girl who winks her sapphire blue eye at me.

“Raven… What are you doing?” I wave at her and hurry toward the car. She knows better than to get into a car with some random guy, especially one I just had a death omen about. “Get out of the car!”

She blows me a kiss, and tips her head back laughing as the car speeds off, kicking up dirt and gravel.

“Dammit, Raven” I chase the car down the driveway and into the trees, following it all the way to the highway, where it vanishes into the night. I stare down the desolate road and tug my fingers through my hair, out of breath. “Shit.” I pull out my cell phone. “No signal.” I run back down the driveway to my car, a beat-up 1970s Dodge Challenger that’s wedged between a truck and a massive SUV. The car belonged to my dad. We were working on fixing it up, but then he disappeared. It’s been three years since it happened, but it still hurts to think about him, especially because I don’t know if he’s dead or alive.

I pat my pockets for the keys. “Where are they?” Trying not to panic, I retrace my steps, searching the ground for something shiny and metallic. “Come on. Come on. Where are they?”

“You lose somethin’, sweetheart?” a guy with greasy hair and a thick neck says from the top step of the front porch. He looks like a wannabe Danny Zuko, with his sideburns and leather jacket, except he has this strange black “X” tattoo crossing his eye.

I back down the stairs, shaking my head. “Nope, I’m good.”

He chugs the last of his drink, crushes his cup, and chucks it over the railing into the bushes. There’s a darkness in his eyes that unsettles me. “You sure?” he asks. “Because I could help you with whatever.”

“No thanks.” I keep walking backward, toward my car, without taking my eyes off him. “I got everything I need.”

“Hey, aren’t you that girl that killed her dad?” he asks as he slinks down the porch stairs.

My eyes never waver from him, even as someone passes close by and nearly bumps into me. “I think you’re thinking of