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I trained hard after that. Even with the power boost that I’d received from the decotrimison I still hadn’t been able to stop Nathaniel. I needed to be stronger. But I just didn’t get strong enough fast enough. The time when I would be able to finally put an end to Nathaniel would come many years too late, long after he’d killed Richie. It was my tenth birthday, the anniversary of Isaac’s death. We had plans to go to the cemetery and visit him before going to Magi’s to celebrate other things. As much of a sad day that it had been we had many reasons to celebrate that year.
We were both still alive for one thing, at least for a while, even after fighting a year against Nathaniel. It had been a hard year; a lot of things had happened but somehow we made it to March 13th. And I really wish that we could have both made it to March 14th. The day before I had finally finished my GMT examinations, which meant that soon I would, after two years of grueling training and months of rigorous testing, become an official hunter within their ranks. I was done being trained and I was going to be active in the field as soon as I got my first assignment. And it was my birthday; Richie really wanted me to celebrate it. I didn’t but he insisted and I could never say no to him.
Richie had a late mission that day so we had to put off going to the cemetery together so I went by myself earlier that day. I kind of just stood there awkwardly for a while before I left to go meet up with him at the GMT. From there we walked to Magi’s because it was just down the street. He came out of nowhere and it all happened so fast. I know now that there was nothing that I could have done to stop; I had no chance to save my brother. But for a while I didn’t know that. I had no memories from that night; I didn’t know what had happened because I had blocked them all out. But I have those horrible memories now. So here’s what happened:
Nathaniel jumped out of an alleyway behind us, a cowardly attack if you ask me but that didn’t stop him, and in a second he had emptied his gun into Richie. He was shot eight times according to the coroner’s report: four in the head, four in the stomach. Nathaniel was a good shot, he hadn’t missed and Richie died instantly. His last act in his life was when Nathaniel appeared he dove between us, to protect me - those bullets had been intended for me not him. Then he collapsed on top of me, dead.
I don’t think that Nathaniel ever intended to actually kill Richie, who was his brother and only friend despite the hatred they felt for each other. I know that no matter what had happened Richie would probably never have been able to bring himself to take Nathaniel’s life. Just look at me. That horrible hatred I would soon feel for Sarah never once stopped me from risking my life to protect her, the way Richie always did for me.
Another thing that Nathaniel hadn’t expected despite all of his genius was that he might use all of his bullets to kill Richie, leaving him with nothing with which to dispose of me. It’s a good thing too because at that point I probably wouldn’t have even defended myself. He couldn’t use his powers, to take my life with them would mean loosing them and he was never willing to give up his powers to kill me. That made me lucky and he was horribly unlucky because apparently I harbored no such qualms over having my powers striped if it meant whipping him off the face of the Earth.
I was in complete shock as I held Richie’s cooling body in my arms; my brain shut itself off entirely. I remember a voice, smooth and soft and utterly comforting. It whispered things to me, telling me that everything would be okay, that it would protect me like Richie always had and that I wouldn’t be alone. And then nothing. After that the next thing I knew I was waking up in Richie’s apartment, drenched in blood. None of it was mine and only a little was Richie’s. I had no memory of Richie’s death or the events that had followed and no idea how I gotten there. I remember Michael breaking the news to me. I didn’t believe him; I couldn’t so I broke into the GMT’s morgue to see the body.
The news came along with the death of two of my other brothers and it took me a while to figure that they were all connected, something that I should have been able to realize right from the instant I learned that were all dead. The two others who had died where Benjamin and Matthias Perkins, Nathaniel’s biological brothers. I hadn’t been that close with them but that didn’t mean I didn’t feel the sting of their deaths, even though they had long ago joined their psychotic younger brother’s side. Despite the fact the Nathaniel was younger than the two twins, who were the same age as Richie - all nineteen, he was always their leader.
I soon learned that Richie had died three days before they had found that I had been gone all that time without a single clue as to what happened in that missing time. I had no knowledge of anything that had occurred after Richie and I had left GMT on my birthday. I tried for a while to remember anything, anything at all to help me deal with it. I couldn’t believe he was dead and that I had been there, unable to stop it and then gone missing for so long. I had to know. I got my answer a few years later when I found a videotape that they had found at the place where Ben and Matt had been killed. Michael had kept it hidden from me until then.
When I watched the tape I realized what had happened that day after searching for so long for those answers. Nathaniel took me from the street, leaving Richie’s body behind to be found an hour or so later. I hate him for that, leaving Richie alone on that street after everything that he did for him. He brought me to a warehouse full of his followers, while he tried to figure out how he should kill me. I just sat there until he tried to kill me. Then I snapped.
She took over and I let Her. You know who I am talking about - Her. My other personality, the one with the white hair that lives deep within my heart and lives only to take possession of my body and to kill. She killed them all and I let Her. There were about thirty people in that warehouse - all of them human. It was a massacre really. She used my power, the sonic screech. She had a lot more control over it than I did, I suppose it was always more Her power than it was mine. Well she channeled it through her hands rather than her mouth, a simple snap was all she needed and she could blow out their brains right out the back of their skulls leaving them all as bone fragments and brain matter splattered over the walls and then left the rest of their remains in a pile in the middle of the warehouse. Nathaniel however got away as she ran out of magic before she got to him and had to return control of my body back to me, who fled.
But I didn’t remember that and no one ever told me. Michael kept what I had done from me for a long as he could but once again I was obsessed and I needed to know the truth. I told myself over and over that it was Her who had done it not me. I told that to people and when I was weak they told me that in return. I tried to live under the delusion that I couldn’t control what Her but the truth of the matter is that I could. The truth that I refused to admit was that I made Her, She came from me, from part of MY heart. Her actions where mine. That is why She is and always will be my responsibility.
After Richie died I retreated from the magical world. I avoided anything that had to do with magic. The only contact I had was the funeral. I simply refused to my powers for months. Luckily I had already completed my exams because there was no way I could deal with them after he was gone. I didn’t set foot into the GMT until I was called there for my first team assignment. I considered not accepting it, giving up and leaving maybe even binding my powers. But I couldn’t do it. The GMT was my home and the people there were my family and it was all that I had left of Richie. And he would definitely never forgive me if I gave up. And when I found out what my first assignment was how could possibly refuse it?
 Zegwarian310 · Sat Apr 12, 2008 @ 10:56pm · 0 Comments |
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