Adnihilo

Adam brushed his long, gray hair out of his face fretfully, and tried not to trip over the extensive cloak that shrouded him almost as notably as the air of urgency that compelled his feet to pound faster and faster against the damp, deteriorating sidewalk. He knew without a doubt that his time was drawing short. He had to reach her before they did. If they found her, they would kill her, and all the watchful years they'd spent protecting her would be all for naught. They would certainly come for her, as they had for Andrew, but unlike Andrew, she had no way to defend herself. She was far too innocent, too trusting. He must warn her before they had the chance to gain her tenderhearted trust. If they lost her, Julia, then all hope would be lost. Years had been spent carefully keeping their existence a secret until they'd come into their full powers. Clandestinely held meetings in dark and remote areas of the most obscure places, all chosen at random of course, over the duration of the twin's nineteen-plus year life span, were just the beginnings of the extensive and intricate arrangement to keep them safe.

It was Adam's sworn duty to do everything in his power, including laying down his life, to ensure their safety until the time when they would be adequately able to take care of themselves. It was written that on the eve of the twins' twentieth year, at the precise minute of their birth four lustrums prior, there would be a total eclipse of the sun, and stars would rain from the Heavens, mirroring the collapse of the powerful mental blocks that were carefully constructed to keep the twins' powers in check. Without that block, they would become capable of wielding the great power that is concealed within them. That day, if it were allowed to come to fruition, was still another two weeks away, but the days seemed to pass by faster and faster as the date approached. It was so very far away, yet agonizingly close as well. That meant that the blocks were becoming weaker, and their power more easily noticed, and it was drawing the attention of the demons who sought to destroy them.

It was becoming harder with each passing day to mask their whereabouts, and Adam worried that the demons might prevail in their avaricious endeavors. He worried for the fates of the two children that he had nurtured for years, almost as a father would have, and each day of uncertainty concerning their precious lives was excruciating. There were so many forces conspiring against them that the likelihood that they would fail was overwhelming. That could not be allowed to happen though, or the world would crumble as demons, unopposed in their feral and animalistic ways of deception and contemptuous pandemonium, ran rampant among the malleable wills of the humans they so found joy in twisting to their distasteful gain. That era had been held at bay for centuries upon centuries, but the demons were becoming stronger. They fed off the insurmountably growing discord and distension of modern day's degenerative society, and their numbers were swelling rapidly. It's why the twins had been born now, to try to restore the balance that had once been self-maintained and prevent the total destruction that would result if the demons grew too powerful.

Adam came to an abrupt halt at the moldering front of an old abandoned general store, and looked to make sure he had not missed a hidden pursuer in his haste. As he permitted himself a brief moment for his sporadic breathing to even out, he fastidiously scanned the beguiling shadows with acute eyes that saw much more than any normal human's could on the best of days and in perfect conditions. These were poor, low lighted and excessively foggy conditions, but that didn't affect his inimitable ability to assess the shadows with a fluent capability that made his confidence, brought on by years of rigorous training, almost seem like a display of hauteur. His long graying hair and the vast depth of long-lived wisdom in his eyes and the undertones of his speech were the only indicators that betrayed he was in any way elderly. He still carried himself with the vigor and zeal so attributed to youth and showed no signs of decrepitude or dotage.

With a quick and assuredly-sound wrapping on the door, he informed the inhabitants inside, through Morse code, of his identity, rank, and imperative purpose. The door swung open immediately and strong hands wrenched him inside before securing the closure of the door as soon as his body crossed the threshold. Burly arms enveloped Adam in a firm, masculine hug, and he looked up into the relieved face of his best and childhood friend Samuel.

"Adam! We worried you'd been killed! How fares Andrew? We heard there'd been a demon attack on the safe hold!" Samuel was always one to cut to the chase.

"Aye, there was. I was unharmed though. Andrew sensed their arrival, and was able to delude them. He's always been more in touch with his powers. That's how I knew he could handle the truth about himself and his sister. I'm starting to reconsider my initial decision to separate them though. I'll share with you this admonition because you've proven yourself worthy of my trust, good friend. As the twins powers grow stronger, so to do the demons' almost in equal increments. At this stage in the pre-battle, ignorance would only serve to hinder her. As much as I detest burdening her before absolutely necessary, it seems we must finally tell her the truth."

"There's no need," a meek, feminine voice sighed softly from the doorway behind Samuel. Adam looked, startled, over the expansive shoulders of his friend and saw Julia's willowy, haunt like form standing in the entrance. Her pale blonde hair hung lank in long, shimmering waves around her pallid, heart-shaped face, and her large brown eyes were round like saucers and brimming with the weight of her knowledge.

"I know," she said to him wearily, confirming his well-placed suspicions. "Andrew and I can speak with more than just our voices you know. Even before the unbinding. We knew your true reasoning for separating us. We were rather discontented towards the proposal, but we understood that it was what was best. Did he accompany you?" She asked, quickly scanning the room with a subtle expectation that broke Adam's heart.

He looked down at his hands. He couldn't look her in the eyes. She was so fragile looking that it was as though even distress could shatter her irreparably.

"I take it he didn't," she said for him sullenly letting out a long, resigned sigh. "I could have used the mind touch to locate him, but I'm afraid that any additional link in our powers would draw the attention of the demons. I know that they search for us."

She walked flowingly, like a phantom with her long, almost floor length hair fanning out behind her, across the expanse of the little antechamber to his side. Her twig thin arms wrapped themselves warily around Adam's body, and she rested her head, on his chest. He wasn't very tall at five foot nine, but she still only came up to about the very bottom of his torso. "I'm glad that you two were able to escape unharmed. I feel sorrow for your loss. Elizabeth was as much a mother to me as anyone, and I know yet that my grief is still minor compared to yours. She will be missed." Then Adam felt the overwhelming grief he'd been feeling since Elizabeth's death in the demon attack slip away from him a scintilla at a time. He knew it was Julia's empathetic powers stealing away his chilling and dark emotions, leaving him with a soothingly warm numbing sensation tingling all the way to the tips of his toes and fingers.

"No," he told her with a thick voice. He grasped her thin arms gently and held out so that her hands could not make contact with him and shift his bereavement. As soon as he broke contact though, his frigid grief came rushing back to him covering him like some perverse, inverted blanket, and he shuddered involuntarily. "I don't mind the sorrow," Adam choked out honestly. "It reminds me that a part of me is still human. It's a terrible heart-wrenching pain that consumes me, but it keeps her memory alive within me also. To flee so easily from it would be an insult to her memory."

"As you wish," she said shrugging off his loose hold and tenderly caressing his cheek, briefly letting a mellifluous tepid wave of comfort roll over him, before walking back out the door to the other room.

"Elizabeth's sacrifice is a noble one, and she will be honored as such. We'll begin preparations for her funeral later tonight, but first you must have something to eat. It was a long journey. You must rest." Samuel softly consoled him. Then they followed Julia into the main living quarters where a warm meal was waiting.

Later that night, Adam stared vigilantly out the one way window and watched the shadows roiling about the low-lit landscape. There were demons out there. They were weak demons who probably wouldn't survive one round with him in combat, but their presence still caused goose bumps to swathe his bare arms and set his stomach turning tensely. In all the years he'd been a guardian to the twins, the demons had never had the gall to approach their wards. They may not have worked out exactly who live within them, but the wards around the house had always been enough to deter them from getting overly curious. The demons grew bolder with their strength though, arrogantly so, and he hoped they could use that to their advantage when the time came. The demons girdled the outskirts of the wards playfully, taunting him with their very presence.

A set of luminous, red eyes went by the window at eye level causing Adam to flinch back into the couch cushions. No, the demons weren't strong enough to break through the wards, but they were strong enough to push languidly on it giving him a migraine, which caused his worry to more than double.

Somewhere outside, but still a safe distance away, a woman's ear-splitting cry broke through the night, and they demons scurried off to take advantage of the woman's savory distress. The scream and the sudden disappearance of the demons happened almost simultaneously and were echoed by a crash from within the safe house. Adam lunged to his feet calling for Samuel and another guard to take his watch duty as he anxiously sprinted down the hall towards Julia's room. He found her lying delirious and convulsing on the floor next to her bed. In one fluid motion, he strode across the room, scooped her writing form up into his arms, and headed to the windowless sitting room. There, he laid her slender form on the couch and ordered one of the guards to get him a warm washcloth to dab her perspiring forehead.

The woman's wail broke off mid-cry, and Julia's breathing became ragged. She sat up jerkily, coughing uncontrollably for a brief moment before falling back into the cushions and into a what looked like a calm sleep. The entire commotion, from the scream to Julia's fit, was over in a matter of a few short moments, and it left Adam breathless and troubled.

The guard returned with the cloth, and Adam wiped Julia's face as he asked, "Is this her first fit of this nature?" While he waited for a response from Samuel, he checked Julia's vitals to assure himself that she was all right. When Samuel hesitated, Adam looked up to see his best friend looking away sheepishly. "Samuel!" he exclaimed. "Are you going to tell me that this fit is not a singular instance? That these are a regular occurrence of which I was uninformed?"

"We didn't know how to tell you," Samuel said with a look of chagrin contorting his features. "She always recovers from them. We decided it would be better to tell you in person, but I could never bring myself to begin the conversation. I'm sorry for my cowardice, good friend, but look. She's already coming to."

Julia's eyes fluttered, and her cheeks flushed as she sat up to see the small group gathered around the couch looking at her worriedly.

"Are you all right?" Adam asked her fussily still holding her wrist from when he was checking her pulse. She slipped her hand from his loose grasp to put her hair up in a ponytail.

"A glass of water please," she whispered with a hoarse voice. Samuel silently left to the kitchen, and Adam walked over to the other couch to retrieve the warm woolen blanked that was lying there. He draped it around her shoulders, and she snuggled into it gratefully.

Samuel returned with the glass of water, and Julia thanked him softly before he left the room leaving Julia and Adam with some amount of privacy. She sipped on it quietly while Adam paced to and fro across the room trying to gather his turbulent and vexed thoughts. Finally, he sighed and immersed himself resignedly into the armchair across from her.

"You're all right?" he asked her with a sigh.

"Yes," she answered him taking hold of his hand to comfort him.

"How often are you troubled by these fits?" he asked her seriously. He wanted to learn as much as he could about them, so that may be he could figure out a way to prevent them.

"They started out rather infrequently, maybe once or twice a month, but as of late maybe once or twice a week," she told him calmly, as if they were discussing the weather on a warm summer's day.

"Do you know what causes them?"

"I'm not certain, but I'm fairly sure that it's correlated to the increased murder rate. It seems that my attacks coincide with violent death. I believe it's my empathetic capabilities. The woman who screamed, I could feel her pain. She was drug into an alley by her hair. The man tried to hold her by her neck while he raped her, but she fought him. She managed to get loose enough to scream and make it a few feet before he stabbed her in the leg. Then he drug her back into the alley as she started bleeding out. He'd hit a major artery. As he ripped-"

"Stop!" Adam exclaimed. "I don't want to hear anymore." Tears leaked from both of their eyes, but Julia's were quiet, somber tears. She knew the pain the woman had endured before her death. She knew that the woman had indeed died. It was personal, but it wasn't anything new. She felt the pain and death of countless others. Yet she hadn't started counting them as just numbers. She hadn't stared writing them off as just another incapacitating agony. She remembered each and every one of them. She knew their names and faces. She knew to a vague extent the lives that they'd led. Each one was a new pain, a separate tragedy that she mourned just as much as any one of the ones preceding it. She carried each one within her heart, and it was starting to eat at her.

"I have nightmares," she said suddenly. "Every night, sometimes I re-see the deaths of those who've already died. Sometimes I see them before they happen. Sometimes I see death, and don't know if it's happened, going to happen, or if it's just an invention of my imagination. It's starting to wear on me, Adam. I fear that one day it will all be too much. If it weren't for my destiny, and the hope I hold for the world, I would end it. I would rather face the giver of this curse than endure one more day bearing it. Can you take me to Andrew? Please? I need to see him. I feel better when he's near me. It's easier to cope."

"Of course," Adam told her instantly. How could he deny her? "We'll make preparations to leave out tomorrow."

Adam helped Julia back to her room, and she fell into a deep slumber almost the instant her head fell back on the pillow. He gave her one last concerned look before he shut the door and left, pondering just how bad her depression had progressed.

He called Samuel and another guards that he trusted for counsel and told them of Julia's request. Neither was rather keen towards the idea of joining them just yet, but no one was boorish enough to recant Adam's promise. After a couple hours, working through the details of her transport and the protection and location of the new safe house where they would be reunited, they had developed a solid plan. Adam left to pull the strings for extra protection and coordinate with Andrews's guards while Samuel updated Julia's. By the time dawn rolled around, everything was set. They would take Julia, within the hour, from the safe stronghold that had been her home for the past few months, and the twins would finally be together again after three long years of separation.

It took the entire day to move Julia and her belongings safely to the new location, and when they arrived, Andrew was still not there. Adam got Julia settled in her new room, and then they waited together for her brother to join them. After the first couple of hours Julia fell asleep on the couch, and Adam let her sleep. He hoped that she would be able to sleep soundly. He had watched her sleep after she told him about the nightmares. She had tossed and turned fitfully, a cold sweat gathering on her brow. Around midnight she woke abruptly, breathing heavily. A few minutes later though, her breathing had returned to normal, and she fell back into a calmer sleep. She still jerked and twisted, but it was less violent.

Now, she slept deeply. She remained completely still, and twice Adam got up to make sure she still had a pulse. An hour after nightfall, Andrew was still nowhere to be seen, and Adam began to worry. If they didn't get there soon, Adam was going to go searching for them. Being out at all was dangerous because Andrew seemed to attract demons like ants to sugar, but being out after dark was especially risky. Another hour past and Adam told Samuel that he was going after them. No sooner than he had donned his coat and gloves though, Andrew walked through the door unharmed, flanked by three guards.

"Sorry for the delay, Adam," said Molly, the head guard. "We came across a den of demons on our way, and, instead of cloaking ourselves and bypassing them like I'd suggested, Andrew felt the need to challenge them." She looked at Andrew with annoyance clear on her face, but Adam could also see the underlying affection.

Molly had grown up with Andrew, and she cared for him. It's why he had made her Andrew's guard captain. He trusted her enough to confide in her, and half the time she was even able to talk him out of his more dangerous pastimes. Though there were times, as tonight was a prime example, that no one could dissuade his stubborn mind.

"One less demon in the world is a good thing Molls. You should be happy," he told her with a goofy grin.

"One demon?" she exclaimed. "More like twenty. It was foolish. What if something had gone wrong? What if-"

"Molly?" Julia's voice asked sleepily from the couch. Everyone turned to see her lithe form rising from the couch slowly. She rubbed her eyes and stretched her limbs before turning towards her onlookers. Then her eyes met Andrew's. "Andrew!" she cried joyously.

She ran across the room and leapt into his arms. His strong hold twirled her in the air like a weightless doll. The air around them crackled slightly with their euphoric laughter. He set her down tenderly before enfolding her in a brotherly hug.

"Lia!" he smiled, running his fingers through her long blonde hair. His dark brown eyes looked into her matching ones as he tired to blink back his tears. He was finally holding his sister in his arms. "I've missed you, sis."

"I've missed you too," she sniffled as her tears streamed uninhibited down her cheeks.

After a long catching up session, the two left for their separate sleeping quarters. The two weeks before their twentieth birthday passed in a flurry of intense training of the skills that they could presently channel, and a lot of angst. No one knew what would happen when the twins were unbound. The prophecy said that they would become capable of wielding their full powers but it gave no inkling of speculation as to what the extent of those powers could be. Supposedly, one of the powers was the knowing; that the twins would know what to do with the power once it was unleashed, but it left a lot of room for uncertainty.

The twins were born at twelve-noon exactly. The messenger who brought them to Adam had told him that much. It was eleven thirty, and everyone was on edge. They waited in the same clearing that Adam and his wife Elizabeth had been walking through on the day they received the twins. It smelt of damp earth, and pine trees. The wind lightly rustled the company's hair.

Adam paced back and forth trying to calm his nerves. Molly and Andrew sat holding hands and talking in hushed tones, and Julia sat with Samuel's son, Simon. Adam had known about the attraction between Andrew and Molly for years, so that came as no surprise to him. What did come as a surprise was Julia and Simon, but thinking back, he probably should have seen it. The four of them had been friends for years. Simon had always looked after Julia excessively, but Adam had simply put it off as Simon emulating his father. Now it seemed overly obvious. He felt a fatherly ache seeing his two charges at that moment. They were grown up. The normality of the feeling in the present situation felt somewhat out of place. It was miraculous how, with so much uncertainty, four young adults could be brought together in such a way to comfort each other through it. It was five 'til, and the twins joined hands and walked over to where Adam was pacing.

"It's almost time, Adam," Andrew said solemnly, as the moon started moving gradually in the line of the sun's light.

Adam sighed a loaded sigh and he could feel all the unrest and instability he'd been feeling for the past twenty years rattle through his bones. He suddenly felt ages older than his forty-five years. He clasped Andrew's shoulder and took Julia in his arms one last time before stepping away from the two of them. As the last sixty seconds ticked away, everyone in the vicinity stood stock-still expectantly holding their breath.

Three... Two... One. The twins doubled over at the exactly the same moment, both clutching their blonde heads in agony. Above, the sun was completely shadowed, and thousands of stars shot across the sky wildly. The moon slowly kept traveling in its path, and the sun steadily became visible again. The stars stopped shooting across the sky just before they disappeared completely.

The twins knelled on the ground, clasping each other for support as they tried to catch their breath. The wind picked up speed and started forming a solid wall that smelled of graveyard soil and blood. Adam attempted to approach them, but a comprehensive whip of blinding red light shot out in his path. It crackled as it swished through the terse air to slam into the ground less than a yard in front of him, sending a spray of sparks flying in all directions. A vortex of the ominous light enveloped the twins in a shielding orb, and expanded out from the center, threatening to scorch the other bystanders in the clearing. From within the orb, Andrew arose shakily, his sister flinching into his side. Her long platinum hair flapped about them in a stunning flaxen flourish.

Red light crackled from their fingertips, and the few stronger demons who had danced curiously at the edges of the group, scattered immediately, running from the lethal light. The wind died down, but the stench remained. Andrew stepped forward towards Adam and pointed an accusatory finger his direction.

"I'm sorry," he said with tears in his eyes and a tremble in his voice. Then a streak of crimson lightning shot from his fingertip striking Adam in the chest. As he crumbled to the ground in a limp heap, a dark mass rose from his body. It swirled and convulsed before taking the rough shape of an oversized hound with coal black eyes ringed in silver.

Red lightning traveled up and down one twins arm to the other and vice versa via the connection of their joined hands. It filled the air around them like static electricity. The demon ignored the other people gathered in the clearing, and circled the twins hungrily. It could smell their internal chaos like a mouth-watering buffet of sinister emotions. They were a direct line to anguish and torment everywhere, felt by thousands of people at the same time. It was that suffering that gave them their strength. They could wield it to fight the demons with the very thing that gave them sustenance. The emotion that gave them life could be used to bring their death.

The beast weaved in and out around them drunkenly, feeding off their appetizing emotions even at a distance. It easily maneuvered around the missiles hurled at it, making his circles around them tighter each time. The two sides aimed and dodged, pushed and pulled-back for so long that the twins lost all perception of time. This was their purpose. This was what they had to prevent. Adam was chosen as their protector so that he would always be within close proximity. He had no idea of the demon lurking inside him all these years. This demon was THE demon. This demon was the one that made the others strong enough to inflict pain on humans for sustenance. It was the reason things were so off kilter. Before it grew this strong, they had been forced to rely on the weak resolve of humans to provide it for them. They could nudge someone in the direction that would provide them a meal, but they couldn't' force their hand. Now the line between subtle influence and total coercion had become blurred. That was why the twins were here, to restore balance.

Time passed by imperceptibly, measured in attacks launched and dodged. Soon fatigue got the best of Julia, and she missed a dodge. The demon's black fire caught her on her left arm, and she cried out in pain. The fire was a chill far colder than any she'd ever felt before. It sucked all the warmth brought by positive emotions out of her, leaving her with a frigid chill in her bones that she wasn't sure would ever truly leave. A bright orange light engulfed the twins' clasped hands as Andrew lent some of his warmth to her to put out the demon fire.

With neither side gaining a substantial advantage, Andrew knew it was time to switch tactics. Instead of lashing out with the lighting, Julia and Andrew let it flow from their fingertips and join forming a kind of lasso. Julia held the lasso steadily while Andrew tossed more fiery projectiles at the phantasm to distract him. Making them small and frequent instead of large and powerful, the demon had a harder time dodging them, and a few hit their mark, causing the demon to cry out in distress. While the demon had to work harder and harder to dodge, Andrew used its distraction to drive it backward into the noose. Before it even realized that it was encircled, Julia had pulled it closed severing the demon in half. As the two separate halves writhed in agony, the red fire, fueled by the twins, consumed it completely.

With one final, eerily inhuman scream, the demon had been reduced to a pile of ashes. The battle was over. The twin's mission was complete. Their power, no longer an immediate necessity, withdrew back into the unused recesses of their mind. All that was left was their telepathic connection, empathic capabilities, and a minimal command of the red fire.

Celebratory cheers ascended from the spectators, but the euphoria didn't carry over to some. Julia and Andrew ambled despondently over to Adam's body where Samuel, Molly, and Simon were gathered with somber, tear-streaked faces. Julia collapsed on the ground next to Adam's corpse and wept on his immobile chest while Simon draped a comforting arm around her trembling shoulders. Andrew held Molly close, and pretended he didn't see her tears, the first tears he'd ever seen her cry. Samuel clasped Andrew on the shoulder before walking off into the forest to be alone.

The battle was won, but at such a steep price that none of those most directly involved could find solace in it.